#EDIT also also thinking about van telling the story of the wilderness. she knows what story theyre in!!!! she knows about the narrative!!!!

[autisticbillpotts]

going insane thinking about how taissa is both the wolf that ripped van's face off and the woman who killed the wolf that ripped her face off

[goddesspharo]

weird writer questions: 3, 25, 26!

weird questions for writers asks

3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed?

A billion years ago when we were all still beholden to PCs, I used to write everything in Windows Notepad and then copy to Word afterwards because I found it easier to write when I didn't have the distraction of fonts/sizes/italics. Over the years, I have thankfully broken myself of this habit, but sometimes when I'm stuck in the middle of a section, I'll open up a blank Word document and start writing in that - somehow the absence of all that came before and all that will come after takes the pressure off. I mostly write in word, but then update it into the google docs file corresponding to a story so that I have it on the go if inspiration ever hits. The annoying thing is that google docs always formats a space after each line break so every time I copy it back into word, I have to manually delete the space so it won't piss me off. (Also smart quotes on my iphone/ipad vs straight quotes on my macbook - just default it to straight quotes, google docs, so I don't have to find/replace every time I edit it somewhere else!)

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

There is no story so I suppose this is irrelevant, but I've always thought that when the Yellowjackets girls get rescued from the wilderness (circa 1998?), someone in the media gets wind of how the cinematic stylings of Sandra Bullock kept them going in the Canadian Wilderness, leading Kurt Loder and the MTV crew to hold a special screening of Practical Magic in Jersey for them. Years later, Van runs into Sandy B when they're filming a movie near her hometown and tells her that she's a big fan of her work, to which Sandy jokes, "You must not have seen Speed 2 then," which, let's be real, is the ONLY good thing to come out of being stuck in the wilderness for 19 months and having to cannibalize your teammates to survive.

Another hyper-specific detail re: Top Gun Maverick is that I've always assumed that Coyote's mom used to send mini-care packages to Hangman when she sent Coyote stuff because of course he went to one (1) barbecue at Coyote's when they were on leave and charmed the hell out of Mama Machado and immediately became "one of the family." (Except to Coyote's brother who has still never forgiven Hangman for innocently hitting on his now-wife/then-girlfriend at the party.)

26. How do you get into your character’s head? How do you get out? Do you ever regret going in there in the first place?

Not to be Sophie Nélisse about this but it doesn't consume me. If I liked the character enough to want to explore the characterization more, then it's probably fun more than anything else? I also think it's less about getting in a character's head and more about getting their voice right. Once you have that, the rest falls into place.

[curiousview-blog]

Electronic-her? (Part One)

I’ve been working on a ‘back burner’ research project exploring the lives and work of underground techno DJ/ Producers (DJPs) in the UK for some time now – looking at how to navigate a successful career among the grass-roots of the creative industries and in particular how technology has reshaped the industries these guys work in – for better, worse and all the timbres and grooves in between. I’ve written ‘guys’ for a very important reason, because with one or two exceptions, the DJPs I’ve interviewed and heard interviewed on podcasts (such as Lowering the Tone) are all male. In fact, with one or two exceptions, the DJPs that I know and/ or listen to, are all male. To underscore the naturalness of this fact, my partner’s son (who was 8 at the time) was visibly gobsmacked on discovering my Traktor controller sitting on the sideboard in my house: “You can’t be a DJ, DJs are men!”, he said. Out of the mouth of babes…

Now there are many reasons why I probably can’t be a DJ, but the fact that I am female shouldn’t really be one of them. Choosing, buying, playing and mixing tunes doesn’t require enormous physical strength, excessive body hair, testosterone, or a penis – so far as I have discovered at any rate - but (being a researcher) it got me thinking. About the same time, I listened to a Setting the Tone podcast, and heard two of my favourite techno producers equate women’s absence from the electronic dance music scene with sexuality, which really hammered home how entrenched sexuality is as a ‘go-to’ explanation for why women don’t progress in certain fields. Whilst there may be some truth in this explanation, being a social scientist, I also know that the reasons are without doubt far more complex and systemic than the fact female DJP’s are put off from having a go because they don't want to be seen to be using their sexuality to get on. So I’ve decided to put my social science talents to good use to find out why there are so few women working (visibly at least), in the music scenes that I know and love.

These issues are too important to deal with as a footnote to my main project, and so I had put them to one side as something to address once I’ve actually written up the findings from the project I have on the go now (see my previous posts “writing on not writing” and “procrastination”). Preferably this will be with a grant from a nice research council and involve lots of field-work in clubs and festivals around the world #niceworkifyoucangetit. But recently I’ve been reflecting on the gendering of the electronic dance music scene in relation to my own experiences – learning to DJ, how to use the technology, understanding music theory and so on – and so like it or not, I have found myself dipping into feminist writing on gender and technology, and thinking about my own formative experiences as a geeky teenager with a love of synthpop and all things electronica, and who, with hindsight, coveted Alan Wilder from Depeche Mode’s Moog synthesizer more than she idolized him (and that's a lot).

Watching a ‘Life in Waves’ was the first time I had ever heard of Suzanne Ciani, an American pioneer making sounds from humungous Buchler modular synthesizers. I went to see this film at House of Vans, in the arches under London’s Waterloo station, as part of an event put on by London Modular Alliance who describe themselves on their Facebook page as ”…a live electro act... No laptops, no button pushing, everything is created on the fly using modular synthesizers - live improvisation!” A crowdfunded production, the film tells the story of how Suzanne struggled to get her electronic music taken seriously, but achieved considerable commercial success making what she called ‘music effects’ for TV advertising in the 1970s and 1980s. 

The story is part-told by Suzanne herself, partly from commentary by friends and family, and edited with captivating old video footage and clips from the compositions she and her team made for advertisements. It was Suzanne Ciani’s studio who synthesized the fizzing sound of a coke bottle being opened and poured (yep, that's not a recording of the ‘real thing’), the sound of Zanussi washing machines, and Atari video games, to name just a fraction of her creative output.

What struck me as so goddamn cool about this woman was the fact she seemed to be completely unphased by the technology, blazing a trail not only with a medium heavily associated with men – both computers and experimentation with electronic sounds – but carving out a niche for herself in advertising, a very male dominated industry (think Mad Men…). A Life in Waves makes very little of this, which I liked and appreciated because it was nice to watch something about a woman in a “man’s world” that focused on her achievements rather than her gender and the battles she fought. And it stirred something old and important in me. Why had I not pursued my fascination for synthesizers when I was younger? Until now, I’ve never given this much thought, and as my Mum and Dad will tell you, my request for a “synthesizer” (probably aged around 14) was a pie-in-the-sky Christmas list request waaaay beyond our family’s means, and anyway, where the hell would I have put it when my bedroom was a 6’x7’ box room? But I think there is more to the story than this…

The second film I’ve seen recently was Northern Disco Lights: The rise and rise of Norwegian Electronic Dance Music. This time in a quirky little bar just off the main drag in Cardiff. Another heartwarming documentary about the origins of the ‘Scandilearic’ scene in the rather unlikely – and very northern – Norwegian town of Trømso. Better known for being the gateway to the Northern Lights, Father Christmas, Elves and reindeers, than for radical electronic dance music, we nonetheless heard stories from lads who tuned into pirate radio stations and were inspired to experiment with disco sounds made from cobbled together bits of electronic equipment, building such rave staples as ‘a homemade strobe light’. Apart from two women (one of whom was a protagonist’s mother), once again, this was a story about men’s involvement with electronic music – also mostly narrated by men. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s no less of a delightful and fascinating film for that, but my musings about music and gender were now becoming a repeating refrain, why have there been/ are there so few female DJs and even fewer female Producers?

A friend once told me he understood life’s little coincidences were signs that the universe was assuring him he was doing exactly what he should be doing, right there and right then, and so I was pleased to see a Mixmag article on the ’20 women who shaped the history of dance music’ pop up in my Facebook news feed just as I was thinking about what to write in this post. And even more pleasing was seeing the first woman Lisa Blanning and The Black Madonna include in their list is ‘Delia Derbyshire’, who I had just been hearing all about in Paul Sheeky’s fabulous podcast series on The History of Electronic Music. Clearly, I take these synchronicities as de facto proof that it’s OK to be starting a new investigation when the last one is not yet done [insert eyeroll emoji here]. And even more encouraging is the fact that as I type these very words, the latest edition of Dancecult: The Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture has today published  a special issue on Women in Electronic Dance Music. Vol 9 (1). Including a paper about Delia herself. Just lovely.

Delia Derbyshire produced the first piece of electronic music for television – the Dr Who theme tune – and alongside Daphne Oram, was one half of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop established in 1958 to experiment with electronic music production for TV and film (you can watch a wonderful short film about Daphne Oram in her home studio – looking uncannily like Mrs Merton – on YouTube). 

Yet it is the composer Ron Grainer who is credited with writing the Dr Who theme tune, even though he is cited in Sheeky’s podcast as saying “did I write that??” when he heard Delia’s electronic interpretation of his composition. 

Debating the line between composing (having the musical ideas) and production (the technical arrangement of the sounds) continues today, and its long been the convention that the ‘writer of the notes’ gets far more credit than the producer of the finished piece - and of course these boundaries are becoming further blurred with the collapse of engineering into the work of the DJ as they increasingly need to produce tracks in order to be taken seriously. But here, what interested me was the effect of the gendered nature of the attribution. History records that Dr Who theme was written by Ron Grainer – Delia Derbyshire only ‘realised’ or ‘arranged’ it, as you can see in the small text below the headline entries above. 

As Lisa Blanning reminds us in the Mixmag article:

History can be a tricky business. No matter how many facts are recorded, it's still written by those in power. Often omitted are the deeds and lives of the oppressed—not only the injustices perpetrated against them but also their accomplishments. Millennia of institutionalised sexism, in tandem with misogynist sexism, have prevented (continues to prevent) half of the world's population from enjoying access, opportunity, aid and recognition. Women get left out. A lot. Of everything. Dance music is no exception.

It's the ‘institutionalised sexism’ bit that really interests me in what Blanning says – and Mary Beard’s recent book Women and Power: A manifesto does a good job of reminding us that the exclusion of women from anything public, technological, economic (e.g., valued and powerful) has such a long history that we have forgotten its roots, and over the millennia, women have learned to keep themselves out of these spheres because they don’t feel comfortable. As the 2002 adverts for Yorkie chocolate bars controversially famously told us, we have learned that whatever it is, “It’s not for Girls”. So in the next part of this series, I’ll be sharing some of the things I’m finding out about the ways electronic music has become gendered, and what impact this could be having on the careers of female DJPs, as well as the aspirations of girls and women (young and not so young!) who are taking their first trepidatious steps into electronic music production, all without the aid of a penis.

[contrastbalance]

music becoming visual

This edition of contrastbalance is primarily about music becoming more and more visual, part of the reason I want physical copies out. Everyone featured in this entire thing has a strong image in some way – some are bold and some are enticing. Some use it as a stand alone statement, others to create something as eye catching as they do ear catching. Others use your eyes as a horizontal platform, ingraining into your cheekbone to reach being one step more relatable over the process of rolling out releases and 5 steps away from their ephemeral counterparts.

In early 2014, everyone’s favourite adopted artsy sibling Dev Hynes gave a stellar Ted Talks. The lecture’s focus was his understanding of the neurological condition of synaesthesia, and also featured a beautiful soundscape using keys he associates with certain colours. His projectile talent becomes far more transparent, opening up to the sniper focused audience, all while the speaker is reminiscent of Grace Jones mixed with a Lemony Snicket character.

Chromesthesia is the more particular type of the condition where colours link to sound, another known carrier is Pharrell. In an interview with Psychology Today he talks about over-active parts of his brain being forced to temporarily halt. He states “you ask any great rapper or writer or musician, and they’ll tell you their craziest ideas come from the shower or the plane because in both places there is sensory deprivation.” Williams linking his heard with his seen when meeting minds is integral to his much covered juxtaposition, which everyone knows he’s interested in creating. He sees his music the same as he does with getting dressed and everything else in between, drawing variation from a multicultural background, he is maybe someone you wouldn’t expect to be interested in what he is.

When A$AP Rocky was a can of spaghetti with the little sausages bursting onto a line of bridesmaids in 2011, what people who make music wear was at one of it’s highest points of fast changing scrutiny. He and the Mob were seen in the places to be, alongside the elite likes of Jeremy Scott, Michele Lamy and Kris Van Assche.

He had grown up bouncing between Harlem and Soho, at a young age mixing with people who inspire inspirers. Tales of acid-induced friendliness at SXSW give some sight into his individual and groups’ participating stabs at hedonism – but he has mixed in plenty of the high-brow sensibility to brilliantly market himself as someone standoffish when it comes to actually being a designer himself, a lane that has distracted musicians from every corner and status. He said in an early interview with SBTV “I’m not a designer, I’m not a fashion designer, I could consult like ‘yeah that’s dope but maybe you should fix this collar a little,’ but I don’t know the first thing about designing, I think that’s disrespectful to the culture. For me to just take advantage of it due to my fame, come in and pretend I can design – that’s not what I do.” Genuine interest and admiration saw designers, models and everyone hanging on in between every side of water huddle around Mayers, safe in the knowledge that artists are very aware of creative processes of those adjacent to them in other fields. He’s in the same vein of Bowie in terms of recreating himself.

While he’s admitted that Long.Live.A$AP leaned too much on the logical option at the time of trying to jump into pop minefields, At.Long.Last.A$AP showcased his genre-blending abilities. Following and probably coinciding with the hardship of losing one of his closest friends, fellow inspirer-of-inspirers A$AP Yams – seemed like he was having fun after making something he was sure he wanted us to hear and see. From the outside he’s the most pertinent visible link between underground music and wide arrays of fashion, and didn’t need to capture considerable numbers in pop audiences to do so.

Donald Glover’s creations always seem to meet at a drunk yoga class. The casual nature in which the creations are born is easily recognisable and even portrayed on-screen. Where Rocky and other massive acts could be described as embodying the more material, often recent and biographical side of rap, those like Kendrick Lamar, Chance The Rapper and Glover prefer telling interpersonal stories that drop listeners in the midst of varying turmoil.

Moonlighting as Childish Gambino, a dad and a guy who seems to place a lot of emphasis on changing his facial hair, Glover lives a really quiet life. His first exposure to the public eye came after Tina Fey was shown a spec screenplay for The Simpsons by David Milner, intrigued, she dug up some of the short films Glover made while at New York’s Tisch School of the Arts as part an improvisational comedy group, and she subsequently hired him to write for 30 Rock at just 23. After an 89-episode stint as Community‘s Troy he was written off the show, later stating that he casually asked to leave because his “heart wasn’t really in it. They, thankfully were just like ‘yeah’ and they let me go”, to Vibe Magazine, which wasn’t imparted to public knowledge at the time – leading many to boycott the show confused about the demise of a character and actor that had quickly impressed and maintained the sole reason for them to bother watching.

Not until 2013 and the rollout of because the internet would he post pictures of handwritten notes on Instagram, one stating “I didn’t leave Community to rap, I don’t wanna rap. I wanted to be on my own.” He says he was “mildly inconvenienced” by the resulting phonecalls.

Ambition to create using so many different artforms, even ability to do so at the level Glover consistently does is one thing, balancing all of them into your waking hours with a newborn is different. In August 2013 work began with FX on Atlanta, around following his short-lived recommencement with Community, around finishing because the internet, around shooting self-written short films featuring tripping pornstars, around the Deep Web Tour, recording and releasing STN MTN and then a day later Kauai.

Atlanta premiered on FX on 6th September 2016. It follows around Earn, who dropped out of Princeton to return back to Atlanta and become a full time slacker, part-time Airport salesman, part-time parent, post-retirement-occupation-time boyfriend. He realises first what his cousin is doing, then an episode length later that said cousin Paper Boi is on the brink of rap stardom and takes on an impromptu role as his manager. In the past few years the city has reached previously inaccessible heights in recognition as a culturally rich paradise for particularly African Americans – while the pressures of rubbing shoulders with some of the country’s artistic, business, innovative and sometimes underworld elite is present in the feel of the series, it’s Glover’s real-life cool in the face of doubt that makes the show so fluidly, deftly written, quaintly shot and highly addictive. “I tried to, I just wanted to make Twin Peaks with rappers,” he offers on The Ellen Show.

There is a brooding undercurrent that’s gained the critical acclaim and also a commissioned 2nd series just 2 weeks after it first aired. An all-black cast is few and far between, but been done – and all-black writing team is a less talked about issue in conversations about opportunity. President of FX, John Landgraf says of the pre-production meetings; “with Donald, he didn’t always articulate his vision in a way that we could see it, but his passions and ambition were clear.” There’s so much scope for a quirky show with (to many viewers) unconventional dialogue to go so wrong, just look at Bored to Death.

The issues that Atlanta portrays Earn tackling are those held varyingly stagnant over long spans of time in different lights by different people – police brutality, parenthood, mental health, institutionalised fear, gender identity, exploitation, flawed or complete lack of ethics in the entertainment industries, attitudes to firearms over racial lines and also portraying Justin Bieber as a black teenager in a charity basketball game – at no point does the show make an effort to not seem like it was written by an all-black team looking outwards. Glover downplays any political role the show may play in a Wired interview, while giving some insight into the casual first steps towards the brilliance the show exudes: “I like it when black people are hit with a certain light, like purple. It just felt good to play around with the look of the show.” An incredibly curious person, no one could’ve written the dialogue for Van and Jayde in the restaurant in the ‘Value’ episode without having experienced a defining moment while leaning over fumes from a squash based appetiser.

Gambino reached what you could call the 2nd phase of marketing with Awaken, My Love! reaching almost 200 million Spotify plays. The album was first played alongside a full band and 6-part choir at PHAROS, a Joshua Tree installment that Glover curated with Wolf and Rothstein, Microsoft and Miles Konstantin. The latter developed the PHAROS Earth app, purchasable for $99, locked to the phone and owner acting as a ticket to the 3-day wilderness based festival, that Glover would state would be his only live performance in 2016. The app was to make sure no tickets could be accordingly resold for such an exclusive event, and after the phones were checked for eligibility at entry they were placed in magnetically locked bags that were handed out – to halt any leakage from the cult event to the outside world. The event placed so much emphasis on first hand purity, as broken down into 5 sections upon purchasing the app – “tribe, ritual, experience abstraction, architecture, language.”

Another peek at Glover disillusionment, this time with technology was displayed by a complete clearance of his Twitter and Instagram accounts at the end of 2014, only returning with a Tweeted countdown in June 2016. “Be helpful. Do not be a detriment. No irony” the app also stated alongside the 5 human experience intuitives. In September fans appeared at Joshua Tree in the “vibrancy colour” of blue, that acted as another entry requirement. Wading through a mixture of Brokeback Mountain sets and a party in a garage ambience the crowds saw an artist in full control of everything they were seeing.

Due mainly to cold callers from Birmingham we’re probably now in the stage of evolution where we know not everyone is going to have a fully suitable voice for their chosen direction in life. Expectations naturally make up reaction and Rick Astley had all you shallow bastards annoyed. If you do listen to people’s music based solely on physical appearance you’ve probably got a relatively neo-nazi dad and you’ll frequently set fire to the family balaclava lexicon so you won’t have to accompany him on his shopping list. Album art is the forward-thinking way to live up to or fail to with regards to listeners expectations that they made with their eyes.

They act as a documentation of what they entomb and the location of the graveyard, modern graphic design actively swingy-chairs into the shins of people holding wine who don’t move out the way. When previously artwork was revealed ahead of release to moonwalk dropping breadcrumbs, that was a linear step like most steady marketing – today the rules often get told as you consume the experience. It lets you in for an all round view of a possibly new genre of image and you can easily find the cover you want to see, it might not match what you wanted to hear but you remember what you saw and go from there – much like casinos in the UK.

The hopefully budding romance of Zack Fox and Thundercat is communicated to the “here for this” spectators vibrantly through the covers of the deluxe vinyl copies of Drunk; feline optical illusion, trap mixtape reminiscent kaleidoscopes of viagra, guns and horses, also a seemingly constipated album artist. The visuals are a cue to using humour to help push through dark moments, it’s just as abstractly debilitating and distracting as that is. In an interview with Creative Review, the mystic force formerly known as Bootymath summarised: “I definitely just wanted to capture my sense of humour, which some would consider absurd or psychedelic. When life is just punching you in the back of the head, you start laughing at shit that doesn’t even correlate – it’s a coping mechanism but it helps create timeless inspiration. I wanted to inject those experiences and let designs be bold and confusing.”

If the Drunk covers would be for the Peter Saul fans, Bonobo’s Migration is probably whispered to those into Dan Flavin. Simon Green’s 6th album cover was designed by Neil Krug – responsible for visuals accompanying sounds from Lana Del Rey, The Weeknd and Tame Impala. The art dads know Bonobo from scenic and melancholy drives drowning out your wife in the boot, and the story of how the album art came about is equally as Californian-style ritualistic.

The consistency of the crispness Krug captured definitely affected his sleeping pattern horribly – he would drive out into the Mojave in the middle of night to have a chance to capture the divinity in the area’s sunrise. Picturing the desert came from Green’s recent life choice of moving to Los Angeles, while finalising tracks he would drive out to find required portions of solace. In an interview, also with Creative Review he says, “You can hear things in a new way just from moving environment. The car test is a classic thing. Producers will say, ‘take a drive with the music’. I like to go up to the mountains – there’s lots of really weird and wonderful landscapes around where I live – and just spend time with the music. It’s very inspiring… it can spark an idea that you might not have had if you’d just been sat in an air conditioned studio.”

The intensity of the supposed subject and the serenity it’s happening in narrate Krug’s skill as a press photographer and the same contrast correlates very effectively as something that could stand without explanation. The cover designer says in the same interview: “Once Si and I sat down and talked I knew the artwork needed to be something other than just landscape images. I thought, if this is going to grab your attention and create a narrative – you need something else in there – but what’s in there can’t be too loud or comment too much on what the music is. It had to stand out in an unusual way.”

Another past-time visual components to music can choose to aim at is discourse on identity. 2016 was a massive year for image around music, particularly in acknowledging vulnerability in places it wasn’t seen previously. I was losing my mind watching a reaction video of Frank Ocean, and the channel owner states “he doesn’t know how to market himself apparently” – yet the singer has had strangers from passing by cars shouting “Frank where’s the album!” If people verbally assault you for more of just you, you’ve created a demand for yourself in infinite ways for constant consumption. Beginning with Endless, Ocean perfected the unorthodox rollout of artistic identity that included two albums, a magazine, a seemingly for-view-only clothing line, pop up retail locations, a music label and apparently a racing team. The most adored gift to date was in the shape of Blonde.

Forever a mystery in an information age, Ocean’s most revealing statement came from that Tumblr note, which in turn made you a chiropractor studying the backbone Channel Orange, just as expected after that he money-danced into the abyss. He stands so close to the likes of West, Knowles, Mayer that reflections off of royal-like jewels fully expose his complete innocuous desire to go and live and them come tell us about it, although he seems to be making that arthouse full time. Post Channel Orange activities forced him to enter into the wilderness, absolutely no interest in TMZ harassment. He has all the cliché qualities to live as a genius like those who handed the torch to him, including the inhuman work-rate; Blonde‘s clear perfectionism required it’s creator to work for at least 17 house a day at the height of production and there’s rumoured to be 150 versions of ‘White Ferrari‘. Apart from a casually released ‘Nikes‘ video, none of the tracks have received even slightly the treatment you’d expect to see for as a single.

Since the album was released at the end of August 2016, Ocean has already given a short interview while wearing Vans in the White House, a longer form conversation in the New York Times, had a filmed interview about the making of possibly his last stab at an “album format” and even released one and been featured on another song – he seems all set to fire himself off to the moon.

What made Blonde all the more enticing was the visual attitude around the release – in the most unconventional cyclical portrayal he maybe could’ve thought of. There is a consistency throughout most of the imagery and what it’s getting it. Self reliance is the quality many align with Ocean’s character. In the New York Times article he revealed that since Channel Orange and the following borderline unwelcome attention, his label and management situation had grown all the more murky, and he had been in the process of buying back his masters from Def Jam. His deal with the label was covering two albums – after they indefinitely shelved his would-be solo album Nostalgia, Ultra he released it himself, Channel Orange followed just over a year later. Personal privacy requirements aside, the label still needed a second release, so Ocean slapped them with the carpentry tutorial that was Endless on the 1st of August 2016, to end the “seven year chess game” – less than 3 weeks later Blonde was released on his label Boys Don’t Cry.

His possible last album-album will be remembered as a great one – widely played and picked apart for years. Blonde lends from many corners, musical and lifestyle. Vulnerability is also set into specific genres, a recent champion of divulging is the Seattle based synth-pop artist Perfume Genius. An artistic contradiction with shared qualities of an 8-year old child prodigy, his music has been growing into larger sounding forms. His melancholic intimate pianist base-point works well bouncing off of lyrics about his past substance abuse issues, his sexuality, his living with Crohn’s, modern wellbeing concerns of gay men inside masculinity and domestic abuse.

Along with the growing mechanics, the nature in which the recordings take place has majorly shifted. Just like the growing catalogue of projects which is set to extend in May, Mike Hadreas is experiencing strength in numbers in terms of albums, fans and relationships – namely with Alan Wyffels, who alongside Mike is 8 years sober. Perfume Genius could very well be in the same philosophical field as Zack Fox, using humour to patch up some past, some continuing difficulties, struggling to not look back with angst upon death threats from school days and even a hate-fuelled beating that forced him to elope with a lifestyle from Seattle all the way to New York. In that city Mike fell into the common grounds of coming of age searching, ending up with you shaking next to a radiator. “When you are a drug addict and alcoholic, you function in crisis mode all the time. Learning and Put Your Back N 2 It was Mike processing those things. Too Bright was a lot of anger. And this album is like, ok, we’re on the other side” Alan tells Fader.

He seems absolutely focused on intense personal growth, which is admirable for a 35 year old. Also in Fader, Mike says of rehab – “I didn’t talk at all for the first four days. I was so terrified. Then there’s something so freeing: there’s lots of group therapy, and you’re just around people all the time because you’re all locked together. By the end of it, I was facilitating the discussions.” His ability to let loose is maybe most striking on his first album’s 3rd song, ‘Mr Peterson‘ about a school teacher who groomed and took advantage of him and subsequently committed suicide.

The new album is said to be a triumph of overcoming personal demons, but fears about growing hostility in his native country are just as scary as we move into increasingly accepting mindsets and heightened security measures see people referred to as “eggshells.” The response of strength in numbers also has Perfume Genius looking to create his new album in an innovative-to-himself manner, creating the melodies before the lyrics. His growth from nihilist to domestic bliss he admits doesn’t feel fully solid, but at the time it’s being focused on by the man himself and those observing prove important – that ascending joy with a gay backdrop is what the outlying masses need.

I take credit for the words and absolutely zero of the photos.