#I am a SUCKER for a good orchestral piece/classical music

[pradaxstyles]

im a sucker for an orchestral piece where you can feel the desperation, the sadness, the longing. where it eats you up in a way thats indescribable. I want to fell every single emotion in a piece, I want it to give me goosebumps, make me understand what it's trying to convey. like yes tell me what you're trying to say with just beautiful sounds, I want it all

[earlysunshines]

really random question but what genre of music do you like listening to? (other than kpop of course)

oh i LOVVEEE QUESTIONS AB MY MUSIC TAYSE OMFMGMGGGGHOORAY

other than kpop i listen to a loooytt of rnb and indie pop!! i’ve also been listening to a lot of classical/orchestral pieces bc it’s just that time…

i’ve also had the new wte album on loop but also the internet has been playing a lot too since it’s almost fall/ basically fall where i am so!!!! yes

but yeah my top genres r probably rnb, indie pop, jazz (loml), and rap! i also listen to a good amount of city pop and rly just older japanese songs, im such a big fan of tatsuro yamashita esp, he has noooo bad songs and im a sucker for his big wave album im actually trying to get it on cassette

[sweet-beezus]

Hiya!

I'm Sham, they/them, and I'm an ✨artist✨

Welcome to my b(l)og, I hope the water's nice :)

I mainly post OCs and reblog fun posts that I can rotate in my brain, fanart is extremely rare 'round these parts unless I'm reblogging some.

I'm on MST, I usually reblog between 10AM-1AM, and queue my own posts for 1PM-2PM (so I have something to look forward to during work), sometimes I'll surprise drop a post if I'm impatient or being silly~

If you want tags to peruse, I have a few that might interest you!

▪︎#sham's art <- my art tag

▪︎#sweet memery <- my meme tag

▪︎#shamsbabs <- tag I use for bunching my OCs together, they are also tagged by fandoms and individual names!

▪︎#trope scope <- writing tropes that really get my brain factory gears grinding

▪︎#sham's favs <- thins it out to the things that make me giggle and live rent free in my brain, mix of both tags like a nice soup, though nowadays I tag anything as a fav... Might need a new tag-

#sham's inbox / #sham's trash posts <- for previous asks and my own silly posts, though these tags gather dust more frequently, since I never have an original thought other than about my OCs...

▪︎#other's art / #friend art <- art appreciation tags :)

I also have sideblogs!

@shams-kiddies <- OC art sideblog, it's better organized than my main in terms of tags

@the-briar-brigade <- AoR sideblog dedicated to an ongoing long form Kingdom Hearts roleplay, periodically mass updates because I'm forgetful!

@the-mighty-phoenix <- Iliana centric sideblog, I thought about using it as an RP blog but it's now just another art archive

I have other sideblogs, but I'm not quite ready to share them yet, so stay tuned I guess-

☆My ask box and DMs are closed for now, since I am getting a bit overwhelmed by donation asks and messages! I can't donate at this time, nor do I have a large enough platform to spread awareness or enough time in my day to fact check each ask or account sent my way, I hope you understand ♥

Currently, I am not accepting commissions, since I have a busy work life and chronic pain (plus I don't even have a commission sheet set up, alas-), however I'm open to art trades and conditional requests if my burnout allows!

For a more competitive art trade experience during the month of July, you can find me on Artfight as ShamSpam!

That's all for surface level stuff, I'll leave some more in depth looks about me and my work under the cut :)

I have no concept of a consistent social life or media presence, so I just post whatever and whenever I want to, usually mid afternoon for me because that's my time to Survive™ my day to day stressors. Whatever hits my dopamine reserves just right will probably end up here!

I am a self taught artist who only really picked up on certain techniques and styles in recent years, I have quite a few inspirations for the directions my art is going in and I actually adore how my style(s) look right now! Which is good because it's a lot of work maintaining and improving all the time-

I mostly indulge in art and writing of my OCs, and the occasional fan art here and there when I'm in a particular mood, and everything (I would hope) is made with the love in my heart for my creations, from the 6+ hours of work on a digital piece to maybe a 10 min sketch of my OCs smooching from the confines of my canvasses.

We can ignore the musician part for now, at this time I haven't really delved too deep into making my own tunes aside from some really rough drafts, but eventually I will! I am a sucker for orchestral pieces, but I need to relearn music theory-

I have a few fandoms and things I like to participate or indulge in from time to time, so if you're curious here's a list!

Music Artists:

▪︎Josh Groban

▪︎Thomas Bergersen

▪︎Marcus Warner

▪︎Celine Dion

▪︎Phil Collins

▪︎Ricky Montgomery

▪︎Citizen Soldier

▪︎Other varieties of orchestrals, whenever they crop up

▪︎The classics from an edgy teen's childhood (Linkin Park, Evanescence, Disturbed, etc. also including Christian rock, it was unavoidable you could say-)

▪︎Also classic artists from before my time (Journey, Michael Jackson, The Bee Gees, ABBA, etc.)

▪︎Folk-y music, nothing specific in terms of bands so far, just whatever hits my brain just right

▪︎Very weird pickings from a variety of places, I'm honestly too tired to list most of them because I'm in and out of listening fixations like a pendulum- Usually it's a select handful of songs that don't have a tremendous impact on my liking for the artist, y'know? Aside from vibes-

Current Brainworms (fictional media):

▪︎The machinations of my own mind (my OCs <3)

▪︎Kingdom Hearts (KHUx era mostly and, again, my OCs)

▪︎Ghostbusters

▪︎ARGs/Analog Horror

▪︎Wizard101

Things I Revisit Periodically:

▪︎Okami

▪︎Persona 5

▪︎Sonic the Hedgehog

▪︎Splatoon

▪︎Ace Attorney

▪︎Doctor Who

▪︎ABZÛ/The Pathless (later Sword of the Sea and Journey, potentially)

▪︎FNaF

▪︎The Dark Crystal

▪︎Various musicals (feel free to ask which ones! This includes concept ones too, there's way too many for me to list tbh)

▪︎Lego games (my childhood <3)

▪︎Celtic mythology (or mythology in general, I'm just obsessed with the Celts for some reason)

Misc. Items That Are Ever Present But Not Constant:

▪︎Sea creatures

▪︎Dungeons and Dragons

▪︎Frogs and turtles

▪︎Tragic love stories

▪︎The concepts of loss and love in general

▪︎Emotional catharsis as a whole tbh

▪︎Phoenixes (for some reason)

▪︎Red pandas

▪︎Moss (especially in ball form)

▪︎Religious imagery/history

▪︎Tarot cards

▪︎Vincent Van Gogh

▪︎Ravens

I have SO MANY OCs I could talk about for hours, so if you ever see one that interests you don't hesitate to send me an ask about them!!

And I think that's all for now, I'll probably add stuff on if I ever remember anything I need to add-

Anyway happy browsing!!

[casual-video-transcripts]

Art Mania: Red Velvet's "Feel My Rhythm" by mera

Video Transcript by CCKN is under the cut

[0:00] Theater kids are going to be manifesting in my house tonight, huh? 

[0:03] Red Velvet are my go-to group for creativity 

[0:06] and I am in love with the melange of 

[0:08] intense and varying art inspirations in “Feel My Rhythm”.

[0:11] This era includes references to different styles of illustration and drama,

[0:16] portraiture and painting, architecture and fashion, music and dance.

[0:20] K-Pop has a few notable ballet concepts,

[0:21] but I love this provocative ballet 

[0:24] and references to the psychedelic theater.

[0:26] Costuming, effects, set design, movement,

[0:28] even the lyrics paint this picture of art

[0:30] colliding in a euphoric mania.

[0:33] I love songs that celebrate music 

[0:35] and this release has it lyrically, sonically, and visually.

[0:38] Soaring between classic violin, dance pop beats, and the rattling metal

[0:42] of a carousel, 

[0:43] “Feel My Rhythm” is sweet like a “Velvet” title and

[0:46] vibrant like a live performance of “Masquerade” from Phantom of the Opera. 

[0:49] I love the second couplet of the chorus where the members trickle down their vocals in a ribbon as

[0:53] as the wave of violins and viola rolls to the front. 

[0:56] The song ends a little suddenly like a music box snapping shut,

[1:00] rather than winding down 

[1:01] but I love the fragrant vocals and the contrasting musical influences. 

[1:05] Elegant orchestral strings, bursts of carnival game beats,

[1:08] and lofty vocals suddenly buckling down into chants and talk singing. 

[1:12] “Feel My Rhythm” is surprisingly bracing, 

[1:14] shiny black spikes poking through lace, 

[1:17] frosted all over with Bach’s “Air for G-String”.

[1:19] “Feel My Rhythm” speaks of music as if it were bottled and personified into five women,

[1:24] five muses of art, each with her own season and stage. 

[1:28] The lyrics and arrangement never stay still for too long. 

[1:31] The members seem to trade dialogue and rebuttals from the constant switch-ups, 

[1:35] and then suddenly ride into the heavens as one. 

[1:37] At parts they stare into the audience as one Greek chorus and at others they're training secrets

[1:41] or cutting each other off with interjections,

[1:44] a lot like play characters and a massive ensemble song putting in their own perspectives. 

[1:49] In my mind there are a handful of songs that deserve to be openings for pop musicals 

[1:53] like “After School” by Weeekly 

[1:55] where everyone gets a personal actionable line that builds into a big centerpiece. 

[1:59] “Feel My Rhythm” feels like a one-thirds mark threshold song,

[2:03] where the play invites you, the audience, 

[2:05] to leave the known world behind and enter the story.

[2:07] I'm always a little on the fence when it comes to K-Pop sampling classic orchestral pieces.

[2:12] Sometimes you get a really over-starch song like “Hands Up” by Cherry Bullet

[2:17] but I think “Feel My Rhythm” uses “Air For G[-string]” more like perfume than costume

[2:21] and it works in their favor 

[2:22] “Feel My Rhythm” has some just classic Red Velvet moments 

[2:25] a lot of moments both visually and

[2:27] musically reminded me of “Cool Hot Sweet Love” or “Cool World” 

[2:31] These creamy, sensual, emotional touches that Red Velvet does really well. 

[2:35] We haven't seen them do black box dancing since like “Automatic”.

[2:38] The video also has these classic collage pop scenes, 

[2:42] these extremely cinematic death of glamour scenes,

[2:44] and a good blue jeans moment. 

[2:47] And I think it works because this song is about the manic collision of art into celebration.

[2:52] I love art that celebrates art, 

[2:53] I'm a huge sucker for it, 

[2:55] and when you put Red Velvet vocals on it, you're gonna make me happy.

[2:58] After listening to the album three times,

[3:00] here is my initial ranking of the songs

[3:02] according to my preference. 

[3:03] Number one: “Bambaleo”.

[3:05] I am in love with this super sweet, falsed-out chorus. 

[3:10] “Bambaleo” is the song that evolved the most the more I listen to it.

[3:13] You start in the city with the quiet synth and funk 

[3:16] but as you drive out into the night, a spotlight from outer space

[3:19] begins to lift you up into the sky.

[3:21] Parts of the song suggests some sort of vacation to paradise

[3:25] but the synth scratch adds some pulp from b-sides like “Look”.

[3:28] The cocktail of cocaine-high singing, psyched-out soundscapes, and retro dance in the middle of it all, 

[3:34] feels like drinking distilled hallucinogens, 

[3:36] but in a nice way, I really love it. 

[3:38] Number two: “Beg For Me”.

[3:40] Whooo, baby! 

[3:42] A Red Velvet b-side in the taste of Irene and Seulgi's Monster album.

[3:45] Absolutely delicious. 

[3:47] “Beg For Me” starts as this very low menacing club song 

[3:51] that breaks into a red demanding mantra.

[3:54] They are yelling at you about the good vibes,

[3:56] it's a little scary at points. 

[3:58] I see this played in a vampire club right after you've been bitten

[4:02] and there's venom in your bloodstream, 

[4:04] and the club matriarchs are like floating around, 

[4:06] reminding everyone what an intoxicating time you're having. 

[4:09] I love the tagline “dance for me, work for me, beg for me” 

[4:12] and a vocal howl at the moon. 

[4:15] This album has a lot of surprising tasteful talk sections.

[4:18] Number three: “Feel My Rhythm”. 

[4:20] The chugging mechanical daydream sounds from “Zimzalabim” 

[4:23] have been repurposed into something more musical 

[4:25] but equally psychoactive. 

[4:27] “Feel My Rhythm” has these rising sweet vocals, 

[4:30] like braces of a cathedral rising up to a point. 

[4:33] I really enjoyed the lyrics on this track. 

[4:35] It's a love song, but it's not to a lover.

[4:37] It’s to music and the places where music touches other art forms,

[4:41] or in this case where arts are piled on top of each other with rapture.

[4:45] Number four: “In My Dreams”. 

[4:47] Killing Eve's song, 

[4:49] change my mind. 

[4:50] Tell me this doesn't make you think of the two of them. 

[4:52] I love the quiet patter of beat,

[4:54] and the high dots of notes 

[4:56] as the song slowly dissolves into symbols and desperate singing. 

[4:59] “In my dreams, you love me back”.

[5:02] It's a little too early my time to be having these emotions 

[5:05] but I love how the chorus kind of bursts out of the speaker

[5:08] but then she loses her courage and has to deal with the words in the room.

[5:12] Number five: “Good, Bad, (and) Ugly”.

[5:14] Mapled and starched like an old photo,

[5:17] “Good, Bad, (and) Ugly” has a spotty rainy ambiance in the background

[5:20] that reminds me of phonographs and classy umbrellas.

[5:23] “Good, Bad, (and) Ugly” falls into that subcategory of Red Velvet b-sides that

[5:27] that play in film noir band bars. 

[5:29] It's a little bit of a cafe song, 

[5:31] and a little bit of draping yourself over the piano,

[5:33] and stealing the pianist's fancy black hat 

[5:36] while you sing about your tragic but passionate love life. 

[5:38] Okay, okay, apparently that is the description

[5:41] that I wrote for this song when I was listening to it.

[5:43] It's too late to change it at this point, whatever.

[5:46] And number six: “Rainbow Halo”. 

[5:48] I appreciate the brass inclusion at the end, 

[5:50] but I feel this song is a little too repetitive for my tastes. 

[5:53] It's got some great moments but 

[5:54] I feel I would like zone out way too easily 

[5:57] while listening to the song and forget that I left the stove on.

[5:59] I really love how this era is soaked in art

[6:01] and the kaleidoscope of musical influences all over the album, 

[6:05] let alone the single. 

[6:07] There's so much passion for each medium, 

[6:09] and you can tell that each crew member was like really excited to

[6:11] reference their favorite piece of art in the video. 

[6:14] I might do a follow-up video

[6:15] specifically about each member's solo scenes 

[6:18] because I think there's a ton to talk about there 

[6:20] but for now I'd like to know what you thought of the era 

[6:22] and what your favorite song off the album is.

[6:24] Okay, bye!

YouTube Channel: mera

Video Description: A bite-sized review of Red Velvet's "Feel My Rhythm."

Disclaimer: None of the videos I transcribe belong to me. They belong to the content creators and the crew behind the videos. My transcripts may not be 100% as I am not a professional. I'm just someone who wants to provide video transcripts for people to understand and enjoy these videos. For this video, I focused on the speaker. If there are any corrections you would like me to make, let me know in the comment section of the post.

If you like this video or any other video from mera, please support by watching her videos on the YouTube platform and through other means by them. 

Personal Notes: This is probably one of the Red Velvet albums that I replay nonstop, also because my Spotify would always play the songs from this album on shuffle. I’m honestly surprised I haven’t gotten tired of Feel My Rhythm but it really is THAT song. 

The album, The ReVe Festival 2022 - Feel My Rhythm, and the title track, Feel My Rhythm is available on YouTube, music streaming platforms, and to purchase as a digital or a physical album. 

Click here for the YouTube playlist version of the album. As for the physical albums, either check your local stores, K-Pop and not, near you or you’ll have to look online to find any available. I’ve listed a few down below but I do recommend to look for anywhere else if you don’t prefer these sites:

SM Global Shop (It’s all sold out as of writing and posting this but I do recommend checking every once in a while to see if they’ll restock again)

KPOPTOWN (I mainly showed the search results in case you want either the ReVe version or the Orgel version or both)

Catchopcd (The ReVE version is out of stock as of writing/posting this but I do recommend checking back every once in awhile to see if they’ve restocked it)

SubK Shop (I mainly showed the search results in case you want either the ReVe version or the Orgel version or both)

KAVE SQUARE (I mainly showed the search results in case you want either the ReVe version or the Orgel version or both)

Kpop-shop (for those in Ukraine)

It’s all sold out as of writing and posting this but I do recommend checking every once in a while to see if they’ll restock again

If there are any other sites that sell Red Velvet albums, you can reblog or tag or comment below. Spread the knowledge.

That’s about it on my end. I’ll catch you all on the flip side.

-CCKN

[rionsanura]

@jadefyre​ said: hello yes I would like the deets of how the POTC theme evokes the swashbucklery so amazingly please

@mochuelita​ replied to your post: I am HERE for the swashbuckle deets

@jackironsides replied to your post: Will you divulge the secrets??

Oh I will absolutely try. I have no perspective about how much anyone knows about music, so I am likely going to vacillate wildly between explaining basic concepts in insulting detail and glossing over things that seem obvious to me but may not be, but I love this damb song so much that I am bout to EXPLAIN IT SO HARD. (Pls let me know the degree of unintelligibility you encounter here, and in what deet, and I will try to ameliorate.)

This glorious Hans Zimmer/Klaus Badelt/Geoff Zanelli thrill, the crowning achievement of hollywood pirate music, named, appropriately, He's A Pirate, is a deep and riotous well of perfectly executed brain-melting techniques. Welcome to my Deet Tour. The biggest categories of secrets here are

1. hemiola 2. augmentation(**) 3. orchestration 4. modal borrowing 5. cadential rhythm

So the biggest and most important rhythmic secret anyone can ever learn has a name that sounds hilariously like either an unfortunate blood disease or an unfortunate Ancient Greek poet. But it is Life and Greatness; it is the secret that makes compound time magic, and I am such a huge sucker for it that back when facebook was an exciting new platform that had just been opened to a few schools outside the ivy league, including mine, back when fb groups were a form of self-expression and not a freebooting nightmare, I made a facebook group called "If Hemiola Were A Person, We'd Be Married." Yes. And 17 of my closest music school friends joined, because hemiola is really that great.

Here is what it means: you are in compound time (a kind of meter that has beats made of 3 smaller beats). You arrange those tiny beats into groups of 2 instead.* Like this:

| | |   | | | -> | |   | |   | |

Think of the coolest thing about the rhythm in the classic Theory 101 hemiola demonstration standby, America from West Side Story. It goes onetwothree onetwothree onetwo onetwo onetwo. That's one way to hemiola. The most obvious way, very good, very satisfying.

A more advanced (and more connotatively piratical, but we'll get to that in a bit) way to hemiola is to do the 3 and the 2 at the SAME TIME. This can be in different instruments, or in the same instrument at different points in the melody of the same bar; the options are endless. You end up with a rhythm that, devil take it, can only reasonably be called Rollicking. Is it in 3? Is it in 2? DOESN'T MATTER. IT'S HEMIOLA. IT'S IN BOTH. Listen to the A section of He's a Pirate; it has everything that can possibly be in both 3 and 2 going on at once. The melody, played by some forthright horns and low strings, has a rhythm that mostly divides the bar into 3, while still keeping the pickup subdivision that makes you feel like the little beats are in 2 big groups of 3. I'll write the rhythm out with periods for rests and pipes for played beats and divide them into the groups I hear them in, with big spaces between the bars: (...) .||    |. |. ||    |. |. ||    |. |. ||    ||. .||    |. |. ||    |. |. ||    |. |. ||    |.. .||    |. |. ||    |. |. ||    |. |. ||    ||. .||    |. |. |.    ||. .||    |. |. ||   |.. ...

The most ambiguous thing here is the middle beat of the bar, the 4th one if you're counting it in 6 (2nd if you're in 2, 1.5 if you're in 3). This whole melody hinges on that empty beat. Is it part of the second note? Or is it a springboard for the last two notes? Is it an on-beat or an offbeat? IT'S HEMIOLA. IT'S BOTH. MAGIC. Obviously some bars will be easier to hear in 2 (the fourth bar at end of each phrase, for example, which starts with two notes in a row with no space between, and a really emphatic drum hit on beat 4 (or 2, or 1.5) while no notes are happening). Some are easier to hear in 3; the rest of the phrase, besides the fourth bar, has at least two notes per bar that sounds like they should be grouped in Big Three (two little beats per group). The best part about it, and what makes the Rollicking so successful (one might even say, as OP did, that it is Jaunty) is that for most of these bars, it is equally easy to hear them in 3 or in 2. The British Isles, particularly the bits that the English tried and failed to assimilate, are deeply associated with this kind of rhythmic ambiguity. In fact the wikipedia example of what an Irish drum (bodhrán) sounds like is mostly composed of 6/8 hemiola, and though it's not the best playing I've ever heard, it is a good example of the rhythms usually played on that drum.

I'm counting the climactic bit that sounds like cutlass swipes (there's our Swashbuckling) about 0:33-0:46 as a B section. Why does it buckle the swash? Because all the beats of the melody have been occupied so far in this tune, and now there are big holes. Are they still hemiola? Yes. It's just the slightly more obvious kind that switches back and forth between 2 and 3 beats per bar in one voice instead of both at once through ambiguous beat 4 (or 2 or 1.5):

|.. .||   |.. ...   |.. ...    ||. |..    |.. .||    |. |. |.   |.. .||   |. |. |.   ||. ...   |. |. |.   ||. ...   |. |. |.   |.. .(||) (the last two pipes here are the pickup to the C section and can be counted as rests for the purposes of the B section)

But don't worry, both kinds of subdivision are still happening everywhere else. It's a mechanically complex but simply majestic pearl of a tune.

Which brings us to Secret #2: augmentation. This is why we feel the buckle is swashed atop the bowsprit, rather than anywhere else on board. This one is Particularly Secret, because to be honest there is no literal augmentation going on in this song, just the implication of it.** This might be a bit harder to explain.

The C section of this song, starting at 0:45 right after the cutlass swipes, goes rhythmically like this (basically two times in a row, with different notes the second time):

(||)   |.. .||    |. |. |.    |. |. |.    |.. .||    |.. .||    |. |. |.   |. .. |.    |.. (...)

Look how many groups of unambiguous 3 there are in this horn melody! With big holes in the rest of the bars! This makes the melody sound slower, because not as many small notes in a row are being played, even though there are still the same underlying rhythms happening in the drums and the accompanying figures that are not the melody. It's like we're on the top of the ship instead of underneath in the waves being bashed on the hull by all the little chops and splashes we hear in the drums and cellos. We can see/hear those little subdivisions, we're just not involved in them right now: this is how we become majestic. The drums are definitively in 2, which emphasizes the moments when the melody is more 3ish. The bass line and accompanimental figures are ambiguous.

This brings us to Secret #3: orchestration.

The magnificence and high wind (which causes rough seas) are indeed related to some cellos. The swash wouldn't be nearly so all-encompassing if the orchestrators hadn't picked the instruments they picked (I'm not sure who orchestrated this particular moment of the soundtrack; see the wikipedia entry on the 7 different composers hired to orchestrate this score because of weird production reasons). There is an ASTONISHINGLY small number of kinds of instruments used in this song considering the forces available in an orchestra, and all but the cellos, horns, basses, and drums are basically decorations on top of the main tune.

Here is the obvious thing: it's very low. Cellos are pretty low instruments, basses are Really low instruments, horns have the capability to go high but do not do it in this song, and drums have no exact pitch but most of the ones used in this piece for the main beats are low in frequency with occasional high crashy sounds for emphasis. Cellos, and I don't think I'm making this up, I've read association studies, sound like wood. Horns are used in hollywood scores (and for hundreds of years before movies were invented) for noble and majestic melodies, associated with noble and majestic characters and environments and qualities (check out some Wagner for more information about the association of melodies with story elements before movies were invented). This is the deet where we start thinking about notes instead of just rhythms.

It is pretty unusual for notes so low to be so fast. A gem of an aphorism I picked up in high-school-orchestra rehearsals (from the director, no less): "an octave lower, an octave slower." (This was usually meant as a gentle tease to the bass section for not playing their part right, or on time, but it works as an explanation of normal orchestration principles.) We don't expect our driving, foundational bass frequencies to move from note to note so fast. Usually if they do, it's an exceptional showoff moment in a bigger orchestral context where the violins or other high instruments are doing the rest of the fast stuff. Here, the violins are just doubling the low strings to emphasize them when the melody is repeated; the high strings aren't even playing all the time. What this means is that the low instruments are showing off all the time, so it's very drivy and feels much faster than it would if just the high instruments were doing the tune.

It's also one of the reasons the song is foreboding; very low notes, punctuated with high shrieky interjections (like the violin swashes in the cutlass section), is the technique used in horror scoring, which we have been conditioned to associate with something scary. Also I think there is some science there.

Another reason it is a bit foreboding (though other sections of the soundtrack are More Foreboding, for example Fog Bound but we're just talking about the main theme in this post) is Secret #4: modal borrowing.

Let's be clear here, there's nothing Super Weird going on in this melody modally, but there are several ways to do a minor scale, and it takes advantage of more than one. Minor keys have a surprising amount of options regarding what notes to use after the fifth scale degree; you can have a low 6 and 7 (often used coming down the scale), or a high 6 and 7 (usually for going up), or low 6 and high 7 (this is often used to sound middle-eastern) or a high 6 and low 7 (this is not often used, since low 6 is good for tension in that half-step going to the 5th degree, but if it is used, it sounds folky and maybe Old). This array of usual options means you don't really have to borrow much to have both kinds of 6th and 7th scale degrees, but the fact that the melody so frequently emphasizes the low 7 (whole step between 7 and 1, instead of half) makes it sound modal and British-folk-ish. Listen to some jigs (Butterfly, for example) or reels (like this whole set of them) or really any minor-key Irish or Scottish folk music and you'll find it has low 7.

This frequent low 7th scale degree means the chord that starts on the 5th scale degree, usually called the V chord in classical parlance, is in fact in this situation the v chord, because it's minor. That's modal borrowing! The minor v chord is not really native to any mode, because usually we make the V chord major even if 7 is low in the scale, but we call it borrowing anyway. It is a particular kind of sound where the drive of the five chord to the one chord is less strong, because the low 7 doesn't want quite as badly to lead to 1. This makes the chord more atmospheric than functional, and it might be more foreboding this way. It's not rare, it's not exceptional, but it is definitely associated with the British Isles (more the 19th century than the 17th, but fewer people know actual 17th century tunes) and folk music and sea chanties etc. This may be how we know it's the jolly roger flapping from the mast.

However! The tune also has moments of high 7! And this means V is major sometimes! Like the end of the A section before it repeats slightly differently (0:17). The fact that both of these chords exist in this tune makes it even borrowier, because usually you get only one of these kinds of five chord. But sometimes we have major V, which makes it More Climactic, the spectacular flaps of the jolly roger.

The last Secret I would like to relate is #5: cadential rhythm. This is the reason we have any actual association with the 17th century instead of the 19th (most piratey music anyone knows is from the 19th century).

Cadences (a cadence is the way a phrase ends) have been classified over the centuries, in terms of both rhythm and melody, into two kinds. They are conventionally called masculine and feminine, or strong and weak, but those are bullshit names so I am calling them direct and indirect. A direct cadence lands on the downbeat, and probably on the root of the chord. An indirect cadence lands after the downbeat, and so the first note of the bar isn't the cadential note; the note after it is.

The way He's A Pirate uses indirect cadential rhythm is especially emphatic. The very first phrase (0:05-0:08) cadences on the second tiny beat of the bar instead of the first. Since the tiny beats go real fast, it's very obvious how the phrase lands on Not The Big Beat. The tinier the beats are, the more emphatic the syncopation is. BUT THEN: the second phrase cadences directly (0:08-0:11). It goes back and forth between direct and indirect until the end of the A section when we have two indirects in a row, which makes the direct (on major V, no less!) last one especially swashbuckly.

Here is a playlist of 17th century English songs (mostly in compound time), the first of which is also full of hemiola, many (especially the third, 14th, 15th and 16th) of which have indirect cadences at the end of nearly every phrase. The switching back and forth between the two kinds of cadential rhythm is really important to the piratical nature of this song, contributes to the jauntiness, and has actual connections to historical 17th century tunes (though this cadential strategy is also common in the 19th century sea folk tunes people are more likely to know). BEHOLD THE GALLEON.

I hope that these Secrets have been Revealed. If my explanatory techniques have been too obscure, please do ask me about things you find unclear; I larve this song to tiny tiny bits and would be delighted to explain it forever.

*Or the other way around. Hemiola just means messing with the subdivision of beats, regrouping them either from 2 to 3 or 3 to 2. OR BOTH AT ONCE YAAASSSS. also you don’t necessarily have to be in compound time (which is subdivided into 3); you can be in any meter, as long as you are regrouping things between 2 and 3. it’s just easiest and most rollicking when you’re in, for example, 6/8 or 9/8. **Despite my 11 years of music school, I have not found a better inaccurate but explicative term for this technique, but let me explain to you what augmentation actually is, so that you know why this isn't exactly augmentation. When you make a melody twice as slow but with the exact same thing happening, that's real augmentation. Like if in the original melody from my first dumb rhythmic transcription had values of quarter notes instead of eighth notes; if it just sounded slower with the rest of everything going the same speed. Obviously the melody in the C section is not the same as the A section, and it does not actually use values that are twice that of the A section, but it expands the beat to feel slower in a way that is compatible with the flexible ambiguous 2 or 3 subdivision of compound time.

[jungiyara]

Ever Since We Met [SF9 Dawon AU]

Man I’m a sucker for cheesy one shots. @fyeah-bubblekey this ones for you :3

Text Key:

[ sample ]: author notes

SAMPLE: Your thoughts

SAMPLE: Dawons Thoughts

SAMPLE: Same thought at same time

———————————

Ever Since We Met [Based off the song Nearly Witches by Panic! At the Disco]

Song for reference (Live ver. 2011) 

Song for reference (Org, with lyrics)

Dear lord I hate school. 5 tests, 3 essays, and a presentation in 3 weeks?

It was the beginning of the second semester of your 11th year in high school [secondary school?]. This was the most important year of your education. The year where all your grades and extracurricular actually mean something. Everything seemed to fall on top of you at once. If you had it your way, you would have dropped out and gone to performance school. But your parents would never allow that. So you dragged your ass out of bed into Hell. You didn’t care for much. But you only cared about one thing. Cheesy as it is, the school's music program is the only reason why you even try; your parents wouldn’t let you be in the music program if your grades were awful. You were the president of the program, you sang, danced and played both the clarinet and guitar.

The best part about this program was not just the fact it wasn’t a boring classical orchestral highschool band, but that it was a versatile program, where there were guitarists, drummers, bass players, singers, and dancers. It was to focus on different styles while promoting individuality and unity. Most students played more than one instrument and everyone was like a family.

You enjoyed adding new people to the program each year. But when your director said that there was a new singer who transferred in, you felt nervous yet excited. Since the seniors graduated last year, the program lacked any singers, and while you were amazing, it wasn’t your focus as was dance and guitar.

“Lee Sanghyuk is his real name but prefers to be called Dawon, I believe,” said your teacher. “He’s a singer and dancer, doesn’t play any instruments.” Wow, so I have a bit of competition now? “It’s your responsibility as president to introduce him to the program. I expect you to make an announcement to all three music class periods. And I believe he’s joining your class. Make sure you update on our set list for the concert in a month. I haven’t handed out the parts yet, but I heard the kid sing.” You relaxed at his expression. He seemed excited by it. “He’s one of the best I heard since our last male singer graduated.”

You took a look at the setlist. 2 general orchestral pieces and 1 instrumental alternative piece for the high school, 1 indie for the 8th graders, 2 combined 6th and 7th-grade pieces, few jazz ensemble pieces and a drum line piece. With a dance performance put in, the concert would run about an hour and a half.

“Nearly Witches? Isn’t that a Panic! At the Disco piece? For the high school” You asked. “Indeed it is. It’s the last song on the piece. It’s probably going to be a duo.”

Oh no. Your the only female singer right now and you haven’t even heard the new kid yet. “I know what you’re thinking y/n, and don’t worry, your voices match each other.” The bell rang, meaning you had to go to your last class. “Good luck kiddo, you can do it!” You loved your teacher. He was almost like a second parent.

Next Day:

You came to school early so you could run to the music room and meet the new kid. As you walked in your heart skipped a beat.

Oh god he’s hot. Almost tripping over the instrument cable damn 8th graders you walked into the office. You were trying hard to keep your composure. He had soft black hard and beautiful brown eyes, was a little taller than you were, though you were in heels. He had a smile that was so bright you thought you needed sunglasses. Your teacher read your mind and started giggling as he instructed you to sit.

Okay, professionalism. You gotta know the kid for the benefit of the program.

“Hi I’m Sanghyuk, but you could call me Dawon!” His voice was bright and I feel like he's comedic and outgoing. “Hi Dawon! I’m Y/N, the president. I heard you’re a vocalist? I know this is fast but we have a concert in about a month. Do you have a free period so we can discuss?” I’m talking so fast oh god. I hope he doesn’t notice I’m staring.

“Uh, I think 4th period?” You saw his schedule. I share 4 classes including free period. This should be fun.

“Do you dance Dawon? After school on Thursdays we have a dance class. We do stuff from hip hop to alternative and traditional. I can introduce you to the Dance team leader for you.” 

“I actually love dancing, I’ll take you up on that offer.” Does she know that I’m really fuckin nervous. 

“I think you’re gonna be a great addition to the program Dawon!” said your teacher, noticing the slight tension. 

The bell rang, and the first music class came in. The three music classes were the two highschool and the one middle school. The first was High school A. Your friends Taeyang, Zuho and Rowoon walk in. They greet you and Dawon; Taeyang walks by and whispers in your ear “he’s cute, I approve.” and you hit him playfully. “Dawon, I’d like you to meet the dance team leader and the most awful best friend in the world. Taeyang, we have a new member for Dance.”

He took one look at Dawon. “Like I said, I approve. Talk to me after school newbie.” 

“Well I wouldn’t bet on it, I have about 100 other things I gotta do, you gotta prove to be a priority!” I hope she found that comment funny or I’m gonna launch myself out the window. Oh my god and he’s comedic. Please don’t let me fall for this boy. You, Taeyang, Rowoon and Zuho are laughing. Thank god. 

As the class settles in, you walk in and introduce him to the group. Everyone muttered in delight; another singer. He shot finger guns at everyone when you described him, and everyone giggled. Oh boy a class clown. Everyones gonna love him. 

Throughout the day, you led him through the school. You two seemed to bond on your mutual hatred for the stupid amount of work you have as 11th graders. “5 test and 2 essays??” “And a presentation!” “How are you alive at this school?” How do i tell him that this music program is the reason why I even try. “I mean, I have music I guess, its my passion.” Oh my god she’s amazing. I can’t believe I met someone who loves music this much. He seems to love music as well. This might be fun.

During your free period, which you previously shared with only Zuho, you two helped Dawon catch up with music stuff. “Our teacher said he wants you and I to sing this song as a duet for the concert.” Nearly Witches by Panic! At the Disco? You both looked at the lyrics while Zuho sat at the table doing his homework. “Ever since we met, I only shoot up with your perfume, Its the only thing, that makes me feel as good as you do” oh god I hope the blushing isn’t noticeable.  

“Okay so the lyrics are a little... lovey... Its strictly professional though. Lets spend the next few minutes splitting up the parts and listening to the song.” My teacher is really trying to set me up with this kid isn’t he. You text Taeyang the song lyrics and he responds with the heart eyes and laughing emoji and you send back the middle finger one. 

“We’re having the whole group sing the first part in french. Seeing that you seem to have a funny bone in you, you can take the ‘Here I am, composing a burlesque part’“ She thinks I’m funny?? 

“You can sing the first verse, I’ll take the second verse following the burlesque line. You can sing the pre-chorus, we can sing the chorus together.” 

He knows what he’s doing oh wow. 

The lunch bell rang. Soon after was the music class. After everyones part was handed out, you two went into the practice room to sing vocals while the rest of the group practiced their part. 

The practice room was a bit on the smaller side; 1 speaker and a music stand. 

“Alright lets get this shit done Dawon.” 

“Don’t you mean... lets get this  shit Done...won...” That was the dumbest joke I’ve made oh lord- ShES LAUGHING?” 

You gave a disapproving laughter at his pun. God he’s cute. ok ok ok focus...

The next 30 minutes were spent singing the parts following the song as it was playing. 

As class ended, you realized he wrote his number on the back of your sheet music with a note. “You know, we might be partners, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.” I hope that wasn’t too much. HIS NUMBER OH LORD. I hope this works out...

______________

You two spent the next two weeks bonding over whatever. You two got along really well. You had a mutual love for dancing. He’s such a good dancer. You found out that it’s been his dream to be a performer/singer. This only made you love him more.

He became everyone's favorite joker, the teachers loved him because he did his work, the students loved him because he made funny, snarky comments about people. Basically he opened up real quick to everyone and fit in right away. 

The best part was during rehearsals. There was a part in the song where the right way to sing the line is in a prissy valley girl accent and every time he does it, the entire class erupts in laughter and you feel yourself falling for him even more. At this point it became a full blown crush on this dude. And during dance practice, Taeyang made sure that you two were close together (he knows all).

He hung out with your general group of friends a lot. I hope she likes me back at some point. I’ve never felt this way about someone before. You noticed how whenever he’s around you he pulls out really bad puns and jokingly flirts with you. Rowoon keeps telling you that he thinks he likes you, but you deny it.

“The song is strictly professionalism.”

The day of the concert was getting closer and closer. You two were told that because it was the last song on the show that you two had to put on a performance. Performance? Its a love song and we’re making it a duet. This could be my chance to pull something. I can’t perform that well, I can show emotion but putting on an act?

The day before the concert you had a sound check/dress rehearsal. This was the time to practice with the amount of space.

“Okay so the beginning is us turned around facing the ensemble. As the song goes into the guitars, we turn around and start dancing. It’ll be mild impromptu.” you explain.

“How should I do my valley girl accent?” he asked everyone, but directed towards you. He starts reenacting that part several times with different poses and accents until the whole group including the teacher is laughing uncontrollably. Dear lord I love him. Your heart rushed with happiness and affection as you told him “Whatever you like. Every time I make her laugh, the happier I feel and the more love I feel for her. 

THE DAY OF THE CONCERT:

You were wearing a short blue dress, white necklace, light make up and your hair falling to your sides. Dawon was wearing a short sleeved blue collared shirt and black jeans, with faux glasses and he hair straightened. Wow. She/He’s hot.

The songs passed, one by one, each group walked off stage and you stood by the door praising everyone. The dance performance came. You couldn’t perform as you requested not to; it was a particularly difficult song and you wanted to watch your boys. Taeyang, Zuho, Rowoon, Dawon as well as Inseong, Jaeyoon, Hwiyoung, Chani and Youngbin all performed a self choreographed and produced song called K.O. At Dawons part you couldn’t stop staring at him. God he’s so good. Is she watching. I hope shes watching. She better be watching, I’m using all of my energy.

As the song ended, you greeted them with hugs as the audience and students cheered. The dance performances usually got the most response.

Soon it was time for the duet. Usually you were nervous, but this time, with Dawon, you felt at ease. 

The whole group walked onto the stage. Here we go. 

“My wing tips waltz across naive wood floors. They creak innocently down the stairs.” You start.

Dawons part came up. Oh boy. 

“HERE I AM, COMPOSING A BURLESQUE, OUT OF WHERE THEY REST THEIR NECKS” Dawon did a 360 degree turn, jumped off the stage, sassily stood with his arm up and hand facing down, his eyes closed and in the most high pitch voice sang with his heart. The audience loved it. You loved it. You loved him. 

You two sung through the whole song, but what confused you was that he walked by Taeyang and grabbed something and hid it behind him halfway through, but you didn’t pay much attention to it.

You two sang the last part together. Waltzing on stage, pretending to be lovers.

“And my one regret is you~~” which was repeated about 4 times.

The last time you two sang that line, he turned around, pulled out something which made the audience gasp and aww. Then turned to you. Here goes nothing.

“And my one regret is you.” A FLOWER! 

As he handed you the flower, you almost in tears, him with a goofy smile and on one knee, the song ends. This is a dream. She accepted it! The whole audience and ensemble is cheering.

You two walk out on stage, flower in one hand, your other hand holding his, and bow down.

After the concert, you two walk back to the music room. As you two pack up your things, as well as in the post concert commotion, he throws the question. At this point it’s just you two alone in the instrument closet.

“So, Y/N... do you, maybe wanna go out some time?” please say yes please say yes.

Truly a dream come true oh my god oh my god! 

You kiss his cheek. “Does that answer that for you?” 

To break the tension he replys in a sarcastic voice, “No actually it doesn’t!” 

“Yes of course I’ll go out with you you big goof.”

He kisses your cheek just as the rest of you friends look through the window. Rowoon walks in shouting.

“HEY LOVE BIRDS WE’RE GONNA GO CELEBRATE AT THAT ONE BOUGIE RESTAURANT DOWNTOWN, CARE TO JOIN OR ARE Y’ALL GONNA FUCK?” 

Dawon starts laughing and you hit Rowoon with a music stand, but agree to go.

The music program truly was the one thing that made you happy.

[spryfilm]

“Beauty and the Beast” (2017)

Drama/Musical

Running Time: 129 minutes

Written by: Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos

Directed by: Bill Condon

Featuring:  Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Audra McDonald, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Nathan Mack, Ian McKellen, and Emma Thompson

Gaston: “If I didn’t know better, I’d say she even cares for him!“

Belle: “He’s not a monster, Gaston! You are!”

“Beauty and the Beast” is the latest in the live action transformation of Disney’s animated back catalogue into live action versions, following the huge successes of “The Jungle Book” (2016), “Alice in Wonderland” (2010), “Maleficent” (2014) as well as the more  modest “Cinderella” (2015) with plenty more to come. Whilst these movies have been expensive to re-make they have all made their money back by all being visually distinct, staying true to their origins, not being sequels or reboots as well as incorporating the visions of their respective directors, who themselves have all been established in the film world for some time – this is more the case with Bill Condon than the others that have been recruited.

“Beauty and the Beast” marks the first time a modern animated film has been remade, not only that, but it also boasts the largest cast assembled for one of these remakes, as well as the most well known. Disney have been wise to have the lead of Belle played by Emma Watson, surely one of the most high profile leading ladies of her age after her part in the Harry Potter franchise. Then building up from there surrounding her with some of the best UK actors around, such as Dan Stevens, Ian McKellen, Ewen McGregor Luke Evans, and many others – but make no mistake this is surely Watson’s film, she shines in it – acting, singing and dancing. For my mind the film has one other ace piece of casting, that of the great Kevin Kline, who has been a superstar not only in movies but is a legendary stage actor – here he brings all that experience as Belle’s father who shines in a role that could have been run of the mill, but with Kline’s casting it becomes something else – bravo on the Director for this choice.

The story itself is fairly simple but offers quite a few complications, it is set in pre-Revolution France, an enchantress disguised as a beggar arrives at a castle and offers the owner, a cold-hearted prince, a rose in exchange for shelter. When he calluously refuses, she transforms him into a beast and his servants into household objects before erasing the castle’s existence from memory. She then hexes the rose and warns the Beast that, unless he learns to love another and earns her love in return before the last petal falls, he and his servants will lose their humanity forever.

Many years later, in the village of Villeneuve, Belle dreams of adventure and brushes off advances from Gaston, an arrogant former soldier. Lost in the forest, Belle’s father Maurice seeks refuge in the Beast’s castle, but the Beast imprisons him for stealing a rose. Belle ventures out in search for him and finds him locked in the castle dungeon. The Beast agrees to let her take Maurice’s place, despite her father’s objections.

I am of an age where I probably should have seen the original animated movie but I have to admit I have never seen it, so I was looking forward to this version (without the baggage) – I am a sucker for musicals so I assumed this was going to be right up my alley. I am so pleased to say that I loved this movie, Watson was good in the lead role, I suspect that this was a role that many would have loved to take, but my real surprise was Luke Evans who has proved over the past decade that he can literally play any role – and here as Gaston he shines in the role as chief protagonist that you can just tell he relishes. With so few musicals being made (although lately there does seem to be a resurgence) if you have a hankering to sing and dance you had better grab it. The other great piece of casting is that of Josh Gad who after almost stealing “Frozen” (2013) as the snowman Olaf, here he to does an amazing job as Gaston’s sidekick LeFou who makes his own part look so easy that you can forget the work it takes to make something look so effortless.

Looking at this movie now, especially when it is possibly going to be the biggest grossing film of the year it seems Bill Condon would have been the obvious choice to direct this adaptation of an adaptation. Over the course of his career Condon seems to have done it all, he has directed a pure horror film, “Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh” (1995), a gothic American drama mini-biography with the excellent “Gods and Monsters” (1998) – oh yes he won an Oscar for best screenplay for that as well – a musical, “Dreamgirls” (2006), two teen blockbusters with the last instalments of the “Twilight” movies, a post modern Sherlock Holes drama with “Mr. Holmes” (2015), now a film that seems to take his past works and meld them into the remake of “Beauty and the Beast” (2017). Condon didn’t need this movie, he has accomplished more in his career than most directors ever will, so the potential downside was quite large, however the challenge must have been appealing, with the success of this film he has been catapulted into another realm of directors, he has made a movie that will end up close to US$1.5 billion, one of the biggest box office successes of the century so far. The pressure for this movie to be a success would have been monumental, it being one of the shining lights of Disney Animation, as well as being one of the key animated films responsible for the second wave of great Disney animated films. That would of course culminate with one of the greatest animated films of all time, “The Lion King” (1995).

What Condon has done is to take the material, not try and fix that which was not broken, used the Disney movie as a template, built around it wisely using new songs, cutting edge animation and wisely using a great physical cast as well as a voice cast that are both uniquely talented, playing to those strengths (maybe except for Ewan McGregor’s accent) whilst pushing them to their limits – remember this movie has acting, singing as well as dancing – something not all actors are able to accomplish believably. What he has had to do is deal with the physical sets, as well as all the elements of a Hollywood musical, a horror film, an animated movie as well as a classic love story. It may seem that all he had to do was copy what came before but make no mistake this movie is a major achievement, one that needs to be seen, as it works on many levels, is satisfying and somehow strikes the right tone in almost every scene. Condon in my mind is at the top of his game, it is no surprise to me that he has been linked to a remake of “The Bride of Frankenstein”, if he is able to marshal the right mix of cast members I can see this being a success – at this stage I would not be against him at all.

This film would be nothing without the music, with Alan Menken back on board, the Disney go to composer of choice and a man coupled with the late Howard Ashman prove that this is indeed of the greatest Disney Animated musicals of all time, it is full of lush orchestrations as well as lyrics that are sublime, are a joy to listen to as well as fitting these characters like gloves, the biggest numbers remain so, and I have to admit to listening to the soundtrack long after I watched this movie.

As well as the music there are two other aspects of the movie that are extremely important, they are the cinematography by Tobias A. Schliessler, as well as Jacqueline Durran, the costumer who has cut her teeth on many period films, she does some amazing work here with colors as well as the cut of all the wardrobe – they are as much a character in the movie as the actors themselves are. The costuming combined with the art direction give cinematographer Shliessler a lot to work with, he takes his vast experience working in a variety of genres as well as his long relationship with the director to give us a gothic lite version of this movie. That is not a negative criticism as this what is required as we start in a lighter atmosphere, following the journey of the characters into darkness, working our way back to happier place back to some kind of equilibrium. The relationship between each separate department working together is not more evident than this movie which is taking almost all the genres as well as disciplines and making a product that is indeed greater than the sum of its parts.

In case you have not guessed by now my opinion of this movie is that it is excellent as well as humorous, scary, funny as well as bring complex. If you had any part in this movie you need to be extremely proud of the work you have produced. This is truly a film for the entire family; it has so much watchability as well as re-watchability that it is ridiculous. I highly recommend this to all, it is a fine addition to any collection, go and get now!

“Beauty and the Beast” is out now on DVD & Blu-ray.

  In Disney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, a live-action adaptation of the studio’s animated classic, Emma Watson stars as Belle and Kevin Kline is Maurice, Belle’s father. The story and characters audiences know and love are brought to life in this stunning cinematic event…a celebration of one of the most beloved tales ever told.

DVD & Blu-ray review” Beauty and the Beast” (2017) “Beauty and the Beast” (2017) Drama/Musical Running Time: 129 minutes Written by: Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos…

[tinymixtapes]

Feature: 2017: First Quarter Favorites

Three months in, and we haven’t destroyed ourselves! To celebrate this achievement, we’re once again sharing our favorite releases from the last few months. A lot of it is pretty heavy, focusing on grief (Mount Eerie), cruelty (Lawrence English), and self-loathing (Xiu Xiu), with other fun stuff like ritual guitar abuse (Skullflower) and the glowing horror of reanimation (Rashad Becker). But we also loved everything from urban gallery funk (Cybervision Simulcast) and philosophic horse opera (Sun Araw) to playful Afromutations (Riddlore) and pop so sugary sweet it’ll rot your teeth (Charli XCX). Something for everyone. ;) Since these quarter lists are more informal than our year-end features, the shortlist before the list proper is equally important (especially Dasychira’s Immolated EP, which got a lot of love since assembling this list). Check ‘em all out below, and maybe see you in another three? Shortlist: Moon B’s Lifeworld 2: Udaya, nekomimi + luvfexxx, LUVISCOLD, Sophiaaaahjkl;8901’s Toilet Abstraction Tapes, Gabor Lazar’s Crisis of Representation, Darren Keen, It’s Never Too Late To Say You’re Welcome, Mega Bog’s Happy Together, Tonstartssbandht’s Sorcerer, Dasychira’s Immolated, Drake’s More Life, William Basinski’s A Shadow in Time, Roc Marciano’s Rosebudd’s Revenge, Future’s HNDRXX, Blanck Mass’ World Eater, and PAN’s mono no aware compilation. --- Mount Eerie A Crow Looked At Me [P.W. Elverum & Sun] I can barely listen to A Crow Looked At Me, an album with little room for novelty, one I’m sure Phil Elverum never wanted to make. Death is the least novel thing in life, but it makes a novelty out of what never was before. Phil (who I feel maybe too close to now) makes white noise of branches, canyons of grocery store aisles, a sunset of what is not dust. He doesn’t have to make meaning of Death, because words become futile when confronted with something so simple and absolute. His grief seems just to be here, contained by the same microphone as guitar, the way someone who dies just can’t be. I don’t think music had ever made me cry only for someone else, but none of this sounds like it was made for anyone but Geneviève and himself. He says he doesn’t want to learn anything from his wife’s death, but by the time you’ve shut your eyes for 40 minutes, alone with the creaking floor and counted days and Pacific birds and spoken dreams, I can’t imagine not coming away with (something) more. It’s springtime. –Pat Beane --- Riddlore Afromutation [Nyege Nyege Tapes] The modest genius of Riddlore’s Afromutations, the January offering from Ugandan cassette label Nyege Nyege Tapes, stems from a certain perspectival grace. A longstanding figure of the Los Angeles hip-hop underground, Riddlore is known first as an emcee and second as a beatmaker. Afromutations sees the artist sketching a playful, iterative bass style drawn from samples of African field recordings, a hauntological gesture that in less subtle hands might fall into a self-serious wormhole. The tape’s beauty is in how the timbral mood of the samples gesture at and usher into place the recombinant scaffolding of the relatively untreated percussion, like how the choral tension that opens “Bakka Pygmies Riddim” blossoms into an eerie kuduro strut. Elsewhere, on “Afroed” and “The Crush,” drums and overlapping harmonies flange into natural psychedelias. Riddlore’s agenda-absent play allows the samples to mutate freely, and Nyege Nyege serves an adept platform for the project. –Nick Henderson Afromutations by RiddloreAfromutations by Riddlore --- The Necks Unfold [Ideologic Organ] To unfold, usually, is to grow, to expand; to sprawl. On their 19th release, The Necks have instead tightened their improvisational nous to four standalone pieces, invoking the mysticism of Cusanus: “unfolding is enfolding.” These anti-compositions unfold insofar as they protrude into space-time and become of-the-world, cosmological chaos and all; they enfold into the broader scheme of the album, all unified through the articulate chops of Messrs Abrahams, Swanton, and Buck. Between balance and imbalance, serenity and turbulence, the respective instrumental forces of the players here circumnavigate these side-long miniatures with microscopic focus and reticence, in characteristically Necks-ian fashion. And, even when compared with classics past, there’s no compromise on ambition, not a single wasted moment. Such is the dynamism of Unfold; what initially struck as blissful stasis, best suited for gazing into the pale blue yonder, gently opens up — and, yeah, unfolds — to yield four of the most self-contained, wholly busy musics that 2017 has had to offer thus far. –Soe Jherwood Cybervision Simulcast Sewer City [H.V.R.F. CENTRAL COMMAND] Sewer City kicks up all the residual funk of an urban galley. Where oil encrusted kebab meat sweats on rotation, busted street lights stutter into the night, and ripple-rich puddles highlight the only natural quality to animate the scene, as thick droplets of rain are spat down from the stubborn grey heavens above. Cybervision Simulcast drape this grizzly vision through the innards of a pitch-black bypass drenched in alarms, sirens, and ricochet. Everything points to a breakdown or dysfunction, as this bleak snapshot of municipal decay melts to nothingness through our slime-smeared fingers. But those signals of distress are incorporated within the process, and they are not to be heeded for what they might otherwise signify; they orchestrate the bass-inverted crank that punctuates the residue of samples, synths, and storyline. To suggest that this grizzled and failing image results in a perfect album would be distasteful — obscene, even. And yet, that’s precisely what’s happened every time I’ve taken the plunge so far. There is no light at the end of this tunnel. Let’s keep it that way. –Birkut SewerCity by Cybervision SimulcastSewerCity by Cybervision Simulcast --- Charli XCX Number 1 Angel [Asylum] Out of the cold dark dust, the Number 1 Angel spreads her wings for Utopia, so emotional and so sugary sweet it’ll rot your teeth. After one of the strangest ascensions (“I! Don’t! Care!”) in the pop industry, Charli XCX is thriving. VROOM VROOM’s EUREKA! production was Charli at a 100% synchronization rate, and now she’s spun a 40-minute pop slipstream, an outside World of babygirls and babyboys. The PC Music crew sheds some of the hyperreal, sourcing Charli’s charisma and songwriting prowess to shoot for real stars: color-coded bangers, sweatsoaked and tearstained, a clarity of vision that at once opens avataric and musical possibilities in the channel of Rihanna and Kesha. The party’s enfolding. Number 1 Angel is Charli’s every intuition refined in hi-fi, the best-yet gateway for anyone not already along for the ride. Ten songs for one night. Glitter in your underwear, left on red. Let’s ride! The closing trilogy of features (Uffie, ABRA, cupcakKe) is fucked-up perfect. Each outrunning the last, headfirst till the 90s bubblegum pops. The synths kick up cinnamon for a minute-long Secret Mix outro. Inextinguishable, enlightening. It’s Charli, baby. –Pat Beane [pagebreak] --- Various Artists Club Chai Vol. 1 [Club Chai] When you’re in the right club, with the right music, with the right crowd, you can feel your body. You’re present in it, in its creases and protrusions, in its decorations and accoutrements, in its movements and vibrations in space, in its careful caressings and navigations around and through other bodies. You can feel it as something fluid, the cells and lipstick and lungs and heels and bass and drugs and genders and hi-hats and drifting and splitting melodies and languages morphing the movement of your limbs into a movement of potentials. You think, “I am in this body and I am feeling these other bodies and I know that this body can be something else, it can be what it wants to be, it can be what it doesn’t want to be, this shell is the end and the beginning and I am going to be fucking gorgeous.” Club Chai is a loose collective of queer and trans club DJs and producers out of Oakland pushing that continuum into the right-now-right-now-right-now of sonic uncertainty, gender uncertainty, national uncertainty. And it feels right. –Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli Club Chai Vol. 1 by Club ChaiClub Chai Vol. 1 by Club Chai --- Lawrence English Cruel Optimism [Room40] I consider myself an optimist, but I haven’t always been positive. My sense of trust in goodness has grown as I’ve unpacked how cynicism has poisoned many of my relationships (with partners, with friends, with art). Then again, being an optimist, as Louis CK once asserted, means being stupid. There’s a delicate balance between being confident in humanity’s potential for good and accepting humanity’s cruelty as simply the cost of business. Lawrence English’s latest release is music for contemplating what’s writhing around deep in humanity’s psyche. Its requiem is solemn, because nobody’s sense of “goodness” has won yet, its negative drones promising because they still have matter to vibrate through. Cruel Optimism is nominally a meditation on how human desire often breeds cruelty at humanity’s own expense, but as a sound work, it is also a reminder that optimism, shed of its colonizing skin, can overcome cruelty. –Jackson Scott Cruel Optimism by Lawrence EnglishCruel Optimism by Lawrence English --- Quelle Chris Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often [Mello Music Group] In college, a friend of mine had a line that went something like, “Your shit is wacker than the ‘you’ that every rapper writes about.” Although I can’t remember exactly how it went, or if it was ever even put to record, I always thought that was so dope: taking aim at the proverbial second person by acknowledging its ubiquitous metanarrative; uplifting recorded battle rap by breaking its third wall. Doper still, the idea that an omnipresent, sucker MC named “You” might actually exist. Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often complicates the above concept by incorporating hip-hop’s superego, the proverbial I, and framing that id character as both a role model for personal success and a self-destructive nemesis. Like “Who Am I” as a slapstick comedy about the creative process. –Samuel Diamond Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often by Quelle ChrisBeing You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often by Quelle Chris --- Sun Araw The Saddle of the Increate [Sun Ark/Drag City] The Saddle of the Increate shuffles the few short steps across from Belomancie’s chambers of internal refraction to twitch and twinge its way through into the shining territory of the lonesome whippoorwill — outdoors, that is. Well, at least there’s a pedal steel or two, a cactus, and a 10-gallon hat — it’s a [“psychedelic”] philosophic horse opera, tough as an actor, distracted but gruffly tender, especially in its latter sections. There’s a space and a half between every point; we can give names to/for every constellation, a classical reference or two even, but it’s still… complex — and how is the soul (your soul) distinct from its powers anyway? Spatially disorienting, temporally atomistic, concrete in image, plastic in execution: seven lampstands have become seven horses (and four hats, a head of cattle, one bowl, etc. etc.). Like pulling a wishbone with yourself, be 100% ready to spit in the skillet. –Michael J --- Graham Lambkin Community [ErstSolo/Kye] As Jackson Scott so rightly put, Graham Lambkin’s Community is “a document of what a community can create without dictating what a community should entail; it is evidence without the arrogance of conclusion.” Not community, but the evidence of community. In fact, the trace audible evidences of sound becoming located in new environments is exactly what establishes Lambkin’s practice and medium — a medium that so mysteriously auditions sonic evidence into richly communicative listening spaces. In Community, we are bathed by this evidence, in communion with it; it is threaded inside of the spaces we inhabit, our daily lives and interactions — those already in articulation. Voiced as such, the album is a masterclass in Lambkin’s quotidian character, flattened into a natural, weathered state close to the void — close to how impossible and brilliant our communities are. It reminds us that our communities exist often without us, within and without our human attempts to locate them. –scvscv --- Camedor En Ut / Alba [Debacle] The scoff that is heard ‘round the world at any mention of “world” music may not be the constructive criticism the catch-all term deserves, but it is the noise necessary to make a greater point. But may we suggest replacing that negativity with a positive denotation? Enter Camedor’s debut 12-inch, which is the sound of the world sucked into a wormhole wherein time, space, and location matter little. In a nutshell, it represents the “new” idea of world music, where we no longer place such a limiting genre marker on what is music now easily accessible to all. Both songs borrow from mid-century composers (including a “cover” of Terry Riley’s “In C”), but also pull everything out of the grab bag of motorik, drone, and pop. José Orozco Mora has layered it all into a wondrous noise that may heavily borrow from Western tropes and styles, but is music from parts (un)known. You may not catch much Berber or Aboriginal influence, but what matters is how Mora’s Camedor speaks to building bridges between cultures through music. It’s a shared form of expression, and the joyous, raucous nature of En Ut / Alba is a celebration of worlds colliding into symphonic harmony. –Jspicer En Ut / Alba by CamedorEn Ut / Alba by Camedor [pagebreak] --- Skullflower The Spirals of Great Harm [Cold Spring] The Spirals of Great Harm has a clear lineage in the Skullflower discography. It’s a step beyond Strange Keys to Untune Gods Firmament (also a double album) and Taste the Blood of the Deceiver, though it follows a similar trek down the left-hand path. Played at a low volume, its minor key melodies and themes are apparent enough, but turn it up and its lacerating feedback has a much harsher effect. Bower and collaborator Samantha Davies (the only other constant in the modern Skullflower lineup) unleash hell through ritual guitar abuse. Outsiders may not readily understand how much different this album is from 2014’s dragon-themed Draconis, but to longtime admirers, it’s a step away from that album’s meandering psych, the style of which Bower used to reserve for his Sunroof! project. Kneeling in worship at the altar of the underworld, stacks of amplifiers in tow, Bower and Davies have crafted another indispensable addition to their canon. –Joe Davenport --- Xiu Xiu FORGET [Polyvinyl] Pray for Xiu Xiu. As many of their contemporaries have either faded from the record and/or embraced a life as background material for iPod commercials [ed: NO SHADE ON IPODS], Jamie Stewart’s long-running project has — like unchecked tooth decay — only deepened with age. Delivering maybe their most “accessible” album since formative hit Fabulous Muscles (a record whose key lyric was still “Cremate me after you cum on my lips”), FORGET brings all the self-loathing, harsh sarcasm, wonky instrumentation, and harrowing Dennis Cooperisms we have come to depend on from the Xiuverse. Whether you love it or not, Stewart and his gang have sustained a distinct interpretation of the world through what can feel like a lifetime’s worth of trend-shifting; for this alone, the band’s persistence should be cherished. That FORGET is one of their best albums to date is a surprise and a delight, the sign of a legacy act finding new life (the light, New Order-echoing “Get Up” is an album highlight) and handing us a deceptively poppy, booby-trapped gift to both longtime fans and newcomers. –Dylan Pasture FORGET by Xiu XiuFORGET by Xiu Xiu --- Rashad Becker Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. II [PAN] Rashad Becker is a musician who is known for mastering other musicians’ work. His operation at Dubplates & Mastering is prolific and now famous in the world of experimental and electronic music, its most recent accomplishments including masters of The Necks’ Unfold, Visible Cloaks’ Reassemblage, and the great new PAN compilation Mono No Aware, but probably the most adventurous and distinctive of the records Becker has engineered of late is his own. He makes music with the freedom of a person who spends a lot of time thinking about the relationship between music and media of expression. PAN officially describes Becker’s Notions as “synthesized sounds that appear to exist hauntingly physical,” alluding to the tension between creativity and materials that enters always into the musical imagination, the tension that Becker gets paid to negotiate on artists’ behalf. The physical “haunts” music, not as an antagonist as if all music were not physical at least in origin, but because of what is risked, what is lost, and what is made when music passes from one physical medium to another, as in the representation of the rapid movements of a trombone’s bell as bumps on a slab of vinyl. Where his first volume of Traditional Music was a bit more self-similar, built from the whirring of buglike tensions and releases, Becker’s second effort explores the glowing horror and breath of reanimation. With species even more personable and diverse than those of its far-out predecessor, Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. II is nothing short of an event in electronic music. –Will Neibergall Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. II (PAN 74) by Rashad BeckerTraditional Music of Notional Species Vol. II (PAN 74) by Rashad Becker --- We’ll See x Treece (Prod Hyro) Constructions Tape [SWMS/Self-Released] Drizzy Aubrey may be hip-hop’s new international playboy, assembling identities like a collector on safari, but the UK hip-hop and grime scene has been strong for a while now. We’ll See and Treece, along with lo-fi necromancer Hyro, present an alternative to the rude glitz of Skepta, a drowsy, dour romp through England’s South West and Manchester, tagging walls, popping pills, and trading deft, witty wordplay. There’s something theatrical, entrancing about the scenes on Constructions Tape, and they fade in and out of view like fragments from a VHS tape in a Buckfast bottle. Hyro is as much a character as the MCs — the beats on “SNES-CD” and “Krylon” are loose and minimal. “Rizla” is a stunning example of his sizzling, ambient lo-fi technique. The drugs are the same, the liquor is the same (the slang a little different). For those who find it hard to relate to life on the other side of the Atlantic, you can dig the lads’ antics in a tape-length music video, which explores the highways, fallow fields, and windy beaches of Britain. We’ll See and Treece are practically alone in the entire piece, ghosts in a glittering, unforgiving city. –Ross Devlin Constructions Tape by We'll See x Treece (Prod Hyro)Constructions Tape by We'll See x Treece (Prod Hyro) --- Jon Mueller dHrAaNwDn [Rhythmplex] Jon Mueller’s dHrAaNwDn is deep and resonant, each quadrant of the 2xLP package filling a distinct void. Mueller is adept at bending innovative recording techniques to fit his drum-offs, and this might be one of his most elaborate schemes. The excerpts found on the wax were captured by a full mobile studio at the historically cogent meeting house of the Shaker Historical Society in Albany, NY. And if you’ve ever been to Albany (as I have, a ton), you know there’s an odd artistic energy enveloping the overlooked city. Using the cavernous environment to its aural advantage, dHrAaNwDn sprawls its percussive attacks out evenly, the dank toms thumping, jumping, and bumping. It’s akin to those loooong rows of files I used to sleep amid when I worked at a complex housing warehouses full of legal files: orderly, sequential, and all-encompassing in its grandeur. dHrAaNwDn hits harder than a drone-out and more comprehensively than the huge push of air that accompanies an explosion, the sound waves bouncing rustically off the “wood and white walls” of the house. So much more to say, so little space; white vinyl, only 200 copies, no digital version, gorgeous artwork, Mueller exploring yet another avant avenue that no one thought to truss. –Grant ‘Gumshoe’ Purdum --- Amnesia Scanner AS Truth [Self-Released] AS Truth provides a severely ungrounded experience. Leitmotifs abound (water, club, shifter, voice, trepan), Amnesia Scanner build a dizzying piece that is colossally unfathomable yet pragmatically short — done before its working becomes cruel. Living in the tiny turns and rarely caring for much larger than that, AS Truth is the pregame and the function (the buzz and the twitch [the trepanation across the nation (the boogie and the drop) that burrs the hole] that feeds the demon) that wakes you up. I love this album, and OK, in case you’re wondering, I found this for you: this. I guess the surgeon is “actually a quack” but look at him, funny guy. Oh, and apparently this guy trepanned himself. Only later do we find out that ~no~ he didn’t. –Ben Levinson AS TRUTH (MIXTAPE) by Amnesia ScannerAS TRUTH (MIXTAPE) by Amnesia Scanner [pagebreak] --- LAMPGOD GOD SHIT EP [Self-Released] “Hey: what’s happening?” is the sound, and it’s me looking for the voice source. “How y’all doing?” (really though how am I doing?) and I can’t put my finger on it (can’t touch a sound, Frank, duh.) What’s means? Someone put some solid white lines between lanes (as if you could keep things separate, as if we all moved in one direction at a time), someone ripped up all the pavement (“‘cause I’m negative”), killed all the streetlamps (“and I’m dark”) some LAMPGOD blows up the means and throws up me. Cause when you wrap all the pavement ‘round your waste, you get GOD SHIT, the influence of ecstasy of ecstasy. Can’t touch a sound, and in this dark, I don’t want to not resolve: “We gotta help each other out, man, renourish the soil.” It’s soil or soul, this driving both ways. It’s GOD SHIT, the garbage divine, the that that’s happening. –Frank Falisi LAMPGOD - GOD SHIT EP by LAMPGODLAMPGOD - GOD SHIT EP by LAMPGOD --- Dale Cornish Cut Sleeve [Halcyon Veil] Room to think is never enough space as you’ve imagined. And Cut Sleeve is just extra for “t-shirt.” So breathe. So much area to cover. So here we have Dale Cornish satirizing modern house music. Beyond that, the Winnipeggian is using Cut Sleeve to comment on a variety of “scene” motifs that continue with the club-politics of Halcyon Veil (i.e., queer culture, auteur vanity, architectural ouroboros, etc.). Only this time, Dale Cornish provides a brooding outsider mentality, blending dark alley grime and abstract dancefloor narration, settling Cut Sleeve in light of summer nights partying in the park, in a ditch or pond, and never quite coming back into reality as before. Ever. –C Monster Cut Sleeve by Dale CornishCut Sleeve by Dale Cornish --- HIRS YØU CAN’T KILL US [Get Better] The pink and purple hue line-blocking the resistant and persisting declaration in bold white-as-day fuck-you lettering YØU CAN’T KILL US. Through the five-track, five-minute EP and 100+ shows through LGBTQIA spaces and hundreds of tracks, HIRS have made further ground down the chaff of their enemies and turned the opposition into dust under their boot. And though they’ve already released a split with LIFES in dedication to all their lost friends, TRANS GIRL TAKE OVER 2K17, and an underheard release called MAGICal/WANDerful (from which all money made goes directly to Morris Home), we keep dedicating our five minute breaks at work to it. It’s raw and fervent, tearing the stitches out from the seams of their oppressor and dividing it among the trans community, leaving a powerful, anxious, angry, passionate residue that we will never wash off. –Monet Maker YØU CAN'T KILL US by HIRSYØU CAN'T KILL US by HIRS --- Dedekind Cut The Expanding Domain [Self-Released] $uccessor’s scion in every way, The Expanding Domain is simply the planar enlargement of Dedekind Cut’s starkly heterogeneous sound. Chimerizing practically every experimental electronic form one can imagine, each track blooms from chill aestivation into confounding calyces of spiraling noise and hyaline synths. Likewise in ontogeny, The Expanding Domain maintains a perennial coiling and uncoiling, as the final cut, “Das Expanded, Untitled Riff,” gives way to the EP’s opening in “Cold Bloom.” His strength is in grafting his raging and rimose rhythms to the divaricate New Age and ambient sounds his newest project has embraced. Simultaneously serrate and undulate, his sonic palette (complemented by the likes of Elysia Crampton, Dominick Fernow, and Mica Levi) unnerves and calms. The static-wreathed stabs of “LiL Puffy Coat” float atop a ponderous plod and the crushing-crushed breaks of the title cut find balance from a languishing wash and a hint of melody. It feels complete and self-sustaining yet always groping outward toward more. A sonic inflorescence, The Expanding Domain is the further coil of the tendril, the greater spread of the rhizome, the deeper growth of the genet. –Cynocephalus "The Expanding Domain (ded005)" EP by Dedekind Cut,"The Expanding Domain (ded005)" EP by Dedekind Cut, --- Pinkcourtesyphone Talk The Pleasure Out of It [Champion Version] Minimalist and ambient music are the aural equivalent of abstract art. Maligned by the uninitiated for their perceived simplicity (read: boring, easy to cobble together) when in actual fact anyone who has ever tried to paint an abstract on canvas finds quite quickly how difficult it is to decide what to put where — or more specifically, what not to put almost everywhere. And therein lies the art. Pinkcourtesyphone is fast establishing a reputation as the Mondrian of music minimalism. With so few concepts and sounds throughout Talk the Pleasure Out of It, it’s breathtaking how much emotion and mood is packed into this all-too-brief EP from the opening bars. –Marty Slattery talk the pleasure out of it by PINKCOURTESYPHONEtalk the pleasure out of it by PINKCOURTESYPHONE --- Demdike Stare Wonderland [Modern Love] Demdike Stare’s first album since 2012, Wonderland produces prismatic color from a grayscale jungle, crosshatching inert beat blocks and blunt chords into tight, combative spaces in order to glimpse a few seconds of beautiful moiré. Between stark silences and loud silver smacks, loose atoms offer subtle signs of life, suggesting endless, complex revisions — small but seminal shifts into new structures, trickled off from the eroding monolith of “industrial” and fully escaped from the aesthetic trappings of “hauntology.” Fans of past records will recognize the esoteric sampling and tough breaks (especially if they’re fans of the Testpressing series), but the level of abstraction on display is newly inspired, with new rhythms and juxtapositions hinting at new modes of expression at every turn. At its core is a pure love of creation, boundless energy picking up inertia amid extreme restraint, transforming all the techno it touches. The humanity is there, but it’s hidden, in corners and in shadows, as still as can be, confident someone will eventually find it anyway. Stay active. –Adam Devlin http://j.mp/2o8xWPc