#I think I drew more and that was in my era FB they had to lose those drawings and I do not regret anything

[honehonn3honey]

All drawings about Kirishima from 2019 to 2024

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[genericpuff]

Remembering My Roots - Rest in Peace, RateMyDrawings

I've talked about my old art before on here, but never really fully in-depth about the site that hosted it. I was reminded of it today while going through my FB memories and felt like I should actually write a true eulogy towards what once was.

Once upon a time, before LORE | REKINDLED, before Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH], before I had even started drawing webcomics, I entered the world of digital art through one website - not DeviantArt, not Pixiv, but a little site called RateMyDrawings. Back in the day, it was one of the most popular browser-supported art tools, offering multiple different art tools that were, at the time, revolutionary. A flash drawing tool which could replay the progress of your drawing (but the tradeoff was that you had a limited amount of 'ink' aka recording data), a Java-supported tool that was essentially Photoshop Lite (but didn't come with the recording), and later, a more refined tool supported by HTML5 (?) that offered more 3D-like brush tools. There was also DrawChat, a live drawing flash tool where you could draw with others and chat.

And on that site, I created my first works of digital art. No drawing tablet, just a mouse and a loooot of patience. They'd host contests every now and then to win budget Wacom tablets. Sometimes I'd enter, I'd never win. I did eventually get my first drawing tablet, but by then, I'd moved on from RMD onto actual software such as GIMP and Photoshop Elements.

That site is gone now, one of the first art site deaths I'd ever experience in my teen years. I was around 12-13 when I started using this site and I adored it. When people talk about missing the 'tight-knit communities' of old, I don't think of DA, I think of RMD, my first home. Unfortunately, the site couldn't survive in the 'modern' era of the Internet, overshadowed by more advanced tools and art-sharing sites like Deviantart, Facebook, and Instagram.

But I did manage to backup some of my old art pieces before the site finally became completely shuttered in the early 2020's. For a while the site was awake but lacked any content or features, with a message from the site's creator Mick that it might come back, it might not.

It didn't. The old ratemydrawings.com URL now redirects to the inactive FB page. Any attempt to bypass that kill screen like before leads to an Error 404.

But while the site was in its comatose state - before it was shuttered permanently - I was able to access my old profile and extract some of my art pieces of old. I posted them to my FB about 3 years ago, and today they showed up in my memories.

I share a lot of art pieces from creators like Rachel Smythe in an attempt to preserve media. But I also need to remember to preserve my own. So here are a handful of the 100+ pieces I drew on RMD. Enjoy ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

Don't be confused by the '1987' part of the username, I picked that number because I was a huge Zelda weeb and 1987 was the year the first Zelda game was made. Whoof.

What's ironic is I actually didn't have the Featured Artist award last time I was actively on the site, so it clearly happened while I was inactive in its final days. The one award I wanted the most and I wasn't there to witness getting it. RIP.

Unfortunately that's all I really have in the way of high-resolution drawings as I wasn't able to preserve much else (though if I find anything more I'll definitely add it to this post!) That said, I was able to nab some screenshots of my homepage via the Wayback Machine where you can see more of the pieces I did back then:

There are so many dorky ass drawings here, some from Time Gate (because it's that freaking old!!!), some are screenshot recreations from anime that I enjoyed (a very common trend on RMD), some are collaborations. There was a point where I learned how to color with the mouse by using low opacity colors and layering them one at a time. Really upped my game there LMAO That Ocarina of Time Link drawing was the first one I ever did that made it to the front page of RMD and y'all, I was so proud, the site back then I think had 50k users total which is nothing compared to the Internet today, but achieving that was one of the greatest things ever LOL The Skyward Sword drawing that followed was one that really felt like a milestone in terms of my art evolution, I felt like I was finally creating something good. I believe I did that Skyward Sword drawing off another DA piece at the time, it was really common to do redraw challenges on RMD what with the technical limitations of the site - I suppose redrawing stuff I liked back then should have been foreshadowing LMAO

That feeling wouldn't last forever ofc once the art high wore off, but even to this day I look back on the pieces from that era fondly. It's where the mysteries of digital art finally started to 'click' in my brain, and I had still barely gotten started.

I also have a few drawings preserved that were done after I got my first drawing tablet, and you can really tell with the improvement of the lineart LOL That said, I think I was around 18-19 when I did these:

Now, one thing that I really enjoyed doing on RMD were collabs - specifically, trading collabs where users would exchange drawing files through the RMD PM system with one another to do steps of a drawing together. Often times I took the role of coloring other people's lineart pieces, which is probably where I started to really learn digital art coloring and come into my own with it.

A collab with user "lime":

Collab with user "Mikai":

A collab with user "Overik", which I specifically remember struggling with because, at the time, my computer monitor's screen was messed up resulting in the entire thing basically being a fluorescent pink:

A collab with "Mist04" that I don't remember doing lmao:

Collab with "Adzumi" (?). I'm fairly certain that's who it was, I definitely remember the process of painting this one, I had loads of fun with it:

Collab with user "ForgottenArtist", IIRC this one was more of a coloring page where they gave out the file freely for others to color, so this was my version. The forums on RMD were great for that sort of thing, people would literally just upload their drawing files for people to have fun with:

So I guess I drew this next little thing in 2021 when the site was still 'live' but not functional, I completely forgot I did this though LMAO Basically the main URL took you to that kill page I showed above, but if you knew any of the extension slugs, you could bypass that kill page and get into the rest of the site, which I was able to by using my username URL. So I got into the Java drawing tool and made this little thing in the hopes I could upload it. Of course, it didn't work, but hey, it was worth getting a screenshot, I suppose:

It's equal parts nostalgic and bittersweet to go through these drawings. Life back then feels so far away and yet I still remember it so vividly, the hours I'd spend drawing on the family PC, feeling more at home with the friends I made online than the ones I had in real life, listening to music that I still listen to to this day. It's far away now, but it still lives through me, in the work I do today. Even someone like me can go from being a complete noob drawing with a mouse to a professional making their living stabbing ink into other people while still drawing the same stories they drew as a child.

There is one piece I had to dig up outside of FB memories, fortunately it wasn't hard to find because I knew I had shared it ages ago on my FB so the search bar saved my skin. My very first digital art piece, of Sheena Fujibayashi from Tales of Symphonia, one of my favorite games of all time.

My very first digital art drawing:

Recreated in 2019:

Past me went through a lot, and they'd be doomed to go through even more still (they hadn't hit the plague yet). And yet they're going to survive, they're gonna keep getting better and better with each passing year. Thanks past me - you've done a lot of dumb shit in your life, but sticking with your craft wasn't one of them. Thank you for walking - through all the good and the bad that you've had to weather through - so that I could run for us both.

[stillgeekingout]

part 2~

I finally actually read all of pride and prejudice, it was great everyone was right lol. also I made character playlists for it for sara’s bday but I also just like them

speaking of playlists. ingrid and I went back to working on our narrative playlist project and we are now hopelessly invested in it lol. all of the playlists are done as of last week but more things to come. also I put together a box of props based on the characters for ingrid’s bday but also for me (are you sensing a theme lmao)

I wrote a song!!! I have always wanted to and never succeeded but I did do it and I think it’s good. I probably won’t ever do anything with it but it exists. maybe in 30 years I’ll write another one. or maybe sooner if we do our OLS thing

we went to a couple of Musical Mondays at a theatre near us and sang in their open mic competitions (and didn’t win but it was fun)

I thought last year was concert year but this was truly concert year. concerts I saw this year: lucius w/ingrid & my mom which was CRAZY good and we were super close and then they came into the crowd and stood right in front of us, aly & aj with ingrid, muna in atlanta which was my first time going to a concert alone (it was still fun but I prefer not going alone), twice in atlanta with shannen and ingrid, black midi with ingrid/sara/sara’s dad lol, and tessa violet w ingrid and the people we made friends with in the crowd (this one was also really small and cool). we started listening to chappell roan like the week she was in orlando and it was already sold out rip. also darren came to orlando but I didn’t go to that either bc it was his christmas show and I don’t care

I lost my beloved yellow water bottle in an airport :’(

I feel like I didn’t really go feral over any tv/movies this year? we watched not dead yet and taskmaster but idk there weren’t any new-to-me shows that I got super into. I was underwhelmed by barbie…. nimona was good and I’m glad it exists but it didn’t Hit Me the way I think it hit other people

one of my parasocial relationships got to the point where even I was like ok this needs to stop

on the flip side my other parasocial relationship is going great on bluesky lmao 

my sister was in indonesia the whole year! :o I miss her a lot! in september we were the depression bros

I saw snow for the first time!! we went on a roadtrip to virginia and north carolina to see friends

got addicted to fb marketplace and got 2 new armchairs (and the infusion tea couch)

ingrid and I took spanish in the fall but the teacher was bad so I didn’t learn very much spanish

our roommate stayed for a second year, she is chill

shannen moved farther away :( but we still got to hang out

we did 2 friend group powerpoint parties

I guess I can’t not say it…. the eras tour took over my entire social media feed which first gave me fomo and then it was fine and then annoying but it did make me start talking to hannah and now we are friends outside of ingrid :)

also this was My Year for taylor’s versions, speak now and 1989 are The Ones (even tho I don’t prefer the new versions)

ingrid and shannen FINALLY finished corey & sherlock. and I read it and it was fun despite also being A Time because it fell during my depression month rip

rory was born!! the first baby in my Vicinity in a looong time

obligatory bullet point for muna bc I love them… I’m still not a podcast person but I listened to so much gayotic this year. yeehaw silk is my roman empire

saved it for the end: my goal in 2023 was to write a lot of my rough draft and I did it! we went to see manatees, we went to st augustine multiple times, I read seasons of real florida & braiding sweetgrass (until I had to return it to the library lol) and I researched weaving and made a connection through an infodump match blog and drew an insanely detailed castle map… working on this book is occasionally stressful but mostly it’s just fun!

did a lot of writing in the beginning of the year and then stagnated for a while and then I was looking for a distraction from work hell and rainbow convinced me to do nanowrimo on a whim and I completed it!

I was in a writing group with someone I used to rp with on forums when I was like 13. WILD

anyway 2023 was a lot but a lot of good things happened too. I hope this year to stress less about work and just focus on what I can control, like my house and my book etc. my mom keeps saying “ready for what’s in store in 2024” so I made up a mcelroy year title for her which is “20 what’s in store: the adventure awaits”. personally idk if I want an adventure this year so I’m sticking with fungalore hearing my wish to get a lot of writing done. if you made it this far I hope you have a year of human connection, restful sleep, and good snacks. peace and love <3

I was gonna be like "would you believe it's my 10th one of these" but apparently tumblr has a CHARACTER LIMIT now????? why would they nerf me on the year I decided not to worry about how long it was

anyway I guess I'm splitting this in 2 so reflections on 2023 part one~

let's start with work bc then I want to be done with it: I spent all year doing trainings (& 2 conferences) and researching and preparing to apply for an advisor position if it ever opened up. it did open up in spring, I applied and did not get it, the new advisor was not good and got fired, I applied again having done much more training and still did not get it, I applied for a different advisor position trying to triumphantly leave my office and did not get that either. so now I’m still in my same position working under the person who beat me for the job but this time with a bunch of extra responsibility that I gave myself trying to prep to be promoted. lol. if I sound very bitter it’s because I am :)))) 

all that being said, I do still mostly like my job from day to day. and I still want to do advising, probably. if they’ll ever hire me for it

related to work but less bitter: I had mostly good relationships with my coworkers. one of them was pregnant for a lot of the year and just had her baby last week and I’m very excited to meet her (we went to her baby shower despite all her friends being Very Christian lol it was a time) (this coworker is uhhhh A Lot but it’s complicated lol). I got to be on the hiring committee for another coworker which was a cool experience and also she is very nice. got closer with another coworker who I previously had kind of a tenuous relationship with (and now she works fully remote so it doesn’t even matter) (jk)

another thing I did in my quest to Be Hireable was basically take over supervising the student leaders (work study students) at work. shoutout to esteban, isa, aar and sheri lol

I have inherited my mother’s trait of getting attached to problem children. there are several students who are a recurring Thorn In My Side but also I’m rooting for them

last work thing that is only tangentially a work thing: I became the advisor for GSA at my campus and now I have a bunch of queer college students under my wing. a few of us walked in pride which was my first time being in the parade and it was wild. also we had an event for trans awareness week and I am proud of them for coming up with it :)) more exciting things to come this year. feels good to have a little corner where I can provide support in the face of so many attacks from the FL govt

let’s get the other big bad thing out of the way! my mental health was shit lol. I briefly was doing virtual appointments with a therapist in the spring but it mostly just made me feel weird and untherapizable. (as in, I didn’t feel like I was getting much out of it but I think part of that was that it was zoom calls from my car on my phone during lunch breaks) although it did lead to me leaving my phone outside of the bedroom at night and putting timers on my apps which I think have been net positives even if they haven’t made as much of a difference as I hoped. 

the aforementioned job stress was a huge part of it, the application process lasted like 2 months and then they left me on the hook after the interview for Multiple Weeks which was. a bad time.

another part of it was I was alone a lot on weekends and I’m not very good at using my time off to do fun and nice things when I’m by myself, usually I end up just stewing in my brains. I did try to get in the habit of occasionally going to these nice gardens near us so maybe I will do that more this year also.

also health related: got my first mammogram this year. it was uncomfortable but fine. also got my first pap smear which was QUITE PAINFUL AND UNPLEASANT but I did survive it

also tangentially health related: I tried a few times throughout the year to do yoga. for a lil bit I was doing it with some coworkers after work once a week. some of it I did with some people from the carry on discord. it was very intermittent but better than nothing at all!

last health thing: my dad’s siblings had an Exceptionally Shitty Summer. one of his sisters died, another of his sisters had an extreme staph infection and was in the hospital for weeks, and one of his brothers had a mini stroke and possibly also a heart attack? the latter two are doing okay now but it was rough for a minute there

ENOUGH BAD STUFF I turned 30 this year! three full decades on this earth

Ingrid got her work authorization and a job and later in the year her green card!

I paid off my car (and also my car is having a lot of minor problems but that’s just… having a car)

I made a few financial mistakes (messed up our taxes, accidentally got a best buy credit card) but they are hopefully still fixable and overall we still saved money by the end of the year. we tried to keep a budget for a while but it was hard to keep up with. we also tried to join a credit union but their customer service was really weird

made a halfhearted attempt at local politics (went to a few protests, one city planning thing, and one socialist alternative meeting)

stay tuned for part 2 since tumblr hates me apparently

[lavenderboneswrites]

top 5 animes ❣️

1. One piece

Of course it’s one piece. Critically I wouldn’t say it’s the best adaption, it’s definitely got some pacing issues and I definitely recommend binge watching instead of the torture of week-by-week (also the manga is god tier #1 manga). Apart from that though, one piece is an absolute epic that has my entire heart. It really be a life commitment cause once you’re in, you’re in for life. Honestly not too exaggerated to say one piece changed my life for the better. If you like stories about found family, adventure, comedy, amazing characters and character develop, absolutely epic world-building on par with Tolkien and G.R.R. Martin then please give one piece a go. And if not, still give it a go I promise it will change your life ❤️❤️

2. Durarara!!

Drrr, specially season 1, is such an amazing adaption. The characters, the art style, the music, my beloved shizaya ❤️ One of the very first animes i watched I still love to rewatch season 1 🥰🥰

3. Fruits Basket

😭😭😭🥰🥰🥰🥰❤️😭❤️❤️ The perfect anime. Bittersweet slice-of-life, tragic and poetic, heartbreaking, yet hopeful. FB grabbed me by the feels and didn’t let go. Ngl I sobbed through most of it, tears of pain and tears of joy 🥺🥹 Critically speaking, in terms of character driven story telling FB is definitely my #1.

4. Hunter X Hunter

HxH is extremely underrated in my opinion. It was my first anime so it has that special place in my heart. Along with OP it’s an absolute pinnacle of Shonen. Most of the time I get annoyed with Shonen anime but when it’s done right boy does it go off. Amazing characters, character development, story-telling, and world building 🥰 critically i would say hxh is my #2 just for how tight it’s story-telling is, it has good pacing too which is such a bonus. Honestly bad pacing is so tedious it’s such a turn off

5. Jujutsu Kaisen

This was such a hard decision to make 😭😭 I didn’t really like JJK at first. It was okay but it was very Shonen and I wasn’t that invested in the characters. What really drew me in was Sukuna. I love his design, he’s an amazing villain and possession trope is 😮‍💨😮‍💨. Another thing that interested me actually was Kugisaki. So this was tying with Naruto for #5 but when I was comparing them I of course looked at the similarities of the main trio. I absolutely despise Sakura, not as a character, I actually want to like her so much, but just how bad kishi has written her honestly she deserved so much better. On the other side, Kugisaki, along with the rest of the ladies of JJK, are absolutely AMAZINGLY WELL WRITTEN. Like i love her so much I think she’s so interesting, three dimensional and it’s nice she’s not just a love interest for the men. A fully fleshed out character who’s a woman in this day an age? In my 2022??? Anyway besides Sukuna and Kugisaki, I decided to watch it for the animation alone, it is absolutely STUNNING, and that is why it’s beaten some of my other favs. It’s worth it for that alone. What really got me hooked was after I watched it I went straight to the manga and it’s one of those stories that just gets better and better with every arc. I am so absolutely ravenous to see the arcs of season 2 animated I apologise for the person I become when that happens 😅 Anyways, after I had caught up with the manga and was properly hooked I rewatched the anime a further two times welp 😅

6. Bungo Stray Dogs

I COMPLETELY FORGOT BSD EXISTED FOR A MINUTE THERE NOOOOOOOO!!!!! Probably this is more so tied with #5. Anyway I love love love BSD. The first season was a lil eh and I wasn’t totally on board but DARK ERA SNATCHED MY WIG and I’ve been obsessed ever since. Up to date with the manga and very excited for season 4. Dazai alone to me is such an interesting character (kind of like Izaya that way). Also my beloved soukoku. And rare pair Ranchuu.

Honorary mentions: Naruto (very soft spot in my heart for Naruto it gets #6), BNHA (season 1-3, beyond that is a butchered adaption and a rant that needs its own post), Banana Fish, Haikyuu!!, Given, KuroBasu, ugh I’ve watched too many animes I can’t even remember them all. Also does this count movies? cause if movies count, NUMERO UNO ICHIBAN FOREVER AND EVER KIMI NO NA WA MY BELOVED 😍😍

(Also Shizaya your name au anyone???)

[landlordrecords]

Bassline (& 2020 in general): Re-e-wind

 What a strange year, as everyone, everywhere has said a million times… Writing-wise, I’d been doing Record Collector magazine since 2014, and uDiscover (the Universal Records online mag) for not much less, & that all just seemed to (understandably) stop dead with the onset of the pandemic. Since then, I’ve polished off my chapter on the work of Simon Morris and the Ceramic Hobs for Palgrave, & that’s about it, so you’re more likely to find me over on Twitter at Sniffy (@philblackpool) / Twitter these days, blurting out the odd sentence. I hence thought it might be time to revisit a very old piece…

Like many, I’ve been working from home for much of the year, and although I’ve occasionally wanted to pull out my own eyeballs, it has generally been very pleasant for a voracious music-lover. I started by catching up on the vast majority of my insane, years-deep second-hand vinyl buy piles, and then chomped through a load of ‘long listen’ stuff I’d had on the backburner forever (including, astonishingly, eventually getting through something like 40 hours of Pan Sonic live sets someone had dumped online). I graded hundreds of releases for sale on Discogs, and revisited umpteen musical thangs extensively, including 90s gabba, Sun Ra, music hall, Schoenberg, dancehall reggae, the acknowledged worst albums ever, happy hardcore, Italian house, bounce and makina (I’ve lost track of how much time I’ve spent checking out youtubes to try to identify a couple of most-wanted bounce and makina tunes), Britpop (!), cosmic disco, and Belgian popcorn. It’s been an extraordinary year, packed with cultural discovery and rediscovery. In amongst this, in no way ashamed of my abject love of Discogs, and already having used and edited it for many years, I read the entire guidelines and decided to go hard on sorting out stuff I care about on there. Seeing they’d finally added various more recent ‘styles’, I’ve spent the last month and a half doing a ridiculous amount of edits on a dozen or so niche genres of importance in recent times (footwork, Jersey Club, yadda yadda). My tweakings around Bassline and UK Funky eventually drew me to the attention of UK Garage legend Karl ‘Tuff Enuff’ Brown, a fellow Discogs obsessive not so keen on the editing side of the site, who wondered if I might give him a hand sorting out the mess of his own and his label’s (2Tuf 4U) discographies. His entertaining phonecalls were enough to convince me.

I dug out all my stuff related to Karl’s label to listen to along the way, and found myself noticing how much UKG has been back in the spotlight of late (key, and brilliant, article here: RA: Like A Battle: The Push For UK Garage's Future (residentadvisor.net) ). While by no means unaware of this (I’ve had some lovely promos from Kiwi and the like of late, plus some moodier bits from various El-B worshippers), my status as a confirmed middle-aged semi-retired raver had hidden much of this from me. This leads me onto one of my big philosophical points of recent years: I listened to dance music avidly before I ever went out dancing, and listen to it now in lockdown, and in semi-retirement. There is far too much an emphasis among ever-rejuvenating dance music correspondents on ‘the club’ as the only way to enjoy dance music, but we know that OG disco fans are 60+ and unlikely to be out every weekend these days – is their experience now worthless? Online fans talk up their love of dance music for exercise soundtracks, bedtime calming soundtracks, etc: this is reality. Dance music is as valid to all these people as rock is to people who haven’t been to a gig in 40 years.

The style I felt myself most drawn back to was bassline (largely via Karl’s low-key issue of some DJ Q material). My love of UK Garage and all its offshoots largely stems from how physically removed I have been from it from virtually its entire history. Only my 2000-03 stint in Essex perfectly matched the garage waveform, and that was the 2-step era, quite the opposite of bassline. Despite being largely a northern phenomenon, Blackpool is largely untouched by bassline, being all about punk and bounce to my mind. An instant love for me circa 2007, bassline feels like one of those genres with unfinished business, but remains one I’ve rarely danced to. Cut off in its prime, it is now back, enormously popular, and rightly so, but, due to the vagaries of the digital music world, some of its key material remains tough to access in any decent form.

I originally wrote the piece I have butchered for this one in March 2008, on Myspace (remember that), in reaction to the exciting waves of bassline and UK funky then reinvigorating the world of UKG. It looks a bit embarrassing now, with more writing experience, although I continue to applaud my own willingness to be open about my innocent appreciation of things I love but am not truly part of.

 The most notable misstep in my original piece was the presumption that bassline would become the latest enormous chart sensation. Like happy hardcore before it, the ball was, in reality, fumbled. Instead of hoped-for freaky innovation, the producers also opted, as many in years gone by, for smoothed-out commerciality (in unholy alliance with low-grade grime crossovers), although the main adversarial issues seem to have been police crackdowns and the London-centric ‘cool police’. Although I was long aware of such problems with Niche in Sheffield (the genre’s spiritual home), it appears that the police interference had a devastating effect across the board ( Banned From Sheffield: How Jamie Duggan fought for bassline… And won (ukf.com) ). This largely explains why many of the bassline producers gravitated towards the largely wack bass house/house & bass style so beloved of teenyboppers in recent years. Thank heavens that era is now largely over.

Niche reputedly specialised in an arguably unholy mixture of dated late 90s speed garage and ‘bassline house’ (think ‘Let Me Show You’ by Camisra, and MK’s ‘organ house’), way past their sell-by date (I still only really like a handful of Shaun Banger Scott bits in this style, one single 2009 Brummie CD EP, and one Virgo remix). Ultimately, though, this experiment unexpectedly created something magical. The crucial element here is the 4/4 beat. While undoubtedly skippy, the vast majority of the material favoured had a firm 4/4 beat, always favoured across all key scenes in the north of England from northern soul onwards. When they ran out of tunes to rinse, in time-honoured fashion, they made their own. Long, rumbling walls of bass, organs, and hoppy-skippy beats, with raggafied samples and gunshots over the top. Popular in Birmingham as well (pretty much the centre of a vinyl glut at the time, and now notable in the popularity of DJs such as Chris Lorenzo and Hannah Wants), B-side titles hinted of coke overload. Disenfranchised by London’s movement away from the holy 4/4 (despite a slight revival in the early noughties), and via messenger services and the like, northern producers began to exchange a new hybrid in the mid-00s which took these speed garage and bassline house influences and updated them with current R’n’B bootlegs, with influences from grime (regional grime producers were key here) and, most notably, with rococo basslines. Its most obvious comparison point was Sticky’s garage productions, concurrent with the early grime era. Southern producers such as Agent X, Delinquent (who featured Gemma Fox on their magical 2006 ‘Boxers’), and Dexplicit (Fox again, 2005’s ‘Might Be’) ran with that, and the north lapped it up. Key early pointers also included DJ Narrows’ superb 2001 4/4 tune ‘Saved Soul’, and early 00s DND work (Artwork, later part of dubstep supergroup Magnetic Man). A notable increase in output came in 2006, and 2007-9 were the genre’s original glory years. And the bulk of producers and up-&-comings delivering serious anthems to the scene came not from London and the south-east, but from Leeds (T2, Wittyboy, Nastee Boi), Bradford (TS7), Manchester (Murkz, Burgaboy, Subzero), Nottingham (Virgo, IllMana), Leicester (JTJ, H20, FB & Zibba), and Wolverhampton (EJ, TRC, Brett Maverick). EJ’s Ejucation mix series (all up on Soundcloud) is a good place to start, beginning as the bassline house began to be overtaken by the pure bassline numbers.

Distribution for serious UK garage music has often been woeful, with only high street compilations & the chart singles (‘Heartbroken’ by T2, ‘What’s It Gonna Be’ by H20, etc) making it all over the country, and this helped stymie the true development of bassline, although vinyl prices, dreadful video promos, and the leap to digital in some ways didn’t help. Years on, as an incorrigible vinyl fanatic, I still only have handful of bassline 12”s. Yes, you can now access this stuff the world over via Youtube etc, but decent, high-quality copies of full-length tunes (they are often hacked about to great effect, but in a way which obscures the original intentions, in the mix) are not always the easiest to come by, although the classic producers are increasingly putting out digital compilations of their original work. Material that would, for previous genres, be fiended after, is lost to being just more online links. At the time, I looked high and low for 12”s, succeeding only rarely, largely on the flip of UK Funky releases. The (mixtape) audience, going by comments online, were often extremely young, are probably now still only in their mid-twenties, and are seemingly happy enough with this chaotic model. Bassline originally, as all rave genres, largely ran off mixtape boxsets, and a 2007 ‘Pure Bass – Fantasy’ box from Stoke remains my key document of that era: seven bassline CDs, with many tracks repeated, but packed to the gills, with most tracks only lasting a minute or two in the mix. As with all rave mixes, it has taken me years to suss the majority of the track IDs. In the Resident Advisor piece linked above, DJ Q (from Huddersfield) talks about thousands of lost bassline tunes, the bad side of the digital revolution. My recent Discogs ferreting suggests more bassline tunes than one might imagine did make some sort of decent release, but too many only made white labels, promo CDs for commercial releases (before being snipped from the main release), mix CDRs, or Youtube’s grainy depths. Classics such as TS7 featuring Bianca’s ‘Seems Like’ appear to never have had any decent release whatsoever, despite TS7 going on to be a big name in bass-oriented house, and Bianca Gerald having kept at the vocal turns ever since.

T2 hit biggest, with ‘Heartbroken’, a gorgeous, smashed-vocal garage dub so popular that it even inspired a Jersey Club refix. His catalogue was immediately deep, although I get the impression he has stopped adding to it. One complaint about bassline, including some of the T2 work, regards the untutored vocals, which can sometimes be rather flat, and certainly lacking in dynamics compared to the dazzling US vocalists featured on some earlier UK garage pieces (I refer here, as always, to TJ Cases’ remarkable ‘Do It Again’). I kinda like that - it shows amateur enthusiasm not far removed from punk, and most obviously links to lover’s rock, as does the production at times: it gives a feeling of melancholy entirely suited to the vocals. Other bassline heroes include TS7, who briefly brought to the fore sassy female garage MC T Dot. His productions also include ‘Smile’, one of my very favourite bassline tracks, full of that Simon Reynolds-quoted 'weird energy’ possessed by DJ Hype & co in the early nineties. Male bassline vocalists such as Ideal also remain unfairly forgotten, although some of the female vocalists have gone on to work in related genres since bassline’s peak.

Paleface, an ex-member of London garage rap crew Stonecold GX, runs Northern Line Records (FB, TRC, Wittyboy, Nastee Boi), something of a quality mark for bassline productions, while also making highly successful UK Funky tunes as part of Crazy Cousinz, and later progressing into commercial house territory. He chronicled much of bassline’s high-water mark (including being married to Kyla, since sampled by Drake). Wolverhampton-based Northern Line signing TRC proved particularly adaptable, spewing out a legion of original tunes and remixes before retreating for a while to grime. Leeds’ Nastee Boi was a favourite of mine at the time, with his pitch-black gangsta bassline tunes, but pushed on towards a mixture of underwhelming R’n’B vocal cuts and nursery grime toons. Wittyboy started similarly punishingly but also went smoother, unbalancing the classic bassline rough and smooth combination.

Now that the dubiously poisonous rep of Niche has been dispatched, the key bassline acts have returned to their key battleground, and the genre seems in full throttle again. Much of the new material seems a little one-dimensional to me: producers invariably big up Bristol’s My Nu Leng as, I suppose, a bridge from bro-step to 4/4. Everything, as acknowledged by the DJs, is huge drops and nothing much else. It still sounds pretty hot though – not the updated lover’s rock of a decade ago, but worth supporting. Bassline is NOT finished!

[yahoo-roto-arcade-blog]

Starting pitcher ranks: Robbie Ray puts it all together in latest Shuffle Up

Robbie Ray has been a right answer thus far (AP)

Here’s the big one, the starting pitcher shuffle up. It’s going to look absurd in a day or a week because that’s how pitching is. This position is erratic, fickle, humbling.

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What’s happened to this point is merely an audition. We’re trying to calibrate 5×5 value from here on out.

Players at the same price are considered even. The prices are used as a tool to compare the players, but they are not scientifically derived. I study the numbers as much as I can, but I am not a formula guy. I never will be.

I will not debate the injured pitchers. They’re ranked as a courtesy. If you know exactly when Syndergaard and Bumgarner are coming back and exactly how they’ll do, wonderful. Please share it with the rest of the class.

I retain the right to tweak this list in the 24 hours. Game on.

$36 Clayton Kershaw $33 Max Scherzer $32 Chris Sale $28 Zack Greinke $25 Stephen Strasburg $24 Corey Kluber $24 Carlos Martinez $23 Dallas Keuchel $22 Yu Darvish $22 Carlos Carrasco $21 Michael Fulmer $20 Chris Archer $20 Lance McCullers $19 Marco Estrada $19 Johnny Cueto

With Archer’s stuff, you wonder how he loses as much as he does. A 3.94 ERA since the beginning of 2016 is criminal, given how talented he is (he’s also fallen short of his FIP for three straight years, which makes you wonder what we’re not measuring). That said, Archer’s struck out double-digits in four of his last six starts, maybe he’s starting to get in a groove. His career shows a 3.19 ERA and 1.15 WHIP at home, 3.88 and 1.25 on the road . . . Estrada used to be a smoke-and-mirrors guy, a lesson about sneaky-soft contact and how fly-ball pitchers are misunderstood. But this year, he’s actually starting to dominate in other areas. He’s pushed the strikeout clip over 10, dropped the walks by a third. This is a high-end SP2 now.

$18 Jon Lester $18 Justin Verlander $18 Jacob deGrom $18 James Paxton $17 Robbie Ray $17 Gerrit Cole $17 Jake Arrieta $17 David Price

I don’t think we had enough fun with Ray’s 2016 season, let’s start with that. A 218-strikeout campaign tied to a 4.90 ERA? A bloated 1.47 WHIP? An 8-15 record? You couldn’t really trust him, though you knew he could strike out 10-plus in any turn.

Ray’s ERA has dropped to 3.00 this year, despite a K/BB that’s actually an eyelash worse. He’s added a dazzling curve to the arsenal, pushed the swinging-strike rate forward, improved with first-pitch strikes. A lot of the so-called luck stats (hit rate, homer rate, strand rate) were against him last year; this year, they’re for him. But with peripheral-suggested ERAs in the mid-to-low 3s, this is a breakout we can feel good about.

Mind you, some home success would be nice. Arizona is a tricky place to pitch, and Ray knows all about it: note the 6.75 ERA at home, 0.64 ERA in the road. Obviously we expect a significant merging of those two stats, and I’d never pitch Ray at Colorado, unless it was a very format-friendly concept. But when you mix shake and pour Ray’s component profile, I like what’s in the glass.

$16 Luis Severino $15 Sean Manaea $15 Jose Quintana $15 Jake Arrieta $14 Michael Pineda $14 *Alex Wood $14 Eduardo Rodriguez $14 Jose Berrios $13 Kyle Hendricks $13 Lance Lynn $13 Jeff Samardzija

Is it possible to throw too many strikes? With Shark Sandwich, you have to wonder. Look at that strikeout rate, 10.5/9. Walks have never been a problem, and this year his BB/9 is down to 1.38. These are Cy Young-contending numbers on their own; we know BB/K tells so much of the story.

Alas, it’s not the entire story. Samardzija has a bloated 16.1 HR/FB, his strand rate blows, his hit rate stinks too. So you have to decide what you want to pay for going forward — the front door ERA or the hocus-pocus one (3.14 FIP, 2.81 xFIP). He’s allowing line drives on 27.7 percent of his batted balls, which explains away a lot of the problems. I’ll expect a high-3s ERA the rest of the way, maybe low 4s, with good strikeout numbers. Alas, that’s a very startable pitcher in the Mound Wreckage of 2017.

I don’t have any strong answers on The Q. I just won’t go any lower on him based on back class. I also think he’s on a better team in a month or two.

$12 Ivan Nova $12 *Aaron Sanchez $12 Mike Leake $12 Sonny Gray $12 Trevor Bauer $11 *Madison Bumgarner $11 Rick Porcello $11 Marcus Stroman $11 Kenta Maeda $11 Alex Cobb $11 Brandon McCarthy $10 Julio Teheran $10 Jason Vargas $10 Dylan Bundy $10 Jake Odorizzi $10 J.C. Ramirez $10 Ervin Santana

If you want a smoke-and-mirror show, Santana checks most of the boxes. Despite his walk and strikeout rates both going in the wrong direction, he somehow has a 1.75 ERA — spitting in the face of a 4.10 FIP and 4.69 xFIP. His home-run rate is in line with his recent levels, but somehow he’s managed a .143 BABIP and a strand rate over 90 percent. Byron Buxton is great, but he’s not that great.

We can’t yell “regression!” and walk out of the room, you know that. But Santana’s ultimate give-back might be jagged to the point that he’s not even worth rostering. I don’t know how sophisticated the owners are in your league, but I’d be trying to sell. Maybe you can’t get something that makes sense. But you need to make an attempt.

Gray looked terrific before one awful inning at Cleveland, so I’m trying to keep my balance here . . .  Bauer still has lapses in command and concentration, but there’s probably signature-significance to a 14-strikeout start and his secondary ERAs are all much better than the front-door number  . . . McCarthy remains the most interesting athlete on Twitter, and he’s a pretty damn good pitcher when the health cooperates. He’s also well-versed in metrics and secondary thinking, a step ahead of many of his contemporaries . . . Nova is another winner of the Ray Searage lottery; you can live with those strikeout numbers when walks are eliminated . . . Lots of good fortune flashing for Bundy; a silly-high strand rate, a suspiciously-low BABIP. His strikeout rate is down to 6.2/9, which makes him very risky to me, especially in the AL East. Remember, that division has the best cumulative record and the best cumulative run differential. It’s still full of landmines and alligators . . . I really don’t know where Teheran went wrong, but we should at least note that he’s been a lot worse at home.

$9 *Noah Syndergaard $9 *Jameson Taillon $9 John Lackey $9 Dan Straily $9 Masahiro Tanaka $8 Derek Holland $8 Tanner Roark $8 Rich Hill $8 *Taijuan Walker $7 Michael Wacha $6 *Steven Matz $6 Matt Shoemaker $6 J.A. Happ $6 Jimmy Nelson $6 Adam Wainwright $6 Zack Wheeler $5 *Trevor Cahill $5 *Cole Hamels $5 Andrew Triggs $5 Matt Harvey $5 *Charlie Morton $5 *Matt Andriese $5 Joe Ross $5 Dinelson Lamet $4 *Felix Hernandez $4 Aaron Nola

My goal for this year is for everyone to see the truth with Aaron Nola.

I know pitching is a minefield right now, but I want to play in leagues where people think Aaron Nola is a Top 20 starter.

— scott pianowski (@scott_pianowski) May 3, 2017

Last calendar year for Aaron Nola: 6.55 ERA, 1.69 WHIP. I know it’s injury-related, but I don’t get the bandwagon. Let the narrative go.

— scott pianowski (@scott_pianowski) June 1, 2017

$4 Gio Gonzalez $4 Zack Godley $4 Brad Peacock $4 Drew Pomeranz $4 Mike Clevinger $4 *Nathan Karns $3 *Danny Duffy $3 Danny Salazar $3 Jaime Garcia $3 Antonio Senzatela $3 Kevin Gausman $3 Ian Kennedy $3 Ty Blach $3 *Jon Gray $3 Luis Perdomo $3 Patrick Corbin $3 Junior Guerra $3 Jharel Cotton $3 *Francisco Liriano $3 Jordan Montgomery $3 Josh Tomlin $3 Hyun-Jin Ryu $3 Ariel Miranda $3 Ricky Nolasco $2 *Julio Urias $2 German Marquez $2 Jerad Eickhoff $2 *Carlos Rodon $2 Kyle Freeland $2 Zach Davies $2 Jeff Hoffman $2 Eric Skoglund $1 *Vincent Velasquez $1 *Wei-Yin Chen $1 *Kendall Graveman $1 Matt Moore $1 Tyler Glasnow $1 *Hisashi Iwakuma $1 Jesse Hahn $1 Mike Foltynewicz $1 Daniel Norris $1 Jose Urena $0 Jason Hammel $0 Clayton Richard $0 Robert Gsellman $0 Andrew Cashner $0 Jeremy Hellickson $0 Phil Hughes $0 Matt Boyd $0 AJ Griffin $0 Jesse Chavez $0 R.A. Dickey $0 Chris Tillman $0 Wade Miley $0 Jhoulys Chacin $0 Mike Fiers $0 Hector Santiago $0 *Joe Musgrove $0 Amir Garrett $0 Jordan Zimmermann $0 Alex Meyer $0 Chad Kuhl $0 Matt Garza $0 Eddie Butler $0 Tyler Anderson $0 C.C. Sabathia $0 Matt Cain $0 Scott Feldman $0 Tyler Chatwood $0 Bartolo Colon $0 Ubaldo Jimenez $0 Jered Weaver $0 Mike Pelfrey

I could have differentiate the zero-dollar guys, but basically they’re all “unownable” and let’s leave it at that. Cashner is the funky name here, because he has a solid ERA that’s complete mirage. You can’t make it in today’s game when you walk more batters than you strike out. That is completely unsustainable.

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