#Martin Meyer

[bandcampsnoop]

4/11/24.

New label alert. Inscrutable Records is a St. Louis, Missouri based label run by Martin Meyer (Soup Activists). Pleasant Mob (Chicago, Illinois) is one of four new releases on the label. Lead song "#3 Dream" reminds me of The Clean, and "Mob" has a Bats feel. And while the other songs do have a Flying Nun feel, the other songs on this release fit the indie pop genre, but bounce between styles throughout.

Pleasant Mob's frontman, Raidy Hodges (of Spread Joy) has a new surrounding band for this release. Mikey Young mastered this.

Inscrutable Records first four line-up is solid - Pleasant Mob, Famous Mammals, Soup Activists and Tia Rosa. Their bigcartel website also looks like the dabble in distribution too.

[konyvboritok]

[margokesses]

Ayo edebiri is so fucking funny

[moomin279]

“Marty short is so mean to Steve and I think it’s Steve’s favourite thing in the world”

[flower-radio]

in my defense, your honor, i was being a little silly. a bit goofy, if you will.

[your-daily-snl]

Andy Samberg Impressions Monologue, in which Andy tries to beat Bill Hader's record for most impressions done on SNL.

Original Air Date: 2014

[colbertt]

Steve Martin & Meryl Streep as ADAM SCHAFFER & JANE ADLER IT'S COMPLICATED (2009) dir. Nancy Meyers

[dustedmagazine]

Slept Ons: 2023

Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter

If you write for Dusted, you listen to music all the time and you try, at least within your general area of interest, to stay current with what’s current. Ask any of our significant others, and they’ll say we listen to too much music, to which we inevitably reply “What’s that, this ‘too much’ you speak of?” We listen to music while we’re eating, while we’re working, while we’re exercising, while we’re driving from one place to another, even while we’re brushing our teeth sometimes; though, admittedly, the sound quality is not that great in the bathroom.

Even so, we miss things. Here, in what has become an annual tradition, we revisit some of the albums that slipped away in one fashion or another, the ones that we kept putting off until it was too late, the ones we somehow didn’t catch wind of until well into January, the ones we discovered tardily on other people’s lists and year-end podcasts and radio shows. So here are our late finds, a favorite or two each that we never got the chance to write about. Fortunately, unlike bread and fresh fruit and bunches of cilantro, albums don’t go bad if you let them sit for a while.

Die Enttäuschung und Alexander Von Schlippenbach — Monk’s Casino Live At Au Topsi Pohl (Two Nineteen)

This record wasn’t so much slept on as patiently sleuthed. Die Enttäuschung, the long-running German quartet (their name translates as The Disappointment, an appellation that says more about their sense of humor than the quality of their ever-buoyant reimagining of bebop and early free jazz) started selling it at gigs in the spring of 2023. I bided my time, and when I made it to Berlin last fall, scoring a copy was on my agenda. To this day, the record and the internet are near strangers; while you can buy it from Bandcamp, there’s no download, streaming or videos. So, you’ll have to just take it from me that Die Enttäuschung’s reunion with now-octogenarian pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach will take wrinkles off your brow. The first time that these musicians recorded together as Monk’s Casino, back in 2005, they performed every one of Thelonious Monk’s compositions over three CDs; pith was essential. The repertoire hasn’t changed this time, but the approach is looser. Crammed into the intimate confines of the now-shuttered Au Topsi Pohl just as Omicron started ruining parties, the five musicians goose the tempos, spike the solos with impertinence, and veer around Monk’s sharp angles with a combination of intimate familiarity and belt-busting abandon.

Bill Meyer

Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter — SAVED! (Perpetual Flame Ministries)

Not slept on so much as avoided— and why, at this point I am not entirely sure. When I saw Kristin Hayter perform under her previous Lingua Ignota moniker back in December of 2022, she opened with a set of devotional songs on piano, a variety of metallic objects set and chains draped across the instrument’s interior string works. It was extraordinary, and SAVED! features the same basic set of raw, austere elements: that prepared piano, Hayter’s remarkable voice and the problematics of faith. The avoidance may stem from my own fraught relations to the sort of grim Protestantism Hayter reimagines; I spend some time around fire-and-brimstone Baptism as a child, and it left a mark on me. She wove some of that language and those textures into the excellent Lingua Ignota record Sinner Get Ready, but there they were much more symbolic, and largely couched in specific fundamentalisms (Amish and Mennonite) that distanced them somewhat. The sounds and spiritual gestures on SAVED! are a good deal more familiar to me, and they haunt. Likely the haunting is the point. Certainly “All of My Friends Are Going to Hell” and “I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole” smolder and then burn with varieties of hellfire I have smelled before. One can also hear those songs more metaphorically, and “I Will Be with You Always” (the best thing on the record) is replete with images and intensities that call to multiple levels of meaning, simultaneously and sublimely. SAVED! is a hard record for me to listen to, and that’s why I have come, somewhat belatedly, to prize it so highly.

Jonathan Shaw

Illusion of Safety — Pastoral (Korm Plastics)

Daniel Burke has been carefully and consistently nurturing his Illusion of Safety project for 40 years, and I’ve been embarrassingly ignorant of the output until now. Burke released multiple audio artifacts in 2023, including a 40th anniversary ten-cassette box set, so choosing a single album to write about for the Slept On column was a daunting undertaking. Pastoral is unique in that it shows off a more delicate and expansive side of the Illusion of Safety oeuvre. It’s also one of the few music-focused objects that the stalwart Korm Plastics label has released in years; the imprint focuses on the written word these days. Sonically, Burke has established a series of vignettes that follow a similar pattern. The music flows from short, sharp attacks into lengthy sustained quietude. Burke unleashes his jarring, frantic salvos both percussively and synthetically, and these brief but unsettling periods morph into slowly churning drone swarms. Given that this is just one example of Burke’s sonic vernacular, I’m excited to hear more. Thankfully, when it comes to Illusion of Safety, I’ve been a veritable Rip Van Winkle.

Bryon Hayes

Malla — Fresko (Solina)

So slept on was Malla Malmivaara’s second solo album that even the normally reliable Beehype missed it, but even if you did happen to notice its inclusion on my midyear list, overstating how well-crafted and immersive Fresko’s dance-pop tracks are is hard to do. It makes sense given she’s better known for her acting career, but Malla’s been in the Finnish music game for a long time, too — first in the short-lived mid-aughts house trio Elisabeth Underground, then as herself with 2019’s “Sabrina” single (which got a Jori Hulkkonen remix, a guy who once redid M83) that ended up paving the way for her self-titled 2021 debut full-length. Despite using similar synth arpeggios and a healthy dose of vocal reverb as she did on Malla, Fresko is a little bit darker, moodier, more down in it. Lead single “Moi” (“hi” in English) tells the tale, its perfectly crafted video full of young Rolf Ekroth models doing things like looking impossibly cool in ridiculous outfits and having fashion shows with ATVs in snowy back alley Helsinki parking lots are a perfect marriage of audio and video, images and a melody burned in my brain the moment I saw it. It is very much a dance record flush with tech-house tweaks and no grander artistic ambitions, but Malla’s barely crested 40; now that she’s pledged more time to her music career, it’s entirely possible Fresko is but a warmup for something bolder — and even if it’s not, you could do much worse than a third album full of body movers like this. Hi is right.

Patrick Masterson

Kevin Richard Martin – Black (Intercranial)

Ostensibly a eulogy to Amy Winehouse, Kevin Richard Martin’s Black is a deeply humane expression of isolation, loss and grief. Built from the ground up, the bass deep and warm, swathes of glacial arpeggiated synths and beats that hint at the club. Notes echo and ripple away to create silhouettes of solitude, a tangible manifestation of absence. Despite the deep weight of his music, Martin imbues Black with an incredible delicacy. His abstract architecture allows the mind to roam and the listener to connect with emotional truths. It’s the balance Martin finds between the particular and universal that gives Black it’s power. In the strutting bassline of “Camden Crawling” smeared with narco/alcoholic fuzz, the looming threat of “Blake’s Shadow” and the bleary saxophone in “Belgrade Meltdown” there are the faintest echoes of Winehouse’s sound which emerge from the depths of Martin’s echo chambers. A work of terrible sadness, great beauty, empathy and comfort.

Andrew Forell

Derek Monypeny — Cibola (2182 Recording Company)

Cibola eased into the world as 2022 turned into 2023, but it took me nearly a year to get to it. Monypeny is a confirmed westerner, having lived in Arizona, Oregon, and (currently) the California desert, and an awareness of both the wrongfulness and the good fortune of living in that neck of the woods infuses Cibola, which is named for one of the American southwest’s legendary cities of gold (helpful hint; if you ever encounter a conquistador looking for gold, tell them it’s somewhere else). Monypeny alternates between guitar, shahi baaja, and on electric autoharp the LP’s seven tracks, and Kevin Corcoran contributes time-stopping metal percussion to one of them. The music likewise toggles between stark evocations of space and swirling submersions into nether states. In either mode, Monypeny effectively suggests the gorgeous immensity and pitiless history of the land around him.

Bill Meyer

The Sundae Painters — S-T (Flying Nun)

One minute, The Sundae Painters are churning wild screes of noisy guitar, the next they construct airy psychedelic pop songs of a rare unstudied grace. The band is a super group of sorts — Paul Kean and Kaye Woodward of the Bats, Alex Bathgate of the Tall Dwarfs and the late Hamish Kilgour of the Clean — convening in loose-limbed, joyful mayhem in songs that glisten and shimmer and roar. “Hollow Way” roils thick, muddy textures of drone up from the bottom, the slippery bent notes of sitar (that’s Bathgate) and Woodward’s diaphanous vocals floating free of a visceral murk. “Aversion” lets unhinged guitar shards fly over the thump of grounding drums as Kilgour chants inscrutable poetry. The two HAP tracks, I and II, stretch out in locked-in, psychotropic grooves, relentless forward motion somehow dissolving into an endless ecstatic now. This full-length, sadly the only one we’ll ever have from the Sundae Painters now that Kilgour is gone, is as good as anything that its esteemed participants ever did in their more famous bands, and that’s saying a lot.

Jennifer Kelly

U SCO — Catchin’ Heat (Self Released)

Here’s the extent of what I currently know: Someone I have on Facebook posted a link to it as one of his favorite records of the year, and someone I don’t know responded that they bought a copy of the cassette before the first track even finished. U SCO are Jon Scheid (bass), Ryan Miller (guitar), and Phil Cleary (Drums) and they are from and/or based in Portland Oregon. According to Discogs and Bandcamp Catchin’ Heat is the first thing they’ve released since 2016. That’s it! I started listened to this with the same box-checking, due diligence energy I tend to have for the dozen or so records I hear about one way or another after I’ve already done my year-end writing; most of them, every year, I don’t even make it through one play (the fatigue has fully set in by this point in the process). But sure enough before the end of that first track, I knew this was going to have to be the record I slept on. It’s perfectly structured, with extra-long, absolute blowouts beginning and ending the record, the second and second-last tracks being the two shortest and the only moments of relative calm, and the middle two making up a strong core that both brings in some elements not found elsewhere on Catchin’ Heat (the vocals on “trrrem”) and is just the most straightforward version of the absolute burners U SCO can clearly summon up on command (“woe dimension”). As great and arresting as that opening track is, though, the closing “abyssal hymn” might be the real highlight here, bringing in clarinet and saxophone to add a whole new layer of skronk to what they’re cooking. I’ve listened to this record about 10 times in a couple of days, and they deserve to sell out of that run of cassettes.

Ian Mathers

[lgbtqreads]

Happy International Asexuality Day 2023!

Happy International Asexuality Day! Today we’re celebrating books with main characters all along the ace spectrum, so check out these titles and find your perfect next read! As usual, all links are affiliate and earn a percentage of income for the site, so please use them if you can! Please note this roundup only features titles that were not previously featured [with covers] in past…

[ghostinarotaryphone]

🦇"She's lost control.."/lyr🦇

Oc portrait or something...

[masoncarr2244]

Houston Astros at. New York Yankees 08/06/23/

[cryptocollectibles]

Star Trek VI Undiscovered Country #1 (1991) by DC Comics

Written by Peter David, drawn by Gordon Purcell and Arne Starr.

[moviesandfood]

It's Complicated

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

It's Complicated (2009, Nancy Meyers

06/01/2024

It's Complicated is a 2009 film written and directed by Nancy Meyers. The main performers include Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.

Divorcee Jane Adler lives with her three children in Santa Barbara, California, where she runs a successful pastry shop.

In May 2008, Nancy Meyers agreed with Universal Pictures to make a comedy film, which she would write, direct and co-produce with Scott Rudin. During the development and pre-production phase the project was carried out under the title The Untitled Nancy Meyers Project. Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin were contacted in August 2008, while Steve Martin joined the cast in October, the remaining performers joined the cast in the following months.

Filming began in New York in April 2009 and concluded in August of the same year.

[katsuobushii]

random john oliver gifs || 10/x

[stealingyourteeth]

i have been thinking. scheming even. about a renegades (YA book series by marissa meyer) and chnt crossover au. i have talents and occupations planned out for at least 4 characters and how a side plot with them would fit into the canon of the original renegades universe.

part 1/???

if you don’t know what renegades and/or camp here and there is i suggest you read this for chnt, and this for renegades!

CAMP HERE AND THERE SPOILERS(?)

RENEGADES SPOILERS

sydney is healer at renegades hq, his talent would be chlorokinesis (the ability to create, manipulate, and animate plant life). this talent is also known as botanokinesis.

jedidiah works in research and development, and he could be a technopath (the ability to control technology). ive also thought about him having a secret talent where he can give life to another being at the expense of his own life?? but i haven’t really thought that through yet

elijah is an anarchist, but he isn’t really around in the subway tunnels and isn’t even aware that the rest of the anarchists moved to nova’s house after the tunnels collapsed (explained more down below). he has the talent of Disabling Aura, people near him feel fatigue and are unable to use their own talent.

adam during the age of anarchy was apart of a villain gang (I haven’t decided which one yet) and had the title “Up and Adam” (as in chnt lmao). after the day of triumph, he now works as a counselor at renegades headquarters, though he uses this job for self gain a lot of the time. he has the ability of dreamwalking, which is exactly what the name states. he can walk into peoples dreams. this could set up an interesting dynamic as Nova never sleeps. (i actually plan on writing a fic where she takes up the counseling opportunity after killing Ingrid at the end of the first book)

heres where the side plot comes in. back in the age of anarchy elijah was put in charge of the hostages (I don’t rlly remember if the anarchists took hostages it’s been awhile since ive read the series all the way through) and sydney was one of the hostages. elijah became fixated with sydney, as his aura worked in a different way around him. when elijah was around sydney, it seemed like sydney’s senses were heightened instead of the opposite. he still couldn’t use his chlorokinesis, but this small defect was enough to send elijah spiraling into obsession. due to this, he spent most of his time tending to sydney, ignoring the other hostages despite what valuable information they may be able to give up.

even after the day of triumph, he was still fascinated with sydney. he was rarely in the subway tunnels where the other anarchists live because of this, and he really had no idea that the subway tunnels collapsed. he spent most of his days stalking sydney from afar, as he couldn’t get close to him considering the effect that he had on sydney.

there’s also like. a side side plot which ill explain.

the reason jedidiah is working in r&d is so he can try and find a way to help sydney survive longer (as he’s still chronically ill in this universe). sydney has been surviving by growing healing herbs and modern medicine, but jedidiah wants to find something more permanent.

ill update this more as i get more ideas, i just want to put this out into the world before I forget ^_^