#This is just a reference to all the crazy amount of mouse puns

[beezii]

Did you know? 

Before Mags became an Auto Mechanic, she had a short lived career as a Waitress! She may or may not have a criminal record now! 😮

[caroline-nighthunter]

-Rating and gushing about every Wizard101 “World”/Arc-  

Imma just gush about my month of Wizard101 and how I finally got to a close “end” of the game.

24/12 Edit: Fixed some typos here and there and added some stuff.

07/09 Edit: KI decided to fully revamp Wiz city also changing some lore so the rating on that is outdated. Might also put my thought of the new Wiz City there once I’m through all the new content.

Arc 1 - Malistaire - 10/10

Prob my favourite.

The writing really ties in every world, even when you speedquest through it.

Contains a lot of my favourite worlds.

I’m still crying over Mali to this day...

(Old) Wizard City - 10/10

Literally the introduction to the game and the place I spent most of my time in when I was a crownless and membershipless young wizard.

Do you want to farm Nightshade or Kraken?

That graphic revamp really punched.

Fave Places To chill: Nightside, Commons, Ravenwood, Cyclops Lane

Krokotopia - 11/10

This world made me fall in love with Wizard101

Egyptian aesthetic o-o

I was once a balance wizard you know?

Cries over the plot in the tomb of storms

Also KROKODILES

Fave Places To chill: Krokosphinx, School Of Balance

Marleybone - 10/10

I liked the Wizard version, but the Pirate version is more my jam.

Everyone is lookin dapper.

Home of the Doc- I mean Professor!

The whole worlds feels like Cats, but with dogs and the plot is Sherlock Holmes.

Barkingham Palace Gear o-o

Fave Places To chill: The Museum. 

Mooshu 7/10

Japan and China vibes

Your usual warlord chaos

Everything is BRIGHT GREEN

It felt  S H O R T

Has pretty nice wand drops

Fave Places To chill: Jade Palace

Dragonspyre 12/10  

This is what you get when you throw Roman aesthetic, Prussian History and a pinch of Russia into a pot.

The amount of subtle history references is making me listen to every line of dialogue I can get from this world.

D R A G O N S

Milos Bookwyrm is kinda a darlin

We kill Mali here :’)

Fave Places To chill: The Atheneum, wherever my battle drake chills

Arc 2 - Morganthe - 9/10

Has nice spots here and there.

Writing is still good, but a little less engaging.

Morganthe was so over the top “bad bitch” that it got annoying

Grandpappy spider was the saving grace of the arc

Celestia - 8/10

Solid world, story was kinda meh

ASTRAL MAGIC

Is this Skull Island??? Why are there water moles??? I thought they only exist in Skull Island????

Basically Atlantis

WAND OF STASIS

Fave Places To chill: Watermole Village

Zafaria - 8/10

Jambo Wizard!

The plot is Belloq and crazy tse-tse zebra ruining everyones day.

All they wanted was a nice zafari, all they got was misery and running into Morganthe worshippers.

Flameingo can’t take it anymore...

“Son I’m disappointed”

Fave Places To chill: Baobab Crown

Avalon - 9/10

Love it, but something is missing?

King Arthur, but you’re Arthur.

How to become a knight 101

FINALLY I CAN GET DEER KNIGHT

The source of Morganthes saltiness

Everyone is prob scared of me because I rode a battle badger during my stay...

Fave Places To chill: Caliburn

Azteca - 9.5/10

Hello and Bye...

I will never be able to do casual side questing here anymore...

The plot was nice, but you know, IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE WAS NOT WHAT I EXPECTED

Do not speedquest through this if you are a plot person, DO NOT

Cries over birb and dinosaur friends...

The music was the best part of it.

Fave Places To chill: N o w h e r e  a f t e r  t h a t  d a r n  m e t h e o r i t e, almost everywhere before that

Khrysalis - 9.8/10

L O O O O O N G

It was to be expected though

Mouse Guard vibes

The furniture sets for this suck and there is no proper furniture to obtain otherwise...

One Wizard Army (with the help of some deer friends) pls do not kill me for my bad word puns

I’d feel bad about how Morganthe ended, but after Azteca I really don’t have anything left for that whiny bitch...

A lot of people want my head...

Hello there hand- I mean hello there Spider.

Captain Colridge, if you had a pegleg I’d be 100% sure you’re ratbeard gone out of shape.

I love the dynamic changes to the Bastion once you progress

SHADOW MAGIC no one uses though because it’s not worth the pips and time 

Fave Places To chill: Last Woods 

Arc 3 - Spider And Raven - 6/10

Had solid concepts, kinda threw them out of the window

I do not like the writing in a majority of the arc

I think I was so disappointed, because I hyped these worlds up so much, the expectations did not meet reality

The ending was a no no

Plot was barely engaging

I only pushed through this for the concepts of Mirage and Polaris and wanted to see where Grandpappy Spider went

Polaris - 7/10

WAY TOO SHORT

You spent half of the time in the arcanum anyway

I don’t like Mellori, but that is just me

REVOLUTION TIME!

I don’t like that we had to throw a ship worth of fish into the sea, although they apparently still live? Somehow?

Everyone was at full right to overthrow the Empress though, she was horrible.

Where is Napoleguin???

RA RA RATSPUTIN, LOVER OF- wait  w h a t ? ? ?

I don’t like the Arcanum, but I guess I’ll be a part of it.

Fave Places To chill: Walruskberg, Captain Colridges Tavern 

Mirage - 6.5/10

The more you hype, the more you’ll be disappointed...

Again the Spider part of the plot was good, the other was  e h

If I’m going to have to talk to another snobby over the top whiny cat I’m going to lose it.

Boochbeard, where is Mr. Gandry?

Bara Snakes.

Istar stop whining about bugs.

Ozzy you’re my best bud in this.

House themed GEAR, APARTMENTS and MOUNTS, but you gotta defeat a 100 enemies before that...

Love the world design though

THE MAGIC CARPET RIDE

Fave Places To chill: Caravan, anywhere you can wander through endless sand

Empyrea 4/10

This is what happens when you throw too many things together

S t a r  T r e k 

Medulla shut up

The idea to have an isle in the eye of a storm is cool though

Zanadu was kinda meh (prob because I remember most of it just happening in a sewer)

That dance session though, Khan rocks

The dwarfes were also kinda meh, just didn’t fit with the concepts of the previous areas 

Cthulu island was also kinda meh

Ending of the first half was literally Batman and although I know “The Bat” and “The cabal” it kinda came out of nowhere...

And then I pretty much lost interest in the world

The Reverie got me again, nice and fresh mechanics.

I will make a seperate rant on the ending, but no... I don’t like it at all and I don’t see Spider forgiving Raven as a good ending

Felt really forced

Hit some bad spots with me...

I thought we could fight Raven??? >:O

Fave Places To chill: Reverie

Arc 4 - idk what is going on

Karamelle ?/10

Ja moin, guten Tag allerseits.

Haven’t gotten there yet, but man, I’m not up for dictator Nana... :T

Spells look pathetic o k

If you try denglish one more time I’m going to lose it

At this point it’s obvious that KI has a thing for german speaking countries related stuff

Sentinel Marshmallows, do I have to say more? 

Other Worlds

Grizzleheim - 8/10

Vikings

Forshadowing of Raven

It’s ok

Grendleweed

Wintertusk - 8/10

Even more Vikings

Grizzleheim 2.0, but everyone is op and crits

You need the spells, but you don’t want to do it

It’s been too long since I’ve last been there

Wysteria - 9/10

The original snob

At least these weren’t a pain to listen to...

Incompetent teachers make incompetent students.

That hall of fame though.

Actually a nice world to quest through

The aesthetic is nice and they kinda got the cooler library compared to Ravenwood, unless I’m missing out on something.

Fave Places To chill: The library

Aquila - 10/10

Birbs

Was a pain in Pirate, is wonderful in Wiz

SKY IRON HASTA

Secret bosses you seldom find people to fight with

Everyone is salty that you’ve beated them and they don’t even try to hide.

Hades got the best estate.

Cerberus was cute until he became a set of floating heads.

Fave Places To chill: Tartarus

Darkmoor - 9.5/10

“Who hits?” - “Everyone” - *person who asked decides to leave the dungeon*

This happened to me 7 times in a row an U G H

People need to calm down their hitter ego

The dungeons are fun the first times, then they are just an annoyance to farm.

Plot is the Ballad Lenore

GO TO REST MALI

Hit in 5 rounds or say bye bye to your blades

No Feints

Catacombs 11/10

D r a g o n s p y r e  L o r e

Valencia, what are you doin there?

Basically KI’s punch in the face of Pirate101 players

“Oh you want an update? Guess you gotta watch how we recycle Valencia in Wiz”

Dragoon gear - Just like Darkmoor, but this time your suffering has a certain end

Also no exp on your quests?

[nigelgodrichproducer]

Ultraista-era Nigel interview

Magoo: I am curious about how the project came together before you met Laura, when it was just you and Joey. Were you just hanging out between schedules when you were in the same town?

Nigel: Exactly. He and I and another friend named Guss. So many times we just got together and we would be recording or jamming. Most of it we did in London but we are working all over the place. Guss and Joey both have little studios and I have a big studio. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, we just made a concerted effort to get a bunch of backing tracks together. We spoke about a certain aesthetic about electronics and a repetitive rhythm which is played. Obviously electronic music that is repeated is exactly the same. You get a human being in and they can repeat but it will sound different every time. Afrobeat was the reference point. So that’s how it started and then we had an intense 3 day session, like a right ol’ recording party and ended up with bits of music that we would then … essentially what I did was took all the music off and kept the rhythm and started again. That’s the basis of the record.

M: How much of this stuff did you have together before you thought you had to find yourself a singer?

N: Quite a lot actually because we’d done tiny snippets which might have been a minute long or three minutes or whatever. It would be a feeling, a little movement and we would leave it at that and move on to the next one. After a while we would go back and look at things and see how they could build and be structured.

M: Were you at any stage trying to do it without vocals?

N: Originally yeah, it could have been just instrumental. It was a bit of an experiment really just to see how substantial something could be like that.

M: Just to see how it evolves?

N: Yes, because it is always a terrifying prospect to say OK we are going to make some music and find a singer… you’d find a singer first and get them involved. I think it’s very hard to find a singer. With the peculiar relationships that we have… mine and Joeys is such a specific one, once in a lifetime, unique buddy becomes muse becomes .. you know!

M: You have worked with each other for years …

N: Yes, To get someone else in with that chemistry is terrifying. It’s something that is not taken lightly anyway. We only did it because we felt that we would be real pussies if we didn’t try. You know, let’s push this and I think we were very fortunate to meet Laura. She’s incredibly down to earth and rational. One of the most important things about relationships is about being able to communicate with that person.

M: I read about how you put up posters at an art college. You were trying to  find someone who was not even necessarily a musician to sing. Did you actually audition anyone form that process?

N: We actually got replies with music that they had made. We were trying to find someone who was an interesting character, who could sing but maybe hadn’t thought about taking it seriously.

M: An amateur?

N: Exactly. The last thing we wanted to do was have a singer songwriter with their chops together who had their version of what they wanted to do already sorted out. What we did end up finding in Laura, was someone who did have their own thing going, but it was very compatible and didn’t work against what we trying to do.

M: How much did the songs change when she came into the picture?

N: What would happen, is that I would write with her. There are a couple of tunes I wrote myself.

M: With lyrics and melodies?

N: Yeah, lyrics, melodies and me singing and she’d re-do it. We’d improve them and finish them off with her singing then there are things that she wrote over the top of what I’d done and we’d finesse that. Then there’s like a ping-pong thing where you are just throwing stuff at each other and putting it together as you go. There are all sorts of ways of doing it and lyrically it is the same thing. We’d play word puzzles.

M: So did you have that aesthetic before Laura joined, that historic Ultarist poetry movement  (The Ultraist movement was a Bohemian-style literary movement born in Spain in 1918)

N: That was already happening before that word came along. People have said you must have been sitting there with an Ultraista manifesto following the instructions. Well no, it was just a coincidence but it works very well. That word suggested what I was feeling, what I could see along with that music.

M: Do you ever have free time Nigel?

N: Oh I do. I have an awful lot of time to stare at the wall and think about what I am doing. I have a very unstructured life. It’s a blessing and a curse because it can actually drive me crazy but it allows me to drop anything and do something on a whim. I have this amazing studio. I can just run in if I have an idea. A lot of this record was collaborative in that we were all in the same room but quite a bit happened in isolation. I wrote a bit of stuff at home. Laura wrote stuff on her own.

M: Was there a lot of sending files over email?

N: Yes a lot of that. Exactly.

M: When you got to the stage of setting up your own studio, was this something that was ticking away at the back of your head?

N: No, this is not like a career move. I think what happened was that there was gap in the schedule. This stuff had been kicking  around a little bit. It was like let’s get this finished. Am I a man or a mouse?

M: You don’t seem like the kind of guy that is going to have a holiday sitting on a beach drinking cocktails?

N: I really wish I did. I think I really give myself a hard time with time! I have read about so many incredible people, incredibly productive people who describe themselves as lazy… and I think that I am lazy. One of my best friends, Nicholas Godin from Air, who is full of wisdom … says lazy people are the smartest because they always try to get the most using the least effort. I think I am one of those. I’m not like idiots who just work for nothing. There has to be a good economy of your effort. It is very important to being creative. You can’t waste your energy on something that is not really going to contribute to the end result. That goes for anything. If you are a recording engineer and producer, then you know what I am talking about. If something sounds, finished or good, you don’t need to take it apart and put it back together again.

M: I am curious about what kind of hours you work. Will you bash your head against a wall trying to get something done, keep at it. Or are you more … let’s take a break, come back tomorrow and this idea will come to fruition.

N: I think I would answer that question by saying I would probably stop.  Generally what would happen is that I would say stop, this isn’t working and at that moment, something will happen.

M: I always find that I have my best ideas on the toilet. You have that break and have that golden moment, pardon the pun

N: It’s like when people started using Pro Tools, they’d say I miss pushing rewind. When you used to rewind you had this moment to think about things. You don’t get that space any more. I think that I work better at night when everybody else is asleep. The world is quiet, there are no distractions. I am terrible in the mornings as a human being. I am just not a good morning guy. Nothing really good happens until after dinner. That’s fine when it is just me. When I  am working with other people, it’s hard because people don’t all keep the same schedule. Generally the work that I do which is good and happens very quickly is between the hours of 11 and 4 in the morning.

M: I hear quite a bit of Brian Eno in his David Byrne type phase in your work. Is he a bit of an influence?

N: I guess so. I am a big fan of that era Talking Heads

M: The Remain in Light period?

N: Yeah, that was huge to me. It was an incredible piece of work but I’m not a fan of Heroes. There are things I am a fan of and things I am not. Obviously there is an idea behind Music For Airports, the ambient moments which I totally understand and love. I have an enormous amount of respect for the guy but I don’t try to emulate anything he has done and never would. Whereas I would try and emulate Trevor Horn. This is a good example of how things happen actualIy. I try to do Trevor Horn and it sounds like Brian Eno. I understand why you say that. He thinks outside the box. He is not hemmed in by a set of rules he thinks he has to follow. At times he has done things in his career that changed the way that everybody does things.

M: Have you met Brian Eno?

N: I have met him a few times. He is very gracious, a very nice man. The thing that I like about Trevor Horn is … even if it is too pop for me, like Frankie Goes To Hollywood or something, even within this mainstream pop thing, he is incredibly obtuse and bold. Such big, bold things happen that go against the grain and you can feel that intention. That’s the thing I really do try to emulate as an idea, rather than a sonic palate. With Brian Eno … I like the sound of space, the ambience and echo and reverb. I like to see big spaces when I listen to things because I see things when I hear things.

M: Getting back to the Ultraista album … without getting too technical … is that just the way Joey plays, or is there a bit of manipulation going on or a bit of both? To me it sounds like there are a few layers of drums in the way that dance music has multiple loops or some sort of loop and a bit of programming underneath. It feels like you’ve gone for that aesthetic but done it live …

N: That’s exactly right. Basically there are electronics going on that he is playing to which is woven into his sound. Sometimes the drums are being processed through a piece of electronics that is making a rhythm that he is playing to. It’s like they’re rubbing against each other.

M: I just wanted to ask how you go  being on the other side of the glass so to speak, promoting an album?

N: It’s fine. It feels a little bit like uncomfortable but I think that is good. It’s a nice change and it is important to make yourself vulnerable. It’s important not to be afraid of things… and it’s important to just do … stuff! I mean the nature of the business is changing. I think producers are more artists now anyway. I’m not going to just find a band and make a record with them anymore. It’s just not that much fun. I would rather work with people that are my friends, have my input, be upfront and be able to write music. It is stuff I have always done. I don’t know what I will do next. I enjoy the playing, that’s fun.