#and i also like the art and all the little booklets! i really love cd cover art. it would be my dream someday to illustrate some album art

[august--and-everything-after]

I bought myself some CDs :3

[bmpmp3]

literally so sad to me as a CD head how CD+G is fully dead. do you know how awesome it would be if there was bonus low res images in crunchy animations in my fucking. 90s japanese grunge discs. i would be ECSTATIC

like listen to ella fitzgerald and read the lyrics and enjoy as heavily compressed images of her scroll by. this is the life

(if u wanna learn more about the format, check out this website! they did a lot of cool work archiving all this!)

[toomuchracket]

when i found you, much younger than you are now (flatmate/dad!matty x reader)

ten years of self-titled!! can u believe!! anyway, a little fluffy drabble about the day the album was released, and also about the day it turned ten, as voted for by you guys. enjoy!

2013

when you enter the kitchen, the linoleum floor cold even through your fluffy socks, matty is staring at the fridge. namely, at the thing pinned between two shitty manchester fridge magnets - a futile attempt by you to reduce your shared homesickness when you moved down south.

he's staring at the calendar, which under today's date reads "75 album release day!!!!" in your handwriting, adorned with as many lovehearts and stars and smiley faces as you could fit in the tiny box.

not that either of you were at any risk of forgetting the date, mind, but you thought it would be cute to commemorate it anyway. "you can keep it as a memento in the future," you had said, as you wrestled with the paper and the bumblebee magnet and the laws of physics while putting the calendar up. "when you're living in a malibu beach house in a decade, married to a supermodel, you can look at that calendar and think of the day your first album came out. and maybe also of me, back in london, or manchester, or maybe edinburgh... i don't know where exactly, but most likely on the other side of the world from you and your gorgeous wife. it'll be cute!"

(neither of you thought it was cute whatsoever, though.)

matty turns when he hears your half-shuffling footsteps, face twisting into a sleepy smile that splinters your heart. he opens his arms as you near him, pulling you into a washing powder-scented hug and resting his lips on your hair. "hi, darlin'."

"hi," you murmur into his sweatshirt. "happy album day."

"thanks," you feel matty's cheeks twitch into a smile against your head. "feels quite surreal, honestly. we have an album out. mad."

you caress the space between his shoulder blades. "i can imagine - it's insane for me to even think that my best friend in the world has an album out. m'so proud of you though, babe."

"couldn't have done it without you, sweetheart. oh, that reminds me..."

matty breaks the hug - and, in the process, your heart - to reach for one of the CDs piled haphazardly between the radio and the kettle. he hands you one with an all too familiar cover art, accompanying his "here" with a grin.

"matty, i said i would buy it!" you protest. "i want to be a part of getting you a number one."

"that's cute, babe, but nah," matty folds his arms and smirks. "there wouldn't be an album without you, because there wouldn't be EPs without you and your room at uni. so, the boys and i figured that you were the perfect person to get the first album CD actually made."

your eyes fill with tears at the ridiculously sweet, ridiculously too generous gesture. "wait, really?"

"i mean, it was my idea, of course," matty winks, which earns him a shove on the arm. "but yeah, that's the very first 1975 album disc. open it, darlin', look at the lyric booklet."

sniffling, you do as requested; your sniffles turn to full-blown sobs as you take in the "to our favourite girl. thanks for the love (and the pints) xx" dedication written on the first page, sobs which only increase in volume as you take in the lyrics, handwritten by matty rather than typed.

you gently place the CD and booklet back on the counter, and pull your sweetly-smiling best friend into a teary hug. "thank you, sweetheart. i feel very special."

"you are," matty replies, tenderly stroking the back of your head. "you're the most special, to me."

your heart jolts at that, and you squeeze matty even tighter, pull him even closer to you. but it's not close enough to satisfy you, it never is - nothing short of his skin cells grafting to yours and consuming them would stop your heart and brain and nervous system aching for him.

well, a kiss would probably do it, but that's far less likely to happen.

the painfully tender moment is interrupted by matty's back pocket buzzing, which provides a blissful relief from the thoughts about kissing your best friend that were beginning to awake from their dormancy. alas, the relief is short-lived - matty sighs in your ear, and murmurs "will you get that for me, sweetheart? don't wanna let go of you."

with a hopefully-unnoticeable gulp, you slide your hand down matty's back and into his pocket to pull out his phone. you squint at the caller ID. "s'george."

"should probably speak to him, i s'pose," matty says, planting a final (and devastating) kiss to your head before letting go of you and taking his phone. "are you gonna go and listen to the album while you get ready for the party later?"

you grin sheepishly. "already bought and listened to it on itunes."

"you're incorrigible. but i love you."

"ooh, big word! i love you too," you smile. "and tell george i love him too, and i can't wait to celebrate with you all later."

matty winks. "will do, darlin'."

you wink back and grab your CD, turning on your heel and wandering to your bedroom to begin the arduous process of getting ready for the album release dinner and subsequent party. it goes by quicker than usual, though, soundtracked by the boys, punctuated by congratulatory texts to and from ross and george and a half-hour congratulatory phone call with adam, and powered by the excitement of knowing you can be extra affectionate with matty today and it won't be weird.

it goes by so quickly, in fact, that you're almost completely finished your makeup when matty peers round your slightly-open door. "hey babe, would you mind- oh, wow, you look gorgeous!"

it's almost embarrassing how warm your cheeks get at that simple statement. you swivel to face your flatmate, smiling bashfully. "thanks, sweetheart. i was a bit worried the eye makeup was too much for dinner, but i've committed to it now, i s'pose."

"no, it's perfect," matty says softly, coming into the room and perching on the end of your bed. you're perfect, he wishes he could add - it's cliché, but god, is it true. "i love it."

your cheeks burn, and lift of their own accord. "i'm glad."

matty smiles back just as widely as you. there's a pleasant silence for a moment, reluctantly broken by you before matty forgets his train of thought. "did you want to ask me something, babe?"

"oh, shit, yeah," matty nods. "would you mind - if you have the time, that is - drying my hair for me? can never get it to sit right. but like it's cool if not, i can do it myself, i just like it more when it's you doing it and-"

"matty," you interject, before he talks himself unconscious. "of course i will. just let me do my lipstick first, yeah? then i'm all yours."

all his. christ, what he wouldn't give. "take your time, darlin'. thanks a lot."

"s'no problem," you say, turning back to your dressing table and rifling through a pile of lipsticks. matty smiles as you open a few in turn, furrowing your brow as you wordlessly narrow down your colour options; the smile is wiped clean off his face when you drop your jaw and swipe a dark pink over your lips, forming them into an O as you make sure the lipstick is applied perfectly. fuck. your mouth.

(the lyric from talk! is most definitely about you, but he'll never tell.)

after the most agonising minute of matty's life, you turn around to face him. "ok, i'm finished making myself pretty. your turn, babe."

"you're always pretty," matty says, kissing the top of your head as you stand up to let him sit in the chair; he finger guns towards his reflection as he does. "and so am i."

you roll your eyes. "maybe it's best if the album doesn't go to number one, actually. your head might explode, healy."

"best make sure my hair looks good then, babe."

"when has it not, when i've styled it? it's me you're talking to, not george."

"fair point."

with a wink to him through the mirror, you rake one hand through matty's hair and aim the hairdryer at it with the other. he closes his eyes, sinking back into the plush seat, enjoying the soothing combination of warm air and your gentle touch - your nails lightly scratch his scalp the way you know he loves, and he hums contentedly. fuck the dinner, fuck the party, fuck celebrating the album; matty would be happy just to stay like this forever with you.

you'd be happy with that too, to be honest.

matty slowly opens his eyes as you put down the hairdryer and finish shaping his hair with your hands. you crouch to get the back looking just so, then rest your chin on his shoulder and smile at him through the mirror. "beautiful boy."

tilting his head so it rests on yours, matty beams at you through the mirror. "thanks, sweetheart. we do look quite hot, don't we? we should memorialise it, i think."

"now? we're not even dressed for tonight yet," you say, as matty pulls his phone from his pocket and opens the camera.

"trust me, babe, this is just the first of many pictures i intend to take to document this very important day. and the first of many pictures i intend to take of you, looking all hot and glamorous."

"charmer. alright, take the pic."

"alright, darlin'."

*

2023

when you enter the kitchen, the déja vu of a moment from a decade ago practically smacks you in the face. never mind that it's a different house, with a different kitchen and a different floor (tiled, not lino, but still cold under socked feet).

just as he was exactly ten years ago to the day, albeit with different hair, matty is staring at something pinned between two shitty manchester magnets on the fridge (also different - a smeg you were embarrassingly excited about buying when you and matty moved here). rather than the calendar from before, though, it's the picture the two of you took while you were getting ready to celebrate the album release.

again, matty turns to smile at you as you near him - well, as best he can with a toddler clinging to his leg and a 7 month-old baby in his arms. you can see in his eyes that the déja vu is getting to him as well. that, and the way his smile widens as he says "hi, sweetheart".

"hi. happy ten years of your first album," you grin, moving closer to kiss him quickly. dylan lets go of her dad's leg and raises her arms towards you; when you pick her up and kiss her cheek, she giggles and hides her face in your neck. smiling, you do the same to elena, who beams mostly toothlessly at you in response. "and hello to you too, my babies! were you good for daddy while mummy was at work?"

soft curls tickling your neck tells you that dylan is nodding, an action matty copies enthusiastically. "they were perfect," he says, booping elena on her tiny nose and making her giggle - your favourite sound on the planet. "they take after their mum, of course."

you roll your eyes. "ever the charmer, healy."

"you know it, healy," matty grins, relishing the chance for acknowledgement of your shared last name, the same way he's done at any opportunity since you took it as your own four years ago. "we were just talking about mummy, weren't we, dyl? how in that photo she thought i was going to be married to somebody else by now, but daddy always knew he wouldn't marry anybody but her."

your heart glows with overwhelming love for matty and his words; it quickly begins to burn with embarrassment at your past utter cluelessness, though. "well, i genuinely didn't think you liked me in that way, the way i liked - like - you."

"silly mummy," dylan giggles, playing with the pendant on your necklace that bears her first initial, as well as those of her father and sister.

you tickle her little tummy, and the giggles increase tenfold. "silly mummy indeed!"

your toddler's giggles fade into little hums, and her tiny face turns placidly serious as she looks at the picture of her parents. "but pretty mummy."

"the prettiest," matty agrees, trying his best to extrapolate elena's tiny fist from one of his curls.

"well, maybe in a few hours, once i'm ready for the party," you say, stepping forward to save your husband's hair from his mini-me's grip. it takes you both a minute, considering you're both operating with only one daughter-less limb, but matty's curls escape mostly unscathed from your baby's possessive grasp. elena might be a matty clone, but she really is your daughter, no doubt about it. "which i really should start working on, considering everyone will be here in... three hours. will you all sit with me while i do my makeup?"

"of course we will," matty nods, holding out his free hand for you to take with your own. "lead the way, wifey."

for the second time that day, although you're sure there will be many more instances of it, there's an overwhelming familiarity to the scene in your bedroom. with the exception of dylan sitting on the vanity, copying you and pretending to put her own makeup on with one of your clean blush brushes, and elena doing tummy time on your bed and babbling away happily, the process is much the same as it was exactly a decade ago - enjoyable, quick, interspersed with excitement and texts and calls from your equally-excited friends.

the soundtrack is also different, although it's still matty singing; instead of the songs about, well, drugs and blowjobs that had scored your pampering in the past, he's doing a medley of disney songs, nursery rhymes, and... "babe, is that britney spears?"

mirroring his youngest daughter and lying on his stomach on the bed, matty glances up, eyes gleeful. "yeah! lena loves it. look - oops, i did it again, i played with your heart, got lost in the game, ooh baby baby."

true enough, elena shrieks with laughter and taps her hands against the duvet in accompaniment to her dad's singing. you laugh too, picking dylan up and moving to sit beside the other half of your family. once you're settled, you scoop elena into your arms and sit her against your knees. "you have such good taste, my girl!"

"mmm, so do i," your husband hums, looking at you with barely-concealed attraction in his dark eyes. "you look gorgeous, darling."

over ten years of matty compliments, and they still shoot straight to your knees and turn them wobbly. you lift your burning cheeks in response. "thanks, sweetheart. you're not too bad yourself."

"you think so? because i was going to ask you about fixing my hair again-"

"i honestly don't think it needs it, babe."

"really? well, in that case," matty reaches back to grab his phone from his back pocket, before rolling to a sitting position and tugging dylan into him. "scootch in, then."

dylan watches her dad open the camera app. "photo now?"

"yes, munchkin."

"but my dress!"

"oh, you're your mother's daughter right enough," matty smiles. "we'll take one picture first, dyl, and then you can go and put your dress on in time for your aunties and uncles and cousins arriving, yeah?"

"ok."

"that's the spirit," matty ruffles his toddler's head, before putting his arm around you. "say cheese!"

after his girls oblige, dylan moves round to talk to her baby sister, while matty opens the picture to see how it turned out; you lean in and rest your chin on his shoulder again so that you can look too. "oh, matty, look how cute we all are!"

"definitely fridge-worthy," matty laughs, kissing your temple. he leans back slightly to look at you, bringing a hand up to lightly caress your hair. "i can't believe it's been ten years. for both the album and the two of us. although they always went hand in hand for me, to be honest. constantly thought about you while i wrote it. and i still constantly think about you now."

you press a quick kiss to matty's lips, wiping away your lipstick stain with your thumb - matty tries to kiss it as you do, which earns him a laugh and a "matthew" from you. "i love you, baby."

"i love you too, sweetheart. here's to the next ten years."

[rosewaterconley]

I solved a mystery that only I care about lol

ok so I have no clue what I'm doing and social media terrifies me. I will probably never touch this account again. why did I have to follow 3 algorithm-selected accounts to get into this website? I can actually name 3 people I'd want to follow on here and it's none of the people your fucking robot told me to follow. but hey, I feel like I have to post it here rather than my blogspot since nobody in the world actually uses blogspot and I want people to see this!

so anyway, there's this band out of the city of Milwaukee called Hero of a Hundred Fights. they dropped a couple CDs in the early 2000s and seem to have broken up, though all their members have been in bands since. that'll be important a little later. for now, Hero of a Hundred Fights are important to me on 2 levels:

I'm a Wisconsinite who has a tiny bit of an obsession with local history and art and really fuck with their weird mathy little corner of the 2000s hardcore scene

I'm a Faction Paradox fan and their 2001 EP The Remote, The Cold contains numerous references to the series! if you've heard of this EP before, it was probably in the context of some "music that references Faction Paradox" list or another

about #2... see, everyone already knows that track 2 is called Faction Paradox and track 3 is called The Celestis. we've all long since put together that the title is a reference to Lawrence Miles' Interference. but what about the lyrics? unfortunately, we don't know. they're not online, and the vocals are good, mind, but rather incoherent.

well, we didn't know. until I ordered a CD copy for like $8 lol. that's all it took! so here you go, the lyrics booklet plus some of the other artwork featured on the CD. artist Nick Slough did a great job on this art and it's a shame only the cover is widely available online (though that's hardly a problem unique to the physical version of this one album). turns out, this is some kinda concept album based on the Miles novel Interference. cool! really love the lyrics on Rope especially. "I need your blood to get this vessel running" and "my life was in your hands, I cut them off and now they're mine" are both raw as hell.

the cover art is pretty interesting. this album was recorded in 2000, released in 2001. the entire creative process occurred before the first standalone Faction Paradox release, The Book of the War. this means the album is entirely Doctor Who-based, not based on the FP series itself. it also means, if we assume the humanoid characters on the art are supposed to be the Remote, that this is the first-ever professional art depicting them!

disclaimer: the booklet lyrics don't 100% match up with what's said in the songs! it's mostly accurate but unfortunately there are some sections missing, some repeated bits that are only written once et al. that's all par for the course but I figured I'd mention it - especially in the case anybody wants to use this to transcribe the lyrics on Genius or some other site like that.

and while we're here, Hero 100 member William Zientara has been in a billion different bands, and I think he's probably the most responsible for the Doctor Who theme on this album. See, he was also in a short-lived band called Managara - named after a Doctor Who tie-in novel so obscure even I, owner of a complete set of Virgin New Adventures who spends my work breaks combing through digital copies of old fanzines, have only ever heard it discussed a handful of times. one of their songs is called Happiness Patrol. more recently, in 2021, he was in the band Fuiguirnet, who have a song called What Grows From the Seeds of Doom! which means Zientara has been randomly tossing Doctor Who references into songs from at least three different bands for twenty years!

so uhh without any further rambling here's the lyrics and art:

[streetkid-named-desire]

Top 10 Albums

Ooh this is a good one and probably gonna be mostly nostalgia because I never really listened to complete albums.

I was tagged by @merge-conflict and I am tagging @byberbunk2069 because I KNOW that bitch got albums.

These are not going to be in any particular order like by favorite or anything, just the first ones that really come up for me.

These first two are going to be multiple albums.

1. No Thanks! The 70s Punk Revolution

My mom got this for me for Christmas when I was 13 or 14 and it introduced to me old early punk. She yelled at me once for playing "Oh bondage, up yours!" by The X-Ray Specs too loud. I had already liked some 90s/00s punk from my sister and the radio and stuff I found on Limewire, but this really started it all. It came with a little booklet that had a little mini history and anecdotes about all the bands. I really liked Iggy Pop a lot.

Also, I thought I was hot shit and Different from other punks and would spend hours in a Yahoo IM punk music chatroom arguing with people older than me about what real punk music was.

2. This 15 disc set of 80s new wave I downloaded off of whatever torrent program

When I finally got my first iPod and iTunes was a thing, BitTorrent was also becoming more in vogue and replaced Limewire for me. I only torrented entire discographies. There was this 15 album set of 80s New Wave music. So, both of these compilations are very important because my taste in music will always be punk and 80s new wave at its core.

This set introduced me to Erasure (and so did my drum teacher), Army of Lovers, all the classic stereotypical 80s pop hits and even some dark wave bands!

3. The Postal Service - Give Up

This was one of the first albums I ever listened to all the way through. I listened to it on my CD player when I was flying to Minnesota to visit my online boyfriend when I was 16 to lose my virginity. (Don't ask, my mom let me get away with some weird ass shit). And it was the first album that made me realize, most albums should probably be listened to all the way through because they have a whole story. This one is about a guy dealing with a bad break up.

4. Reel Big Fish - Cheer Up!

I don't care if it makes my a ska poser, I love this album. I think it's one of the albums I bought with my own money from Hot Topic. I just love all the songs on it and loved the album art. Drunk Again is a song very near and dear to me. That and their cover of New York, New York are my favorites to absolutely belt out in the car.

5. Fatboy Slim - You've Come A Long Way Baby

One of THE first albums I EVER bought with my own money (okay when I say "own money" I mean my allowance). I had to have been 13-15? At the Fiesta Mall (RIP) Hot Topic in Arizona with one of my friends. One of the other albums I bought will be next.

I only like Right Here, Right Now, Rockafeller Skank, and In Heaven (still get "Fatboy Slim is fuckin' in heave / fuckin' in heaven / fuckin' in heaven" stuck in my head.)

6. Short Music for Short People - Fat Wreck Chords Compilation Album

The other CD I bought in that same shopping trip. I later would go on Limewire and find the full versions of songs. It introduced me to a lot of my fave punk bands and I still get some of the little bits stuck in my head from time to time.

It was a promotional album released by the studio Fat Wreck Chords. The gimmick was 101 artists with 30 second or less songs.

It also introduced me to Gwar!

Unfortunately, the album isn't on Spotify but a kind soul curated a playlist with all of the songs that were on the album.

7. Slipknot - Iowa

My first kinda real boyfriend gifted me this album and a custom mix CD that included songs like Seether by Veruca Salt, a song by Matthew Sweet I can't remember and some others. We watched Cabin Fever at his house. He held my hand walking me home and it was very sweaty and clammy. He eventually became my biggest bully at school lmao

I listened to this album all the time at school/on my way to school in middle school when I was depressed.

8. The Distillers - Coral Fang

A BFF I met in middle school who was SO fucking cool and always had funky makeup, she was never shy to express herself. I love her SO much. My first kiss with another girl was my other BFF who has been my BFF for the longest since we were like 8. And then the other one was the first girl I ever fooled around with. We were watching Totoro while she was fingering me in bed at her grandma's house. We also made out and she fingered me while watching Braveheart.

ANYWAY, she introduced me to this album on that same trip. I wanted to sing like Brody Dalle and always wanted her haircuts too.

An honorable mention here is Tribute by Tenacious D, we shared earbuds while listening to it on my CD player and swinging in the hammock on the roof during a nice breezy summer night.

9. Weezer - The Blue Album

I was a HUGE Weezer fan when I was younger and I'd draw their little funky W on all my notebooks next to the anarchy symbol lmao

This album just has the most songs I like. This, The Green Album, and Pinkerton were my faves.

You can find me at karaoke belting out Say It Ain't So.

10. Cake - Comfort Eagle

Shadow Stabbing was the opening track in the film Orange County and I really liked that move as a kid for some reason. I love Comfort Eagle, Fashion Nugget, and Pressure Chief about equally. But just like the Weezer album, this one had more songs I liked.

I was like top 0.1% of listeners for Cake on Spotify Wrapped for like three years in a row. I know all the lyrics to almost all of the songs on those three albums and probably have the most songs out of any artist on my driving playlist.

[kes-geiszler]

MY DINOSAUR LIFE ~ MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK

Earlier this week, I bought myself two CDs - I Am The Movie, and My Dinosaur Life. Both are by Motion City Soundtrack, a band I don't think I can really actually express my love for adequately. When I say that I was so excited to get my hands on these albums I had to use my inhaler, I'm not actually exaggerating. Anyway, My Dinosaur Life has really quickly become my favourite CD I own, and I really gotta gush about it before I ultimately implode under the pressure of keeping it all in, and what better place than here I thought! I won't talk about the songs, this is specifically about the CD and art etc.

First of all, here is the back and front of the CD case! The part that reads MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK is actually a sticker on the case as opposed to being printed directly onto the album booklet. The case for I Am The Movie has a similar deal going on, but I'll talk about that another time. I'm just a fan of the little dino guy (designed by Joe Ledbetter, no less [additionally, someone that understands Wikipedia needs to add a citation to his page with regards to his work with MCS please!!])! As you can see by the back, this is the standard edition disc as far as I'm aware, it features none of the alternative versions found on the deluxe editions, and it's certainly not the Japanese release.

Anyway, next up: the disc itself! I'm a big fan of the disc, I think it's very sweet. I think I might have almost died when I opened it today to see this. I am a huge fan of shiny discs, but the best part came after I removed it....

As you can see, removing the disc shows the art behind the disc itself. The same dinosaur, but this time on display in a museum. I cannot understate how fantastic the graphic design of this case is, it is beautiful, and fantastic, and there is so much to see in it, wherever it is you look.

Whenever I have a CD, I usually expect that the lyrics will be in the accompanying album booklet, perhaps with some additional notes and thank yous. However for My Dinosaur Life, I was pleasantly surprised to find that instead of the lyrics was a booklet filled with art by Joe Ledbetter. Each of the artworks corresponds with each of the songs on the album, which is a fantastic touch and one that excited me even more than the bones behind the disc did. I've taken a picture of every single one of those illustrations, which are all gonna be shared here for everyone's viewing pleasure (because they're like. really really good okay).

Every single one of the art pieces is brilliant and filled with so many little references and correspond to the ideas of the songs, and I will be honest in saying I have been staring at them for a lot of time today. I wanted to make sure everyone else had the opportunity to see them as well!

Additional Information: Produced by: Mark Hoppus (of Blink 182) Mixed by: Andy Wallace (worked with Nirvana, Sepultura, System of a Down, and plenty others)

There is also a link to a website on the back of the disc. It seems the domain is now owned by someone else, however it was archived on the wayback machine if anyone is interested! It has plenty of information on the making of My Dinosaur Life, pictures, schedules (and at the bottom, it says "powered by Tumblr", which I wasn't expecting). You can access this here!

I don't really have much else to say other than there is not enough Motion City Soundtrack on here anymore and I plan to change that single handily, fuelled primarily by a very intense interest in them!

[weneverlearn]

Congrats to R.E.M. for Making the Songwriters Hall of Fame Last Night!

Last night, R.E.M. reunited for the first time in 17 years for one song at the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony in NYC; plus this week is Fables of the Reconstruction's 39th Birthday! So here goes an expanded version of a facebook post I made about the expanded edition CD box set of Fables...

Good rockin' little demo that never made it onto an album, though much of the lyrics appeared in the song "I Believe" on their next album, Life's Rich Pageant.

-------------------------------------------

R.E.M. - Fables of the Reconstruction - 25th Anniversary Edition (I.R.S., 2010)

If ya gotta do an expanded reissue CD box set, this is how you do it. Pictured is the rough sketch art sleeve for “The Athens Demos” CD (all previously unreleased and with some songs that never surfaced otherwise), recorded before they jetted off to record their third album way over in the UK, about on their way to wider horizons…

Neat little set also includes booklet w/ liner notes and pix, postcards of each member, and a big fold-out poster kinda based on the store promo poster of yore…

Love this 1985 album that was met with some iffy feelings from the already-big fanbase; not to mention that the band seemed weird discussing the reportedly tough recording sessions, but that I believe Michael Stipe has since said is his favorite or something; and Peter Buck says in these liner notes is “a personal favorite.”

I was amazed at its bigger sound palette that was somehow even more musty Southern gothic than before. (And this record offered up their best 7” B-sides, which would’ve really sent this set way over the top, but are easy enough to find elsewhere.)

R.E.M. was always good at coming up with album titles that kind of seep in, and a lightbulb goes off like the eighth time you sat down with the album (except New Adventures in Hi-Fi; I always thought that title was a little behind the 1960s "bachelor pad" trend LP references of that time period.)

On first glimpse, that the switcheroo of this LP title from front/back cover could also read "Reconstruction of the Fables" seemed gimmicky. But right about that moment in time (1985), the band -- specifically Michael Stipe, I suppose -- was drip-dripping into more political stances, lyrics, etc. Their budding stardom was making them (rightly or wrong) some kind of spokesmen for a generation. This album kind of did have them working as new Southern storytellers, trying to fashion a different characterization of small town Southerners than the usual stereotypes left over from post-Reconstruction/Jim Crow eras (which, when you think about it, started with that Reckoning title)... Whether they succeeded -- and no one demanded they do -- is another question for another day...

Posting this breaks my personal rule of not hyping a band on this page that doesn’t really need it, especially on the day the band is getting inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. But what the hell, they deserve it.

One of my personal gateway bands to more music discovery, and still a top 10 fave album of their's.

[kimium]

For the weird asks: 11, 14, 21, 33 and 34💜

(From this ask HERE)

Thanks for the ask, friend!!!

11. Favourite extracurricular activity?

If we're talking sports my favourite is swimming, especially lane swimming. If we're talking any sort of club in school, then I guess art club.

14. Do you love the smell of earth after it rains?

That depends on where I am. The smell of the earth (like ground and grass) is lovely. I also really loved the smell of rain afterwards while I lived in Japan, especially with all the trees and greenery around me. However, sometimes I also smell wet concrete or asphalt and that's not nearly as charming or romantic.

21. Something you've kept since childhood?

I have multiple things kept from childhood. I'll name a few because I can't pin down just one.

-Stuffed animals: I have multiple stuffed animals from my childhood days still present in my life.

-Gameboy Colour/Gameboy Advance: Yeah, I still have these tucked away in one drawer in my room at my parents' place. I also have the games for them still. Majority of those Pokémon games, but I also have Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland for the Gameboy Advance.

-Digivices (02 and Tamers): Yeah, I had Digivices, which were essentially bigger Tamagachi. In case anyone is wondering which ones, I had Davis (Daisuke) from 02 and Henry from Tamers.

-The Clow Book (from Cardcaptor Sakura): One of the only items on this list I actually want a better, nicer version of. Mine is obviously very old and I'd like a nice replica version with Sakura's name on the bottom of each card.

33. The last adventure you've been on?

I visited my parents recently and I accidentally took the wrong exit out of town, so I had to loop myself back around to get to the right road. I wasn't very happy.

34. Is there a song you know every word to by heart?

Who doesn't have a song(s) they know every word to by heart? I couldn't possibly name all the songs I know by heart.

(Fun fact: I used to be obsessed with the little booklets that came in CDs because they had the lyrics to songs in there. I used to read the lyrics as I listened to my CDs. I still do that sometimes, especially if I want to see the Japanese lyrics to a song. Or if the English to the song somehow doesn't register in my brain for one reason or another and I need to figure out what the heck the lyrics are.)

[buckevantommy]

in primary school (age 10-ish) i remember touch screen technology being the coolest sci-fi thing that was in the near future and i couldn't wait. They soon came out with ipods - which were cool, but not touch screen. In high school folks had indestructible nokia bricks, flip phones, and those keyboard slide phones that looked like mini gaming consoles. i remember the first generation iphone and the first touchscreen ipod around the same time I remember the new (last?) Harry Potter book coming out and lunchtime was weirdly quiet because everyone had their noses in the book wanting to finally read the story but also wanting to finish first. i remember bringing high school assignments into school on floppy disks - we're talking mid 2000s - because usb drives were quite new and too expensive. not many people had touch phones by the time i finished high school but if they did you knew their families were rich. only rich families and tech-loving people had ipads. laptops were still expensive and not something every student had, again just the rich folk and computer science kids. i remember going for walks wearing a certain hoodie/cardigan with a pocket big enough to hold my CD Walkman. i remember walking to my local video rental store - Blockbuster or Video Ezy or that independant place that had the coolest vibes - years before i could drive to rent part 1 of a tv series, season 1 part 1 with the first 4 of 12 episodes in one dvd case. i remember not being allowed to rent ma15+ or r18 movies. i remember having to do battle around the tv at certain times bc different family members wanted to watch different things and we only had one tv - a staticky, bulbous thing, not a flat screen and not a smart tv bc they didn't exist yet - bc there were no streaming services in australia yet - ipads still weren't really an affordable thing yet so people watched dvd movies on desktop computers and laptops and portable dvd players and dvd players plugged into these non-smart tvs. 

i remember finding the workarounds to burn dvds. i remember whittling down playlists to fit music onto burned blank cds. i remember refusing to pay $2.99 for a song on itunes and instead browsing the sales at the local Sanity or JBHIFI store for certain artists compilation albums and unfolding the poster art to pin to my wall or read through the lyrics booklet. i remember the old printers that were slower but didn't rely on wifi and bluetooth and they always worked. i remember the cosmic screech of dial-up noise on the landline phone - yeah the one attached to the wall and with a curly cord connecting the reciever - if someone was using the internet. i remember MySpace and its customisation long before Facebook took on and eventually became the untraversable hellscape it is today. i remember Youtube before the ads. i remember the early days of social media and as everything got good for a while before they all started emulating the censorship shitstain that is Tiktok. i remember playing snake on my Nokia brick and the ringtones made via button tones.

i remember roadtrips of gazing out the window long before parents gave an ipad to each kid in the back seat. i remember bringing physical books on roadtrips and long train trips bc smartphones and ipads didn't exist or, again, were only for the rich families. i remember LayBy being a very grown up thing for people with credit cards (re:parents) long before Afterpay existed. i remember using cash to pay for everything including bus fare when i forgot my paper school pass that lived in that little wallet with the plastic window. i remember using a payphone to call friends and home because i ran out of texting credit. i remember waiting to be picked up from an after school sport of weekend game by a parent with a previously agreed upon time and place bc i didn't have a mobile phone. i remember pocket-sized digital cameras and memory cards. i remember when GoPro became a thing. i remember going somewhere new for the first time and not knowing much about it bc Googling It wasn't always possible - we got our information from stories and visitor brochures bc few places had websites let alone social media pages and you couldn’t look them up online if you were on the road. 

i remember yearning for the near future where personal tech became real and then accessible; but personal tech has brought problems along with its entertainment value and multi-tool features. i remember feeling lonely and broken as a kid and a teenager bc i didn’t have access to online communities; but online is still no replacement for irl social interaction. i remember wishing there was more media for my interests and relatability; and now i’m flooded with choice in numerous streaming services that promote bingeing (fast! now! consume!) while mistreating creators and hoarde content to hoarde gold. i remember wondering how other people lived their lives day-to-day bc i was curious and bc i needed hope that i wasn’t alone but also that it could get better; now social media is raising generations of young people with neurosis to share every day of their lives and training all generations to consume content in fast-paced bite-size pieces as we doomscroll and numb ourselves to irl experiences. 

i remember all of this and i’m 30 fucking 3 years young. 

[planningforburial]

An essay or some thoughts on the art of Leaving September 2020.



I want to say some things about the artwork for Leaving, this is mostly because I am on this kick to make sure my thoughts on many subject involving Planning For Burial are archived somewhere, anyways I didn’t really mention the art much in the little booklet that came with the anniversary box set much at all besides saying there wasn’t a whole lot of art/photos too choose from for it.


So let me start by saying I’m so extremely happy with how the box set turned out, I was very worried while doing it because of what I had mentioned above and because the main reason, which is that I have never been 100% happy with any of the artwork for any of the physical editions of Leaving. This boxset I had my hands on the entire thing, I’m not slamming anyone for the work they did either, it’s just I wasn’t happy with aspects of the other editions.

For example, the original CD version for a few reasons, I wanted it in a size envelope closer to what the (continued) CD had come in, the bigger envelope just didn’t fit well anywhere with any of my media besides my 7”s, and it seemed the contents are always fumbling around in there. Second I didn’t realize until I had seen the final product in my hands that Dan had cropped much of the “background” of the front image to give it a black border. Now this also could’ve  been fixed with better communication on both sides, but when it came down to it I was inexperienced with anyone else putting my music out and I was frankly just happy that someone cared enough to put their time, money and their own reputation on the line for it. 


The cassette edition I did on Music Ruins Lives that came in the box with a spray painted black square was fine, it helped tie it to the minimalism of the original CD envelope. I also used some art work from the inserts of the CD. As time goes on I realized I could’ve done some sort of sticker to make it appear like the current LP box set, hindsight is 20/20 I guess. Looking back on it too I think my design eye wasn’t meeting with my technical know how at the time either.


And last the first LP edition that The Flenser put out in 2015, I actually love Niels artwork for it, the only problem is that it wasn’t the original. I had thought the original image in the most high resolution version has been lost thanks to a stolen laptop, the only copy I had for it just wasn’t going to work being blown up to fit the LP.

Fast forward to 2018, I had another hard drive die on me, so I started digging out other external drives and my very first laptop to back all of them up in multiple places, and there it was still in the photos of my old laptop the original high resolution image along with other variations of the photo, you may ask why I didn’t check that to begin with back in 2014/2015 when we were setting up the first edition of the LP, and the answer is I thought I had pretty much scrubbed the whole computer clean so I could just barely keep my recording set up working, but there it was still intact.

Now as for the artwork itself. It has no meaning, but I just immediately felt it was right for the photo of the album when I had accidentally made it, because that’s the thing I base a lot of what I do off of a feeling I may have and for whatever reason it just fit the vibe. An LP mailer from my basement floor that I had written the track listing of the album at whatever time on it just to get an idea for sequencing, because I often like to write things out. Later on I must’ve used that mailer to protect my back deck as I spray painted a fuzz pedal I had been working on, white and red, I had left the mailer outside to dry and while that happened a lite rain came through and mixed some of the white paint together with falling petals from cherry blossom tree in my backyard. Upon seeing it I began spraying both paints at the same time in order to get the right texture of pink, I then stood on a chair and used a cheap Cannon point and shoot to take the pictures and eventually picked the one that is on the cover. This was sometime in May 2008.

With some of the other art mainly being the organ with the portrait/painting of the boy resting on it.  The organ is the one I own, I had bought it for $25 at a yard sale down the road from my 2nd home in New Jersey the one where I recorded “Wearing Sadness and Regret Upon Our Faces” and “Verse/Chorus/Verse”, I used it a lot on recordings around this time, and I had always kept that photo above the organ in the area I recorded. The photo of the boy a large digital print I believe, I had won it at an raffle for one of my ex-girlfriends friend who had recently gone into remission from cancer, the artist who did it was on of their friends. I got it sometime in 2006 or 2007 and sadly I don’t know who the artist is but it has always been part of PFB since that time, it currently hangs in the kitchen of my home.

Anyways, this was a long ramble, I’m not sure it means anything, and I’m not sure if I got an idea across. I just wanted to say some things about the art I guess/ 


Written sometime in late August/early September 2020. 


[marksollinger]

Hello! Any Clara hcs?

i headcanon that clara/jennifer is argentinian and (sephardic) jewish & write her as such; the same applies to her brother

her favorite season of the year is the spring (like right as the snow has completely melted, the grass is just turning green and it’s warming up but still pretty windy)

she was in (middle school and high school) band (yes she did march) and she played the french horn

the rare jocknerd archetype: has nerdy liberal arts interests, was good in math and science in school, and kicks ass doing reps with a medicine ball

clara/jennifer always wanted to be in something like girl scouts or boy scouts but wound up being involved with big brothers big sisters of nyc with her brother. though her brother never became a mentor, she did. though, after moving from the northeast bronx to a neighborhood in west queens between junior and senior year of high school, she couldn’t continue mentoring or tutoring and regrettably had to focus on graduating and couldn’t really budget the time out of her week to take connecting subway trains all the way back to the bronx. she dropped it from her resumé not long after graduating from college. she felt weird about being proud of her time as a mentor because there’s some guilt she associates between not being able to see her mentorship out until hs graduation and then going on to use it to apply for jobs on her resumé

if she had the money for it, she’d probably be a bit of a vinyl head. as it stands, she has a treasured (but rather ‘old’... like 2002 old, if you can call that old) cd player with nice, loud speakers and one of those hilariously large booklet collections of music cds (the caselogic kind she most definitely also takes with her in her car when driving long distances and is sealed with velcro) and (au-contingeint) she nerds out with dan plenty about music archiving

with regards to baked goods (babka and otherwise) and the decision between cinnamon or chocolate... her choice is always cinnamon, to her brother’s dismay (he’s much more of a chocolate-favorer) but this should surprise no one. she loves cinnamon candies as well, which her brother doesn’t like much because they’re a little too spicy for him. she loves the spicy-sweet. and the warm throat sensation from cinnamon hard candies. however... if you say that some chocolate treat has almonds in it, she’s all game. almonds and chocolate are meant to be together, in her opinion.

send character, get headcanons

[ghoste-catte]

⭐️ for You Love A Stone please? About anything!! :D

Aaah yay!! You Love a Stone is probably my favorite or 2nd favorite thing I’ve ever written, so I’m super excited to have a chance to gush about it. 

My original framework for the story was always 3 parts, based on the Okkervil River song, “A Stone”.  I originally stumbled across Okkervil River in a record shop in my hometown. I picked up the album Black Sheep Boy out of the pre-owned CD rack because of the cover art and the lyrics booklet, despite knowing nothing about how the band sounded, because something about the art just ... spoke to me and who I was at the time. A Stone quickly became a favorite of mine, because, while on the surface it’s about loving a girl who’s still in love with her dead boyfriend, in many ways it’s about loving someone who’s out of reach, or incapable of love. Maybe TMI, but especially as a high schooler, that was a notion that was really evocative to me ... I remember a lot of late nights, driving home in the rain, taking the corners on the rural back roads way too fast, scream-crying along with these lyrics, because I didn’t think I was someone who was capable of love. (I’m okay now. Therapy is a good thing.)

But anyway, I’ve been obsessed with that song for like ... well over a decade at this point, and it always seemed to me like something that could be spun into an AU, even back then. I just didn’t have the mental space to do the idea justice at the time. My original idea honestly was something to do with Sakura or Hinata, because of the whole “princess who turns away all her suitors in favor of a vagabond who left her one rose” thing, but then I sort of hit my fanfic niche and the ultimate concept became GaaLee. 

The first draft of the fic included the characters having magic abilities in each setting, something that I’m glad I left out, because I like them better as just ... ordinary people, going about their lives, and the only aspect of magic being the reincarnation cycle. For example, in an early draft of chapter 2, Lee met Gaara because he was showing off with magic sand as part of a courtship ritual. Likewise, in the final chapter, Gaara pulled Naruto’s chair out from under him with sand, rather than his foot. The mundane magic idea ended up spun into Heliotrope, another fic I wrote around the same time. 

The original conceit also was a lot more Western-centric. The middle chapter, which ended up set in the Edo period, was much more a kings/queens/castles Western medieval fantasy-type deal, but I had been reading a lot of meta about the ... Americanization (?) of anime canons in modern AUs, and so I ended up deciding to stick with a Japanese setting. I’m glad I did, and I think the fic is stronger and more unique for it, but oh my god did I end up having to do so much research. I did not know really anything at all about Edo Period Japan outside of like ‘samurai were A Thing’ prior to sitting down to write, so every time I had a thought about a sentence, I then had to think through: Okay, but is that something that feasibly would have happened? Is this breaking some major cultural mores I don’t know about? There’s probably still some of that in the fic, but hopefully there’s less. For example, in the original draft, Lee was a Buddhist monk instead of a Shinto priest, but monks have a lot fewer things they’re allowed to do and I didn’t want to go the whole ... religious figure breaks his vows for gay sex angle, because that felt kinda disrespectful. Finding information about Shinto funeral rites was especially challenging, because in modern-day Japan funerals are completely Buddhist in nature (Shinto priests aren’t supposed to deal with death because it’s unclean), so I ended up going deeeep into the literature to find historical accounts of Shinto funerals pre-Meiji Restoration. Thank god for Google Scholar. 

Likewise with the last chapter, my original thought for a modern AU was that they would both have grown up in foster care, and I intended to have them meet at something like a disciplinary/behavioral ed school. I thought this would be much quicker and easier for me to write, because I’m very familiar with the American foster care and educational system. Turns out, after a bit of research, that there really isn’t anything like the American foster care system in Japan, there’s mostly state institutions and kinship care. So I ended up having to scrap basically my whole first draft of the third chapter and rewrite it from the ground up to fit an institutional setting. Fortunately this wasn’t quite as much of a jump as from Western medieval setting to Edo-period Japan, but it was still a lot of revision. I ended up watching a very interesting short documentary and reading a ... 200-something page Human Rights Watch report about state institutional care in Japan (You can read it here, warnings obviously for child abuse and neglect) before I felt comfortable proceeding. Little things that bring a story to life, like what kind of flowers bloom at a certain time of year, what the temperature is like and how the air smells, what people eat and what they wear, are really important to get accurate or close to accurate, so I’m always looking for little things like that, and first-hand narratives and video are a great way to get those little details. I also read and watched a lot of material about homelessness in Japan, runaways, and emancipation. It was surprisingly hard to find information about people who don’t follow a typical path of high school -> college -> working a white-collar job, and I had to flex my (very rusty) Japanese skills to turn up some of the material. 

Lee in the final chapter was really an interesting challenge to write, because he was so much more wounded than Lee is in canon. A big part of my decision to write Lee this way was based on research into Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and resiliency. In canon, Lee goes through a lot of hardship, but he has a mentor--Gai-sensei--who insulates him from a lot of his trauma. Research shows that children who have just one “safe” adult figure in their lives are much less likely to suffer the adverse effects of childhood trauma or to grow up to have PTSD. In the modern AU, Lee doesn’t have this, and he’s grown up without a single stable adult caregiver, just a rotating cast of paid adults.This is why he calls Naruto and Sasuke by their last names, because it doesn’t feel safe to him to become their friends, despite ostensibly knowing them for years. Gaara, on the other hand, is the more open one in the final chapter--after all, he grew up in a relatively intact home until recently, despite the abuse--and that’s why he befriends them and calls them by their first names, because he doesn’t have the same walls up.

Lee also has symptoms of ADHD and dyslexia in chapter 3. I often write modern AU Lee with dyslexia, because it seems a good allegory for his canon disabilities, in that it means he has to work much harder to do the things that his peers take for granted, and some of them he can’t do at all, which makes people think he’s not as smart as he actually is.

Thanks for the opportunity to talk about this fic! Like I said, it’s probably one that I hold closest to my heart. Sorry about the length!!

Ask me for the Director’s Cut of a specific story/scene/set of lines or send me a star to have me give a behind-the-scenes peek into a story of my choice!

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

DELAIN: Chillin’ As Doomsday Approaches

In the band’s press release, you state that Apocalypse & Chill will surprise your listeners. What are some of these surprises you have in store for them?

We always write our music pretty organically, so we set out with every album to make it bigger, better, and louder. But it’s not like we’re going to completely change. We just go with whatever inspiration brings us. However, on this album there are some new elements. We’ve got a real choir, we’ve got Timo screaming, and we have full instrumental tracks, which we’ve never done before. There are definitely some parts where we really explored what we could do differently. And then what I mainly think will surprise our listeners is, especially in the first half of the record, the sound is very electronic, without going away from sounding like Delain. They’re all very much from a pop and electronic side of the spectrum. And I think that some of our fans who like us for our previous material, they will kind of be scratching their heads during the first half. But towards the second half of the album, it picks up on the orchestral elements again and becomes more symphonic. There’s plenty of new things on the record, but I definitely think that our fans will be able to appreciate what we’ve done.

How did these electronic influences creep in? Was there something specific you were listening to or interested in that made you want to incorporate it into your music?

I don’t know. I think that within the writing team, Martijn comes up with really 80s synth parts and I often come up with kind of like 90s dance parts. Those two mix well in our music. But it’s not like we said, “We’re going to incorporate this.” When we meet up to write, we all take some ideas with us, like a verse or a chorus or a theme or whatever. We sit down and listen to it and see what we want to work on all together. That’s how those ideas work themselves into the music.

With these ideas, themes, and lyrical inspirations, was there anything going on in your life or the world in general that catapulted these ideas into the songs?

Yeah, I think so. One thing that’s relevant for the way that we’d written this album is the fact that we’ve recorded it very fragmented. Martijn is a producer who really spearheaded this idea of “let’s do everything in several blocks of just a couple of songs” instead of in one go. Because first of all, we didn’t have enough time to have one big block for writing and recording and mixing the entire album because we’ve been touring like crazy. So, this gave us a lot of flexibility, but also the chance to go back on the songs now. All these ideas come from different places as well. But I must say that over the last few years, definitely a lot of it has been inspired by the concerns about the world today. If you open up a newspaper, if you turn on the TV, you see the world quite literally being on fire. And then if you open your socials, you’ll see everyone living their most perfect lives. There is this great contrast between the two where you wonder how can these actually exist at the same time and is this even the same world? And I think that contrast is also visible in the songs on our album.

The visual of the album cover and the promo photos have a 1950s cinematic movie star theme. Is that the concept or theme behind it?

It was really that contrast between the impending doom that you sense when you look at the news these days and then at the same time the complete projections that is very much the majority of things you see on socials. That was very interesting. Since it is so much about zeitgeist, Netflix and chill, it’s a very 2019 thing. So, we felt like the play on words was really fitting for this album. And then when I was playing with the idea of that title…it’s not like I think of a song first and then the title and then the artwork. Usually when you think of a title, there is an image in your head. Or when you think of the music, you see something, like you can imagine it. And for this title right away, I could imagine someone lounging while the world is on fire. I actually put this image together in Photoshop, but I am not a very practiced designer. We really liked that image. We’ve been also looking for images that were more towards the kind of covers that we usually have, like the more art nouveau/romantic/goth imagery, but it just didn’t fit the theme and the title as well as this one. What we eventually did to give it that identity and authenticity that my mockup was lacking, is we gave it to this collage artist. She works really analog. She cuts up images and papers and she reworked the image into what is now the cover and also continued that for the promo photos in the inside. Inside of the booklet you’ll find all of us wearing sunglasses and having different natural disasters reflected in our sunglasses. We put that topic throughout the entire artwork. Not that a lot of people get to see CD booklets these days, but for those who do buy the physical thing, we always try to give it something extra.

How did getting Beast in Black’s Yannis Papadopoulos to sing on “One Second” come about? Did you specifically write his part or realized after the fact that he’d be a good fit?

We realized afterwards that it would be a good fit. We really like working with guest musicians. It’s always a very nice surprise to see what other people, other creatives come up with when they listen to your music. Yannis, we’ve been in touch with him for a while. We met him in Greece. I remember during an after party at a show he taught me a bunch of Greek curse words! We had a few songs where we thought we could really use a guest here, we could really imagine his voice there. Then we were at a festival this summer and they played there as well, and that’s I think when the deal was struck. We gave him a choice. We had three songs where he could imagine it. We always try to give our guests an amount of freedom, so they can really make it their own.

The video for “Burning Bridges” has such cool visuals and beautiful scenery. Where was that shot, and how did the concept and the characters come about?

It was filmed in Snowdonia, which is a gorgeous part of Wales. We filmed it with the company Video Inc., which is a company that we’ve actually worked with for four different videos in one year. In 2019, we did four videos with them, including “Ghost House Heart.” The idea behind “Burning Bridges” for me lyrically was really that the protagonist of the song keeps leaving his surroundings in order to get away from the negative energy there—the negative energies are following him. The real question is, are those negative energies actually coming from your surroundings or are you the one bringing them? And then leaving and burning your bridges behind you will solve absolutely nothing. That was the idea that we wanted to work with for the video as well. What I really like about Video Inc. and how they work is we’ve had in the past where we pitched a song to other video companies and they came up with all these ideas that didn’t fit the song at all. And then we thought, “Oh, we have to give him some more input.” So, any images or ideas that we have with the themes, we send them over, but sometimes then people just say, “Okay, we’ll do that.” And what I really like about Video Inc. is they take the idea and then they go over it. They’re the video makers, that’s their expertise, and they give their own twist to it. “Burning Bridges” is definitely one of the most dramatic ones of the four videos, and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

You’re the frontwoman and the main focal point of the band, but the album closer “Combustion” is a cool instrumental that gives the rest of the band a chance to shine. Was this a song specifically created as an instrumental or music that you had trouble finding words for it?

It wasn’t meant to be a song with lyrics ever. Actually, this song was written by Timo and I’m sure that Joey also had a say in it because his drumming parts are very prominent. They actually started performing this song as a showpiece Joey had at his graduation at music school, and they performed it there. We really loved that song and that performance. Another thing is when we write songs for Delain, we really like pop structured songs. None of us in the band are ego trippers, none of us try to show off what we can do. We just do what the song needs, but on this track, they really get to shine. And I think that it’s really cool to give them that moment to shine because we have some really fantastic musicians in the band and they play very functional parts in the regular songs. So, I think that this is a great opportunity for them to show what they’ve got. Also, this is an egocentric reasoning, but for me, a lot of the songs have become much harder to sing. I really appreciate the two minutes of taking a breath during the shows! I think that on the album Apocalypse & Chill, that song for me, represents the explosion, the combustion, the apocalypse itself, if you will. I think it’s got a very symbolic function on this record.

What’s the music scene like in the Netherlands? You’re a very well known international touring band, but what was your humble beginning like?

Delain is a little bit of an odd example in that case because Martijn had rolled out of Within Temptation, who were at their breakthrough, and he had so many well known guests on this album that he wrote and that took a long time. There was a lot of work that went into that, and he had a whole big business plan that he used to get to the labels as well. But we got into that label straightaway for the first record because of all that hard work that Martijn had already put into it and the planning he did and the whole set up of the project. But, if I look at the scene that I was in before I got involved with that, the Dutch metal scene is a very small scene. Everyone knows each other, everyone is in everybody’s bands. I was I think in four bands at that moment. I was in a band, a guitarist in that band was doing a project, and I was in that project and then Martijn did arrangements for that project. And that’s where he heard me. So, he asked me for his project. I know that’s a very confusing sentence, but that may be a good representation of the Dutch music scene. It’s very interesting because a lot of metal comes from the Netherlands and actually a lot of symphonic metal comes from the Netherlands. But you would never tell if you looked at the Dutch mainstream music media. I don’t know, maybe it’s because it’s not exotic enough for us, or maybe it’s because it’s too exotic. The Dutch popular music is basically just dance and hip-hop. And I have nothing against dance and hip-hop, but sometimes it’s weird to me. I do these Dutch guest things and there will be people from multiple genres, and I will always be the one with the most followers on Instagram and Facebook. And they will be like, “But we don’t know you!” And that’s very typical for Holland, I think. Music that is very well known internationally is not really well known in the Netherlands itself. On the other hand, it also has its benefits because I bet that even if Delain would have a massive hit in the genre that I could still go grocery shopping without people recognizing me!

Delain has been around for 18 years and you have this new album out and upcoming gigs for the next few years. What are you looking forward to the most in the near future?

We have already reached so many things that we wanted to reach with Delain. It’s been really amazing. It’s been an absolute roller coaster. Martijn and I do most of the work behind the scenes, and we’re a really tight team and we both have started talking about how we might want to start doing some things outside of Delain every now and then. I think our biggest goal for now is to really find a balance and do anything in order to keep making beautiful music together. Because if I look at what we’ve done in the past, if I look at the album that we made now, I’m just really, really proud. It is really a product of our team. The sum is more than its parts, so to speak. I just really hope that we can keep doing that and make a lot more beautiful music and hope that people keep enjoying it. Delain has been around for 18 years and you have this new album out and upcoming gigs for the next few years. What are you looking forward to the most in the near future? We have already reached so many things that we wanted to reach with Delain. It’s been really amazing. It’s been an absolute roller coaster. Martijn and I do most of the work behind the scenes, and we’re a really tight team and we both have started talking about how we might want to start doing some things outside of Delain every now and then. I think our biggest goal for now is to really find a balance and do anything in order to keep making beautiful music together. Because if I look at what we’ve done in the past, if I look at the album that we made now, I’m just really, really proud. It is really a product of our team. The sum is more than its parts, so to speak. I just really hope that we can keep doing that and make a lot more beautiful music and hope that people keep enjoying it.

[deep-sea-skiving]

Today’s a boring day so I thought that I might as well share some of my Kate Bush collection. This is only the stuff I own which is music related. If anyone’s interested, I may later do a post about some of the many non-music Kate Bush memorabilia I have obtained throughout the years.

I have managed to get most, if not all of the official releases Kate Bush has made on CD. One notable exception is the ‘Kate Bush Live at the Hammersmith Odeon’ CD which came bundled with a VHS tape of the tour of life that occurred in 1979. Most of my CD collection is a mismatch of different versions and releases such as earlier EMI releases to re-masters under Kate Bush’s own Fish People label. None of these are especially rare but there are some which are a little unique. For instance, The Hounds of Love album is the 1997 remastered version which differs significantly from the later remastered editions of this album which have been released under the Fish People label. This version of the album includes the original album version of The Big Sky which has sadly been lost. Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m sure that if you buy the album today the version of The Big Sky which is featured is the special single mix, which has a slightly different introduction. This version is also unique in the fact that it includes 6 bonus tracks, the majority only being originally available as B sides. In my opinion this is the best version of the album which you can get on CD! You may be wondering or not why I have two copies of The Whole Story which is a greatest hits kind of album. Well one of these is ever so slightly different. One copy has an incredibly poor-quality insert, the booklet’s image is distorted and thinner than the other copy I have. According to my understanding this was because these copies got rushed out to meet the demand created by the announcement of the one-off 2014 shows. An interesting thing about the copy of Director’s Cut I own is that it’s the collector’s edition which includes an analogue mix of the Red Shoes album. It definitely sounds a lot better and warmer than the original digital mix.

I’ve only lately got into collecting Kate Bush albums on vinyl, so I haven’t got a lot yet! The vinyl versions of the Kick Inside and Lionheart are both first pressing which can be identified by their etchings. The Kick inside has the message ‘remember yourself’ etched into the dead wax and Lionheart has ‘hope you like it!’ engraved. The Sensual World is also an original first pressing but I cannot appear to find any message engraved into the vinyl.

To finish up here’s some of the most recent special releases, these tie into the release of new re-masters (2018) which saw a total remaster of the whole Kate Bush back catalogue. On the right there’s the Cloudbusting 12” picture disc which was released on the 24th of May 2019 and in the UK was an HMV exclusive (http://www.katebush.com/news/12-cloudbusting-picture-disc) Also, another weird release is the 12” single of Ne T’Enfuis pas. This was originally a French exclusive only available through FNAC (https://www.fnac.com/a13674158/Kate-Bush-Ne-t-enfuis-pas-Exclusivite-Fnac-Edition-Limitee-Maxi-vinyle) however, later just started to appear in HMV stores in the UK. It uses the same cover art as the he original French Ne T’Enfuis Pas / Un Baiser D’Enfant single from July 1983 but adds the remastered branding. This is a really strange release of an incredibly uncommon song with an unknown quantity pressed! 

[beauvoyr]

My Little Sister ☆ Can’t Be This Cute!

Chapter 1 | Kiss Kiss Fall in Love!

Pairings: Noctis/Reader Genre: Romance Tags: Pre-Canon | Fluff and Humor | Eventual Romance | Slow Burn | Enemies to Friends to Lovers | Reader-Insert | Big Brother Ignis | Idol Reader Characters: Noctis, Ignis, Prompto, Gladio, & You, an Idol! Chapter Rating: G Crossposted on: ao3 Summary: Noctis thought he knew everything about his Advisor. And then there’s some. i: “Dude.” Prompto says. Noctis does his best impression of The Thinker dating from M.E. 655. “Iggy’s into this kind of thing.” Prompto asks, sans question mark. The shock definitely got to him. “Did you know about it.” Bros gotta protect each other’s secrets, right? Right. But the bro code never outlined an emergency protocol when two bros are pitted against each other. Who’s to say which bro is more important to him? ‘cause Prompto’s a bro, Ignis’ a bro, and asking him to pick between two bros is like asking him to choose either Assassin’s Creed or King’s Knight.

i:

Maybe Ignis has a thing for things like this, Noctis reasons. Under all that elegant pomp and heavily accented words rolling off a tongue peculiarly eloquent in jabs, steam-soft shirts and slacks swishing about as he walks, maybe he secretly harboured an interest in things betraying his stern and stoic stature. Being the personal advisor to the prince grants him no leeway in freely expressing his interests beyond what Noctis eats, which meetings Noctis should be attending, when Noctis finishes classes, and whether or not Noctis got over his lachanophobia. Which, according to Ignis Posh Scientia, is fear of vegetables.

(Noctis so does not have a fear of vegetables.)

(He just doesn’t like them.)

(Very much.)

None of his internal monologues answered why on Eos in this standard Audi commissioned to every Citadel staff, in this dull sedan with its immaculate leather trim and waxed dashboard, Ignis kept a CD.

An idol CD. The kind you’d find in a budget bin somewhere in Rock Corner for 90% off just because they want to get rid of trashy music as soon as possible lest it besmirches their shop’s status. Flashy pink booklet with signature of the iNTERGALACTiC ★ DiVΔ done in gold, sprawled all over its childish arrangement of what seems to be said Intergalactic Diva in the idolesque ensemble of flouncy skirt, crisp blazer scattered with silvery military embellishment, wearing the laciest pair of platform heels while simultaneously surrounded with stuffed toys. Stuffed toys. As if the whole setup made sense only to the art director like some army veteran crossing over the whole cute couture concept they’ve got going on here.

Noctis takes another good look at the CD. A deeper, closer, more intimate look at the girly plastic casing and its tracklist on the back as though it’d explain the enigma suddenly surrounding the secret life of his 21-year-old Advisor and his secret stash.

Six minutes later, Noctis replaces the CD where it belongs: Right in the deepest, darkest corner of the glove compartment, where no eyes may venture where his accidentally went.

And then he went on searching for his missing phone.

ii:

A month and a half later, Noctis is pleased to announce that he’s entirely forgotten about the idol debacle. While the matter had loitered around the recesses of his mind for a maximum of two days, it’s all water-under-the-bridge kind of thing because nobody got hurt and he’s not about to make fun of his Advisor for repressing the urge to listen to the peppy trills of an idol singing about high school crushes and unrequited love. Everyone’s got their own jam, like Prompto who’s always blasting Ron Goodwin out of one earpiece whenever they gather to demolish their assignments, and then there’s Gladio who’d sometimes slink onto the sofa with his nose buried in either An Inquiry into the Good or Romancing Sir Sigurd, and there’s no in-between.  

In fact, Noctis is actually more than happy to safeguard Ignis’ secret for the rest of his entire life just because he’s such a bro (or in his case, he conveniently forgot about it), but he’s also failed to take into account that Prompto’s exceptionally good at noticing things. Photographer quirk, he calls it.

“Dude.” Prompto says.

Noctis does his best impression of The Thinker dating from M.E. 655.

“Iggy’s into this kind of thing.” Prompto asks, sans question mark. The shock definitely got to him. “Did you know about it.”

Bros gotta protect each other’s secrets, right? Right. But the bro code never outlined an emergency protocol when two bros are pitted against each other. Who’s to say which bro is more important to him? ‘cause Prompto’s a bro, Ignis’ a bro, and asking him to pick between two bros is like asking him to choose either Assassin’s Creed or King’s Knight.

Noctis weighs the two. He chances a glance at Prompto’s shell-shocked stance of a hand barely touching the glossy cover of an・an unrolled from the boring brown paperbag of weekly groceries. There it is again, that iNTERGALACTiC ★ DiVΔ graces the cover in all of your majestic glory. Forgoing all the sparkling cuteness of a girleen for elegance, pearls in your sedate coiffure, smoky makeup and that white-tipped-fingernails thing girls do when they want to be extra fancy. You're pretty—no, beautiful, actually—but then again, when is a magazine cover not photoshopped? Yeah.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you this,” Prompto goes on at Noctis’ extended silence, “cuz I thought he was Moogling some recipe for dinner but dude, he was ordering her CD off Amazon. Thought that was a one-time thing so I was pretty meh about it,” he shrugs, “but y’know, it was so not a one-time thing because it was a five-time thing—”

Noctis makes a sound in his throat. Never underestimate a photographer’s quirk.  

“—and I’m really not gonna judge if he’s into idols since they’re cute,” Prompto nods along to his rambling which gets Noctis to nod along just to show he’s listening and oh he’s listening all right, “but it got me thinking.”

And when Prompto starts thinking, that’s when Noctis should start getting really worried.

As if guided by his instincts more than his rational mind, the blond extracts an・an and smoothens it on the table, palms pressing down the corners like this elusive evidence of Ignis’ intersecting interest in the idol world will do a comical poof and disappear in curly smoke. His stare hardens more than a diamond. “Iggy’s birthday’s around the corner, right?”

“Uh.” Noctis really can’t see where this is going and subtly wonders if abusing the powers of the Oracle would grant him a vision into the future for something like this. Would Luna grant him her strength in times of great emergency if he blasted a message through Umbra? “I guess? It’s next week. February 7th.”

Prompto makes a sound in his throat that is eerily similar to Noctis’.  And when he turns, Noctis thinks the light in his eyes is bright enough to banish the impending gloom and doom prophesized in the future. He might as well be the King of Light at this rate.

Prompto says, “Dude. I’ve got an idea.”

iii:

When Prompto says he has an idea, it’d normally be a great idea. “Wanna ditch and hang out at the arcade?” he’d ask, to which a 16-year-old Noctis would do a 180 from returning to class after lunch and misuse his warping talent to zip in and out of his classroom with his bag through the window, and they’d rendezvous at Club Sega just for diversion tactics. Blasting through zombie brains and kicking each other’s ass in Street Fighter, they’d spend the whole evening there unless Ignis hears them play hooky, usually by way of a ‘concerned’ teacher ratting them out at the very last second. At most, Noctis gets an earful that he evades with practiced ignorance with all that regurgitated nonsense of he’s the prince and he shouldn’t be skipping school, but.

This idea.

It’s very bad.

Noctis doesn’t know why, but it’s very bad.

Going up to the receptionist counter and boldly proclaiming that he’s the prince isn’t at the top of list of things he wanted to do because he’s really not into blatant exploitation of his title. But hey, it works. It takes one slack-jawed, starry-eyed intern whispering in awe, “Prince Noctis? Can I get your autograph please?” and a ballpen hastily scrawling across lipstick-smudged napkin later, he finds himself fidgeting on a stool in a bright dressing room, bulbs lining the mirror blasting him with light. Rolling racks are hanging with the most absurd yet lavishly decorated dresses decked in chiffons and sequins in all the colours a rainbow has to offer. Striped tophat completes what he thinks is a feminine form of a tuxedo, while thigh-high boots are stationed under a rugged combo of punk-rock aesthetics involving a PVC-belted skirt and metallic studs. The world of an idol is far more fearsome than the life of a prince destined to die, he thinks.

Prompto turns to him with the most scandalised expression ever after taking stock of the myriad of makeup products littered on the countertop, gasping, “That was way easier than I thought.”

“I’m just glad they didn’t kick up a huge fuss over it,” Noctis grunts. Then, as if the weight of what they’re doing is finally hitting him with the force of Gladio’s blows, Noctis blows a limp lock of hair out of his face. “We’re really doing this.”

Prompto cocks a brow and appropriates the plastic stool across him. “Dude, you’ve got a better birthday bash idea going on?”

Noctis couldn’t answer that.

No, really, he couldn’t even answer that because the moment he opens his mouth, the door opens instead. What’s he supposed to do other than to gape like a fish out of water, an expression he’s seen from all the fishes he strung up on his line, when you flounced right in? That hair cannot be natural, Noctis thinks, as he eyes the way light powders pastel purple tresses crowned by roses. Hands from who he thinks is your personal stylist are fussing over the deep wrinkles left by the rippling of your complicated dress, while the bespectacled woman beside you glares at him from behind a clipboard. Petals flaking from your cheek to your collarbone, filigrees cresting your shoulders—unless Photoshop worked in real-time, there’s no way a person would look that unearthly.

The way Prompto’s jaw is hanging tells him that he’s not alone in his thoughts.

Contact lenses are obviously the explanation behind your roseate eyes, there’s no other way he’s going to accept someone else having eyes that pretty. And false eyelashes, the kind that Gladio babbled about when Iris broke his bank wanting to experiment with makeup, yeah, that stuff’s definitely glued someway somehow on your eyelids. It makes sense that an idol’s job is to look pretty because looks sell either way and everyone loves a pretty face, so. Yeah. Noctis doesn’t know where he’s going with his train of thoughts because it’s on the verge of derailing right now, especially when those eyes flit to seek his and the corners of glossy lips curl with a sanguine smile.

You are unhesitant in striding forward to offer him your hand. Confident. Bold. Singsong sweet, the singer you are. “You must be Prince Noctis,” you say, and he’s never known that his name would sound that nice on someone else’s tongue. “Sorry you had to see me like this, I was in the middle of a shoot when you arrived.”

What was he supposed to say at times like this again?

Right, first: The handshake.  

His legs are jelly-filled donuts when he stands and his arms are wet spaghetti. Prompto almost toppled his stool when he gets to his feet to receive your hand after Noctis. “I, ah,” Noctis starts, smooth because they never rehearsed this far? And how is he supposed to be making demands as a prince to an idol? When Prompto’s rapidly zoning into outer space and ascending to Astral realm instead of helping him out right now? “Uh—I. We,” he quickly rectifies the moment the Bespectacled Woman’s dirty look peeps from the rim of her glasses, “we’re here to ask if you’d meet with my friend.”

And here is where he stops, just because your brows stitch together following a quizzical tilt of head.

That stuff only looks cute in anime.

And it doesn’t help that you look 100% anime right now.

A quick darting of your eyes from Noctis to Prompto has your smile deepening. “So that’s him?”

You’re definitely getting the wrong idea here and it’s up to Noctis to save the day by jamming his elbow right in Prompto’s side. An embarrassing yelp that shot Prompto’s soul straight into his body later, the blond’s back in commission with a shaky laugh. “Ha—who, me? N-no, not this Argentum!”

…or maybe not.

Noctis wills himself to stomach Bespectacled Woman’s increasingly incensed glare and tries to remember why he’s doing this in the first place. For his bro. For Ignis Scientia. Best advisor. Birthday. Gotta make it meaningful. Idols. Cute idols. Huge fan. You. Right. “He’s not here right now,” Noctis corrects the misunderstanding as confusion clouds your face, “because we’re trying to keep it a secret. His birthday’s on February 7 and we’re trying to make it a surprise party because he’s a big fan of yours.” At your unrelenting stare, he deflates a little. “He’s, ah, my personal advisor.”

For a second, silence reigns.

“Oh,” you say.

He doesn’t get a chance to consult what ‘oh’ means in Idol-Speak when Bespectacled Woman interjects, “So big of a fan until the prince himself has to abuse his authority and make Diva miss out on Gucci?” And boy, Noctis hates being on the other end of Death Ray shooting from her eyes.  

But you’re quicker to laugh at his honesty, batting the woman on her arm. “It’s okay, Isolde, I got this.” And for him, a mischievous smile replaces your prior confusion as you offer yet another handshake, this time for another reason altogether. “Aite, you’ve got yourself a deal! Let’s make this an epic birthday bash, yeah?”

When things work out far too easily, one should be suspicious.

Noctis, however, chalks it up to good luck when he hears Prompto splitting into a deafening, “Woohoo!” and answers your smile with a grin. The biggest, widest grin he could muster.

Because this is going to be the best birthday party ever.

iv:

This is not the best birthday party.

Ever.

There are tears down your cheeks and you’re choking on your words. Your makeup should’ve been a mess but some part of Noctis is thanking the Astrals that guided your makeup artist to apply waterproof ones, probably out of sheer experience, because he’s never seen anyone bawling this bad before. Whatever Iris had before doesn’t even cut close to this. Fists balled in your skirt, this verbal fisticuff doesn’t even look like it’s coming close to an ending. Even a fear-frozen Prompto’s clutching a gawking Gladio by the bicep and they’re far, far away from the warzone while Noctis is the only idiot brave enough to remain where he first sat.

That is, right in between an eerily silent Ignis and a Diva well underway your waterworks.

“You know well by now that my duty to Prince Noctis cannot be taken lightly,” asserts his Advisor in the calmest, coldest manner that could’ve frosted the entirety of Leide. “I’ve explained it to you time and time again that I’m—“

“You’re the advisor, I get it,” you choke out, “but I wanted a big brother that I could’ve talked to! All you did was to toss me aside like I was—“

“I never tossed you aside,” Ignis rebukes, the hiss of his words coming from thinning lips that is gradually downturned. “I received your calls, I replied to your messages, I listened to mother and father talking about you—“

“I’m always the one who has to do all the texting, calling!” you shriek in a pitch only sopranos could trill. Tears trekking down your cheeks, you are a sobbing, shuddering mess to Noctis’ left, the backs of your hands swiping away teardrops swaying off your jawline. “When did you ever call me!? When did you even bother to say good morning to me!? It’s always me who has to tell you—“

“I have a job,” Ignis retorts, adjusting his glasses from sliding down the bridge of his nose. “If I’m not carrying out my duties as an Advisor, I am at the Citadel attending meetings—“

This is crazy.

He’s going crazy.

In all honesty, he’s never tried watching soap operas for this very same reason: He can’t handle the drama. All the tears, all the angry exchanges, plots doing a backflip from I-love-you-so-much-I-will-die-for-you to I-don’t-love-you-anymore-because-we-are-actually-siblings-separated-at-birth. Galahdan soaps are notorious for pulling the rug under Prompto’s feet and making him drop series faster than his runs. But this? This is another level of drama, one that has Noctis nursing his throbbing temples because who would’ve guessed that said Intergalactic Diva is his Advisor’s little sister? And who would’ve guessed that not only Gladiolus Amicitia has a little sister, Ignis Scientia, too, has a little sister of his own?

Definitely not Noctis.

And definitely not Prompto and Gladio too, judging from how their eyeballs are playing ping-pong with how they’re chasing after Ignis’ accusations, only to have your indignant interruption instead.

While that explains why Ignis hides idol CDs and bought girly magazines, it does a poor job in explaining why he’s caught in a crossfire between the Scientias.

“You hate me,” you spit out, and woah what part of the episode did Noctis miss out? He’s pretty sure he paused on the whole you-never-spent-time-with-me, so how did it end up this way?

Ignis removes his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes scrunched tight with a pain only a brother could feel. “I do not hate you. I’ve never hated you, (y/n), never.”

“You hate me ever since I said I wanted to be an idol,” you sob out an octave lower, reddened eyes stabbing Ignis’ accusatorily. With how your bottom lip is quivering, it’s a wonder how your words manage to come out as a whole, sans stutters. “You said it’s a shameless job, you said they’re just exploiting high schoolers, you said—“

“But I respected your decision—“

“After ma and pa made you—“

“That’s because I was worried about you—“

“And I keep telling you not to worry because you met Isolde and you met Ninian and you met Watanabe—“

“And they are nice people but—“

—yeah, Noctis needs time out here because this sounds like a huge misunderstanding.

He composed a three-second plan and had it executed by standing up slowly and letting the chair drag right behind him across hardwood, letting the painful skrrrrrrrrrrrrrr scream cut off what's left of the argument. And what an epic entry into the fray it is, Noctis thinks. Ignis is riveted by his uncharacteristic boldness and has resorted to clicking his mouth shut. Your sobs don’t stop, but at least your red-eyed red-nosed red-cheeked face wordlessly thanked him for the interruption. From the sidelines, Prompto’s mouthing at him don’t do it Noct don’t get involved in the family feud but Six, Noct needs to straighten things out because technically he’s mildly at fault here for eating up his Advisor’s time by 70% even though it’s Ignis’ job, he thinks you don’t know how much Ignis actually cherishes your journey to idolhood and bought your CDs and magazines, and someone’s gotta eat that delicious two-tiered fondant-frosted cake on the table.

Besides, he’s going to be the King of Lucis, damn it, so what kind of king would he be if he can’t solve a petty squabble between two siblings?

Turning to Ignis, Noctis breathes out. “I got this.”

Ignis does not think he got this. “Noct—“

Turning to you, Noctis snatches a napkin from his armiger and crams it in your hand. “Listen, Iggy doesn’t mean anything bad,” he starts as you’re carefully dabbing your eyes, teeth raking across gloss-sticky lips. “I’m the reason he can’t spend a lot of time with you because it’s his job as my advisor and there’s no helping it.” This is where Ignis makes an indignant noise and tries to cut in, but Noctis warp-strikes to his next sentence. “—And that part where you said Specs doesn’t care about you? You’re wrong. He bought a magazine with you on the cover. He even had your CD in his car.”

Ignis makes another noise that sounds torn between vehement denial and dying embarrassment. “Noct—“

Prompto, the greatest wingman in every GTA heist they pulled off, nods so rapidly in his corner until he looks like he’s having a seizure. “Yeah—no, seriously, he did,” he convinces you when you turn disbelieving eyes at him, napkin crumpling under fancy nails. “And I saw him going on Amazon trying to get all your limited edition albums. Five times.”

“Oh Gods,” Ignis chokes out, burning an interesting shade that contrasts with his hair. “Prompto—“

“And we didn’t know that Ignis had a sibling because if we knew that Iggy had a little sis, we would’ve made him spend more time at home,” Gladio asserts, leaving his seat. “I know how ya feel because I’ve got a lil’ sister too. She calls me and texts me and nags me all the time if I don’t spend at least a weekend with her. Don’t get me wrong,” he adds when you turn sullen, putting up a hand to stop whatever retort you prepared, “I appreciate it when she does things like that for me. Sure, it gets annoying when I get nagged for missing movie night, but she’s my little sister and I got nobody else to protect except for this scrawny ass prince we have here.”

Noctis balks at the jab aimed specifically for him, fighting off the heat burning up his cheeks. “Shut up. You’re missing the point.”

“—a-anyway, the point here is that Iggy really cares for you even when you think he doesn’t!” Prompto crows when you look like you traded your sullen expression for a wobbling lower lip and eyes flooding with fresh tears. “We swear this is probably just a huge misunderstanding and we can probably talk this out to fix it! Right, Ignis?”

Such bros they are, never once allowing Ignis to shoulder the blame alone. Always we and never him.

Ignis looks like he has half the mind to surrender to the Astrals’ machinations hell bent on messing up his birthday—only, everything comes to a stop when you sniff. A loud sniff. And erupt into the biggest bawling session ever, dashing straight to Ignis’ arms. His poor Advisor gets his life squeezed out of him, smothered in his little sister’s death grip, but Noctis knows the glassy sheen in his green eyes isn’t a trick of light.  

Noctis clicks his mouth shut and eyeballs Prompto and Gladio, who’re trading self-satisfied smirks between the three. Sure, maybe you’re crying harder than Iris when she got ratted out at the Citadel, and sure, the sounds are hideous like a behemoth’s mating cry, but it’s a job well done for all of them.

All’s well ends well.

v:

It is much later on, when you’ve dried your tears and Ignis changed out of a tear-streaked snot-soaked shirt, that they’re all gathered round the dining table with party poppers readied and candles glowing. That delicious two-tiered fondant-frosted cake dips under Ignis’ plastic knife and, under a shower of glitter paper and confetti, Noctis plates the first slice for the man of the hour. Turning 22 is hard work for Ignis who’s probably grown up feeling like he’s 30 all the time, and his Advisor probably deserves a medal of honour from the king for putting up with Noctis all the time, but this?

Eating cake together with his friends?

And having solved the sibling squabble between an attention-starved little sister and her excessively diligent big brother?

This is the closest he could get, he guesses.

one:

They’re crowding around him again.

“It must be nice being the prince! I bet you can do whatever you want!”

“So how many servants do you have? Ten? A hundred?”

“Noooo, it must be a thousand!”

Noctis Lucis Caelum, the name of the prince who stole your brother. Iggie was promised to the prince ever since he turned eight, and stopped being eight at that moment. For a boy who stole Iggie, he doesn’t look special. Sullen and withdrawn, cherub cheeks and choppy bangs. Hardly a word passing his lips as though nobody is deserving of his voice. You know, because you sit right beside him in class. Always staring at the skies as though the Astrals spoke to him in tones a human can’t, the prince surely daydreams of things only a prince could daydream about. Living in the grand Citadel with a hundred—no, a thousand helping hands, and your brother is simply one of his faceless servants.

You do not know if you detest him for stealing Iggie away or if you envy him instead.

Because he gets to spend more time with Iggie than you ever did.

two:

This is a memory you removed from your treasure box, a careful hand dusting over the grime caking the frame. It is a class picture of all the first graders, bobbed haircuts and flushed skin from sitting under a sun, trying to stare into the camera as sunlight flares off its lens. Arranged from left to right in the first row: Asuka and Sheryl are inseparable from the start; Ben, Jonathan, and Yukio are the rascals always running down the hallways when the teacher says not to; your homeroom teacher, Madam Maria, who teaches maths before lunch; crybaby Aina who doesn’t like eating alone; fraternal twins, Rebecca and Junior are always holding hands; Noctis and you, two seemingly unrelated people who are, in all actuality, related to each other by way of Ignis Scientia.

Even as you take a closer look at the yellowing photograph curling around the edges, you still don’t know what Noctis is thinking about.

Does he know about you?

Does he know about your existence?

What about your family name? Surely he’s noticed it?

If so, will he finally relate you to your brother?

Will he finally notice you?

And will he finally return Iggie to you?

three:

Mother packed your lunch today; your favourites, rice with heart-shaped sprinkles in pink, deep-fried chicken, egg mayo salad, and steamed crab cakes. Here, you are swinging your legs, chopsticks picking off one treat after another. Asuka and Sheryl are giggling from the corner of the classroom, trading side dishes like sisters from the same womb. Aina’s gone ahead and joined Rebecca and Junior at their tables, dragging her chair over with a ringing scratch over the tiles. Somewhere outside the class, on the field below, the boys are immersed in a quick football game and trying to outdo each other for the qualifiers next week. They’ll surely come back into class later, reeking of salty sweat in this humid summer, which makes you bite into your crab cake a bit harder.

At least they have friends, you think.

At least they’re not alone, you think.

Not lonely like me, you think.

Is the prince capable of feeling loneliness like you do?

Of course not.

He always has your brother with you.

Always.

NOTES:

first off: if you feel you aint cute, you cute af. You cute as all hells in this fic. Believe in yourself you a cutie patootie 2019!

secondly: we’re going to be dealing with a lot of body image & skin problems & self-esteem issues in this fic, so that’s a heads up.

thirdly: HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY IGNIS SCIENTIA!

Chapter 2: What ‘bout My Star?

Someone stands before Noctis, and it’s not his bespectacled Advisor brooding on his tendency to sleep in, which is truly unbecoming for a prince. It’s a girl, veiled by an anti-pollen face mask, wearing the roundest pair of hipster glasses he’s ever seen. Nondescript snapback, shirt and acid wash jeans—what is this, why does he feel oddly scrutinized under her eyes and why does she even look at him that way?

Noctis blinks in hopes of clearing the mirage, fails to find an explanation, and affords a minute of silence before going, “Uh?”

For a moment, he thinks she’s smiling—her eyes crinkle upwards, but when it comes, it shakes the breath out of him. “Morning, Noctis. Diva here.”

It, meaning your imaginary punch to his solar plexus.

[wereallbarredfromheaven-blog]

Music Business Loans and Grants: How to Spend It

 Suppose you've been sufficiently fortunate to discover somebody to put resources into your record mark or other music venture, or even that you have some money of your own that you're prepared to put towards what you're doing. You have the money close by, yet the crucial step isn't finished yet. Presently, you need to make sense of how to spend the cash you do have shrewdly. There are a couple of reasons why making the correct calls with your music business advance or speculation matters:

 The most clear reason not to blow the cash you have is, well, you won't have any cash left. Be that as it may, beside the typical handy utilizations of being down and out, maybe, overspending on one piece of the procedure of your task will abandon you with no cash to for different parts. That implies, for example, that on the off chance that you blow all the cash on the squeezing of your collection, you won't have any cash left for advancement

 The cash you get may accompany strings appended. This is particularly valid in the event that you get cash from an expressions committee (indeed, I know, an outside plan to US perusers, yet they're out there), yet in case you're managing a financial specialist in your business, this could matter also. You no uncertainty needed to disclose to any individual who is financing you what your arrangements are and where you anticipate that the cash should go. They'll anticipate that you should stay on course you exhibited to them, in any event by and large terms.

 Flubbing your financing once could affect your odds of getting supported lateron.

 Along these lines, plainly, the choices you make about organizing your costs are critical, however they're not in every case simple. Here, we should investigate some normal music business situations and how to deal with them. To begin with, the little print. Not these situations will apply to you - it relies upon the task you've been dealing with. Additionally, this guidance is general in nature. Step by step instructions to best spend your cash relies upon your particular conditions - above all else, how flush with money you are. This guidance is outfitted towards the individuals who are truly juggling their costs, however there's a piece of truth in there for the vast majority, regardless of how profound your pockets are.

 Collection Pressing Costs

 Suppose you have a non mainstream mark. You're preparing to discharge a collection, and you're endeavoring to choose on the off chance that you need to press up the collection on CD and bundle it in a gem case with a two or four page booklet, which you believe is somewhat ho-murmur, or on the off chance that you need to squeeze it on CD, bundle it in a digipack or a gem case with a 16 page booklet AND press it on vinyl, which, goodness, wouldn't it be so cool to put something out on vinyl?!?! What do you do?

 All things considered, most likely the appropriate response is evident here. You go for the basic first choice. It might not have every one of the extravagant accessories, however things like digipacks and long booklets truly lift the expense of creation in a rush, and you don't get much profit for that venture. Indeed, cool work of art and bundling are bunches of fun, yet you need to spend astutely currently to come to the heart of the matter where you can stand to do that sometime in the future. With respect to vinyl, well, it costs a fortune, and it's difficult to sell. Try not to misunderstand me, for certain styles of music, vinyl is truly essential, and indeed, when individuals love vinyl, they LOVE vinyl.

 In case you're one of them, you may be persuaded that vinyl is the path forward. On the off chance that your companions love vinyl, at that point you'll REALLY be persuaded that vinyl will make you rich. It won't. It's an extravagance. Be keen toward the begin, and you'll have the capacity to enjoy your vinyl dreams sometime in the not so distant future.

 Obviously, in the event that you truly need to set aside extra cash, you could select an advanced discharge and test out the enthusiasm for the collection you're discharging before you press printed copies (or may choose you don't have to press by any stretch of the imagination). Furthermore, on the off chance that you need some all the more persuading about vinyl, consider Factory Records, who lost cash on each duplicate sold of their greatest selling 12" - Blue Monday by New Order. Would you truly like to implore no ones purchases your collection so you can pay your lease?

 Demo Recording

 You are very brave melodies, and you think you'd like to send them out to some name to perceive what occurs. You can record your demo at home, however your chronicle abilities are so-in this way, and you're stressed that your demo will sound so amateurish the names won't pay attention to you. Your other decision is to book some studio time to record your tunes genius style. What do you do?

 Regardless of whether you have financing for the collection you're making (and indeed, in certain spots, expressions boards will finance individuals to compose melodies), in case you're recording a demo, don't spend your cash on a studio. On the off chance that your motivation is genuinely to shop your melodies around, marks truly, sincerely are set up for demos to be unpleasant. They anticipate it. A few people feel that having their demo expertly recorded and giving it complete broad fine art and liner notes demonstrates that they're not kidding about their music. In all honesty, now and again, it can really make somewhat of an awful impression—it's only a misuse of cash that looks somewhat credulous.

 Your cash would be better put resources into some sort of home account framework so you can plug away at your astoundingly up. Truly, individuals do record demos in studios, however that is best left to individuals who are as of now offering a few records and can bear the cost of it. For the time being, you have better approaches to spend your money.

 The special case? On the off chance that the thing you're pursuing isn't generally a demo at everything except rather a promotion. On the off chance that you intend to attempt and sell your chronicles, at that point a studio might be all together.

 Employing PR

 You have a collection prepared for discharge, presently you should simply advance it. You can do the advancement yourself, yet you're not by any means beyond any doubt what you're doing. Your other decision is to contract a music PR organization to deal with the work for you. What's the best choice?

 This one is somewhat precarious. Advancement is to a great extent about contacts, contacts, contacts, and when you contract a PR organization, you're truly paying for access to their contacts. Having said that, there's no genuine enchantment equation. Everybody doing advancement had their first day at work, in a manner of speaking. You need to begin some place, so there's no reason you can't develop those gets in touch with yourself, with loads of persistence, explore (and a tough skin). Be that as it may, do you have sufficient energy, or want, to do it?

 First of all, PR is costly. While thinking about whether it is a beneficial speculation, consider the collection you're discharging. What are the odds that it will truly get prominent surveys in national media/radio plays? On the off chance that it's a first collection by an obscure craftsman, that is an extreme fight notwithstanding for a PR organization. You might be in an ideal situation doing your promotion in-house, developing the same number of provincial audits as you can while ensuring the nationals in any event realize you're out there, and afterward enlisting PR for the following discharge.

 With that basis set up, you're giving them something that has a battling shot of getting took note. Then again, if the collection you're discharging as of now has that foundation set up or as of now has a buzz, at that point PR can be an incredible speculation.

 The main concern for PR? It relies upon your discharge. Likewise, remember that distinctive PR organizations spread diverse pieces of the media. One approach to find some middle ground on the off chance that you can't decide on PR is to procure an organization with great radio contacts and do the print media yourself. Radio is inconceivably hard to get into, so having somebody with a foot in the entryway on your side can be a generally amazing thing.

 Visit Support

 You have a record name, and one of the groups/craftsmen you work with is intending to go on visit to advance their new discharge - and they need you to contribute to the expense. Would it be advisable for you to do it?

 This is another dubious one. Visiting is exorbitant. In all respects expensive. Anyway much you figure it will cost, it will be more than that. What's more, ordinarily, free craftsman simply beginning aren't making enough cash to try and verge on earning back the original investment. Along these lines, requesting that the name pay visit support is a quite run of the mill and reasonable solicitation. All things considered, visiting is extraordinary advancement for a record, and their visiting may help both of you. In the meantime, most non mainstream names loathe giving visit support, since it's difficult to evaluate whether it's a decent venture.

 While a visit may expand the buzz around a craftsman, it may not convert into deals immediately, or enough.

 Where does that abandon you? It comes down to an informed decision. To start with, realize that many, numerous outside the box marks won't considerably consider paying visit support. On the off chance that there is sufficient cash in the coffers to help spread the expenses of the visit, and you like contributing, put it all on the line. Be that as it may, don't hold back on other imperative costs to rub together the cash for visit support. Likewise remember that you may have just added to the visit "in kind." If you booked the shows—which numerous non mainstream marks wind up doing—you have spared the band the commission an operator would charge for taking every necessary step.

 In the event that you're advancing the visit in-house, at that point that is another cost you're covering. In like manner, in the event that you have your PR organization complete an extraordinary battle for the visit, you're now acquiring cost for the visit. Different things to remember when weighing up visit support:

 Your arrangement with the craftsman—on the off chance that you have the craftsman bolted into a multi-collection bargain (quite uncommon for outside the box names), putting resources into a visit may be a not too bad thing over the long haul, since you have a superior shot of receiving the benefits. In the event that your arrangement is progressively adaptable, there isn't much explanation behind you to pay for a visit for a craftsman whose next collection you're not going to work.

 Does your agreement say anything regarding visit support?

 In the event that you pay visit support, will that be a recoupable expense against the craftsman's record?

 What amount is the craftsman going to make on the visit? Things might be diverse at greater names, however for an outside the box mark, you're somewhat in things together. On the off chance that they will make a benefit from the visit, at that point it's not to your greatest advantage to contribute any money. For more in-depth information about Music Entertainment . I highly recommend this website Music Entertainment