#anyway when the fuck is the next Bandcamp Friday because I need this and The Linda Lindas' new album 'No Obligations' so bad!!

[musicrunsthroughmysoul]

I have to admit, while posting this song (obviously because I like it), that my favorite version of this song is and always will be Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers' version. BUT. THE LINDA LINDAS KILL IT, TOO! I feel like the reason why I love this version is because it's a more punk version of it than anything else, and idk, who the fuck doesn't need a punk version of an already GREAT song played by a band of all girls/women? Just me? Well, okay then - MORE for me, then. 😁

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Slovenia to Eurovision with a dreamy couple

Oh boi, now here comes another NF I wasn’t interested in. I don’t hate EMA as a thing, it’s just that it’s infamous for not listening to what people want most of the time, often axing their faves (BQL, Raiven, Nika Zorjan, even going as far back as Saša Lendero and Nina Pušlar...). This year it seemed like Raiven finally had what it takes with her post-dubstep-era dubstep tune, “Kaos”. BUT did she go? Oh nope

Instead we got possibly the best thing that ever happened to Slovenia. That thing is this one entry sung by a cute crossover of Lorde and that trombone fetus thing from Courage the Cowardly Dog (well, at least she looks better than him, hence why ‘cute’), Zala Kralj, and she has her 2-year-long partner Gašper Šantl by her side too, to make up the musical part for the couple’s Eurovision 2019 entry for Slovenia, “Sebi”.

Let’s start reviewing this by complimenting its atmosphere. It’s cosmic. It’s pure. It’s pleasant. I feel like I’m floating among the stars... in the same way as if someone is projecting a star backdrop on a wall and I’m just against the projection, dancing silly. I feel like I’m covered in stardust. This is achieved by the composition of the song, which is very melodic, although a bit background-music-like. It incorporates a lot of those softened hi-hats, soaring synth waves and harmonious additional backing vocals (I think I heard those? whatever that was that adds more depth and gorgeousness to the song...). The lyrics are also cute, the poetry here is pretty fascinating, and I love the hints of intimacy and nature. The chorus reminds me that you have to stay true to what you are and who you stand for, and you don’t need to apologize for being different. Something along the lines of this. And Zala sounds like a person that could do a vocal ASMR therapy - and I imagine that as something that gives tingles to my neck everytime I hear it. You just need to strip the melody away and let me listen to more of those silent, soft-spoken, eerie whispers, and usually I feel creeped out and want it to stop, but at the same time it’s seducing and oddly enough I want some more.

This song has its faults though - it’s supposedly the song being repetitive (look at that chorus’ lyrics, just repeating 3 lines during it doesn’t really suffice, especially with the song being composed like THAT), Zala’s vocals being so hauntingly chill they even sound too calming or too monotonous, and this song is a simple electronic track with it just flowing all so well? Like, it’s something you’d find more on an unknown project’s Bandcamp page and that project usually has 1500 views or so on their videos. It’s a soothing ocean, it’s a galaxy, but sometimes the silence overwhelms you too much you just want to fucking scream... or fall asleep and miss the beauty of it all.

So as a whole it’s a stellar ride through galaxies and supernovas: the song. Great production, slight lo-fi vibe (idk how to explain it but everything here feels so... hmm... soft tune and quiet vocals make it to be something of the more indie-er side of a lower-cost production I suppose?) and sparks of pure bliss raining down on me whenever I remember or hear it. Truly, truly some indie goodness.

The most interesting part? The guys seem too overwhelmed about their Eurovision experience! Sure, Eurovision doesn’t require a too-laidback approach from the participants, but there always are Eurovision non-enthusiasts (seriously, don’t yell at Eurovision participants on Youtube comments when they fail to recognize a language of a song’s from a previous year! Just because they didn’t hear it and/or forgot the language, doesn’t mean they need to be put at stake), or those who just didn’t expect to win their NFs and then are like “shit um now I need to do something about that Eurovision thing I guess”. Salvador never really watched it before, AWS didn’t really hope to participate in Eurovision at the early stages of their NF, now we don’t really hear much Eurovision news and shit from these two Slovenians... well except of them releasing a shortened version of their song so it could comply to Eurovision’s lenght rules (giving it an apt sub title - “Dare to Dream Version”), declaring that one line of the song’s will be sung in English so that everyone not speaking in Slovenian could understand it better (just like Lea sang the end of “Hvala, ne!” in Portuguese because... well we all understand either of them, do we? lol) and that their staging will be similar to the one they had in EMA, and that their stage clothes won’t be the same but of a similar light color. They do have Eurovision in mind, but not quite as much as some other participants, and that’s perfectly fine. As long as they do their job right, that matters.

Approval factor: I may let you in on a little secret here - this is, in fact, my absolute favourite Slovenian entry this decade, if not overall. I have a hard time approving Slovenian entries because they end up lacking something at the end. This one... kinda fits in well with me, so Zala and Gašper did enough of THAT to warrant a big fat thumbs up for me.

Follow-up factor: Wasn't a big fan of Lea's song, BUT I can confirm that she started something good for Slovenia in Eurovision, especially after qualifying. And the couple certainly continued it, so it moves on well! ^^

Qualification factor: Now that's an interesting question... I might be wrong but a part of me fears for them to become the fan favourite duo/couple with a really pretty song that doesn’t qualify, like it already happened to Norma John and ZiBBZ before. They even have been drawn to semifinal 1, ffs. But maybe there’s still a spark of hope somewhere for the two, and I’d be inclined to believe that there is. I don’t wanna see sLOVEnia flop on the year I like their song, ffs. So I’m seeing a borderline result for thee, you the nation of usually fairly-underrated songs. Maybe this cosmic sea beauty will be in them finals.

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

So, EMA 2019, eh? I guess that was a thing that happened. I at least admire the fact that they used dancing robots for their “not-so-postcards-but-postcards” that played before each performance (I mean, you’d get camera shots of the stage being set up for the act to perform next with their info graphic in the NF’s LED background and next to it there was a re-creation of The Creation of Adam with the other hand being one of a robot’s <3, then cut to EMA’s visual design of the year and the dancing robot person, another shot to the performing act, and then lights out). They had a good time there. And there was a duet singing Salvador Sobral’s ESC winning song, one of them performed by a person who had to be Salvador for a TV show. Ah, fun. I wasn’t all in up for the she-bang (instead I watched A Dal Semi 2 and Supernoval final on that night), but I got some other goodies that I noticed that people noticed before me, for y’all to reminisce. Here are some moments and some songs that lost to this lovely pair:

• So what’s the deal with Raiven, anyway? She’s on the show for her third time, and has already firmly grasped onto the iconic NF partaker’s status, together with.. well... other NF 3-timers (that are mostly from Sweden). This time she went all her way out to prove y’all that “dubstep’s not dead in 2019!!!1″ with her song, “Cows” “Kaos”, and a rather interesting effect show taking place on her face. I don’t know why but Raiven’s and Aly Ryan’s from Germany stagings remind me of each other, maybe because of them being so interesting? Anyway, like as usually, this multicolored songstress failed to grasp the victory of her country’s national final, and honestly, good for that to happen because in my irrelevant opinion, the dubstep in “Kaos” is ridiculously unnecessary and it doesn’t make the song flow very well. Just rework the chorus to make it more suited to the song and maybe it could have worked, as the last 30 seconds and the verses actually rock! I love me some songs that make me feel like I’m listening to sunset transcribed to actual melodies and sounds.

• The 2015 entrant couple, Raay and Marjetka, are incredibly restless for some reason, and it’s that because they have co-written quite a few songs over the past few years even since their eventual victory as themselves in 2015. Maybe they’re the Slovenian Stig Rästa, probably as in “we loved the Eurovision green room experience so we always want some more!” kind of way. This year they did 2 songs: an electro-swing inspired number about Fridays and “spending some quality time with one’s girls” for the Slovene JESC debutee Ula Ložar and a radio-pop-esque track for a lady named Kim (not Verson). The one that I gravitated towards more will have its video down below and it is probably obvious a bit now. And if it was my will, I’d’ve replaced Raiven with the below lady in the superfinal because... frankly, yet again, I’ll restate that imo it wasn’t Raiven’s year even without the eventual winners having participated...

• For a country of whose NF’s I didn’t seem to care about, they indeed had quite a few nice numbers. I already shed my thoughts on 2 of them, now here’s another one. Somehow, most countries out there shied away from having rock songs (well except Hungary because I don’t really see any other NF with more than 3 of those clearly audible rock/metal tracks, maybe has to do with the fact they already sent one last year), and as a result, none of the actually submitted ones won because things didn’t really go well with even the slightest rock-sounding songs last year (except one of them almost got into top 10). So one of the rock gems we happened to lose came from Slovenia. INMATE brought the 00s American alt-rock sound that was popular with uncomfortable teens that acted outrageous with their song “Atma” (which somehow means “soul”??). And man they were banging.

• There’s not much I want to say about the rest of the NF’s gems that you missed. Well, there was one song about horses that is considerably well-received by the fandom, perhaps because of the slow and relaxing ballad sound that surrounds it (but they don’t know the lyrics enough to start hating it). And a song co-written by last year’s Svenskfloppen winner that, as he was destined to, flopped in Melodifestivalen as well. And a decent club track that was actually one of my other favourites, together with “Atma”. And some 00s teen sitcom theme song performed by a completely-careless-about-their-image-band (they call themselves Lumberjack but they dress nothing like ‘em, I assure you) with chill-surfer-attitude-bearing, long-haired lead singer. They brought in a nice vibe at least with their color-splashing LED images and slightly energetic performance. And like I said about how the lead singer looked... well just look at him and try to not see him as a troublemaker teen archetype from a high school rom com or at least irl that can’t score a date:

Damn, Manel Navarro really let himself go.

• Lea Sirk, besides performing the ESC winning song from two years ago in a duet with someone, and obviously re-appearing to be a honourable guest after having won EMA last year after like 4-5 tries, also served her part as a jury member. Y’know, one of those people that maybe visibly or not visibly tried to push Raiven to her eventual EMA win after her 3 tries so that she wouldn’t become an annoying NF hogger for years on end. Well that didn’t happen because the televoters went for the Zalšper couple! You gotta love it when the teleaudience picks that song for Eurovision that is performed by those that didn’t specifically submit it because they wanted Eurovision, right? Well apparently, Lea took the loss of Raiven as a small stab to her heart and was heard complaining about the unexpected outcome (simply not being able to believe Raiven lost), out loud, to the viewing audiences at home and in front of computer screens. Yep, THAT happened... And I couldn’t be bothered to find a clip of it anymore, so instead I’ll post some pictures of a visibly shook Lea with her new hairdye on fleek (I guess that was to reflect Raiven’s love for hair dye?):

noooo why do I have to give a trophy to those whom I did not support to win... well fine I will

With all that out of the way, I just really hope for this lovey-dovey duo all the best possible with having to carry the responsibility of representing a country in a very big European music competition on their shoulders. They aren’t seemingly stressed out themselves from the looks of it (if they were in a Brantsteele’s Hunger Games simulation, they’d be those people who’d pick flowers all the time), but you know what happens when you’re given such a big honour but you let what the honour stands for down, upsetting the others who look up to the honour somehow. Terrible, terrible things. Hope the haters don’t grind these two down if anything happens. Srečno!

[vroenis]

Notes On A Conditional Form

I need a break from games writing, and I guess playing video games I’m not entirely enjoying. To be fair to the Uncharted series, I was also briefly dipping in and out of Battlefield V and that’s just not been going well for a long time. I’ll just sit quietly and wait for the new maps.

Today’s title is the most obvious and terrible of puns, for which I should be fired. You’re fired from your own journal - pack your shit and get the fuck out, Vee. Fine, I never liked this job anyway. Who am I kidding, I love this job - I’ve been writing consistently again since the 16th of February this year and really enjoying it.

For once I’m going to use something topical as a springboard for today’s discussion, so as I say on Twitter - Saturday is writing day.

The 1975′s new album Notes On A Conditional Form is out now, available on all the usual distribution platforms except for the good one that counts (Bandcamp) so go get it.

I’m just finishing up my first full listen-thru in the studio where I do my writing as I begin typing out this piece - actually Guys has just started up so it’s the final song. It’s the second time I’ve heard this track, the first time was last night when my week ended and I finally got a chance to sit down on the couch in-front of YouTube and the promo was in my recommendations. What an adorable video.

For the duration of this writing session, I’ve queued-up Telefon Tel Aviv because it suits my mood better - NOACF will play after Dreams Are Not Enough and it’ll probably play if I write for long enough.

I joked around on Instagram yesterday that I bought NOACF Friday morning but wouldn’t get a chance to listen to it until today. I could have listened to it during my work day but there’s no way I’d have had my first listen on the shitty UE Booms that have transducers made of stale bread I have at my work-from-home desk, plus I don’t want to have distractions for my first listen - be talking over it while I work and have to stop-start music during teleconferences and video-meetings etc. Friday was a particularly hectic day for me, but even if it wasn’t, the speakers alone are enough of a reason for me to not want to engage in critical listening in my work-space. I can’t use the 535s or 555s even, because constantly swapping from music to teleconference headphones would be a nightmare.

It’s fine - I just have to be patient. At some point you just stop having to listen to everything the minute you get it. Years ago, I absolutely would be slamming tunes as soon as I would download them - or back when we bought CDs from stores, R and I would be in the car, peeling plastic wrap and jamming them into the slot and cruising around having a listen. Even then, tho, I made it a practice of setting aside time for dedicated listening. Music has always been important to me, I don’t know if it’s tied intrinsically to being a musician, I don’t think it is but it could be, hard to tell. For as long as I’ve been recording things onto cassette from the radio and then buying CDs with my own money, I’ve spent time just listening to music - not while reading, not while doing chores or homework or recreational things like building Gundam kits and Lego, play board games or entertaining guests with other people altho it has its place backing all of these things.

I’ve always wanted to spend time having music as the main focus - the specific activity I engaged in.

When I studied Audio Production and Engineering, it was taught as a subject called Active Listening, albeit as a pragmatic subject of analysis both sonically and musically and I still appreciate it being taught this way. It engages students to perceive musical listening as something you should do as a verb the same way that it’s taught in psychology and social studies. While there are some specifics you can probably educate yourself with regards to the physics of audio and music theory, at some point it begins to become about what’s subjectively pleasing to your ear - this much is absolutely also taught - that much about sound is about perception and is subjective, and the industry of music (the actual course is literally called Music Industry: Technical Production) is about honing technical skills and combining them with understanding your own subjective perception and successfully marketing them.

The real art of active listening is simply paying attention - it’s rudimentary - it’s just not being passive. Most folks aren’t participants in their appreciation of music and that’s not a facetious statement - there’s nothing wrong with people who don’t take a greater role in their digest of music in general, it’s perfectly OK because it’s probably not that important to them. The point at which they feel they want more from what they hear is when they need to do something about it, but they don’t owe it to anyone else to do anything before that. You’ll get no soapbox ranting about pop-music from me.

What’s perhaps less OK is if an individual regularly expresses discontent at a generalised lack of quality or availability of good art but does nothing to seek it out. Good art has never been more accessible. “Oh Vee,” I hear you cluck, “Are you here fixin’ to tell me The 1975 is good art? Cos we gonna throw down.” If you disagree then firstly that’s fantastic. I mean, you’re wrong, but I’m happy for you. But also you’re already in a good space to know what you do and don’t like and should already be good and finding good art.

I’m getting distracted again.

As meandering as my writing seems to get, hopefully some of it is still healthily circular in some ways - and coming back to the reasons I’ve stepped back from other platforms and am finding it comforting to write regularly here on tumblr is that observation of the longer form. Here I get to set aside more time and give myself more consideration to a topic. I sit in the studio and get my thoughts out over a few hours, then over the next few days, I revisit and re-read snippets or all of what I’ve read, in part to proof-read and correct it but also to go over the subjects I’ve written about in review. Sometimes reviewing inspires further notes in my phone that may or may not turn into journals in the future, but that doesn’t have to be a thing, I’ve not decided yet, but I’ve long ago abandoned the need for every action to bear fruit; it’s a very capitalist way of thinking, this framing of return on investment, that a thing is only worth doing if it’s profitable in the future. The action often has value then and there, it’s the act of doing it, but there has to be an action beyond just the thought, because if I don’t write it down, I know a day later when I want to summon the thought again because I liked it, it’ll be gone from my brain and I’ll hate myself for not noting it. This is how the brain works - it’s immensely capable and sometimes, when everything is important but there are a lot of things, it can’t keep track of them all so at some point it starts discarding them, especially in the short-term.

I watch a lot of YouTube. I really enjoy Rooster Teeth videos and I’ve had a First subscription for almost two years now. Oddly I still watch almost all their content on YouTube simply because it’s more convenient to do so across all devices,  but the point of having a premium subscription for me is to support them as content creators, not to access content earlier or really to access anything exclusive - I’ll be honest, I’m not watching any exclusives at all and couldn’t tell you what that content is. I’m also super glad that they opened up First access free during Covid, so right now you can sign up for First and watch everything thru their web portal and see all that exclusive stuff plus watch everything early and it won’t cost you anything. Yes - part of the point is the marketing benefit that after Covid, they hope you’ll see that First has economic value for you and that you’ll pay for it afterwards, but they transparently, plainly and frequently acknowledge this in their shows which I suspect is more than other companies are doing.

Outside of Rooster Teeth - which do create a lot of content at 30 minutes and above, often 1 hour shows but often 10 to 15 minute episodes, I still do watch a lot of typical 10 to 20 minute YouTube clips, especially after work. My reasons for watching these are probably similar to a lot of people - after an arduous day of office admin, often it’s easier to watch smaller, more easily digested pieces of media instead of material that takes potentially more psychological commitment. How that commitment takes shape is different for everyone - for some people, heavy narrative is more demanding. For me, if you’ve taken any cues about my tastes, you’ve probably figured it’s a little different.

Some of the short clips I watch are video gamers arsing about being funny; a lot of Funhaus (under Rooster Teeth) falls into this category, but a lot of my watching is comprised of Synth Tubers and musicians. There’s some stuff in the periphery - because of Gavin Free’s adjacency in Rooster Teeth, I might watch the occasional SloMo Guys clip that might appear in my recs, as well as the odd 1975 promo because I’m subbed so their single releases appear in my feed and Dirty Hit and adjacent artists will hit my recs too, so again once in a while I might try them to varying success - I bought half of Wolf Alice’s Visions Of A Life but couldn’t bring myself to pay for the full album. Maybe next time.

YouTube is a bit like the thumb, heart and like. It’s the short-term hit, the low-level engagement for my visual and auditory senses. I’m not knocking it, it’s fine. It’s good. It’s not entirely like but not entirely unlike sugar. Does the analogy carry all the way thru to if I consume too much of it, it’ll give my brain virtual brain diabetus? I’m not entirely sure but it could be worth being cautious of. I don’t think that’s a real thing but one thing I certainly have been missing is real cinema, and the other night I finally turned everything off and put on a bluray I’d bought of a film I’d as yet not seen, and was really glad I did;

I don’t often get to watch films that are for me, as egotistical a statement as that might sound. When J is home, I try not to subject her to my film taste, or at least some of the more rigorous sides of it. There’s a decent amount of crossover in our tastes which is plenty fine for us to share, but for some things I’d wait for her to go to bed or be out or away. I’m not sure how she’d take something like The Favourite, there’s a lot to like about the narrative as a whole, but I certainly can understand how people might not like it.

Nevertheless I adored the film, it’s almost perfect for me with the exception of some of the editing - Yorgos Lanthimos edited it himself, it would seem, so that’s ah... a thing. Anyway, alas were I here to discuss the film because it’s an absolute smashing delight.

I really do miss sitting down and just being able to be immersed in good cinema. It isn’t because I don’t want to, either - it really is because I find it so difficult to find film aligned with my tastes. If you want to know what those tastes are, there’s a page full of it, and yes, David Lynch and Terrence Malick are on it so I’m one of thooose people. Whatever, I so don’t fucken care. I’m not a snob, tho - I’ve talked about it before, can’t be arsed digging thru the journals but they only go as far back as Feb so have at it - but I dug the first John Wick, Michael Bay has his place, I mean, he’s a cock, but I respect and admire the cinemacraft - I totally talked about that (maybe I should go find it). I really *really* love action and stunt-craft a lot - there’s a lot of hard work that goes into that - not just sets and props but personnel, stage-craft, lighting, vis-fx and camera. It’s good industry, it looks great and it’s simply fun to watch.

Anyway.

I have action films on bluray, I just don’t talk about them. Instead I keep a list of my weird shit because they get less attention, less money and I feel like they speak more to my experience and there are fewer things in this life that speak to my experience. The list of video games in the journal before this one speak more to my experience, that’s why there’s a list of them. Uncharted speaks infinitely less to my experience, and that’s probably why I hit it with a stick so much, because dear lord jesus fuck look at how much money it gets, and yet look at how poorly the people who made it are being treated and how much fuck-all is being done about it, so fuck that shit, unite and unionise, and support your fucking indies. I’m getting distracted again... it’s not hard to do at the moment...

A dear friend had a birthday recently and they asked for some music - actually let’s roll back. Once our state went into lock-down and we couldn’t go visit one-another, one of my best friends K and I started talking over video-calls instead of our normal phone-calls. We’d normally speak over the phone because we’d see each other when she’d come over and have dinner with J and I, or we’d all have lunch etc. So me being me, there’s no way I’m going to be happy just using my phone - of-course I can run Zoom from my PC and use my webcam, but run all my audio gear thru my interface - meaning a nice condenser mic instead of a shitty phone or hands free, plus all my synths. This is how our video-calls go - I play music for her while we talk. It’s an absolute blast.

On one particular call, she told me the music I was playing at the time would be really great to help her with the work she was doing (also working from home). I was only just playing a Rhodes patch thru the reverb unit with a massive tail but she did have some decent bluetooth headphones on and it sounded great. That weekend, I spent a couple of hours recording a few pieces of simple music, just one instrument and fx direct - no sequencing, straight into audio - lightly normalised - topped and tailed, encoded to mp3 and sent them to her.

I haven’t had a lot of studio time at all over the last two years - J and I have had a really rough year - not with one another, but challenges that we’ve had to face. If you read back thru the journals, you’ll see another one of those which has further flow-on effects for us that we continue to deal with. That’s life. Both she and I have been dealing with these kinds of challenges for most of our lives from a very young age. Sometimes I spend a bit of time noodling, as J calls it, on a piece of gear here and there, and in the past I’ve taken a few bits of gear out of the studio down into the kitchen and recorded videos for Instagram that have been fun - usually for a weekend or week while she’s been out of state with family.

There’s that thing again with only doing things in short bursts and hopefully I’m able to illustrate this pattern of shortness, of us having to live our lives in short bursts. I’m not going to hook it into the evils of YouTube (I like YouTube and use it) or Spotify (I hate Spotify and don’t use it) - as always, these things seem to follow people’s patterns of behaviour rather than shape it - but there are probably some other evils that have shaped our patterns of behaviour and the consumer services have simply followed. Are we being over-worked and is the quality of our life out of balance? Probably. Are we losing touch with a better sense of engagement with one another, activity, focus and art? Very likely. Do we point a furiously waggling finger at Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and yell BAD and run to the hills to farm organic vegetables and hide from 5G (couldn’t help it) for the rest of our days? Not at all because that’s clearly stupid.

I like Twitter. I really like Twitter. I really like YouTube. I really like the Wire and the accessibility and ease it’s brought about. Just because we haven’t quite figured out how best to utilise it doesn’t mean we have to set it on fire and huddle in the dark. I don’t get that approach - we are astonishingly intelligent beings, yet our reaction to not being able to fully process complex things always seems to be SHUN AND RUN. Don’t credit me with that, I’m sure I read it somewhere - I wish Mamoru Oshii’s external memory (or wherever he shoplifted it from) was a real thing and I could check it (NB: I did exactly that, but couldn’t find anything culturally remarkable enough as a source).

Dedicating time to recording those pieces of music for K was really amazing. I just listened back to them and I’m really happy with how they came out. If you ask nicely I might post one of them up here but you’ll have to ask really nice and understand they’re super ambient so they might put you to sleep but that’s one of the desired effects, I guess. Watching The Favourite was amazing, and I have to try to dig out more cinema to dig into. I’m really hoping Ghost of Tsushima reviews well for PS4 because I’m pretty much sold on it - I’d like a game I can play for long periods rather than short bursts because I value enduring video game experiences that aren’t frustrating. And writing here every week has been the most positive step I’ve taken this year, super beneficial and I hope at some point I can get around to discussing some of the other artefacts of art I keep mentioning in greater detail, or at least more about my engagement with them. That list of films has a lot going on in it as far as how it’s influenced my life. I say that it’s listed in no particular order, but Ishikawa’s Tokyo.Sora remains to this day my most favourite film by a long way, no other film has come close, but there are a lot of films that are almost as special and that leave everything else a long way behind. Most of Lynch’s films are pretty special to me, so too most of Oshii’s, but I’d love to talk about why films like Polgar’s Exit and Fliefauf’s Womb are there for their tone and feel more than their content.

I think that’s coming. For the moment I’m still writing as a capture of my mental state in time. Barely anyone uses the term microblogging in reference to Twitter any more but that’s exactly what it is - it’s a granular timecode of people’s pragmatic and emotional reactions to their experience of life - usually too granular to be useful without strange barely accessible tools to process. For me a return to traditional writing has been both immensely useful and satisfying. I enjoy both cataloguing and documentation, but I also love the mechanical process of such. Sitting down and spending time writing has given me perspective on how and when to use a granular tool like Twitter - even for shitposting - and Instagram too, tho shuttering Instagram is still on the cards - and it’s amplifying every activity I dedicate time to.

More and more I’m getting down on the floor with our dogs and playing with them - I did this anyway but I do it more, to bond with them and enjoy a sense of play and place at their level in pack harmony. There’s nothing overly spiritual and wanky about that, they’re just our dogs and we love them, it’s just about understanding canine behaviour and enjoying it.

This isn’t a puff piece about the perfect life, far from it. I’m not just trying to be positive either. There’s still an immense amount of shit happening around me, never you mind. It’s hard to contextualise everything all at the same time, so don’t be tempted to believe I’m here doing a HASHTAG BLESSED post because you can fuck right off. Go back and look at my taste in films damnit and tell me a positivity-only person digs those films get fucked. You wouldn’t know what we’ve been thru and I wouldn’t know what you’ve been thru either. Let us talk about shit sometimes and don’t do that whataboutism shit. You should be more mature than that. If there’s anything granular media has done it’s make you a lazy thinker so shake yourself out of it. You know better. You *know* you know better. Come on.

I might draw some art for you to steal, come back and insert it but I’m happy with ending here.

[genesiselijah-blog1]

The Story Of  The ‘I Ain’t Even Charging Bruv 2′ EP. How Everything Went Wrong. . .

Ok. It's Friday night (Or it was when I originally posted this on facebook) and if you're reading this you're either home and bored out out and bored. I'm gonna tell you a story. A story of when I really realised that the music game is not about talent or quality of music. Ok so you ready? I'll take that as a yes. It all started in 2012. Early 2012. I was at a high point musically. Painkillers & Pilkington (https://genesiselijah.bandcamp.com/a…/painkillers-pilkington) had just dropped and had done really well. Radio 1 play. Psalms (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQrYMQ0Cf98) was my highest viewed video at the time. Life was good. So now it was time to drop new music. This time I was gonna go all out. Heres what happed. . .

So my idea was to drop an EP so good people would really notice. First I'd have to have it hosted on a big platform. At the time SBTV were killing it and I'd just done a warm up session that summer so Jamal was cool with that idea. . .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYN_JdsLwaM

Track 1: Underground King. My goal was to drop 7 of the best tracks I'd ever done with the biggest artist I could get at the time and really make some lasting music that would push me to that next level. So the first track was a track called 'Underground King'. This track was actually written in Brighton a few weeks before the first Boom Bap Festival. I was up there shooting a video for another artist and all though I was aware that the festival was happening I wasn't really aware who was on the line up. All I knew was I wasn't. As I was going around Brighton I saw one of the flyers and saw the names that were on it. I got pissed. How the fuck can you have a uk hip-hop event like that and not invite me?? I went off on twitter. You know how I do. I think either Dike or Gizmo inboxed and told me to chill but I was too far gone. Then I reached for pad (Yeah I was still writing bars at that time). I had to remind people who I was. So this happened. . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-s2BHEeN3Y

Track 2: What I'm On. This was a track I did with Boris Berlin. We had previously done an EP (https://genesiselijah-beezwax.bandcamp.com/.../civil-unrest) together and as far as modern sounding beats in UK hip-hop he was way ahead of his time. I wanted something that would really bang and this beat had that feel. The flow is fire. The hook is big. I love it. We filmed the video at English Frank's Hip-Hop Ain't Dead night and had a bunch of cameos. I loved this vid cos it really gives you the vibe of the night. Unfortunately SBTV but a Mic Righteous Xmas advert before it which is just fucking annoying (Sorry Mic I still love you bro haha) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g3W-zmjoJM

Track 3: Alive. Ok so now we're getting serious. So I had this beat from the amazing Anton Nutty P Flanders. First of all I have so much love for Nutty P. Not just because he's top 3 producers in the country but for some reason he's always been up for giving me beats that he could have sold for thousands to bigger artist. I'm so grateful to even be one that guys radar. Anyway so yeah I have this beat. It's fucking hard as fuck. Now a little while before I'd built up a really good relationship with an MC called Context. I'd jumped on a bunch of his tracks and then he'd got signed and whatever and was doing really well. I asked him to drop a verse and his brother Well Read to jump on the hook. I wrote the hook with his brother voice in mind. I really wanted a crossover record. Like a pop/dubstep/grime rap track. Once it was done I knew it was gonna be a smash. It just sounded so radio ready. Anyway all it needed was a video. I hollered at Context to do the vid but he wanted to rewrite his verse. . .WAIT WHAT??? Bro. . .the track is done. It's out. It's on the SBTV Bandcamp page! I have a camera NOT A FUCKING TIME MACHINE!!! FFS. . .I was gutted. I still love Context but I was so pissed off at the time. I felt like my chance to have a hit was dead before it even had a chance. . .But hey. Life goes on. https://genesiselijah.bandcamp.com/.../alive-feat-context...

Track 4: What We Do. Fuuuuuucking hell!!!! Ok this track is fire. First of all some how I managed to get a beat off Teeza Musič. That in itself had me so gassed! I asked Polly Yatesto jump on the hook and she came through and smashed it. The beat was just so next level and her voice on it just gave it a different feel. I loved it. Then it gets mad. So hollered at Loudmouth. he came through with fire. I mean some of the funniest punchlines. Man had me cracking up! But I also got a verse from Swiss. He is one of my idols. A So Solid legend. We all know he's nice but when e sent me the verse I was in shock. Yeah me and Loud did our thing but he killed us and every MC within a 10,000 mile radius. Fucking hell. Fucking hell. Listen to this. . .https://genesiselijah.bandcamp.com/.../what-we-do-feat...

Track 5: Coming Up. Damn. Even I forgot how sick this is. Hiram O'Connell is a PHENOMENAL producer. Like world class. He's one of the only producers I would ever do a full project. he's incredible. So hollered at 2 of my favourite MC's for this one. Pyro Rapper Barz to me is a flawless lyricist. Go check his music. Every verse. Flawless. He's one of the only rappers I would ever do a full joint project with even though he'd kill me on every verse hhahaa. But yeah he came through and killed it. So at the time Dream Mclean was about to go clear. He was signed to chase n status and as there's no way the label would have cleared the verse we had to keep it hush. That meant no video. No radio push. Again I was gutted. But this is the game. he killed that verse too. Pure flames all round. . . https://genesiselijah.bandcamp.com/.../coming-up-feat..

Track 6. Army. This was another mad one. Ok so this was produced by Sibling who is Little Donatella's (Love & Hip-Hop Hollywood) brother. For some reason they have always shown me love. He was another producer that has worked with some massive artist but chooses to work with me and always goes out of his way to tailor make beats for me. It's not like "yo I got these beats" it like "Yo I've made this track with you in mind and think you should come at it like this". I got so much love for him. Any way he hits me up with a concept. I love it. He then gives me a hook! He smashed it. I was blown away. I remember Emmy Williamson telling how much this song meant to her. It made this song mean so much more to me and one of the reasons I had to put her on my album 2 years later. But yeah I went hard on this one. . .https://genesiselijah.bandcamp.com/.../army-feat-sibling...

Track 7: Yuck. There was no way I was gonna put out an EP without a Dead Man Walkn beat. These might be two of my best verses. I went hard. I went over hard. I went so hard that one time I performed this in a club full of metal heads and they went so crazy we couldn't even finish the song. The beat is. . .Yuck. It's just nasty. The bars. . .Nasty. I don't even know what more I can say. As for the video. I was so much fun making it. It's very disturbing also. . .You'll love it. Well actually that's not true. No one really did love it. Today it has only 6652 views. And what makes that sadder is that the video dropped almost a year before the EP hahaa. Fucking brutal. Again. That's life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9y8AvyqbyA

So there you have it. A project that I put so much blood sweat and tears into that pretty much just got ignored but everyone apart from the SBTV staff and my core supporters. Someone tweeted me yesterday and said "Your bars have got so much harder" If we had been face to face I would have laughed straight in to his. My verses on this project and all the ones before it were so fucking hard. I dropped so much knowledge and insight and did it with so many patterns, multis and punchlines it would give your average baggy jean backpacker a chubby just in the first 2 bars. But it was never really appreciated. To date it has only been downloaded from my band came 344 times. I'm not sure what it did on the SBTV Bandcamp but I'm guessing way less. To put that in to perspective How To Loose Friends And Alienate Listeners is on 857 and has only been out for 3 months. I'm sure there's a moral to this story but for the life of me I can't find it. But yeah. Support the music you love and the person who makes it will make more of it. . .Have a great weekend. 5AM In Wakanda is out now. . .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x16oAp8-WF4

GE