#because there is exactly One video that alex does actually curate and edit with the intent for it to be seen

[brittlebutch]

really as a whole it is endlessly fascinating that alex is the only main character in the series who never has any kind of autonomy in curating the narrative at all.

[safetycar-restart]

Oooh ds au motogp, you mentioned thirst trap slutty chaos demon Jorge? Please do tell me more, im very intrigued. 👀

So Fabio being a good boy and Marc deliberatly getting a spanking by posting thirst traps were just so delicious. Fabulousness.

But what punishment does Marc recieve for the soft porn half naked workout videos? Or did he gave permission for those ones? Or was that when he felt very neglected and passive aggresivly shot those without a collar and posted?

On the other end of the insta spectrum how much does dom coo over marc and his brother's dog, fabio and various dogs, jorge and his (?) dog, enea and his dog, bezz and his dog (was it any other moto boy you liked for this?). Like the adorableness.

Also Fabio in various soft sweaters, so coo worthy, need to cuddle and pet his hair.

And then we have Marc in various post surgery and injury recovery pics. Is that something his dom takes as a sign that Marc needs all the soft but structured scenes. Needs to just float and let someone else be in the drivers seat for a little while and be loved and cared for?

Cheers 🏍 anon

There are only three things guarantees in the universe: death, taxes and 🏍️ anon dropping killer MotoGP asks. I fucking love this. I really want to write more for MotoGP cause they’re actually truly my favourite lads.

So I’m gonna discuss this by separating each concept, because I think that makes the most sense? As always, let me know if you want to hear more about anything/if anything inspires you/if you want to see more MotoGP!

D/S AU THIRST TRAPS:

So firstly, as I said Jorge is indeed a chaos demon with this, and I say demon because he doesn’t just post his own thirst traps, no no he must drag you into hell with him. He’s not getting into heaven and neither are you.

If you go to the gym with him, sweaty workout selfies of both of you WILL be posted. He must show off both his insane body and also his insanely hot dominant. And he’ll do the most suggestive poses over, he once posted a picture of him shirtless leaning against you, literally licking your neck he’s an absolute menace.

You have to curate the pictures he does and does not post or else he will post straight up porn on his Instagram stories, and he’s perfectly happy with you choosing what he can post as long as he’s still allowed to post soft core porn and pictures with you.

As for Marc’s punishments….

So I think the half naked workout videos actually are taken with permission, mostly because they actually have to be edited? It takes work before those can be posted, unlike just taking his shirt off and posting a picture.

In fact I think him doing them without a collar would probably somehow be a requirement? Like a sponsor doesn’t want him to wear it. And Marc, as much as he loves to push your buttons, would NEVER take his collar off because that’s his everything. So he was very unhappy filming those videos and had to take multiple breaks to get reassurance from you.

However, he does get punished for just randomly posting half naked pictures without permission and that is always done when he’s feeling bratty and wants attention. He gets his attention for them, which is a very good spanking followed by a cockcage but that’s exactly what he wanted.

CUTENESS:

(I adore all of this babble)

So firstly, all of the subs take introducing you to their dogs VERY seriously. Especially Marc and Bez. It was an entire event with Bez. You literally had to come to his house just to meet his dog. As for Marc, he conveniently forgets the dogs are actually Alex’s and just treats them like his own and it’s also very important that you like them and get along with them.

For Bez especially though, because whenever he has the time he’s always with his dog and he doesn’t want to have to split his time between his Dom and his dog. And he absolutely adores spending time just the three of you. In fact maybe you start calling bez’s dog in for aftercare? You get Bez all cleaned up and fed and whatnot and then it’s just time for cuddles and waiting for him to recover so you call his dog in and then Bez can have dog cuddles!! It’s the absolute best. Just a happy, sleepy fucked out Bez cuddling his dog.

Oh god and Fabio with all his sweaters!! I actually recently spoke about this on discord server and I’m gonna repeat it here: Fabio LOVES being his Dom’s babygirl. He loves to be cared for and loved on and looked after and treated like he’s too pretty to do anything for himself. He’ll put on some comfy oversized sweater and his cute little glasses and fuzzy socks and come snuggle right under his Dom’s arm, refusing to do anything for himself because he’s simply too cute and too sweet you must do it all for him.

And Marc! Poor Marc. Honestly by this point I think you’d have a whole aftercare protocol in place for post surgery care with him just because of the sheer number of surgeries he’s had to undergo. I think the first few days after surgery are always the toughest for Marc, because that’s when he can do the least and when he literally just needs to rest it. Once he starts being able to start the rehab process, then he’s okay because he’s got a game plan and things to do. But the initial week or so of having to do literally nothing kills him.

That’s the time where he spends most of it just floating in subspace for you. It’s so much better for him when you just take him down. Because then he can’t feel bad about not doing anything or push himself too hard or get stuck in his own head because he’s too busy being your good boy.

Marc also insists he heals much better like that, but most likely that’s just because you’re there to take very good care of him. So yeah, plenty of very relaxed non-sexual but structured scenes that allow Marc to just float in subspace and recover.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Alex Weston Interview: Scoring the Year’s Most Universal Film

BY JORDAN MAINZER

In Lulu Wang’s fantastic new film The Farewell (A24), a Chinese family chooses not to reveal to their matriarch that she’s dying but want to see her before she goes. So, they do what any good family would do: stage a fake wedding. Right? As absurd as it sounds, it’s Wang’s story, the center of which is presented through the perspective of Billi (Awkwafina), an NYC-based aspiring writer befuddled by what she perceives as her family’s dishonesty and betrayal. At the heart of the conflict are diverging modes of thought, the individualism of the West at odds with the collectivism of the East. According to Billi’s Japan-based uncle, the family, not the grandmother, Nai Nai, should bear the emotional burden of death. As such, the film is chock full of scenes of characters experiencing extreme emotion without trying to make it look like it, so as not to give away the secret they’re keeping from Nai Nai, but often failing and having to make excuses for tears.

This same strife is rife throughout composer Alex Weston’s essential score. Based around a motif of desolate classical string compositions and eerie, high-pitched, wordless vocals, Weston’s music drives along the film as the family tries as best as they can to achieve their secrecy, adding the tension that inevitably threatens to boil over due to longstanding familial disagreements and differences in values and country of residence. At the same time, it’s moments of musical familiarity and tradition that keep the family’s bond strong. Wang’s deft script presents these moments as key--Billi and her father singing “Killing Me Softly” at wedding karaoke, Italian aria “Caro Mio Ben” superimposed over the family getting wildly drunk with booze, splendor, and despair--while Weston’s arrangements supply them with the timbre and tone to allow them to maintain their importance to the film’s impassioned journey.

I spoke to Weston over the phone last month about his approach to scoring the film, working with Wang, and curating the soundtrack. Read the interview below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: How did you become involved with the project?

Alex Weston: It was kind of a traditional pathway for something like this. They were looking at a lot of composers, and the music supervisor was giving Lulu Wang, the director, a bunch of options. Someone suggested me, and I met with Lulu to talk about the project and wrote a couple of scenes sort of as a little tryout. She decided to go with me.

SILY: Was she aware of your work before the recommendation?

AW: No, she wasn’t. It was just that someone who was familiar with my work had her listen to some samples, and she was intrigued enough by the samples to want to see what I’d do.

SILY: Do you know what specifically you had done that led to the recommendation?

AW: No, I don’t know.

SILY: Had you seen the film without any music before scoring those couple scenes?

AW: I had seen the movie with the temp track on. All pre-existing music.

SILY: How did you approach the two scenes you tested the waters with? Was it your normal approach to scoring?

AW: Yeah, I don’t think I approached it differently--capture the energy and the emotion. Ultimately, Lulu had in mind for the movie a very particular kind of sound and tone. Even though I got the job off of scoring those two scenes, what we ended up having in those two scenes was not at all related to what I had written [for the tryout].

SILY: How would you characterize what she had in mind?

AW: As we were starting, we had a lot of conversations about tone. We were trying to find this particular balance of emotion. The story itself is very small. Every family has experienced this--not exactly with the whole lying and fake wedding thing, but every family has experienced loss or grief and has lost a grandparent. So the stakes are incredibly small. It’s a grandparent dying, which is what grandparents do. But for [the family in the film], the stakes are so high, the added tension of the fact that they’re maintaining this lie. So we wanted it to feel more dramatic and heavier to play against that. Two things we wanted to incorporate to accomplish that were using classical music--capital “c” classical music--and for it to be very vocal-heavy. A big, dramatic choir that would play against what’s happening on screen. So she was originally planning on just hiring an arranger to do vocal arrangements of Vivaldi and stuff, and that would be the score. Ultimately, we decided to make something that was unique for the film that we could build and expand on rather than try to shoehorn in something pre-existing.

SILY: On the soundtrack, there are three tracks credited to someone else. Can you tell me a little about each?

AW: The first one on there is a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Come Healing”. Lulu had the idea to use that song in the movie from the get-go. But it did feel kind of ridiculous for this female-centric movie to suddenly have gravely Leonard Cohen. It didn’t fit; it was jarring. We wanted a cover that was more vocal-heavy and string-heavy to fit with the score, and a female vocalist. We ended up finding this cover by Elayna Boynton, who is a phenomenal gospel singer based out of L.A. She has a bunch of really great albums on her own. She’s written songs for movies before; she has a credits song in Django Unchained. Lulu actually found her by just watching covers of “Come Healing” on YouTube, and there was a video of Elayna doing it at church. In terms of the arrangement for that, I produced the recording with Elayna and did a version that matched the rest of our score.

The second song, “Caro Mio Ben”, is a pretty famous aria. There’s a scene in the wedding where family members are going up and singing songs, and there’s karaoke at the wedding. One woman sings “Caro Mio Ben” ,and it’s juxtaposed with a slow motion montage of other things happening at the wedding: the family playing drinking games, the groom getting wasted and breaking down into tears, stuff like that. It’s a very funny juxtaposition over the anarchy of what’s going on. We recorded it with a wonderful opera singer and her accompanist, but Lulu wanted something different with the accompaniment. She used to play piano, so she ended up going to the studio and recording the piano part herself. I think it’s kind of cool she ended up performing on the soundtrack itself.

The last one was added after my involvement. That plays during the credits. Similarly, because of the sense of community that the voices provide, and the karaoke, it starts with an Italian cover of Harry Nilsson[’s “Without You”] and breaks down into a full karaoke version of it, which I think Lulu and 10-15 other people recorded after a shot or two of tequila. One of the music supervisors took a big passenger van up to Woodstock, where the recording studio was, and they passed out shots and sang it.

SILY: How do you go about naming the tracks?

AW: The tracks were named afterwards, of course. When I was working on them, they were more functionally named: “M1″, “M2″, “M3″, that kind of think. Before the album, me and Lulu just had a phone call debating what would work, what would flow nicely.

SILY: Sometimes, it’s something thematic, sometimes, it’s “this piece of music takes place during this specific scene where this happens.”

AW: There was a fair amount of that. The first track, “The Lie”, is the first scene where they decide they’re going to lie to their grandma. “Family” is slow-motion the whole family walking together. Most of the time, it was fairly literal.

SILY: To what extent does this score function as a separate piece from the film?

AW: There are a couple cues on the soundtrack that are variations of what appear in the film, but it didn’t make sense to have two 45-second things on an album that were practically identical. So I kind of combined them and worked out a transition between the two to make a piece that someone could listen to. An example of that would be track 3, “Changchung”, where there are two distinct halves but similar material. We spent a lot of time working on the sequencing, making sure it felt like an album, not standalone tracks. I think there’s even one cue on there that ended up getting cut from the movie, but we liked the music, so we put it back on the album!

SILY: What other projects do you have coming up?

AW: I have a few films that are starting now. I’m working on another solo instrumental record. But at this point, I just hope people decide to go out and see The Farewell!

[wmua-amherst]

A Conversation with Kassie Carlson of Guerilla Toss

By Alex MacLean and Judge Russell On a humid Saturday in Holyoke, Massachusetts, the 2019 Dream Picnic took place at Gateway City Arts. A day festival curated by Brooklyn indie band Rubblebucket, this year featured performances from Western MA acts such as Carinae, Raspberry Jam, and And The Kids, as well as national touring acts STRFKR, Sidney Gish, and Guerilla Toss. 

After Guerilla Toss’s performance, we caught up with the New York dance-punk band’s singer and violinist, Kassie Carlson, and asked her a few questions about movies, restaurants, and inspirations behind the band’s upcoming EP, What Would The Odd Do?, out November 15 on NNA Tapes. The band will be on a US tour starting October 19th.

WMUA: So y’all have a new EP coming out soon, yeah? Kassie Carlson: Yep! What Would The Odd Do?

WMUA: So I was going to ask what some of the inspirations behind the new songs were, in terms of the music and lyrics? KC: What Would The Odd Do? Is kind of, like, all of us, the counterculture people, the weirdos, the freaks. Like instead of asking, “what would Jesus do?,” anyone who has grown up in a religious environment, y’know, and weighing so much on god, this is what would the Odd do! [laughs]

WMUA: and the lyrics?

KC: Mostly just about existential dread and the presence of darkness, and lightness in the world.

WMUA: I feel that. So what was the recording process like?

KC: Well, we recorded at the Outlier Inn in Upstate New York, it’s kind of like a retreat/recording studio that our friend has where you can go and stay there and record a record, but it’s actually near where my house, so I didn’t stay there. My friend Josh has got goats on the property!

WMUA: Goats are so funny, there’s goats by my house and me and my housemates whenever we drive by we yell “GOATS” and they all look at you

KC: I don’t know how true it is, but I read something recently that goats can see facial expressions, and understand them. It’s the eyes, the square pupils.

WMUA: Woah! I’ve never really gotten that close to a goat before.

KC: You should! Y’know, there’s like the cat eye, the goat eye...I was thinking a lot about eyes and perception when I was watching this animal show the other night, about predator and prey, how the prey has eyes on either side, the predator has eyes on the front, and what that does to how you see and interpret things.

WMUA: Wow, what a thought! It’s all in the eyes.

WMUA: So some of the questions I’ve written here have to do with the music but some of them are just fun questions, like if there are any movies you’re loving as of late?

KC: Oh God.

WMUA: Or any movie you’ve seen recently that you liked?

KC: I saw Midsommar in theaters, it was cool, maybe that’s like an obvious thing,

WMUA: That’s the last one I went to see in theaters, I loved it.

KC: There’s lots of people with flower headbands out today, so I was thinking about it. It’s fucked but like, also beautiful. You know our music video for “Plants”?

WMUA: Haven’t seen it yet, no.

KC: Well the editor for Midsommar did that video.

WMUA: Woah, that’s so cool!

KC: Yeah, Max Berger and Jade Goheen. It’s got really cool editing.

WMUA: I’ll have to check that one out!

KC: New song “Plants”!

WMUA: New song “Plants,” it’s great, we’ve been playing it at the station.

KC: Sweet! [laughs]

WMUA: So y’all currently live in New York? KC: I don’t live in NYC anymore, I live upstate in the mountains now.

WMUA: Well, so do you have a favorite place to eat in New York?

KC: I do, of course! It’s called Lupe’s East LA kitchen, it’s in SoHo. It’s amazing, it’s where we have all our band meetings, so if you go there you might see us!

WMUA: What kind of food?

KC: It’s Mexican food.

WMUA: Are there any bands that you’re looking forward to seeing tonight? KC: Oh yeah, well I saw Homebody earlier, amazing band, amazing beats, amazing voice, also Rubblebucket obviously, STRFKR, it was cool to see Toth, all the bands are really specal and curated tonight, so it’s fun.

WMUA: For sure for sure! [laughs] oh this question is kinda goofy, but, I really like your song “Jackie’s Daughter,” yeah, I was wondering how Jackie and her daughter are doing?

KC: They’re doing awesome! Killing it, yeah. That song, people always request it, but it’s kind of hard to do it live, we haven’t really figured it out yet. 

WMUA: I’m really glad you played “Meteorological,” I love that song!

KC: Yeah, that one’s about trying to predict your own feelings and thoughts.

WMUA: Like a meteorologist!

KC: Exactly! But they’re always wrong!

WMUA: I also really like all of the artwork on your records, I was wondering how you go about picking it or designing it if someone in the band does it

KC: It’s actually a lot of different people, Keith Rankin does a lot of our art, he does Orange Milk Tapes, and he does, like, epic airbrush stuff, he’s killing it right now, doing billboards, other albums, stuff for magazines. But GT Ultra, that’s like 70s acid strip paper from Mark McCloud, his house is filled with acid sheets, they all have really interesting designs, and that was one of them. And the new one is Yu Maeda, an artist I found on Instagram who is super amazing.

WMUA: What are you guys listening to in the van? KC: Usually a lot of the Grateful Dead, because it’s something everyone likes, I’m also really obsessed with Emeralds.

KC: Thanks for taking the time to do this, hope the tour goes well!

Guerilla Toss’s new EP What Would The Odd Do? is out now on NNA Tapes.