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plotbnuy · 4 years ago

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KarpReviews - Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) and End of Evangelion

It took me a good while to really get into anime. Well, maybe that’s technically not true, as I grew up with the Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh anime series. That’s really where my exposure to the medium stopped for a long time, though. There was scattered influence, such as an ephemeral viewing of Spirited Away on Cartoon Network, and access to one of the Naruto fighting games. Ultimately, though, I hardly knew what anime was until high school. It was around this time that I would occasionally stay up late to watch Toonami on Saturdays. Toonami provided me with several of my first and favorite anime series, including Cowboy Bebop, Deadman Wonderland, and Soul Eater. One night, however, I found myself treated to something completely bizarre.

I can’t say for sure exactly what I had watched, though my current knowledge suggests it was one of the Evangelion recap movies. These are abridged versions of the series that tell the story in a more condensed format, though it’s possible I just caught a few episodes of the regular series. The show itself was overwhelmingly confusing and bizarre, with concepts my teenage mind struggled to grasp, and characters that seemed strange and depressing. It certainly didn’t help that I was watching this show in the dead of night while sleep repeatedly attempted to pull me down. I was mesmerized regardless, and the images I saw never left my mind.

It wasn’t until now that I decided to finally watch the series in its entirety. I was excited to figure out exactly what I’d seen, why the robots in the show looked the way they did, why the “monsters” had such abstract and strange designs. Most importantly, I wanted to experience one of the major pieces of Japanese animation that had influenced so much of popular media. Thankfully, Neon Genesis Evangelion did not disappoint.

To briefly summarize for those who still haven’t seen the show, the main premise is that, for one reason or another, Earth has become assaulted by powerful beings known as Angels - strange monsters that threaten humanity with their otherworldly power. An organization called NERV, led by Commander Gendo Ikari, plans to protect humanity and destroy the Angels with mysterious and strange humanoid mecha named “EVAs.” They can only be piloted by particular children, one of whom is the main character and Gendo’s son, Shinji. The Angels themselves, as well as their lore, hearken to Christianity, though in the same way that American media loosely uses Greek mythology. While the premise of the show seems to match that of other mecha, such as Gundam or Macross Saga, Evangelion is more about it’s heavy, layered theming as opposed to mecha and kaiju battles. Evangelion’s storytelling is rich and layered, yet I never found it to be overwhelming or poorly paced. Even though it’s dark tone is prevalent throughout, the battles between EVAs and Angels are still exciting and enjoyable on their own, each encounter building the stakes higher and higher, until it almost feels that everything will suddenly explode. Almost.

Visually, I think Evangelion holds up phenomenally. The animation style is instantly recognizable while still carrying the same charm that many 90′s anime have. Characters are expressive and animated when they need to be, and backdrops are detailed and colorful. I was blown away especially during the show’s numerous fight scenes. Unlike the bulky mechs featured in most media at the time, the EVAs are nimble and powerful, often performing acrobatic feats or creating stunning displays of destruction. I was absolutely captivated by the designs of the EVA’s and Angels, just like I was in high school. The EVA’s are both incredible and sinister, immediately intriguing just from their design alone. Just looking at one makes you want to know more about them. The character designs are simple but still memorable, which matches their personalities well. What I love most about the visuals of this show, however, isn’t the fluid action or expressive characters, but the implementation of long shots and surreal visuals. Several times throughout the series, the show will linger on a single frame for an extended period of time. There’s no dialogue in these segments, just ambient noise or background music. These moments are some of the most engrossing, trapping the viewer in a single uncomfortable moment, such as the gruesome aftermath of an Angel attack, or a long elevator ride following an argument between Asuka and Rei.

Speaking of, the characters in this show are truly fascinating. Nearly every character is layered and interesting, and each one has their own ways in which they deal with the pressure and terrors of the world around them. I was surprised with how much I ended up liking Shinji (during the main series that is, but we’ll get to that) whose awkward and conflicted personality can be easily polarizing to viewers. I thought Asuka was a nice foil for Shinji, and an entertaining character on her own. She is a bit rough around the edges, and her loud and often self-centered personality can be grating at times, but ultimately her presence is a positive one, and I feel she inadvertently pulls other characters out of their shells. Rei, the third part of our pilot trio, is quiet and mysterious, and she adds to a lot of the show’s intrigue. My favorite character is easily Misato. On top of keeping the younger character’s intense personalities in check, her own story is one that the show graciously gives a lot of attention to. Watching her start to work through her demons was thoroughly compelling to me, and I felt that even through her faults she always tries to be mindful of the people around her. Ryoji was another character that I was a bit worried about after his introduction, but thankfully he had much more going for him than his flirty, aloof attitude. The one person that I never got totally sold on, though, is Gendo Ikari. While he’s certainly integral to the plot, his character was too nuanced for my liking, and it dampened his impact on the story. He’s also one of the characters who I can confidently say isn’t a good person, making his presence even more distasteful. Important for sure, but generally unpleasant.

Perhaps the most memorable piece of this show is it’s music. Truly, every single track within this anime screams “iconic.” The catchy drumming of “Decisive Battle” constantly plays within my head, a track that helped every Angel encounter feel like an elaborate chess game. “Angel Attack” has a memorable, intense melody that felt appropriate for the show’s surreal and powerful monsters. Of course, nothing needs to be said about one of the most iconic anime openings ever, “Cruel Angel’s Thesis.” By far my favorite, though, has to go to “Komm, süsser Tod.” Playing during the finale of End of Evangelion, this hauntingly beautiful song fits the show perfectly, from it’s use of choir-like vocals to the chaotic mess of strings towards the end. Every song in the show’s OST is wonderful, and I often listen to various tracks while I’m working. Even if you don’t want to watch the show, I strongly urge you to check out the soundtrack anyway.

Deep within these varied, elaborate pieces, behind the catchy music and incredible action set pieces, Neon Genesis Evangelion is a show about depression. Each character struggles with this in a different way: Shinji keeps his distance from those around him, despite needing more than anything to connect to another human being. Asuka searches for validation from the people around her, becoming angry when anyone takes attention away from her, afraid that she’ll be ignored or forgotten. Rei struggles in general to feel like a real person, to become more than her birthright and her purpose. Misato tries to drown herself in her work and in alcohol, keeping herself in denial while she tries to distance herself from her past. In some ways, the EVAs represent the responsibilities of everyday life, highlighted by Shinji’s struggle to fully commit to his obligation of protecting mankind. The characters in this show are broken, messy husks, and for almost the entire show these struggles seem impossible to overcome. These themes and motifs become especially true starting with episode 16, where the show begins to slow down and focus on its characters as the final Angel threat is thwarted. Ultimately, however, the message of the original series is a hopeful one, sending the viewer off with the message that only when you’re able to help yourself can you finally start to truly connect with and help others. It’s a poignant message and one that I think the show earns by weaving it’s theme of depression throughout the entire show, not just focusing on it near the end.

The end, however, is where Evangelion becomes a truly fascinating piece of media. Part of what makes this true is that, actually, Neon Genesis Evangelion has two endings: the final two episodes of the show, and the movie appropriately titled End of Evangelion. The series has separate endings for a couple of reasons, actually. While I won’t explain it in depth here, the summarized version is that the latter episodes of Evangelion, starting with episode 16, are subjected to a bit of a paradigm shift following production issues and budget cuts. These later episodes are where the various characters’ faults take the forefront of the narrative, and the action scenes become scarce. The final two episodes take on an especially bizarre nature, analyzing the characters within the context of the show, using abstract visualization and disjointed dialogue to do so. Personally, I’ve grown to appreciate this ending. As I mentioned before, while the focus does change towards the end, I still believe the show was always more about the heavy themes than it was about the robot fights. Many, however, do not share my opinion. When the finale originally aired, many viewers were incredibly unhappy. Unreasonably so, as thousands sent angry letters and death threats to the studio, griefing the creator for his vision. They called for a different ending, one with a more satisfying conclusion, with more action and a clearer sendoff for Shinji and the other characters.

Needless to say, creator Hideaki Anno obliged them.

Releasing in 1997, End of Evangelion is perhaps the most spiteful piece of artistry ever conceived. While the original series ended with a message of hope, this film turns the series on its head and creates a narrative that simply reeks of despair. Junko Enoshima could only dream of creating something so explicitly hopeless. While Shinji takes his first steps towards healing in the original ending, this film features a Shinji who has completely and utterly given up. He’s succumbed to his base desires, numb to the world around him in a way that’s turned him into a monster. His thoughts and actions are violent and abusive, he becomes completely deaf to the needs of those around him, and in a few short minutes of this film, he becomes almost completely irredeemable. He knows he’s become a despicable shell of a human being, but he almost seems to revel in that fact. This version of Shinji is utterly useless, and his actions - or rather inaction - causes the complete destruction of everyone he loves. This film is depressing, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s absolutely unconscionable...

And I loved it.

In context, it’s hard not to imagine that End of Evangelion is a deliberate slap in the face to the fans who so ruthlessly tore apart the original ending of the show. It completely reverses the progress that was made in the original series, opting to create an ending that is more intense and action-packed, but at the price of turning Shinji, the audience surrogate, into a complete bastard. Watching the film for the first time is almost infuriating, especially as Shinji repeatedly destroys everything in his wake through his own self-loathing. Yet, after letting the film sit in my mind for a while, I found it to be a truly unique piece of art. It’s hard to stomach, and I don’t think I can recommend it, especially on its own, but End of Evangelion is a truly fascinating film.

As a whole, I’m extremely happy I decided to go back in time to watch this old classic. I believe it holds up incredibly well overall, and it has so much to say in just 26 episodes. Watching it reminded me a lot of Samurai Jack and Cowboy Bebop, especially with its use of masterful long takes and thick atmosphere. If you haven’t given this anime a shot, I strongly recommend checking it out on Netflix or wherever you can get your hands on it. It may not be for everyone, but for this kaiju-loving gal, it exceeded every expectation.

#anime #anime review #movie review #neon genesis evangelion #shinji ikari #end of evangelion #review

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pynkhues · 4 years ago

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Was re-watching some of season one, and I still can't believe there wasn't fallout from Dean's cancer lie. That it was just dropped like that. As a writer is there some kind of time limit these things need to be addressed before it loses steam? As much as I still want Beth to confront Dean about it, I'm not sure if it'll mean the same thing after all this time?

Okay, I owe you a huge apology, anon, because you sent this months ago and it’s currently the oldest non-prompt ask in my inbox, and the only reason I haven’t answered it yet is that it’s such a good question, and one that I wanted to answer thoughtfully and - - well fully - - for you. I hope you’re still around and that you still might want the answer. 😊

It is frustrating that the show hasn’t had any fallout from the cancer lie yet. I feel like it’s been on my wishlist for every season since s1, haha, and I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m actually less bothered by Beth not having confronted Dean on it than by the fact that the show hasn’t mentioned it at all. After all, I think it’s believable that Beth would have a hard time dealing with it – the way she found out about that lie is now intrinsically tied to Dean getting shot, and the guilt that would be associated with that (and that we saw in the early part of season 2) feels grounded and authentic to me.

That said, I don’t believe for a moment that Annie wouldn’t have brought it up, and for us to get scenes like, say – 2.05, where Annie and Ruby bore witness to the reveal of another Dean-shaped betrayal in the conversation with Amber – feels disingenuous and like a missed opportunity to me. I feel like the cancer lie should’ve hung heavy over that conversation.

But! That’s not your question! Your question is if I as a writer think there’s a time limit on addressing these sorts of narrative moments, which is such a good question, like I said, and I think is probably something that’s subjective to how people like conflict in a story, but for me, the short answer here is no, I don’t think there’s an expiry date on something like that.

A lot of that comes down to how I understand and enjoy conflict in storytelling; which of course invites quite a few caveats around narrative and weight and characters, so hey! Let’s break that down a bit.

Conflict & Narrative Weight

Conflict is, of course, the driving force of any story. It’s what pushes characters through narrative, forces hands and creates tension, and what that conflict looks like is different story to story, arc to arc. There’s a lot out there on different types of conflict, but I typically like to break it down into four categories which encompass most of those:

Character vs Other Character

Character vs Self

Character vs Society (structures and institutions)

Character vs Environment

Generally speaking, stories can use any amount of these any number of times, and Good Girls in particular thrives on all four. Each of the girls have their own types of conflicts in each area, but I’d say that generally speaking they each have the focus of Character vs Self, and then a different primary conflict otherwise.

In s1 for instance, I’d break it down a bit like this:

I think it varies season-to-season of course, but in s1 at least, I’d position Beth’s conflict beyond her conflict with herself as primarily being with Other Characters, Ruby with Society, and Annie with Environment.

That’s not to lessen these other conflicts, this is just to say that they’re weighted differently. And they should be! Good stories have different weighted conflicts, because having life threatening dilemmas like Dean cutting the plate interspersed with lighter conflict like Annie trying to steal the canary interspersed with Dean trying to make up a story about why the fish died for his daughters, is what creates dynamic storytelling that has a rhythm and feels full of light and shade.

Point is, while the girls each have conflicts in all four areas, they’re weighted differently for the three of them.

In s1, Ruby has conflict with other characters like Shirley and Mary Pat, but they’re typically short-lived with lower stakes compared to Beth’s with Dean, Rio, Turner and Mary Pat, and alternatively, neither Beth or Annie have the same high stakes societal conflict that Ruby has with battling the hospital for Sara’s treatment.

And again – Beth and Ruby’s homes might become a battleground occasionally, but it’s got nothing on the way many of the environments Annie operates in have been heavy conflict zones – from almost being raped in her home in 1.01, to Fine & Frugal being an insanely hostile setting for Annie across both S1 and S2, from the smaller moments i.e. Greg springing Annie to tell her he’s suing her for custody, to the more extreme – Boomer trying to coerce her into sex, Boomer planting drugs in her locker and getting her arrested, the bodies being stored in the cool room, Noah’s infiltration. These are extremely major conflicts positioned around Annie and her environment.

These conflicts are both major and minor, episodic and long-term, resolved and left to hang, temporarily or forever. The point of all of them though is they’re there to build story, character and tension, and how they’re weighted, generally speaking, depends on their purpose and the character focus.

Dean’s cancer lie was, in a lot of ways, a response to his already-existing conflict with Beth. It originally gave the appearance of a snowball effect, which is a writing technique that this show loves, haha. The problem is, that’s not what happened with the cancer lie storyline. We didn’t get the cathartic end where the snowball builds and builds and hits, instead it was interrupted, which affects audience expectations.

What we expected was this:

But instead we got this:

(Sorry for my terrible post-it note diagrams, haha)

Basically that articular conflict was usurped by Rio’s conflict with Beth, which cut the snowball effect off mid-roll.

We should’ve had our big, huge fight – that moment where the snowball has gained all it;s weight and hits – only it was stopped.

Which! Isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Those dramatic stops of narrative arcs happen all the time, and many do it really well! Think of something like The Red Wedding in Game of Thrones, where the snowballing arc of Robb Stark’s rise was so suddenly stopped, and hell, I even think, in the moment, that cutting off Beth and Dean’s conflict for Rio’s dramatic re-entry into Beth’s life was extremely effective.

The difference is that the loss of Robb’s rise as a result of The Red Wedding was still weighted heavily, just not in the way we expected, and as a result was felt for the rest of the series (or at least, y’know, it was before the show completely fell apart, haha), whereas Good Girls seemed to bury the Beth and Dean conflict, and instead blanket it with a new layer of snow.

Beth got Dean shot.

That was the betrayal now, and that is what the first few episodes of season 2 gave weight to, and while that conflict evolved again, the cancer lie never quite got unburied.

Does that mean it never will?

Not necessarily at all, but to talk about that, I think I need to breakdown what I like to call Touchstone Conflicts and Landmine Conflicts.

Touchstone Conflicts

When I talk about touchstone conflicts, what I generally mean is the conflicts that are revisited frequently and come to be major parts of the character’s journey. These are the meat and potatoes of any story and what drives individual scenes as well as episodes and arcs and seasons.

Touchstone conflicts are conflicts Good Girls usually does really well. Think about how Ruby vs Society is revisited frequently through her troubles paying for Sara’s medication, then surgery, then different medication, and how that’s not only compounded with specialists, the hospital and the insurance company, but also her conflicts with Stan and Sara. The purpose of this is to keep Ruby’s motivation really present in our minds as an audience, but also to tease out Ruby (and later Stan’s) evolving sense of morality, which is pivotal to her conflict with herself.

Similarly with Ruby, I think she has the best touchstone conflict arc across the series in her worry around Stan finding out about what she’s doing in s1, him finding out in 1.10 (Oof at that particular snowball hitting), and then with him coming through for her in 2.01 before she gets her awesome ‘I’m that bitch’ speech in 2.02. It continues to be a touchstone conflict after that too, but I think it definitely peaks overall in there.

The thing about touchstone conflicts though is that they’re so regularly revisited that they become close to the surface and thus very present overall in the feel of the show which in turn means that they can be gateways to new conflicts and new scenarios. Annie’s conflict with herself and her own insecurities for instance are touched on so regularly in so many different ways, that when they build into conflicts with other characters – whether that be with Nancy, Beth or Ruby – it feels unavoidable in ways that are usually (although not always!) narratively satisfying.

With Beth and Dean, the cancer lie was a touchstone conflict in s1 along with Dean’s cheating, but while Dean’s cheating has now been a touchstone conflict across all three seasons, the cancer lie feels buried, as I said above, which can make it what I like to call a landmine conflict.

Landmine Conflict

Landmine conflicts are ones that are frequently established, left for a while – sometimes for chapters or entire series at a time – and then later explode. A lot of shows do this really well (and a lot really badly, haha) – Bojack Horseman, Breaking Bad and The Sopranos are three shows that jump to mind as being good with landmine conflict – but a lot of shows do try it to varying degrees of success, particularly as landmine conflict typically makes for a buzzier story / episode than touchstone does.

Because here’s the thing – where touchstone conflicts are about building towards greater conflict, landmines are about exploding conflict open.

Good Girls, to me, is a show that wants to be great at landmine conflict, and isn’t. And look, it’s no secret that I love the show, but I don’t think landmine conflicts have ever been its strong suit. I mean - - the loft scene in 2.13 was definitely An Attempt, haha, and I think Boomer’s ‘death’ in 2.03 which then exploded in 2.12 was a slightly more successful attempt, but not overall that satisfying.

The point of landmine conflict though, in my experience of them, is usually based around three things:

Marking a drastic shift in the narrative / character arcs / relationships

Contextualising or recontextualising prior scenes and character moments to give them new narrative weight; and

Shock value and hype.

I’m tired of talking about 2.13, so let’s talk about the Boomer’s Alive reveal instead.

As a landmine, this did all of those things, although how effective that was is of course up for interpretation. It did though mark a significant shift in the story in terms of how the girls were going to try and get out from under Turner’s thumb, and it had a huge impact on Annie’s sense of self and her relationship with Marion, which would see an end put to that touchstone conflict untill it was revisited gently in 3.08 with Marion’s death.

Yes, but what does this have to do with the cancer lie, Sophie?

Right! Sorry!

My point is that I do think the cancer lie would be an (uncharacteristically, haha) effective landmine conflict for this show if they weighted it appropriately, because you’re exactly right in your ask – bringing it up randomly now would not be satisfying, because it’s no longer a touchstone conflict in either Beth or Dean’s arcs. It’s not one that sits close to the surface – it’s buried deep – and that doesn’t mean that it can’t or shouldn’t be dug back up, but if it is, it needs to go off.

And at this point in the story, I think the only ways that that could effectively be done is in either:

A divorce

Beth forcing Dean’s hand in the midst of another conflict

In a major fight between Beth and either Ruby or Annie where it’s thrown in her face; or

Some combination of the above

We need to feel it at this point in the story if they are going to use it, because it’s been left so long dormant that to revisit it needs to be shocking, it needs to mark a drastic shift, like I said above, but most importantly, it needs to contextualise the two seasons it stayed buried.

It needs to give the silence around the lie weight.

If it doesn’t, it will feel lacklustre and it will feel like too-little, too-late. To so forcibly blanket what was a major touchstone conflict of season one – not just with the characters it involved directly, but the characters on the peripheral of that particular story too – doesn’t diffuse the storyline, and it shouldn’t. I think we can all still hear it ticking, and whether or not it goes off is up to the writers, of course, but I do hope they pull the pin, and I do hope we all feel the bang when they do.

#omg this got long #haha #beth boland #dean boland #gg season 1 #dis/honesty #writing #kind of #gg season 4 #beth x dean #staying's worse than leaving #welcome to my ama #nbc good girls #Anonymous

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wtnv-panels · 6 years ago

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Good Morning Night Vale, episode 1: “Pilot”

Symphony Sanders: A friendly desert community where the sun is hot…

Meg Bashwiner: The moon is beautiful and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep.

Hal Lublin: [Cecil voice] Good morning, Night Vale.

Symphony: I was like ooh, I got a little chill when you said that Hal, that was cute.

Hal: Thank you. I exist to give people chills, that’s what I’m here for. I’m a chill monster.

Symphony: You’re very talented.

Hal: Some people say I have no chill, [laughter] but I think I just proved differently.

Symphony: I think you have lots of chill.

Hal: Thank you.

Meg: All right everyone. [laughs] I think you have the most chill.

Hal: Oo!

Meg: Hey everyone, welcome to Good Morning Night Vale. A new podcast where we recap every episode of Welcome to Night Vale!

Symphony: Woo!

Meg: Woo! Everyone’s afraid to talk. [laughter] I know.

Symphony: [laughs] I think I’ll get better later but right now I’m like, do I say yes?

Meg: Welcome to the clunky intro of our brand new show. My name is Meg Bashwiner and I am the woman who talks to you at the end of every Welcome to Night Vale episode. I also play the voice Deb, sentient pyatch o’ haze, and I am the MC of the live shows, if you’ve been to one of our live shows you’ve seen me, for the most part, unless you came to the show in Birmingham in 2015 you didn’t see me, I wasn’t at that one. Other than that, that’s me. Who else is on the call with me, who else is here? Silence.

Hal: Oh I was saying ladies first, but I’ll go.

Symphony: I was waiting for you, you go.

Hal: OK. My name is Hal Lublin and I am the voice of Steve Carlsberg and I have been since… 2013. Wow. I can’t believe it’s been since 2013, my mind is ready to explode, with happiness, and I’m really excited to be a part of this and to stroll back through Night Vale with the both of you.

Symphony: And I’m Symphony Sanders and I play teen militia leader Tamika Flynn, in Welcome to the Night Vale. And I have since… I also think 2013, I’m not sure, someone would have to tell me. And I’m super excited to go through all of these episodes with you guys.

Meg: I’m also excited to go through all these episodes, it’s been fun, it’s nice to take a look back on the, oh lots and lots of episodes. By the time this airs, I think there will be like a 129, 130 episodes of Welcome to Night Vale…

Hal: Wow.

Meg: ..which is really wonderful.

Symphony: That’s a lot of episodes, Meg.

Meg: Not to mention all the live shows and uh, and yeah all the things. Yes so we’re going back, we’re gonna be talking with some people who are involved in the Welcome to Night Vale world. On this episode, we’re going to hear from the voice of Night Vale, Cecil Baldwin. We’ll chat with him about his experiences and his reactions to the pilot episode of this show, and we’ll have that for you later, which is really exciting. Yeah so we’ll be hearing from different people involved in the Night Vale world over the course of the podcast, and in this episode specifically we’ll be hearing from Cecil, and we’ll be talking about the different episodes of the show, our personal reactions to them, as well as the global reactions to them.

Hal: Can I jump in for a second and say what I love about the show that we’re doing?

Meg: Please.

Hal: Even if it’s the first episode and the first, five minutes of it.

Symphony: [laughs] Yes.

Hal: This is what’s cool about it. For all you Night Vale fans out there who have not been able to come to a Comic Con where we’ve done a panel, who have never got to see us in person or gotten to sort of learn a little bit about what’s going on behind the curtain of the show. I think it’s really cool that you get three people who have been involved in the show for a very long time, sort of walking you through it, and not only talking about what happened but giving you some insight and we’ll be answering your questions on occasion as well. So this is really for all of you out there who are fans of the show, to give you another layer of Night Vale, maybe answer some questions you had, or raise some new ones if we’re doing our job.

Symphony: Agreed. [laughter]

Hal: Was I wrong?

Symphony: Correct.

Hal: Was I bad?

Symphony: No you were correct.

Meg: No that’s really beautiful.

Hal: OK, good.

Meg: Yeah, it’s really beautiful.

Symphony: It was just such a good, you really impacted us, it was such a good description. [laughs]

Meg: Yeah. I was speechless. I’m really looking forward to seeing where this podcast takes us. So let’s get down to business, we’re doing the pilot of Welcome to Night Vale, we’re discussing that today. The plot description of which is: “A new dog park opens in Night Vale. Carlos, a scientist, visits and discovers some interesting things, seismic things. Plus a helpful guide to surveillance helicoptering.” I’m a really good reader. [laughter] So yeah.

Symphony: That’s why you do this fictional podcast.

Meg: Yeah, that’s why I do this fictional podcast. So we, to reel us in, do you want to talk about what our reactions were?

Symphony: Yeah. I mean if you really look, not even that deeply into it, a lot of the things that come up in the first episode are some of our biggest fan things, like the dog park obviously what were, or so many people are known for talking about hooded figures and the Sheriff’s Secret Police, and kind of introducing the town of Night Vale and immediately putting you in this space of, uh, distrust. [chuckles] Right? And you can’t go in the dog park, even though a new one was built, dogs aren’t allowed in there, people aren’t allowed in there. Basically don’t acknowledge it.

Meg: Yeah I was struck by that too, by how so much of the Night Vale world that we know today existed in this first episode. So we’ve got the dog park, we’ve got hooded figures, we’ve got the Sheriff’s Secret Police, we’ve got Old Woman Josie and angels and Big Rico’s Pizza and the Desert Bluffs rivalry, like there’s so, and Carlos and Cecil, like he says in this episode “I fell in love with Carlos”, Cecil says it’s. it’s just like, there’s so much of what makes Night Vale Night Vale just in this first 20 minutes.

Hal: Yeah I think the hallmark of really good storytelling is, rather than beginning at the beginning is to start in the middle, and you are dropped into the middle of what feels like a fully realized world. And it’s a testament to how it was written that all those elements of the pilot have just been built on. And even that thing that, the great humor in Night Vale for me, the thing that I enjoy the most is that contrast in the ordinary with the fantastic that’s being treated as completely mundane and, like standard. So there’s no wink to the audience, there’s no we get this is weird, it’s just this is the world you’re in, and that allows you to sort of jump into it completely. And I love that Joseph and Jeffrey joke rhythm they have where they’re like, there are no dogs allowed in the dog park. Do not look at the dog park, do not taste the dog, like that building rhythm, where they just attack a type of announcement or an angle of something over and over again and keep building on it, I really loved seeing that from the beginning. I forgot, I hadn’t listened to this in years and years and years. And it was really interesting to see how formed their voice was for this from the jump.

Meg: Yeah I hadn’t listened to this episode until like it was probably, this episode premiered June 15 2012, which is Night Vale’s birthday. Almost six years ago to the airing of this episode. That was the last time I listened to it, when Joseph was like “hi do you wanna listen to this thing I made?” And I was like sure hun, you know, what do you got? And that was the last time I listened to it, and it really is great to be able to look back at it and hear so much of their voice and also Cecil’s voice, and the development of the character of Cecil as our reliable unreliable narrator.

Hal: What did you think the first time you heard it, way back then when it was like listen to this thing I made, what was your impression of it?

Meg: I think I was initially just, it was so different than anything else I’d seen Joseph make before and also so, I’m always impressed by Cecil the actor. Cecil the person, you know I love and is a dear friend and Cecil the actor blows me away every time. No matter how many, how long I’ve worked with him and how long I’ve known him, so I was really impressed by his voice acting and how much world he was able to build just behind the microphone. The world of audio fiction was in a newer place then, so it was interesting to kind of see what one man and one microphone could build and that was really cool, I remember being like, this is cool. And you know, that was before Night Vale was a thing, so I was like this is cool, what do you want for dinner? Like [laughter], Joseph you made a nice thing, it’s great.

Symphony: Yeah along that..

Meg: I remember him sa-

Symphony: Along that line, where did you think this was going? Did you think it was gonna go anywhere, did you think it was just a fun project that he is working on? What were your initial ideas?

Meg: I remember him saying to me: “I feel like this could be thing.” Which is interesting now, cause it definitely has been a thing, but at the time it was like he never, we’d have projects that we worked on, we’d had projects that we did. And I think the confidence that he had in this project was different than what we had seen before from him. And he had definitely had successful projects before, but definitely nothing with the audience and impact that Welcome to Night Vale has had. So… yeah.

Symphony: And so past this pilot when, cause this happened in 2012 but like, when did you guys, do you remember the day that you were like oh this is, more than just a thing you do?

Meg: Yes. I don’t remember the specific day, but it was about a year later.

Symphony: Nice.

Meg: The first year of Night Vale was great, people listened to it, Joseph and Jeffrey were like, hey some of our friends have listened to this show, how great is that? I remember there was like one fan that we saw, Joseph would search Twitter to see if anyone was listening to it and we would often get people being like up all night, [vale]. [Vale] is the verb in Spanish does it mean I think it, what does [vale] mean? So we would get those tweets, we’d search for Welcome Night Vale tweets, we’d get people in Spanish saying [vale]. And then eventually we saw people talking about and there was this one fan who’s named Dana, and Dana would tweet about listening to the show with friends, and there was one tweet that was from Dana that was like “Mom, stop ftrying to bring us enchiladas, we’re listening to Welcome to Night Vale.”

Symphony: Aww!

Meg: And so we thought that was really super sweet, and so they named the character Dana after Dana the person who was tweeting at us. [chuckles]

Hal: That’s cool.

Symphony: That’s so funny. Also I love enchiladas.

Meg: Yeah. But if you’re trying to listen to Welcome to Night Vale, and your Mom was trying to bring you enchiladas, I would personally be like thanks Mom, but…

Symphony: Right, it’s like a listening snack.

Meg: No shade to Dana but [laughter]. So yeah, about a year into it it started to get some tractions. We did our first birthday party at a space in New York that had about 100 people come to it, which was awesome. So cool that we had 100 people that knew about us. And then things changed pretty rapidly. In July of 2013, we used to sell Welcome to Night Vale T-shirts on Amazon, and I think we printed like 50 of them. And once a week or so, we’d get an order for a T-shirt. Joseph would package it up and take it to the post office and send it out. And then over the course of a weekend, we got an order for 1000 T-shirts. Before Amazon shut it off, because it kind of went out of control super quick.

Symphony: It’s like too much.

Meg: It was too much, it was like there was, we didn’t have the stock for that, so we went and had more T-shirts printed…

Symphony: You broke the system.

Meg: One weekend just sitting in our studio apartment in Brooklyn, packaging T-shirts, a thousand of them. Which is a number that doesn’t really make sense until you actually sit down and do it, and it was so hot..

Symphony: That’s a lot.

Meg: I sat in the apartment and I just did it, and I think I watched like the first season of A Chef’s Life on Netflix while I did it. And I was using packaging type, touching it over and over again so I had no skin left on my finger tips at the end of it.

Symphony: It was just slowly pulling off layers of skin.

Meg: Yeah. And then I made Joseph take me out for ramen and.. [laughter] That was my payment for packaging 1000 T-shirts was my husband or my boyfriend at the time took me out for ramen.

Symphony: That’s like, in Seinfe- I probably can’t mention that. In that one show where that lady died, she was sending out her wedding invitations and she kept licking the stamps, licking the stamps and the glue was poisonous, good thing you’re still alive though.

Hal: Wait…

Meg: Yeah, I still have use of my fingers.

Hal: Why can’t we mention that show? Are we restricted from (--)?

Symphony: I mean can you?

Hal: Sure.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: I don’t know the rules of audio recording.

Hal: I’ll tell you what.

Meg: Seinfeld! McDonald’s!

Symphony: [laughs hysterically]

Hal: I’ve been around the block and let me say something, Jerry Seinfeld. You’re welcome to come on this podcast anytime you wanna show your face.

Symphony: Yes, yes!

Hal: We’ll all get into an old car with you, you can take us out for coffee.

Symphony: Ooh, for coffee!

Hal: We can complain about comedy, it’ll be great. Making that offer right now.

Symphony: I’m very funny.

Hal: He who will not be named.

Meg: I will make sure I say nothing funny. [laughter]

Symphony: I won’t even smile the whole time.

Hal: I do love that show, but he complains all the time.

Meg: Yeah, it’s gotta be hard being him.

Hal: Yes, really difficult.

Meg: Anyway, that’s not to throw shade on Jerry.

Hal: No.

Meg: Yeah so that’s, we kind of got off on our lovely little tangent talking about the very beginning and where we are now.

Symphony: Yeah. But we can go back, look…

Meg: Let’s go back.

Symphony: That’s the great thing about a nice conversation. Let’s go back, let’s talk about the beginnings of Celios, the beginnings of Carlos and Cecil.

Meg: Yeah, the [C’s/seeds?) [0:14:11].

Symphony: Before it was Cecil, just nameless announcer, just announcer. Or narrator, right? But people I guess didn’t even, did they reference him, what did they do before he had a name?

Meg: I dunno. I dunno if anyone listened to the show, like (if we had) fanbase before the.. [laughter]

Hal: Yeah, we’re in the early early days. It struck me, was it weird for either of you now, listening to it through the lens of six years of content almost? Five and a half, wherever we’re up to as of this recording, that everything sort of takes on extra meaning? For me in particular, playing somebody who’s like not the conspiracy theorist, but the guy who seems to know the truth about what’s going on? That through that lens I was like, he’s lying, he’s a puppet. I can hear it right now, because all of that was just being established. Did either of you get that sense or am I just going in too deep?

Symphony: No I think that is like, I’m not as conspiracy theorist but I am also dazzled by magic. And there are things in the early episodes of Welcome to Night Vale that I’m like, how did they know?

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: Like how did they know? And I just love it, I like going back and listening to and I’m like oh my gosh, talking about like, seismic activity and there’s something happening in Night Vale like how he was talking about the different, how it was very interesting scientifically. Just finding out those things, you’re just like oh now I’m like, did they know from the beginning? But then now I know because they’re my friends I’m like, they didn’t know. Or maybe they did, who knows? Maybe they’re possessed.

Meg: They’re probably possessed. We’ll find out later…

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: .. in season 18 of Welcome to Night Vale, it’ll be revealed.

Hal: [chuckles] I remember talking to Joseph, and this had to be some time in I think 2013 early 2014. And I know at that point, things were still being sort of plotted out. Like hey we had some thoughts about what, and that conversation was about Steve and Cecil’s relationship and maybe Cecil’s not the most reliable narrator. So now that’s something, that sort of rung in my head and it developed over the course of a couple years, but now going back, when you go back with that knowledge of what’s to come, it colors everything that you hear. Which I think is a hallmark of how good the writing is that they were able to take it, even if that’s not something they had planned out for 2014-2015, that they got there in a way that the internal logic stays intact. As a whole.

Symphony: Yeah. That you can go back and relisten to stuff and you’re like, oh yeah there’s no gaps where you’re like oh, that was totally forgotten about. It’s not like Lost.

Hal: Yeah, you’re watching like they don’t even know, he doesn’t even know what’s gonna happen, I can’t believe I’m listening like I have more knowledge than the character does.

Symphony: Right.

Hal: And it’s you’re getting to watch them, you get to rediscover it by listening along, which I think is really really cool.

Meg: That is really cool. I hadn’t thought about that, but it is a pretty cool experience to be like uh, I’m the reliable narrator know cause I know.

Symphony: Cause you’re from the future.

Meg: I’m from the future.

Hal: Oh my goodness, we’re all time travelers! This is very exciting.

Symphony: Ah, you guys!

Meg: (You’re all) Is this the best time to time travel?

Symphony: [laughs] I feel like I’m in Quantum Leap! I’m just gonna start mentioning major television shows. [laughter]

Meg: Yes, hey I think it’s fun, they can all come for us, they can all come directly for us.

Hal: Yeah what are they gonna do, send us to Cheers? [laughter]

Symphony: The Borg gonna get us from Star Trek?

Meg: Yeah I mean we're just like Raymond, everybody loves us. [laughter]

Hal: Sesame Street. You were saying, Meg?

Meg: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was just thinking. Alright, so yeah I think it was interesting what we were talking about for a moment, with the sparks of love between Cecil and Carlos. I think it’s interesting to, this show was not one that describes people’s physical characteristic very much, but Carlos is described right away. His teeth and hair are described, which when I wrote that down I was like, teeth and hair! [laughter]

Symphony: What wonderful notes.

Meg: What wonderful notes, yeah, and Cecil’s description “I fell in love instantly”. And so they describe his perfect hair and his teeth like a military cemetery,a nd that he is beautiful.

Symphony: Hey, you like what you like, I guess.

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: The lens of Cecil’s developed.

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: Is that how you felt about Joseph the first time you saw him?

Meg: I felt, being honest about the first time I met Joseph, I did not think that he was uh.. I thought he was gorgeous, I mean like he’s a good-looking dude.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: But we did not get along on a personal level, I think cause I didn’t quite understand who he was, and then once I got to know him I fell in love, over time slash instantly. But yeah we met in the box office of the Kraine Theater, which is, the Kraine Theater is the place I met Joseph, I met Jeffrey Cranor, and I met Cecil Baldwin. So it’s a sacred, sacred space, yeah when I met Joseph and..

Symphony: Most of the important men in your life.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: Yeah. When I, all of them except for, you know like my Dad and Hal Lublin.

Hal: Correct.

Meg: I met my Dad in the hospital when I was born. [laughter] It was a good day. Like I met my Mom and my Dad and maybe my sister all in the same day, which was pretty great.

Symphony: That’s a big day!

Hal: That’s pretty important.

Meg: Did I know at the time like how important these people would be to me? No, I was an infant, I was a newborn but, I felt it I think, maybe. [laughter] Alright. So when I first, but this isn’t a love podcast. When I first met Joseph I was like, who is this kid? What does he want? And then yeah we became friends and I, only wanted things from him from that point out.

Symphony: Then you made him yours.

Meg: Yeah so then I realized how wonderful and smart and, I always knew he was attractive, he is a good looking kid.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: He really is. Anyway, alright. Other things in this episode, there’s the NRA bumper stickers.

Symphony: OK, here’s the thing.

Meg: The intr-

Symphony: Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.

Meg: I wasn’t gonna say anything, I was making..

Symphony: I’m sorry. I got really excited, because I was thinking about this in the first two episodes, they make their stance very very clear about where they stand with like governments, and the NRA and guns and all sorts of business like that. So to all of you (friendlings) out there, who love your second amendment, we love you too, however listen to the episodes.

Hal: Yeah, it is really striking, I agree. I had the same, I wrote that down too that idea of like, you know where they stand right away and sadly, it’s really sad that six years later, that is really relevant to the point that listening to it I was like hold on, this could have been written any time in the last year.

Symphony: Three weeks ago.

Hal: It could have been an hour ago, and it would feel just as relevant. Which is, that’s a piece of commentary about a lot of different things, but in particular it’s..

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: It’s nice to see like, it’s very much them, and what’s inside of them and then writing their, what’s in their heart. Probably with the idea that hey it doesn’t matter who listens to us, we’re gonna make something that we care about. And that comes through big time, in moments like that in particular.

Meg: Yeah if Night Vale is an American city, which it’s a city in the American southwest, it’s set in the America so the people who, we can’t hide from that, we can’t run from that whether it is this totally bizarre world where up is down and down is up, it is still footed in America. And so there’s these things that are unescapable about it. And yeah, Joseph and Jeffrey are not ones to ever really hide their opinions when it comes to things like gun violence…

Hal: True.

Symphony: True. So and as we have also evidenced by, when we travel throughout this beautiful country of ours, I remember there has been airports that we’ve come through, where there’s been a sign that says: “Did you forget to take the gun out of your luggage?” And I’m like oh, I never put one in there, dang it!

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: I guess I forgot to bring that.

Meg: I can’t bring dry shampoo.

Symphony: Right?

Meg: But.. [laughter] Like literally, you’re like we can’t bring that dry shampoo.

Symphony: What about my yoghurt?

Meg: What, hang on, sidenote. Tangent, why are old people always trying to bring yoghurt on the airplane? Like it’s a liquid, friends, like…

Symphony: [laughs] Constant struggle.

Hal: Oh my god. One time I was at the metal detector at LAX and I was behind a group of older German tourists, and it was like they huddled up beforehand, they were like alright, which rule do you wanna break cause we shouldn’t all do the same one.

Symphony: What?

Hal: I’ll have a pocket full of coins, meanwhile you’ll have a gallon of water in a camel bag that you’ve strapped on that you don’t understand you can’t have for a variety of reasons. [laughter] And then could you be juggling grenades as you try to walk through? That would be great, alright, break. And it took forever, it felt like I mean, again probably wasn’t that long but it felt like nine days, of waiting for them to get it together and realize that they can’t drive a car through the metal detector. It was bizarre.

Symphony: You grew a beard in that time.

Hal: I grew a long wispy bread. I scratched several lines, both horizontal and vertical, into the wall to mark how long I’d been there.

Meg: Alright. Welcome to this very important podcast where we talk about, how things can be frustrating at lines at airport security.

Hal: Yeah. We’re so sorry (it’s all)..

Symphony: It’s all part of the Night Vale experience.

Hal: Yeah. I was gonna say we were talking about Joseph before, I wanted to bring it to the weather. Meg: Yeah, the weather. Let’s tease it like they do on the show so we’ll be like, next up we’re gonna talk to Welcome to Night Vale’s voice, Cecil Baldwin, but first – we’re gonna talk about the weather. [sings] Da-daa..

Symphony: That was a good, that was a good teaser.

Meg: We teased it. Really teased that.

Symphony: We teased the shit out of it. [laughter]

Meg: Yeah, so the weather. These and More than These…

Symphony: It was Joseph!

Meg: By Joseph Fink.

Symphony: That’s your husband.

Hal: I didn’t know who, I was listening to it, I was like this guy sounds super familiar, but I don’t, I can’t place him musically to any other songs that I would have heard from him.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: And then I’d get to the end of the episode where like, (-) the weather was These and More than These by Joseph Fink, I’m like get the fuck out of town!

Symphony: Right?

Hal: That was Joseph? And…

Symphony: He’s such a good singer!

Hal: He has a beautiful singing voice, how do I not know this after all this time? And it’s an enjoyable song.

Symphony: It’s a good song.

Meg: It is, the lyrics are great, they’re super weird and fun.

Symphony: OK so first of all, let’s talk about the weather being a song.

Meg: Yeah, this is the first time that happened.

Symphony: The first time I ever, I remember back in the day when I first listened to the episode, I remember I was like, OK and now the weather. Cause it had other installments like Community Calendar and whatever and you’re like OK, that’s cool that makes sense it’s like weird and kind of funny. But then the weather is music. What a brilliant idea. And now that I know Joseph as well, it makes so much sense. Joseph and Jeffrey, it makes so much sense because they are so focused in music, they both love music so much, and Joseph especially loves independent music. And I admire that. And listening to this show, I have found more musicians and more music that I would have never ever heard of in my entire life.

Hal: Sure.

Symphony: And it’s like getting a recommendation from a friend, right? You’re like, they’re like you would like this song, and they play the song and it’s like wow. But this song in particular being the first song, I keep thinking I’m like, was he just like oh, I’m gonna put this song on there, or had he thought oh I’m gonna try to see if I can find other people, or whatever. I guess I don’t know that bit.

Meg: I mean knowing Joseph and knowing his process behind this, he was definitely like well OK what do I have the rights to? OK, something that I own.

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: And then yeah, I don’t know his process behind selecting. Joseph has a lot of songs, he’s had some be on the weather, he’s had some that weren’t on the weather that just exist. I used to go see him play at open mics and (-) places in New York City, and he would play his original songs, and he would also play a Leonard Cohen cover or two, because that’s how adorable he is. So I think, I don’t know why he selected this one “These and More than These”, but I like it, I think it’s really fitting in the first episode, I think you’re gonna get an interesting.. Joseph’s voice as a songwriter as well as Joseph’s voice as a writer.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: So yeah I think he was first starting to place the weather, he was like who do I know that will say yes to this, and he was the one who could do that for the first episode. [chuckles]

Symphony: It me, you know.

Meg: It me, and now it’s branched out like so many people, people like the Mountain Goats have premiered songs on the show and..

Symphony: That’s phenomenal.

Meg: ..Dessa has premiered songs on the show and people have, like The Felice Brothers have premiered stuff so it’s like, there’s all these bands that we love and have loved forever, and musicians that are putting their work on our show and it’s so cool to start from here and get to a bigger place.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: As well as the submissions. There was a while we were taking submissions for the weather, and we got so much great music from people. And that’s the point where it’s like, we still use those submissions, we opened submissions I think for like a couple weeks, and we still use some of those submissions. As there were just hundreds of great great songs.

Hal: Amazing.

Symphony: But that’s also how we get introduced to so many great artist that we’ve heard from and once that we’ve worked with. Mary Epworth and Eliza Rickman and Dessa and Doomtree and all sorts of people, people from all over the world which is really phenomenal and actually I’m going to see Dessa this weekend, for her new Chime tour so I’m pretty excited about that.

Meg: It’s a great album.

Symphony: It’s so good.

Meg: She hasn’t made anything I don’t like. She hasn’t sent a text message I didn’t like. Like every piece of her writing is that good. [laughs]

Symphony: She’s a poet.

Meg: She’s a poet, yeah seriously. She Facebook comments in a beautiful way like she just.. [laughter] Which is a, super (sick) (--). Yeah it’s like, we get to meet such great people and luckily we get to work with them when they came on tour with us like we’ve had, and we’ve really bonded with all of them. I think tour will bond you to people.

Symphony: Yes.

Meg: It’s cool to bond to people who are like, they start as outsiders and then they become insiders.

Symphony: They’re from the inner circle. Actually we should, just a sidenote, we should have a maybe special episode talking about tour, I feel like we’ll talk about it anyways but, be like oh tour shows, Investigators… what else did we do, Ghost Stories?

Meg: Yeah we did Ghost Stories, Old Oak Doors we didn’t tour but we did it live.

Hal: The Debate.

Meg: Condos we sort of toured, The Debate.

Symphony: That’ll be really interesting when we come across those. And we’ll have to go over the controversy of, what we call the controversy of the original Tamika Flynn. [laughter]

Meg: I think we will, stay tuned audience, we’ll go over that controversy.

Symphony: It’s me, it’s always been me!

Meg: There’s also the controversy of the original Carlos.

Hal: Oh yeah, for sure!

Symphony: Yes, we’ll talk about that with Jefe.

Meg: Yeah, with our Jefe and maybe even with Dylan Maroon, short of Dylan Marron.

Symphony: Ooh!

Meg: We have more fun guests coming, but speaking of more fun guests coming, we go now to our conversation with Cecil Baldwin.

Hal: Stay right there. Good Morning Night Vale will return after a brief break.

Meg: We go now to our conversation with Cecil Baldwin. Alright, so who do we have with us on the line, who could it be?

Cecil Baldwin: Wait, is that me?

Meg: It’s you.

Hal: Do you know who you are? You get three guesses.

Cecil: It’s me!

Hal: Alright, that’s fun.

Cecil: [chuckling] That’s one. Also me! And my telephone.

Meg: Cecilia Joyce Baldwin.

Cecil: That’s right. It’s me Cecil Baldwin!

Meg: So Cecil Baldwin, what is it that you do for Welcome to Night Vale? [laughter]

Cecil: What don’t I do for Welcome to Night Vale?

Meg: True.

Cecil: I’m a voice actor on Welcome to Night Vale. I play the character of Cecil Palmer, although we’re talking about the pilot episode..

Symphony: Yes.

Meg: Sure are.

Cecil: So there was no Cecil and there was no Palmer. It was just “guy”. It was like, dude on mic.

Symphony: Unbodied voice.

Cecil: Just the voice of.

Meg: Yeah. You were the voice of for a very long time before you got proper-named.

Cecil: Yeah.

Meg: So yeah we have Cecil Baldwin with us, Cecil is of course of the voice of Night Vale, the velvet host of Night Vale Radio, the velvet-voiced vost, the velvet… voiced host.

Symphony: Yeah. That’s a lot of words.

Meg: So as you mentioned, we’re discussing the pilot episode. So the pilot episode aired June 15, 2012. What was your life like in June 15 in 2012? [chuckles]

Cecil: Oh my god. If I was better at multitasking, I would totally look up my Facebook page from 2012, just to see what was up but I literally can’t talk and uh, handle technology at the same time so…

Symphony: You need a time hop.

Cecil I know I know, I was thinking about that. See, had I done any preparation for this show, I would have already done that. But the prep I did was listen to the pilot twice, while I made dinner tonight. So you know, I was like that’s enough. What was my life like? I was probably waiting tables six days a week at a restaurant in Chelsea, New York. Probably doing Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Trying desperately to get onto Law and Order [laughter] or, oh man, what was…

Symphony: Like every New York actor.

Cecil: Like every New York actor. What was the one on HBO? That was like…

Meg: Carnivale?

Cecil: No, no no it was like..

Meg: Oh no, the one.

Cecil: Like (five points) New York, old rough New York.

Meg: Yeah yeah, with Steve Buscemi.

Cecil: With Steve Buscemi, yeah.

Hal: Boardwalk Empire.

Cecil: Boardwalk Empire. I was like…

Meg: Boardwalk Empire, yes.

Cecil: That was like, as long as that show was on, somebody kept calling me back and I was like maybe this time, and I never got it. So that was probably what I was doing, [chuckles] at that point in my life and living in like, the tiniest apartment in West Harlem with the tallest man that could possibly fit into that apartment with me. And that was where I recorded this pilot episode.

Hal: You were living in a sitcom. [laughter]

Symphony: He is (-).

Cecil: Yeah, it was like a sad kind of foul-smelling sitcom.

Hal: I have a question for you, Cecil.

Cecil: Yeah.

Hal: This is Hal Lublin, I play your uh, brother outside the law, Steve Carlsberg. Just to introduce myself, it’s me.

Cecil: Who are you?

Hal: We’ve roomed together, we’re road roomies.

Cecil: Who am I?

Symphony: Me too!

Meg: Me too.

Cecil: I think we’ve, have we all roomed?

Meg: I’ve, yeah.

Symphony: Everybody except for like, I haven’t stayed with Hal before.

Meg: I haven’t stayed with Hal either, so yes Cecil you’re the unique one in this conversation, you’ve roomed with Hal.

Cecil: Nice.

Meg: We’ve all roomed with you.

Cecil: I’m the spoke of the wheel. Everybody’s like..

Symphony: Cecil’s gotten around.

Cecil: Next tour Cecil has his own room, it’s fine. [laughter]

Hal: So my question is, which room mate was the best? No I, my actual question…

Cecil: Which room mate was... [laughter]

Symphony: Wow.

Hal: In (listening to -)..

Cecil: And the (--) breakfast (-).

Meg: Symphony Sanders is a pretty good room mate. I’ll say it. I mean I can’t speak (--) but Symphony Sanders is an excellent room mate. She always brings you water…

Symphony: I’m a pretty good room mate.

Meg: She always brings me water so…

Cecil: Coconut water and, yeah no (-).

Symphony: I like to create an experience, you guys.

Hal: I wish I hadn’t asked that question.

Cecil: And you leave to go exercise, wakes me up, so I can then go back to sleep. And then say hello to you after you’ve worked out, and be like oh maybe I should get out of bed now. [laughter]

Symphony: I come in glistening and I’m like hey wake up, are you ready? Ready to face the day?

Cecil: The sun’s been up for six hours. [laughter]

Symphony: I’ve had a full day.

Cecil: Did you have a question, Hal? I can’t remember.

Hal: Yes. I did have an actual question listening to it, one thing that struck me even in like the first three minutes of the episode listening to it, was like oh I’m listening to Cecil find his character.

Cecil: Oh yeah.

Hal: As you were doing it it was evolving, even in the first couple moments which was really impressive to watch you kind of zero in on it. Cause I know, we’ve heard the story before in panels, but I’d love to hear a little bit about your initial approach for this episode, looking at it, how much direction you had an like how you were directing yourself, how many takes it took, that kind of stuff.

Cecil: Well, first it sounds like Cecil on Xanax, like it sounds real, I was like wow I sound very sedate in this.

Symphony: Yeah.

Cecil: And I think, that more than anything set the tone for people who then later would be like, oh my god I fall asleep listening to your voice, so soothing. Because listening to those first couple of episodes it really is super neutral, like it’s so neutral and like just really quiet, just reading. And there was, like the character of, which would later evolve, wasn’t there as much. Because I don’t know. I guess I knew this idea it would be like an episodic thing, and it would go on from there but I had no idea, how many we were doing and where this was all going and stuff like that, so I was like well let’s just, you know, keep it really basic and simple and just start by words on the page, and then finding ways to you know, have that sort of very neutral narrator voice, and slowly finding the moments in Joseph and Jeffrey’s writing when Cecil does comment on stuff. And there’s little ones in this first episode. It’s just like, so and so brought the corn muffins and they needed salt. Oh like that was a moment when I, that was like a Cecil moment rather than a neutral narrator NPR, late night radio DJ, generic.

Symphony: Right. So when you were initially finding the character, a lot of that was just like feeling it out..

Cecil: Yeah.

Symphony: And you weren’t sure where it was gonna come from.

Cecil: Mm hm, yeah.

Symphony: Right or where it was gonna go so you just were like, I am gonna read this thing as well as I can.

Cecil: Yeah exactly like, put words on sound, into a mic.

Symphony: Exactly. And as an actor of course obviously you’re trying to do the writers’ words justice, right?

Cecil: Mm hm, yeah.

Symphony: So I think that’s part of it but now listening to it when you go back and have heard it again, what would you think you might have done differently?

Cecil: What I’d done differently?

Symphony: If anything, or was it a perfect read?

Cecil: [laughs] No it was not perfect. I dunno, I do wish that I’d had a chance to take a crack at it again. I think I would have, in a way getting to do kind of the last paragraph as the foreword to the book, the first book, was kind of a chance to do a do-over. And it was so much fun to be at the studio, in a fancy, you know like midtown studio with an engineer and a director and all that stuff getting to redo what was essentially the very first episode of the podcast. And having 70 plus episodes of Night Vale under my belt at that point, that was really cool, that was super cool.

Symphony: So did you feel more connected to it?

Cecil: Yeah, I felt more connected and also giving every part of the language weight. Cause when you’re reading something, for the first time especially if it’s absurd like no-linear. You just have to kind of be like, OK these are the things that I’m gonna try and hit, and highlight and let the chips fall where they may. But if I had a chance to go back and redo the pilot, I think I would have made some of the one-off jokes, like the two-sentence jokes punchier, punch it up kid, you know?

Symphony: [laughs] Well I feel like that we get to do now in the live shows where we get to repeat and do the shows over and over again, but..

Cecil: Yeah.

Symphony: When you record it one time, you’re like oh man, now that I listen to it I can do something differently.

Cecil: Yeah.

Symphony: Speaking of taking a time travel, let’s go back to the time hop thing for one second. So in your world, back then you said you were just recording this, you didn’t know where it was going and you were waiting tables, right?

Cecil: Yeah.

Symphony: So when you recorded this, how did you record it? Did you go to a place, can you tell that sort of story?

Cecil: I had to borrow Joseph Fink’s Snowball microphone. Which is this giant plastic, you know like ball on a tripod. You know it’s like…

Meg: I still have it.

Cecil: Oh really?

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: Get out of here!

Cecil: Like you can just throw them around and, but they’re kinda bulky. And so he had wrapped it up in a sweatshirt. [laughter] And we met at a coffee shop near Union Square, and he was just like OK, here take this, plug it up to your computer and just record it, just do it. You can use Audacity or Garage Band, whatever. And I had heard of Audacity through the Neo-Futurists for free sound editing software, so I was like OK I’ll check, OK. So I took this like contraband, little straw baby back to my apartment. [laughter] And I plugged it in. And I think I recorded maybe the pilot and the second episode at the same time? Or I think one, two and three happened within the same week.

Symphony: OK.

Cecil: So that way, cause I had the microphone borrowed, and then eventually I had returned it and got my own. And then we did the reverse of this, like pass off this weird little small child sized microphone, wrapped in the sweatshirt in front of the coffee shop on the street. It was podcast drugs, it was like illegal podcast contraband. [dramatic voice] In a world where podcasting is illegal and the penalty is death! [laughter] It’s somewhere..

Meg: And the rest is history.

Hal: It’s like a Logan’s Run scenario where there’s only podcasts inside the dome.

Cecil: That’s right, it’s… [laughs]

Hal: If you live outside the dome, you’re gonna find your way in that city.

Cecil: It’s like A Handmaiden’s Tale, except for podcasting.

Hal: Did you record them in order?

Cecil: Yes. For the most part absolutely. It wasn’t until like literally years later that I started getting, it was like three episode arcs or stuff like that where stuff would be out of order but mostly was like, literally one two three four five six in succession, for years.

Symphony: And did they give you any indication, were they like, oh we’re just gonna keep doing this until we can’t do it anymore, or?

Cecil: Yeah. I think around like episode seven or eight, I emailed Joseph I was like, heeeeyyyy. So where’s this going? You know like, is there a, do y’all have like a giant dry erase board that you’re, have like characters written out and shit like that? And they were like, absolutely not. [laughter] I think Joseph’s reply was like, we just figure we’re gonna keep making it until we don’t wanna make it anymore. Until it stops being fun, I think literally he was, we’re gonna make it until it’s not fun to make anymore. And I was like, OK, well here we go.

Meg: And here we are.

Cecil: And here we are.

Meg: 125 episodes in.

Cecil: I know, right? And I know that’s been like, there’s been a lot of fun stuff along the way involving like, continuity and stuff like that because, literally that was how we made it was just like, OK here’s an episode, and here’s another episode that kind of mentions this other character, however many episodes back. And like you kind of half-remember stuff. For me it was a lot of, for my end it was more about like, trying to find episodes that that character was mentioned, to be like wait, does Telly the Barber have a voice? Did we ever give him a voi-, does he ever say anything?

Symphony: Right.

Cecil: Cause there’s like, when you’re reporting stuff second hand on, which this show is, you kind of have the choice every time you see words in quotes, to like is it impersonation of that character? Or is it Cecil, are you trying to sound like the character themself or are you trying to sound like, what that narrator’s personification of that character is. And usually the easiest way is just to be like, “and then they said a whole bunch of stuff”. Much like a newscaster.

Symphony: You’re not doing an impersonation, you’re just..

Cecil: Exactly.

Symphony: ..reporting on what they said.

Cecil: Exactly. And I would just kind of feel it out in this very like one foot in front of the other, episode by episode kind of way. And then later on, I was like oh man, have we heard from Big Rico? Does Big Rico have a voice or a sound and I’m sure there have been like, characters that sounded one way and then, maybe 20 episodes later they say like one sentence and you’re like, that’s totally not right, there must be like a million of those. Or at least there is in my mind.

Meg: So when you were doing your relisten tonight, was there anything that jumped out at you that struck you as weird or interesting or like, any feels about listening to the show?

Cecil: OK so the first thing that I noticed from the very beginning is, sort of the entity of Night Vale Presents. And I was like oh man, it was like Jeffrey came on and they were talking about the Tingle podcast and, Conversations with me you know Dylan and, I was like oh man. Because of course it makes absolute sense but in my mind I was like, some of those early intros especially with Joseph where he’s like, I was like are we going to get to (Dash) convention?

Symphony: Yes.. [laughter]

Cecil: You know it’s not that early on, but I was like oh man, those are as much of a time capsule, almost more than the show itself of like how far..

Symphony: The announcements, yeah.

Cecil: ..how long ago this was. When we were just like..

Meg: Those are gone now.

Cecil: They’re like all of them are gone?

Meg: They’re a gone.

Cecil: Hey, I mean..

Symphony: Yeah it’s just like thanks..

Meg: (--).

Symphony: ..it’s like thanks for loving us, donate if you can, like whatever you get special content, right?

Cecil: I hope somebody has a copy of them somewhere.

Meg: I think they do exist somewhere.

Cecil: See, that’s all I wanna know.

Meg: Because of the advent of dynamic insertion, which sounds really dirty but really…

Symphony: That sounds nasty!

Meg: ..it just allows you to move stuff around. So a while back, I re-recorded all the credits and proverbs and made...

Symphony: Get out of here, no you didn’t!

Meg: Yeah.

Cecil: What?

Meg: Yeah and…

Symphony: Meg?!!

Meg: And then they chop up what I say at the end of this show and like, there’s different versions of it, so I do like a different version and that gets like edited around, to be like when I talk about the mailing or I talk about merchandise or I talk about live shows, that stuff kinda moves around.

Cecil: Wow.

Symphony: Get out! OK and then that goes into every episode just in case somebody’s listening now for the first time, to the first episode like they get the current stuff?

Meg: Yeah they get the current stuff so they get, what we’re talking about now and if you listen to the pilot now and download the pilot now you’ll get, I don’t remember if it was Joseph or Jeffrey they do, they talk about live shows or something.

Hal: It’s Jeffrey.

Symphony: Yeah I heard Joseph talking about donating to get, and you can get special content and all that stuff. Oh, that’s so interesting!

Cecil: All that special content.

Symphony: Technology!

Meg: Yeah, so they can move all that stuff around, they can change it. It’s good cause you don’t wanna, like if someone’s listening to episode 70 and they wanna come see a live show, they don’t wanna hear about a live show that happened a year and a half ago, they wanna (--) the stuff going on…

Cecil: Come see The Investigators!

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: I do slightly feel betrayed, in a heavy way. Just like, I wanna hear those old, cause that’s what I remember when I first listened to it.

Symphony: Hal wants the classics! [laughter]

Hal: It was always Joseph coming in, saying there is no Joseph Fink and like here’s..

Cecil: Yeah, we’re all Joseph Fink..

Hal: Here’s how you can support the show, we are all Joseph Fink.

Symphony: That was always really fun to record.

Meg: Let me make some phone calls, let me see if I can get those recordings for us to work off of. Let me see, so we don’t have to work off the new ones.

Cecil: And if Good Morning Night Vale, if Good Morning Night Vale is truly a retrospective show, I feel like you should go through an episode later like pull out some choice ones, and play them for the listeners of like (--).

Meg: Good idea, thanks for the content idea, that’s a good one.

Hal: Yeah! And then we can submit it to the Smithsonian along with that Snowball mic, as part of the Night Vale exhibit.

Meg: Which is…

Cecil: When there’s a Night Vale exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, and they have all the artifacts and all the deer paintings, and the laminate for Big Rico’s Pizza that I stole from San Diego Comic Con, stuff like that. [laughter]

Cecil: There’ll be little listening booths for all the children.

Hal: I actually volunteered to live for three months.

Cecil: Oh really? [laughs]

Hal: Yeah just like in a tank, like it’s a David Blaine thing but I will have a bed, so that’s the difference. [laughter]

Cecil: Oh my god.

Hal: And a (potty) with a (--) so I can (--).

Cecil: The artist is present. And it is Steve Carlsberg.

Hal: I mean you press a button to deliver a low level electric shock, it’s fine, I can deal with it. [laughter]

Cecil: You get like food pellets.

Symphony: I know, that’s what I was thinking, I was like food pellets.

Cecil: And Carlsberg beer.

Symphony: Yeah, it’s Carlsberg.

Hal: If I can solve the puzzle.

Symphony: Isn’t that like not even full alcohol beer?

Cecil: Oh, is that a low alcohol beer?

Symphony: Is it? Or is it just terrible tasting? [laughter] Who knows?

Meg: I dunno if I’ve ever had one.

Symphony: A Carlsberg? We should do that this tour. If you buy us a Carlsberg beer, oh wait, no one will hear this but…

Hal: Symphony will drink it. [laughter]

Symphony: [laughs hysterically]

Meg: This episode premieres June 7.

Hal: If you see one of us..

Symphony: Nevermind, cut it! Cut it, (-) cut it!

Cecil: I think according to Wikipedia I think Carlsberg is a normal beer.

Symphony: OK. Did you look it up?

Cecil: Yeah I did.

Meg: Are you multi-tasking with technology?

Cecil: I’m trying to multi-task but it’s really hard.

Symphony: Look at you and your science.

Hal: Look at you.

Symphony: Speaking of science…

Meg: Is it…

Cecil: Dark magic.

Meg: Is it a Dutch beer?

Hal: Probably.

Cecil: Denmark.

Meg: Is Carlsberg Dutch, oh Denmark.

Cecil: Denmark.

Meg: It’s a Danish beer.

Symphony: Who knows with those people?

Meg: Those people who are our fans, who listen to us, who love to go see… [laughter] Hey, we love you Copenhagen!

Cecil: Oh my god, right?

Symphony: Literally no one is hating on Denmark, like ever, so they can take it.

Cecil: Oh my god, there’s a special place in my heart for Copenhagen.

Symphony: I wanna go there so bad.

Cecil: I had such a splendidly shitty time both times I went. But it was like, fireworks of shit. The best crazy, travel stories that in the moment you’re like this is the longest day of my life. However..

Symphony: Is that when they lost your luggage?

Meg: It really was.

Cecil: But I know future me is gonna eat up every moment of it. And it’s all because of Copenhagen. Copen-hahgen.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: Do you say hay-gen or hah-gen?

Meg: I say Copen-haygen. I guess you can say both, I’ve heard both.

Symphony: Are both correct or is it just like willy-nilly?

Cecil: My guess is it’s Copen-hahgen for people who live there, Copen-haygen with an American accent? I dunno.

Symphony: Maybe.

Cecil: That’s my guess.

Symphony: Sammy Hey-gar. No. Sammy Hah-gar.

Cecil: Sammy Hah-gar. [laughter]

Meg: Hey-gen-Dasz. Hah-gen-Dasz.

[They’re basically just saying Häagen-Dazs in various ways and something about Chicago, I dunno how to transcribe it]

Symphony: It’s funny because I live here.

Hal: This is topical.

Meg: Well, this conversation has been…

Symphony: Next!

Meg: …a joy. Cecil, thank you so much for joining us on the first ever Good Morning Night Vale, it’s so great to hear from you.

Cecil: Thank you for having me. Yeah, it’s super weird to be talking to you all in a professional capacity with like, listeners listening in. Just FYI.

Meg: It’s like they’re backstage with us.

Cecil: I know.

Meg: Except we’re wearing clothes. Well, I’m wearing clothes, I don’t know about, I can’t speak for anyone else on this call.

Cecil: I’m wearing clothes, for once.

Symphony: Kinda.

Cecil: Kind of. [laughs] State of undress.

Symphony: A crop top is clothes. I’m wearing a crop top and leggings, is that, that’s clothes?

Hal: And I’m covered in body paint, so I’m good.

Symphony: [laughs]

Cecil: Oo! I’ll say, I’m wearing a full suit from the waist up and nothing from the waist down.

Meg: Perfect.

Hal: Business on top, party on the bottom.

Symphony: [laughs] Yes!

Meg: Alright, cool. Well thanks, Ceec!

Cecil: Party on.

Meg: Thanks. Bye!

Cecil: Bye!

Hal: Bye!

Meg: Thank you so much for joining us on our first ever episode of Good Morning Night Vale. Next week, we’re gonna talk about the episode 2, “Glow Cloud”, and we’ll be joined by special guest Joseph Fink, the creator and writer of Welcome to Night Vale and my personal husband.

Symphony: Amongst other things. [laughs]

Hal: You’ll hear us next time.

Meg: You’ll hear us next time. Thank you so much. Good morning, Night Vale, good morning.

Symphony: Good morning. Byeee!

Today’s adverb: Zestfully. I zestfully zested an orange, because I am flamboyant and I care deeply about really hammering in those notes of citrus in my flavor profile.

#welcome to night vale #night vale presents #good morning night vale #meg bashwiner #symphony sanders #hal lublin #cool cool cool #long post

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nellpire · 7 years ago

Text

[160926] Nell - C album commentary interview (translation)

1. Habitual Irony Q: 'Habitual Irony' as the first song seems to show the direction of the album. Jongwan: I think it shows the harmony we wanted to create with this album. We've studied and experimented with balancing synth and sequencing sounds with band sounds before, and I feel like we mixed all those attempts in this song. It tells people that Nell is this kind of sound, this sense of space.

Q: The way the drums change the tone and gradually broaden the sound was very impressive to me. I also thought that rather than using a ton of different instruments, you showed the process of expanding the space of the song. Jongwan: We always used to study a lot in order to find the sounds we wanted, but for this album we set out with the thought that space isn't infinite, and we thought it more important to decide what sounds should be the main focus. As for this song, it starts off with piano and synth, and we mixed it so that when the drums kick in, the location of the basic sounds all change. New sounds will stand out to people even if it's low in volume, so with that in mind we lowered the new sounds and changed their locations as we added more, and so it feels like the space is slowly broadening as you listen.

Q: You’ve steadily learned how to express different kinds of sound and space. Is that one of the things that influenced how you expressed this song? Jongwan: I think most of the opening lyrics served as description. It progresses from a description of the emotions or the situation surrounding them, or a time-based description, to lyrics that express my own feelings, so I think the sound naturally went in that direction too. The sound is amplified because the emotions are. I guess you could say the change in the emotions we wanted to express is that detailed. Jaekyung: I would like to think it gets more delicate and detailed as we go along. That the things in our minds and the things we actually express are becoming more similar. It's important to make the guitar as harmonious as possible, and I'm working hard on playing it in a more detailed manner.

Q: You must have gone back and forth a lot over the moment when the guitar explodes in this song. Jaekyung: Jongwan plays that part, and the song wasn't originally going to peak the way it does. But at some point he got feel (laughter) and we gradually understand the songs better and better when we’re in the mixing stage, so we decided to add it in then. Jongwan: This is a different topic, but as time goes by, the more I think that musicians are just the tools of music. Rather than this being Nell's music, something we made, I feel like we're tools for music to be made through. There were other things we wanted to express through this song too, but I think in the end we ended up expressing only the things that the song wanted us to. I think it was a conscious change. Rather than us proving something through music, it's better to do in the direction the music pulls me in...

Q: Then how do you decide when you first start making this music, which pulls you in the right direction? Jongwan: This might sound abstract, but I think that's what music is. When I ask myself "where does music come from?" I think, in the end, inspiration comes from music itself. From each and every sound. If I focus, I feel "ah, so this is what the music wants". And I think we made this album according to that.

2. Day After Day Q: Nell's music always felt like it created a scene or a space, but with this album I felt as though it not only created a visual background, but also told stories that took place within that background. In this song especially I felt that the story changed with "Don't fade away" in the chorus. Jongwan: I don't know if this is the right expression, but I think you could say the lyrics have become more like storytelling. Thinking about it, it could be that full albums are windows for musicians to tell their stories, or maybe I chose to write the lyrics like a conversation because we don't see a lot of people while we prepare our albums (laughter)

Q: The drums and bass drives the song forward, and I felt it was unique how you created the space by separating drums, bass and synths into three units. Jongwan: The drums are extremely important in this song. In a sense, it feels faithful to the feeling of an old band sound. Back in the days when you couldn't just add layers endlessly, people relied on drums to create space in their songs. I think you could say it's similar to that. And this is something we need to keep studying, but we could have added a rhythmical guitar in the B part of this song, because for some reason that's something we find romantic. It gives the song another nuance. We liked many different genres of music as we grew up, so since our goal is to merge all of that together, we try to go with something else if our original choice seems too obvious. Jaekyung: In movie-making too, there's the drawing the director creates, but sometimes an important cut will be made in a situation they couldn't have even imagined. If we keep all possibilities open as we create the guitar lines, we will end up with ten different versions and the end result might be completely unexpected. Jongwan: There are times where Jaekyung thinks one version is the best while I think "ah, that one's just okay" (laughter) and times when it's the other way around. I think the bass and drums are a result of this, and I think it's an issue of who does how much, which we work out when we do the arrangement. If the sound is strong in density and it starts interfering on one side, then another side will be thrown into disarray too (laughter) and I think you have to be careful about that when you're mixing if you want to make the song a bit more harmonious. It's a method that many of my favorite engineers use; we create space by making the bass about 1-2 decibels lower than the drums. Junghoon: We agonize over it a lot. It's the same for Jaewon, he agonizes a lot over which cymbal or which snare to use on each song. Jongwan: We can't always get it 100% on every recording, but we consider the drums important from the moment we enter the studio, so the drums sound good even by themselves, and we thought it important to know what this song wanted. Setting up the drums alone took a long time, but the recording was on the easy side because we did that.

3. Horizon of Time Q: I think this is the first time I heard lyrics like "those moments were more beautiful than I deserved" in a Nell song. Jongwan: This beautiful reminiscing is a first for us. Haha! I think it's obvious that we're reminiscing more and more as we get older. Looking back, there are many painful memories but they're still better than the present (laughter), we've reached that kind of time. Jaekyung: We think about that a lot. One of the reasons why being in a band is good is that we all have these feelings, and Jongwan is right next to me writing about it, so we can relate to one another.

Q: I feel that the music draws the outline of the story as the center of its flow. It's not that you're drawing us a picture sound by sound; it's like a movie that pays a lot of attention to the mise-en-scene but needs to get to the center of the story eventually. Jongwan: Everything from the arrangement to the recording of this song is faint, but we thought of the narrator as having the perspective of the present. That's why the vocals are directed straight ahead, while the piano and guitar is spread out behind as to give a small sense of faintness. In that sense, working on this song was easy.

Q: It's sung from the perspective of a person in the present reminiscing about the past, so the feelings of the song both swell and remain calm at the same time. It can't have been easy to control the emotions like that when you arranged this song. Jongwan: That could be the delicacy Jaekyung mentioned earlier, but honestly, I think we were comfortable cutting it down. Saying 'this is the peak of this emotion'. People don't start sobbing or wailing in the midst of reminiscing usually (laughter). Of course there are times like that as well, but we wanted to capture the feeling of shedding a single tear as you reminisce, so I think we needed that delicacy in mixing, arrangement and instrumentation in order to get the emotion to pull you in even though it doesn't explode.

Q: Regarding that emotional delicacy, it was interesting how you carefully entered the chorus before having it stop completely and mixed in shimmering treble into the sound. Jongwan: We used more guitar in this song originally. The guitar itself wasn't bad. The guitar itself was good, but we thought it'd be better for the faint and desolate feeling to remove it, and I think the various sounds we used to fill the space the guitar left behind, like the reverb on the snare, revived the feeling in the song. Also, we changed the way the song speaks in order to stop the desolation from becoming boring. The song is like a conversation with myself, but we made it like two people having a conversation from two different locations. I think that's how we could sustain the focus without having the emotions explode. I'd like to think these kinds of things come from our growth as a band. I think we're becoming more and more like this as we grow older.

4. Dream Catcher Q: While the other songs set up an imaginary space, this song draws an image of a band performance. I wondered if the 'moment' you sing about is related to that. Jongwan: I also wonder what's up with this song, sound-wise (laughter). It's a mix of many things, but I think in the end the chorus is the key part. 'We'll hold onto this moment and not let go'. I think other parts of the lyrics are better, but I also think the chorus has a big impact. To me, this song tells the story of everyone who dreams the same dream, us included, and we felt it was important that all of us members sang it together. I think it came out like a band performance because of all those things combined.

Q: Is 'we're just different, not wrong' the overall message of this song? Jongwan: It is. We were worried that it would be awkward if we suddenly started saying things like that, but we were satisfied with the result. It's a great live track. And it's a different kind of catharsis than we've made before -- it seems going in this direction wouldn't be too bad for us.

Q: It can be seen as a song for Nell style stadium concerts, but what is it like to play? Jaekyung: It's very comfortable. The guitars in the last part are played with old Fenders; for some reason we felt that suited it well. That old kind of sound, not strong but with strength. Jaewon: As for the drums, it's a song that stays faithful to the beat all the way through. Jongwan: Overall there are no difficult parts in playing this song. But I think this song is more faithful to our instincts rather than our emotions when it comes to playing it.

Q: It's close to a basic band sound, but it's interesting how halfway through the song Jongwan's voice is surrounded by sounds. It's interesting because the song is positioned between other songs of yours. Jongwan: I think that was a relief. There are twelve songs on the album, and this song plays an important role on the album as it is track four. I think the album would feel lacking if this song wasn't on it, and I think the songs before and after it also play their roles better because of this song. Simply put, we call it our 'dutiful son song' (laughter) since it plays that part.

5. One of Those Days Q: It's the first song to appear after Dream Catcher changed the album's atmosphere, and I'm sure there was something you paid extra attention to in the arrangement of this song, as well. Jongwan: One of the things we pay a lot of attention to is tempo. If an acoustic guitar song follows Dream Catcher, which had synth as its main instrument, it messes up the flow of the album, so we considered which sound would be a good follow-up. So we chose one that continues the feeling of Dream Catcher with more synth and that changes the tempo a bit. And the guitar is pretty much the main in this song. The synth takes the lead at first but the guitar comes from both sides along with it. We wanted the guitars to be good so we paid a lot of attention to them during the recording. We broadened and thinned out the space gradually using delay and reverb on the guitars before finally letting them explode towards the end.

Q: Nell's music was always more about conveying emotional depth or space through arrangement and mixing rather than melodies, and it feels like on this album, the first song shows the range of what you can do, while the rest of the songs shows different kinds of spaces according to their different situations and circumstances. Jongwan: I often thought that if this album was to be made into a movie, it would be made through high speed photography. Many of the pictures that have moved my heart in the past were calm and silent ones, and if you use high speed photography the impact can be huge. So I think that making the band sound larger, that is sounds other than just the vocals, makes the emotions feel more explosive as well. I think it allows us to express emotions more frankly.

Q: As you know, when others look at bands who have had a successful career, they don't see you as having many ups and downs in life. So you have no choice but to keep it inside, and how do you think that's reflected in your music? Jongwan: To me, this song has some of the saddest lyrics of the entire album. I wrote it out of what I felt one time when I went on a trip with the members and we were on our way to get some food. Everything was great at that moment. Everything was beautiful and I didn't have a single worry in the world. But all of a sudden, I got this dark, hopeless feeling. I had this bitter feeling when I wrote the lyrics too, but from what I understand some people listen to this song and think "he sounds really happy". But since the lyrics are open for interpretation for everyone, I think that’s a good thing.

Q: This song also strikes me as very complex, since it talks about the narrator’s feelings from the past until the present. Then, what do you think of the future? Going on making music throughout your life. Jongwan: In the future... I'm sure there'll be many hard times, but above all I think it will be fun. The four of us have just gone through this huge change, you know. And since we went through a process like that, I think the future will be fun even if it's hard. I also have expectations that things will go well for us.

6. Home Q: I feel as though this song concludes the first half of the album. The emotions in themselves feel stronger than the previous six songs, too. It's like crying once and for all while sorting your thoughts out (laughter) Jongwan: You're right. We didn't think of it as 'half time' exactly, but we do think of this song as one that helps you sort your thoughts out. That's why it took so long to make. We wrote it around two years ago but kept changing the arrangement. The previous versions we made were good too, but we always felt like the song needed to progress more. So we thought a lot and changed it around for two, almost three days until we almost gave up on it. But then all of a sudden, in the space of time where one of the members went to the bathroom (laughter), we finished it in lightning speed within fifteen minutes. 'Home' might be a bit of an obvious title, but we felt it covered everything. Junghoon: Jaewon was working on his drums alone at that time, when all of a sudden we got to work on the song, so when he came out we told him to have a listen and he went "Oooh!!". All of a sudden, it was finished.

Q: If the other songs express being in the midst of a dilemma, this song sets a conclusion to certain emotions, so couldn't that be why it happened like that? Jongwan: I think it could. I thought about this song in two different ways when I wrote it; it could be about love, and it could be about music. I think when we perform, this will be one of the songs that both us and the audience will enjoy. And I think we learned a lot from it. If you just keep holding on, then at any moment, if there is a God he could go "they're so pitiful, so let's just give them something" and you can earn something that way (laughter) Junghoon: That's why we won't give up on other songs we've struggled with as much as this one (laughter)

7. Tinnitus Q: The suffering starts again with this song (laughter), how did the topic change with this song? Jongwan: To put it simply, this song is about depression, and we expressed those emotions by creating a personification of depression and having it speak to me.

Q: The process of that conversation is very easy to visualize. It starts out with the voice doing a monologue up front with the other sounds in the back, and as the song progresses the sounds surround the vocals little by little. Jongwan: That's exactly what we wanted to express. The narration is shared by the two of us, where we wanted to express 'me' through a dry tone and the other party like a sound that rings in my head. What we wanted to convey was very clear. Starting from when we made the demo, we wanted to express the emotion in that expression of 'it's me'. So even the sound gives the feeling of swallowing me little by little.

Q: This may sound weird, but it feels like being embraced by pretty tentacles. It's interesting how you managed to express that through sound. Jongwan: It may not be my favorite song, but it's one I'm proud of, since we made sounds that don't fit with one another sound natural together. It makes me want to record a video for the song. Rather than a music video -- making a few dozen drawings to give the feeling of one drawing moving very slowly? Like the high speed photography we talked about earlier. Slowly unfolding like a short moment's emotions captured through high speed photography.

Q: In that aspect, I think every song on this album is told through a different method of expression, size of space and length of time. If Day After Day is like a movie, then this song is almost the opposite of that. Jongwan: I think that's the difficult part about making full-length albums. Each song has its own charm, but they can't be awkward once you put them together. Even so I think this album was more successful than our previous in that sense, and I think our studio was one of the reasons for that. There was a sense of stability, psychologically, and we were able to stay and work continuously, plus if a song didn't feel quite right, we could spend as much time as we wanted on discussing it. Jaekyung: When we're in the studio, time ceases to exist. We don't even have clocks in there. Jongwan: What about your cellphone? (laughter)

Q: You're expressing your desired space and time through these circumstances, but how does it feel to be able to express the details of these emotions through sound? Jaekyung: Music can't be seen, but I think we all visualize it in our heads. When the feeling you just mentioned comes. I think that's why we make music. We don't make it in order to be able to visualize it, but I do think we make music in order to get to that point. Jongwan: When you approach the goal you set as your dream, as good as it gets, you also start getting anxious. It's good since you're slowly getting closer, but you start thinking it's a pity if you can't go any further than that. So I have that talk with the members before we start mastering. 'This is good, but is it really good? Is this our best?' I think we need to have that anxiety as musicians. I want to invest more into the things we think are already good.

8. Full Moon Q: Full Moon gave me personally the biggest auditory pleasure. I felt that the sound’s bandwidth was extremely wide, while really the space is smaller whereas the density is higher. Jongwan: I'm sure some engineers wouldn't agree with me, but I think the energy that comes out of having a small space and high density can be inversely proportional to one another. If the sound spreads out over a wide space it may sound refreshing, but it takes away from that "bam!" kind of feeling. So we went back and forth a lot while mixing this song since we could only choose to either have the space refreshing and wide or saying, 'whatever -- let's go!'. Also, we chose chord progressions that not many bands may use, so we think it turned out a bit more interesting than usual.

Q: Was there are reason why you needed to collect this much energy? Jongwan: This song is even older than 'Home'. No matter how much we tried, there were parts we couldn't quite work out. So if we were to make something to empower people, we were very greedy in our desire to do it properly. It was obvious when we worked on the songs that this one had the greatest energy sound-wise, that it was so strong from the get-go that you couldn't help but focus on it. It calms down slightly midway through, but we wanted to have it push ahead from start to finish.

Q: Since the sounds all pile on one another and push ahead. Jongwan: That's how we arrange the lights when we perform it, too (laughter)

Q: On old albums you'd call tracks 1-6 the A side. In your A side, the emotions are slowly piling up, whereas the rest of the songs are all completely different in emotion. Is there a reason for that? Jongwan: It's the same when we perform. We stack the emotions little by little and let them explode in the last part of the show; we show everything. It's the same when you drink; you shouldn't go all in at once - you start out slow and then go all out with a "ya~!" (laughter)

9. Sing for Me Q: This song feels a bit like a healing process after Full Moon. Jongwan: It does feel a bit like washing your ears. We find some parts of the album burdensome too, so we think this song lets us rest in contrast to the previous three songs. I think this song is the most comfortable to listen to on this album. Jaekyung: The reason why I like this song so much is that it gives off the feeling of old pop music and recent music at the same time. It's a new song but somehow it sets off memories (laugher)

Q: It feels perfectly modelled. The bass especially makes me want to go "this is what bass should sound like!" (laughter) Jongwan: We thought of a motown-like concept for the rhythm and wanted the drums to be a bit subdued rather than clanky, as they often are these days. We wanted to establish a harmony of many different sounds. Many friends of ours who also work in music tell us they like this song. I'd like to think it's because it brings our thoughts back to music we used to hear back in the day. Junghoon: We didn't spend a lot of time considering the concept for this song. It went very smoothly.

Q: So Dream Catcher needs to be taken in in a huge concert hall whereas Sing for Me can be heard in any kind of performance hall. It would do well in a very small place, too. Jongwan: That's why when we had a meeting with the lighting director for our concert, we asked him to design it like a small '80s club. In the end we just used a mirror ball (laughter). It might seem tacky, but we think it matches the feeling of this song.

10. Vain Hope Q: I don't know why, but for some reason this song makes me think of Time Spent Walking Through Memories. Jongwan: It's a song with a very clear emotional motive. Clearer than what we had for Sing for Me. So we made sure the vocals can be heard well, which might be the reason why you feel that way. Jaekyung: I think this is the song on the album that's the least open for interpretation. No matter who listens to it, I think everyone understands it the same.

Q: When you made Time Spent Walking Through Memories, you really emptied it out and created a very small space, but this time there's a feeling that you killed or excluded some sounds even as you express very large emotions. Jongwan: I think it fits the song better. There are times for screaming too, but for some reason I get that high speed photography feeling we talked about earlier from this song, too.

Q: In high speed photography, even if someone gets angry and starts yelling, there's no sound. I guess you could call it similar to that. Should I call it keeping a distance from what you're expressing, even when it's very strong? Jongwan: I think that's what we were after. There are times when I get angry, but I think that though I used to scream and shout, I've become quieter now.

Q: What conclusion have you come to after going through these emotions? Everyone has a different perspective on the songs, but the overall flow of the album has a feeling of having escaped from worries. Jongwan: First of all, we worked on many songs aside from these, and there's a reason why we chose these songs for the album's consistency, and as for the lyrics, I understood things after I had written them. 'Ah, so I'm in this condition' (laughter). I wrote all of them at different times but most of them were written in a space of two to two and a half years, and I think that's just what I was going through at that time. I think I was frustrated about a lot of things.

11. Let the Hope Shine Q: As this song rounds up the album, it also feels like it reflects back on the rest of it. While the sound expands slowly in both the first and last song, the first song says 'this is our beginning' while this last song says 'this is the end'. Jongwan: I don't think anyone had any objections to saving this song for last.

Q: It feels like ending all your worries and arriving at the ocean? (laughter) Jongwan: We worked on it very comfortably. The most interesting thing is that Jaewon played his drums so much better on this and Vain Hope than any of the other songs, and we wondered if using an explosive snare like old days' Genesis and Def Leppard would work, and the end result was amazing. I think that part makes the whole song.

Q: The sound is explosive, but the vocals are so quiet that it feels like going to the ocean on your own. Jongwan: It feels like a single ray of light that slowly expands. Jaekyung: Ending credits (laughter)

Q: How does it feel to arrive all the way at the ending credits? At the end of the day, if you listen to this album to the end you can feel a small sliver of hope for the future... Jaekyung: You feel better, you see the light (laughter) Junghoon: If you see making an album as going on a journey, then we've always been left with some fatigue after our previous journeys, but this time we're left with expectations regarding our next trip. Jaewon: I think I also enjoyed how we ended this album, like Junghoon. For about two days (laughter) Jongwan: We always have many regrets when we finish an album. It has its good points too, but we always want to do better. But what's clear is that we've grown and matured to some extent. I think we've become a lot better as we worked. Technical skills and singing ability aside, I think our thoughts or attitude towards music has become deeper and a lot more earnest. We started out by performing in empty concert halls, but we kept at it and now we've set up our own studio with our preferred equipment, and the fact that we've now finished our first album in that studio makes me very emotional. And it makes me think of the process we went through to get here. This is a step where we can say a little more confidently, ‘we are musicians’. In any case, we made every single sound on this album, and every single sound has a purpose. So the process of making it was torturous but so happy. I think this is our true beginning.

Feel free to use, but please credit Nellpire.

#nell #interview #translation #c #naver blog #jongwan #jaekyung #junghoon #jaewon

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strechanadi · 8 years ago

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Paris Opéra ballet Swan lake - when it’s not about Odette

So I assume you were all too shy to ask, but you actually desperately want to read my review on POB Swan lake, right?

So ... Here it is!

(And as always - I’m sorry for that English grammar I murdered once again. I truly am.)

(Yes, they pay me for this.)

Paris Opéra ballet Swan lake - when it’s not about Odette

It’s December. And for almost every ballet company in the world it means annual Nutcracker madness. Not for Paris Opera. French most prestigious scene chooses for every christmas season another big classic and this year it was time of the most iconic piece - Swan lake, returning on stage of Opéra Bastille after just year and a half, and being broadcast live on December 8th in various cinemas in France, Germany, Austria or Belgium. Czech spectators could watch the record in local cinemas on 17/12 and 18/12.

Big classics in ballet world mean ballets by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. And for Paris Opera pieces by these two masters mean choreographies by Rudolf Nureyev, who was also director of the company between 1983 - 1989. He made his first version of Swan lake in 1964 for Viena Staatsballet, where he danced the premiere himself with Margot Fonteyn and after the performace they recieved record 89 curtain calls. Paris version was born 20 years later in 1984 and its psychological aspect follows Swan lakes by John Cranko (1967) or John Neumeier (1976).

Distinctive storytelling

Nureyev was not just extraordinary and non conventional dancer, he was equally exceptional as choreographer and storyteller. He brought the prince into focus and made him true main character of the ballet. He added two solo variations for him in Act 1 (first on music of pas d’action, the second, slow one on andante sostenuto, which is in the original Tchaikovsky score situated right before Pas de trois, and which has been commonly cut out) and also returned his variation into Act 2 (right after Big swans pas de quatre). But more importantly he intensified prince’s character.

Siegfried in Nureyev’s concept is not an ordinary dreamer, his absent-mindeness and daydreaming are significant, almost symptomatic for him. The real world with its obligations, responsibilities and conventions, he could learn but never truly understand, is unfriendly place for a young man like him - in short Nureyev made his prince suffer with one of the autistic spectrum disorder.

Such prince needs tutor or mentor more than ever to help him better understand the complexity of court’s life. The tutor is Wolfgang, mysterious, enigmatic man, whose relationship with Siegfried is strange, a bit unclear, but unquestionably strong with as many interpretations of it as casts. Second act gives another perspective on said character, changing Wolfgang into Rothbart, magical creature who has unlimited power over Odette. Considering prince’s personality, the idea of all swans’ acts taking place solely in Siegfried’s fantasies and dreams basically suggest itself (as even Nureyev indicates). The white swan then represents not only the idea of pure love, but she is also reflecting prince alone, for her existence depends on Rothbart just as Siegfried’s depends on Wolfgang.

Act 3 is the most ambiguous. Reality with Siegfried on his own engagement party blends in with prince’s own inner world, where he is trying to hide, and where’s Odile - embodiment of sensuality and attraction (so she’s more like an addition to romantic Odette than her opposite). However even in his own dreams Siegfried is not left alone with object of his desires. The famous so called black pas de deux becomes a masterly pas de trois thanks to constantly present Rothbart.

There are two decisive moments in last Act. The first one is Odette and Siegfried’s duet (music for pas de six formerly from Act 3) with lots of synchronal dance passages and repeated steps, that are danced by both dancers who are constantly changing their place in pair (sorry, this sounds really stupid, but this is what I was talking about and couldn’t translate to English…), so Odette and Siegfried are blending in with each other even more. And then there is final Siegfried’s confrontation with Rothbart, that is referring to Siegfried’s duet with Wolfgang from the end of Act 1. At the very end they even literally repeat some parts of it, which could be an explanation and answer to some of spectators’ questions or on the contrary it could provoke new speculations on the true nature of Wolfgang/Rothbart and his relationship with Siegfried.

The dreamy, kind of blurred atmosphere is supported by faded pastel or light earthy colour costumes (Franca Squarciapino) and very minimalistic, yet expressive decors and stage design (Ezio Frigerio), that mainly in Act 1 complete the picture of stern, hostile world in which Siegfried feels like a prisoner.

Artistic approaches

From what was written is clear, that this Swan lake depends even more than any other on its interprets.

One of the most emblematic princes of Paris Opera is Mathieu Ganio, étoile of the company. And watching him on stage you fully understand why. If there should be just two words describing his performance, it would be honesty and genuineness, because the way he more lives than acts his part is simply disarming. He portrays his prince with remarkable nuances. He is able to act as an aristocrat, to play his part in social interactions, if it’s needed. But then there are moments he could be his true self (and it is not just by coincidence there is always Wolfgang with him) and his immense fragility, mental confusion and insecurity are evident. His ineffable tenderness and open fascination with white swan is almost touching and makes sharp contrast to his confidence and dominance in Act 3 where he would like and tries to catch up with Odile, who arouses his desires, but by her constant escaping and refusing him, also provokes his resentment and anger, very unique emotions in Siegfried’s character. The end of Act 3, while he’s trying to deal with the discovered truth about Odile, almost matches Giselle’s mad scene from the first act of said ballet in its unaffected harshness. Speaking of his dancing - Ganio could demonstrate his unquestionable talent for dreamy adagio variations full of emotions, his refined arabesques as well as soft and at the same time French precise pas de chats and especially his extraordinary sense of music and Nureyev’s choreography. His Siegfried’s variation from the end of Act 1 is one one of the most poetic moments not just of this particular Swan lake.

The dual role of Odette and Odile was danced by étoile Amandnine Albisson. There are some truly remarkable musical moments in her dancing, she intuitively follows all rythmical accents and reacts on any change of music. However, she’s no exceptional interpret otherwise, besides her artistic and acting choices aren’t always compatibile with Ganio. As an untouchable, unattainable Odette she maybe seems too reserved, too distant, but her lack of swan like arms and pliant, flexible back required are the biggest issues. Her Odile then is more winsome, enchanting than demonic and disdainful, however although the role of femme fatale suits Albisson better, there’s still some kind of spark and individuality lacking.

The real main couple

While Albisson/Ganio couple is not completely flawless, missing its magic and better chemistry between the two of them, the couple Ganio’s Siegfried makes with François Alu’s Wolfgang strongly stands out. Their relationship makes you shivers sometimes, but it’s their remarkable duets, full of meaningful gestures and looks, that can break your heart (wait a minute - this is something I wanted to delete before sending to editors! Well… shit.), that are the most intense. They are full of contrasts. Where Ganio is elegant and melancholic, Alu is energetic and forceful. While Ganio’s Siegfried is embodiment of artlessly innocent devotion and pure, almost childlike, naive gullibility, Alu’s Wolfgang is uncompromisingly dominant, darkly authoritative and very well aware of his power over young prince. And he doesn’t hesitate and just brazenly taking advantage of it. Francois Alu makes his Wolfgang not very layered character, even as prince’s tutor, he’s more like Rothbart, flamboyant villain, who hides his intentions behind fake joviality, that Siegfried is almost unable to expose. His mockery and self-satisfaction visible in his eyes every time prince looks at him with explicitly sincere devoutness, is completed by powerful dancing, that literally explodes in Rothbart’s variation in Act 3. But maybe he could slightly slow down and concentrate more on the duality of his character. Or characters?

The famous Act 1 Pas de trois was danced by three talented first soloist Leonore Baulac, Hannah O’Neill and Germain Louvet (AN Louvet and Baulac were named étoiles on 28th and 31st of December after their performance as Siegfried and Odette/Odile). Valentine Colasante and Arthus Raveau caught viewers’ attention in Act 3 as one of the two pairs in Spanish dance.

Endless inventiveness

Nureyev choreographies use the traditional classical steps, but are famous for its distinctive style and difficulty not for the soloists only, but for the whole ensemble. The corps de ballet is the fourth main role in this Swan lake. Act 1 is prove of Nureyev’s genius in corps de ballet dances and is crowned by masterly, all men polonaise (Dance with cups traditionally). In Act 2 he sticks with iconic Ivanov’s choreography (or with what we use to think is Ivanov’s choreography), but even here he is able to find his own way how to play with it. Dances of swans are full of nuances, full of different details, any two succesive steps are not completely the same, there’s always at least slight change in port de bras, in tilt of head, in the direction of look, and that makes the whole picture even more textured and vivid. In Act 4 he left typical swan port de bras behind and the dancers, moving across the stage in canon, are giving impression not so much of birds but more of slowly growing waves of heavy seas.

People are use to watch Swan lakes because of the swan dual role and mainly the ballerinas dancing them. In case of Nureyev’s version, you should be interested in interprets of main male roles. Because they are the ones who truly matters. Don’t let yourself be confused by Odette/Odile on top of casting list.

#ballet #swan lake #review #Paris Opera Ballet #selfpromo

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entergamingxp · 5 years ago

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XCOM: Chimera Squad review – a generous and inventive spin on a tactical classic • Eurogamer.net

Breaching a room is one of those weird things that games turn out to be brilliant at. It’s pure tactics – information with stimulating gaps in it. A bunch of bad guys are waiting behind closed doors. You know some things about them but you don’t know everything. How are you going to open the doors?

XCOM: Chimera Squad review

Developer: Firaxis Games

Publisher: 2K Games

Platform: Reviewed on PC

Availability: Out now on PC

It’s a wonder, really, that it’s taken a classic tactics series like XCOM so long to try a bit of breaching. XCOM 2 encouraged you to think of ambushes, sure, but with XCOM: Chimera Squad, the latest instalment in the series and a standalone adventure with a somewhat focused scope, breaching finally has its moment.

And it’s glorious. Chimera’s missions play out room by room, essentially – or encounter by encounter really as most of the game’s spaces are multi-room environments – and with none of the prolonged knocking around looking for a fight that previous XCOM games used to feature. Each encounter starts with a breach. You choose your door, you choose who opens it and who goes in next, you plan, you fiddle around, you change your plan and switch everyone out again and have a comforting Pop-Tart – just me? – and then you commit.

Pure tactics, information with gaps in it: every door tells you how high the likelihood is that you’ll take damage. Every door generally offers its own twists too. Maybe your shots will stun if you use this door. Maybe they’ll crit. Maybe the first one through can’t miss. Maybe the last one through won’t be able to move afterwards. Maybe everyone gets free Overwatch. Generally you have a choice of doors and windows to spread your four-person team across, and you can buy items as the game progresses that allows access to new doors – security doors and vents, say. I love this breach moment – it’s new, but it already feels like pure XCOM. You’ve thought about the odds, the perks. You’ve lined up your guys. Pop-Tart. BREACH.

Once you’re through time gets wonderfully thick and soupy. It reminds me a little of the stand-offs in John Woo’s Stranglehold, may it rest in glorious peace. Everyone gets a chance to breach fire – which means you each get a free shot as you scramble through the doors. If you’re playing on easy where the dice are loaded in your favour, four people coming through a door can often clear out four baddies. But even if you’re not, once the breach fire period is over your team scramble to cover and then it’s classic XCOM. Turns, cover, dice rolls, disaster.

Except it’s not, because everywhere throughout Chimera Squad there are playful tweaks and rebalances. Firaxis always strike me as the molecular gastronomists of the strategy and tactics world, a wide, dappled genre that in itself is sort of the molecular gastronomy of video games. Anyway: Firaxis can’t stop fiddling with things. Instead of foams and crumbs and airs, though, these designers like to dig down into the basics of a game and ask fundamental questions. Chimera Squad asks: hey, how about breaching? And then it asks: how about smaller maps, which play out as stacked encounters, so there’s no fat, as it were, no connective tissue to worry about.

But it hasn’t stopped tweaking there. In classic XCOM you move your guys and then the aliens move their guys. Chimera Squad opts for interleaved moves. Wonderful word, interleaved. Precise and papercrafty – one for the specialists, the scholars, the obsessives. Interleaved moves means one of your guys makes a move, and maybe one of theirs goes next? It makes fights much more dynamic, and more personal. You have more power, but with XCOM that always means the power to screw up. Classic XCOM meant that a situation you hadn’t foreseen could pop up and be resolved – usually tragically – in the course of an alien turn with little for you to do but stand around and take it. Classic XCOM was somewhat concerned with the delicious pain of tactical paralysis.

By contrast, Chimera Squad means you can see a situation develop and then you have the chance to do something, because you might get a turn in between two alien turns. But with that power comes the fact that this is still XCOM: clear shots can miss, aliens can be extra sneaky, things can go wrong in enormously creative ways. Interleaved moves bring great invention and dynamism and even wit to the game. And of course, it’s all information with gaps in it: the turn ticker is clearly visible on one side of the screen, and there are unit powers that allow you to sacrifice a shot, say, for the chance to change the order of turns to your advantage, to shuffle one of your cards in before one of theirs and save the day. Or try to save it, anyway. But what will the response be?

How deep does the tinkering with the basics go? It’s wrong with Chimera Squad even to talk of your turns and alien turns. This latest game plays out after the events of XCOM 2, in a city where humanity and aliens are trying to get along together. How are things going? Well, in the opening cut-scene the mayor is blown up in a truck. So they’re not going very well. I think Firaxis is aiming for something a bit like The Third Man’s Berlin, parcelled up amongst uneasy “allies”. It’s a lovely setting for an XCOM game. Previously they’ve concerned themselves with invasions. This one’s more about insurrection – insurrection played out in three acts, and three factions’ investigations.

And all of this means that your squad is formed of human and alien team-members. The focus on Chimera Squad is much more personal than most XCOM games. Your team have cut-scenes and names and personalities and dialogue and banter and everything. It’s XCOM: the Saturday Morning Cartoon, even before you get to the stylised storytelling sequences that use lurid four-colour layouts and halftones that can’t help but remind me – oh glory! – of the beautifully ugly excesses of Codename STEAM.

Does it feel weird that you can’t name your own soldiers anymore? In truth, I didn’t miss it that much. After a few hours I’d forgotten that I ever used to go into battle with units named after my favourite takeaway restaurants. I started to feel close to my new guys, from the awkward muton who sometimes sounds like Jeff Bridges to the techy who always misses – for me at least – but has a drone that shocks anyone who gets too close, a kind of electrical wasp at the XCOM picnic. Keeping units alive for the whole game means that XCOM’s power snowball thing is in full effect: you can get to a point where everyone’s so riddled with interesting skills that you start to feel bad for the guys you’re up against. But I was still learning to get the best out of people by the end of the surprisingly involved campaign. One of my guys had psionic powers and could change places with any unit on the battlefield. This meant if a mission-critical baddy was making a break for the exit I could swap places and move them into the heart of my ranks. But it also meant I could zap high cost baddies over to exploding barrels and then touch them off. The fun never ends.

Ah the campaign. Given the low price for a standalone game I was expecting Chimera Squad to clock in at about three or four hours. In truth, it kept me busy for two days on my first playthrough. What’s happened, I think, is a narrowing of focus: shorter missions, smaller teams, a simpler strategy layer and throughline.

I think the new strategy layer is fantastic. I love settling in for a game of XCOM 2, knowing that I’ll be dozens of hours deep before I realise I made a crucial mistake at the two hour mark, but it can be quite an elbowy and confusing game, with layouts, maps, and perhaps not quite the clearest sense of all the things you should be focusing on, at least for your first chaotic attempt. Chimera Squad is much more straightforward. Base building’s out and the whole thing is set in a single city as you chase down a single mystery, one suspect faction at a time. Alongside missions that advance the story, you also have missions that earn you resources and also allow time to pass until the next story mission becomes available. While all this is going on you have to monitor the whole city, making sure tension never gets too high in each of the districts. Completing missions in a district will bring the tension down, but you can also buy agencies that sit in each district and have limited powers to calm things down in interesting ways, or at least freeze the escalation for a few turns. All of this is presented via a 3D map that is colour-coded so you can instantly see how things are going. If most districts are blue, then happy days, as Tuffers would say. I wouldn’t mind getting Tuffers in an XCOM team.) If they start to turn towards red you’re going to have to do something.

There is a term for this kind of thing – I want to call it the small blanket problem or something like that? Anyway, in classic XCOM style, you never have enough time and resources and people to maintain total calm in the city. You’re always making trade-offs. And when it comes to your people the trade-offs never stop. You need four team-members to go out on missions, but you also want to staff the streamlined lab that makes breakthroughs and allows for new gadgets. You want to send people away on Spec-Ops that earn you resources or may lower tension in the city. If people are wounded – or if you just want to improve their stats – you’ll want to send them for training. All of this means you’re juggling who you can actually take out shooting, trying to make sure everybody gets leveled up nicely and gets new abilities, while also ensuring that nobody’s battle damage results in untreated “scars” that affect their stats.

It’s a lot to think about – of course it is, it’s XCOM. But Chimera Squad is a lot more approachable than XCOM 2. It’s more direct, less expansive, sure, but also a little less muddlesome to stupid people like me. This isn’t XCOM 3, but it isn’t pretending to be. It’s something different – a characterful, sharp-edged, surprisingly rich side-quest. It will keep me busy for hours and hours, I think. That’s the thing about doors – I always want to know what’s on the other side.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/04/xcom-chimera-squad-review-a-generous-and-inventive-spin-on-a-tactical-classic-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=xcom-chimera-squad-review-a-generous-and-inventive-spin-on-a-tactical-classic-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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ismael37olson · 6 years ago

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The Power of Love Can Make a Zombie Too!

It's hard to believe it's over. It was five years ago that I set out to write The Zombies of Penzance. It seemed so perfect, so deliciously fucked up, and the process of "translating" the story , the changing of Gilbert's pirates into zombies, hardly disturbed the plot at all (though I later made some larger plot changes). I know you want to ask, so yes, I was seriously stoned when I thought of the idea. I immediately loved everything about it. I already deeply loved The Pirates of Penzance. I love zombie movies. I love mashups. Plus, I quickly decided that my approach would include an elaborate, though entirely false, backstory about the creation of The Zombies of Penzance. In fact, that meta-layer became an important part of the humor. We tell the audience Gilbert wrote these zombie lyrics, but then throughout the evening, we keep smacking them with anachronisms, four-letter words, and other morsels that Gilbert would/could never have written -- including every reference to zombies, which hadn't entered the awareness of Western culture yet. I loved all of that. The inherent wrongness of it all. More than anything what I loved most was the fundamental idea of telling a horror story in the language of English light opera, possibly the most "wrong" storytelling form imaginable for this content. That was the appeal for me, more than anything else. I love things, particularly art, that are obviously wrong or fucked-up. That's so interesting, and often, so funny. I also loved the idea that this would be New Line's second zombie musical, since we did the very serious Night of the Living Dead in 2013. And its our seventh horror musical, following our productions of Rocky Horror, Sweeney Todd, Bat Boy, In the Blood, and Lizzie. Should we also count Urinetown...? Throughout the time I've been working on this, I was always mindful of the fact that no matter how funny or meta-ironic my text was, it had no real value on the page. It's only a zombie operetta when it's live (dead?) onstage. I needed lots of people to make it into live theatre. That's true of all our shows, but since this was an awfully odd experiment, it was constantly in my awareness. When I talked to friends about it, at some point I'd always throw in, "...if I ever finish it, and if we produce it..." We held a public reading in January. To my amazement, 150 people showed up, and to my greater amazement they followed the plot easily and fully embraced my multiple layers of meta, my blatant anachronisms, and the four-letter words sprinkled throughout. The audience really loved both the ways in which I had stayed true to Gilbert & Sullivan and their traditions, and also the ways in which I violated that. It's actually a fairly complex piece, and I was delighted that many of the reviewers noticed and appreciated that. Paul Friswold wrote in his Riverfront Times review:

Scott Miller and John Gerdes are the responsible parties, tinkering with Gilbert's lyrics and Sullivan's music to create something more than the sum of the parts. The two St. Louisans have added modern references, profanity and a careful adherence to the spirit of the original operetta. Portraits of George A. Romero and Queen Victoria hang above the old-fashioned stage and its working footlights, hinting at the twin forces at work here. Romero is the godfather of zombies in popular entertainment, and Victoria led the society that simultaneously embraced Gilbert & Sullivan's jaunty work and harbored a morbid fascination with life after death. All of these elements come together on stage, to strange and often comic effect. . . . But it's not all fun and pop-culture riffs. Despite his lethal nature, the Major-General has a most troubled conscience. The second-act song "When the World Went Bad" cracks open the show's candy coating to reveal the darkness within. Stanley sings of his fears about the forces bringing the dead to life, and worries about the coarsening of his soul. Is he less moral than the Zombie King, who spares some people (albeit under false pretenses)? The Major-General kills them all, and then shakes with terror and remorse late at night. Is he worse than what he hunts? It's a question that harkens back to Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend, which was Romero's own inspiration. The book also informs the finale, which is preceded by a delightfully ridiculous brawl between the Stanley daughters, who are in their bloomers and bearing cricket bats and nunchucks, and the zombie horde. Things become very dark indeed. But you know what they say: It's always darkest before the dawn of the dead.

Some people reflexively dismissed the show -- without seeing it of course -- as a stunt, a bastardization, a one-joke show. I'll admit that my new Major-General lyric is a stunt, but so is Gilbert's original. That's what patter songs are. Beyond that, The Zombies of Penzance is an experiment in form and content, it's a big over-arching meta-joke about lost and discarded works, and it's a translation in terms of cultural context and also in terms of themes. As I wrote in another blog post, The Pirates of Penzance is about how absurd and arbitrary class distinctions are. But though I changed the basic story very little, the substitution of monsters (zombies) for "monsters" (pirates) changes more than you'd expect. The Zombies of Penzance is about the Other-ing of those who are different from us, particularly by those who claim the moral high ground.

And also, because I cut the policemen from the story, and gave their songs to the Stanley daughters, who are now trained zombie hunters, it's also a story about women standing up for themselves, fighting back, solving their own problems. I was honestly shocked at how empowering it apparently felt for women in our audience when the daughters marched on in their zombie hunter clothes in mid-Act II, particularly I think for women who know Pirates. The journey's been five years for me, but it's also been two years for John Gerdes, who adapted the music and orchestrated it. He adapted and orchestrated all the music for our reading last January, then he orchestrated Yeast Nation for us, then he came back to Zombies, finished his work and incorporated my rewrites from the reading. And then John and his wife Lea played in the band for the show. So I suspect John will have some zombie withdrawal as well. This amazing cast has been working on this show since last November, when we started rehearsals for the reading. They have worked so hard on this score, both musically and conceptually. I realized early on that we had to apply the lessons of Little Shop, Bat Boy, and Urinetown to The Zombies of Penzance. The more seriously we take it, the funnier it gets; and in parallel to that, the better we sing the music, the more seriously we take that, the funnier the show gets. This isn't Evil Dead. To maintain the crazy meta-story, our audience had to believe this was intended to be performed at the Savoy Theatre in 1879. The more legit the music, the funnier the show.

And likewise, the better the craft -- rhymes, scansion, etc. -- the funnier the show. The Major-General's big patter song, "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Era Zombie Killer," is funny partly because the craft is good. Really, I guess all this is a lesson Gilbert and Sullivan learned long before Little Shop of Horrors. Almost all their shows are inherently ridiculous stories (about inherently ridiculous aspects of Western culture) which they present utterly straight-faced. No matter how wacky Gilbert's text gets, Sullivan's music is always straight-faced. This has been such a wonderful experience for me, bringing two of my greatest loves together, G&S and zombies. To quote my own lyric:

Hail, zombies, thou heav’n-made dead! Forsaken by the God we dread. Great metaphor for all we fear! All hail the end of all that we hold dear!

I was very lucky to find a cast full of really strong, funny, talented, fearless actors to bring my show to life, and almost all of them have stayed with the show since last November. I am very grateful. And then to get such warm, overwhelming responses to it! Look at some of these press quotes:

"Another triumph for New Line. . . a hilariously inspired joke." -- Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch "The funniest show that New Line Theatre has ever mounted." -- Judy Newmark, All The World's a Stage "Both a nightmare and a delight — let's call it a delightmare." -- Paul Friswold, The Riverfront Times "Uproarious." -- Jeff Ritter, Critical Blast "It's amazing. . . so much fun." -- Kevin Brackett, ReviewSTL "A wonderful whirlwind of apocalyptic delight." -- Tanya Seale, BroadwayWorld "Reverently irreverent and witty. . . a delightfully fun, pointedly funny musical." -- Tina Farmer KDHX "Let the wackiness ensue." -- Lynn Venhaus, STL Limelight "In terms of humor and sheer musicality, it’s remarkable." -- Michelle Kenyon, Snoop's Theatre Thoughts

But our show has closed and my zombie journey ends, for now. We've already gotten a couple requests for rights to perform the show, so the Zombie King may live (die?) on. But for all practical purposes, the ride is over. I will miss these characters and this beautiful music, and this extraordinary cast. It was so thrilling every night when they sang the a cappella chorale late in Act I, "Hail Zombies!" -- such a massive, gorgeous sound (due in large part to music director Nic Valdez)! John and I will be cleaning up / correcting the script and score, and then we'll publish them on Amazon, so they'll be available soon. And I won't swear to it, but we also may be releasing a live cast album. And yes, we will license other theatres to produce it.

And don't tell anybody... but I'm already working on another "new" G&S show. No promises, but I may end up writing a G&S horror trilogy before I'm done. I can hear the heads of G&S fans exploding as I type this... Suggestions are welcome for source material for the third in the trilogy. I'll leave you with one of my favorite bits from Zombies. Thank you, St. Louis, for once again, taking a chance on us and totally embracing the insanity we've wrought. We owe you so much!

My zombie hunting habits, though a potent, little metaphor, Are really more subversive than the critics give me credit for. In nineteenth cent’ry operetta, comedy or thriller, I am still the very model of a modern-era zombie killer!

Long Live the Musical! Scott from The Bad Boy of Musical Theatre http://newlinetheatre.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-power-of-love-can-make-zombie-too.html

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dylanreviewsthings · 7 years ago

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Immortal Reviews' Top 50 Songs Of 2017

2017 is coming to a close, and it's that time of year where we all look back and reflect on the past. We are all different people than we were at the start, for better or for worse. By the same token, music is different than it was at the start of the year. We've watched music change and morph with the times from beginning to the end, and perhaps there's a beauty how specific moments are chronicled in the sound.

From the urgent release of Lorde's 'Green Light' to the heartbreaking tragedy of Linkin Park's 'One More Light,' we have grown and changed with the music throughout the year. This is Immortal Reviews' Top 50 Songs of 2017. Let us know what your favorite songs of the year are in the comments or on our social media!

Click on the links to read our full reviews of the songs/albums in which the songs are found on.

50. Evanescence - 'Imperfection'

Six years after their last record, Evanescence returned with beautiful orchestral reimaginations of previous tracks, as well as some new numbers such as the anthemic and haunting 'Imperfection.'

49. Blackbear - 'anxiety'

Blackbear's Cybersex was laced with many pictures of the state of relationships and interactions, and the wonderfully innocent yet worrysome 'anxiety' tied it all together.

48. Meadowlark - 'Paraffin'

While 'Paraffin' was Meadowlark's breakout single last year, it certainly held up it's message. The sweet, melodic indie pop track is infectious in every way, keeping its meaning at its core to tie in with its sweetness.

47. Björk - 'Losss'

Chaotic yet enchanting in the perfect way only Björk knows how to create, 'Losss' was the culmination of the soulful, industrial dream she explored in Utopia.

46. Foo Fighters - 'The Line'

Concrete & Gold was a big change in pace for Foo Fighters, who sought after a more upfront and grandiose production on this record. At the heart of the band's more driven sound is 'The Line,' an anthem that's truly one for the record books.

45. Death From Above - 'Freeze Me'

Death From Above had an interesting year, breaking out from a lot of barriers. Finally able to drop the "1979" label after previous legal drama and breaking through the radio barriers with 'Freeze Me' as their new anthem, the duo's more alternative sound really took them to a new level, without dropping their signature anger and groove.

44. Sam Smith - 'HIM'

Sam Smith made his long-awaited comeback this year, and not without tragedy. 'HIM' battles the struggle of being gay, facing expectations, and trying not to disappoint. It's a hard track to swallow for anyone who's ever been in love, let alone someone who is part of the LGBTQ community. It's a powerful one in the name of love

43. XXXTentacion - 'Save Me'

Many events in the music world of 2017 led to a bigger - and needed - discussion of mental health, a theme that is largely discussed in XXXTentacion's 17. 'Save Me' is a raw track with an inside look on being depressed, and perhaps it should serve as another insight into the big discussion of mental health.

We do not condone nor endorse the actions of XXXTentacion, we merely are commenting on the message behind the music.

42. The Chainsmokers & Coldplay - 'Something Just Like This'

When you pair Coldplay's anthemic presence with The Chainsmokers' ability to make pop bangers, and you get a beautifully personal track where Chris Martin begs for someone to hit that right connection again. Regardless of what you feel about either band, this track is a wonderful anthem that's bound to hit home somewhere for you, whether it be from the childlike curiosity of wanting to be the best or the idea of searching for that right feeling once more.

41. Vince Staples - 'BagBak'

2017 ushered in a new era of hip-hop with the trap scene, and a lot of music was lost in the need to make useless hype. Vince Staples made sure he didn't follow that trend, 'BagBak' taking the best of this new era of hip-hop and making an incredible anthemic track where the beat and delivery are both just as powerful as the other.

40. Bonobo - 'Second Sun'

Atmosphere in music is and art, and few artists harness it like Bonobo can. 'Second Sun' is the sound of being lost on a foreign planet, wandering aimlessly in awe of the deserts in front of you. You get a lot out of this track, including a sense of insignificance in this wide universe. It's good to get that beautiful knock of reality once in awhile, though.

39. Nadia Reid - 'Te Aro'

Sometimes, emptiness is just as important as layers. Nadia Reid captured the mysterious nature of her home country, New Zealand, in Preservation, 'Te Aro' wonderfully tying together her wonderful storytelling lyrics and minimalist production into one unforgettable track.

38. Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, & James McAlister - 'Jupiter'

Imagine bringing together four of music's smartest minds, and then putting them to work on a concept album involving space. Well, that happened. Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, The National's Bryce Dessner, and James McAlister release Planetarium this year, employing the vast and mysterious nature of space to create a truly beautiful adventure of an album, and 'Jupiter' beautifully captures the essence of it all.

37. Son Lux - 'Dangerous'

Son Lux is no stranger to drama, and 'Dangerous' is a testament to that. The dark synths and frantic production helps 'Dangerous' find its way into a horror setting, yet the drama is still inherently sensual and romanticized all the same.

36. Soen - 'Opal'

Soen's Lykaia took an in-depth look at the most visceral emotions we feel within ourselves, and 'Opal' brought out some of the angriest of those thoughts. Combine powerful passages of intense sonic moments and searching, internal lyrics and the brilliance of Soen really shines thorugh in 'Opal.'

35. SOHN - 'Rennen'

SOHN is the master of atmosphere, and the title track of his new album, 'Rennen,' was all the proof needed for that. The tragic lyrics and vocal layers above the somber piano help make 'Rennen' a dark and heartwrenching track that won't leave your mind any time soon.

34. Zola Blood - 'The Only Thing'

Nothing is more thrilling than dark pop music. Zola Blood's Infinite Games took that sound and morphed it into a brilliant collection of mystifying and dark tracks, 'The Only Thing' being the core of the sound. Sensual at heart yet haunting on its outside, it's an enchanting track from start to finish.

33. All Time Low - 'Drugs & Candy'

All Time Low are the masters of anthems, and 'Drugs & Candy' is one of the finer moments. With nothing but sweet memories and sweeter melodies to back its wonderful atmosphere, 'Drugs & Candy' stands at the center of everything that made Last Young Renegade so fun and powerful.

32. Nothing But Thieves - 'Live Like Animals'

Nothing But Thieves returned with a vengeance this year, their new record Broken Machines taking their sound a step further. 'Live Like Animals' has a much more forward and aggressive drive than a lot of their discography, though with the big choruses and the electronic punches to pair, you won't have to think twice about whether or not that was the right path for them to travel (the answer is yes, it was).

31. Brockhampton - 'Summer'

Brockhampton are a collective of production geniuses, and tha idea is spearheaded by 'Summer.' Hip-hop's boy band created a trilogy of brilliant albums with the three-part Saturation this year, and 'Summer' ended the band's second part of the trilogy. Soulful and pretty in every way, the song is an uplifting and dreamy testament to love and the future.

30. Lorde - 'Green Light'

Lorde was another artist who had to live up to an iconic debut this year, and she blew it out of the park. Lead single 'Green Light' shows maturity in a graceful way, a dark and haunting intro changing into a big pop anthem that channels all sorts of energies. It's a song about overcoming your own anxieties put into the perspective of one night, and there's no one who could've done this better than Lorde (and, of course, the brilliant mind of Jack Antonoff).

29. The Chainsmokers - 'Young'

Say what you will about The Chainsmokers, but its unquestionable that they know how to write some truly catchy songs. Take one of their songs that aren't overplayed ad nauseam and you can find some real gems, like 'Young.' It's another song about millennial love, but there's something familiar in the song's premise: "It's hard when you're young." It's all about the thrill and uncertainty of being in love when you're young, and with beautiful orchestras and wonderful builds to promise, this is a song that shows what the duo are capable of. Perhaps it's better that this one stays a hidden gem, though; we don't want what's good being overplayed to death, too.

28. Halsey - 'Sorry'

Halsey's modern telling of Romeo & Juliet came with a lot of different and interesting messages, but the one that came off the strongest was in 'Sorry.' Take the song out of the context of the record and you have a heartwrenching apology to anyone you've ever loved. It's a track that's hard to swallow for anyone who's ever felt heartbreak before, and it perfectly captures the emotions you feel in the wake of one, or fears the future of one: "So I'm sorry to my unknown lover / Sorry that I can't believe that anybody ever really / Starts to fall in love with me."

27. Incubus - 'Nimble Bastard'

Incubus returned to their anthemic roots this year in 8, with 'Nimble Bastard' holding the helm of it all for them. A badass, taunting intro and giant choruses to follow suit with, Incubus really came back with guns blazing. Everything about 'Nimble Bastard' just screams epic, and it's certainly an awesome ride from start to finish.

26. Mastodon - 'Steambreather'

Mastodon is no stranger to intensity. 'Steambreather' is the sonic representation of an angry demon, stomping impatiently during the choruses before charging and exploding in the massive choruses that anthemically chant, "I wonder who I am... I'm afraid of myself." Every note is like a punch to the face and not a second is wasted to channel every aspect of the nature of anger, every moment of the song brilliant capturing the inner workings of an enraged mind. The ending is just pure madness.

25. Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes - 'Snake Eyes'

The ferocity of rock wasn't captured so perfectly by any other band than Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes this year. 'Snake Eyes' has it all, with thrilling drums, giant riffs, and cavernous vocals to make this alternative anthem not only immense, but also visceral and carnivorous in its nature.

24. David Bowie - 'Killing A Little Time'

Though we lost David Bowie last year, he is long from being forgotten. The posthumous EP, No Plan, was full of interesting outtakes from the Blackstar sessions, one gem being the dark, gritty, and rocking 'Killing A Little Time.' Perfectly capturing the gritty, knowing aspects of Blackstar and injecting some of his own ghastly theatrical presence into it, David Bowie made sure his influence wasn't ready to die out any time soon.

23. Brockhampton - 'Team'

Brockhampton isn't the only outfit to make the list twice, but 'Team' is perhaps all the reason you need to see why. The beautiful first part has wonderfully heartbreaking crooning above chill guitars, before the grittier second half comes in seamlessly to bring the conclusion of the Saturation trio to a powerful end. Brockhampton's brilliance is captured in one angelic final track, and definitely serves as a standard for what should be expected of hip-hop.

22. Royal Blood - 'Lights Out'

2017 was undoubtedly the year of important sophomore releases, yet there was not band quite like Royal Blood who so surely blew out all the expectations. Without dropping any of their charm or niche, the band returned with the powerful, upfront, and driven 'Lights Out,' complete with simply giant choruses, enormous low end, and loads of swagger to back one of music's biggest follow ups.

21. Frances - 'Don't Worry About Me'

The feeling of stepping out into the world for the first time is both exhilarating and scary, and also serves as the subject of Frances' Things I've Never Said. 'Don't Worry About Me' is the opening track of the record, capturing those initial insecurities everyone feels when stepping out into the world, and the insecurities the ones who love you feel all the same. It's a track about reassurance, and something to connect to whether or not you're yet to step out into the world or if you've done it a long time ago. It's important to remember where it all started, and 'Don't Worry About Me' promises that even though it's scary, everything will work out in the end; an important sentiment to remember.

20. Sorority Noise - 'First Letter From St. Sean'

Sorority Noise's sense of tragedy was what made You're Not As _____ As You Think so impactful. At the center of it all is 'First Letter From St. Sean,' a dejected, somber track that has traces of optimism in its sound but screams out in pain. The ominous lyrics chant "I am not alive, I didn't mean to leave you when I died / I was too scared you might be the one to leave / There's so much more to life than the flick of a knife / I am alive 'cause I'm alive inside of this," a clear cry for help but lost under apparent hope that it takes some digging to find that answer.

19. Linkin Park - 'Crawling' (Live)

Linkin Park was amidst one of their best tours in years before Chester Bennington tragically committed suicide this year. With the world holding them up, the band refuesd to let his spirit die and be forgotten. From an incredible memorial show to countless fan-created memorials, Linkin Park and their community made sure his spirit was alive in our hearts. Linkin Park only hit Europe on their One More Light European Tour this summer, and they wanted to share, at least in part, how magically those shows were. The piano version of 'Crawling' the band performed is perhaps one of the most beautiful moments on One More Light Live, stripping down one of the band's classics to reveal the song's more personal tragic nature, millions of fans singing along with Chester the lyrics that meant so much to every one of them. The track doesn't only highlight the incredible voice of Bennington, but just how important the songs they made were to an innumerable number of fans.

18. 10 Years - 'Ghosts'

When you make a jamming track, an element of intensity is important. 10 Years does it perfectly with 'Ghosts,' an explosive track with giant vocals, giant riffs, and everything that excites and thrills you is part of this song. The alternative presence makes this song a staple for any rock radio, and is bound to get you ready to rock and take on anything ahead.

17. Mount Eerie - 'Swims'

There's an unforgiving sense of reality in Mount Eerie's A Crow Looked At Me, an album all about losing the most important person to you to the demon that is cancer. 'Swims' is the saddest, realest moment on the record, where Phil Elverum recounts watching his wife die in his arms. The pain is evident in every note he plays, the lyrics making the story even harder to swallow; the track's title derives from the innocence of a question his daughter asked him: "Today our daughter asked me if mama swims. I told her, 'Yes, she does, and that's probably all she does now.'"

16. Starset - 'Back To The Earth'

Nothing's quite as epic as a space epic, and that's the entire premise of Starset's sound. Vessels was the follow up to their giant debut, and it certainly lived up to expectations. 'Back To The Earth' is urgent, grand, and beautiful, sounding like a war being fought in space or the sound of returning home after a long journey into the great unknown. It's almost tragic, but the orchestras in the final, giant explosion of ending help it achieve that triumphant feel.

15. Peter Silberman - 'Maya'

Imagine a perfect sunset where the sun is setting over the sea, the sky violet, scarlet, and blue all at once. Imagine being along on a paradise island, by yourself with nothing but the ambience of the ocean and the warmth of the final rays of sunlight washing over you. That's the atmosphere 'Maya' creates, it's lo-fi sound so familiar and nostalgic yet captured in such a perfect atmosphere that it seems almost too sweet to be real. Not even the sweetest dreams could emulate the perfect sound of this track.

14. Kendrick Lamar - 'DNA.'

Kendrick Lamar is the unquestioned king of hip-hop, and for good reason. There's urgency in his music, often along with comments about the state of society. 'DNA.' is not only delivered in an epic fashion, but delivers a scathing picture of the stigmas that still exist against hip-hop and the daunting state of racism. Take that with an epic beat and unstoppable flow, and it's clear to see why Kendrick owns hip-hop.

13. Coldplay - 'A L I E N S'

Coldplay isn't the first band you think of when thinking of artists who make bold statements about society in their music, but they are certainly capable of it. 'A L I E N S' is a beautiful, atmospheric track about the refugee crisis taking over the world right now in the midst of tragedies taking place in the Middle East right now. It's from a refugee's perspective, in their search for a new home in unfamiliar lands once their previous home is gone. It's a very complex track performance wise and an even more powerful track meaning-wise, proving to be one of Coldplay's most unique tracks.

12. Ed Sheeran - 'Supermarket Flowers'

Ed Sheeran's Divide came out at the start of the year, before tragedy struck the industry, yet that didn't stop anyone from releasing heartbreaking tracks about loss. 'Supermarket Flowers' ended his record, a beautiful, piano-driven goodbye to his grandmother. Sheeran gets incredibly intimate about the moments he shared with her and sends her off in an angelic and heartbreaking way. 'Supermarket Flowers' is sure to hit you hard if you've ever lost someone important to you. The song beautifully ends with one final, bittersweet sentiment: "You got to see the person I have become / Spread your wings and I know / That when God took you back / He said, "Hallelujah, you're home."

11. Justin Bieber & BloodPop - 'Friends'

'Friends' wasn't the first jaunt between Justin Bieber and BloodPop; the two previously collaborated on the mega-hit 'Sorry,' so it's a no-brainer that the duo are capable of huge things. 'Friends' is a sweet song about love, Bieber asking almost tragically, "and if it ends, can we be friends?" The song wasn't an enormous hit, but perhaps that's for the best. 'Friends' is a beautiful capturing of that emotion of wanting someone to still be a part of your life, and paired with BloodPop's masterful production, it's a song that has earned a reputation as a hidden pop gem.

10. Paramore - 'Fake Happy'

Paramore's big return came with a surprising new face. Stripped from their angstier past, Paramore's After Laughter explored that inescapable emotion that the good moments are fleeting. There's always that moment after laughing where you realize that moment is no longer there, and perhaps never will be again. The inward searching record revolves around the themes of 'Fake Happy,' where Hayley Williams so honestly cries out, "Oh please, don't ask me how I've been, don't make me play pretend... I bet everyone here is fake happy too."

9. Julien Baker - 'Appointments'

Julien Baker is a tortured soul, and she wore her heart on her sleeve in this year's Turn Out The Lights. A heartbreaking album dealing with every tragedy one can face while walking through life, from heartbreak to addiction to loss, it's perhaps most wonderfully summed up in 'Appointments.' There's little words can do to describe the quiet beauty of the song, though you can perhaps get a full sense of all the tragedy of the song from the sobering lines: "How I disappoint you / Suggest that I talk to somebody again / That knows how to help me get better / And 'til then I should just try not to miss any more appointments."

8. Gorillaz - 'Saturnz Barz'

Gorillaz had a lot to say upon their big comeback, but nothing stood out as grandly as 'Saturnz Barz.' Employing the Jamaican emcee Popcaan to add an element to the song that few songs can claim, Gorillaz explore space with dark melodies and borderline-schizophrenic sounds to back their psychedelic dream.

7. Imagine Dragons - 'Believer'

Imagine Dragons know how to deliver empowering anthems, and 'Believer' may be one of their most powerful tracks to do so yet. The driven percussion and guttural synths support Dan Reynolds' giant vocals and uplifting lyrics, the choruses immense in every aspect of the word. Every chorus gets grander, and every word makes the song's message more powerful. Imagine Dragons are all you'll need to find the power to believe in what you want to accomplish.

6. Brand New - '451'

The art of groove is slowly being lost in alternative rock, yet the perfectionist mind of Brand New's Jesse Lacey managed to bring it back wonderfully in '451.' The bluesy verses lead into truly explosive choruses. Layers upon layers of percussion, guitars, and vocals build the expansive atmosphere of '451,' making it impossible to not get lost in the song's massive sound. The final chorus gets even higher, one final explosion of passion coming out with massive flair.

We do not endorse nor condone the actions of Jesse Lacey, we merely comment on the nature of the music.

5. Arcane Roots - 'Curtains'

Few bands can be so technical yet incredible anthemic like Arcane Roots are. Fully embracing electronica in Melancholia Hymns, 'Curtains' was the first taste of new music from them, and to say it was dramatic is an understatement. The theatrical swells of the synths and Andrew Groves' almost mechanical lyrics eerily overlie the darkness below leads into an epic, crushing breakdown that brings the song out on a massive note. This level of grandiose is only something Arcane Roots are capable of.

4. Thirty Seconds To Mars - 'Walk On Water'

Thirty Seconds To Mars is a band that knows how to take things to the next level. That being said, it's no surprise that the lead single to the band's upcoming album, 'Walk On Water,' is one of the biggest tracks of the year. With confident chanting, a glorious gospel, giant synths, and huge vocals from Jared Leto, 'Walk On Water' is the anthem for any success story. It's the soundtrack of overcoming the highest mountains and rising to the largest occasions.

3. PVRIS - 'What's Wrong'

All We Know Of Heaven, All We Need Of Hell was another album that came out at an important time for me. Major heartbreak is a dangerous thing, and PVRIS beautifully captured the essence of that. 'What's Wrong' was both one of the most impactful songs that I connected with, and at the some time one of the more powerful tracks on the record. It comes with a powerful, yet simple message: it's okay to not be okay. As Lynn Gunn so wonderfully claims in the chorus, "I don't need a metaphor for you to know I'm miserable." It's angry yet anthemic build perfectly pairs with the emotions the song discusses, leading to an all encompassing track that captures everything about that specific emotion, a quality in which only PVRIS are the masters of.

2. Linkin Park - 'One More Light'

To say the loss of Chester Bennington was a tragedy for the music industry is an understatement. On July 20, the world lost a hero. A hero who brought life and hope back into millions upon millions of souls. One More Light was an album about battling depression and the effects it has on relationships and humanity, but unfortunately the world understood that too late. 'One More Light' has become the song of goodbyes this year. It's hard hearing Chester sing, and perhaps it'll never get easier to listen to this song. All the same, there's a reassuring nature in the chorus' heartbreaking lyrics: "Who cares if one more light goes out? Well I do." If we've learned anything about ourselves this year, it's that that sentiment will always reign true, no matter who you are. Chester lives on in our hearts, and his soul will never die.

1. Linkin Park - 'Sorry For Now'

Linkin Park is on this list three times for a good reason - there's no band with the vision that they have. Regardless of what you think of them, this band has defined everything great about music: evolution. 'Sorry For Now' is a song that means a lot to me personally, and was one of the songs that helped me through the darkest month of my life. After Chester's passing, I couldn't listen to the band's music for weeks, but when I finally came back to this one, I remembered there was still a future ahead of me. Heartbreak, loss, and confidence is interlaced into the beautiful anthemic synths and harmonies of 'Sorry For Now,' showcasing Mike Shinoda's ability to turn anything to gold, show the chemistry that made Linkin Park so impactful, and most of all, why they are and always will be one of the most important bands to ever exist. And to tie that all together, why they'll always be one of my favorite bands.

Want to hear all these songs? Check out our official Spotify Playlist:

You can check out how we ranked all of our favorite songs of 2017 on the full comprehensive list here. Stay tuned for our Best New Artists and Album Of The Year lists!

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