#detroit sample pack

[joemuggs]

Chimes of Freedom

Three years ago I did an oral history of Orbital's "Chime" for MOJO. This is it...

Paul Hartnoll: From the age of 13 I was in school bands and local bands in Sevenoaks, usually playing guitar. Then when I was 16 and my brother was 20, about ‘84, ‘85, we started getting drum machines and what have you together. We were listening to electro, hi-NRG, Tackhead, Cabaret Voltaire, Chakk, Severed Heads. We’d turn up at local discos with a Front-242 or Dead Or Alive record, or a bunch of electro 12”s, and pester the DJ to play them. Then, when house came along in ‘86, ‘87 – the stuff like (The House Master Boyz’) House Nation and (Nitro Deluxe’s) This Brutal House - we immediately thought, Great! This is like electro and hi-NRG together!

Phil Hartnoll: I was doing an apprenticeship, so I had a bit of money, and any spare cash I’d spend on synths. I never had aspiration, I just wanted to know what synthesiser sounds were. Paul was much more driven, he wanted to be in a band. We gradually got tapes together, we’d give them to a few people, then Paul found this guy Jazzy M.

Jazzy M: My show was called The Jacking Zone, and it was the first ever proper house show on London airwaves. The stuff was already coming in from Chicago, but I wanted to hear if people could make it here in the UK - so on my radio show, I asked, Are you making music? Come and bring it to me!, bold as brass. So (Paul’s pirate DJ friend-of-a-friend) Jack Man Jay brought me this tape. It’s wondrous to think back that I had no other information but ‘Paul from Kent.’

Paul: I went up to see Jazzy in this record shop in Croydon, My Price I think; it was quite terrifying, really, because he was like a John the Baptist of house music, such an evangelist, a real character. He ran around the shop collecting all these 12”s, then went, ‘What you do is brilliant, but it’s too fast, and you need to copy these records.’ I said, I haven't got any money. He just looked at me like this was an abstract concept, and went, ‘Money? Nah, you can have them. Copy those, come back when you need some more.’ He became my mentor right up to the time when I finally gave him Chime.

Phil: The way Paul wrote Chime was very impulsive and instinctive, that non-thinking-about-it creative vibe is really captured there. Normally he’s much more the musician, the nerdy one who’ll sit down and work things out, where I’m just a Tasmanian devil - Wurrrrgh, press that, what’s this do? - so actually it was funny for him to do such an unconscious, unconsidered kind of track.

Paul: I was just trying out a way of recording where I did it all live to the four-track, without worrying about mucking about and syncing different tracks. I started about four in the afternoon, I think it was a Wednesday, a couple of hours before I went to the pub. I guess I was trying to do something a bit Detroit techno, but really, I just took some random samples from my dad’s easy listening records, put in the ‘dum dum dum du-du-dum’ bass at the beginning, job done. Right at the end I thought, What’s that weird sound? and it was the descending string bit. Sounds OK, I’ll put that in… and that was literally it.

Phil: His mates were sitting on the sofa hassling him to finish it as he did the live recording to tape! I’ll be honest, Chime never floated my boat massively because that sort of Salsa-ey rhythm didn’t really sit right with me, but I realised it really stuck out as quirky and weird, which is why it worked for us and helped as break through. And it really did go mad.

JM: He brought it into me at Vinyl Zone at the weekend, the shop was packed with DJs, I put the tape on and the whole place went spare – ‘I want it! I want it!’, thinking it was a new 12”. I was really cheeky, like, Ha ha, no you can’t have it, it’s not released! Right that minute, I went, I’m having this. I’d been working on setting up the Oh’Zone label so it felt like perfect timing, spiritual almost.

Paul: Jazzy told me to go home and re-record it, but with an extra bit at the end where it all comes back in – ‘and do it on a metal tape as well.’ I spent £3.25 on a cassette to record it on, the most expensive one I’d ever bought, and I was thinking, It’d better bloody be worth it.

JM: I’ve still got that tape, it’s a TDK MA90 with just ‘CHIME’ written on it. The brilliant thing is, that’s what we mastered the vinyl off - 12, 13 minutes whatever it is, no edits, nothing, just straight on to the Oh’Zone 12" (released in December 1989). And that was my label launched! 1,000 copies, then another 3,000, it kept getting bigger. I even played it out off the cassette too, before the vinyl. I remember it was Clink Street or one of those really grubby underground raves. The whole place went absolutely crackers. Johnny Walker was DJing there too, he worked at Polydor which was in the same building as Tong - so that’s how he got to know about it.

Pete Tong: Soon as I heard it, I had to sign it. I did the deal with Jazzy on the track, then rolled it into a bigger deal with the boys - because I knew I wanted a longer-term thing for them with (London records dance imprint) FFRR. It was a bit of a seminal moment for British homegrown electronic music; before them we had DJs going into studios with the help of engineers – S’Express, Bomb The Bass, M/A/R/R/S - learning how to make records cut-and-paste style. Then the next big wave was the talent doing everything themselves: The Prodigy, Underworld, The Chemical Brothers and Leftfield. And Orbital really set the tone for that.

Helen Mead: My first thought on getting the record was, Wait, this isn’t The Orb! And second - and this is how trendy everything had become - I thought, Oh they’re supposed to be named after orbital raves? God that’s so over. But with their live shows, they started something else. At the time I had such a battle to make people realise that there could be any link between dance music and live music, whereas I knew they interlinked.

Paul: We’d only played one show before, as The Hartnoll Brothers, amazingly supporting a local Kent go-go band. But a friend of ours (Johnny Delafons) drummed for the Shamen, and we ended up meeting them (Orbital played their first gig supporting The Shamen at the Islington Town & Country Club 2, February 1990)

Mixmaster Morris: Doing the Synergy tour with The Shamen was their first proper live gig. I took them out to buy sequencers to make it easier to do the live sets, and the first time I ever heard them play was their first soundcheck. Everything was moving so fast in 1990, and I’ll always associate Chime with that. It was in the charts as we were touring, so it just got more and more popular, everyone got more and more crazy. The Shamen weren’t in the charts at that point, they didn’t have a hit ‘til 91, so Orbital got bigger than everyone else on the tour. They were still only getting £10-15 a night like the rest of us, mind.

Phil: When we did Chime on Top of the Pops (on March 22, 1990), we were a square peg in a round hole. We were so awkward standing there trying to mime - we thought we were being all clever having everything unplugged. Ugh, it was pretty painful. We had a big argument with them asking why we couldn’t play live, but at the end of the day you can’t refuse Top of the Pops! Then of course we had Snap! on afterwards doing, “I Got The Power!” and they just showed us up even more.

Paul: Between us, 808 State, The Shamen and their mates, it really felt like the beginning of something, of people deciding they didn’t like the old nightclub regime and wanted something new. From there we got involved with (crusty tribal rave promoters) the Megadog lot. It was very word of mouth, it was really about being evangelical for this culture. Very different to all the Sunrise and Energy raves which we’d play - they were run by blaggers who were only in it for the money, and they would run things very shoddily. 

PT: They were very much in tune with the free parties, the traveller mentality, the DIY mentality. And they presented themselves as a band from the start. Them, The Shamen, The KLF, I think they showed the way. To this day, I tell producers starting out, If you want to be seen as a band, you’ve got to act like it, not just another DJ making a record.

Phil: Playing it live was where the magic came in for me. It was so simple, just a few samples, the 303 - which was my little baby to mess around with - and couple of other analogue synths, it was really easy to jam it out. You can hear how much we’d go off on one with it on Son Of Chime (released on the Live At The Brain album, 1990). Sometime around this we went up to Liverpool, that guy James Barton who started Cream asked us to do a private do for him and his mates, about 100 people. As soon as we’d played it, they’d go, Play Chime again, play Chime again! We must’ve played it for half an hour, maybe more.

MM: They played Synergy shows all through 1990, and we were doing underground parties at the same time - the whole point of those was to do an all-night party with no DJs, only live electronic music. A classic one was at a rehearsal studio in Willesden - maybe 1,000, 1,500 people, well overcrowded - which kickstarted (touring Megadog rave event) the MIDI Circus and was a precursor to Experimental Sound Field in Glastonbury in 1992, where Underworld, Orbital and everyone played for the whole weekend. 

HM: It was probably 1993 before people realised how big this whole scene had become: that’s when you had Aphex Twin, Sabres of Paradise, Leftfield, all coming through. So Chime was big, but I don’t think anyone knew how big it was all about to get.

Paul: I could never get sick of hearing Chime. Aside from just being proud of it, it’s given me my entire life of doing music. How could I ever not get a thrill from that?

[igettalk]

More than 160,000 pounds of ground beef has been recalled by Wolverine Packing Co., located in Detroit, due to suspicions of E. coli contamination. Recently, Grimmway Farms issued a recall of organic carrots because of E. coli contamination, which resulted in nearly 40 people getting sick in over 10 different states.This latest recall by Wolverine Packing Co includes both fresh ground beef, which has a “use by” date of November 14, 2024, and frozen ground beef that was produced on October 22, 2024. These products have been sent to restaurants all over the country, and it is important that they are either thrown away or returned to the suppliers to ensure safety.The issue was first brought to attention when the Minnesota Department of Agriculture informed the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) about several cases of illness connected to eating ground beef. In response to this report, an investigation was launched, which revealed that a ground beef sample from Minnesota had tested positive for E. coli. According to reports, at least 15 people became sick, with symptoms showing up between November 2 and November 10. Out of those affected, two individuals needed to be hospitalized due to their illness.Health organizations have explained the risks associated with E. coli infections. Although most strains of E. coli are harmless and actually aid in digestion, some types can lead to serious health problems. These can include dehydration, bloody diarrhea, and intense abdominal cramps. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) notes that symptoms may show up anywhere from 2 to 8 days after exposure, but they usually occur within 3 to 4 days. While most people tend to recover within a week, it's important to note that in rare cases, serious complications can arise, potentially leading to kidney failure.To reduce the risk of E. coli infections, it is important for consumers to cook ground beef until it reaches an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Additionally, following good food safety practices can help prevent infections: make sure to wash your hands before handling food, rinse fruits and vegetables thoroughly, and steer clear of water sources that may be contaminated.In summary, if you have any of the recalled ground beef products from Wolverine Packing Co., please throw them away immediately. This is crucial for your safety, as E. coli infections can cause a range of health problems, from mild to severe. Read the full article

[priokskfm]

#FREEDOWNLOADS #FREEPROMO #RADIOCHART L.R.S - Get Fucked Up [BIRDFEED] [BIRDFEED EXCLUSIVE] L.R.S debuts on the Feed with “Get Fucked Up”! -How long have you been creating music? I have been creating funk, soul & hiphop under a different name for around 6 or 7 years now. I only recently started my house music alias LRS (Love Reigns Supreme). House music has always been a passion of mine. I frequented raves and clubs since my teens and have always had a foot in the scene. -What do you use to make your tracks? My favourite software/plugin I use is loopcloud for finding good samples and chopping them up. I can find rhythms and grooves from tons of sample packs and twist and shape them as I please. Its been a game changer for me. -How and when did you first discover Dirtybird? I honestly don’t remember when I discovered Dirty Bird but I came across the label on Soundcloud. I was drawn to its distinct style and creativeness. -Which Dirtybird artist would you want to collaborate with the most? Walker & Royce = Dons. -If your entire life was a movie, what title would best describe you? The Pursuit Of Happiness. A road filled with hard work & determination. -What’s the best concert you’ve ever been to? The Prodigy hands down. I have witnessed them live many times. Their energy is insane. -If you could time travel, where and when would you go? I would go to Detroit in the 60s just to see all those legends of soul music doing their thing live. -What species of bird best describes you and why? I would say a woodpecker because Im always banging out beats but my girlfriend says a Do Do haha….FML -What does Dirtybird mean to you? To me DirtyBird means upfront, original, creative, forward thinking and just down right dirty. Скачать: https://ift.tt/Nwd2Abh https://ift.tt/ZxDc2t3

[quantzigblogs]

Top Global Providers of Oil Spill Solutions

Originally Published on: SpendEdge | Top Oil Spill Solutions Providers in the World

Solutions for oil spills: A market overview

Activities related to oil exploration and production have increased dramatically in recent years. As a result, the risks of oil spills associated with such operations have raised the need for and expansion of oil spill remedy providers globally. Oil spill remedies are a collection of methods or solutions designed to reduce the harm that spilled oil causes to the environment. They also help to lessen the financial harm that spill-related parties suffer. Oil transfers to ships and oil transportation frequently result in oil spills. Leaks in the pipelines that transport oil from the ocean to the land could be another prominent reason for an oil spill. The demand for oil spill solutions is also being significantly influenced by the growing concern over the harm that oil spills are causing to the environment and the ensuing government regulations to ensure responsibility of oil and gas firms with regard to reducing oil spills. leading providers of oil spill solutions Polyeco

The business was established in 1977, and its current headquarters are in the United Arab Emirates. They offer a full range of oil spill services, such as evaluation and consultation of the incident, spill management, technical support, logistics for the response, planning and administration, deployment/operation of equipment, and waste management. Over the years, the Polyeco Group has expanded its competence in more than 2,100 activities around the world. In addition to providing the widest array of environmental services now available, the company also processes and treats any volume of trash in addition to acting quickly in the event of any emergency oil or HNS catastrophe. Demand Proposal Lamor

Lamor is a business with its headquarters in Finland and was founded in that year. A full selection of skimmers, oil booms, pumps, power packs, landing craft, workboats, storage, and associated equipment are included in the company's oil spill solutions. In order to find innovative and efficient oil cleanup techniques, they have also made major R&D investments. Over the past 36 years, Lamor has increased its proficiency in responding to and recovering from oil spills, particularly in Arctic and offshore operations. International NRC

In terms of reaction, containment, and remediation to oil spills, NRC International is the industry pioneer. The business was founded in 1992, and its present headquarters are in the US. Over 1,000 oil leak accidents have been contained and remedied by the company in its 26-year history. More than 1,250 people work for their emergency response network. Over 50 offices spread throughout 13 nations, including the United Kingdom, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and the Americas, serve as NRC International's operational hub. Control of Marine Pollution

Marine Pollution Control provides all-inclusive environmental solutions, from reaction to emergencies and cleanup to maintenance and training for businesses. MPC, which was established in Detroit in 1967, has contributed significantly to many of the most serious pollution incidents in recent history.

Request a free sample of SpendEdge's market research report on Oil Spill Solutions Procurement to learn more about the market's growth, pricing options, and suppliers' best practices. To contact our specialists, click here.

[sethshead]

We already know that AI (at least outside of China's surveillance state), due to the samples on which it was trained, is terrible at correctly identifying nonwhite people. Lineups and "six packs" also produce questionable results. It's even worse when recognition is based off of 8-year-old photographs.

A witness ID of a suspect may be enough for questioning, but how on earth was it sufficient for a judge to sign an arrest warrant with no further evidence? Meanwhile, Ms. Woodruff and her family were subjected to trauma, the expense of legal representation, and possible medical complications that fortunately did not come to pass. This was an embarrassment for the City of Detroit, and I hope Ms. Woodruff is entitled to sue. No one should be treated like a criminal on the basis of such flimsy evidence.

Black peace of mind matters.

[screamingforyears]

MINI_REVIEW(s):

The review template of choice for the TL;DR Tribe…

‘HELL NIGHTMARE’ (@blissbeatrecords) is the latest LP from @bodyofleaves & it finds the SLC-based quartet of Evan Pack, Ian Francis, Adam Toomey & Elizabeth Mathis bringing all the NuWave goods across an even 8 track spread that’s chockfull of chilled isolation, brightly hued new_romancing & aesthetically inclined detail… or in most cases a combo of all three as evidenced on the melancholically malaise’d “Process”

‘L.A. SHIT’ (@wharfcatrecords) is the latest LP from @graciehorse0 & it finds the Los Angeles-based artist embodying her “I drive fast cars and I eat fast foods I contain multitudes” ethos in full while showing off her talented friends across 9 dusky pieces of Alt_country’d IndieRawk, bummer jamming odes & tenderly twanged heartbreakers as witnessed on the tear inducing Mazzy meets the slide guitaring of “What I’m Missing”

‘OTHER WORLD’ (@alacarterecords_) is the latest EP from @madelinegoldstein_ & it finds the Los Angeles-based artist sharpening her blade across 4 disco_dazzled tracks that set their sights on some sultry & dark_waving SynthPop while aiming us to the nearest darkened dancefloor to bask in its throbbing synths, slapped backbeats & stoically purred vocals which are on full display throughout “Death’s Door”

‘VIRTUE FALTERS’ (@felte_label) is the latest LP from @ritualhowls & it finds the Detroit-based trio of Paul Bancell (vocals/guitar), Chris Samuels (synth/samples/drum machine) & Ben Saginaw (bass) spending album #5 honing in what they do best, cinematically blending their brand of rust_belted DoomPop, one that coalesces around a healthy dose of darkly hued noir, industrialized backdrops & plenty of Americana’d twang as heard on the jittered “Goodnight Reason”

////

[rjhpandapaws]

Heyyo Panda!! I have another ask for you, but only if I’m not being a pain in the ask.

I’m picking the prompt “Lost” for allen60.

Pls tell me about their camping trip from hell, which was actually a blessing in disguise. (They get together miles from civilisation, through a series of hilarious arguments about who misread the map)

//You are never a pain send as many as you like!! //I am going to go with Canonverse because that just seems like it would be the most fun.

“You can just admit we’re lost Six, no one is going to judge you.” Allen said after he waited five minutes for Sixty to either look up from the map or come off of red, “You’re allowed to make mistakes.” They’d originally pulled into the rest stop parking lot because Allen thought he had missed an exit somewhere and wanted to check the map. When he drove on the interstate lone enough everything started to look the same and he was liable to miss his turn off, which was exactly why he started taking trips like this with company. So he could have a navigator. Most of the time he would take Gavin or someone from his unit, but when he brought it up he learned Sixty had never been on a camping trip. So he chose to take him instead. As he watched Sixty pour over the map as his LED cycled to show he had at least heard Allen he understood a few of the placed he had gone wrong. Sixty had never been outside of Detroit, he could look up land marks almost instantly, but that didn’t mean he would recognize them. After being shot in the head, and then brought back he processed things a little slower than most androids. Allen was relatively certain he was witnessing one of those loops. “Hey, Six.” He tried again, “Sixty.”

“What?” He finally responded, his tone was sharp as he looked up at Allen with evident frustration, “I am trying to figure out where we are. I can’t triangulate with your constant talking.” “Six, there isn’t any cell service out here.” Allen explained, “That’s kind of the point of the trip.” There was a long beat of silence. It was eventually punctuated by the crinkling of paper and Allen was handed back a neatly folded map, “Well then Captain, congratulation’s we’re lost.” If it were anyone else Allen would have laughed, “I’ll head inside and ask for directions. Do you want to come with me? They might have something you can sample.” “Sure.” He replied and they both got out. The thing about getting directions from locals was that they tended to use landmarks that “everyone” knows. Which renders them all but useless if you’re from out of the area, but it was still endearing to see Sixty try his best to find them. Even if watching him down dish-soap like it was soda was an unsettling part to the image.

Sixty’s face when they finally made it to a camp ground was worth all of it. This wasn’t the planned one of course, they’d taken a few too many wrong turns for that, but it would work. It was far away from the rest of the world and they would both have a chance to just be. Sixty’s face was plastered to the window, his radio active green dish-soap was in the cup holder long forgotten as he took in the scenery. They didn’t run in to their next problem until they got to their plot. In all of Allen’s planning, or lack there of in this case, he hadn’t accounted for small town ideals on androids. On either side of them were camping trailers adorned with Anti-Android stickers and flags. He didn’t want Sixty to be surrounded by this for the next three days, it had been part of what Allen was trying to get him away from. “Interesting neighbors.” Was all Sixty had to say about it, “We should probably get the tent set up before it gets dark. You don’t have night vision.” “Six, we can find another place, you don’t have to do this.” Allen said carefully. “It’s not every day that I get to ruin two people’s weekends.” He looked back at Allen with a smile, “If anything happens we have the authority to deal with it, relax okay? Besides I don’t exactly want to risk getting lost again.” That was a fair point. They weren’t from here, and Allen didn’t want to spend the first night of their weekend car camping, “Alright, but if they start anything, come to me okay.” “Sure.” He said in a way that let Allen know, that was the opposite of what was going to happen.

Setting up a tent was always a nightmare, not as much as taking down, but it did make the list of things Allen hated the most about camping; and that was before Sixty managed to get tangled up in the tent fabric. All of the things to be said in compliment of prototype androids considered, the one thing Allen wished they came with was common sense. “Okay stop laughing and help me please Allen.” Sixty said when it became clear that Allen was in fact not on his way over, “I did everything according to the pictures and now I am stuck and there is no tent.” “You did them out of order Six.” He replied when he caught his breath, “And I really don’t know what else went wrong to get you stuck like that.” “I don’t care what went wrong, just get me out.” He snapped. One untangled android and a couple of hours later, the tent was finally set up. It was dim enough now that Sixty’s LED was a little more noticeable. Allen was on edge, but Sixty at least seemed content to sit and watch the fire, and Allen had learned to keep the lighter fluid away from him. If he wasn’t trying to start a forest fire he was drinking it. Which all things considered, was something Allen should have seen coming. “I can see your stress levels rising Captain.” Sixty looked up from the fire, and seeing the flame dancing in his eyes was a little unsettling if he was honest, “They won’t try anything tonight, they are only observing. So relax and come join me by the fire.”

“Call me Allen while we’re out here Six.” He replied as he made his way over, “We’re off hours, I’m not your captain.” “Alright then Allen,” He grinned at the way Sixty said his name with all the enthusiasm of a child that had been told they were allowed to swear, “You were the one who said vacations were about relaxing, so sit down and relax.” Allen took the open chair beside Sixty and made a show of sitting down, “Happy?” “Sure, so what do we do now?” He asked, “We’ve started a fire, and I’m not allowed to stick anything in it, so what else do people do when they camp. Other than sleep outside.” “First of all, you aren’t allowed to put anything in the fire because you will find a way to burn the entire campground down.” Allen sighed, “Usually people will tell horror stories or make smores, but you can’t eat so...” “So tell me a horror story.” He replied. “I don’t know any good ones.” He said with a shrug. Sixty groaned, “So we’re just supposed to sit and stare at the fire until it goes out?” As if on cue there was a distant roll of thunder and it began pouring rain. Allen cursed under his breath and made for the tent and Sixty followed after him. They made it inside before Allen got soaked to the bone and zipped it up behind them, they could figure out something to do once the rain let up.

Except the storm didn’t actually let up at all. At one point it even hailed. Allen wanted to kick himself for not checking the weather before they left, but he had figured Sixty would know despite this being his first camping trip. In a way though, being holed up in a tent with Sixty wasn’t all that bad. At the very least it was warmer then being out in the elements. The hardest part was avoiding spilling his guts to Sixty. There wasn’t much else they could do other than talk because Sixty counted the card every time they tried to play a game. It wasn’t his fault, probability calculation was one of the few things he couldn’t turn off because it was tied directly to how he operated. So they talked, a lot. Allen about his childhood and why he enjoyed camping so much, and Sixty on what it was like to be an android. The more he learned about Sixty the harder it became to keep these things to himself. He started to use endearments for Sixty, and he didn’t catch himself. It wasn’t until the last day when they were packing up despite the rain that either one of them acknowledged it, and at that it wasn’t Allen who brought it up. It was Sixty. “Did you mean it?” He asked abruptly. “Which ‘it’ exactly?” It was poor way to deflect but Allen was nervous. “All of it any of it.” He replied, “Am I really someone you don’t mind being trapped in the woods with.” Allen closed the trunk of his car and leaned against it. He was soaked through, but he didn’t mind, the heater in his car worked fine. He didn’t reply until Sixty looked at him. It was the moment of truth, “I meant every word of all of it, and given the chance you are the only person I would make a habit of getting stranded in the woods with.” The kiss that came after seemed natural, it was a long time coming Allen supposed and as he drove back with one hand in Sixty’s he decided they could probably make a tradition out of getting lost together.

(Prompt from this list)

@asset35-maya

[joemuggs]

DO YOU SUFFER FROM SPYMANIA?

It’s the 25th anniversary of the Spymania label, and to celebrate it they have released a record of unreleased tracks. It’s brilliant, you should buy it. In 2016 I wrote a history of the messy, messed-up, but brilliant Brighton scene that they found their feet in. Sadly it got lost in the archiving of the Red Bull Music Academy site, but I’ve still got the text, so here it is. And to prove I was there, here is me, in an inexplicably bad shirt, with the Spymania crew and friends:

Some Spymanians - far left is Hardy Spymania, next to him in blue t-shirt is Paddington Breaks, third from right leaning forward is MDK and that’s me in the bad shirt on the right.

25th Anniversary EP by SONGBIRD & WAFTA

From the town's 18th century genesis as a playground for aristocrats, Brighton has always been a space for outrageous hedonism. Being the closest point to London on the English south coast makes it an obvious place for escape and misbehaviour. With that has always come something grittier and grottier though. It's no coincidence that the best known fictional depictions of Brighton feature razor-carrying petty gangsters (Brighton Rock) and running street battles and hurried back-alley knee-tremblers (Quadrophenia). The novelist Keith Waterhouse famously said “Brighton always looks like a town helping police with their enquiries” – and it still does. Behind its facade of homeopaths, holidaymakers, students and media folk, it hides rampant corruption and organised crime, a heroin economy to match any British city, and sprawling estates that are among the country's poorest.

In the heat of the 1990s rave fervour when the world and its dog came down to Brighton to party their way through untold seven-day weekends, all of this ambiguity was expressed via a rather different electronic scene. While the superclubs along the seafront pumped to the sounds of handbag house, trance and big beat, hidden away in the nooks and crannies a techno style formed that became known on the European underground simply as “the Brighton sound” – and around it sprouted odd rave and electronica mutations that, though they might have seemed pisstakey or bloody-minded at the time, would alter the course of electronic music for a long time to come. All of this was surrounded by a dense web of art, theory, satire, in-jokes and meat-flinging cabaret, that could be perplexing, even off-putting, but has left a huge creative legacy from a tiny scene that punched way, way above its weight.

This scene of malcontents and squarepegs was by definition loose-knit – but if there was a centre to it, it was Cristian Vogel. Originally from the south Midlands, he and his friend Si Begg already had experience putting out cassette releases and primitive music software hacks (with the Cabbage Head Collective) before he came to Sussex University to study 20th Century Music in 1992. With a head full of Stockhausen and rave tapes, he was boshing out the techno, and by the end of 1994 had two releases on Dave Clarke's Magnetic North label and was resident at the Acid Box club nights in a little sticky-floored upstairs venue in Brighton's North Lanes.

This was the period when techno and hardcore were still part-fused, and along with headliners like Carl Cox and Luke Slater you could expect to hear Belgian hoover noises full-pelt gabber rolled into the more “intelligent” beats, all with nothing but relentless strobes and smoke to intensify the experience. It's a sign of how intense it was that the “chillout” in the backroom consisted of Richie Hawtin tunes playing and Tetsuo: Iron Man being shown on a couple of TVs, and felt genuinely laid back in comparison to the dancefloor. It could be shoulder-to-shoulder packed, or have ten people raving away, but it was pretty much always guaranteed to deliver mental obliteration. It's precisely this delirium you can hear in key early releases like Vogel's “Ninjah” or Tobias Schmidt's “Minus One”.

Si Begg and friends

Cristian, together with Si Begg founded Mosquito Records around this point, around which a motley crew of producers of monstrously banging but sonically razor sharp techno gathered. Neil Landstrumm, Tobias Schmidt (an ingenious pseudonym for one Toby Smith), Ibrahim Alfa and Russ Gabriel, as well as Begg and Vogel themselves, all released in the first couple of years. They were closely allied with the Scottish techno scene, notably through Landstrum but also the Sativae label run by Dave Tarrida and Steve Glenncross, and played to seething crowds north of the border, as well as absolutely huge ones in Germany, Poland and further afield. Yet even though the audiences were tiny back on the south coast, the local brand was inescapable: indeed Si Begg, who lived in London right through the nineties, recalls with some bafflement seeing untold German flyers with “BRIGHTON TECHNO” in big letters under his name.

All of this was great, but taken alone could simply have been another local flavour on the international techno scene. The four-to-the-floor certainly remained the heartbeat of the scene as The Acid Box became The Box, which became Defunkt, which became Freekin' The Frame, and the techno dons kept coming through: Blake Baxter, Shake Shakir, Claude Young, Beltram, Weatherall, Surgeon, Bandulu... but very quickly, things became about more than just that. There was a strongly disruptive element from the beginning in the form of a close alliance with the Brighton “clench” of the Church Of The SubGenius. If you don't know about the Church, that's a whole other rabbit hole to fall down, but for our purposes it's enough to know that the local bunch existed on the fringes of freeparty soundsystem culture and subverted its tendencies to crypto-mystical bollocks, and were big on collage and stencil graffiti, heavy punning streams of consciousness (“Bulldada” in the SubGenius parlance), mischief disguised as culture and vice versa.

Heavily influenced by this SubGenius mischief was Mat Consume, in-house designer, computer animator and frequent back-room DJ for the Vogel-related axis. His art, brain-bent ranting and noisily experimental sets became a vital part of the identity of the scene, helping coalesce obsessions with punk and Situationism and ambivalent embrace of digital progress among Vogel and compadres to the point where when they formed an umbrella organisation for their activities it was natural to call it No Future. Held loosely together by Vogel's partner and manager Emma Sola this acted as a booking agency for various acts, but just as much felt like a chaotic but fiercely independent joint art project between Vogel, Sola and Consume, throwing ideas and aesthetic forms out into the underground and forging alliances with equally bloody-minded creators.

Emma Sola

These included the likes of Canadian filmmaker and stencil artist Pablo Fiasco; animators and sound artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt aka Semiconductor; non-techno eclecticist club collectives Mufflewuffle and Slack; the combative cabaret night That Stupid Club which would feature subcultural saboteurs like Stewart Home, Dennis Cooper and The Divine David; and another more rave-influenced cabaret night called Monkey's Lounge full of spoken word, off-colour comedy, offal-flinging and pints-of-piss-drinking, run and compered by... um... me (under the names Rimmington Snuffporn Esq and DJ Dead, with help from my music production and DJ partner Jeffrey Disastronaut). It was at a Monkey's Lounge session that Consume physically pushed Jamie Lidell – already widely known as a wildly innovative techno producer via the Subhead collective and their Growth parties – on stage with the house band Balzac, immediately kickstarting a long running residency as their singer and marking the beginning of a performing career that still continues.

Tom “Squarepusher” Jenkinson and Hardy Spymania

Possibly the most important alliance of all, though, was with the Spymania crew. Their social circle was a motley bunch of Londoners, Midlanders and most notably a large contingent from Chelmsford, Essex. Many of the latter had been to school with Tom Jenkinson, a musician known originally as Stereotype and then, when the Spymania label itself was formed by Paul Fowler and brighton-based Hardy Finn, as Squarepusher. Their ethos was preposterous in all ways, fuelled by unstable fusions of questing intellects and Essex swagger. As teenagers they first congregated around a Chelmsford club night called Club Trout, run by future scene mainstay Jane Mitchell (and later exported to Brighton as Smooth But Halibut); they smoked themselves sarcastic to early tapes made by their friends Cassetteboy; everything they did was shot through with skater-stoner-hardcore-raver pisstake attitude. Their rickety old website, which remains live today, still gives a hint of all this. http://www.spymania.com/pgs/hardcore.html

Yet these were musical connoisseurs too, assiduously collecting hip hop, acid, Detroit techno, British electronica, and especially in the case of Martin “MDK” Wood, death metal, gindcore and anarcho punk. This pile-up of musical expertise and sarky dicking about was there from the first release, Squarepusher's Conumber EP – which featured everything from a track that was nothing more than a timestretched Jenkinson asking “can anyone lend me a fiver” to the jungle-acid fusions that would literally redefine how electronica was made from the Aphex Twin on down for the rest of the 1990s. The Spymania records that followed touched on illbient mismatched time signatures, Drexciyan electro-funk, Deicide samples, eerily blissed out atmospherics, Cassetteboy's peurile genius (via offshoot label Barry's Bootlegs), and a dozen more awkward twists and turns besides, always brain-frying, always funny, never settling on any sound that offered the casual listener an easy handle on what was going on.

A standardly Dada Spymania cover

This added up to a refreshing antidote to the chin-fondling seriousness and purism of much of the electronica scene. And when Finn, Wood and friends went raving at the Acid Box, they naturally found a kindred spirit in Mat Consume who would design almost all the Spymania sleeves, their grainy photocopy style a counterpoint to the garish clashing computer images and animated dancing baby skeletons of his No Future work. They in turn helped inspire Consume, with the urbane Lynton Million (a university friend of Jamie Lidell's), to set up Trash Records.

Trash was a label that would take the horrible and confrontational side of the scene to extremes, with anger and ugliness from label mainstays including DJ Paedofile, Chuck Shite and Shit & Cheap (aka Consume & Landstrumm – sample track name: “SuckingCocksForFishheads”), as well as impossibly intricate turns from the likes of Liddell and another Chelmsfordian Squarepusher contemporary and Rephlex recording artist, Matt Yee-King. Si Begg, too, was close to the Spymania team, and launched the rather more good-natured but equally ridiculous Noodles family of labels, featuring a slew of collaborations and AKAs (including Hardy Spymania's pleasingly literal Barry Pseudonym) from the No Future and Spymania families.

It was a messy and disparate little scene. The bulk of the rave action took place in the big clubs of Germany and the rest of Europe, but the creative processes were at least as much about what happened in smoky shared flats and workshops in Brighton's tatty backstreets as they were about big dancefloors. Vogel once described his metier as “the drug pub rant”, and a lot of work sprung from precisely these. Continually, though, the bulk of Brighton club culture, from the seafront clubs to the free parties on the beaches and Downs, tended to look askance at the belligerence and deliberate obfuscations of the No Future axis, or more often simply ignore it all. Perhaps the glorious cresting of the first wave of activity, and probably this scene's peak visibility in Brighton full stop, was at the Brighton Dance Parade of 1997. This attempt to replicate Berlin's Love Parade was never to be repeated – hippie mismanagement and Brighton's endemic corruption saw to that – but for one day only the ravers had their literal day in the sun.

The Trash crew: top - Consume, Hunter & Million / middle - Million & Consume / bottom - Cristian Vogel & Million

There, among floats pumping out free party trance and funky house, the No Future bus – stencilled all over by Pablo Fiasco with pictures of dead rock stars, and with a stunningly crsip rig playing weaponised techno whose angles and curves were a thousand times sharper and more present than any other music on the day – stood out like a septic thumb. This was also the year that Vogel's musical partnership with Lidell began in earnest – with Lidell's furious remix of Vogel's “(Don't) Take More”, which remains a brain-damage anthem to this day in some quarters, and their first release as the mutant electronic funk duo Super_Collider, “Darn (Cold Way O Loving)”. The latter track, amazingly, emerged on a major label, thanks to it being signed by Skint parent label Loaded, in turn licensed through Sony. It was a year to wave the freak flag high.

Despite untold hard drugs, fights and the incestuous nature of a town as small as Brighton, the scene and the various record labels involved remained vigorous and continued to diversify right through the last years of the nineties and into the new millennium. Super_Collider released one album on Loaded, and another on Rise Robots Rise, the label created by Vogel and Sola for ever more varied output including Catalan girl-punk and German dancehall. Lidell's ultra-experimental first solo album, Muddlin Gear, came out as a joint venture between Spymania and WARP in 2000, accompanied by deranged artwork and live films by Pablo Fiasco. Bands increasingly became part of the mix: whispering neo-Krautrockers Fujiya & Miyagi (on Paul Spymania's Massive Advance imprint), the terrifying Wevie Stonder (who he managed) and space-pop group Chungking (which I was in for a couple of years, and whose multi-instrumentalist James Stephenson played bass for Super_Collider live, creating a Chelmsford rhythm section with Matt Yee-King on drums - both of these two had also been in the aforementioned Balzac too).

No Future’s logo, designed with typical aggression by Consume

There were prominent fans too. John Peel asked the Trash collective to open Meltdown Festival in 1998. Thom Yorke and Radiohead's resident artist Stanley Donwood designed t-shirts for No Future. Vogel is namechecked on the Sabres Of Paradise Haunted Dancehall album, and Andrew Weatherall would frequently call him up, dumbfounded at his latest sonic advances. One memorable 1999 awayday for the Freekin' The Frame club to The End in London saw Róisín Murphy jumping on stage after the live Super_Collider show to duet with Lidell on an impromptu version of “Once in a Lifetime”, a very young Kieran Hebden repping UK garage, Chicks On Speed shouting their hearts out, and Chris Cunningham playing long segments of white noise to puzzled ravers, as well as sets from various No Future / Spymania stalwarts.

Inevitably, like all but the very biggest musical scenes, the micro-one in Brighton dissipated as people grew up, fucked up, or moved on – but its echoes continue. Vogel and Landstrumm continue to be significant forces in electronic music, both as influences on the post-Blawan generation and as musicians in their own right. Si Begg is a respected sound designer and composer. Matt Yee-King runs the computer music course at Goldsmiths college, and is a big noise on the “Algorave” scene. Paul Spymania is an artist manager and agent, and along with Scuba, brought dubstep to Berlin in the legendary Sub:Stance sessions. Semiconductor became artists in residence for NASA, among many other extraordinary commissions. Jamie Lidell supported Elton John. Consume is in Bristol, currently working on a giant mural of DJ Derek. Lynton Million lives on a small island, selling whisky. Ibrahim Alfa took several sharp diversions that are an epic tale in their own right, and is only now picking up where he left off with a Workshop issue of his “lost” album Once Upon a Time in Brighton. And so it goes on...

Unlike some electronic scenes, the one in Brighton was never particularly chic (although it certainly had massive cultural cachet in a few countries if not at home), and its records don't necessarily fetch silly money on discogs (like that's a measure of value, right?). But out of a tiny techno club and its committed few regulars grew something that filled an entire decade with utterly extraordinary art, music, humour and ideas, and which still has relevance and resonance for smart creative minds many years on. Those messy, aggro, awkward bunch of ravers and jokers somehow managed to hold it together just enough to build a creative world entirely of their own, with its own rules and its own distinctive identity: what more can artists hope for?

This history is dedicated to James Phillips, a vital part of this scene and always 100% one of the good guys. RIP

Some tunes:

Cristian Vogel: Ninjah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ydOFHo9JtI

Tobias Schmidt: Minus One https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YjozNVF7_I

MDK: Sound of Saturday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV3KQHGxmcg

Subhead: Ruction (produced by Jamie Lidell) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5vNX_ylRQM

Squarepusher: Sarcacid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IY6cvGnVCA

Cristian Vogel: Bite & Scratch (Blake Baxter Detroit Mix) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXIB7I3D7ss

DJ Paedofile: I was Rise in Clouds https://youtu.be/WcyrrAwqaQY

Buckfunk 3000 (Si Begg): Future Shock Planet Rock https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp4b6PE0FkY

Cristian Vogel: Sarcastically Tempered Powers http://youtu.be/Q2G3204pfkY

Yee King: Goodnight Toby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbnZuv3xHog

Super_Collider: Darn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh2kauFcGpw

No Future at Brighton Love Parade: https://vimeo.com/119001501

[datacultaudio]

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If you really like what we do, become a patron: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Datacultaudio Show us you care! Give us a shout, a share or a like! When you do you are supporting a resource that promotes electronic sound artists across the world! This week's artist Is none other than Ivo Ivanov. It is hard not to be impressed with Ivo's track record. His depth of skill and knowledge is deeply impressive. Data cult Audio is honored to have him as this week's featured artist. Video generated by the awesome Jellotonin Lopez. CATCH US HERE: You can tune in here: Site: http://datacultaudio.com/episodes/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/data-cult-audio/id1234835844 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/datacultaudio FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/DataCultAudio/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Datacultaudio About: Ivo Ivanov aka @ivanov_sound has worked as a sound designer and content provider for companies such as  Ableton, Native Instruments, and  Tiptop Audio to name just a few. His the Founder & CEO of Glitchmachines, a forward thinking company that designs unique audio software and sample packs. Ivo’s creativity extends well beyond software though. He has designed and built eye-catching circuit bent instruments for artists like Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Trent Reznor, @ottovonschirach, @richarddevine and many others. He holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Audio Engineering and has worked as Campus Director and Head of the Audio Technology program, SAE Institute of Technology in San Francisco. More recently, Ivo showcased his abstract take on electronic music in the form of a full-length conceptual album release on Detroit Underground Records aka @detroitunderground. Links: www.ivanovsound.com www.youtube.com/user/IvanovSound www.instagram.com/ivanov_sound/ glitchmachines.com @glitchmachines Also, be sure to check out our Retrospective Series on YouTube: https://youtu.be/yU-42jnb8qw #datacultaudio #electronicmusic #modularsynth #experimental #music #noise #podcast #techno #industrial #ambient #drone #idm #modbap #powerelectronics (at Scottsdale, Arizona) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGbyXSXhq7Q/?igshid=b2zk4gatldly

[itsblosseybitch]

Griffin Dunne: Who’s That Man? (article from ARENA magazine, Sept/Oct 1987)

Double Exposure: The $4.5 million it took to make Martin Scorsese’s black comedy After Hours and the twitchily neurotic lead performance were both the work of the same man, hybrid movie producer and actor whose next assignments involve the likes of Sidney Lumet and Madonna. David Keeps spends some after After Hours hours with Griffin Dunne. 

Griffin Dunne, leading man to Madonna in the soon-come Who’s That Girl, is not the sort of actor who swoops into a photo session with an entourage of managers, publicists and gofers. He enters alone, armed with a briefcase full of business pertaining to the next three or four films he will produce, and introduces himself with a winning humility and, on this particularly sweltering Manhattan afternoon, a perfectly reasonable request for a Budweiser. He graciously and gracefully agrees to a quick bit of barbering and slips into samples from Paul Smith’s autumn collection -- clothes that look very roomy on his slight five-foot-seven frame -- without a fuss. “Are you sure these weren’t for David Byrne,” he jokes. Griffin Dunne is one cool character. 

The same can not be said for the neurotic yuppies he’s portrayed in After Hours and Almost You, two critically acclaimed films that were released back-to-back in Britain and helped to establish him as the archetypal Manhattan man. “That’s a coincidence,” he explains over breakfast at a Greenwich Village eaterie a few blocks from his home. “The pictures were actually filmed a couple of years, but I guess if you looked at them as a double-header, you’d see similarities because the main character is New York. One thing I have noticed is that the guy I’m playing always wears a blazer. I’ve got to be careful about what I do next. Those jaded laconic New York type roles are creeping up on me,” he continues, his almost-black eyes widening as his voice rises in mock terror. “I may never work again and die a pauper because these two pictures are so much alike!”

Now there’s an unlikely prospect. Having successfully produced Chilly Scenes of Winter, John Sayles’ Baby It’s You and Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, Griffin Dunne is in the unique position of being able to pay the bills and choose his acting roles carefully or develop properties for himself. The latter is an option he has exercised only once (After Hours), the former is an admitted luxury. “The problem with success is, the more successful you become, the more careful and calculating you have to be. While I dread being an actor and never knowing where my next job will be coming from, there was a great freedom in going from one stupid comedy into a play in some no-name theatre down on Pitt Street in lower East Siobokia. I get sent a lot of scripts as a producer and I don’t want to spend my time looking for parts for myself. I have an agent to do that. But that still doesn’t give me the opportunity to pick up the phone and say ‘Get me a script that is completely different from anything I’ve ever done, and I want to start working Wednesday’. “

There was a time when the very prospect of working in films - as an actor or a producer - was something to be avoided. Born in New York City on June 8, 1955 to actress Ellen Griffin Dunne and Dominick Dunne, who evolved from a television stage manager to a producer and now, a writer for Vanity Fair, Griffin was raised in Los Angeles amongst the privileged sons and daughters of Hollywood. He attended a pre-preparatory school at age 11. “All boys. You wore a coat and tie and got little swats if you got out of line. It was called Fay School,” he recalls with a shudder. “It was a bitch to say ‘I go to Fay School’.” He turns his head to the side to improvise a dialogue and with a sneer asks himself sarcastically, “How’s Fay?” “Fine thank you,” he mumbles, suitably humiliated. In his final year it became his job to order films for school entertainments. His very appropriate choice was Lindsay Anderson’s public school drama If... “It was a real underground thing. The attendance rate was incredible. They were hanging off the rafters. If you know the picture you know it takes them forever to kill those fucking teachers!”

The Fountain Valley school in Colorado proved a more nurturing atmosphere for the lad. Influenced by his uncle and aunt (the literary lions John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion), Griffin thought he would become a writer. “I just knew that film business was the last thing on earth I was going to be in. It’s like if your father goes to work in a car factory in Detroit, the last thing you want to do is go into the automobile business. I didn’t sit in judgement of Peter Benchley’s (OP NOTE: author of Jaws) drinking habits, but it was just too close to me. I was really verbal about it. Openly vitriolic, I would never be in show biz. I said that right up until a friend talked me into auditioning for this play.”

That was Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story and Griffin knew instinctively that he was the best man for the job. “Somehow I just knew I could say these lines better than anyone else. It was like being the only one in that room who spoke that particular language.” An actor was born and a bullshit artist began to operate. “I was the guy who ran the drama club, the art paper, the student council planning board. Teachers treated me like an adult, they really thought I was going places. They said ‘You’re not like the other students.’ I was, of course, a source of total disappointment, because I was exactly like the other students. I would get high and take the car off campus and try to get laid at every possible moment as soon as their back was turned.” 

Then, just as he was about to make a dramatic triumph playing Iago in Othello, he was busted. “Got caught smoking a little hash,” he winces. “All that was really there was what was in my lungs and it just trailed out of my mouth as I denied what was happening. And the teacher did not get a contact high and forget what he was doing. What they were saying was, ‘We’re going to change the rest of your life for that amount of smoke in your lungs’.” He was sent packing, forced to face up to parents who were “grief stricken”, he says with a comic frown, “chopped off at the knees.” Convincing the school authorities in a brilliant final thespian act that he needed to take the bus home in order to have time to think about his misdeeds, he hit the highway and hitchhiked home.

The odyssey that followed could’ve been a foreshadowing of the hassles that befell him as the stranger-in-SoHo in After Hours. “I was very worried about getting into any more trouble. And every car I got in was the most troublesome, criminal car. One guy would be driving a huge Cadillac convertible that he’d bought with a bad cheque. Another guy was AWOL from the army and there was this kid who’d just left ‘Juvie’ (Juvenile Hall) who was only a year younger than me, but also about four feet shorter. We’d spend a good deal of the time daring him to do things like climb out of the hood of the car to straighten out the antenna as we were crossing the desert. As soon as he got out there the driver would floor it, going about 95 miles an hour and swerving to throw him off. I thought, ‘OK drug possession, hot car, and manslaughter, all on the way home. Look at it this way, Mom, Dad, I was only kicked out of school for smoking hash!”

He lived in Los Angeles for the last gasp of his teenage years, working in a bookstore and as a shipping clerk for a cooking utensils firm, while going for auditions that were few and far between. After a few small roles on TV, he moved to New York to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where, ironically, in the days before Dustin Hoffman, Griffin’s father had left his studies when he was told that he was too short to be a leading man. Though Griffin was spared the same advice, he worked more steadily in the restaurant trade - even selling popcorn at the candy counter of Radio City Music Hall - than he did in the theatre. Then he met Amy Robinson and Mark Metcalf (OP NOTE: misprinted with an e), two equally frustrated, equally unemployed actors, and the trio decided to become producers. 

(OP NOTE: Since Dunne, Robinson, and Metcalf were/are baseball fans, the original production company’s name was Triple Play Productions. When Metcalf left to focus on his acting, the company was renamed Double Play Productions).

“We went out to Cambridge and met Ann Beattie, who had written Chilly Scenes of Winter and she said it was like three of her characters walked into her living room.” Not surprisingly she allowed them to buy the rights for a film version at a very reasonable price. At age 23, Griffin Dunne had become a producer and had his first property. The trio turned the process of pitching the project to studios into an acting exercise. “It was exactly like a performance, but it was easier than going in on an audition. Here I had something tangible to sell, a book that I was passionate about. It’s hard to do that about yourself. What do you say? ‘Look at this interesting aspect of me. Then if you shade it with these particular attitudes I look like this!’ I wouldn’t want to see anybody do that.”

First released as Head Over Heels, and re-released more successfully in 1982 under the author’s original title, Chilly Scenes of Winter set the stage for the fledgling producer’s next triumph, John Sayles’ Baby It’s You, which introduced Rosanna Arquette and Vincent Spano to a large and appreciative audience of young filmgoers. In the meantime Dunne had appendaged several screen acting credits to his dossier, largely of the messenger boy variety.

“I’ve passed a ton of envelopes,” he laughs. “In this one film, The Fan (a potboiler starring Lauren Bacall as the intended victim of an overwrought admirer) I played a stage manager who was to hand a letter the killer gave me to Maureen Stapleton. The letter read ‘I’m going to kill you, I’m going to kill you,’ and sure enough he does. So they spend the rest of the movie looking for the killer instead of asking me for a description. When I told the director, he said ‘Yeah, well, fine, can we just shoot the scene please?’ So I just couldn’t resist on one take. I went up to Miss Stapleton and I said, ‘Here’s a letter from the killer -- oops! -- I mean the man outside’.”

He was able to use his comic gifts more successfully playing the sidekick role, “the very dead one” in An American Werewolf in London (OP NOTE: Title misprinted without the ‘An’) and the clean-cut brother of a gangster in Johnny Dangerously, “a big silly comedy.” Then a script crossed his desk which he simply could not ignore, for it contained all the elements he looked for in a film as both a producer and an actor. It was called After Hours, and it was the tale of a lonely word processor who meets a beautiful girl, loses her, loses his money and his house-keys and spends the rest of his evening on the run from assorted temptresses and loonies in the lofts and streets of New York’s SoHo. 

Griffin Dunne was no stranger to the inherent weirdness of such a scenario. “Last weekend I was out of town and a friend was in my apartment. I said don’t use the bottom lock. She did, and so I was locked out of my own apartment. I called my neighbors to let me in, but they were locked out of their apartment too. I found that out from the neighbors below. The owners are from Japan and they’re coming to get their apartment from me. I’ve now been through so many locks it looks like a Uzi got at the door. The locksmith is now an old friend of mine. I have the worst time with keys. I believe the first stage of manhood is when you live on your own and you’re given this set of keys. I’ve been through so many keys. They just leap out of my pocket!”

Griffin Dunne became After Hours’ hapless anti-hero Paul Hackett and his run-ragged energy leaped off the screen. Despite the fact that the entire film was shot at night, director Scorsese demanded that he remain celibate during the course of the shoot. For added punishment, Dunne himself also acted as the film’s producer: “As an actor your job is not to have distractions and be in a loose state where, when things are thrown at you, you can react accordingly. As a producer your job is to constantly anticipate problems, disasters, flare-ups, fiascoes. You’re in a constant state of tension. You have this little rubber ball with spikes sticking out of it in the pit of your stomach. In After Hours if there were times when it was five in the morning and I was starting to run out of anxiety adrenaline, I could think of how much the picture was going over-budget and I would suddenly get this hollow look in my eyes, my eyebrows would start creeping up on my forehead and I was ready to roll! But I never as an actor looked at the director and thought, ‘Gee, he’s shooting too much film, I must tell him to stop.’”

Though After Hours was a huge critical and commercial success, it pointed out some rather disheartening facts about the American film industry. “People are so obsessed with how much pictures cost. It really pisses me off,” he says with a furrow of the brow that makes you an instant sympathizer. “All anybody talks about with After Hours is that we made it for $4.5 million.(OP NOTE: $4.5 million in 1985 would be about $10.8 million in 2020) Who cares? Is it a good movie? Is it a bad movie? For some reason English films have avoided that. Probably because they were made with pounds instead of dollars and the critics are too lazy to figure out the currency conversion.”

Now he’s on a roll and it becomes quite clear that Griffin Dunne, as an artist and as a businessman, cares about the cinema passionately. “There are a lot of [OP NOTE: misprinted as off] young filmmakers trying to get off the ground here. It’s treated so condescendingly,” he splutters. “Those kids made that Personal Art film. Art film is a bad word for everybody - it’s a personal film. Or it’s an independent film, which must mean it’s personal. ‘Those kids made that picture and just look what they did. And their grandmother gave them $2.5 million for that?’ I don’t think it was their grandmother,” he continues with a lethal iciness. “I think they went to a major financing entity and they got the money, it’s playing in theatres now. GO SEE THE GODDAMNED MOVIE!”

(OP NOTE: Sir, this is a Wendy’s. All joking aside, I would love to hear the off-the-record version of this rant)

All of this seems particularly annoying to a man like Griffin Dunne because he’s proved that it can be done. “It’s just treated like it’s so cute. Now it’s possible to make films like Mona Lisa, Withnail and I or one of Stephen Frears’ movies in the States. There’s a lot more avenues of finance and they’ve figured out ways of distributing movies where they actually make serious money and it’s easier for people to get their money back on videocassettes and all the other rights. What we’re having a little bit of a problem with is the material itself. How do you find a script that doesn’t reek of being an Independent Movie?”

In Adam Brooks’ Almost You, which was written as a vehicle for Dunne and his then-girlfriend Brooke Adams, he found exactly that. An offbeat comedy about an adulterous husband, the film was warmly received in Britain after having been crucified by the American press. (OP NOTE: As someone who enjoyed that movie, I think the reason for that is because British audiences are more comfortable with unlikable or dysfunctional protagonists than American audiences. Also, this was the Reagan era with traditional values and all) “I found the character very touching and pathetic, but when it came out you would have thought I was a war criminal. An immoral louse. The worst of it was they would never say my character’s name.  They would say ‘Griffin Dunne is a duplicitous, weak-willed human being!’ People fuck around on their wives, what can I say? The way people went on, because I fooled around when my wife was in a wheelchair, it was like one of those Reefer Madness kind of movies. Like I was condoning it,” he says, lapsing into a sinister’s narrator voice, “C’mon kids, go out and smoke heroin. And while you’re there get married and fool around on your wife who’s in a wheelchair. Come with me to...THE MOVIES!”

His next screen appearance should raise the stakes considerably higher and may establish Griffin Dunne as a solidly commercial leading man in romantic comedies. “I’d known about the script for years,” he says of Who’s That Girl. “It was the first screwball comedy I’d read that wasn’t a rip-off or a parody . The characters were really contemporary. Over the years I just slowly watched it get put together, slowly, slowly coming around to me. I had a feeling it was going to work out and I have that feeling very rarely.” It’s the story of one Loudon Trott, the standard “uptight kind of guy” whose world is thrown into utter chaos by the appearance of a dizzy but dazzling vixen. “I’m one of those inside-the-little-globe-there’s-a-madman-dying-to-break-out characters. But I was going as much against the nitwit-nerd as possible. I wanted to wear the best suit I could find. I look unlike anything I’ve ever looked before. You don’t wake up with hair like what I’ve got in this picture. I don’t even know what the hell I look like.”

The vixen is, of course, played by Madonna. “It was externally pretty crazy,” he says of the shoot. “A lot of paparazzi and fans. I guess for my survival I just shut it out. It didn’t bother her, so why should it bother me? If it bothered me it would show on the screen, but nobody would say, ‘Gee, he doesn’t seem to be there right now, it must be the fans.’” He laughs at the very thought of it. “I’ll fight for a disclaimer at the end of the picture!”

He’ll have to juggle his next acting assignment between efforts as a producer. Running On Empty, the coming-of-age story of the son of Sixties dissidents living on the lam, is set to be directed by Sidney Lumet with River Phoenix in the leading role and Robin Williams has been signed as the lead for a Disney-financed version of the stage comedy The Foreigner.

[OP NOTE: While Running on Empty was eventually released in 1988, garnering Phoenix a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Golden Globes, The Foreigner never materialized. I’m sure there’s some amazing stories that have yet come to light on the latter].

And industrious though he may seem, Dunne admits that he’s really good at not working, too. “It’s a talent that I’ve evolved over the past year or so. When I’m not working it never crosses my mind. I’m into maps. I’ll chart a trip and get a really good radio in the car, record a lot of tapes and hit the road. I’m really good at getting out of town and going to the beach. My problem has been collecting a lot of things over the years, but I’ve lived in sublets for the past 11 years, so I haven’t been able to settle into any pattern yet. Now that I’m moving into my own place, I’m glad. I’ll have people over so they can admire my spoon collection from my various journeys and I’ll even have shows. I will promise to bore them senseless with my passions.”

It’s unlikely he’ll be able to make the same claim in a professional capacity; his involvement on both sides of the camera and casting office have certainly produced an exemplary cross-breed of moviemaking professional, one that box office superstars-cum-executive producers of their own vanity projects could most certainly learn from. “One of the things I like about being a producer,” Dunne explains, “is that it’s opened me up on how to read a script. I like to think of the whole picture now, not just my role.” But having an awareness of what makes a film succeed in an increasingly byzantine business has not dulled his enthusiasm for acting, nor dimmed his onscreen spark. “It still is fun,” he demurs. “It should always be fun to get paid for taking fencing lessons.”

Always a wit, Griffin Dunne does seem most comfortable making a joke, even if it is at his own expense. Asked which of his screen characters he’d feel closest kinship to in real life, he deadpans, “I use so much of myself in them that I can’t imagine wanting to hang out with any of them.” And he’s equally nonplussed about his reputation as an independent force in the motion picture industry. The man simply has taste and if he likes to wear as many different hats as he can in this business, well, that’s his business - and he’s certainly very modest about his accomplishments.

“It’s difficult,” he concludes. “for me to say ‘I’m a rebel. I’m a maverick’ and put on little cowboy hats and stroll out of here into the sunset.” Especially, we both agree with a laugh, since it’s not even high noon yet.

[voodoochili]

My Favorite Albums of 2019

As we bid adieu to a decade and a year that many of us would like to forget, let’s take the time to run through some albums that deserve to stay in our rotations at least until the onset of the imminent apocalypse. It’s a cliche, and we say it every year, but as bad as 2019 might have been in the real world, it was an excellent year for music. I listened to at least 300 albums this year and found at least 150 that I liked! Here’s the stuff that made me think, made me happy, and made me drop my jaw last year.

Some themes I found in my listening--I really like rap music from L.A. and Detroit; A few artists who I admired more than loved in the past came out with albums that I completely adored; the nebulous genre often called “afrobeats” or “afropop” has the highest hit percentage of any international scene since dub/reggae in the 1970s (the African Heat playlist on Spotify might be my actual album of the year); a lot of my favorite albums this year came from people who are clearly the product of music schools; my top four contains two excellent bedroom pop albums, and two excellent treatises on race relations in the USA.

I made a Spotify playlist with highlights from my albums list: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6S9kSm5xG3U1vPxhVyBpQc?si=0PHLV0-XQOyNY3XAVRzzAA

And in case you missed it, here’s my list of the year’s best songs: https://voodoochili.tumblr.com/post/189890284724/my-favorite-songs-of-2019

THE BEST:

10. glass beach - the first glass beach album - the first glass beach album combines chiptune synths, frayed emo vocals, jazz piano, and suite-like song structure into an exhilaratingly chaotic mishmash. Mix it with a strong dose of theater-kid earnestness and the result is the most ambitious debut album of the year and possibly of the decade, providing a peek into an alternate dimension where Los Campesinos! wrote the La La Land soundtrack. It sounds like it shouldn’t work, and it wouldn’t if glass beach didn’t buttress their boundless invention with well-crafted songs, like “classic j dies and goes to hell part 1,” the suitably bonkers intro, the prog-pop opus “bedroom community,” and “cold weather,” which shifts from ska-punk to math rock and back in 2 minutes and 20 seconds.

9. Jenny Lewis - On The Line - Long one of indie’s pre-eminent songsmiths, Jenny Lewis’s On The Line is her most personal album yet, digging deep into her childhood trauma and emerging out the other side with pearls of cheeky wisdom. Jenny’s lived more lives than most, enduring an entire career as an in-demand child star before ever even picking up a guitar; when she reached her teenage years, she learned most of her earnings fed directly into her mother’s heroin habit. Some songs like “Wasted Youth” and “Little White Dove” confront it directly (“Wasted Youth” takes the form of a conversaqtion between Lewis and her sister about their late mother), while other songs like “On The Line” and “Rabbit Hole” are testaments to the strength Lewis gained after fending for herself for so long. Appropriately for an album so focused on the past, Lewis enlists the help of rock legends like Ringo Starr, Don Was, and Benmont Tench, whose organ lends a lush poignancy throughout the album, and transforms opener “Heads Gonna Roll” from a pretty ballad to a genuine tearjerker.

8. Burna Boy - African Giant - West African music continued its quest for global hegemony in 2019, flooding the airwaves with passionate, uptempo party music. Though it was a massive year for artists like Mr Eazi, Zlatan, and do-everything superstar Wizkid, the year belonged to Burna Boy of Nigeria, his sonorous deep voice lending authority to each extravagant boast. Following up last year’s promising Outside, African Giant unleashes Burna’s full potential, drawing a through-line between Africa’s past and present--his use of multilingual lyrics, outspoken politics, and supernatural sense of rhythm updates the famous formula of Afrobeat founding father Fela Kuti for the new era. Aided by frequent collaborator and unheralded genius Kel-P, whose lush and genre-bending beats perfectly complement Burna’s melodic strengths, African Giant was 2019’s most reliable mood booster, presenting standout singles like the irresistible “Anybody,” the ambitious and easygoing “Dangote,” and the romantic club anthem “Secret,” before taking time to explain the history of colonialism in Nigeria on “Another Story.”

7. The Comet Is Coming - Trust In The Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery/The Afterlife - With a long list of collaborators and an even longer list of influences, London-born saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings’ musical ambitions can’t be confined to a single form or style. While his work with Sons of Kemet emphasizes percussion-heavy Caribbean influences and radical spoken word poetry, Hutchings aims squarely for the stratosphere with his The Comet Is Coming project, which continued its progressive jazz odyssey with two worthy albums in 2019. Elevated by the interplay between Hutchings (calling himself King Shabaka), synth wizard Danalogue, and drummer Betamax, Trust In The Lifeforce of Deep Mystery is a mesmerizing cycle of songs. Boasting titles like “The Universe Wakes Up” and “Super Zodiac,” each song searches for (and finds) a trance-like groove, transporting listeners to the far-flung locales of the song titles before reaching an emotional conclusion. A more contemplative, but still ceaselessly propulsive follow-up, The Afterlife is music for the “stargate” sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey, providing a more optimistic counterpoint to Trust while refining the trio’s unique group dynamic. Together, the two works make an immensely satisfying head trip, offering a thrilling soundtrack for the end of the universe and whatever comes next.

6. Moodymann - Sinner - “I don’t even know what you need, but I’ll provide,” grunts Moodymann on Sinner’s simmering opener “I’ll Provide,” “Cause I got something for all your dirty nasty needs.” Possibly the most singular and beloved figure in a Detroit electronic scene overflowing with singular and beloved figures, Moodymann is known for sublimely tasteful DJ sets and sprawling solo works that fuse house music with elements of R&B, gospel, blues, and funk. By his standards, Sinner is slight, spanning only 7 tracks and 44 minutes, but it benefits from a tight focus, showcasing Moodymann’s effortless creativity. Throughout the project, the artist born Kenny Dixon approaches familiar elements from odd angles: jazzy changes and burbling Fender Rhodes invade an intoxicating two-chord vamp on “Downtown”; fellow Detroiter Amp Fiddler adds soulful auto-tune to the blissful “Got Me Coming Back Right Now.” He even manages to find a fresh way to incorporate Camille Yarbrough’s “Take Yo’ Praise,” most famously sampled by Fatboy Slim, into one of the album’s hardest-charging tracks.

5. Polo G - Die A Legend - Way back in 2011, long before he became rap’s first Pulitzer Prize winner, Kendrick Lamar took a moment to explain his ethos on the outro to his breakthrough Section.80 tape: “I'm not on the outside looking in/I'm not on the inside looking out/I'm in the dead fucking center, looking around.” It was a bold statement, but one that Kendrick’s managed to live up to, and finally we’ve found another artist with the ability to achieve all-seeing perspective on record: Chicago 20-year-old Polo G.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been blown away by a new rapper like I was by Polo G in 2019. He possesses a rare combination of melodic mastery and writerly observation, painting a vivid (if bleak) picture of his life on the South Side. His debut project Die A Legend is packed with unflinching observations about the reality of his situation, he touches on his former pill addiction on “Battle Cry” and he reminisces about talking to his younger sister through a prison phone on “Through Da Storm.” As dark as the subject matter can get, Polo never crumbles under the pressures of poverty or fame, staying afloat with crisp melodies that mix the emotional honesty of Lil Durk with the radio-ready slickness of Wiz Khalifa. He’s already mastered the art of the rap ballad, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.

4. Helado Negro - This Is How You Smile - This Is How You Smile overflows with warmth, inspiring a feeling I don’t often get from music. Listening to it feels like a long-awaited return to a physical place of comfort--a childhood bedroom, perhaps, or a reading nook in a favorite library. Our tour guide is Roberto Carlos Lange, an expert sound designer whose plainspoken, pleasantly nasal voice might be the friendliest sound in music today. The album is comforting, yet unpredictable, with songs that range from synth folk to bedroom pop to ambient field recordings, and feature lyrics that vacillate between English and Spanish. Highlights include the bouncy “Seen My Aura,” calling to mind a collaboration between The Brothers Johnson and Ariel Pink, the sweeping and mesmerizing “Running,” combining trap drums and Budd/Eno piano, and my favorite, the devastating acoustic ballad “Todo lo que me falta.”

3. Jamila Woods - LEGACY, LEGACY! - Jamila Woods has a gift for expressing complex intellectual and musical ideas in deceptively simple ways. Her melodies are like nursery rhymes, her lyrics are cutting and conversational, and with LEGACY, LEGACY! she delivers a fiery blend of artistry and activism that rivals peak Gil Scott-Heron. These songs are bold and truthful, tackling heavy subject matter with a delicate touch, commenting on cultural appropriation on “MUDDY” (“They can study my fingers/They can mirror my pose/They can talk your good ear off/On what they think they know”), sexual assault in “SONIA” (“I remember saying no to things that happened anyway/ things that happened/I remember feeling low the mirror took my face away”), and the value of protest on “OCTAVIA” (“It used to be the worst crime to write a line/Our great great greats risked their lives, learned letters fireside/Like a seat on a bus, like heel in a march/Like we holdin' a torch, it's our inheritance”). With songs named after her artistic heroes (a convention that has become a bit trendy, as Rapsody and Sons of Kemet have pulled similar tricks for their recent projects), LEGACY! LEGACY! Is Woods’ audacious attempt to establish herself as an heir to that formidable tradition--one that succeeds without reservation.

2. Raphael Saadiq - Jimmy Lee - A force of nature with one of the most underrated back catalogs in the game (he made hits with Toni, Tony, Tone in the 80s, was a major force behind Neosoul in the 90s and 00s, and produced Solange’s A Seat At The Table in 2015), Raphael Saadiq’s latest is his most powerful effort yet, inspired by the tragic tale of his older brother Jimmy Lee, a heroin addict who died of HIV.  Jimmy Lee tries to find the universal through the personal, taking a deep look into how drug addiction can tear a family apart. Throughout the project, Saadiq approaches his brother’s illness with radical empathy, singing from his perspective on the dangerously alluring “Something Keeps Calling,” and the zonked out “I’m Feeling Love.” He uses his personal tragedy as a springboard to talk about larger issues on the twinkling, self-explanatory “This World Is Drunk,” and the seething spiritual “Rikers Island.” The album veers from style to style, connected with a sound effect that mimics a channel changing on an analog TV, encompassing Prince-like grooves, languid quiet storm, simmering funk in the late Sly Stone mold, and taking detours into hip-hop and traditional gospel. Connecting it all is Saadiq’s raw passion, echoing the pain of everyone who’s lost someone to substance abuse, and singing as if his tenor is the only weapon powerful enough to end the epidemic.

1. Yves Jarvis - The Same But By Different Means - There’s a song on The Same But By Different Means called “Constant Change,” in which Jean-Sebastian Audet layers his voice into a cacophonous symphony and repeats the title phrase for 30 seconds til he reaches an abrupt crescendo. In his first project under the name Yves Jarvis (the 22-year Montreal native used to record under the name Un Blonde), “Constant Change” is his animating philosophy, guiding each second of the most surprising masterpiece of the year. A thrilling and unpredictable effort, The Same But By Different Means overflows with sonic and melodic ideas, shifting and beguiling with unexpected shifts and sounds. The album gets its power from this fluidity--sounds burst into the mix and fade away without notice; songs mutate from one genre to another (traces of freak-folk, tropicalía, funk, and a lot more) within the span of 2 or 3 minutes. It’s a hazy, dream-like collage, at times evoking the likes of Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, and Nicolas Jaar; the least expected sound-a-like occurs on “That Don’t Make It So,” which could easily be mistaken for an outtake from D’Angelo’s Voodoo. No hour of music in 2019 was more calming, yet more invigorating than this one--an eclectic and restless monument to Audet’s creativity and an addicting, absorbing soundscape. I listened to hundreds of albums this year, but none of them hit me quite like this one.

THE REST:

11. Cate Le Bon - Reward  12. Big Thief - U.F.O.F./Two Hands  13. Vampire Weekend - Father Of The Bride 14. Jay Som - Anak Ko 15. Raveena - Lucid 16. American Football - American Football 17. Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains  18. Kelsey Lu - Blood 19. Pivot Gang - You Can’t Sit With Us 20. Gunna - Drip Or Drown 2 21. Great Grandpa - Four Of Arrows 22. G.S. Schray - First Appearance 23. Bandgang Lonnie Bands - KOD 24. Marika Hackman - Any Human Friend 25. Mavi - Let The Sun In 26. Spellling - Mazy Fly 27. SAULT - 5 / 7 28. Juan Wauters - La Onda De Juan Pablo 29. 75 Dollar Bill - I Was Real 30. Maxo Kream - Brandon Banks 31. Brittany Howard - Jaime 32. J Balvin & Bad Bunny - Oasis 33. Rio Da Yung OG - 2 Faced 34. Desperate Journalist - In Search Of The Miraculous  35. Angel Olsen - All Mirrors 36. 03 Greedo - Netflix & Deal/Still Summer In The Projects 37. Doja Cat - Hot Pink 38. Lambchop - This (Is What I Wanted To Tell You) 39. Sada Baby - Bartier Bounty 40. Rucci - Tako’s Son 41. Floating Points - Crush 42. Bat For Lashes - Lost Girls 43. Young Thug - So Much Fun 44. Samthing Soweto - Isphithiphithi 45. Kim Gordon - No Home Record 46. Sandro Perri - Soft Landing 47. Anthony Naples - Fog FM 48. Quelle Chris - Guns 49. Sleater-Kinney - The Center Won’t Hold 50. Tyler, The Creator - IGOR

Honorable Mentions:

Billy Woods & Kenny Segal - Hiding Places Caroline Shaw & The Attaca Quartet - Orange Leo Svirsky - River Without Banks Martha - Love Keeps Kicking Nilüfer Yanya - Miss Universe Drego & Beno - Sorry For The Get Off The Japanese House - Good At Falling Tree & Vic Spencer - Nothing IS Something Spielbergs - This Is Not The End Fireboy DML - Laughter, Tears & Goosebumps Dee Watkins - Problem Child Daniel Norgren - Wooh Dang

TOO MANY MORE TO NAME--could’ve listed up to 80

[totallyvain]

Vanity Hour With Hala

WORDS BY: Thania Garcia

Hometown: Oxford, Michigan

Sounds Like: Something you’d find in a soundtrack for a nostalgic film about teenage love in the 70s

Most music nerds can tell you that Detroit’s music scene in the 1960s and early 70s was rich in R&B and soul. Thanks to the success of Motown Records, Detroit became one of the few cities in the United States that is synonymous with music. It is also the home of Hala, an indie rock project that stemmed in the neighborhood of New Center in Ian Ruhala’s attic turned studio.

“From the tiny window at the front of my room I could see the Motown Museum from across the street,” says Ruhala, “The history as well as the musicians who surrounded me, were a definite influence when I started out in the local scene at the time.”

In 2016, Ruhala released “Spoonfed,” a collection of 12 songs, an altogether 40-minute project made up of wavy guitar interludes. “Spoonfed” turns five in a few months but despite its age, the album continues to pack a global punch. And thanks to the power of Spotify’s Discover Weekly feature, one of the most beloved tracks “What is Love? Tell Me, Is It Easy?” has a mind-blowing 8 million streams on the platform (and counting).

“I guess, the first really interesting thing that made me acknowledge that something positive was beginning to happen, came when my friend Samia messaged me a YouTube link to Emma Chamberlain singing “What Is Love, Tell Me Is It Easy?”, in her car. That made me laugh.”

His latest release came in a pair of sunny tunes one titled “Sorry” and the other “More Than Anything.” The success of Hala can be traced back to many roots but a notable feature is Ruhala’s artistry when it comes to guitar. The track “Sorry” best exemplifies that fact. it features jumpy strings and drums, with Ruhala’s dreamy vocals singing “Your weekend is drifting on and on/ I just don't know if I can go on/ To get it.”

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

Totally Vain: In the past, you’ve shared that it's important you write and record music that is true to your experience. Has there ever been a sort of still period that puts you in a writer’s block? If so what do you do to get out of it?

Ian: Writer's block is definitely something I have felt from time to time. I just find it really hard sometimes to sit down with other songwriters, and write about a certain subject matter; “summertime,” or “love,” etc… It kind of feels forced at times like that. At home, I find that my best ideas come usually at night time, when my brain for some reason seems to be working at its most. And, if I get stumped, sometimes it is best just to step away from a song, or the guitar/instruments in general, and things will pop into my head much more naturally after that. Maybe a certain experience will also spark a lyric, or chorus line during this period of separation from the music.

TV: Your music often times reminds me of the kind of music you’d find on a movie soundtrack, so I’m just curious if you have a favorite one or if they are places of inspiration for you?

Ian: Many songwriters think of music in broad ways; colors, or with a much more theoretical approach. I really like to write sometimes with a more cinematic approach. In doing that, I find that music video concepts will sometimes come even before the song is completely finished. This usually makes the thematic element of the song more obvious in the beginning stages, which is definitely helpful in keeping my mind on track. Not to sound too simplistic, but Freaks & Geeks has a really great soundtrack that I find covers a lot of ground musically over every episode. There are a ton of others I could mention, but that one I feel is a good example of following a formula of being un-formulaic. Honestly the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack, is another great, and popular example of this.

TV: I remember seeing an interview of yours where you’re talking about “What is Love? Tell Me, Is It Easy?” and you mention that you recorded most of the instrumentals on your own and you had to work that way since. Is that still true? Do you plan to incorporate a band during studio sessions? If yes, how has that transition been for you?

Ian: Up until this point I have recorded everything, by myself, and at home. I am definitely not ruling anything out, but I really do enjoy working and recording in the most independent way possible. But, who knows? One day I would really like to do a 70s style, singer-songwriter album, with string players, and all that additional “jazz.” Something a la Van Morrison, Nilsson, Bowie, or McCartney, you know?

TV: When you go into the process of making an album or any collection of music that tells a story, what is the first step? How does that vision play out in your head and finally come into fruition?

Ian: I think with making a cohesive body of work, I usually start with setting limitations for what I want to create for myself sonically speaking. For me, recording can sometimes take a long time, and working with the same gear helps with keeping things somewhat similar and following this idea of continuity in some form or another. With that being said, I think this also allows me to do whatever I may want to do genre-wise, or in the vein of storytelling, and get away with it; because I am still utilizing what gear I initially limited myself to use, in order to record the songs.

TV: Before you started playing music, did you keep a journal or write creatively?

Ian: When I was younger, I did a lot of illustrating which I would most definitely consider to be a creative outlet. I made comics with friends and things of that nature. But, no I did not really keep a journal, actively, even though now I do like to handwrite lyrics, in order to more visually realize what I like and do not like.

TV: What makes good production?

Ian: A good ear, that will not be satisfied until the sound imagined is created or replicated.

TV: What do you feel is the best song you’ve released and why?

Ian: That is a really hard question to answer, but I feel like “Sorry” is maybe the song that I am most proud of (as of right now). I spent a lot of time, vigorously focusing on that track, and I feel like it opened the door for me, capability-wise, to make music with a more intense production component. I probably did over a hundred takes just to nail the guitar solo in that song. Chopping up bits and pieces, making sure it was all in time, as well as I just wanted to create something different from other solos I had been hearing at the time. I wanted something fast, intricate, out of left field, but also with a pop sensibility.

TV: So you’ve finished your US tour and now you’re supporting The Regrettes & Greer on a few dates. Do you enjoy touring? What kinds of things have you learned about being a musician on the road?

Ian: I really enjoy meeting fans, and with touring, that is definitely the easiest way to pursue and have that connection. It is just incredibly surreal for me to meet people that are excited about my music in the same way I am excited about others. And, I know for me, those moments of interaction with an artist were and are really special to me. I think the biggest take away with touring in support of artists like Hellogoodbye, or playing on the road with Anna Burch, has been learning how to be patient, and empathetic towards your fellow bandmates. Knowing you could not be doing what you are doing without them, really puts things into perspective.  

TV: One of your songs was sampled on a hip hop track, Big K.R.I.T’s “High Beams (feat. WOLFE de MÇHLS),” did that at all persuade you to begin thinking about messing with other music genre stylings than the ones you have in the past?

Ian: Staying in just one lane, musically-speaking, for me has never been of interest. Going back to the question regarding movie soundtracks, I feel the best soundtracks are ones that run the gamut when it comes to musical genre. The music I am currently working on, to me, feels genre-less in a way. Because, I am consciously “attempting” to write out of my comfort zone. I think this will make a lot more sense when my next record comes out, as I try to tap into a little bit of everything, from hip-hop, to pop, punk, and country.

With every Vanity Hour comes a playlist curated by our featured artist.

Hala’s playlist can be found at the Spotify link below.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1z9FTLM4SNzggJh3NQxJpC?si=o2zOWHnbQymNBSMqt9rC9g

[doobler]

It's fucking happening

The air was surprisingly cool and calm for a Friday morning. Prowl was meditating by the window. Bumblebee and Bulkhead were playing video games, the volume turned low. Ratchet was working on some mystery project, occasionally muttering under his breath. Optimus watched his crew with silent pride.

Then, all sense of peace was shattered by a shriek.

"That sounded like Dr.Halley!" Optimus snapped to attention, already reaching for his trusty axe. "Autobots, time t--"

"Oh my GOD!" Halley came rushing into the warehouse's living room, hands stretched triumphantly over his head. His cheeks, usually flushed by default, were nearly glowing. 

"Are you hurt?" Optimus inquired, rushing over, wringing his hands.

"Huh? Oh! No, no, no, at ease, boss," Halley waved him off with a sheepish smile. "I just got a letter!"

"Is it B?" Bumblebee spoke up suddenly. "That's my favorite letter."

"Hey, me too." Bulkhead agreed.

"Er, sorry, no," Halley held up his tablet, his grin broadening when Optimus hunched down low to read it. "I've been invited! There's a conference being held in Grand Rapids-- a collection of some of the Midwest's top scientific minds!"

Halley lowered the tablet, tucking it under his arm with a shy smile.

"Well. In truth, Sumdac was invited, but he's so damn busy, he requested I take his place!" He shook his head. "I feel awful for years of bad-mouthing. He may be a little vacant at times but he's genuinely a good man with good intentions."

"So what's the deal, then?" Bumblebee lifted himself off the massive couch, leaning over the back with his chin in his palm. "You gonna go to this nerd convention?"

"I mean. Yeah?" Halley shrugged, still smiling. "It's a week long affair, with all sorts of activities sprinkled throughout. I heard there'd be some really incredible demonstrations, like rapid growing saltwater algae samples and a possible next step into subatomic surgery."

"... Im gonna admit I understood less than half of that."

"That's pretty serious then, huh?" Optimus looked like a mother hen admiring his youngest chick. "Well, I wish you the best, doctor."

"I'm gonna miss you guys," Halley replied, a soft sadness lingering at the corners of his mouth. "This'll be the longest we've parted since I joined this circus. It'll be lonely. Not to mention inconvenient, I gotta find my own transportation."

"Why not take one of us with you?" Bulkhead suggested, scratching at his face plate. "I'm sure we can manage a bot down--"

"Take Prowl!" Bumblebee clambered atop his massive green friend, shutting him up with a hand over his mouth. "I mean-- I'm sure someone as low-key and uh. Stealthy as Prowl could help you out. In case there's trouble. You never know, the world's pretty dangerous these days. Right, boss bot?"

Optimus scrubbed at his chin, eyes narrowed in thought. A flicker of suspicious flashed across his features.

"Only... If Prowl wants," Optimus turned to the ninja-bot, still silent and unmoving on the floor. "You game, Prowl?"

"I don't see why not," He stood in one quick fluid motion, shrugging casually. "It'll be a good opportunity to study more organic life non-native to Detroit."

"Cool, cool, cool," Halley's fingers fidgeted and twitched at his sides. "I'll uh. Make sure my things are packed, we'll leave tomorrow afternoon."

Before he ducked out, Halley shot a rather complicated flurry of facial expressions at Bumblebee, which didn't go at all unnoticed by Optimus.

"You two... Okay?" He asked.

Bumblebee shrugged.

"I guess it's what I get for being an A+ wing man."

[nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany]

2:00PM Water Cooler 7/31/2019

Digital Elixir 2:00PM Water Cooler 7/31/2019

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Trade

“Trump’s Bid to Dismantle Global Trading System Poised for a Win” [Industry Week]. “Thanks to a U.S. veto on new appeals judges, the WTO’s dispute arm is expected to start slipping into the institutional equivalent of a coma at the end of this year. That has set off a scramble by the European Union, Canada and other countries to set up a temporary alternative allowing the use of arbitrators rather than three-judge panels to hear appeals. But by creating that system, WTO members may be giving Trump and aidesーwho, like him, have deep-rooted skepticism of multilateral institutionsーthe very thing they want. Arbitration would above all provide the flexibility the U.S. is after, Vaughn said. It would see disputes treated as individual cases, avoiding the precedent-dependent system the WTO appellate body has become.”

“Inside the lose-lose trade fight between Japan and South Korea” [Nikkei Asian Review]. “[There is a] growing ‘Boycott Japan’ movement spreading across South Korea. South Koreans have also stopped buying cars, beer, cosmetics and just about anything else bearing the label ‘Made in Japan.’ Some are even canceling their summer holidays…. Well-organized protests are not uncommon in South Korea, and they tend to pass relatively quickly. But these boycotts — which in South Koreans’ minds are tied with the emotionally-charged issue of wartime labor and a sense that their most successful companies are under attack — may be different. The movement kicked off shortly after the decision by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration on July 4 to tighten controls on exports of three chemicals essential for making semiconductors and flat panel screens used in smartphones and TVs. By choking off supplies of the chemicals — Japan’s market share for two of them stands at more than 90% — the Abe administration was essentially taking aim at the engine that powers South Korea’s high-tech economy.”

“USDA gave almost 100 percent of Trump’s trade war bailout to white farmers” [New Food Economy]. • Deceptive headline erases class: “The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has documented that the program has disproportionately helped wealthy landowners and a recent analysis by Donald Carr, a senior advisor for EWG, argues that the MFP has deepened the disadvantages of black and minority farmers.”

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

“2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination” [RealClearPolitics] (average of five polls). As of July 30: Biden continues rise at 32.2% (32.0), Sanders flat at 16.2% (16.2%), Warren up at 14.3% (14.0%), Buttigieg flat at 5.6% (5.5%), Harris up at 10.8% (10.5%), others Brownian motion. Sanders opens a little daylight between him and Warren, for the first time in two weeks.

* * *

2020

Delaney (D)(1): Naughty, naughty:

so someone edited John Delaney’s Wikipedia page

pic.twitter.com/dFMHiz15XD

— Sarah Flourance (@BookishFeminist) July 31, 2019

Gabbard (D)(1): “Tulsi’s Last Stand?” [The American Conservative]. “Gabbard has been perhaps the most interesting Democrat running for president and Wednesday night could be her last stand. She gets to share the stage with frontrunner Joe Biden, like Hillary Clinton a vote for the Iraq war. There is no guarantee she will get another opportunity: the eligibility criteria for subsequent debates is more stringent and she has yet to qualify…. Gabbard has so far been unable to penetrate this madness despite being young (she’s 38), attractive, telegenic, a military veteran, a woman of color, and an articulate, passionate opponent of the regime change wars that have brought our country so much pain.”

Warren (D)(1): The liberal Democrat enforcers are coming for Warren:

Maybe Warren really believes that single-payer is the only way; if so, I’ve misjudged her policy acumen. Either way, that was a bad night for someone who should be leading the progressive charge 7/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) July 31, 2019

The Debates

“Sanders, Warren battle centrists in testy debate” [The Hill]. “But on Tuesday night, the moderates came out swinging at Medicare for all with grave warnings about the electoral consequences.” • Oh.

“The Centrists Did Not Hold” [Jeet Heer, The Nation]. The Deck: “Both the moderators and centrist Democratic candidates failed in their attempts to gang up on Sanders and Warren during Tuesday’s debate.” • So we’ve normalizes the idea that the moderators are not refs but players? One more reason to get the networks out the debate business. More: “The fusion of entertainment with politics continued apace with CNN orchestrating the Democratic primary debates as a professional-wrestling donnybrook. Led by Jake Tapper, the CNN hosts consistently tried to get the two factions to attack each other, while bizarrely elevating John Delaney for much of the debate.

“The Middle Ground Did Not Fare Well in the Democratic Debate” [Jacobin].

“‘Do or die:’ The pressure is on struggling 2020 Democrats to break through at Detroit debates” [McClatchy]. “With the leading candidates increasingly separating themselves from the rest of 2020 Democratic presidential primary field, this week’s second set of debates are shaping up to be most crucial for the bottom half of the pack who are dwelling in single digits and struggling to raise money. It’s those campaigns that are preparing to take a more aggressive posture in Detroit as they fight for survival ahead of a traditionally slow summer fundraising period and stiffer requirements to qualify for the next debates in the fall…. The next debates aren’t until September, when polling and donor requirements for entry will tighten. Seven candidates have indicated they’ve already crossed the necessary thresholds, with at least two others claiming they are close to doing so.” • Hence, beyond ideology, the aggressiveness of Hickenlooper, Delaney, et al., and the relative quiesence of Buttigieg and O’Rourke, who have already made it to the the next debate round. I would expect the same dynamic to be in play in tonight’s debate as well.

2019

“California Aims to Make Trump Release Taxes by Requiring It for Primary Ballot” [Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine]. “California governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation making disclosure of five years of income-tax filings a condition for appearing on the state’s presidential-primary ballot, beginning next year.” • Here the Constitutional qualifications and requirements for the Presidency. Article II, section 8:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

I don’t see the grounds on which California gets to add additional qualifications for a Federal office. Further, the additional qualifications are blatantly aimed at a political enemy of the California Democrat power structure (California is a one-party state). What happens a tit-for-tat struggle begins with states dominated by Republicans? We won’t have national elections any more. Back to the article:

But the latest bill passed on a strict party-line vote, and Newsom signed it on the grounds that because of its size and stature, California had a “special responsibility to require this information of presidential and gubernatorial candidates” (it will apply to candidates for Newsom’s own job after 2024).

This is a 21st century states’ rights argument, except only for large states. Where is it written that any state has “special responsibilities”?

Realignment and Legitimacy

“DSA Members, America’s New Left” [New Left Review]. “But the five dsa members, all from California chapters—and spanning a range of positions, from neo-Kautskian electoralism to libertarian party-building—offer a vivid sense of the debates agitating the group’s membership base. How will dsa convert its newly acquired supporters into political organizers? What fields of activity should it bestow its (still limited) resources upon? Most pressingly, how should it relate to the Sanders 2020 campaign, and to the Democratic Party as a whole? Can the long-term goal of building an independent working-class party be reconciled with dsa’s current practice of running candidates on Democratic ballot-lines?” • Interviews with five DSA members. Interesting!

“No, Professors Aren’t Discriminating Against Conservative Students” [Pacific Standard]. “The idea that left-wing college professors are both brainwashing undergraduates and discriminating against conservative students has emerged as one of the most consistent right-wing lines of attack against American higher education over the last few decades. While conservative undergrads, like many types of students, may often feel isolated, a new working paper led by a public policy professor who tells me he’s a ‘lifelong Republican’ suggests that any evidence for bias in grading against conservative students is at best minimal and most likely absent.”

Stats Watch

Chicago Puchasing Managers Index, July 2019: “[T]he lowest reading in 4-1/2 years” [Econoday]. “New orders sank deeper into contraction with employment falling into contraction for the first time in nearly two years and to its deepest level of contraction in nearly 10 years… Though conclusions are difficult to draw based on uncertainties over the make-up and size of Chicago’s sample, the drop in this report could reflect trade-tension issues.”

ADP Employment Report, July 2019: “ADP estimates that private payroll growth in Friday’s employment report for July will rise 156,000” [Econoday].

Employment Cost Index, Q2 2019: “Wage pressures are flat and will not stand in the way of a Federal Reserve rate cut that is expected this afternoon” [Econoday]. “The lack of acceleration in employment compensation readings hints at available capacity in the labor market.”

State Street Investor Confidence Index, July 2019: “Global institutional investors continued to reduce their exposure to equities and were even more risk averse in July” [Econoday].

Tech: “Privately Owned Scooter Companies Don’t Have a Future” [Jacobin]. “Nearly two years ago, dockless e-scooters started appearing on the sidewalks of major cities across the United States, eventually fanning out to Europe, Asia, Australia, and beyond. In most American cities, the companies didn’t bother getting permits or checking their services would be legal; they just dropped off their scooters.” • Scooter economics seem quite similar to ride “sharing” economics, i.e. not and never going to be profitable.

Manufacturing: “The CEO of one of the world’s largest airlines said Boeing needs to get its ‘s— together’ as the ongoing 737 Max crisis hits the carrier’s profits” [Business Insider]. “The CEO of one of the world’s largest airlines said that Boeing needs to get its “shit together” as the ongoing grounding of its 737 Max planes extends beyond predictions and the carrier’s profits take a hit…. Ryanair, the biggest low-cost carrier in Europe, had ordered 135 of the 737 Max planes, with the first 58 of those planes due to arrive by summer 2020. The airline was the fifth-biggest in the world by seating capacity in 2018, and is the world’s largest airline by number of routes.”

The Biosphere

“Whose fault is plastic waste in the ocean?” [Deutsche Welle]. “Because plastic is so tough, it can last for centuries without breaking down. That means plastic made in the past, mainly in richer nations, has accumulated, often in the ocean. Experts say this, along with the lack of data on plastic from marine and other sources, makes blaming individual regions for ocean plastic unhelpful.” •

“Geoengineering is very controversial. How can you do experiments? Harvard has some ideas.” [MIT Technology Review]. “For years, several Harvard climate scientists have been preparing to launch a balloon capable of spraying reflective particles into the atmosphere, in the hopes of learning more about our ability to counteract global warming…. ‘It’s an extremely high-profile institution that’s decided they don’t want to wait for the regulatory regimes to greenlight this,’ says Wil Burns, co-director of the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy at American University.”

Health Care

“The Plausible Path to Medicare for All” [The American Prospect]. “The flailing second-tier Democrats in the presidential debates who attack Medicare for All and its sponsors are indeed doing the work of Republicans. It is indeed possible to get to universal coverage under the auspices of Medicare, without bankrupting the public treasury or increasing net costs to the middle class. And the coverage would be better, more reliable, and more cost-effective than even the best insurance that people now get from their employers. Today’s employer-provided insurance is riddled with deductibles, co-pays, denials of reimbursement, limits on which doctor or hospital you can use, and loss of insurance when you change jobs. Sanders and Warren are right about all that. But the transition problems are far from trivial. The biggest problem is that the people who will save money when they no longer pay premiums are not the same people who will likely pay more in taxes*. So the sponsors of Medicare for All should recognize that a better transition strategy may be the best way to disarm critics, among centrist Democrats, Republican attackers, and the press; and to reassure the electorate and make Medicare for All the big winner that it can be. The best of the transition approaches are those proposed by Jacob Hacker, with a close legislative counterpart in the Medicare for America Act co-sponsored by Representatives Rosa DeLauro and Jan Schakowsky.” • I would be more sympathetic to Kuttner if TAP and its ilk hadn’t, through unremitting effort, themselves created the need to “reassure the electorate.” I also remember the fantastically destructive role played by Hacker in the liberal Democrat bait-and-switch operation against single payer in 2009-2010. I know this is the genetic fallacy, but it’s very hard for me to believe that TAP and Hacker are operating in good faith. NOTE * So #MedicareForAll is a downward transfer of wealth? And this is a bad thing?

Black Injustice Tipping Point

“Whites get half of mortgages in Detroit, nation’s largest majority black city” [Bridge]. “Home loans are heating up in Detroit after years of a frigid lending market, but a majority of loan dollars now go to whites, who comprise just over 10 percent of the population. African-Americans, who still make up fourth-fifths of the city, are now far more likely to buy homes in the suburbs than Detroit. The findings come from a Bridge Magazine analysis of hundreds of thousands of federal mortgage records from 2007 to 2017.”

Class Warfare

“The Roepke Lecture 2019: ʺWar, capitalism, and the making and unmaking of economic geographiesʺ [Erica Schoenberger, Johns Hopkins]. Worth a listen over a cup of coffee:

(I owe a hat tip to an alert reader for this, but I can’t find the comment where the suggestion was made.O)

“The tyranny of productivity” [The Week]. “More than 100 years ago, states began listening to workers’ demands and limiting the hours employers could make people work. Later, in the 1930s and ’40s, the federal government did the same thing on the national level. And governments didn’t just guarantee people the free time to pay attention to things one might deem “unproductive” — they also helped them find unproductive things to do. Indeed, early 20th-century political leaders made playgrounds and public spaces a priority. Teddy Roosevelt, who helped create the national parks system, ensuring Americans’ access to wild and beautiful places, frequently described the power of nature in decidedly non-instrumental terms. ‘There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm,’ he once wrote. Later, during the depths of the Great Depression, workers hired by the federal government built some of the country’s most gorgeous public architecture — including, as Odell notes, the Oakland rose garden she so enjoys. But, in the second half of the 20th century, government increasingly shied away from policies aimed at anything as unproductive as beauty and pleasure and devoted itself to economic growth, instead.”

“IBU strike shuts down Alaska ferries” [Alaska Public Radio]. “In Ketchikan, approximately 30 picketing ferry workers stood on the sidewalk outside Alaska Marine Highway System terminal where the ferry Columbia was set to depart for Bellingham, Washington…. The union had warned the night before that a strike was imminent if it didn’t get a contract deal. It’s been negotiating for the past three years. An impasse last week led a majority of members to vote to authorize taking direct action.”

“These Are the Wealthiest Towns in the U.S.” [Bloomberg]. Handy map:

News of the Wired

“Daemons are the programs that run the internet. Here’s why it’s important to understand them.” [The Conversation]. “Internet daemons optimize how computers actively manage systems toward certain goals or highest-efficency states. Optimization is another way to understand algorithmic governance. It is at once a way of thinking and a way of doing. To optimize is to calculate optimal states that solve social and political problems. Optimization also involves ways to actualize these states…. The technical connotations of optimization obscures its social and political implications. For example, an optimal amount of news to include in Facebook’s NewsFeed or shorter passenger wait times on Uber are technical decisions and business ones.” • Optimization is not neutral!

“Behold, the most (intentionally) poorly designed website ever created” [Ars Technica]. • Here it is. Looks like Twitter’s designers examined this site closely.

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (Re Silc):

Re Silc writes: “My 3-year-old bristly locust love southern vermont.”

* * *

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So do feel free to make a contribution today or any day. Here is why: Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of small donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals. So if you see something you especially appreciate, do feel free to click this donate button:

Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated.

Readers, I have redesigned the image above because the composition of your Water Cooler donations has changed. For the last few months, donations have shifted to monthly donations in smaller amounts, with very few one-time donations in larger amounts. While I’m very happy to have enabled small contributions (Luke 21:1-4), the lack of larger contributions has cut into the trickle of funding from Water Cooler that I really do depend on. In other words, your contributions are way down. (Readership and comment counts have not fallen, so I don’t think Water Cooler editorial content as such is the issue, though do feel free to drop me a line if you have thoughts.)

So, I redesigned the image to emphasize one-time donations, while still enabling smaller monthly donations. And if you’ve been waiting for a good excuse to contribute, perhaps last night’s debate coverage will provide an excuse!

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2:00PM Water Cooler 7/31/2019

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[deviancyconfirmed]

Thirium Love

Human!Connor x Android!Reader Part 1

Fandom: Detroit Become Human

Warning: Canon Typical Violence

Human!Connor x Android!Reader

“Detective...Detective Anderson.”

You shook your head the LED on your temple shifting from blue to yellow as you processed a different approach. Slamming your hand on the desk next to his head caused your coworker to jolt up, hand quickly reaching to his sidearm. The paperwork on his desk scattering haphazardly on the ground.    

“Wha-What? What the fuck Y/N!” Connor sat straight in his seat a hand covering his heart. He could already hear Gavin giving him shit for it.

“Detective-”

“Please call me Connor.”

“Connor, you’ve been assigned to work with me on this case. It involves an android and three humans. Captain Fowler wants this solved as soon as possible.”

Connor signed running a hand through his hair before grabbing the fallen papers. “Fine. Just let me get some coffee.” Shuffling the papers in to a neat stack Connor stood while tightening his tie. You followed closely behind already relaying a detailed report as he slowly sludge to the break room practically dragging his feet on the tiled floor.

“Connor did you sleep well last night?” You ask as the coffee machine whirled to life bright screen illuminating the dimly lit breakroom making a horrible sound in the process. Adjusting his jacket and tightening his tie once again he huffed a laugh mindlessly watching the machine sputter out coffee. There was a moment of silence the break room thankfully bare before Connor shook his head.

“Mhm not really, Hank can home from the bar pretty late last night, completely wasted, loudly telling Sumo about how the bar was too loud and he just wanted a drink in peace and...ha I guess it amusing now.” Lifting the cup Connor hissed quietly, swiftly sliding the sleeve on. Shrugging, Connor grabbed three creamers from the coffee stained tray next to him turning his drink milky white.

“Why were you waiting for him? You could have called me for assistance if you were concerned for his well being. I do not require sleep.”

“Careful I might just take you up on your offer. I’m just concerned, I really did think he was getting better but-old habits die hard.” Tightly gripping the cup Connor placed the lid on top before spinning around, a fake smile on his lips. “Come on, hopefully we can finish this quickly.”

The street was covered curious neighbors, EMT’s, police, and news crews. As the self-driving car slowed to a stop next to the noisy crowd. Stepping out of the car you scanned the house deciding on the best course of action. The house was updated with the latest security provided by Cyberlife, there was a small balcony jutting out from on of the rooms. The exterior was painted a light blue with the windows and door white. The owners were Shelbey McCain, died December 5th at 2:30 am, and her husband Peter McCain, died December 5th at 1:00 am. The third resident was their daughter, Hope McCain missing.

“Y/N, are you coming?” Connor glanced over his shoulder at you before looking back towards the house trying to determine what you were so fixated on.   

“I was getting the necessary information about who the victims where, point of entry, and what security system they owned.”

“Wait, just looking at the house gave you all that information?”

“Yes”

Connor chuckled then started approaching the house, you beside him. The inside was clean and orderly. The living room was a soft brown with a recently used fireplace at the center. Scanning the room you discovered nothing happened in the living room. Heading upstairs provided a completely difference scene. The hallway walls were sprinkled with blood leading into the master bedroom. Taking a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching you dipped your fingers into the blood and took a sample.

“I’ll never get use to that.” Connor grimised examining the blood trail next to you.

Ignoring his comment you started the analyses. “This is Peter McCains blood, it appears the struggle started on the starway and moved to his bedroom. I do not believe Mr.McCain was armed due to the lack of thirium.” Following the trail you opened the bedroom and located Peter and Shelby McCain. Peter was on the floor near the closet with a paper weight covered in thirium. Shelby McCain was on the bed almost appearing to be asleep the only giveaway was the small traces of blood on the backboard.

“I bet you already know what happened, huh?” Connor asked taking notes of the crime scene.

“Yes, the android was specifically after Mr.McCain, he used a large kitchen knife and stabbed him thirty-two times. Ms.McCain was stabbed once in the heart, she died quickly.”

“Okay, what about the daughter what happened to her?” Stepping out of the room you moved to the daughter bedroom. The bedroom was dark even with the lights on. The walls were painted a dark purple and the all the decor was dark blues and black. The most noticeable thing was the closet door flung open with clothes spread across the black carpeted floor.

“She wasn’t kidnapped.”

“How can you tell?” Connor glanced around the room trying to piece together what you already saw.

“If she was kidnapped she would not have time to pack a bag” You stepped further into room looking at the balcony attached to the far wall.

“They escaped out the balcony, the android is still armed and it is unclear if the daughter is aware her parents are dead.” You turned around to face Connor who was already sending out an alert. You took in the his brows were knit together in concentration and how his hair fell in front of his fac-

“Y/N is their something on my face?” Connor asked wiping at his cheek.

“No Connor I was simple filling out the report.” You responded grateful for the ability to smooth your features to a neutral expression. Connor smiled, straighten out his coat.

“Well, look like we’ve got an android to catch.”