#electronic star duo

[knifegremliin]

when you're black, green and white and you're part of an electronic band

[animenostalgia]

Some sad news to share, friends - Leiji Matsumoto, the iconic creator of Space Battleship Yamato (aka Starblazers), Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999, and many more, has passed away at the age of 85. A manga artist since the 50s who originally got his start in shoujo manga, Matsumoto’s works were a cornerstone of early anime fandom. American sci-fi fans of the 70s may not have known the terms “anime”, “manga”, or “cosplay”, but they knew and loved Matsumoto’s work, which was many fan’s first exposure to anime back in the day. One of the first recorded “cosplay” gatherings in the US was of fans dressed as mostly Leiji Matsumoto characters!

In other parts of the world, they also fell in love with Matsumoto’s work: as in France, where Harlock was known as Albator, and won the hearts of many fans. So much so that Matsumoto won many prestigious awards there, and would eventually be knighted in 2012 by the French government. French electronic duo Daft Punk was highly influenced by his work, and in 2001 collaborated with Matsumoto to release anime music videos (and eventually a feature-length film version called Interstella 555).

Modern anime & manga owe much to his work, as he was THE pioneer of space opera and what he liked to call “boy’s romance” stories--”romance” in the literarily sense--full of angst, heroism, and fighting for independence while celebrating nature, brotherhood, and friendship. He helped many people learn to never give up on themselves and their dreams, no matter how fantastical they may seem.

May his spirit travel on, in a new adventure in the endless sea of stars.

[rahonn]

Rust

A/N: Gobble up the angst my children

Pairing: Eustass Kid x reader (no pronouns mentioned!)

Word count: 3511

Trigger warning: mentions of alcohol and drug abuse, toxic relationship, a bit of crime

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He never intended for anything to come out the way it did. Foul smell of burned meat invaded his nostrils, clinging to every inch of his exposed skin. And once again, alone and angry, he threw the plates against the wall. Mashed potatoes, looking more like a soup, ran down the ugly greyish paint, slab of overcooked beef slapped hard against the floor soon after. This was the drop of grease that started the fire. Low rumble started deep within his chest, making him vibrate all over. Soon, he was roaring like a hurt animal, throwing things all around, smashing plates, stomping on the utensils, throwing chairs. One of them smashed the window and fell out. Someone screamed right before wood broke into pieces against the concrete. Not even five minutes later someone started to bang on his front door, but he didn’t even hear them. Blue and red lights flashed outside accompanied by deafening sirens of two police cars and only then he stopped, suddenly feeling empty.

All that was left of Eustass Kidd were ashes and acrid smoke.

He was never the one to be interested in love. Not after they killed Victoria. They were young, sure, but the fact police never even bothered to open an investigation messed him up real good. Only other person he could count on whatever happened was Killer. With time, Wire and Heat joined their fucked up duo-turned-group. They caused a lot of ruckus around town, they were a violent bunch. Only thing they were really good at was producing noise and fixing or recycling electronics and car parts. So they leaned into it, putting their anger at the state of the world into making money from fixing whatever they could that they later spent on studio and crappy instruments.

They sounded awful at first, but that’s how they felt. Nothing made sense in this fucked up world, why should their music do?

By complete chance they found themselves in the middle of the woods, drinking. Being still underage, this was one of few places police wouldn’t catch them. The sound they never expected there suddenly appeared – raspy, sonorous voice boomed all around them. They listened awfully familiar lyrics, perfect rendition of one of the bands they drew inspiration from. Peeking out at the main trail from behind some bushes, they saw young human dressed in all black, with tattered leather jacket on, few sizes too big and bovvy boots not even tied up.

That was the day their group got a new member and Eustass Kidd felt something move in his chest the second mesmerizing eyes looked at him. The smile light up his world. Nothing got fixed, it didn’t work like that. But Kidd started to change, bit by bit.

He started showing off more, expecting a praise from their new member. And he often got it. Everyone, him included, saw they were smitten, just head over heels for Eustass. They looked at him like he was the best this world could produce and he liked it. He got addicted to this feeling of being needed so desperately. He became their air, their water, their food, hobby and job. He was their everything. They were his obsession, but he would never, ever, say it out loud.

And maybe that’s where he went wrong.

All the times they practiced, drank the night away, went out to vandalize something or just to walk around, they tried to glue themselves to his side. He made fun of them a lot for it, they laughed it off. They loved him unconditionally. He called in the middle of the night? They soon stood on his doorstep, all sweaty and barely able to breathe. He told them to get him something? They would move heaven and earth to get it, even if it meant stealing or committing fraud. Or robbing someone. He wanted a star? They would somehow get into spaceship, burn their hands and destroy themselves, just to bring it down to him even if it was the last thing they’d do.

It was unhealthy, their relationship. Kidd, basking in the power he held over them, often poked fun at them, made fun of them. They laughed at it too, even though Killer and the rest tried to stop Eustass from saying such things. They were part of their small army, it was them against the world after all.

But one day, they became distant. All of a sudden Kidd lost his sun, his moon and the stars. His heart shifted, but he was too prideful to reach out, to ask what was happening. How furious he became after he saw they interacted with the rest of their band like earlier, before they decided on the name. What he didn’t know was they also slowly withdrew from the rest as well. It started with ignoring their texts, missing few practices here and there. Then it became more frequent. And when Killer, most emotionally mature out of all of them, asked what was wrong, they told him only about wanting to leave the band. Once Kidd heard it, his heart turned to stone. He jumped on his bike and drove straight to their house, forgetting about speed limits or even his helmet. He was furious, but cold. And he didn’t scream at them when they opened the door. Coldly he asked if it was true, if they were betraying the band like that.

If they were betraying him like that, but that part stayed silent.

Once shining eyes sparkling whenever he came into room, now looked at him without much emotion, dull and bland. They confirmed, they were indeed thinking about leaving to pursue higher education.

“We can’t play around like that for much longer. We need to grow up, sooner or later. I’m choosing now as my time of change.”

He spit on their shoes and with pure disgust he told them to never show their face near him. And that was that. He was hurt, he was furious, he felt betrayed once again. For the second time in his life, human he loved died in his eyes. This wasn’t the rebellious, up to anything person he met all those years before.

And they disappeared from the face of the earth after that, leaving black hole where Kidd’s heart once has been. The echo of their voice haunted him, whole band was missing them. But all members respected their decision. Only one that badmouthed them was Eustass, who put even more energy into their music, for the first time in very long with empty space near microphone. He forbade all Victoria Punk’s members from even talking about getting a replacement.

“We’ll manage without another leech just waiting to betray us.”

But when they caught the eye of one of bigger alternative labels, Killer sat Kidd down and talked to him for hours. That this was their chance of making it big and getting their story out there, shining a light at fucked up sides of this world. That he really needed to let them go already. They chose different path in life and that’s fine. It didn’t mean Kidd should let it hold him back from excelling in life. Eustass, after long few minutes of silence, said he got it, he’d find the vocalist soon.

First truly big concert was just ahead of them and he would make sure it’d make them talk of the country, if not the world. Stacks of song lyrics piled up under his bed, almost spilling out from there and their new frontman would sing them. After first fifteen minutes, they were already sweaty, giving their all. With guitar pick between his fingers, Kidd grabbed the mic, looking out into the crowd for a second, before closing his eyes and letting his voice carry through the air. With each word he got out there, he felt shield, carefully placed over his heart, bend, twist a bit and crack. Every song healed him just a little bit more, leaving him in the pit full of only sadness.

He missed them, their laugh, their eyes, the way they put all their energy into whatever they were doing. For maybe the first time in his life, when panting, covered in sweat he looked at the mass of bodies jumping and obeying his every word, he looked at his band, his best friends and smiled sadly. He walked over to Killer, who thought that maybe he wanted to change the song they were about to play. But Kidd just grabbed his bicep and looked deep into his eyes.

“I love them, Killer. And I need them back.”

As if lightning struck, Victoria Punk got their second, third, fourth and fifth big show, propelling them forward faster than it was necessary. Suddenly, they were doing interviews, got their own merch, started selling VIP tickets, had meet-and-greets with fans who cried and screamed upon seeing them.

Kidd made it his mission to find them though. He took out the songs they wrote and along with the band he mastered them, refusing to let even one word in them change. He hoped that maybe if they made it big enough, if they started to use their lyrics, they’d come to one of the shows. Because frankly, Eustass didn’t even know where to start looking for them.

The only time he wasn’t thinking about them were times when he snorted some coke or fucked someone. And it became his comfort, cushioning yet another fall after failed attempt of finding his love. It became his new habit, his new addiction to get rid of his old one – them.

Kidd started taking more drugs any of the guys from Victoria Punk even saw in their whole life. He often caught him mumbling to himself, off in his own world, their name leaving his lips all too often. Kidd smiled softly, staring into the void while sitting on the couch and talked under his breath about ‘how good it was to have them back’. And it scared Killer to no end. Soon, only he was allowed to enter Eustass’ room so the others wouldn’t know the extend of the damage done. He tried to pick the pieces of his best friend and mend them together, he searched all over for them, thinking maybe it would help. He even hired private investigator when all leads came up dry. All to pull Kidd back from the edge on which he balanced for the longest time.

And when investigator produced fresh photo of them, Killer relayed this message onto sober Kidd, rare occurrence these days. But Eustass looked at him with empty, sunken eyes and just smiled, not believing a word he said. Killer slapped the photo down with number hastily scribbled on the back of it and ordered his best friend to call them, then and there. To amuse his partner, Kidd grabbed his phone in trembling hands and pressed few buttons.

Phone ringed for a long time. And finally someone picked up making both men freeze on the spot.

“Hello? Who is this?”

No doubt, it was their voice. But Kidd panicked, because what would he even say? That he wanted them back? After all those years of no contact?

The voice whispered softly on the other end: “Kidd? No, there’s no way, right?” they laughed to themselves and cut off the call, leaving Eustass Kidd curled up on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably, already deciding he’d go completely sober, he’d return to his old self and call again.

And he did just that. He got clean, cut off contact with all prostitutes he got to know for all those years. The whole time he nervously scribbled down and erased lines of his confession. The only outlet ever to his emotions became writing songs and singing them with all his chest. Once lead guitarist, now vocalist, Kidd composed the best song his band ever produced.

All to convey his feelings to them, to get them back.

It was first concert of their tour celebrating 30th anniversary of creating Victoria Punk. They managed to pull of starting the tour in the town they lived now instead in their hometown. Killer sent them VIP ticket that included meet-and-greet. In the envelope there was also long letter, describing how whole band felt it was time to maybe reconcile, how they all regretted the day they parted ways. Everything now depended on whether or not they wanted to meet their old friends.

Eustass Kidd thought he would maybe make dinner just to heat it up when he’d inevitably would bring them back to the apartment rented just for the time being, until Victoria Punk stayed in town. He decided to make something simple, so it wouldn’t take a lot of time to heat up, but also would taste good.

Suddenly, after almost 20 years of playing all over the world, he became nervous. He prepared everything, this was about to be greatest show of all the time, ending with his confession.

They walked on the stage, immediately getting into their positions. Instruments were ready, their hearts were ready. The show began without any problems, they rocked the whole stadium like they always did. Whole hour he searched the rows closest to the stage, VIP places where people could still mosh, but were separated from the rest. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he spotted familiar sign. He saw that line over and over again, motive repeating in their songs, the handwriting that haunted him in his dreams.

You catch me when I fall, we sail off in the night

The last song Victoria Punk performed was a cover, most fitting to the title of their tour ‘For you’.

“I’m sure you’ll like our rendition of Starset’s song Die For You” Kidd smirked right into the microphone. He tried to convey his feelings the whole time he stood on this stage. Tearing his throat to shreds, he heard Killer slamming the drums with all his might. Wire broke guitar pick, Heat almost sobbed while delivering the bass line. And when the song ended, whole stadium erupted into cheers, believing this was the end of the show. They all let them believe it, walking backstage. But Kidd only waited for lights to be turned off. He grabbed acoustic guitar he held onto from the day all Victoria Punk’s members signed it, laughing about selling it once they’d be famous.

But Kidd grabbed it and walked back on stage. He sat on the edge with guitar close to his chest and struck a chord. Single reflector snapped on, finding him in a flash. Kidd found the sign he saw earlier and smiled.

“This last song is, and will be, unreleased one. I took a long time to try and convey my feelings since I’m shitty talker. The person this song is to knows who they are. And they are here tonight.” Murmur spread through the crowd, he could swear he saw their eyes light up just. Just like in the good, old days. Suddenly, people vanished, all that was left was Kidd, the guitar and them right there, clutching a sign to their chest.

I sleep on my dreams, living in a nightmare

It hurts, you see, when you’re not here

There’s no past and no future

So, tell me when, when to let go

When to let you go and keep living

Without air, without fire, without soul

So, tell me when, when to let go

When to let you go and keep living

He sang his heart out, holding an eye contact with the one that grabbed his heart and ran all those years ago. And when he was done, he thanked everyone and straight up ran backstage, preparing for meet-and-greet. He made sure security knew who with what ticket number to bring to the back where the table was set up with snacks and five chairs around it for original squad of Victoria Punk to talk in private.

They sped through meeting their fans, making sure they all knew how grateful all members were for them to be there. But Kidd could only think about them, probably already sitting at the table, all nervous, looking around, playing with their hands to let out some of their feelings just a bit. How confused he was when he walked to the back all smiley and happy just to find the table completely empty. There was no one there. Killer, Wire and Heat went around, asking the crew and security where was the person with this specific ticket number.

“Yeah, they were here, but all they wanted was for me to give this to you all” one of the guards said, holding out four envelopes, each with different name on it. Kidd, still in shock, couldn’t move. Killer grabbed two last envelopes from guy’s hand and smacked Eustass on the back.

“Let’s go, partner” he said, sadness tainting his voice. Kidd let him lead him all the way to the car. Whole drive to the apartment, he held onto the envelope with his name scribbled on tightly, as if it could fly away at any second. Killer helped him get out of the car and made Kidd give him all valuables. “Just to be sure you won’t have anything to buy drugs with” he whispered, explaining himself, but Eustass automatically just put everything onto outstretched hand. He even shrugged off custom-made leather jacket before marching up the stairs.

He closed the door, mechanically turning on the oven to heat up the dinner he made. And he sat down on the couch, envelope in hand. He stared at it for the longest time before carefully pulling out card from the inside.

Dear Kidd,

Words already started dancing and merging together, but somehow, he was able to read it. Slowly, line after line, he read about their feelings. How hurt they were, how he treated them like a dog, using their admiration to make himself make feel better, how they finally decided to cut him off because their mental health was lower than the floor back then. And how hopeful they were he’d maybe contact them once they heard about Victoria Punk’s first CD, how they spent fortune going to all shows they played in their country, how they saw him spiraling and then getting back up, how proud they were, how they wrote countless letters to him, but never sent anything in the end. And how happy they were to receive invitation to this show with VIP tickets and handwritten note from Killer, how they missed all members of their little rascal band from their past, how nice it was to know they still thought about them.

And I never told you this, but I’m sure you knew already. I loved you. All this time, I loved you like crazy. And honestly, I still love you. But I also know you better than everyone, Boss. I know you just miss having someone stuck to you like a velcro, staring up at you with limitless admiration. That’s all. You were honestly my everything. My world, my air, my water, my hobby, my job, my soul. But it’s too little too late.

I’m sorry, I didn’t want to say those things like that, but I know I would cave in if I saw you in person. I would fall to my knees and beg you to take me with you, make me a part of Victoria Punk once again. But I know I would never be loved by you. Not in the way Victoria was, not in the way I deserve to be loved. You would, at most, make me your mascot again, just like you did when we were kids.

I am happy now.

Kidd smashed the mirror in the bathroom, no longer able to look at himself.

I found a guy that loves me and treats me with respect.

Sink got ripped out of the wall and thrown on the floor, smashed to pieces.

I wish I could kiss you and tell you I love you one time.

He looked out the window, contemplating the jump.

But please, let’s leave it in the past.

But the door got kicked in, police swarmed the apartment.

I miss you terribly, wishing it was you who I slept by every night.

By the time they got to him, he blacked out from the blood loss, his left arm bent weird in four different places.

I love you, Kidd, like I never loved, love or will love anyone.

He woke up in the hospital, staring up at the ceiling, his heart of steel laying in the pool of tears.

Please, forget about me.

Killer, Wire and Heat stood by his side when he got the news – they had to amputate most of his left arm, which meant no more shows for a little while.

Forever yours.

But that didn’t matter anymore, since his heart that lived for music, slowly got eaten away by the rust.

[rays-of-fire-and-ice]

The Music Goes On and On

Rating: K/General

Setting: in the decade before the main story.

Synopsis: Shinji is going about his daily life at his job in a music store, until he sees an old face from the past.

AN: the winner of my first poll! This was fun to write, so thank you to everyone who voted for it!

I hope I did Shinji justice here. He's a character I love, and I've always wanted to know what he and Visoreds did after escaping the the Living world and before they introduced themselves to Ichigo. I've broached the topic before in As Months Go By, As Season Change part II, but I wanted to write a specific instance of his life in the World of the Living. I had intended this to be more comedic, but well...it's me, and it ended up more angsty with one sappy moment.

In terms of research, I looked into Japanese 1990’s music and the workforce during the 1970’s. I'll briefly go over it here, but if you want to skip it and get to the fic, continue to the line break before the story begins.

For music, I mainly used information from this article about Japanese jazz bands, doing Youtube searches for 1990s Japanese music, and searching for what records stores in Japan typically look like.

The songs, albums, and bands mentioned in this fic are:

B'z: a Japanese rock duo who sold millions of albums during the 1990's. They're one of Japan's best-selling artists even to this day, having sold over 80 million albums. Sasori ni sasa reta by Kimidori Review by Glay: this was one of the best-selling albums in Japan for 1997, and sold over 2 million copies in it's first week. Casiopea: a Japanese jazz fusion band who have created over 40 albums as of the time of writing this fic. They've been active since the 1970's, and have gone through four phases with different band members; in this story, they're in their second phase. Light and Shadow by Casiopea Casiopea by Casiopea Yasuko Agawa: a Japanese jazz and blues singer. Before releasing her debut album, Love-Bird, in 1978, she starred in movies in the early 1970’s. This included the Bloodthirst Trilogy, a Japanese horror film trilogy that involves unconnected stories about vampires. Agawa starred in Chi o suu bara, which is the final film in the trilogy and it's title has been translated to Evil of Dracula in English. Love-Bird by Yasuko Agawa All Right by Me by Yasuko Agawa Scenery by Ryo Fuuki (also mentioned in As Months Go By, As Season Change part II)

In terms of the workforce research, I had to change the timeline in light of what I found. Rather than seeing a coworker Shinji knew from 30 years ago, it's now 21 years. This is because the store they worked at together, Yodobashi Camera, opened it's first store in 1975, and in this fic Shinji got a job with the company a year later. In it's early years, the stores primarily sold cameras and photography equipment, but eventually branched off into other technology and home electronics such as TVs and PCs. Nowadays it's online version is incredibly popular and one of Japan's most visited online shopping platforms. Why a camera store? I can't explain why, but I have this weird feeling that Shinji might've worked in a camera store at some point. Maybe because old camera's used to have inverted lenses, meaning they could be upside down (and we all know how Shinji feels about things that are inverted).

Finally, there's a slight joke with the name Shinji chooses to use here. From what I saw in my research, ‘Mako’ can use the same Kanji characters as ‘Shinji’, (which are ‘真子‘ and if I’m not mistaken have the same meanings of ‘truth’/’sincerity’ and ‘children’) but both names can also be spelled using other Kanji characters too (but it changes the meaning of the name). While ‘Mako’ tends to be primarily a girl's name, it seems it can also be a boy’s name too, and from what I can see, the spelling of it can be same for both boys and girls when using the same characters as ‘Shinji’. If I got any of this wrong, please let me know so I can change it. My sources for all of this were here and here.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this!

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The bell above the music store’s entrance rings as the latest customer leaves. Shinji doesn’t glance their way, taking and unfurling a poster of B’z from his cart. After pinning it to the wall, he lifts out a box of CDs to restock the ‘New Releases’ display rack at the front.

 Karakura Beats Records Store is empty save for him and Kana, who resumes pricing the latest shipment of vinyls behind the cash register. The morning sunlight pours in through the many posters and notices stuck to the windows facing out on to the quiet street, casting blocks of shadow over the many vinyls and CDs.

From the speakers high up on the walls, a tune he’s never heard before begins to play quietly through the air. Shinji drums his fingers on the CD rack to the tune in between stacking in copies of ‘Review’ – which will no doubt be gone by the end of the week if the hype around the album and the sales figures from other music stores are to be believed.

Eventually, he’s swaying his body to the beat too. “Yo, Kana-san!”

She looks up, her bright, dyed hair falling over one shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Which track is this?” he asks, still swaying as he tops up the rack the. “It’s a good one, I might buy the album if the rest is any good.”

“ ‘Sasori ni sasa reta’ by Kimidori.” She grins. “I knew I could get you to like something I like.”

“Didn’t think you’d like hip hop.”

“Not much of it, but I heard this one when I was in my last year of high school.”

Done with the CDs, Shinji returns to his cart and rolls it behind the cash register. “Ya done with those?” he says, pointing at the vinyls.

Sticking a price on the top one, Kana picks up the pile and drops them into the cardboard box that just had 'Review' in it. “Done now.”

He goes to pick it up, but blinks down at the cover. There’s three shadows on a white surface, and above them with is a de-saturated sky, and running along the middle is a dark lake and the silhouettes of hills and houses. The album’s title is in English, as is the band name. Even so, he recognises the name without having to read the blue slip on the vinyl’s side with a translation. “Huh, when did this come out?”

“In September. The old drummer came back, apparently.”

“Ya mean Jimbo Akira?”

“Yeah, but it’s got a guest drummer too.” Kana cocks an eyebrow at him. “I’m surprised you don’t know. You like Casiopea, right?”

Shinji shrugs. “Some of their stuff, sure. I can take ‘em or leave them, just surprised I didn’t know about this one.”

“They release something every year, right?” Kana says, moving on to the next stacks of vinyls and CDs to price. “Shouldn’t be too surprising.”

No, it shouldn’t. He’d been listening to their music since their self-titled debut album in 1979, and even though he’d lost some interest in their music by the late 1980’s, he still kept tabs on them. But then, even after being in the world for as long as he has, the passage of time is so different it sometimes escapes him.

Resisting the urge to shake his head, Shinji puts two other boxes of CDs and vinyls Kana had prepared into his cart, and rolls it down the right-side aisle.

Hecomes to a stop at his favorite section. Written above the display racks and cupboards is ‘Jazz’. When he’d started here three months ago, while he'd been impressed the store's collection was better than others he'd come across, the section had been smaller and in desperate need to of a wider range of artists. After showing his extensive knowledge about jazz and blues music had been one of the reason’s he’d been hired by he and Kana’s manager.

Aside from the usual roles in customer services, he’d been tasked with refurbished the store a little, putting up posters for bands and music artists on the walls and redoing the titles over each genre section. While doing the latter task, he had to withhold the temptation to write every genre name upside down – he’d tried to argue it would make them stand out from other stores, but backed down when Kana protested against the idea, saying ti would confuse customers.

The jazz section was his unofficial space in the whole store, the one where he got to arrange it as he wanted. The entire row against the wall has a wide variety of artists, from the famous to the up and coming to local talent. He goes to the where the rest of Casiopea’s discography is and clears a space for the vinyls.

The bell rings again. Kana greets their new customer from the counter and offers assistance. Judging from the voice that thanks her, the person is elderly.

Shinji doesn’t listen to the rest, but as he makes his way down the middle aisle to stack some vinyls and CDs in the ‘Rock’ section, the older man remains in his peripheral. He takes out the box, balancing it on the rack with his arm over the top, and unloads the vinyls two at a time into an empty space with the others. He frowns at the sensation in the back of his mind; something nags in the back of his mind, begging him to look at the man.

The bell rings again. This time by the sounds of it, it’s one of their regulars, a young woman who’s name doesn’t remember. She and Kana chatter away, discussing the weather and family. It’s so ordinary, so far away from all of the worlds he’s ever known. He hasn’t been in the Soul Society for decades, and yet there are times like now when it feels like only yesterday he was a captain.

With all the vinyls stacked in, he begins to lift the almost empty box back into the cart. However, his arm bumps into someone, clattering the records inside. Shinji turns to apologize, but his throat closes up involuntarily when he sees it’s the older man from before.

“Oh, sorry, please excuse…” The old man trails off.

Shinji frowns, that nagging sensation getting stronger now that he has a closer look at the man. He’s not as old as he thought. His hair is greying, but there’s still some dark hair on the top of his head and in his thick eyebrows. Wrinkles ring around his eyes and the ends of his mouth, but they aren’t deep, only just beginning to show more prominently. Behind his glasses, the man’s eyes are dark brown, and widened with probably the same strange feeling of familiarity as Shinji is experiencing.

Then, when the man tries to speak again, and his brows furrow into a frown, it hits Shinji.

He nearly has to bite his tongue from saying the man’s name aloud. “No harm done,” he somehow manages to say without any of the spiking nerves thrumming through him.

He tries to remain calm as he continues stacking the vinyls in, but he can feel the man’s – Keiji Mimura’s -- lingering gaze on him, even as he turns and pretends to browse the albums in front of him.

He has to get out of this fast. He can hear the cash register going; Kana must be ringing up the regular, which means she’ll be free any second now. He hoists the box back into the cart, planning to head back to the counter, then offer to take over the register for Kana. She’d go out on to floor, probably keep Keiji distracted and try to sell him some obscure rock album she likes. If he ends up buying the album, Kana will likely keep the conversation going all the way to register, get Shinji to move aside so she can ring Keiji up, and then he’ll be gone from the store, and Shinji’s life again.

Shinji doesn’t even make it three steps when Keiji speaks up behind him. “…Hirako-san?”

Shinji has no choice but to stop and turn around. In the face of the man’s shocked expression, Shinji somehow manages a smile. “Excuse me? Did you say something.” It sounds lame even to his own ears.

The man shakes his head. “Forgive me, it’s just…you look and sound like someone I used to know.”

It takes everything in Shinji to not drop the smile, but even then, the corners of his mouth twitch. How to get out of this?

He and the other Visoreds had managed to keeps their identities a secret up until now, switching jobs every few years, never getting close to any coworkers and never revealing anything about their personal lives. They mostly find work outside of Karakura Town in the major cities, countryside towns, and to a smaller extent the towns that surrounded Karakura. The commutes were a pain, but they needed to make a living and not expose themselves as being ‘ageless’ to local residents. This was his first job in Karakura Town, and it had partly been out of desperation when he couldn’t get another anywhere else.

He can dismiss Keiji, just treat this as an awkward encounter with an elderly man who had a case of mistaken identity. It happens, more often than he realized before being forced into the World of the Living.

It’s what he should do.

Later, as he's walking back to the warehouse and then while being lectured by the other Visoreds after telling them about his day, he will reflect on this moment where he chose to do something far more troublesome for himself.

Shinji’s widens his eyes, pretending to come to a realisation. “Ah! Wait. I think I understand your confusion.” He chuckles and shakes his head to himself for effect, leaving the older man bewildered. “I’m terribly sorry, sir,” Shinji continues. “Did you used to work with Hirako Shinji?”

“Y-Yes!” Keiji stammers out.

“Ah, ya see, he’s my father. I’m his son.”

The older man blinks, briefly scanning Shinji from head to toe. “He never said anything about children,” he murmurs under his breath.

Shinji pretends he didn’t hear it, remaining rooted in place, grin plastered wide over his face and a fisted hand on his hip. Seeing the man’s unfaltering skepticism, he bows slightly and holds his hand out to him. “I’m Hirako…Mako.”

Of all the names! He purses his lips and continues to stare at the ground, hard, as he inwardly begs, Please don’t think too much on it, please don’t think to much on it, Keiji-san, don’t think --

After a beat, the older man bows and shakes Shinji’s hand. “I’m Mimura Keiji. Forgive me for before, it’s just that you look so much like Hirako Shinji – your father, I meant.”

“That’s fine. I’ve gotten that quite a bit, actually. Everyone’s always saying I look like my old man.”

That gets a huff of a chuckle out Keiji; Shinji can’t tell whether it’s due to the comment, how informally he’d spoken, or how the way he spoke was identical to his 'father'. It's probably the latter.

Keiji lets go of Shinji’s hand and they both straighten back up. The store bell rings, briefly drawing Shinji’s attention to Kana. To his chagrin she doesn’t look his way, instead continuing her chat with their regular as she makes her purchases.

“I worked with your father a long time ago.” Keiji explains. “We were coworkers”

Shinji keeps his grin small as he returns his focus back to his old coworker. “Where did you work with him? The old man’s had a lot of jobs across his life.”

Keiji smiles. “So he said. We used to work at Yodobashi Camera together.”

“Ah yeah! He was a sales clerk there. He barely knew a thing about camera’s when he started, huh?”

Another huff of a chuckle broadens the old man's smile. “He learned on the job. I was no expert at the time by any means, but he even had to learn which button to press to take a picture.”

Shinji chortles, both from the memory and the embarrassment of those years. He’d been the World of the Living for several decades by that point. He’d known about cameras but was so concerned with training to control his Visored abilities and stay afloat money-wise he hadn’t ever learned about some of the most basic things for humans.

“He was all right with the other technology of course,” Keiji continues. “We often had shifts together. Every now and then we went for drinks at ‘The Golden Cup’ with everyone else.”

Despite himself, Shinji can’t help but grin wider as nostalgia flutters in his chest. He and the other Visoreds tried to maintain a certain distance between themselves and the cowrokers in whatever job they worked in. Regardless, on rare occasions, he’d indulge himself and go drinking with his coworkers. He did it more often with the employees of Yodobashi Camera than in any other job, and he’d never had a bad night out with them. They were a good bunch of hard workers who knew how to party even harder afterwards -- or at least as much as they could given that they all needed to wake up and go to work the next day.

“I -- He mentioned that too,” Shinji eventually says. “He always came home in a good mood after those nights, tripping over his feet."

Keiji gives a nervous snort. "I must admit, I did worry about how much he drank sometimes."

Shinji did too. He recalls the concerned pinch of Keiji's brows when he was about to leave, wobbling on his feet. He rarely got drunk, and he didn't always understand why he chose to get drunk with those guys.

"Nah, he was always sharp," Shinji says, "even when drunk. Heck, he could even play mahjong while drunk and still win." He let's Keiji's chuckle fill in the air for a pause. "He used to play that game with his coworkers too, right?”

“Ah, yes! I used to enjoy our games.” Keiji sighs. “It’s been a long time since then, and Yodobashi Camera has certainly grown bigger and bigger over the years.”

“Ya can’t escape them these days, huh? Feels like they’re at every railway station in the major cities.” Shinji leans back against the vinyls racks, trying to appear casual. “So, do you live in Karakura Town now?”

“Oh, no. My wife and I are visiting our daughter. I assume you live here?”

“Yeah, I moved here about a year ago.” A lie, so natural sounding from years of saying many more like it before.

He can sense the next question coming – something to effect of ‘Do your parents live here as well?’ – so he quickly continues, “It’s a small town, but there’s a few places I can recommend for visitors if your daughter hasn’t taken you to them already.”

“We only arrived two days ago. We visited one of the shrines with her yesterday. My wife and daughter are having breakfast at a cafe nearby. We’re planning to walk around the shopping district this afternoon.”

“All good ideas. There’s also Tsubakidai Park, it’s always nice to walk around there. There’s also a music performance happening there two days from now, local bands mostly.”

“Is there now?”

Shinji points to the most recent poster taped up next to the store’s entrance. He briefly glances at Kana, who had gone back to pricing the vinyls, but she’d stopped at some point, staring at their exchange. She eyes him with a raised brow. Her expression is asking him ‘Is everything okay?’

“See that there?” Shinji says, keeping Keiji distracted long enough to wink at Kana in reassurance. “It’s got the details for it if you’re interested.”

With a shrug and a good-natured roll of her eyes, she returns to her task.

Keiji nods. “I’ll be sure to look at it on my way out.” Turning back, he looks over Shinji shoulder. “Speaking of, I came here to get an album I was told would be here. I believe it will be under jazz.”

“Yeah? Which one?” Shinji asks as he leads Keiji to the ‘Jazz’ section.

“It’s often hard to find, but Umei -- oh, she's my daughter -- thought I should try my luck here. She said this store often sells music from older artists. ‘Retro’, she calls it.”

“She ain’t wrong.”

Keiji frowns thoughtfully when they stop in front of the rows of CDs and vinyls. He let’s out a sudden, ironic laugh. “Actually, now that I think about it, it’s from a singer your father introduced me to.”

Shinji already knew, and his heart squeezed for a moment. “Oh, yeah? Which one?”

“Agawa Yasuko.”

The memory comes to him. He’d gone drinking with Keiji and his coworkers, and they ended up discussing films they love. When the topic of The Bloodthirsty Trilogy came up, Shinji brought up how Yasuko Agawa had gone on to make music since then. Only Keiji was interested, and took up Shinji’s suggestion to go buy her debut album. He hadn’t seen someone as smitten with a jazz album as Keiji (and apparently his wife) was. They discussed her singing the next day during lulls at work, and for the first time in a while, Shinji felt relaxed, briefly forgetting the troubles that always weigh on his mind.

“Well, her albums are just here,” Shinji says, gesturing to the left-side display racks. “Were you after CD or vinyl?”

“CD,” Keiji says while steps around him. He bends over the CDs and thumbs through them. “You have most of her albums here.”

“It’s like your daughter said, we’re retro here.”

He takes out a copy of ‘All Right With Me’ with a grin. “This is the one! I listened to it last year, but haven’t been able to find a copy of it until today.”

“It’s a good one, she’s always had a great voice. I can recommend any of her albums, they're all good.”

“Ah, are you a fan of jazz music too? Just like your father?”

“Yeah, like my old man, jazz is one of my favourite genres. It never gets old.”

“He said the same thing.”

Then, because one of half of him is now stuck in the past, Shinji says, “My father mentioned you had a wife, a daughter, and a son. They doing okay?”

Keiji hums in ascent. “Yes, very well. I’m not sure if your father told you, but my wife, Kyoko, works in a bakery. She has worked in the same place for over twenty years now, and got promoted to manager five years in.”

“That’s incredible!”

Keiji nods firmly and returns to flicking through the albums. “She’s always been determined. Umei is a newspaper reporter for the local news here, and my son, Naoya, is an accountant in Tokyo.” He grins. “He’ll be having our first grandchild soon. My wife is eager to be there in the weeks before the baby is born, she already has gifts planned for him. He’s a lot like his mother, determined and hard-working. I have no doubt he’ll be a good father.”

Shinji has the sudden urge to reminisce with this man. To talk about their days in the store, where Shinji learned how to use a camera, and about their regular customers. To show he remembered the little details Keiji had told him about his life outside of work – how Kyoko would come to visit them with baked goods when she knew her husband hadn’t packed a lunch, or how happy he was about Umei’s first day of school, or when he was pleasantly surprised by Naoya’s sudden obsession with the new ‘Astro Boy’ anime. To talk about the music from that time, and see if he’d taken on other jazz and blues recommendations he’d made.

At Shinji’s silence, Keiji’s grin transforms into a bashful smile. “You’ll have to forgive me. I must seem like an old man rambling about my family and reminiscing about the past.”

“Nah, it’s fine. I get it. My old man worked at Yodobashi Camera over twenty years ago, and if I saw an old coworker, even if it was their kid, I’d want to talk about it.”

"Well, thank you then," Keiji says, “How is your father these days? I probably should've asked that first.”

Shinji knew it was coming, hovering over them from the moment Keiji recognised him without realising. Even so, the pit of his stomach plummets along with his grin. He’s at another crossroads.

He takes in the man’s features again. How the wrinkles gather deeper around his eyes and around his mouth as he speaks. The fact he wears glasses now, resting over the faint scar on his nose he got when he broke it during a high school baseball game – he’d tumbled after getting homebase and cracked it on the ground, Shinji recalls; it'd been a drunken confession made on one of the night he'd gone out with the coworkers.

He thought noticing age couldn’t affect him anymore. But seeing someone from his past, someone who he got along well with and truly wished the best for, it strikes something in him. He’d been a Shinigami for centuries, ferrying hundreds of Souls like him to the Soul Society. One day, Keiji will be met by a Shinigami when he passes on, and forget the life he’d lived by the time he gets to the Soul Society.

It’s then SHinji realises he's been living in this world for too long. That detachment, that knowledge that he was not like humans, has eroded over time, crumbling bit by bit, leaving only a thin slab behind. Hiyori was right; he should’ve left his job at Yodobashi Camera sooner. It's been one of the longer jobs he'd had, and he recalls trying to stuff down the bitterness of leaving it behind when he left on his last day.

It hadn't been right to drag Keiji along like this, for his own selfish whims of wanting to relieve the past. So he does the right thing this time.

Shinji looks off to the side. “He’s gone. So is my mother.”

In the pause, Keiji remains frozen in place, lost for words. “Oh, I…I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up…I had no idea.”

“It was three years ago. He and my mother were involved in a car accident.” Like all his lies, it comes out smooth and natural, like he is the son reflecting on grief he's only just overcome. He hates it.

Keiji shakes his head in disbelief. “That's awful, truly. I really am sorry.”

“Thank you, but you don’t have to be. I’m sorry you found out this way.”

Keiji is silent again, staring at the ground for a long moment before raising his head. There’s a faint mist across his eyes. “Your father and I only knew each other at work, and on the occasions he came to drink with the rest of us. Even so, I could always tell he was a good man. He worked hard, but he always had time to help others around the store too. Not just his coworkers, but also the customers.” His smile faintly returns. “I always wondered what happened to him after he left the store. I always thought, though, that wherever he went, he’d do good work.”

Keiji always saw the good in others, and in a time where Shinji still hadn’t fully processed Aizen’s betrayal, he’d been wary of the man at first. He'd reminded him of his seated officer Genji Isawa: a hard worker who could bring a smile and laugh to anyone who met him. Maybe this is why he'd eventually came around to being a little less guarded with him.

In his last year with the store, it was only then he’d begun to take an interest in his personal life and the lives of his coworkers, whether it was the rowdy Takahiro, or the quiet but hard working Kaneshiro. In some ways, now that he thought about it, Keiji might’ve been the closest thing he’d had to a friend in many years. Still kept at a distance, still lied to, but still an echo of a friend, one he probably would've had in another life.

He can't tell him any of this, not without it sounding like he truly knew him rather than a son telling a father's old coworker what his old man thought of him.

He'd put what little detachment he still had between him and his past, but now it came bleeding through like a bruise. If only he knew he was speaking these words directly to him and not to the son he thought he was.

“Thank you,” Shinji says quietly, still unable to meet Keiji’s eyes completely. “He’d have appreciated your words a lot.”

A sombre awkwardness settles over them, only broken when the store bell rings. A young couple come in, with the woman goig straight to the ‘New Releases’ rack. Shinji looks to Kana, who now unabashedly just stared at the scene unfolding in the corner of the shop. She’s only distracted away when the man who just entered asks for assistance.

Keiji bows. “Thank you for your assistance and for listening to my ramblings today, Hirako-san. I’ll go purchase this now.” He rises, but doesn’t move to the counter. He hesitates to say something else, lips parting and closing. "And I'm truly sorry for your loss. You have my condolences."

Shinji can only nod. This will be the last time he ever sees Keiji. It’s just as well, given the emotions and reactions he’d undergone today. Who knew how he’d react to meeting some of his other old coworkers from his other jobs. If nothing, this has reiterated why he shouldn’t get close to any of the humans, not even asking them about or taking an interest in their personal lives.

But some part of him, a wistful part that he’d thought was buried under the cynicism and hurt of Aizen’s betrayal, urges him to do one last thing. His detachment tries to block it, but it shine through, clutching at his heart.

“Did my father ever tell you what his favorite record was?” Shinji asks.

Keiji frowns slightly and shakes his head. “He might have, but I’m sorry, I can’t remember.”

“Well, to be more accurate, it’s one of his favorite records.” Shinji takes a step backwards and scans the lines of CDs until he finds the one he needs. He fishes it out of the rack and presents it to Keiji. A copy of ‘Scenery’. “He loved it from the moment he heard it. I still have his vinyl copy of it.”

Keiji is slow to take the CD. “I’ve always been more into pop music, really. Agawa Yasuko is the only jazz singer I liked.”

“It came out in 1976, the same year he started working for Yodobashi Camera. He said that while listening to it, it’d remind of his life at the time, including his work and his coworkers. He always associated it with good memories.”

Keiji nods, and his smile returns, albeit with a sadder edge to it. “I’m glad, then.” As Shinji holds his hand out, planning to take the album and put it back, Keiji raises his gaze back to him. “In that case, I’ll be buying this too.”

Shinji let out a chocked chuckle. “Whoa, hey, I wasn’t trying to make a sale –”

“I know, but I want to buy this now.”

Keiji had to be guided by his sentimentality right now, this isn’t fair. Did he feel the need to listen to this to honor him? “Hey, look, it’s really not –”

“If you recommend it, and if your father would’ve recommend it to me, then I have no doubt I will enjoy it. I’m sure my wife would too. She also likes Agawa-san’s music, and a few of the other recommendations your father made.”

Somehow, that lightens the load on his heart. He even manages a grin. “Then in that case, it’s on me.”

“What? Oh, no, please, there’s no need –”

Shinji holds up a hand to silence him. “It’s no trouble. Think of it as a gift.”

Even as they walked to the counter, Keiji fretted about the idea. Kana is ringing up the couple, but as the woman counts out the money, she eyes Shinji and Keiji as they approach.

After serving the couple, Keiji comes up the counter and Shinji digs his wallet out of his pants pocket.

“He’s buying the Agawa album, the Fuuki Ryo one is on me.”

“Really, you don’t have to do this,” Keiji insists.

Kana only shrugs as she takes Shinji’s money. “If you’re sure.” She turns to Keiji with a smile. “Good choices by the way.”

Keiji hands her the albums and his money. While waiting for Kana to count up his change, Keiji reads the poster for the upcoming music festival. “I’ll tell Kyoko and Umei about this. I have a feeling they’ll be interested.”

“It’s looking to be a good line up this year,” Kana says while handing him his change and bagging his purchases. “They have a lot more local acts. It’s always good to support them.”

“Yes, it is.” He bows to her after taking the bag from her. “Thank you very much.”

She bows in return. “Have a good day, sir.”

Keiji then bows to Shinji. “And thank you so much, Hirako-san. I’m glad I got to meet you. Please, pay my respects when you next see your father and mother.”

Shinji bows in return. “Likewise, Mimura-san. I’m sure my old man would’ve been happy to see you today.”

Both rising, Keiji smiles broadly, before turning and leaving the store. There’s a still silence after the bell above the door rings. A few heartbeats later, Kana finally speaks. “What was that about?”

“One of my dad’s old coworkers,” Shinji says, ungluing himself from his spot and going back to get his cart. From across the store, he says. “My old man and I look a lot alike, so he thought I was him.”

“Huh,” Kana huffs. “That sounds like it’s be awkward.”

“It was, but…I’m glad I got to see him.”

Kana’s brows frown slightly, but she doesn’t say anything about him ‘seeing’ rather than ‘meeting’ him. “So long as you’re feeling okay about it.”

“Yeah, I am.”

The rest of the day continues as usual until closing time. The sky has turned to amber, with the last of the sun peaking out over the horizon, by the time Shinji and Kana steps out of the store.

After locking the front door, Kana spins to him and hitches her bag over her shoulder. She jerks a thumb in the direction of Karakura’s main shopping districts. “You want to go for a drink?”

She always offers, and just like every other time, Shinji shakes his head. “Nah, gotta get home.”

Kana shrugs. “Suit yourself.” Unlike other times, concern flickers across her expression. He’d tried to hide the sombreness that’d settled into him after Keiji left, but maybe he hadn't been convincing. Maybe he's losing his tough.

Kana bows. “Thanks for your hard work today. See you tomorrow.”

Shinji does the same in return. “See you tomorrow.”

They part ways, going in opposite directions.

Autumn is in the air, crispy in the wind that brushes against him as he walks the quiet streets of Karakura Town. The streetlight pop on, beaming down over him and the those either returning home or heading for a night on the town in the shopping district. He can blend in with everyone, dressed like them and walking like them, but never be one of them.

He never wanted to be, still doesn't, but like them, he'd let that small part of him, that sentimental part of him, get the better of him.

As he comes to the quieter part of town, getting closer to the warehouse, he contemplates quitting his current job. It's only a passing thought, one that he dismisses when he considers his and the Visoreds financial situation. Kisuke had been generous over the years for someone struggling almost just as much as them, but they can't rely on him.

They needed to make their own path back to the Soul Society. Back to Aizen, to take him down once and for all. The old fire returns in Shinji's, a determination he'd used to fuel his detachment form humans.

But he's been here for so long, more than a century now. He's been alive for too long, and been around humans for too long.

Their lives are so short; one moment they're here, and the next, they're meeting a Shinigami or another agent of death. Yet, he'd come to like some of the human's he'd interacted with over the decades. Keiji is clearly one of them, and for all of the grief today had caused him, he still can't deny he'd been glad to see him. But now he'd another person in his past, one he'll never see again.

And one day Kana will have to be one of those people too. He could still visit the store for next few years and get away with it, but there will come a time where he’ll have to stop visiting. And even then, he’ll have to watch himself more in public; Karakura is a big place, but there’s still a decent chance he’d run into her on the streets in the years to come.

When that time comes, she might wonder where he went, what he’s up to, or maybe she won’t. Maybe she’ll unintentionally spare him and move away, going back further north to be closer to her family and finally confess to that one highschool friend she sometimes calls on her breaks and still lives in her hometown. Maybe she’ll use the money she’s saved over the year for singing and guitar lessons, then start that rock band she’s always dreamed of and leave Karakura to go touring.

And maybe none of that happens, and she stays here until the end.

It’ll be a shame when it happens. Despite how small the store’s original jazz section had been, he always loved the store’s collection. He hadn’t found another like it in all his time in the World of the Living.

[dreamings-free]

Outkast’s Big Boi, EDM artist Zedd, U.K. band Nothing But Thieves, Norwegian artist Aurora, rapper Hanumankind, guitarist-composer Cory Wong will perform in Mumbai on March 8 and 9, 2025

Anurag Tagat Sep 10, 2024

American punk-rock heroes Green Day, pop artist Shawn Mendes, U.K. hitmakers Glass Animals and singer-songwriter Louis Tomlinson are among top-billed acts making their India debut at Lollapalooza India 2025 in Mumbai, between March 8 and 9.

The lineup for the third edition of Lollapalooza India also includes rap veteran Big Boi from Outkast, U.K. band Nothing But Thieves, Norwegian pop artist Aurora, electronic artists like Zedd, John Summit and Alok, American guitarist-composer Cory Wong (known for his work with acts like Vulfpeck), breakout rapper Hanumankind (also our latest cover star), South Korean indie rock band Wave To Earth and rising pop artists Isabel LaRosa and more. Folk-indie singer-songwriter duo Lullanas – comprising Indian-origin siblings – will also make their India debut at Lollapalooza India 2025.

More Indian artists adding heft to the lineup include singer-songwriter Dot., rappers Raftaar and KR$NA, Punjabi artist Talwiinder, sitarist and fusion artist Niladri Kumar, pop artist Lisa Mishra, rock artist Raman Negi, Ahmedabad rap favorite Dhanji, producer Spryk, pianist-composer Sahil Vasudeva, DJ-producer Anushka, multi-instrumentalist-producer Sid Vashi, singer-songwriter Raghav Meattle and indie multi-instrumentalist/producer Sudan.

The announcement in September makes for meme-friendly news for Green Day, known for songs like “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” The band announced their India debut on Instagram and said, “Another first for us!! India, you’ve been calling our name… and it’s finally time to answer. We’ll see you in Mumbai next March for @LollaIndia.” The trio comprising Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool released their most recent album Saviors in 2024 and will likely dig into all-time hits like “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life),” “American Idiot,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and more. Shawn Mendes, known for hits “In My Blood,” “Treat You Better” and new single “Why Why Why,” returns to the live stage after more than two years on his current tour, which includes Lollapalooza India.

Louis Tomlinson, who has a big following in India following his time with pop group One Direction, will also make a long-awaited India debut. Fellow Brits Glass Animals are a big draw on the back of releasing their new album I Love You So F***ing Much in July, but primarily due to their 2020 hit “Heat Waves,” which was the seventh-most streamed song in India on Spotify in 2022.

Glass Animals founder Dave Bayley – who visited India as a 16-year-old – told Rolling Stone India in 2020, “Thank you for the support, I hope you are staying safe and healthy. We can’t wait to come and visit.”

In a wholly new strategy, Lollapalooza India’s 2025 lineup is out six months in advance of the multi-genre festival taking place in March. BookMyShow Live also took a similar approach while announcing the lineup for their festival Bandland, which is taking place on Nov. 23 and 24 in Bengaluru.

Get Lollapalooza India 2025 tickets here.

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

"It’s more than sales – it inspired an entire generation of young girls to know they had a place in heavy music." Inside Fallen: the album that turned Evanescence into instant 21st century metal superstars

No rock band had an explosive a rise in the 2000s as Evanescence. This is the story of their classic debut album

Evanescence’s Amy Lee was at one of the many awards ceremonies she attended back in the first half of the 2000s when she was approached by a fan. This wasn’t unusual in itself, except this fan happened to be rapper and mogul P. Diddy.

“He said, ‘I love your album, I listen to it when I work out’,” Amy tells Hammer today. “And I was like ‘Really? That’s awesome!’ That was surprising to me. You know who I am? That’s weird.” Weird is right. Just a couple of years earlier, Amy had been a shy, aspiring singer and songwriter who had played no more than a handful of times with the band she’d co-founded as 13-year-old almost a decade earlier. And now here she was, getting star-spotted by hip hop A-listers at swanky awards ceremonies.

“What do they call that thing? Imposter syndrome!” she recalls today. “I definitely felt like I’d snuck in the back door and somehow got to go to the Grammys. Like, ‘I’m not supposed to be here and people do not know who we are and this is a prank.’ I think part of that is just it all happening so fast and being so young.”

The reason for the attention was down to the blockbusting success of Evanescence’s debut album, Fallen. Originally released in March 2003, and about to be reissued as a deluxe 20th anniversary edition, Fallen appeared at the tail-end of the nu metal boom. It offered a gothier, more dramatic take on that sound, which bridged nu metal and both the rising symphonic metal and emo scenes. It would go on to sell more than 10 million copies in the US alone, turning Amy Lee into an icon and role model for a generation of young, female fans.

Amy describes the young, pre-Evanescence version of herself as “a little bit shy”. Earlier this year, she told Hammer’s sister magazine, Classic Rock, that the death of her younger sister, Bonnie, when Amy was six, was a catalyst for “this soul, spirit- searching, expression mode”, which would eventually manifest itself in music. She wrote her first song aged 12, and others quickly followed. “I wrote plenty of songs that were crap,” she says with a laugh. “You just haven’t heard them.”

Things became more serious when she met future Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody in 1994 at a Christian Youth Camp in Little Rock, Arkansas, where her family had moved to a few years earlier. She was 13 and Ben a year older, though the two decided they could make music together. Amy describes their initial endeavours as “more like an electronic duo, like Massive Attack” than an actual band, though some of their early songs would end up on Fallen, including Imaginary, Whisper and My Immortal.

The nascent Evanescence didn’t play a gig for nearly six years, partly because of their youth, and partly because they wanted to concentrate on honing the songs they were writing. “The live part for me at that time just wasn’t my focus,” she shrugs. “I wanted to make stuff.”

Their first release was a self-titled debut EP that came out in 1998 via local label Bigwig, followed by another EP, Sound Asleep, the following year (both featured songs that appeared on Fallen). They’d played a few a low-key acoustic shows in their early days, but their first proper, plugged-in show was at a bar named Vinos in Little Rock on January 2, 1999, less than a month after Amy turned 17.

“It was difficult to be on stage at first,” she says. “I had to really work at being a good performer. I remember the first time we played a gig and four people knew the chorus to one of our dumb little songs,” she adds, self-effacingly trailing off.

It was an early version of My Immortal that caught the attention of Diana Meltzer, head of A&R at Wind-up Records, in 2001. Amy had just enrolled in college to study music theory composition when she got the message that Wind-up were interested in Evanescence - essentially herself and Ben.

“I still wanted to make music, but I was going to study so that maybe one day I could work on film scores as a backup plan,” she says. “We got signed three months in. I had one semester of school. I literally went from graduating high school to moving to LA and making our album in a year and a half.”

Producer Dave Fortman can remember the first time he heard Amy Lee sing Bring Me To Life in the studio. The guitarist in 1990s rockers Ugly Kid Joe pivoted to production after the 1997 break-up of that band, working with the likes of Superjoint Ritual and Crowbar before signing on to produce the debut album by an unknown band from Arkansas called Evanescence. After listening to their demo, he jumped at the chance to work with them. And then came the moment when Amy began singing in the studio.

“Amy was in the booth and this voice just came out,” Dave tells Hammer. “My engineer, who has worked with some of the biggest names in music bar none, turned to me with his jaw on the floor and said, 'Goddamn! This girl can sing.’ You just forgot where you were, you weren’t working anymore, you were just in awe of her. They were the most talented people in their age I’d ever been in contact with.”

The Evanescence that recorded Fallen was Amy and Ben, plus keyboard player/string arranger/co-songwriter David Hodges (who joined the band in 1999) and an array of session musicians, including future Guns N’ Roses/Foo Fighters drummer Josh Freese. Dave Fortman estimates the album cost around $250,000 to make – a sizeable sum now, but relatively modest at a time when seven-figure budgets weren’t uncommon (Korn’s 2002 album Untouchables reportedly cost $4 million). Some of that budget went on the real-life orchestra that Amy insisted on using for many of the songs – a bold move for a new band, when an electronic recreation would have been cheaper.

“None of us were ever going to back down on that,” says Dave Fortman. “It had to be that way or it wasn’t going to work. We recorded the orchestra in Seattle where they have no union, so it was cheaper. If we’d have known it was going to smash in the way it did, hell yeah, we would have just recorded them in LA!”

Evanescence didn’t get everything their way. Bring Me To Life, which addressed Amy’s feelings of numbness while in an abusive relationship,  was augmented by the inclusion of rapper Paul McCoy in an attempt to appeal to the nu metal market - a decision that went  against the band’s wishes. “I was so scared in the beginning that we were going forward with something  that wasn’t a perfectly honest picture of who we were,” Amy told Metal Hammer earlier this year. “But it didn’t last long. After a few songs, the mainstream was able to hear more than the one song and it was like, ‘OK, they at least sort of get what we are.’”

Advance expectations for Fallen were modest when it was released on March 4, 2003. “If it had gone gold [500,000 copies], we’d have A all been delighted with that,” says Dave Fortman. As it turned out, the album smashed it, selling more than 140,000 copies in its first week of release alone and reaching No.7 in the US Billboard charts. Bring Me To Life was a huge factor in that success. Like My Immortal, the song made its first appearance on the big- budget, Ben Affleck-starring Daredevil movie, which hit cinemas a few months before Fallen came out. 

When it was released as a single in its own right, accompanied by an expensive-looking urban-gothic video that saw a nightdress- clad Amy somnambulantly climbing the side of a tower block, like a cross between a character from an Anne Rice novel and a comic book superhero, Wind-up reps had to beg radio stations to play it (“A chick with piano on a rock station?” was a common response). Those that did air it soon found their phone lines jammed with people who wanted to know what it was that they’d just heard. It entered the US Top 10 and did even better in the UK, where it reached No.1.

Bring Me To Life and subsequent singles Going Under and My Immortal put wind in Fallen’s sails. Those 140,000 sales shot upwards at a vertiginous rate: within a month, it had sold more than a million copies in the US alone. By the middle of 2004, it had reached seven million (in 2022, Fallen was awarded a diamond certificate for US sales of more than 10 million). The speed of the ascent left Amy Lee dazed. “There was just so much going on,” she says, exhaling. “I don’t know if I got to focus on it that hard at the time.” 

The label wanted to get Evanescence out on the road to capitalise on that initial success. A touring band was assembled around Amy and Ben – guitarist John LeCompt, drummer Rocky Gray and bassist Will Boyd were recruited to back them. Their rise as a live band was equally dizzying. The day Fallen was released, Evanescence headlined the 200-capacity Engine Room in Houston, Texas. Three months later, they made their first UK appearance playing the Main Stage at the inaugural Download festival, sandwiched between Stone Sour and Mudvayne. Two weeks after that, they returned to the UK to headline a sold-out show at London’s prestigious Astoria.

Inevitably, given the scale and velocity of Evanescence’s success, it didn’t take long for the backlash to kick in. Amy was the focus of much of the criticism, with the barbs ranging from the petty (one magazine questioned her goth credentials) to the outright misogynistic (she was painted as a diva with absolutely nothing to back it up other than the fact she was a woman). Evanescence themselves were perceived by some of their detractors as nothing more than a cynical marketing experiment; the phrase “Linkin Park with a girl singer” appeared a depressing number of times back then, which diminished the decade or so Amy and Ben had invested in their band and music.

“I felt a lot like people wanted to see me fail, especially in the beginning,” Amy says. “I think it’s partially that they want to see if you’re the real thing, and when you shoot up so fast and you have a lot of success really quickly, I think there’s a little bit of a human nature thing that wants to poke a hole in that. I felt on the defence, I felt misunderstood – I’ve got a badass, bitchy look on my face on the album cover, so obviously I must be some kind of bitch.”

Amy was just 21 when Fallen was released, and the criticism took a toll on her. “It was hard as a young person to feel misunderstood,” she reflects today. Things became even more complicated when Ben left acrimoniously in October 2003, just six months after the release of Fallen, with creative differences cited at the time as the reason for the split (in 2010, he admitted to trying to force the singer out of the band they had founded together).

“I felt frustrated,” says Amy. “I wanted to hide a bit in that initial aftermath. People always wanted to attach me to drama, like Ben leaving the band. All of that was trying to be made to make me look bad, like it’s my fault or, ‘Well now it’s going to suck because she didn’t actually do any of the work, obviously all the men behind her did all the writing and the creation.’ It just made me angry a lot.”

The criticism and fractured personal relationships may have been difficult to deal with, but the impact Evanescence had was undeniable. Fallen landed at a transitional time for metal. By 2003, nu metal was on a downward trajectory creatively and commercially, with scene heavyweights Korn and Limp Bizkit both releasing dud albums in the shape of Take A Look In The Mirror and Results May Vary respectively. The New Wave Of American Heavy Metal was bubbling up, but it didn’t possess the same kind of mainstream crossover potential.

Fallen was different. Nu metal may have been in its DNA, but so was goth and electronic music. It was heavy enough for metal fans but it was also dramatic and heartfelt enough to draw in the emo crowd and pop fans alike. The soaring piano ballad My Immortal, with its narrative of a grieving relative haunted by the spirit of the family member they’re mourning, and Going Under, another song detailing the feelings of hopelessness that come from suffering in an abusive relationship, were unquestionably dark, but Evanescence wrapped them up in ear-worm hooks and gothic allure, while Amy’s presence imbued them with a distinctly feminine spirit that was a world away from nu metal’s over-testosteroned aggro.

The broad-church appeal of Fallen was reflected in the range of musicians who garlanded it with praise. Over the years, it’s been cited as an inspiration by everyone from Lzzy Hale and The Pretty Reckless’s Taylor Momsen to pop star Kelly Clarkson. Björk praised Evanescence and so, more surprisingly, did Lemmy, a man not known for his love of goth-tinged ballads.

“They’re fucking excellent,” said the late Motörhead frontman when asked for his view of the band. Even more significant – and noticeable – was the devotion Evanescence, and Amy in particular, almost instantly inspired among fans, especially female ones. The look she sported in music videos, magazine photo shoots and TV interviews – goth-style corsets, black and red eye make-up - was taken up by countless rock club kids up and down the country.

But arguably the most lasting impact Fallen has had is musical. It marked a changing of the guard: not just the end of nu metal, but the beginning of the rise of symphonic metal. Bands such as Nightwish and Within Temptation released albums before Fallen, making sizable waves in mainland Europe, but Evanescence put a distinctly American spin on it, turbocharging symphonic metal’s rise on the back of Fallen’s success. Even now, Amy’s too modest to acknowledge the influence that Fallen had.

“People are always asking me that question: ‘What is it about that album that resonated with people so much?’” she says. “I don’t know. Some of it’s just out of your control. At that age and that time in my life, I don’t think I would have given myself that credit.”

Dave Fortman is far more forthright on the subject. “Did I notice it?!” he says. “How could you not?! That’s what happens when you become, not just a big band, but an icon. She truly changed things. All those symphonic bands that came in their wake? They’re all Amy’s children.”

Fallen helped turn Evanescence into one of the biggest bands of the 21st century. They beat superstar rapper 50 Cent to the award for Best New Artist at the 2004 Grammy Awards (Bring Me To Life also took the trophy for Best Hard Rock Performance). To date, the record has sold more than 17 million copies worldwide – only Adele, Eminem, Norah Jones, Lady Gaga and Linkin Park released albums that have sold more during that time.

Dave calls Fallen “a life- changing album”. He explains: “It’s more than sales – it inspired an entire generation of young girls to know they had a place in heavy music. To show they didn’t have to ever compromise.” It’s a sentiment Amy shares as she looks back at the shy 21-year-old of 2003.

“It was crazy, it was awesome,” she says. “But there was a lot for me that was going on personally, turmoil and relationships within our band. It was just this wild time where so many things that felt huge were happening at the same time. Did it change the musical landscape? I don’t know. But it inspired somebody for something good, it made them walk back from the edge, feel their self-worth in some way. I think it’s truly a gift and a blessing in my life.”

Originally printed in Metal Hammer #381

[the-90s-music-colosseum]

'90s MV of the day

Kelly Watch The Stars by AIR

Released in 1998 as the second single from French electronic duo AIR's debut studio album Moon Safari. Video directed by Mike Mills.

[jevilowo]

If I was ever held at gunpoint and told to make a fnaf highschool au, I'd make it about the Funtimes: weird theatre kids who have a strange obsession with clown and circus imagery.

Freshmen: minireenas, bidybabs

Sophomores: Baby, Lolbit

Juniors: Freddy, Foxy, Chica

Seniors: Ballora, Eggs, Mari

Freddy, Foxy, Ballora and Baby are the stars✨. Their funky team name is Ennard. No, Ennard is not a separate character in this AU.

All of them except Ballora fight to the death over who's the best at acting.

Bonbon is Freddy's younger brother who goes to their rehearsals bc their parents aren't home. He usually ends up with a small part in whatever play they end up doing.

Bonbon, Baby and Ballora are also nicknames: Bonbon (Benny) because Freddy dyed his hair blue like the sweet as a prank, Baby (Elizabeth) because she was the first freshman to get a lead role and Ballora (Reena) because she does ballet.

Speaking of Ballora, the Minireenas are freshmen and Ballora fangirls. They worship her every move and are very gay for her. Everyone calls them the minireenas because they dress like Ballora and so look like mini versions of her (get it, like mini Reenas)

Foxy is a nickname too: she wanted to change his name after coming out as genderfluid but hasn't thought of anything good yet.

Lolbit is Foxy's younger sibling who helps backstage. They also do twitch streams there. They have kitty cat ear headphones, but claims they're fox ears.

Handunit (Hank or something) is the play director. He is stressed because no-one ever listens to him, but can and will do a really good angsty teen voice when in a good mood.

They all hate freshmen and so refer to all freshmen theatre kids as Bidybabs (derogatory).

Chica used to be one of them but abandoned them for the band kids (i.e. El Chipe and Music Man. She's in a poly relationship with them). She does backing tracks for the musical numbers now. It's extremely awkward.

Eggs (Michael) is Baby's older brother. He also works backstage, and usually handles the electrical stuff. Lolbit claims they could do it, but they aren't trusted around electronics after the hacking incident.

Baby and Egg's younger brother is an 8th grader. They think it's funny to never call him by his real name so they just call him whatever name pops into their heads first. To avoid confusion, they also refer to him as CC.

CC is best friends with Cassidy, and they call themselves the Golden Duo. The two also hang out with Gabriel, Jeremy, Fritz and Susie.

Mari (Charlie) is Egg's best friend. People call her Marionette due to their emo swag. They use she/they pronouns.

Toy Chica is an alpha bitch, Toy Bonnie is the Twink She Keeps Around, Toy Freddy is a gamer, Mangle is a contortionist, Mari is, as previously stated, an emo and Balloon boy is a cunt. Somehow, they are the Popular Group.

[one-additional-time]

Daft Punk in Chronic'art 2007/2008 - scans & translated interview

Here it is, the long-awaited monster interview that sat untouched on my bookshelf for 6 years. I bought this magazine on eBay in 2017, fresh off the Grammys performance with The Weeknd, and I was really excited when I realized it was a huge 10 page spread... Until I started translating and realized the content was extremely in-depth and complicated. So, it got put to the side and accidentally left there for many years.

Anyway, here we go. Buckle in for a long read! Please note that I did not translate the extra sections of the article titled "Discovered" and "Very Disco" as these are just basic information about DP's discography and samples they've used- they are not part of the interview.

My usual disclaimer- I am not French, nor am I fluent in French, so some of this may be incorrect or interpreted differently than the author intended. If you find any glaring errors, my ask box is open for feedback and I can update the post/files as needed. (Post updated May 2023 with corrections)

Feel free to repost to other platforms/social media sites, but I humbly beg that you link back here or give me credit because I really spent a lot of time slaving over this (like 50+ hours).

Thank you so much for sticking around my blog after so many years. I really appreciate this fandom and community and I'm excited to experience new music with you all soon!

(Trigger warning for discussion of suicide [Electroma] in the interview!)

Download full scans and translation at my Dropbox.

Full translation below the cut.

In ten years, from Homework in 1997 to Alive 2007 and Electroma, the electro duo Daft Punk have popularized electronic music, launched fads (the French Touch, filtered house, monumental live shows), and transformed a simple music project into a verifiable universal, even metaphysical, concept. Are Daft Punk dropping the helmets?

BY: WILFRIED PARIS & OLIVIER LAMM | PHOTOS: © MAUD BERNOS

SCANS AND TRANSLATION BY STEPH @ ONE-ADDITIONAL-TIME.TUMBLR.COM

(Please see the downloadable PDF file for translation notes/comments)

Everyone has been hearing about Daft Punk for the last two months, because their live CD (Alive 2007, from EMI) and the DVD of their robotic road-movie Electroma are being released for the holidays. We wanted to go a little bit beyond the obligated promo, and the repeated wooden language found in all the media, by trapping Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo for an hour and a half in a restaurant in the Latin Quarter, subjecting them to questioning, and if possible, making them drop the helmets a little bit, over ten pages and many questions.

We’re not going to harp on what you already know (the French touch, the robot helmets, the live pyrotechnics), we’ll just say that we wanted to do this thorough interview with Daft Punk because they’re more than a CD or a DVD, more than music, more than any current pop group. They are an essential symbol of our post-post-modern times, speaking in a very clear yet always paradoxical voice (between hedonistic joy and profound existential sadness) on the human condition, no less. Over the ten years of their career (Homework, like Chronic’art, again, decidedly, appeared in 1997), Daft Punk have invented a new way of presenting music to the world. The robot helmets reveal (social uniformity) more than they cover (buried humanity) and have given them perfect anonymity, which seems like the anonymity of those who succeeded, not in annihilating the self, but becoming self-less. This anonymity accentuates the dominance of the art over the artist, and it has made Daft Punk a universally well-liked and famous group.

A conceptual, pop, philosophical, even metaphysical group, Daft Punk mixes Andy Warhol (seriality, pop art, emptiness) and Friedrich Nietzsche (the man who wanted to die in Electroma, the superhuman for and against technology), mass culture (disco, Albator, Star Wars) and esoteric symbols (the masonic pyramid), the dancing body and thinking brain. In that respect, they are a purely manufactured product of our culture and likely represent the completion of the pop figure began by the Beatles: fragmented culture (the sample) and repetition, theatricality and abstraction, universalism and experimentation, technological innovation and advanced marketing, refusal of the embodiment and worship of the personality…

The current tour (Alive can also mean “en vie”) also refers to an interstellar voyage, like Discovery and Interstella, which seemed to mean that humanity is, by nature, dispossessed, that humans do not belong on Earth but came from Heaven and are destined to return there, that they are “stardust.” They themselves [Daft Punk] are probably not aware of the symbolic and almost metaphysical significance of their creations, and they always prefer to talk about “emotions” rather than thoughts, the heart instead of the head, and they act as the “guinea pigs” for their own experiments. Listening to them, we realized that Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo do not really theorize their work, their music, or their image, but that they react to the infinite accumulation of data from our culture of abundance, that they are indeed the guinea pigs of an experience that has outrun them, marionettes played by “high culture,” pop culture, and the entertainment industry. Maybe Daft Punk really are robots, and no one is pulling the strings, certainly not them.

Chronic’art: Between Homework, which would correspond to your schoolwork or your learning phase, Discovery, which would represent your adolescence, the discovery of the world, microscopic to macroscopic, and Human After All, a moment of reset before a new cycle, it seems to us like you have come full circle, which would be represented by the mirroring of your two live albums, in 1997 and in 2007. Could you have scripted your career?

Thomas Bangalter: It’s strange. We have never written out any part of our career, because even ten years ago we didn’t think we would do this for a long time. After the fact, without having planned it, we realize more that we had sort of reset prior to the live show from 2007. For us, these concerts, this tour, this CD, they are more of a new step than a conclusion. We had not done concerts for 10 years, and there was something very exciting about doing things that weren’t technologically possible when we started. With the last live, we wanted to produce something original, that could predict what might become the norm of tomorrow. We know that we’ve done certain things in the past that were five years ahead of their time, and we are happy to be trying something no one else has done right now. We feel like, during each album, we’ve started back at zero and have had to create a new process, even if it’s true that there is a consistency which emerges in the straight line of our career. But this consistency is not defined a priori, we just emphasize working on projects that can become sort of a realignment of everything we’ve accomplished until now. Interstella was consistent with Discovery, the live show was consistent with our third album compared to the two previous albums, but each step represents, in the moment, the desire to start a new cycle. As for Human After All and Electroma, they’re about something darker, less celebratory… Maybe the live show is a loop; our record label released a Best Of last year, but the concert itself and the way we worked on it is more a way of combining things and expressing them in a new way, rather than celebrating a sort of anniversary or something from the past. We definitely didn’t want to give people the impression that they were in 1997, in a continuation of past music: we instead wanted to give them the chance to feel like they were really in 2007.

During the live shows, you mix together your own tracks, referencing and quoting yourselves. It’s like being simultaneously and precisely between 1997 and 2007, as if the past and the present were merging. All of your songs evolving in a sort of loop…

T.B.: It’s almost the third generation of sampling: us sampling ourselves. At the same time, it’s like having created a universe and an aesthetic that is more than the music, or that the music isn’t actually a central vector. Our approach isn’t at all demonstrative, it’s entirely sensory. There isn’t another message to understand. That being said, there is a desire for cohesion, to make sure that each element added to the structure resonates with the others, with the little mythology that governs this universe. It’s a bit like in a video game, each new element opens a new level in a new environment rather than replacing an older element. We wanted, for example, to break these things with Human After All, but in the end we realized that the album was very cohesive in the continuity of our work.

There is a very strong sense of nostalgia, mixed with a strangeness, in the timeless juxtapositions listeners are subjected to in the tracks. They seem to be complementing and responding to each other, as much musically as thematically… 

Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo: It’s especially very exciting to see that twelve or thirteen years after our first maxi, our music has not aged too much. There is a sense of nostalgia1, but it still works in the present, and it’s very strange to see that we can mix four tracks from four different eras simultaneously, and not a single one kills the mood. Right after we started making music, we were seeking timelessness. It’s the same with Electroma. At our core, we are fans of timeless things. If you listen to the Beatles, aside from their very first period which is a little bit stuck in the past, you notice that time doesn’t touch their music. We are following that: we are trying to move through time without getting stuck in it. In the same way, we are trying to make sure that our music can be listened to by a lot of different people, without having to worry about languages or genres.

The Beatles were, for that matter, the first group to reference themselves, for example in All You Need is Love, where John Lennon sings She Loves You… 

G-M.H-C.: We don’t compare ourselves to the Beatles, either… 

T.B.: The idea is constructing a cohesive universe from a series of spontaneous attempts. If you watch Star Wars, people don’t seem to come from when the film was made. It’s as if the 70s have no effect on the film’s universe. Its atmosphere is its own, even if mixes a lot of things together. For about five or six years we have tried not to let the times we live in make an impression on us.

You are very privileged to be in a time when everything moves so fast, or everything ages so fast, right in the middle of acceleration. For example, you did a massive world tour without having an album to promote… 

G-M.H-C.: The day before the first concert of the tour, at Coachella, we were terrified, we weren’t sure of anything. Every time we try something new, we start back at zero.

T.B.: It’s the live show that sparked the craze, I think, truly. The success was really unintentional. Separate from that, being immersed in a certain underground before our first album taught us a lot. We’ve seen all the trends come and go—jungle, speed garage, electroclash, new rave, French touch, revival—and we are really surprised to have slipped by all of that. We didn’t want to be specifically concentrated on music, we only released three albums in 15 years, and we had a lot of luck. The legitimacy of our music, the future of our music lives in the combination of different forms of expression, the scope of influences, the mixing of techno with funk, with metal, the intermingling of rules and cliches. A lot of important decisions have been roughly made; also by means of spending time solidifying this roughness in order to share it. In fact, electronic music, in the 90s, put you in a state of experimentation, urgency, innovation, it literally prohibited you from repeating yourself. Electronic music was still very elitist, because it was expensive—you had to go to the library to find out about these musicians, you had to go to Beaubourg to make photocopies of books on filmmakers, you had to go to small shops to buy old drum machines. We know what changed, we’re familiar with the saturation that followed. We were also lucky because actually there wasn’t much of that happening when we started out.

The permanence of Daft Punk is also really linked to your image. People don’t only dance to your music, they dance with your personas, with the robots, like you predicted the fatal characteristic of the embodiment of rock (John Lennon, Kurt Cobain). With your robot helmets, you have made the entire process of love, requisition, and the sacrificial reclaiming in your place impossible. You come across as impersonal and therefore verifiably impossible to sacrifice. Not gods, rockers, heroes, nor rulers. The helmet prohibits any kind of identification process. When put on, they show the listener-viewer their own reflection. By giving nothing, the helmet says (silently), “Know thyself.” Can your work be considered an invitation for people to know themselves?

G-M.H-C.: Yes, I agree with that interpretation. At least, that’s what happens with our concerts. Audience members, rather than being lost in the view of a far-off guy, Mick Jagger or another inaccessible idol above the audience, find themselves between us, or even with themselves. It’s kind of like a rave, without superstars, like in the era of anonymity. The robots don’t give the audience much except music. There are robots in a pyramid, but the audience enjoys it in a more selfish, more self-centered way.

T.B.: It’s a mixture—the chance to show the listener their own reflection, to respond to a question with another question, but also the opportunity to go back to a fiction, in a cult that isn’t the cult of a personality, but of an art, of an image, of an aesthetic. Without personification. Then we can let ourselves to be two robots in a pyramid of light. If our faces were uncovered, it would be the most megalomaniacal thing in the world; with the helmets, no one sees us because we stay within the fiction. And without wanting to make a joke, there is also a degree of separation, a distance. A distance from the reflection, like in Electroma, or a distance from the entertainment, softer.

All the lines from Human After All work in the same way. They recall Kraftwerk, but Kraftwerk developed a precise message about celebrating, in a way, the immediate future. Your messages are a lot more ambiguous: are they critical, ironic, devoid of meaning? Like we see so well in Electroma, your helmets are, above all else, mirrors…

T.B.: Ambiguity is good, because it allows for a certain interaction between the viewer and the artist; between what the viewer interprets and what the artist is trying to depict. It’s very participative, and that comes from a desire to go against the demonstration. We are the first consumers of our music, and we hold the view that we can’t make any judgement values by calling things into question. In speaking about technology, about consumer society, which completely inhabits our art, we don’t want to teach a lesson, or offer a point of view or a judgement, we just want to find paradoxes and point them out as is. For example, we’re dependent on consumer society and it’s so appealing, productive, optimized, and at the same time totally terrifying, horrible, and very funny.

Your work is dialectical: sometimes it seems to denounce a sort of robotic totalitarianism (like in the Technologic video which depicts propaganda of a robot on top of a pyramid) and at the same time it plays with this imagery, strikingly. The video for Around The World also shows how robots surround and surveil the population; they are in the last circle, and they are the ones who chant the phrase “Around The World.” Does the video denounce the surveillance of us by nonhumans, or does it condition us to accept it? We never know if you’re denouncing a conspiracy against humanity or if you’re participating in it. You use of language is equally dialectical. Your language is refined, born from catchphrases and words of totalitarian order (Technologic), and if taken literally, it’s this: the phrase “Television Rules The Nation” can be taken as the assertion of an established fact. It then becomes constraint, manipulation. At the same time, the distance imposed by the performance can give the words a double meaning, and adds to them a critique of this established fact, even the denunciation of a totalitarian power. This recalls the “doublethink” in Orwell’s 1984: the capacity to simultaneously accept two opposing points of view and thereby put critical thinking on the back burner. Where do you situate yourselves in this in-betweenness?

T.B.: But it’s inside this paradox where we progress. In terms of our experimentation, we are in fact the heart of the system; it would be totally obscene to lean more to one side or the other, to claim to be part of a totalitarian system, as if we were giving lectures. It’s because this is so interesting that we refused to do any promotion for Human After All, because there couldn’t be a willingness on our part to encourage people to buy the album, because of this paradox. Because it’s like an unbiased opinion on technology, on consumer society. The video for Technologic actually gives you the keys to derive an ironic and scary message from the track, but it has since been used by Apple in a commercial for the iPod, and there the lyrics turned into blind praise for technology! It’s funny seeing to what extent the double meaning has effectively functioned. That’s why we so often refer to Andy Warhol who had an experimental approach through his connection to pop culture that, depending on the project, had as much a place in very elitist and private circles as it did on supermarket shelves. Creating with perplexity, in short.

Nevertheless, you use very strongly significant symbols, like the robots or the pyramid. The pyramid that you use on stage is a Masonic symbol. It is on the dollar bill, with George Washington and the note, “New World Order.” The pyramid represents the structure of society, from the masses up to the elites and the leaders. The cornerstone with the “all-seeing eye” surely represents the summation of technology which, though it could be plainly operational, will make sure that the “New World Order” can truly start coming forward and establishing itself on Earth. Some interpret it like the construction of a new technology, a technologic eye that would see all, through a generalized surveillance. With that said, the presence of robots like operators of this pyramid makes a lot of sense. How do you fit in with regard to these symbols and this story?

T.B.: We work a lot with the senses, with the power of symbols on the subconscious, and the pyramid, in effect, is a very heavy symbol, in terms of the senses. We don’t want to discuss the details of the symbolism, but to question its power without its history. The pyramid has become a symbol because, geometrically, harmonically, it’s a magical, occult, mysterious object. There is also this mysterious and occult, on the verge of paranormal, power in music. No one can really theorize about the effects of music on the body and mind, so it’s incredible. We just try to pass on that magic in a rather empirical way. Moreover, we could carry out experiments on the way in which light or sound intensity acts on the body and on crowds, to see which types of sensations or emotions are provoked by one frequency or another. But we could never really explain the reason for these effects.

G-M.H-C.: We are the guinea pigs of our own universe. We managed to create a sort of self-sufficiency between the two of us, which lets us experiment with a consistent voice, and what works for us tends to work for the audience, it’s like a small miracle. We put a pyramid on stage because we think it’s cool, and it makes everyone trip out.

When you talk about guinea pigs, it’s as if you were manipulated from the outside, by a mysterious third-party, as if you were also puppets. There is a determinism there, but one that serves humanity. According to the Laws of Robotics by Isaac Asimov, it’s humankind who constructed the robot, and the robot is at its service…

T.B.: Above all we want to express a paradox on the discussion of human dependency on technology. We’re not virtuosos and we rely on technology like a crutch. We could never do it without technology, and at the same time, we try to value, like any artists, the human element in our work. The process we’ve used for these fifteen years has been to try merging the machines and us. We are the operators of these machines, the editors of the experiments: we select them, we choose them, and we decide to keep them or not. Daft Punk is the product of a tug of war between human and technology, always questioning the place of technology in the project.

Electroma addresses this discussion between human and machine, in a sort of grand general inversion. Electroma seems to be the account of a traumatic experience: in the world of robots, the two characters presented a human face to the others, in openness, generosity, expressiveness. The result of this demonstration of humanity leaves them ostracized, chased, and reduced to aimlessness and suicide. Do you think that showing your humanity is dangerous?

T.B.: Yes, that’s the background of the film. But speaking more broadly, formally, it’s part of the same approach as what we’ve been able to do before; to know how to create emotion while using machines, in a creative process. Without actors, without a script, without a real plotline, but with photography, color, framing, made from machines, objects, just like a still life. We began with creating an environment around the spectator, who is almost like the only actor in the film, and wondering how to make them experience these emotions, which are not the same as those on the dancefloor, but aesthetic emotions, where the spectator can project onto themselves. The film is totally open, and we thought a lot about Magritte when making the plans. What you can see in Electroma is essentially sensation, that’s a lot more at the level of the gut or the eyes than of the brain…

Robots After All by Philippe Katerine was clearly inspired by your album Human After All and touches on the idea that human society has attained such a degree of conditioning and conforming that humanity became a species of robot, a determined creature, ruled by automation, in their language as much as their everyday comportment. When we recently asked what he thought about your music, Katerine told us, “I hear nothingness in it, so I want to find a place there.” Is the universality of your music due to the fact that it’s also, in a sense, empty?

T.B.: It’s empty because it’s more sensory than significance, yes. Theoretically devoid of sense, it allows people to see something from nothing and project themselves there. We just heard Katerine’s single. Our music is open, it can be interpreted and taken in different ways.

The musical abstraction and loops that by and large make up your music allow each person to take possession of the music and go beyond it. There is a shamanic aspect in this usage of emptiness and repetition. As a matter of fact, musicians like Animal Collective, who were inspired by shamanic trances, now cite you as an influence. Also, you could interpret the end of Electroma, when the two robots die by explosion and combustion, as referring to shamanic initiation rituals, in which one goes through a symbolic death by division of the body or self-combustion. Could you say that the end of Electroma represents, in some sort, this symbolic and initiatory death? In other words, do you perceive a shamanic side to your music?

T.B.: Yes, it’s a trance: the loop, the heartbeats… We use samples to express the desire of prolonging a strong sensation that comes during one or two seconds in a track, and wanting to repeat this sensation, not only feeling it for ten minutes, but also seeing what consequences come from ten minutes of that feeling, how everything unfolds. Visually, with Electroma, our desire is the same: to create images or an assembly of images that produce a physical sensation, a feeling of hypnosis, wandering, or weariness; in any case a state of mind that you can only reach by feeling this sensation for a certain time, for quite a long time. 

Wandering, loss of identity, and expropriation are pop themes in a sense. If you think of the Beatles, the “Magical Mystery Tour,” the transformation of the Beatles into the “Lonely Hearts Club Band.” As of now, you are a group that “turns,” that travels, to those “lonely hearts.” Is there a “trip” pop?

T.B.: It’s true that during this tour, we felt a little bit of a psychedelic thing: there are people who saw and re-watched the concert multiple times, almost like a Grateful Dead concert, with this idea of there being, during the concert, something imperceptible that you can never capture on disc or on film: an experience which was unique and can only live in reality, at a time where everything is virtualized. We felt like people wanted happenings, concrete experiences, which could consequently be produced by advanced technology: we could multiply the giant screens, have a very strong sound, and combine everything into these unprecedented audiovisual processes, which had never been seen anywhere before. Even a film projected in an IMAX theater could be no more than the “ghettoblaster” from another experiment with new technologies. Our music is moving: it was within an industrial system which ended, it was dependent on the economy. And the economy was destroying itself, it influenced new formats and new ways of creation, like the tours we’re doing currently.

Today, music needs to find new ways for distribution, with the death of the record industry and the virtualization of music. The live show, as a unique experience, is a response to this situation. You were the first to start a download site on the internet, with the Daft Club in 2001, which didn’t work out. Was it five years too early?

T.B.: Being current five years too early is really better than we can hope for. It’s good to be precursory, it’s almost our principal objective. Speaking about the musical economy, I think that music has never been as important as it is now, and the concert isn’t a response to difficulty selling CDs nowadays, because live shows are also very expensive. Economic upheavals are interesting: I read a book recently by Jacques Attali, Bruits, which talks about the musical economy and its power since the Middle Ages, and if you look at the place of music in the world in the last 2 thousand or 3 thousand years, the place of the record and pop music industries will have not been an end in itself, compared to music as a whole. It’s interesting to try to find out where music will go and what it will generate, in the sense that it is often a precursor of the relationship to come between social and economic powers. But we define ourselves less as musicians than as artists and creators, in trying to combine things and experiment with new formats and new technologies. We aren’t uniquely musicians.

Homework represents a sort of pinnacle of the age where a certain technologic novelty was expressed directly through music. You could literally hear knobs being turned. Does Daft Punk necessarily have to excel technologically in an age where all these methods have become normalized? Were the concerts from your new tour sort of like an advantage?

T.B.: It’s not an advantage, it’s a set of challenges that could be technological, actually. You wind up with a concert that looks sort of futuristic, like a remake of Close Encounters of the Third Kind or a mix of a Grateful Dead and a Kraftwerk concert. Making something that we couldn’t make before. We pick up the tools, we manipulate them, we try to progress. Electronic music in itself, in 2007, doesn’t seem to me to be very conducive to experimentation from a strictly musical point of view. I’m waiting for the new generations to prove to me otherwise… We pay attention to technological developments because we’re interested in them, and because they are at the heart of our art. Musical instruments are advanced technologies which have continuously reinvented music.

Since Human After All was released online, there were a lot of rumors about the album, which was an indication that people were waiting for you. In that context, are you able to feel free as musicians? Have you produced things in reaction to the public’s expectations?

T.B.: Actually, we aren’t free relative to our own expectations. We can’t totally set the public aside, but we have our own demands and we respond to our own vision of what we make, while taking into account paradoxes, contradictions, restarts, new beginnings. But we don’t think about the public: it’s both selfish and more respectful for people because we don’t have the pretentiousness of putting ourselves in their shoes.

G-M.H-C.: We are our own fans. We work until we find moments of pleasure in our work, and when we save those moments and explore them on an album or in a film which we release, that resonates for people. But within those moments, which are like lightning, we are like spectators—we feel like we’re revealing something, and discovering something we created at the same time. In this way we are ourselves in the position of spectators and fans. I imagine that this process is even more evident in painting: you have a piece of canvas in front of you, and there is a tangible process of creation. Creation is a mystery and you can really speak about magic when it comes to music or art.

Could the image of the pyramid that you use be a graphic representation of your music? With its foundations, progressions, ascents, and its climax? Bercy, it so happens, also has a pyramid shape…

G-M.H-C.: Not all of our songs follow a progression. We have flat songs, square songs, round songs… And in the live show, there are a few final moments where the tension comes back down. Bercy really does have a pyramid shape, but the top is missing. And it’s true that we would have really liked to play on top of it (laughs)…

[ideasarestuckinmyhead]

|•♡•♡{Welcome pick your man!}♡•♡•|

|•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡.{Number 2}.♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•|

Shit he'd say

{♡} reblog

- You though I was feelin you?! Your not even a fart!!

Mexican Candy

{♡} personal

- Feed him the candy. He craves it

Racer

{♡} personal

- What if and hear me out he was a racer?

Tummy ache

{♡} personal hc

- give him ginger ale it's the only cure

Spice Lover

{♡} personal

- you want some? K, WAIT THATS SPICY OH NO-

Mexican Seth HC

{♡} personal hc

- No Sabo kid ass

Iykyk

{♡} personal

- save a horse ride a cowboy

Abuse cycle

{♡} personal

- breaking the cycle is hard if you doubt yourself.

Artist Casper

{♡} requested

- Charlie with a artist? The glazing goes wild

Teeth

{♡} personal hc

- cute smile with that chip tooth

Thighs

{♡} personal

- CRUSH ME CRUSH ME PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

Grocery shopping

{♡} personal hc

- Rat goes grocery shopping?!

Yan! Casper

{♡} personal

- Yo my lover kinda crazy

Baking

{♡} personal

- We can't bake send help-

Beast boy

{♡} personal hc

- I wanna be called mama by him-

Incorrect Quotes:

FNAF

Big shirts

Crush me

Gossip boy

Hey Mama~

Camera's

{♡} ask

- Auron gets freaky w the camera's?

Porn pt3

{♡} ask

- hhmmm smut idea for him

Domestic Bliss

{♡} personal

- oh shit we domesticated him

Ethnicity

{♡} personal

- Got curious what he'd be

Grocery shopping

{♡} personal hc

- fancy man goes to food for less?!

Incorrect Quotes:

Tempted to kill

Old phone

{♡} personal hc

- jail breaking ur old phone's hard

Electronics

{♡} personal hc

- lol he forgor he had that

Food HC

{♡} personal hc

- FUCK CALIFLOWER

Otome rizz

{♡} personal hc

- Mr bitchless? Naw Mr. Catches bitches left n right

Incorrect Quotes:

Personality

Confession

Confession Pt2

Not going anywhere

NEVER BACK DOWN!

Sunflower has a stutter

{♡} requested

- Finn has a lover with a stutter!

Oh yeah pretty boy? (SMUT)

{♡} personal work

- He dresses up for you!

Horror Lover

{♡} personal hc

- What if he was a lover of horror movies?

Flower

{♡} personal hc

- you remind him so much of one...

Eye contact

{♡} personal hc

- OH! I'm into that-

Sayings

{♡} personal hc

- please just curse

Sneaky insults

{♡} personal hc

- Southern Finn came out

Incorrect Quotes:

Go ape shit

Losing my shit

Some HC

{♡} requested hc's

- hc's bc my eyes were opened

Girl Dinner

{♡} personal

- wdym a single grape and some chips is dinner-

Shadows

{♡} personal hc

- Lucien is my shadow he follows me where ever I go

Not so scary

{♡} personal

- ur literally a Teddy bear, but still a bear

Incorrect Quotes:

DO NOT

THEIR SOUL

Banned baked goods

Lil evil

Done nothing

Say My Name

Bro is struggling

Fucking tree

Lore Dropping

Lore Dropping pt2

Trans Listener

{♡} requested

- trans reader with Charlie, Finn and Faust

Yan! Listener HC

{♡} requested

- Sugarboo, Casper, Star, Rook and Angel (Sunflower has their own post)

Listener family

{♡} ask

- What if they were related?

Mexican Listeners

{♡} ask

- What if they were related and MEXICAN?

Voguing match who'd win?

{♡} poll

- Faust won again, king shit

Pirate au

{♡} personal

- idea bc I wanna kiss Pirate Auron-

Song 3

{♡} personal

- Bittersweet duo song that fits them too good FUCK

Rook and Faust bbfs

{♡} personal

- teehee haha idea bc I wanna torture Auron

Jewlery thoughts

{♡} personal hc

- All boys and ideas of what they'd have.

Ethnicity

{♡} personal

- ask to everyone bc I wanted to see it all

Dangaronpa AU

{♡} personal

- The boys being accused? Can their listeners defend them?

Rap Battles

{♡} personal

- Epic rap battles of Academy! /ref

Tokyo drift au

{♡} personal

- idea that I didn't expand on </3

Porn

{♡} personal

- when you get here-

Porn pt2

{♡} personal

- oh there's Charlie-

Total drama slaughter island

{♡} personal

- kinda like dangeronpa au? But on a island.

Your so pretty

{♡} personal

- calling then pretty <33

Boudior photos

{♡} personal

- sexy pics for them, but perfessional!

7ft Listener

{♡} personal

- tall ass mf

Nails

{♡} personal

- nails!

RAGE ROOM

{♡} personal

- I MISS THE RAGE!!

•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•

.•♡•♡Please consider following♡•♡•.

[dustedmagazine]

Patois Counselors — Limited Sphere (ever/never)

Photo by Lindsey Miller

It’s been six years since Patois Counselors came out of the gate with Proper Release, an all-timer of a post-punk album that balanced furious energy with flights of surprising lyricism, a single-minded, oddball perspective with large ensemble arrangements.

The follow-up three years later was the Optimal Seat, a quieter but still menacing outing that got me thinking about the twin titans of the post-punk genre. My Dusted review ended with this: “I’ve slipped in a Fall reference already, but the real touchtone is Pere Ubu, whose bass-y, post-apocalyptic funk set the template and who also got quieter and weirder as time went on. If Proper Release was this band’s Modern Dance, then the Optimal Seat is its Song of the Bailing Man. Who knows what the next one will be?” A live album kept the seat warm earlier this year, and now Bo White tackles the question; what’s next is seething, writhing intelligence, wrapped in softer textures and melodies, but still bracing.  

Four songs make a return appearance after the live Enough: One Night at the Daisy Chain. None has changed significantly since then, though the live versions are, across the board, a bit noisier and rougher, while the studio takes allow for more carefully separated, cleaner sound. For instance, “Ranking Set,” a highlight in both albums, is a surging, pummeling rush on Enough. It’s not quite “qualified noise on a tiny speaker” as the lyrics insist, but there is a certain amount of compression. The studio take has the same sense of headlong energy, but you can hear more, the bass for one thing, a saxophone squeal, a sharp but irregular scratch of lead guitar. Likewise, “Serious Rider” pulses with ominous propulsion in both iterations, but the live one brings up the patter of syncopated snare and lets you hear an oscillating clarinet.  

Other tracks break more conclusively with past efforts. “Cathy Music” floats and shimmers and twinkles with electronic elements; the thump and hammer of post-punk disappears almost entirely under dream-state atmospherics. “Return to Sensitivity” also shrouds beats in silky swathes of synthesizer. It might remind you of Moon Duo’s Stars of the Light. “Marge Attack” slouches and grooves in trippy dissatisfaction, trailing bloopy bass notes and a wandering clarinet. 

And yet, Limited Sphere remains very much in Patois Counselor’s orbit, extending the palette, clarifying the details and continuing the journey.  If you love a band, you’ve got to let them try something new.

Jennifer Kelly

[that-irrelevant-ricecakeaddict]

My Review/Analysis of Stray Kids' new album

💫ROCK STAR💫

Part (2/6)

Track 2: LALALALA

Okay, first of all.

When I first found Stray Kids' music (late November 2022), one of my very first thoughts were "Wow I would like to see them make a phonk song".

THIS. THIS SONG. IT HAS SATISFIED THAT VERY THOUGHT THAT I HAD AS A BABY STAY.

What is phonk?

By dictionary definition, it is an underground style of hip-hop/trap music directly inspired by 90s Memphis Rap, mostly present on SoundCloud as trill style beats with old funk and nostalgic samples, often accompanied by vocals from old Memphis Rap tapes.

(A phonk song I would recommend is Wither by Japanese artist takayan. Some of the beats in this track actually sounds similar to it)

Moving on!!

The opening high-pitched but bouncy beat is an amazing intro choice. Like it creates a buildup to the members' vocals and rap, but it also makes you curious as to what's gonna follow it. Combined with electronic beats and effects gradually joining it, it makes a GREAT INTRO.

OMG CHANGBIN OPENING LINES??? EVERYONE WAKE TF UP 🗣🗣🗣His scratchy rap tone is sensational for opening lines!! 👏 it DEFINITELY kept me wanting more!! Followed by felix and hyunjin's (?) rap lines carrying it on!

And do I hear leeknow rapping?? 🧐🧐 I LOVE how his voice sounds when rapping, especially since he usually sings!

Followed by seungmin and jeongin's verse bringing the song to the beat drop before the chorus. Omg. Vocalracha ATE THAT UP.

Now, I know some people think that using auto-tune on lines in a song (besides the purpose of fine-tuning the singers' tone) is a "questionable" approach. But lightly auto-tuning Han's "LALALALA, LA-LALALALA"? JAW-DROPPED. His high voice actually fits quite well with light auto-tune!! Combined with the song's base background phonk beats, it sounds 🔥

LEE KNOW AND CHANGBIN'S COMBINED CHORUS ‼️ I don't think I've heard them have lines together before, so this combo was surprising but nonetheless a great choice in lime distribution!!

Wrapping the chorus up with Felix's "LALALALA, LA-LALALALA" was like OMG. It contrasted well with Han's same line at the start of the chorus and 'closed' off the whole chorus really well.

Moving on, we have one of Hyunjin's ICONIC 'low-key' raps. In my opinion, it gave me a "break" after the heavy chorus, while still keeping it interesting. Love it. 10/10. Easily one of my favourite parts.

The part after hyunjin's rap where the members (it sounds like more than one member to me, I'm not sure) go "we go ROCK, ROCK" and "STOP, STOP" with the beats on "ROCK, ROCK" and "STOP,STOP" with pauses in between to emphasise them??? IN LOVE RN. It also builds up really well to Changbin and Han's fast-paced, combined rap!!

Followed by Bangchan and Jeongin's pre-chorus verse!! The blend of their singing tones is just *chef's kiss*

Then SURPRISE!! The chorus doesn't come after that!! Instead, Felix and hyunjin's low voices drastically change the vibe to that of a hero and a villain having a final showdown on a dust-ridden, corpse-strewn battlefield. Combined with the wind orchestra in the background? Literally. What. The. Fuck. AMAZING BUILDUP. JAW-DROPPING. I LOVE IT WHENEVER THEY USE WIND OCHESTRA IN THEIR SONGS (another eg of this: chorus for TOP)

THEN Han's voice literally BREAKING the 'silence' followed by Felix's low "Lalalala, la-lalalala"?? Sensational. Then Hyunjin REPEATING Felix's line using his AGRRESSIVE TONE?? EVEN. BETTER. TOTAL EAR ORGASM DJZBXJSJBXJDJDJD (can u tell this segment is my favourite part of the song 😭)

Ahem ahem anyways...

Han and Felix combined chorus!!! I love how they were the ones to do the chorus the second time round. Especially Han's! The way it literally blends and contrasts at the same time with hyunjin's aggressive "lalalala" adlibs is SO SATISFYING.

Followed by Seungmin and Chan's higher-pitched English lines for the outro chorus!! Underrated vocal duo OMFGGG.

Finally, Leeknow's amazing vocals (HIS ENGLISH IMPROVED SM BTW IM SO PROUD OF HIM) closing off the whole song before the background phonk eventually fades out.

The phonk beats combined with a striking metal guitar chord playing one last time before the song ends is so 🔥🔥🔥 LIKE- 😭 where are my words. Taken away. Like my breath after listening to this track.

Overall, I LOVE LALALALA. It might be one of my fave title tracks from SKZ rn. I manifested hard enough for SKZ to do a phonk song, and it happened!!! Legit so happy, you've no idea how big of a smile I had when I recognised the phonk beats in the very beginning on my first listen of this track. 😭😭 I really hope SKZ continues experimenting with all these split genres!

Honorable mention: LALALALA rock version. I'm in love. Pls.

Thank you for reading my review!! Stay tuned for my reviews on the 4 other tracks in their new album. Stream 💫ROCK STAR 💫!!

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

McMusic 16 2001 Pop / Teen Pop / R&B / Pop-Rap

Resuming this intermittent Euro-trip that I've been on where I get snapshots of what different countries' pop landscapes were looking like at certain points in time, and today, for the first time ever, we're taking a look at 2001 Norway, with this 16th installment in one of the country's own Now That's What I Call Music!-type series, McMusic.

Now, usually when it comes to these types of ephemeral Euro-comps from yesteryear, I'm looking for three separate boxes to check off: one for a nice and poppy rush of nostalgia, another for a good tune or two that didn't do anything Stateside, and third, something that's so insanely dumb, bad, and Eurotrashy that you have to appreciate the beautiful mind that conceived of it. And while there is plenty of bad Euro music on here, unfortunately none of it falls into that highly sought after category of 'so bad it's good'; it's just unremarkably bad instead.

But with that said then, let's start with the nostalgia rush. There are a few instantly recognizable, intercontinentally classic y2k bangers on this album, but no tune among them happens to go harder than Destiny's Child's "Survivor," a song that took the group's criticisms and constant ribbing about their own personnel turnover to task and ended up resulting in the most ferocious and intense single that they'd ever made; an absolute, certified, string-frenzied bop that you can cathartically wallop a punching bag to 🥊😤. Beyoncé's entry is just so electrifying on this one, and the chorus' constant background chants of "What?" à la DMX, are super infectious too.

And then for something that didn't really do anything in the US, we have "Chillin'" by Modjo. Generally, before EDM got coined as a term, there was no outlet for electronic dance music on a mainstream level, discounting the largely cheesy 90s phenomenon of Eurodance. Some stuff managed to peek through a little bit, though, like Modjo's own "Lady (Hear Me Tonight)," but this French duo's follow-up single that sampled from Chic's disco classic, "Le Freak," was pretty sleek too. Shame America never developed much of a taste for house music back in these times, because with our total affinity for Daft Punk now, we seem to have societally missed out on a whole lot of this goodness.

And one last song I have for you all amounts to a Mandela effect kind of thing, but in reverse, because this is a track that apparently performed pretty decently in the US on a certain mainstream chart, but I don't think that anyone either knew it existed or that they remember it at all. But let's see. Ever heard of a co-ed rap group from Philadelphia and Brooklyn called Spooks? I have, but only because I've heard them on another one of these Euro-comps before. Spooks were enormous in Europe in the early 2000s, and one of their biggest singles, "Things I've Seen," which had a retro-60s cocktail lounge-Amy Winehouse-styled beat to it, was featured in the Laurence Fishburne-written, directed, co-produced, and starring direct-to-video film, Once in the Life, and also served as the theme song to the European version of the US TV series Dark Angel. And the music video for this song featured Fishburne himself in it too!

"Things I've Seen" managed to peak at just #94 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart, but it was #13 on the different Hot Rap Singles chart. And if you're an American who doesn't concern themselves with early 2000s Euro-popular music or has never seen that specific Fishburne project, then I think you're flat-out lying if you tell me that you remember this song. I feel like this thing has been memory-holed to the point of complete erasure.

So that's a little taste of the Norwegian commercial pop landscape of 2001. Didn't find anything mesmerizingly and uniquely awful here, but still ended up getting what I came for on two other critical fronts—some memory lane tunes and stuff that I've never really had much of an opportunity to be exposed to, outside of sifting my way through other releases just like this one 👍👍.

Highlights:

Destiny's Child - "Survivor" Nelly - "Ride Wit Me" Spooks - "Things I've Seen" Opus X - "Girl What's Up" Jennifer Lopez - "Play" Eve - "Who's That Girl" Modjo - "Chillin'"

[sqarletsworldlesswandering]

Eclipsed Wanderers (Namely Edda, Aven and General) gets thrown into Modern Day Earth. How well does it go?

Weeeellllll...

The General and the Duo haven't met yet, so the first thing that happens is "Who the heck are you?!" and "Is this your fault?!"

That settles pretty quick, since General is pretty calm by default and the duo are more interested in the new environment than arguing. (That's...not quite how things go canonically, but given the extenuating circumstances, we can bypass that).

Now, "how well it goes" depends a lot on where they end up. I raise two possibilities that I've actively thought about:

The summary in either case is this: It goes great, as long as they stay hidden from the world at large....

Option A: The farmhouse

If they end up somewhere rural, things go pretty smoothly. They scout around the area, get a little freaked out by the wildlife and then fall in love because everything (so far) is so comparatively small and cute compared to their own world. Aven absolutely adores rabbits, Edda gets a kick out of the birds, and the General spots a bear in the forest and steers them both away from the woods. They find a farmhouse and go up to investigate, and meet their first human. The human is....understandably surprised, but also, they've seen enough nonsense in the world that they aren't terribly phased by this.

From there, things go smoothish, given that the human and their family are chill and let them stick around until they find a way back, and carve out a place for them to stay permanently if they can't go back. They keep them under the radar for the most part, and try to minimize the number of people who meet them, mostly out of worry for what happens if someone get the government involved. Nobody wants SCP-style containment for these guys....

This is probably the best outcome for the scenario, since they get to gradually warm up to aspects of Earth culture that the family introduces, and have space to move at their own pace. There's less to adjust to at once.

It takes a while to get past the language barrier, but they manage. One of the family's children is deaf, so the family knows sign language and the Stars pick it up easily.

As for more slice of life stuff, they have the most fun experiencing food (the joys of home cooking). Aven in particular takes an interest in helping cook, though they all pitch in.

Edda and the General both get a tad restless, so they start helping around the farm with the harder labor and various shenanigans.

Oh, also, when they're first shown a smart phone, they are both confused and extremely fascinated. They also discover the hard way that Edda doesn't go terribly well with electronics.

Another discovery - The General is shockingly good with kids, and ends up keeping them occupied a great deal (Mom appreciates it greatly).

Option B: Suburban Shenanigans

If they end up plopped on the side of the road in a suburban town area, things get...interesting. Assuming they get lucky, a well-meaning stranger sees them before anyone else and gets them back to her place so they can lay low. If things go poorly, someone calls the police.

In the police scenario, the trio is cordial enough (they can guess that these guys are law enforcement of...some kind and also have weapons, so let's not make them mad). However, when the police start making noises of detaining them so they can call other authorities and someone starts talking about "testing?" They start getting antsy, and at the first opportunity make a break for it. Speed wise, they'd be able to get a good ways away, if it weren't for how not open the land is and their lack of a map. This scenario winds up with them running into the well meaning human and hiding out with her, now with the police actively looking for them. So... added stress, woo hoo.

However, in the luckier scenario where they're found by the human first and go home with her, things go much more smoothly.

Well, they freak out at the whole concept of a car, and the seatbelts don't work great..... they end up compressing themselves in an abstract shape pile on the floor trying not to get carsick or be spotted.

Once they get home, they take up residence in the attic/basement and start panicking a bit. They've got a lot to process at once, and everything has been very fast paced so far. The end result is janky Word Document a QnA with the human over some hot chocolate while nestled in a pile of blankets.

From there, slice of life procedure is a constant series of "what's this and what does it do and may I touch it?" as they discover how human technology works. Technology makes up much more of their Earth experience, as food isn't something their human is used to making as much of. Usually dinner involves making a slightly larger portion than usual so the stars all try some, but they don't need full portions and thus stick to samples.

They also get the joy of meeting their human's partner, which is an interesting conversation, but he's chill about it, thankfully. He and Aven get along swimmingly.

They also get introduced to video games, and... aren't very good at some of them. Aven and the General are decent-ish at first person shooters, but not spectacular. The trio takes a liking to Sky, though. The General is pretty good at Rain World, while Aven and Edda prefer Hollow Knight (Edda's prefers the melee combat, Aven is jealous of the Knight's spells).

The only hitch in the otherwise smooth progression here is whether or not the Stars can get home. If they can, things are fine. If they can't then it gets tricky finding a permanent place for them to stay. Their humans insist it's fine if they stay in the basement, but the stars feel bad for permanently existing in part of their house. They figure something out eventually.

Well, that got long. If there's specific things you're curious about that I didn't talk about, ask away and I shall endeavor to answer!

[1997thebracket]

Round 1

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Into every generation, a Slayer is born: for ours, Sarah Michelle Geller stars as Buffy Summers, a supernaturally-gifted and interpersonally-burdened former cheerleader who loves a pithy one-liner, a night at the Bronze, and a chic taupe lip color. What began as a promising but critically divisive 1992 film would blossom into one of the biggest television hits of 1997, and a cult franchise for decades to come. As a story, Buffy didn't just work for the simplified impression of "girl power" that sold well in the 90s, but for its complex themes of morality, identity, the isolation of responsibility, and the echoing effects of laying the world like a chain on the neck of a child. ("Girl power" was however a fundamental part of the puzzle, and that would expand through the show's run to explore the strength of Slayers, witches, vampires, demons, Gods, girls made of bugs, girls made of nothing at all, and most potently, lesbians.) Buffy's recognizable dialogue and time capsule-like preservation of the era's fashion and music gives the show a sense of style and vibrancy against the frequently dark cemetery backdrop.

Daft Punk's Homework: If the pop world knew then what we know now, we would've invested even harder (better, faster, stronger.) Homework is the debut album by the French electronic duo Daft Punk who would come to be known not only as pioneers of house music, but for many, as the masked face of it. Featuring the singles Around The World and Da Funk, the album brought the then-underground progressive house music out of the clubs and into the homes of millions. Band members Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo had originally given their demo to the DJ at a Eurodisney rave, and in a few years would see bidding wars between major labels before ever releasing a studio album. Homework, which by the duo's admission is comprised of a collection of singles rather than a planned album tracklist, could have been inaccessible to pop music fans disused to instrumental electronica-- instead, it found success Around The World and paved a path forward for the genre.

[seoul-bros]

More musical clues for PJM1?

In the W Korea interview released this week, Jimin was asked who he was listening to recently and he mentioned Park Hwayobi and Honne.

Since it's a pattern that these guys like to drop clues in their interviews let's dig into this a bit.

Park Hwayobi

Park Hwayobi is known as SK's "Queen of R&B". Her biggest hit which got to No.6 in the Korean charts was Bye Bye Bye in 2010.

Her latest single was Sunset in 2021.

Fun fact and possible additional clue, RM posted her song How is it going? from the Because I Love You album on Instagram this month (23/01/2023).

Instagram Link

I wonder if Jimin is going to pull an RM on us with an R&B collaboration with an established star.

Honne

Secondly Jimin says he is listening to Honne (本音 or "true feelings") the British electronic music duo who debuted in 2016 with their album Warm on a Cold Night. This album was really popular in South Korea where it went platinum.

It also included their song, Somebody that Loves You with Izzy Bizu.

Their association with BTS, and in particular RM, goes back to 2019 when they released Crying Over You featuring RM and Beka.

In 2020, the were producers on RM's Seoul

and last year they have credits for Closer on RM's Indigo album.

As far as I can remember they weren't amongst the songwriters and producers that have posted about working with Jimin last year but you never know they too could be in the mix for PJM1.

Post Date: 29/01/2023