#etna (band)

[disgaeazone]

Disgaea AU

I actually technically will have 3 Disgaea AU's after this one!!! I have not told anyone about my other 2, one is in the making, 1 I have lore for and this new one is about the silly Disgaea 1 trio being apart of a band or something!! I've had the idea in my head for so dang long and honestly I'm really excited to start writing for it HEHEH I just wanted to tell you guys because Disgaea is fun and I'd love to rant about all of my Disgaea AUs (3 of them) here!!

[apod]

2024 July 5

Mount Etna Milky Way Image Credit & Copyright: Gianni Tumino

Explanation: A glow from the summit of Mount Etna, famous active stratovolcano of planet Earth, stands out along the horizon in this mountain and night skyscape. Bands of diffuse light from congeries of innumerable stars along the Milky Way galaxy stretch across the sky above. In silhouette, the Milky Way's massive dust clouds are clumped along the galactic plane. But also familiar to northern skygazers are bright stars Deneb, Vega, and Altair, the Summer Triangle straddling dark nebulae and luminous star clouds poised over the volcanic peak. The deep combined exposures also reveal the light of active star forming regions along the Milky Way, echoing Etna's ruddy hue in the northern hemisphere summer's night.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240705.html

[uncontrolledfission]

Mount Etna Milky Way, 2024-07-05

A glow from the summit of Mount Etna, famous active stratovolcano of planet Earth, stands out along the horizon in this mountain and night skyscape. Bands of diffuse light from congeries of innumerable stars along the Milky Way galaxy stretch across the sky above. In silhouette, the Milky Way's massive dust clouds are clumped along the galactic plane. But also familiar to northern skygazers are bright stars Deneb, Vega, and Altair, the Summer Triangle straddling dark nebulae and luminous star clouds poised over the volcanic peak. The deep combined exposures also reveal the light of active star forming regions along the Milky Way, echoing Etna's ruddy hue in the northern hemisphere summer's night.

Credits: NASA's 'Astronomy Picture Of The Day.'

[dontirrigateme]

Made by the amazing @ronald-speirs (my sister wrote this part, but I've seen your stuff and I agree so I'm leaving it). And thanks @1waveshortofashipwreck for the tag

Favorite place in the world you’ve visited?

Mt. Etna. When I was little (like, 3rd grade) we lived in Sicily, and one winter my brother and I wanted desperately to play in the snow, but it hadn't snowed where we lived in a long time. So we took a drive up Etna until we saw snow, where we stopped and spent the day playing around in it. (It was later that there was a horrible eruption that caused a bad earthquake where we lived, but I sleep like Nixon so I was dead to the world throughout the event.)

Something you’re proud of yourself for?

Making it through fire academy. Other than playing basketball one year in childhood I had never been very athletic, but I was out there doing bleacher runs, blackout drills, and climbing ladders to drag giant hoses to the top of buildings with the rest of them. I'm driven by the desire to not make an ass out of myself in front of others, and somehow I was able to do all those things, and ultimately participate in a live burn at the end of the program.

Favorite books?

Making my way through the books written by and about the troopers, so I gotta go with Band of Brothers. But my other favorites are anything by Kurt Vonnegut, the Dark Tower series, the Black Company series, Les Miserables, Moby Dick, Practical Demonkeeping (and almost anything by Christopher Moore), Hitchhiker's Guide...I'm sure I'm leaving some out, I love to read (Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon mostly...I couldn't resist).

Something that makes your heart happy when thinking about it?

.........band of brothers. Specifically my background characters. Specifically Smokey and McClung.

Favorite thing about your culture? About being American?

When did you join the HBO War fandom? What was the first show you watched?

It was a long road.......it came out when my family was stationed in Japan, so I didn't really know about it until I moved back. Streaming wasn't a thing then, so I would catch parts here and there, and I eventually figured I had seen the whole thing. Spent a long time thinking that people overreacted to it and that it was overrated. But I'm also leaving out one thing: that I am stupid. Figured my sister would appreciate having seen it, and suggested we watch it. I realized at the end of the first episode just how stupid I am.

Have you read any of Easy Company’s books? If so, which ones were your favorite?

I have a growing collection, but work often gets in the way. I've only read Ambrose's Band of Brothers. I've also read the Smokey portion of A Company of Heroes by Marcus Brotherton.

Favorite HBO War character and your favorite moment with them?

Have I mentioned how much I love Smokey yet.... One of his best moments (I think) is when he meets with Roe in Bastogne in his foxhole and gives him the morphine, tells him where to find scissors, and about Toye's boots.

Also McClung. And I love "ask him to dance, doc." The battle on the outskirts of Carentan has to be one of my favorite parts of the series though.

Do you make content for any fandoms, if so; what sort of content?

Just some gifs so far. I do like to write, but I've never dabbled in fanfiction.

Favorite actor/actress and your favorite film of theirs?

Russell Crowe and Michael Fassbender are the ones where I'll pretty much watch anything as long as one of them is in it, even if it's bad (like Jonah Hex...horrible movie, but worth it to see Fassbender's little villain character doing his little tee-hee leprechaun laugh through all his scenes). I'll also watch almost anything with Emily Blunt, she is fantastic and a hilarious human being.

Favorite quote/s that you wish to share with others?

So many by Kurt Vonnegut, but I'll just put two:

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."

"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane."

Random fact your mutuals/followers don’t know about you?

I had a bearded dragon named Ichabod years ago. And I still love that name for a lizard.

If you’re a writer, do you need a beta reader (say yes so I can be your beta reader 🤭)?

If I ever start writing again, then yes. 😊

Three things that make you smile?

Anything band of brothers (obviously)

my remote-controlled tank (which I did not expect to love so much)

Facial muscles

Any nicknames you like?

You can call me anything and I won't care. If it's an insult I'll probably just wind up more confused than offended.

List some people you love to see around on tumblr!

I can't even think of all the people I see around here, but of course my sister @1waveshortofashipwreck, also @executethyself35, @love--persevering. And the ones I see around like @panzershrike-pretz, @dustyjumpwjngs, @blood-mocha-latte, @ewipandora, @cody-helix02, @blueberry-ovaries, @grumpy-liebgott, @hanniewinnix, @kafka-ohdear, @malarkgirlypop, @whollyjoly (i'm sure i'm leaving some out, sorry....)

What would you do during a zombie apocalypse?

Finally have a job I like probably. Not like I have a crowbar, axe, jacket with a thousand pockets, and combat boots hoping for something to happen...

Favorite movie?

So, so many. The 12th Man, Four Lions, The Nice Guys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Professional, Headhunters, the Full Monty, anything in the Mad Max franchise, Death of Stalin, Tremors, District 9, the Right Stuff, Children of Men, Suddenly Last Summer, Banshees of Inisherin, Dunkirk, 1917, Fury, 28 Days Later, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Drop Dead Fred, Sicario, Lars and the Real Girl, Casablanca, Three Kings, the Great Escape, the Fifth Element, Hud, Stand By Me, Tucker & Dale vs Evil, Evolution...I could go on

Do you like horror movies?

Yup. 28 Days Later is up there in my favorites. The Descent is an EXCELLENT horror movie for anyone that hasn't seen it (and has made it this far down my rambling answers). Ravenous isn't very well known, and it's not perfect, but it's fun and weird. Stir of Echoes is an unconventional horror movie, but an excellent one-off story. Slither is a fun one with a decent cast (Elizabeth Banks, Nathan Fillion, Michael Rooker, among others).

No pressure tags!!

I'm just gonna copy and paste the people I put up in my answers. Sorry if you already did this, but enjoy another tag: @executethyself35, @love--persevering, @panzershrike-pretz, @dustyjumpwjngs, @blood-mocha-latte, @ewipandora, @cody-helix02, @blueberry-ovaries, @grumpy-liebgott, @hanniewinnix, @kafka-ohdear, @malarkgirlypop, @whollyjoly

[mobscene-london]

CAMDEN'S ANNUAL ITALIAN STREET FESTIVAL:

Location: The Borough of Camden. Hosts: The British-Italian community of London. Date: 19th of July - 21st of July. Dress Code: None.

EVENT SUMMARY:

It's once again time for Camden's annual celebration of Italian pride! Whether you hail from the homeland or not, all are welcome to come and enjoy a weekend celebrating one of Europe's richest and most beautiful cultures. There will be distinct representation from Sicilia, Lazio, Calabria, Abruzzo, Veneto, and of course, thanks to London's thriving Neapolitan community, Campania, all showing off the best their region has to offer. The well loved and long established festival brings together people from all over the city to enjoy good food, even better company, and endless entertainment. The canals will be lined with tables for people to dine at; catered to by the authentic street vendors and fresh food stalls boasting the best Italian cuisine outside of the country itself. The market will be transformed to offer art, clothing, wine, and much more, created either by the community itself, or imported directly from Italy. When evening starts to fall, though? Grab your sambuca shots, wait for the music to fill the air, and watch as the real party begins. Primrose Hill will play host to a mini music festival all of its own on all three days, with a spotlight on both upcoming and established British-Italian musicians throughout the day and well into the night. Rumours say there might even be some guest appearances from Italian artists, too. And yes, there will be pop up bars and grab-and-go Neapolitan pizza ready for you. We're not forgetting this is still London and you're all messy af...

MAIN POINTS OF INTEREST:

Cheese & Wine Tasting (Friday afternoon) - What better way to get things started than sampling Italy's two most beloved exports? Offering a spectacular selection of Sicilian wines (thanks @ Mount Etna for your service), a laid-back wine tasting event will take place for anyone (old enough, you little shits) to enjoy. You'll also get to vote which region has the best cheese. Fight to the death, tbh.

Dinner & Dance (Friday night) - Once you're all sufficiently drunk on Sicily's offerings, the traditional live bands will start to play canal-side. Laze beside the water with your dinner, enjoy the warm weather, and be transported to the streets of Italy as you eat your bodyweight in pasta.

Pizza Making (Saturday afternoon) - If you're not too hungover from necking sambuca shots at the festival in the park, or from finishing that bottle of wine you probably shouldn't have, try your hand at making authentic Neapolitan pizza with some of the best chef's Camden's Italian scene has to offer. What do you win? Pride, bitch. That's all you need. You're Italian.

A Taste of the Opera (Saturday evening) - Fancy a spectacular rendition of Rigoletto? Probably not, you cultureless heathens, but the offer is there... Enjoy Verdi's masterpiece in the local community theatre, courtesy of the local youth operatic society. Support the local arts, bro.

Mini Venetian-Style Carnival (Sunday afternoon) - Yes, of course it's after Mass, don't worry... Head back down to the canal once more to watch London's best attempt at capturing the beauty and artistry of the Venetian Carnival. You'll also have a chance to make your own Venetian-style masks with the help of local artists. The creepier looking the better, apparently.

Drunk Shenanigans (All nights) - Because there's alcohol available from the vendors, and you've got an excuse to party in the streets? Go wild, bro.

[schismusic]

On June 13th the Biografilm Festival in Bologna hosted the world preview of Uzeda: Do It Yourself by documentary director Maria Arena. Apart from the fact that calling it a "world preview" implies a level of attention to the movie that we could define as slightly oversold to the unwitting audiences, I was one of the expectant ones, having been following the project ever since it started its crowdfunding campaign. Much to my surprise, the campaign actually did grant enough money to proceed with the production. The reason why I'm so surprised has nothing to do with the actual quality of the output, including the short excerpts they were, at the time, already posting on social media — more on this later, but the gist of it is: it's great and we knew it. That is exactly why I was so worried at first: such a good project, with high production values for an independent documentary, about a band that just about no one gives a fuck about in Italy save for a very passionate ten or so people? I was afraid that, despite all my best hopes, the crowdfunding would barely scrape by at best.

I have never been happier to be proven wrong.

According to what Maria Arena herself said after the showing, the doc had been in the making (and I mean in the actual making, as in Arena was already going around Catania with the band shooting video of them and of PJ — a musicologist from UCLA who wrote a whole ass PhD dissertation about lo-fi and independent rock) as far back as 2016. Leonardo Sciascia would have probably argued that such an endeavour is "very Sicilian", which of course reflects very well on the approach taken by Uzeda themselves. For starters, the band name. The Duke of Uceda — Italianized into "Uzeda", of course, and take a deep breath before you go on — Juan Francisco Antonio Alonso María José Domingo Pacheco y Téllez-Girón was the one to reconstruct Val di Noto after the 1693 earthquake and subsequent Etna eruption which destroyed the city of Catania. Of course, the southern gateway into the city of Catania itself is also named Porta Uzeda. If that wasn't enough, on more than one occasion the band themselves, and especially drummer Davide Oliveri, the band noted how growing up where they did proved crucial to their music. It was pretty special (for me, but I assume for him as well) to see Davide be complimented, on the site of the showing, by a literal eightysix-year-old from Syracuse, Sicily.

That's what gets me: this isn't exactly music you would show your grandfather, per se. I know I wouldn't show it to mine, for example. And yet this dude waltzed into a projection room and still managed to pull some relevant insight out of the proverbial top hat. Call it genius loci, gut-feeling intuition, shared sensitivity informed by coexistence or, simply, good predisposition. This eightysix-year-old gets Uzeda, possibly much deeper than you or I ever will. Which I guess stands as a testament to what it means to do what you like, to stick to your guns and yet at the same time to find a way to stand within the grooves of consummate professionalism. Uzeda are all trained musicians, and this is a very important distinction to make in the context of punk and punk-adjacent music. Throughout the film the band insist on how studying with someone, learning to play music from someone else was a crucial experience that did not in any way, shape or form stop them or prevent them from playing exactly the music they wanted. Meeting a band like Bastro at a festival in Berlin was an opportunity to unlock a new style of music to play; churning scales over and over throughout the whole fretboard led Agostino Tilotta to start looking for what he himself calls "non-scales", if anything. And studying with other musicians certainly gave the rhythm section of this band an impulse to professionalism: Oliveri, at the very least, worked as a composer for an animated musical and as a songwriter on Gianna Nannini's Aria album; Raffaele Gulisano, bassist, also doubles as a high school teacher, while Tilotta and Cacciola choose not to make of this music their own profession.

Tilotta especially is often framed by Arena, or her director of photography whose name I don't remember off the top of my head, like a Sergio Leone character: a unique face capable of powerful expressions standing in stark contrast to and at the same time in perfect complementarity with the surrounding environment. This brings to mind how Leone himself would cast extras based solely on their faces, without really asking them to act. I can only imagine just how dazzling, for a director such as Arena, or for any director really, it must have been to have someone with a face like Tilotta's to work with. And with his endeavor: the man is a riot, a one-man show. The legendary Albini skit about Fake Italian makes a whole lot more sense when you hear Tilotta himself speak his ornate, calculated English.

But of course Uzeda is almost inseparable from their own Steve Albini connections. The single opening credit of the movie ("To Steve") hits incredibly harder than expected. According to Arena and her editor, the movie was left untouched even after May 8th, 2024: a testament to poignant editing and beautiful personalities. Oliveri spent a good five minutes constantly underlining just how profoundly good, kind, approachable, just how much of a friend Albini had been to them since the very earliest days working together — and just how much of a void he leaves behind in the wake of his passing. And of course I believe their friendship stems from a number of core values the band and their producer — rather, engineer, as he would have preferred — shared, chief amongst them the idea that one must persist. Like I said in my Joy Division post, and just like Coil and Israel Regardie. The capability to stay true to one's self implies understanding that there is no one-self to abide by except the one present at any given time.

As for the band themselves? Well, they were with Shellac on May 26, 2015. And that's not the sort of show you can ever complain about. Go watch this fucking movie when it's out.

[metalshockfinland]

VOLUCRINE Release Long-Awaited Album "Etna", Out Today

Photographer: Antti Heikkilä Finnish modern metal band Volucrine released their long-awaited fourth studio album ETNA via Inverse Records.  LISTEN/BUY ETNA album: https://push.fm/fl/volucrine-etna Vocalist Jupe Velin comments:“Hard to believe we’re finally here! We started working on the album in May 2021, so a lot of water has flowed in Kymijoki while we’ve been working. ETNA was in a way…

[mnstcrbnll]

"So! The second round, eh?

"How about we see what you guys answered to all of those?"

"And while we're at it, we'll give you the right answer."

"Aaaaafter I finished mocking everyone!"

[ the fire emoji is etna, the crown emoji is sadie ♥ ]

🔥: "Looks like the first question, " reoccuring dreams of kid!them being lost at sea with another person. this person is never the same between two dreams ", had just one quarter of our contestants answer May! But we had a lot of people also guessing Yellow and Ree... and two of you Clair and Viola! I wonder if Viola has weird dreams!!"

👑: "Almost half of you guessed that who sent " I lied to my boss more than once and told her I physically couldn't make it to work when I just wanted to stay home and watch cute nature documentaries instead. " was Grusha, but Colza and Viola were voted for one fourth of the votes each. Guess nobody likes to work in a Gym...!

🔥: "Half of you guessed correctly, Gold is " in possession of a redacted file stolen from the Johtonian government. "... but a lot of people wondered if maybe May or Alistair had something to do with it. And even Yellow?! Wooooow!!"

👑: "Half of you also knew that- ahum. Who sent " During one, rather unsavoury trip to Unova, I in fact, managed to get Grimsley, of Unovan Elite Four fame, to strip after he lost to me at blackjack sixteen times in a row. " was Alistair. One of you even thought it was Grusha... I can't see it, but okay.

🔥: "Cheer up! The next, "I put the milk in the cereal bowl first. ", caused a lot of ruckus! Some guessed right and picked Kane, some Ree, but we also got May, Grusha, Gold and even Clair! Can you imagine her, putting milk before the cereal?"

👑: "...I do that?"

🔥: "You're Galarian you don't count."

👑: "MOVING ON. The next, sad secret, " My brother broke my arm once because he was having a bitch fit and I told him to stop. ", had more people guessing wrong than those guessing right. A lot voted for Kane and Grusha, some voted for May and Clair, and even Colza-- wait, do they have a brother? ...still. Who guessed Yellow was correct."

🔥: "Most people guessed that Wes was the one who " tried to sell a throne on eBay.  ", but a lot also guessed Ree could've done that! Don't tell their boss!"

👑: "Exactly half of you guessed that  "I may come off as tough and harsh (rightfully so, thank you very much), but I do have a large, secret shine in the corner of my closet solely dedicated to a certain adorable little Pokemon. I love them! " was Clair's secret, but a lot of you also picked Alistair. Guess he has something to hide after all." 🔥: "Bad bitches like cute Pokèmon." 👑: "Bad bitches like cute Pokèmon."

🔥: "Another one most people guessed wrong! Kane was picked as the most likely to " have a tattoo of Piers’s band logo on their lower back ", but it was actually Colza! Man, someone who's more likely to have his arm broken, to get a tattoo like that and pours milk first... almost makes me want to meet him, he would fit just fine in Rissa!"

👑: "Honestly I thought you'd like to meet Viola more. She's the one who sent " I have an underground history in toxicology :) ", after all. 🔥: "I already have a poison enthusiast in my gang and I love her a lot, thank you very much!"

🔥: "Last but not least, our Ree had yet another great adventure, because they " met celebi once "! A lot guessed Yellow or Gold too, and, uh. Well. I mean they're not wrong, I guess? I'm sure they met it too!"

[burlveneer-music]

Cratere Centrale - s/t - a club jazz mini LP that is pleasantly close to soul-jazz (Roots Underground)

Cratere Centrale is the Sicilian band founded by Dario Aiello and Andrea Normanno, musicians / DJs and producers from Catania who share a passion for club culture as much as that for funk and jazz. Along with Daniele Salamone on keyboards and Cristiano Giardini on sax, they mix funk and jazz with broken beat, house and hip hop rhythms. Visceral influenced by the magmatic forces that dominate Etna, the band has a fiery, transversal vision of the groove with an attitude to explore the entire existing musical spectrum from top to bottom. By combining their different musical backgrounds, these four guys from Cratere Centrale have been able to create a unique mix that fuses the Mediterranean jazz fusion tradition of the past with the freshest and most current sounds of contemporary clubbing, for a result that will be confirmed by this release of their debut on Roots Underground records. Dario Aiello - Guitar Andrea Normanno - Drums Daniele Salamone - Keyboards and Synth Bass Cristiano Giardini - Sax and Percussion

[moochilatv]

Philipp Spiegl presents: Love Letters

Great grunge rocker song

Singer/songwriter Philipp Spiegl is back with his new single »Love Letters«

The track takes us to smoky, dark indie clubs - distorted vocals and fuzz guitars drive the song towards the chorus and unexpectedly meet brass and choir. A new world of sound opens up briefly before the garage rock band knocks on the door again and sweeps us away “And I sing - Love Letters” is the message, because Philipp Spiegl wants to spread hope and confidence.

The musician is an observer of fates and connects these experiences with characters from literature. In »Love Letters« he sings about how diverse life can be, sometimes difficult and unfair, but still beautiful enough to embrace with open arms. With the new single, the busy musician and author delivers an indie guitar banger that packs a punch and announces the album of the same name.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Philipp Spiegl (@philipp_spiegl)

Philipp Spiegl is a Singer/Songwriter and Author from the western Austrian Alps.

In his music he explores themes like loss, religion, love and self awareness. Inspired by the landscapes of his homeland but also by the places he has seen on his travels through Europe and Asia, Spiegl is on a pursuit of capturing the human condition. His debut Album "Be My Redeemer" was released in 2021 through the Viennese indie label Feber Wolle. In 2023 Spiegl won the V@Sound Award for his Single "Garden Of Endings" and in October 2023 he released his first Novella called "Flickers Of Etna" which is accompanied by a three-song EP with the same name. 

[firstbuzz]

Italy's Mount Etna eruption captured from space as ash, lava spews out

Mount Etna, the towering volcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy, has once again captured the world's attention with its eruption.

The event was so significant that it was observed from space by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, which used shortwave-infrared bands to highlight the lava flow at the time of acquisition.

The eruption sent a dramatic plume of ash and lava into the sky, visible from various parts of the Mediterranean island. Social media was abuzz with footage showing the fiery spectacle as molten rock and ash were ejected into the night sky. Despite the potential hazards, operations at Catania Airport, located near the base of the volcano, have not been disrupted.

Mount Etna stands at an impressive height of approximately 3,329 meters and is known for its almost continuous volcanic activity. This recent eruption is part of a series of events that have characterized the volcano's behavior, with frequent ash emissions posing risks to the surrounding areas, including the densely populated city of Catania

[spacenutspod]

Image: One of the world’s most active volcanoes, Mount Etna, erupted on Sunday – spewing lava and clouds of ash high over the Mediterranean island of Sicily. This image, captured on 13 November by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, has been processed using the mission’s shortwave-infrared bands to show the lava flow at the time of acquisition.

[prestige-fashion-world]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Bcbgmaxazria Etna Dress Peridot Combo Black Green Lace Peplum Sleeveless Size 12.

[upalldown]

Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want To Turn Into You

Second album from the former Chairlift singer featuring guest appearances from Dido and Grimes

7/13

Desire can be volatile, excruciating, wonderful, and cruel—but above all, it keeps us going. We want and want and want until we die, these small hopes urging us across the vast expanse of our lives. Caroline Polachek—pop auteur, emotional philosopher, hopeless romantic—makes a muse of this tangled, pervasive force on her virtuosic new album, Desire, I Want to Turn Into You. She knows too well that falling in love suffuses you with possibility, makes a boring world briefly beautiful. And so, as a nod to desire’s transformational power, her album’s cover displays her on all fours on the grimy subway, lunging forward with a ravenous look in her eyes. On one end of the car is the rat race; on the other end, sand—a mirage of paradise.

Polachek spent much of her career as one half of the indie-pop band Chairlift in the maddening, formative city of New York, and more recently has split her time between Los Angeles and London. In 2020, she decamped to the idylls of the Mediterranean—blaring ’70s and ’80s Italo-pop out of a beat-up station wagon with her boyfriend in Rome and staying at the base of Mount Etna in Sicily, marveling at the “faceless, tectonic, chaotic energy coming up from below.” Inspired by these excursions, the album takes us to breathtaking places, all palm trees and crystalline water, deep red sunsets and smoke-covered volcanoes. On the ecstatic “Welcome to My Island,” Polachek is Calypso greeting a shipwrecked Odysseus, waving us to her oasis. She channels a yearning as deep blue as the ocean and howls like a wolf to the moon.

While Polachek was constantly in transit on her 2019 album Pang—descending with a parachute, passing through a door to another door—Desire is grounded in a more real sense of place. Even on songs with few locational details, you can feel the climate: An elusive woman lives out an escapist fantasy on “Bunny Is a Rider,” not checking her email because she’s “AWOL on a Thursday.” Satellites can’t find her because she’s somewhere in the jungle: Hear the muggy, tropical bassline, the faint bird chirps, the static that resembles the rustle of fronds. “Crude Drawing of an Angel” is staged below the Earth’s surface amid dripping stalactites, with jagged breaths creeping up from behind. Polachek’s voice slices through the dank atmosphere like a blade: “Forsake me/Here on the ground/All or nothing,” she pleads, begging for mercy from a lover whom she knows will disappear.

Perhaps the “crude angel” is painter Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, the “angel of history” who, in one famous account, looks with horror upon the cumulative wreckage of civilization, the damage wrought in the name of glory and beauty. Polachek is not just a swooning lover, but an aesthete and philosopher attuned to contemporary extremes, conceptualizing Desire during a period of grand instability. During the pandemic her father died of COVID-related complications, and she saw cruelty all around her as she contended with the cyclical nature of disease, the fragility of the supply chain, and the rancor of social media morality. “I started thinking about how to re-harmonize myself, and my music, with the reality that there is a destructive side to everything,” she said. On the flamenco-inspired “Sunset,” Polachek dramatizes the pressure of new love against the backdrop of a destitute society, a collapsed infrastructure of care: “So many stories we were told about a safety net/But when I look for it, it’s just a hand that’s holding mine.”

The love explored on Desire is not the result of a patient and sustainable partnership, but a violent, all-or-nothing immersion. Implicit in the wish in the album’s title, I Want to Turn Into You, is the prospect of losing one’s own selfhood. Across the album, Polachek indulges in the pleasure of obliteration and surrender: “You are melting everything about me,” she sings with her arms outstretched on “Smoke.” On “Blood and Butter,” her descriptions turn grotesque: She coos breathlessly about diving through her lover’s face and underneath his tattoos, longing to be sustained by nothing “but the sun that’s in our eyes.”

Sometimes Polachek seems so breathless with desire that she can only come up to its surface to gasp up a few intelligible lines at a time. Bristling at our culture’s obsession with literalism in art, she proffers, “I’m a deep believer in what lies behind.” So songs like “Pretty in Possible” dabble in Cocteau Twins-style abstraction, blotted narratives featuring mayflies and bloody noses. Sonically, the song is Frou Frou meets “Tom’s Diner” with its keychain-jangle beat, wordless a capella stretches, and corkscrewed melodies. Polachek and producer Danny L Harle started it as an exercise in pure flow, no explicit choruses or verses. Still, one sweet line wrestles itself from the stream: “I was born to get you home.”

The theme of mania is replicated in the songs’ twisted, irregular structures. “Blood and Butter” casts off its jacket and just to put it on again, staging a fickle transition between day and night and ending on an epic bagpipe climax lifted out of “The Sensual World.” “I Believe” is breakbeat pop fit for a Lizzie McGuire trip to Rome, punctured by glitchy, adrenal breaths that sound like a cyborg subjected to shock therapy. The album’s production veers from trip-hop to new wave, trance to flamenco, demonstrating an innate understanding of the pop archive in pursuit of a new personal style. Each creation seems marvelously its own: Who else would pay tribute to their mercurial father with petulant white-girl rapping and cheesy stadium-rock guitar, or use a 1970s young adult novel about an immortal family as fodder for a shimmering Enya ballad?

The cumulative effect is like staring up at a giant fresco, the detail so exquisite you can’t decide where to rest your eyes first. Flourishes appear in one place, then echo in a new location—wings flapping, whistles beckoning, blades slicing, bells chiming. She opens Desire with her father’s warning to “watch your head, girl” and concludes with the image of a decapitated angel. But what really binds the album is the dynamism of Polachek’s vocals, the culmination of years of bel canto operatic training and the hunger to get it right. There is so much conviction in her delivery that ceding space to anyone else, even guest spots from Grimes and Dido, feels like a disservice: Within the span of one song, Polachek’s voice will smear like paint, swoop like a crane, and bubble like lava.

All of the best attributes of Desire are reflected on its closer “Billions,” a humid tabla-pop song with medieval sound effects and an over-the-top drone squiggle. Polachek brings us into the throes of a shaky love affair, doling out details in succulent little morsels. “Salty flavor/Lies like a sailor/But he loves like a painter,” she sings, evoking the tangy taste of skin, the coarse vernacular of the seaman, the uncalloused touch of the artist. There’s something brilliant in how she drops down an octave between verses, going from the heady bliss of the evening to the sobriety of the morning after, and how she lends ordinary words their own strange mouthfeel—“zay-zay-zay-something to me” and “bill-lee-yaaans!” After running through scenes of seduction and anguish, the song appears to end on happy note: “I never felt so close to you,” Polachek confesses, echoed by the cherubic voices of the Trinity children’s choir. But being close to is still not the same as being subsumed by, having turned into. So we nudge and nudge and nudge, never quite reaching fulfillment, longing until the end.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/caroline-polachek-desire-i-want-to-turn-into-you/

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VOLUCRINE Release New Single & Video 'Riptide' from Upcoming Fourth Studio Album

Photographer: Antti Heikkilä Finnish modern metal band Volucrine released a new single Riptide. The track is taken from the upcoming fourth studio album ETNA which is set to be released on February 16th 2024 via Inverse Records.  Vocalist Jupe Velin comments:“Riptide is the story of a life lost in a storm of mental distress and pressure. There is still hope for a recovery, but the journey to…