#have a live orchestra that only plays that super intense classical music

[spacelesscowboy]

nunca me voy a perdonar x dejarme caer en la trampa de i’m not like other girls a los 12 xq les aseguré a mis papás a esa edad ke no quería quince, y como. 5 meses antes de cumplir los 15 les dije. jiji saben ke si quiero 🤭🤭 Y‼️ si no hubiera hecho eso hubiera podido tener un quince con tema darks :(

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Colin Fisher

Photo by ilyse krivel

Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist Colin Fisher is on a constant quest for the ecstatic through sound. His journey has taken him in many directions, from the math-rock inspired group Sing That Yell That Spell, to the fiery free improvisation duo Not the Wind, Not the Flag. As a band leader, his free jazz quartet released the white-hot Living Midnight for Astral Spirits in 2020, about which Derek Taylor wrote, “Passages of ruminant restraint alternate with excoriating blasts and outbursts, but the means always remains intelligible and momentum driven whether full-steam or incremental.” Solo, Fisher has recently wafted in a more contemplative direction that might see him associated with the new age revival, but this work is as exploratory and engaging as his most spirited improvisational outings. Here, he lists some of the pieces within which he experiences the sublime.

Jean-Pierre Leguay — Chant d’Airain

Some of my first experiences with the sublime in music were in church. I abhorred being in church (and would even attempt to hide to avoid attendance) but at the end of service the organist played as the congregation filed out. The selections were usually secular and I can remember my rapt attention. Not because of some aesthetic taste but because I was having a physical/biological response to the sounds. Being in the resonant chamber of the cathedral provided a fully immersive experience. Rather than suggest whatever music was being played at the time I’m going to fast forward to my mid 20s… While in the same church, I heard the principal organist of Notre Dame improvise with some Messiaen-symmetrical ideas that lifted me out of my corporeal form and left me sobbing in a church pew at the very church I would have done everything in my power not to be present in as a child. The organist was Jean-Pierre Leguay.

Ravi Shankar — At Monterey Pop

An early transmission from what seemed like outer space at the time, as a young child I heard the sounds of Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha live at Monterey Pop (my parents had this and the record with Yehudi Menuhin.) Ravi is far from my fav Hindustani musician or sitarist, of which I have innumerable favorites now. But I’m particularly enamored with Vilayat Khan after reading his biography, The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan, a couple of years ago. Pandit Pran Nath is also a huge inspiration.

Polvo — Cor-Crane Secret

Without sifting through the rubble of my punk/hardcore teens (which was totally legit inspirational beauty, from Minor Threat and straight edge to grunge, etc.) I want to highlight a band that literally changed my life in my mid to late teens. When I first heard Cor-Crane Secret by Polvo, I didn’t realize that music like this existed. It gave me permission to go on long wonky improvisational explorations — endless melodies and whammied chords that would go on for hours sometimes. I also got to see them on the Today’s Active Lifestyles tour when I was 18, totally life changing.

Ornette Coleman — The Shape of Jazz to Come

The next stage I’ll focus on has a little more girth: my introduction to jazz/free jazz/improv/fusion. I think I first discovered this music by accident. I remember seeing a clip of Monk on the news the day he died. I was much younger, and I thought to myself “this music is like an alien transmission!” But I put that away in the vaults for a couple of decades. I also remember seeing a clip on TV of a soprano player at a jazz fest in Toronto, playing the craziest shit I’d ever heard (once again on a news program,) but had little-to-no context. The clip lasted probably 10 seconds but felt longer and I remember thinking something like “this is more punk rock than punk rock!” hahaha. So, there was a hunger there that I needed to satiate. But I had no access to any recordings where I lived. I remember reading books at the library about jazz history and the only CDs I could borrow were Manteca or big band music. I had to imagine what Song X sounded like for the time being. Ornette’s The Shape of Jazz to Come was one of the first albums I actually bought, and it was more magical than any description could possibly illustrate. As pedestrian as this may seem to everyone now, it was another life changer for me. I can remember late nights sitting by myself, probably super high on good weed, listening to “Lonely Woman” and weeping.

John McLaughlin — Extrapolation

In my early days of discovering jazz, I also came across the music of John Mclaughlin, initially via Mahavishnu Orchestra. His whole profile as a guitarist was incredibly inspiring for me — someone who had an equal footing in jazz, Flamenco, Indian classical music and fusion — a model for what I could become as a player (although I don’t think our styles are really even that comparable.) One of his albums that I think is maybe overlooked in his career is Extrapolation which has an incredible lineup and the compositions are incredible.

John Coltrane — Interstellar Space

In considering this list I’m realizing there’s no way I can touch on all the music that has shaped me. But there is an album that’s shaped a great deal in terms of how I play and in what seems to be my favorite type of collaborative setting — the duo. Interstellar Space is an absolute masterpiece. Everything feels raw — the intensity, the interplay, the emotion. As much as I love so much of John Coltrane’s music, there’s something about this record that was akin to hearing punk music for the first time. There’s an immediacy to expression and interaction. And it was something that felt available to me (certainly not his virtuoso chops, which felt otherworldly — an unscalable monolith.) The direct communication between two people was a revelation and the content of this music felt like something I could mine for the rest of my life.

The Ivo Perelman Trio — “Cantilena”

Fast-forward another few years or more and I had travelled with some good friends to NYC for I think it was the JVC Jazz Fest. We wanted to see MMW play (of whom I still think Friday Afternoon In the Universe is a perfect album.) While we were there though, we saw so much beautiful music that blew me away. The most significant for me though, was catching the last 10 minutes of a set by the Ivo Perelman trio in Tribeca somewhere (the trio was with Jay Rosen on drums and Dominic Duval on bass, who I played with several years later. RIP). It was electrifying. I was moved enough to go and talk to him after and he gave me an unmarked demo tape of Seeds, Vision and Counterpoint. There’s a track on the album called “Cantilena” and it really drops into this heavy space for around 10 minutes that gives me the chills every time I hear it. There is this free lyricism that is still absolutely elating to me. I love his playing and he’s still probably my favorite living saxophonist.

Marilyn Crispell — Vignettes

Masabumi Kikuchi — Out of Bounds

Using lyricism as a segue it brings me to the music of Marilyn Crispell, especially her albums Amaryllis,Nothing Ever Was Anyway, Vignettes and many others. She has a mode of free ballad playing that is absolutely transcendental. I will also mention Masabumi Kikuchi in the same breath. I find the desire more and more to play with a similar intention even though I rarely find myself in the context to do so.

Jute Gyte — Birefringence

A total shift from this narrative of discovery and development is metal music. Something I’d been listening to since my teens and getting hip to some cool thrash music through Canadian band Voivod, particularly the album Dimension Hatröss. I've continued to follow the music and all of its various subgenres and have so many favorite picks, but I’ll choose just one and it’s a total mindbender. Jute Gyte’s Birefringence actually eclipses easy category and you really just need to experience it.

Giacinto Scelsi — “Uaxuctum”

Catherine Christer Hennix — “Blues Alif Lam Mim In The Modes Of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis”

My last pick is another double pick (I know I’m cheating) because it relates to the power of music and ties it into the first selection. Another current, among many, of musical obsessions is “new music.” But when I heard Giacinto Scelsi’s music for the first time it surpassed all of my previous notions about what was possible with composed music — it felt like music from an ecstatic vision. Even as I listen to the track now, it immediately accesses some occult realm of sublimity that feels similar to the music I first heard in church but with an unbridled intensity and depth.

Another more recent selection that fits into this category — but that is different in that it embraces a sort of stasis rather than dynamic movement — is the music of Catherine Christer Hennix. If you don’t know her, she’s a deep well of musical/mathematical/spiritual inspiration for me. Another music without a real equivalent in this day and age — something that echoes ancestral currents as well as the vibration of the cosmos itself. Thanks for reading/listening. Peace be with you. xoxo

[letterboxd]

Lonesome Cruiser.

Blockbuster composer Tom Holkenborg, aka Junkie XL, talks to Gemma Gracewood about composing for titans, his pride in Dutch cinema, friendship with George Miller and longing for Olivia Newton-John. Plus: his Letterboxd Life in Film and why he’s selling his prized collection of recording gear.

It has been a spectacular spring for Tom Holkenborg, the Dutch musician also known as Junkie XL, who has crafted the scores for multiplex fare such as Mad Max: Fury Road, Deadpool, Terminator: Dark Fate, Sonic the Hedgehog and the upcoming zombie banger Army of the Dead. Only weeks apart, two blockbusters landed on screens with his sonic stamp all over them: Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong and Zack Snyder’s re-realized Justice League.

Thankfully, the Godzilla vs. Kong score was complete by the time the Justice League telephone rang. Holkenborg—who had lost the Justice League gig along with Snyder the first time around—knew the Snyder cut was coming; he had closely watched the growing calls for it online. “Zack and I already started talking in 2019. He’s like, ‘What if we were to finish this? What would it take?’ Those conversations turned to ‘Well, how many recording days potentially do you need and how much of an orchestra do you potentially need?’ Finally, somewhere in April 2020, that’s when that phone call came: ‘Okay, light’s green, start tomorrow, and start running until it’s done because it’s four and a half hours’.”

Ray Fisher as Cyborg in ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’.

Holkenborg approaches the titanic task of blockbuster film scoring with an engineer’s mindset: “Building a fantastic, huge house with 20 bedrooms and the dance hall and the kitchen… You’re not going to start by building the third bathroom for the third guest room, right?” Once he has identified the scenes that are most important to his directors—for Snyder, they included the introduction of Cyborg, three fight set-pieces, and a scene of The Flash running that comes towards the end of the film—the composer identifies instrumental ���colors” in order to build a theme around each character. Then he holds some of those colors back, theorizing that “if you want like an, ‘Oh!’ experience by looking at a painting that has a huge amount of bright yellow in it, it’s way more successful to see fifteen paintings in front of it, where yellow is absent.”

The Godzilla vs. Kong score satisfies Holkenborg’s life-long love of both characters. “I don’t have a preference for either one. I love them both for various different reasons.” Their respective histories fascinate him: Godzilla as a way to make sense of Japan’s nuclear fall-out, and Kong as a gigantic spectacle that ended up attracting the sympathies of the audiences he was supposed to scare. Even when the science makes no sense (“what the fuck are plasma boosters, anyway?!”), Holkenborg is still happy to wax lyrical about the emotional depth of Kong’s stories, the elaborate concepts of the Godzilla-verse, and his musical approach to the pair—dark, moving brass for Godzilla, with synthesized elements “because he is a half-synthesized animal”, and a more organic, complex orchestration for Kong, featuring “one of the world’s bigger bass drums”.

Adam Wingard’s ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’.

All of this seat-shaking bombast is composed on an “insanely massive sound system” in Holkenborg’s small home studio (though he reassures pandemic-stricken film lovers that he has recently seen both Godzilla vs. Kong and Justice League on his laptop—and “really enjoyed watching it like that”). The process, he says, was “pretty intense”, but only in terms of the sheer amount of score needed. Composing in quarantine was not much different from his usual workflow. “I’m a pretty lonesome cruiser anyway. Composing, by nature, is like a solo exercise—obviously with assistance.”

Like many creatives (Bong Joon-ho recently told a film studies class that he is up at 5:00am most days to watch a movie), Holkenborg is an early riser, waking by 4:00am. “I’m super sharp between like 4 or 5:00am and 9:00am, so I like to do a lot of creative work in that slot.” He takes care of business until mid-afternoon, when another creative spurt happens. “And then I have another batch of calls usually to make, and then around 8:30pm, I’m going to retire for the rest of the day and just chill out a little bit and watch stuff that I want to see, read things that I want to read. Right now I’m studying Portuguese.” By 10:30pm, he’s asleep. “And then at three o’clock I get up.” (Needless to say, Holkenborg’s children are no longer small.)

The pandemic simplified a lot of things for a lot of people: for Holkenborg, it has been a moment to tidy up the physical side of his work. In November last year, he opened an online shop to divest the bulk of his gear—synths, pedals, guitars, drum machines and much more—that he has been collecting since the late 1970s. When friends told him he’d regret it, he disagreed. “At some point I’m going to die. I can’t take them to the afterlife. I also found out I don’t need them. I love to have them around, but I don’t need them.”

Tom Holkenborg with the bass drum used in the ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ score.

It certainly solves the question of what he’d take if his house was on fire. “The hard drives with sounds and music over the last 40 years, 45 years, that’s hard to replace. So, that would be it. I’m just thinking about things that are absolutely irreplaceable and there are not that many, really.” Alas, it’s bad news for that bass drum. “I can’t take that with me when the house is on fire. Unfortunately, it’s going to make the house burn longer.”

Anyone who has interviewed or spent time with Holkenborg will agree: he may be a lonesome cruiser, but he is also personable, funny, loves to settle in for a chat. As he lights his second or third cigarette in readiness for his Life in Film questionnaire, I’m curious about his relationships with the esteemed filmmakers he has worked with—who include his mentor, Hans Zimmer, directors Sir Peter Jackson, Tim Miller, Robert Rodriguez and, especially, Fury Road’s George Miller.

The story of how Holkenborg scored Mad Max: Fury Road bears retelling: that George Miller did not want a soundtrack (“he was convinced that the orchestration of sounds of the cars would be enough to carry the whole movie”), that Holkenborg was only brought in to create a little something for the Coma-Doof Warrior’s flame-throwing guitar, that they hit it off, the job grew, and grew, into a score that covers almost the entire film.

The Coma-Doof Warrior in ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015).

What is his best memory of Fury Road? “Well, obviously, when I saw the movie for the first time and I was like ‘what the hell am I looking at?’,” he laughs. “What I mostly look back on is the friendship that I developed with George and the film school one-on-one that I got admitted to, while being paid at the same time, to study with somebody like him. We would talk all night about all kinds of things and nothing, because that really defines our relationship so much—a joint interest in so many different things.”

Happily, Holkenborg and Miller are working together again, on Three Thousand Years of Longing. “It’s really great to be in that process with him again. It’s just like about pricking each other with a little needle. It’s like, ‘Oh, why are you saying that?’ We do that with each other to keep each other sharp. ‘Oh, but if you’re doing this, I’m going to be doing that.’ And then, ‘Oh, if you’re doing that, I’m going to be doing this.’ So it’s really interesting.”

What is your favorite Godzilla film?

Tom Holkenborg: 1989’s Godzilla vs. Biollante. It’s a very obscure one where he’s basically fighting a giant rose. Let’s not look for the logic there.

Why has that particular Godzilla captured your heart? It’s so corny. Yeah. Mothra vs. Godzilla is also great. Mothra looks like a very bad Arabian carpet that was imported through customs and it got delivered by FedEx completely ruined and then laid outside for like four weeks in the rain.

‘Godzilla vs. Biollante’ (ゴジラvsビオランテ, 1989).

What is the first film you remember seeing in a cinema? Bambi. I was six years old, yeah.

And is there a film you have fond memories of watching with your family—a movie that became a family favorite? Not, like, a family favorite because our opinions were too diverse for that, but the next movie that became very important to me when I was a little older was Saturday Night Fever. I thought the soundtrack was, like, groundbreaking, mind-blowingly insane. It’s not necessarily those three massive beats of the Bee Gees on there, but all these other really alternative, left-field tracks by bands like Kool & the Gang. And the way that that darker disco music played against that really dark movie about what it’s like to live in New York and become a competitive dancer, it’s incredible. And still, today, it’s one of the movies where film music and the film itself had so much impact on me, even though it’s not a traditional film score in that sense. It’s incredible.

What is the film that made you want to work in movies, given that you also have a whole musical career separate from movies? (Enjoy Junkie XL’s early 2000s remix of Elvis Presley’s ‘A Little Less Conversation’.) For me, the move from a traditional artist into film scoring was a very slow gradual process. There’s not one movie that pushed me over the cliff. It’s just, like, all the great movies that were made. And I still have a list of obscure movies, classic movies that I need to see.

Yesterday I saw the weirdest of all, but I do want to share this: the original, uncut R-rated version of Caligula, [from] 1979. He [director Tinto Brass] was notoriously brutal and he organized orgies and had terrible torturing techniques. But it’s really weird, there’s Shakespearean actors in there, and then it goes to full-on porn sections. It’s really weird. The music is incredible. You can find it online. You will not find it anywhere [else]. I can just imagine what this must have felt like in 1979 when the film came out. Suspiria, that’s another one. It’s just like, how weird was that thing?

What is your favorite blockbuster that you did not compose? Ben-Hur. I’ve seen that one at least 20 times.

What’s your all-time comfort re-watch? The movie I’ve seen the most is Blade Runner. It’s just, like, it’s a nice world you’re stepping into, that fantasy. It’s not necessarily because I have memories [of] that movie that brings me back to a certain time period, it’s not that. It’s just that I just love to dwell in it. It feels a little bit like coming home. You can use it as comfort food, you can use it as, “I’m not feeling anything today”, or the opposite. You feel very great and you feel very inspired and it’s like, “Oh, let’s go home and watch that movie again.”

Terrence Malick’s ‘The Thin Red Line’ (1998).

Hans Zimmer has been an important mentor to you. Do you have a favorite of his scores? Yes, The Thin Red Line. It’s also the filmmaking of Terrence Malick—he forces a composer to think a certain way. He would always say, “It’s too much, make it less, make it smaller, make it this, make it that.” So, A, it’s a very good movie and B, he got Hans into the right place and Hans just over-delivered by doing exactly the right things at the right time and then shining just because of that.

Who is a composer that you have your eye on and what is one of their films that we should watch next? It’s so sad to say, but I mean, let’s call it like a retrospective discovery if you will. I’m so sad that we lost Jóhann Jóhannsson. He was a composer I felt really close to. We started roughly in the same time period making our way in today’s world. Also, Jóhann came from an artist background, even though it was a modern classical background. He made really great records, great experimentation with electronic elements, with classical instruments, and the mix between the two of them—very original way of looking at music. With Denis Villeneuve as his partner in crime the movies that they did were just mind-boggling good, whether it was Sicario or Arrival or Prisoners, and his voice will truly be missed among film composers. So people that are not super familiar with his work, I would definitely check it out.

‘Turks Fruit’ (Turkish Delight, 1973).

What is a must-see Dutch film that we should add to our watchlists? Holland has small cinema, but it has a really rich cinema and a very serious cinema culture. Usually because there’s not enough work in film, people are serious stage performers but then they also act in movies so they understand both really well. And we’ve delivered. There’s a string of actors that make their way to Hollywood or star in well-known series, whether it’s like Game of Thrones, or what we just talked about, Blade Runner. Many directors like Paul Verhoeven, Jan de Bont, the cameraman.

And so a movie that I’d like to pick is an old movie, called Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight) from the 1970s. Rutger Hauer is a younger guy, like, this completely irresponsible guy that starts this relationship with a really beautiful young girl, and they do all these crazy things, they do a lot of drugs and they have a lot of sex. He’s just like a bad influence on her.

Then he finds out she [has] cancer and it’s terminal. And to see him deal with that, and to see him want a change, but also in that change he does a lot of bad stuff at the same time… It was a sensational movie when it came out. And it actually was directed by Paul Verhoeven, one of his earlier films. When you see it, you’re just like, ‘Why am I watching this?’ for the first 45 minutes and then it starts and it’s like, ‘whoa’. So it’s really good, even in retrospect.

Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta in ‘Grease’ (1978).

What is the sexiest film you’ve ever seen? When I was super young, it was definitely Grease, with Olivia Newton-John, when she was in her catsuit at the very end of it. I had her picture on my bedroom, above my bed sideways because I was only like ten years old or something. I was so in love with Olivia Newton-John. It wasn’t the film per se, it was her. Yeah, I find, personally, movies from the ’70s to be more sexy, but it has something to do with the super-loose way that people were dressed and people were behaving.

And the other one was later in life: Basic Instinct. Sharon Stone. I’m not talking about like the famous shot, right, where she crosses her legs. I’m not talking about that, but the way that she acts throughout the whole movie. It’s insane. It’s really great.

Are there any films that have scared you? Like, truly terrified you? Yeah, I’m not a big fan because I get sucked up too much in it. The found [footage] horror movies like Paranormal Activity and things like the Japanese version of The Grudge, I cannot watch that stuff. That gets me too much. Because when I watch a film, I cannot watch it with one eye half open, the other one closed, like, ‘Okay, kind of cool, interesting’. I just get sucked into it.

Is there a film that has made you cry like no other? Oh yeah. Multiple. Once Upon a Time in America. The Godfather. Hable con Ella (Talk to Her). Betty Blue.

Thomas Holkenborg, AKA Junkie XL.

These are the films that make you weep? Not like on a regular basis, but I remember those were the ones that I really got hit. I’m talking particularly about the third Godfather. That whole end scene when they get out of the church and then… It’s really well-acted. So many Godfather fans that were dismissive of the film when it came out, in retrospect, ten, fifteen, 20 years later, are like, ‘it’s a really good film’. And I actually think so.

Final question. Is there a film from the past year that you would recommend, that you’ve loved? [Long pause.] The thing is that I watch pretty much a movie a day. So, that’s like three to four hundred movies. It [has] happened so often that I watch a film and then I’m just like an hour and 45 minutes in, it’s like, ‘wait, fuck, I’ve seen this thing before’.

So, we have an app for that… [Laughs.]

Related content

Junkie XL’s Letterboxd Life in Film list

Freddie Baker’s review of Justice League

Dutch Cinema: Danielle’s extensive list of more than 2,000 films

Letterboxd Showdown: The Perfect Score (best film scores)

The official Junkie XL Reverb Shop

Follow Gemma on Letterboxd

[newyoungjustice]

Yes!! Your headcannons give me life!

Thanks! Okay so I’ll put this in two groups, since the team has a two or three-ish year age difference (Maya and Damian are oldest and Irey and Jai are youngest). I’ll do a middle school/9th grade set and a 10th/11th grade set.

Younger teens (13-15)

•They occasionally skip patrol and go eat ice cream on a rooftop

•Kathy keeps growing her hair out and has braids down to her back

•They each have their own room at titans tower

•Over one summer, the traveled the world and space for an intensive training program (think like summer camp throughout space for superhero kids). All of them would say that it was one of the best summers of their lives.

•Kathy gets a scholarship to Jon and Damian’s privite school.

•Maya and Colin also end up at the West-Reeves school.

•The others go to school in their respective cities.

•All of the kids are highly encouraged to have other hobbies outside of being a superhero.

•Irey and Jai are super into science, and Jai plays on the basketball team. Irey’s on the soccer team. Maps is in the detective club and takes martial arts and visual arts. Kathy runs a farm and is on the soccer team, dance team, tech club, and at one point joins rowing and sailing (she’s a really fast learner and likes to do it all.)

•Maya gets forced to go to normal school by her teammates, so she joins a culinary program, and is in cross country and at one point, Kathy makes her join the dance team. She hated every bit of it.

•Colin and Jon play on the football teams at their schools, and Jon is also in a science club.

•Lian does triathlons and plays tennis. She also is in her school’s orchestra. Damian takes art and plays the violin. He does classical martial arts training too, and he bounces around sports teams occasionally. Suren is the only one not to have at least gone to school at one point, so he kinda just tags along with everyone else.

•All of them have been in a school play/musical at least once.

•They have a bi-annual game of assassin with all the other young heroes. The justice league never expected it to be so intense, but people camp out outside of people’s rooms and have tried to get their person mid-battle.

•At this point, the league *sometimes* lets them go on space missions or multiple day long missions by themselves.

•They have violated almost every Justice League rule at least once.

•Every day is April fools day at Titans Tower.

Older teens (15-17)

•They all frequently go to the beach together.

•All of them are best friends, and despite their difficulties working together in the beginning, they are great partners at this age.

•The ten of them are all so chaotic they’ve been banned from a solid 80% of meetings/events.

•Sometimes if they don’t have school or anything, they just go with Kathy on her ship and wander around in space.

•Kathy still has her farm and the whole team, especially Jon, help her run it. Damian also helped her hire some people for when she can’t make it to the farm.

•None of them really want to quit the life or the team in the near future.

•Damian opened a cruelty free animal shelter in Gotham.

•Maps still goes to Gotham academy.

•They all have their struggles, but everyone is really happy at this time.

•For some of their school dances, they invite all of their teammates and everyone just shows up in a big group.

•Damian took them all to a Wayne gala, and they all had fun for like an hour and then everyone snuck out and just hung out.

[journaloftomfooleryandjapery]

All the TOP 10 OF THE DECADE posts made me want to make one of my own, so here’s my 10 fave games this decade:

Yakuza 0  Shovel Knight  Nier Automata  Metal Gear Rising  Gunvolt Chronicles Luminous Avenger IX Final Fantasy XV   Scott pilgrim vs the world the game Undertale Persona 5  Doom

Danganronpa 2, New Vegas, Touhou Luna Nights, Katana Zero and Mario Odyssey all only barely missed out, and it was a tough decision not to include them. I loved the shit out of those games but thinking it through I decided they were just slightly less loved by me than the above.

Below the cut are some extended thoughts (of varying length) on the games included:

Just CTRL F if you wanna find a specific one

Yakuza 0

Every Yakuza game is delightful and this is definitely the best one, in my opinion. The Yakuza games appeal to me for a lot of reasons: the combat, the story, the variety of activities, the look of it all and the music. I feel like its a very unique game experience with its blend of weird in-depth side activities, serious crime drama, manly man masculine combat friendship melodrama, metal gear-esque convoluted conspiracies and a surprisingly compassionate view of the world it takes place in. 

The combat is what drew me in initially because it just feels good, the feedback of stomping on a dudes face in yakuza is delivered perfectly, and the attacks are brutal, hard and flashy. Its a very solid and satisfying combat system and in 0 its the best it has ever been. The ability to switch between 3 different and equally fun fighting styles on the fly really lets you mix things up and adapt your approach, every style feels fun and useful. If i had to pick a favorite it would be slugger, but its a tough choice, and they are all very viable and FUN.

Yakuza 0 also gets big points for having the best story in the series. The protagonists feel much more interesting in this era, the fights feel more earned in this game than others, the relationships are incredibly touching (I’m almost mad majima didnt stay with makoto) and the substories (and some parts of the main story) are the funniest they’ve ever been. Stuff like the quasi-stealth mission where you have to make sure women don’t see you buying a porn magazine for a child, and the extended scene of kiryu trying to guess the right business manners for a meeting had me laughing so much i was i was almost in physical pain.

The extensive business and host club substories get you tons of extra game content and are good enough to almost be there own game. The other games in the series have extended side activites of varying quality, but i think 0 had a rare case of all of these being, basically, perfect. The team obviously agrees since host club management came back repeatedly, but never as good as it was here.

Being set in the 80s elevates almost everything in the game because of the outfits, money flying out of every enemy you attack, the classic sega games you can play at the arcade (Outrun is so much fun and I’d have never have given it a proper go otherwise) and the disco minigame everyones made a meme out of (that music is so catchy).

As a final note this game has the best boss fights and music in the series, which is a very high standard to surpass when you look at the rest of the series. The dual final boss fights, the recurring boss for kiryu and almost every majima fight are highlights of the entire series for me. 

0 is going to end up being one of the few games I’ll never sell my copy of because i want it available for me to play forever, its a complete delight.

Shovel Knight

This game has been analysed to hell and back, so i wont have much original to say i suppose. Admittedly i did enjoy the first campaign but it didnt completely win me over, plague knights campaign and beyond was what really made this an all time greats for me. It’s one of very few games that gets the NES+SNES platforming appeal 100% right and essentially surpasses most games of the day, with almost perfect pacing, challenge and level design. IT helps that the whole world and story and look is charming as all hell. It’s an easy game to love and the more you play it the more that feels justified. Being PACKED with great content is also a plus. If you liked the first campaign you can just keep going through a set of campaigns about as good that only really rehash some level assets. I would say its one of the best 2D platformers ever for me, if not quite my true number 1.

ALSO JAKE KAUFMAN KNOCKS IT OUT THE PARK WITH THIS SOUNDTRACK

Since i have little else to add to the shovel knight discussion, here’s my ranking/thoughts on each campaign

Plague of shadows. BEST storyline, great levels with a really cool gameplay gimmick, the characters are all cute and the ending really makes me feel for him. both sorry for him at first and then a very real AAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW for LOVE

King of cards. king knight is just fun as hell to play as, he doesnt have that many tools but his movement is just crazy fun and i love the flair in all his animations. also has that rad final boss. joustus is ok i guess.

Shovel of hope. uuuuuuh what can i even say about this. its good, and the melancholy dream bits add a lot to the mood of the story. we’ve already analysed this campaign within an inch of its life i dont think i can say anything new. wish we could fight the battletoads on pc.

Specter of torment. still fun and i appreciate the tone change, but i didnt care as much for the characters and the mega man-esque level select doesnt suit shovel knight imo. specter knight has a lot of fun movement options though. mainly i just love GRINDING and the diagonal slash. i dont give a fuck about reize

Nier Automata

I feel a tiny bit ashamed i have so little to say about this considering it is one of the most emotional experiences i have ever had with a story. If i lsten to the final version of weight of the world i still cry just from remembering this game and how it made me feel. i think its one of the greatest narratives of the century but i can barely get across the appeal to anyone who hasnt already played it. its a story about hope, despair and the nature of the human race that never feels like its preachy or pretensious or taking on more than it can handle. it made me feel all kinds of emotions deeply and intensely, it genuinely made me burst into tears about 10 times, maybe more. even putting aside the ggrand narrative, theres so many cool character moments and bits of world building and visual eements and tragic little side stories that you would need a whole book to talk about them all while doing any real justice to them. i loved it so much that im paying £70 to see an orchestra do the soundtrack live. I want to hug and kiss 2b and 9s better. i just love it deeply and i find it hard to explain why it makes me feel that way, but its a dark beautiful and hopeful story where every moment feels earned. the despair of the story giving way to genuine hope with the rest of the world helping you fight for it is such an intensely emotional moment that you could never replicate outside of this kind of story and medium. how the fuck do i explain that to anyone that doesnt already get it. I’m glad this game exists

Metal Gear Rising 

Well, complete tone shift here. Platinum made a lot of great action games in the last decade that all dig into that same itch for DODGE SLOW MOTION BANG BANG BANG alongside great soundtracks, visuals and awesome set piece moments. Just intense, flashy, awesome combat. Picking a favorite of the decade was the hard part, because a platinum game had to be one of my faves of the decade. The closest was transformers, but mgr has a couple of things about it that put it above the rest of the platinum catalog for me.

The story actually works very well at still being metal gear while in the platinum formula, its about the cycle of violence and FINDING YOUR OWN PURPOSE and it works weirdly well. The strangest part is that it feels like a legitimate sequel to metal gear 4 tonally while still being the crazy action game it is

Raiden is just super fun to play as, while I’ll always miss the DODGE SLOWMO in a platinum game parry and zandatsu give a great flow to fights and there’s real exhilaration to parrying a hard chain of attacks and tearing out a bunch of enemies spines at once every time

raiden is also just  a fun protag, it truly allows me to embrace that kind of stereotypical edgy cool anime swordsman he embodies

BEST PLATINUM SOUNDTRACK DO NOT @ ME

Bosses just rule

one of the best final bosses ever, in my opinion? maybe that’s controversial, but armstrong gets an insane amount of characterization and pure PRESENCE out of such a small amount of screen time and the fact he feels like such a perfect rival to raiden so quickly is kind of nuts to me. within about half an hour you are ready for the ultimate final showdown with everything at stake, and then the gameplay 100% delivers on that with a fight that is challenging as hell and just feels climatic and intimidating. its a little thing, but having this dude just smack you around with his hands and almost no fighting skill after a game filled with crazy flippy cyborg ninjas makes him feel TOUGH and the way you finish him off? it just rocks, plain and simple. I don’t think i need to justify slices a massive dudes chest open and ripping out his giant still beating robot heart as the music climaxes and our cool edgy protag literally says WE’RE DONE HERE. truly, it has to be this way.

Gunvolt Chronicles Luminous Avenger IX 

For fast twitchy 2d platformers this barely beat out Katana Zero and Touhou Luna Nights, but i think its just a little better. The skill ceiling on this game is high as hell and once you really get to grips with it, its an experience you cant find anywhere else. its just satisfying as hell to be able to get through the point where you can ZOOM  through these levels by making use of copen’s dash and lock-on and weapons well enough. once you get good enough to get through a hole level without touching the ground, you just cant go back. I liked this enough to get an S rank on almost every level. this game just rules, man.

story, art and music are all great as well. but they pale in importance next to zippy jetpack zoom zoom fun time.

also great for having a cool twist that i genuinely did not see coming at all

Final Fantasy XV   

For context, my experience of FFXV was not the base game so i cannot personally address the concerns of the version at launch, which i hear from others was a total mess! The game has been updated and changed so much that it is probably almost unrecognizable aside from the absolute base aspects of it. The version i am talking about is, as far as we know, the “final” version released right before Episode Ardyn. There was of course an update after this, but it only added DLC compatibility and a few items, so it means very little in the grand scheme. I also played all of the dlc and watched all the periphery material to get the full, messy disjointed experience. it is also worth noting that the only other FF game i have played is the classic title Mario Hoops 3 on 3 Basketball. I feel it important to tell you this before getting into things so that you can have a full idea of the perspective i come at the game from.

This was chosen over Mario Odyssey and someone will probably kill me for that. I just think its a great emotional story that does a fantastic job of making you care for all the characters, and the world feels massive and full of cool stuff to see. It’s my favorite open world game and i love The Boys.  its not the kind of thing i usually play but i think it genuinely had a great story and its a very fun game to just explore and spend time in. ffxv truly understands the emotional bond between The Lads and it is fun to kill big monsters with your party

(they kinda ruin the last cutscene in english, in japanese he says I LOVE YOU GUYS and it makes me cry but in english he goes U GUYS ARE THE BEST which just isnt the same. a small nitpick though. a lot of this game made me cry regardless, its just great at creating an emotional bond)

I admire the insane level of ambition in the visuals and scope, and i bought every dlc for it because it was just that good. the ifrit boss fight and all the giant monsters are just amazingly epic in scale. the “found a cool rock” post is what i truly admire about this game summed up. 

all the ancillary material for the game is great and worth getting into, with the exception of the Comrades multiplayer expansion. Everything else adds depth to the story and the world without being entirely necessary for you to get through the story. the anime and the dlc all really feel worth getting into without being something you have to see to get The Full Experience

the giant monsters are cool

Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game

Being from 2010 this game only just makes it in, but it was my favorite beat em up this decade and a source of great nostalgia for me. It had a pretty big impact on music and art tastes in regards to games, and in retrospect this games existence was very much a dream team scenario. Paul Robertson is a great sprite artist who does a lot of good work, Anamanaguchi have gone on to become one of my favorite bands (another winter is still one of their best tracks imo) and at the time this came out i was obsessed with scott pilgrim. That plus the beat em up gameplay makes this kind of a perfect blending of a lot of my specific tastes. Playing this brings me back to the time in my school life that i played it very distinctly, a more comfortable time in my life for sure, and i think the game still stands up excellently. I hope that someday it will get a rerelease so others can enjoy it. I give this another play through every year or so, but i wish id gotten the dlc while it was still available

Doom

ITS VIOLENT ITS FAST ITS FUN ITS METAL

i like this game because of the intense adrenaline rush and violent catharsis it gives me, essentially a constant dopamine rush

fun game good

Undertale

I’m glad i got to this before the massive wave of spoilers and popularity came about. It’s a great story with some fun gameplay, and i think SANS UNDERTALE was one of the best boss fights this decade. Its a shame that for so many new players this experience is going to be ruined by spoilers

Persona 5 

Danganronpa 2 and fallout new vegas were close contenders for this last spot. I actually made a post about my thoughts on this game before https://journaloftomfooleryandjapery.tumblr.com/post/184341270554/nue-is-great-love-his-goofy-design-when-life-will but essentially 

Essentially, its got a great cast of characters, a cool slick look, great monster designs, a fun gameplay loop of collecting monsters and grinding stats while waiting for the next big event, and a surprisingly good story

No idea if royal is any good, but its on a pretty small list of games that i might actually take the time to replay

[avaliveradio]

Zealandia Angel Release 'Christmas Dreams' a Touching New Holiday Single

‘Christmas Dreams’ has been written in the middle of the Global Financial Crisis. My family's business crashed, my child was sick. It was time for me to decorate our Christmas tree. It would've been exciting if it was not for those two things. 

Artist: Zealandia Angel

New Release: Christmas Dreams

Genre: Dream Pop - Holiday

Sounds like: : Selena Gomez, Hasley, Alizee

Located in: : Auckland, New Zealand

This is when a beautiful melody poured into her mind along with the words: 

"I will hang my dreams On the Christmas limbs Evergreen, 

ever-bright They will shine all night For Peace and Hope and Grace.  Over praying heads, Over infants’ beds, 

Over healthy and sick, Over proud and meek, 

For Hope has come to the Earth. 

Through the needles I see Angels looking at me, 

A sweet and gentle voice Tells me to rejoice: 

Whether young or old, 

Whether scared or bold, 

Whether dancing or crying, 

Whether living or dying For Peace has come to the Earth."

Music Talk… Ava Max is the only singer who I respect. I wish I could have her mid belt. But I am thankful for what I am blessed with and hope to be a blessing to others.

This Christmas, many people can resonate with the message I received 10 years ago. A sad Christmas is still Christmas. Have hope, help others, and be blessed, as well as stock up on antivirals like L-Lysine, elderberry, and EpiCor Plus.

Right now we are...

I recently received my weekly Shazam report and there was 1 shazam of my "Christmas Dreams" from California. It means 2 things to me. It is played on air and someone liked it enough to learn more about the artist. I have a dozen of singles with music videos that are pending releases. I am excited about sharing it with our label's 35 000 subscribers and 6000 radio stations. I am also excited that I was personally invited to participate in the 17th IAMA (International Acoustic Music Awards). I hope my Christmas Dreams will win a prize.

About the Artist...

Zealandia Angel is an actress, singer, writer, and composer who is known for Song of Songs, Diamond Bay, and other musicals. She learned mixing and sound engineering from Grammy Awards recipient - Andrew Scheps who mixed Adel's 21, Lana Del Rey's Born to Die, and Lady Gaga's Artpop.

Her music is an extension of her character: gentle but not submissive, fragile but not broken, vulnerable but empowering.

In 2020 ZA released her Neo-Victorian album Virgo De La Mar. The album and the artist achieved great reviews such as "super fresh" (The Groove Cartel) and "super talent" (MindMassage Music). She was credited with creating "a beautiful genre of music" (Italian composer Riccardo Pietri), having a "beautiful" voice and "great ethereal tone" (Jeremy Lim Music), "pioneering sound ... which dares to go places others will not" (SoundOut).

Here is what fans say:

"Again this artist has done it again with delivering great work into her songs. The song provides creepy, yet pleasant echo vocals along with great beats into the mix..." and "You all need to listen to this voice angel. The voice is tuneful, amusing, melodious and a very powerful one."

But Zealandia Angel who spent 2 years in her New Zealand Bay of Islands studio producing this 25 track album already had an ample amount of artistic training and dramatic performance in her past. In her Russian university, she was allowed to display her course mastery (in lieu of a final exam) by writing a classic tragedy in the dactylic hexameter style of Homer. Her translation and performance of the Latin song Gaudeamus Igitur won 1st place in a student vote. She was an honor student and received a scholarship from Concordia University in the USA from which she graduated with a BA in Humanities.

Her deep understanding of cultures, histories, and the ever-changing nature of arts allows her to have a bird's eye view of the current trends as well as seeing beyond the horizon. Her passion and vision for music are her only guides in her journey. "It gives a real middle finger to the conformist nature of music today and gives its alternative take with its production and vocals. The surreal lyrics and clear pitch of the vocals are fascinating and disturbing" (SoundOut)

While in attendance at Concordia she participated as a soprano in a joint venture between Concordia Theological Seminary and Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra in the production and performance of a 90-minute long recording of Brahms's Requiem. To make the atmosphere even more intense the maestro decided to deliver the piece from a mezzanine while leaving the audience in complete darkness. When the performance was over she walked down to meet the audience just to find them in tears. People whom she did not know were giving her hugs like her closest friends.

Zealandia Angel was born in a provincial Russian town north of Ukraine. Her father was a fighter pilot born in Moscow. Her mother was a math teacher born in Voronezh county, Russia. While her parents were stationed overseas, she lived in her grandparents' historic house on Main street surrounded by a century-old garden of mature fruit trees, lilacs, and roses and her Grandma's folk songs sung in Russian and Ukrainian.

At home, as a teen, she had an impressive collection of literature assembled by her father but her favorite book was a small collection of poems by Evgeniy Baratinski. They were philosophical and sophisticated. She was trying to grasp the superior thinking patterns which were not found in works of other poets.

Her family legend claims that her father is a great-grandson of Prince Peter Ivanovich Meschersky. According to the legend, Peter Meschersky took his wife's maid as his wife after his wife died in 1867. He never formally remarried and the relationship was never legalized. They had a daughter, Maria, born c. 1870.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Maria and her husband, Vasiliy Mininkof, abandoned their property in Smolensk and dissolved into the masses of Moscow, avoiding political repressions. Maria never told the story and it nearly was buried with her. After her death, it was accidentally mentioned by a drunk uncle.

If the story is true, then, some of Zealandia Angel's ancestors were Ruriks who were Vikings and ruled Russia before the Romanovs for over 700 years. Her family DNA test found traces of the Scandinavian DNA, which would be expected in that scenario. She jokingly calls herself 1/16 princess, 15/16 - angel.

On her mother's side, she had a beloved Grandfather who was a Jew but it was disclosed to her only after his death. Foods that she ate at home and thought were Russian turned out to be sold at the Jewish sections in US supermarkets. The song Gooseberries is a true love story of her grandparents during the trials of WWII when her grandfather spent 7 years in concentration camps. Her second album will be named after this song.

Zealandia Angel's husband, Joshua, inspired all of her love songs. He was born in San Antonio and graduated from TX A&M. Joshua is a software engineer who takes her music videos to the next level. He has an AI-equipped 3D render farm that can challenge Hollywood. They have 1 son.

Funny facts

The sound of military jets at night rocked her to sleep.

One time her Dad brought home a tall pile of rabbit drawings to her sheer excitement! It was the product of an assignment he gave to his military pilot cadets - to draw rabbits for his daughter.

In Russia, as a kid, she would climb a fence to sneak into the military territory after school to go see her Dad. At the time, he was the head of the aerodynamics department and had a partly disassembled fighter jet in the middle of his office.

Zealandia Angel learned English by reading the King James Bible in Russia. When she arrived in the US and was asked to read an NIV version in her theology class at Concordia University, the lack of eloquent style made her think it was a children's bible.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Alisha Riley aka Zealandia Angel

LINKS:

 https://youtu.be/VaM1rlATP3E https://open.spotify.com/album/6zimqifCgoDuCApTPH2yln?si=DId5vbj8TTWO8tBRXKBpbw https://twitter.com/ZealandiaAngel https://www.facebook.com/ZealandiaAngel https://www.instagram.com/ZealandiaAngel

Dropbox link or reverbnation link so we can download your song: http://zealandiaangel.com/christmasdreams

LINK to the photo we should use for this:: https://zealandiaangel.com/img/In_the_Forest.png

[plathway]

End of December so that means it’s BEST OF/END OF/WORST OF List time! As evidenced by the blog title I’m just going to be doing a summary (not in ranking order) of my favourite memories from 2017. I won’t even bother with a “Worst Of” because we all know about the terrible things that happened this year, things that we will still be dealing with long past 2018.

I personally am a huge fan of New Year’s Eve. Yes practically resolutions are never fulfilled and everything is extra expensive but I love the hopefulness that usually permeates around this time of year. The new year looks so shiny and new and there really is something seductive about (hopefully) becoming a new or better person. 

The last day of 2017 is a chiller. I was out taking a walk at around 4:30 and the air was so crisp and sharp but the light was so soft. It made me think about the year ahead, all shiny and new; hard and cold as yet untouched with familiar warmth. Daylight seemed to try it’s hardest to cling to the very end. The sky was all pale blues and soft rosy pinks. It made me the streetlight glow feel so golden yellow and the moon is full and such a pure perfect white, it looks like a pearl in the sky. 

I hope I become a better person than I was in 2017. I hope that I will have a lot of fun memories as I did in 2017. And now, in no particular order, my favourite 2017 memories. 

Art Shows: Mystical Landscapes, Blue Whale @ ROM and Georgia O’Keeffe @ AGO

I got to see some really cool gallery exhibits this year thanks to Helen. Mystical Landscapes was nice, got to see some of the classic Monet’s and Van Gogh’s. My favourite ones that I saw was the Blue Whale during one of the ROM’s Friday Night Lives and and the Georgia O’Keeffe at AGO’s First Thursdays.

The Blue Whale was really cool; whales are gigantic and everyone knows that but seeing it was really awe inspiring. I think it’s heart is like the size of a Fiat lol. I really really loved the Georgia O’Keefe exhibit. It was quite big and some of my favourite pieces were: – Lake George Reflection – Flower Abstraction 1924 – Abstraction White Rose – Horse’s Skull with Pink Rose – Farmhouse Window and Door (this one is really cool to see in person because it looks 3D or layered paper but it’s just paint.) – Mule’s Skull with Pink Poinsettias – From the Faraway, Nearby – Rust Red Hills – Red Hills and Bones – Red and Yellow Cliffs – Wall with Green Door 1953 – My Front Yard, Summer

I wish that you could see what I see out the windows – the earth pink and yellow cliffs to the north – the full pale moon about to go down in an early evening lavender sky behind a very long beautiful tree-covered mesa to the west- pink and purple hills in front an the scrubby fine dull of cedars- and a feeling of much space- it is a very beautiful world. Georgia O’Keeffe

Lol my celebrity encounter of the year happened when I was at the O’Keeffe show, I saw Camila Mendes from Riverdale walk by. I was honestly star struck. She walked by and I literally stood there gaping and then had a moment of panic because I wanted to chase after her but I also had to find Helen who had gone up ahead. I finally found her and then we spent the rest of the night running around the AGO looking for her but she had went back to her hotel to live tweet Riverdale lol. 

Women’s March

The Women’s March was the first protest that I’ve ever been to. My mom thought it was dumb of me for going because, “what is it really going to do?” which is a sentiment held by a lot of people. 

I went with Rebekah and it was a really fun experience. The turn out was much greater than I expected, not just in Toronto but all around the world. It felt nice being part of that crowd all with a similar goal. 

Brunch Club 

Brunch times with my Y&E girls and seeing baby Celeste! Lol it’s nice seeing Mei’s 1st OG team and Celeste who is the cutest baby in the entire world. 

Dangerous Dan’s

All the times Rebekah, Precillia and I would go to Dangerous Dan’s. We’d always get the same thing, a coffee shake for me and an uber Amy grilled cheese, with fries or onion rings on the side. Precillia would always get the gyros with a side of pierogies and Rebekah would get a grilled cheese and the owner would always tease her for being a vegetarian. And the very best, we’d get a cookie cow pie to share.

Unfortunately it closed due to the increasing gentrification, but the memories of going there starving with Precillia and Rebekah, hearing the rest of the staff yell at Heather (or Helen? I don’t remember) just laughing and eating the most delicious food was truly some of the best times. 

My first time at a vape lounge

The day of the TRL sale, (Rebekah and I made out like a bandit, the books were like FIFTY CENTS!!!!) Rebekah took Precillia and I to a vape lounge for the first time. I don’t know if it was what she rolled or if it’s because other people were smoking but I have never gotten that high in my life. 

We were discussing middle school crushes and it was my turn, I stopped right in the middle of my story and I felt like it was so hard for me to speak and I could not stop laughing, my voice got so high it was practically a squeak. 

Birthday Party @ BATL

This year for my birthday we went axe throwing and also shot bows and arrows. I don’t know what was my favourite part… seeing old friends and catching up, when they gave us photos of Trump to put in the bullseye… 

Actually, the highlight was when we played the most intense game of gigantic Jenga of my life. 

Escape Rooms

This year we really got into escape rooms. Two of the ones we did were super scary and one of them we beat! The first one we did we were all locked in individual stalls and had to work our way out of them, the second one was a diamond heist so I got to live out my dream of being an actual cat burglar. 

By far the scariest one we did was for Precillia’s birthday. The theme of the house is that we broke into a haunted house but it really turned out to be a murder house. And we had to break through a series of clues to try to escape. I am a big fucking baby so I was useless and spent the whole time screaming. As far as escape rooms went it was really atmospheric. It gave us a lot of fun puzzles to solve that were really hard. And we got to move around the small room by climbing through a hidden cabinet, running up and down the stairs, pulling things out of grates etc.  The hardest part was the actual physical component. We had to make it across this set of monkey bars, I went first and fell into the foam–Rebekah was the only one to make it across. Unfortunately we ran out of time but we made it nearly to the end. Rebekah was the Judas and would have sacrificed us all if we had the time. 

All the visits to Doc

Whether I was freezing in the winter, or getting a sun burn during the summer or any of the visits by myself… hanging out at Doc was always a fun time. Riverdale park is gorgeous. My favourite thing is to go there listening to opera and reading. 

Summer in Port Dover

This summer Precillia told us about Port Dover which is one of the few beaches in Ontario that has palm trees. There are only three of them but a guy wanted them here so badly he planted them and they stand there lol. Port Dover is truly one of the best beaches I’ve been to in Ontario. I wish we were near ocean water but the water in Port Dover is pretty nice for lake water.  We’ve only been three times but each time was amazing. I think my favourite was the second time when Precillia, Rebekah and Ayan went. I think it was after a storm or a storm was coming but we stayed out in the water as the sky turned clear to grey to all these different shades of blue. We saw a rainbow and that day Rebekah and Precillia found twenty dollars in the water and we also got a football from these guys that were chilling near us.  Sitting in Precillia’s car, loose limbed and sun kissed eating salty messy Subway sandwiches before Precillia sped us off into the night that was so blue it felt like we were being wrapped up in it, it was so thick. Every time I hear “Sex on Fire” I can feel Precillia’s car flying down the road and the blue of the night blocking out the sound of the world as that “YeahhhHhHhHhHhHHHHhhh” fills my ears. 

Bruce Peninsula

So, we did everything right starting off the trip lol. We set out really early, got all of our snacks and drove all the way up there… only to stand in the woods for a bit. The Bruce Peninsula has grown so much in popularity, especially because of the Canada Park’s Pass that there were only a few slots during the day that we could go and all of those were filled up. In the end we ended up going to Port Dover. 

Kudos to Precillia for the drive because it was long AF. We eventually got so hungry we were looking for the nearest place to eat and I think we drove to an A&W in some small town. It was full of old white people but it was easily the cleanest and nicest looking A&W we’d ever been in lol. 

Rebekah had an edible that she split with me and it really gave me a new appreciation for Ontario. I truly live in a beautiful province, there were so many gorgeous fields and fields of flowers and farm stands and we saw Mennonites just trundling along beside us in their horse and buggy.

Carly Rae Jepsen @ TSO

For Canada’s 150th birthday, actual Canadian treasure Carly Rae Jepsen played her greatest hits accompanied by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. I went with Precillia and it was truly a magical night. Everyone was dancing and singing along, it was just a fun night with great pop music full of love. 

Janet and Petr visiting

Janet is officially back in Canada with her husband Petr!!!! They came up to visit me for a week and I was ecstatic because I had my foodie buddy back. We ate at some of my favourite restaurants in Toronto such as Descendant for Detroit style pizza, Maha’s for Egyptian food, Hot Star fried chicken, Patois, FuZen, Tsujiri and some of my Kensington Market favourites as well.

Friendsgiving2k17

The second annual Friendsgiving was even more lit than the first if you can believe it! We got a beautiful house with a sauna and stuff this time because I got a credit from AirBnB because they cancelled my original reservation. I have like 5 memories from that night because I decided to compete with Tsering but I cherish all 5 of them. I know we did White Elephant, we had a lovely family dinner, I think Beer Pong was played and we played Monopoly for a few rounds and then Precillia and I murdered a unicorn cake. 

Expectations are HIGH for #Friendsgiving2k18 but know that Precillia, Rebekah, Ayan and I are going to pull it off. 

Anyways, those are some of my favourite memories of 2017! I know I had many more and I’m excited for what 2018 has to offer. I hope it’s nothing but good things for all of us.

Happy New Year’s Eve!

xoxo Cat

Today's featured image is by Pedro Miranda Filho

lmaoooo down to the wire here is my last 2017 post!!! End of December so that means it's BEST OF/END OF/WORST OF List time! As evidenced by the blog title I'm just going to be doing a summary (not in ranking order) of my favourite memories from 2017.

[firelord-frowny]

speaking of music, and speaking of things i hate,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so like. 

in the ~classical music~ world, there are these things called ~festivals.~ Not like coachella or whatever. these festivals are mostly an educational thing for music students. festivals can be for specific age groups, or skill levels, or both. they’re almost kinda mandatory - every professional player has attended festivals as a student. I’ve been to four, but a lot of people attend/attended them almost every year, sometimes multiple festivals per year. 

You almost always have to audition to get in. And for more prestigious festivals, those auditions are HELLA selective. Like... they’re only accepting players who are already more-or-less at a professional level. Maybe they wouldn’t win an audition for concertmaster of Berliner, but they could definitely be making a super solid living via gigs and teaching if that’s what they wanted to do. 

The faculty at these festivals are usually ~distinguished~ professors and performers from all over the world. Concertmasters, soloists, esteemed chamber musicians... if you’re on the faculty at a noteworthy festival, you’re Somebody in the classical music world. 

And basically, it’s supposed to be a setting where students can get intensive, higher-level training, and gain experience in collaborating with other players, learning how to function as a unit in a chamber group or orchestra, blah blah. 

But SOMETIMES at these festivals, there will be these random-ass students who just... 

suck. 

They’re nowhere NEAR the level of every other player. And their ineptitude is glaringly obvious in every rehearsal. And their peer are ALWAYS frustrated because it’s just unnecessarily difficult to still do your own best when there’s someone in the group who isn’t playing in tune, or who’s rhythms are off, or who’s just generally unable to keep up at all whatsoever. And then it’s also demoralizing to the one who sucks, because now they feel like shit for being the obvious Weak Link. 

And those sucky students are AAAAALLLLWWWWAAAAAAYS the private student of one of the professors who are faculty members. They didn’t audition to get in, because if they had, they would have been turned away unanimously. But for SOOOOME REASON, these professors think that Their Student is somehow special or important enough to still deserve to participate. Nevermind how it’s going to negatively impact the learning of all the other students who actually auditioned, and who are actually able to play the shit they’re there to play. Nevermind how it’s going to impact the confidence of the student who’s so far behind that they can’t play a single measure without obvious errors. 

It’s so maddening to me bc like...

There are programs suitable for students who aren’t super advanced yet. There are programs for intermediate-level players where they can gain experience in chamber music and orchestral repertoire, and take lessons with gifted teachers. A student who’s struggling to get through Suzuki book 4 and can’t play play the dotted rhytms in Mozart’s “The Hunt” does not need to be at a festival alongside students who are playing Prokofiev Sonatas and Janacek string quartets. It doesn’t do anything useful for ANYONE! It only makes everyone’s experience worse! 

[dailymusingsofamedic]

19th May 2020 - Ives

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

Robert Browning Overture (1908-1912) 

https://open.spotify.com/album/7I7GhxyRjPJkGRN7yMA11l?si=79f-cElQQUeYRJCagcDkTg Track 28 (I know right)

So some background. I’ve chosen Ives because one of his pieces ‘The Unanswered Question’ was formative in my appreciation of classical music, and I have a lot to thank my then Youth Orchestra director, Carl for that. Having chosen the composer, I then looked through a list of his compositions and found this. Another of the people who was instrumental in shaping my love of music has a name very similar to Robert Browning. It seemed like the obvious choice therefore. Now I don’t know any other Ives apart from ‘The Unanswered Question’; but that’s pretty wacky. I think I remember a story about his being a postman or something. Also, a composer clearly though. This work was written supposedly as one of a number of pieces written about/for famous authors. Unfortunately this is the only one he did. Hopefully not because it was shit.

Above - Did anyone consult Stokowski before making a marble sculpture of him and whacking it on the front of an album. I’d be requesting haematinics were he my patient. 

Scary opening. Brooding. I think that’s the right word, I always get brooding and broody mixed up. At 1:10 you get the first proper hint of uncomfortable dissonance. It’s short-lived at this point though. Lots of nice bassoon. 1:53 is beautiful, the winds playing very close together, with that string drone underneath is quite an interesting sound. 2:35 things become a bit more unhinged but then the woodwinds (except bassoons) just stop. 

The new section at 2:56 is horrible I’m sure it’s meant to be, but it is horrible. Loud, chaotic, dissonant but almost as if not intentionally, just because lots of shit’s going on at once. High winds in the background are awful. The whole section so far is really intense, but not intense like stimulating. It’s intense like that friend in the group that just won’t stop talking about that thing that nobody cares about for succch a long time and very loud. By 5:00 we’re still going with the chaos. I’m not enjoying it. There are musical patterns you can pick out, but none of them are pleasant on their own, let alone mangled in with 5-6 unrelated others. 

6:00 onwards starts to sound a bit more like music rather than noise. It’s still horrible, but in a different way, and tolerably so. By 7:10 however it’s just like an assault again though. At 7:25 I am very grateful for the drop in dynamics. The music is all of a sudden calm, and even beautiful again. It remains dissonant at times, but deliberately and cleverly so. The sound of the cor at 8:15 is very welcome. So far the low double reeds have been an important part of the piece’s texture. Again at 9:20 with the bassoon entry. 

From 10:00 I start to worry we’re going back into the crazy second section, but no. The passage from 11:00 sounds like the Ives I’ve heard before. Dissonant strings with a seemingly unrelated woodwind figure in the middle of the texture. It seems unrelated until the occasional bar where it fits perfectly and briefly with the surrounding harmony.

12:28, the brass come to the fore, and it sounds great. Regal but still ominous. Solo bassoon come in again from 13:40, and then joined by the oboe and clarinet shortly after.  15:03 Oh dear. Not again. We’re back into the horrible second section. It’s no more impactful the second time around. I find it impossible to focus on any line but the trumpet. It’s directionless, and difficult to appreciate. I think that if parts were missing, wrong, or changed, I wouldn’t really notice a difference. I always think that passages like that are a shame. Why bother writing a passage that’s deliberately chaotic, if it’s so chaotic you can’t hear the individual intricacies of how the parts are meant to go together? 18:08 is again musical. The strings and brass underneath are playing different, but at least related, things here. And it makes such a difference. I feel like we’re approaching a climax at 19:00.

Gosh the piccolos at 19:20ish are brash. The chord at 19:36 is expertly constructed, and takes us into a trombone solo, which then unfolds into a trombone and horn duet with ever growing string tremolos in the background. Unfortunately by 20:30 it’s all super weird again. 21:20 is interesting. The nonsense is still going on in the background but because of the weight of the brass, it only serves as a textural device, rather than a melodic or harmonic one. 22:09 is also horrible. The transition from 22:25 to the next quiet section is very dramatic. We know this quiet figure now. It does leave me wanting more though. I wouldn’t have added the tubular bell. 

Overall – 6/10. It’s a really difficult listen at times. The louder sections are very uncomfortable indeed, but the delicateness of some of the quieter sections does mean the piece has interest throughout. I will struggle to listen again I think, but I’m glad I did once.

Below is some really good Ives. I’d forgotten how delicious the dissonance was in this until I just gave it a listen. Brilliant. 

[tonguetiedmag]

interview: Joel Taylor

Combining undeniable musical talent with a charisma that lights up every room he enters, Joel Taylor is truly everything you could want out of a singer-songwriter. Since the Sydney-born, LA-based musician came out with his debut singles, Two Sides and What Good is Love? in 2017, he’s quickly established himself as a force to be reckoned with in the genre. With the release of his new single, Moment’s Notice last week that features his bold vocal melody being intertwined with the voices of an entire gospel choir, Taylor revealed a whole new side of his ability that is sure to keep fans coming back for more. 

Before his performance at Rockwood Music Hall here in NYC on November 7th, I was lucky enough to spend a bit of the evening catching up with him on where he’s at right now and what he has planned moving forward. Here’s what he had to say:

Let's start from the very beginning. How did you even get started in music?

So my dad was a jazz singer in the 70s, my mom was a piano player, and my grandfather was a piano player as well. He played for Roy Orbison, the Beach Boys, and the Everly Brothers so he played for a lot of people. The whole family’s always been into music and I grew up playing just for fun really. I wanted to be a professional tennis player actually. I think it was when I was about 12 that I started to do music properly and started actually caring. By the time I was 17, I was so far down the music rabbit hole that I chose it over tennis. I then moved to America straight away! So yeah, it was always something I was pursuing. 

How did physically moving from Sydney to LA affect your sound?

You know what? I’m going to say it didn’t affect my music that much actually. I grew up listening to so much classic American music. My grandfather and my mom love New Orleans blues and so much classic gospel and soul, so I was like ten and listening to Stevie Wonder and Billy Joel. I definitely have had a huge influence from American music. But, I didn’t really know how deep it got though until I moved to LA because I could really see that there are so many great musicians everywhere. You throw a rock and you hit an incredible musician. That depth of skill everywhere really put everything into perspective for me. You really have to be good or nothing happens. 

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned about the music industry while pursuing a career in it?

I always had this idea that I’d move here and have a record deal in six months and I’d be some famous singer. So definitely patience. I think that there’s no such thing as overnight success, just a lot of gigs and practice. I think I really learned not to rush myself and expect that everything should just happen. You don’t necessarily deserve it, you just have to be lucky enough and ready for it. I definitely had to learn how to slow down and just be more prepared so that if things did start to go my way I’d be ready. 

Whether they’re people you knew personally or people you generally look up to, who do you think really helped instill that advice in you?

I came here and studied music when I first moved to LA and I had a bunch of great teachers that were really hard to impress. They definitely gave me a bit of a kick in the butt because I could already play and I already had a sound. I felt like I knew what I was doing but I didn’t. At least not like these guys. They really let me know that there’s a lot to figure out. One of those teachers was my jazz piano teacher Kyle Schroeder who played with Frank Sinatra and was incredible. He knew if you were faking it so it was definitely a bit of a wake up call to put in serious effort.

What shows have you found to be the most memorable of your career? 

There have been some really great shows, like when I played the Troubador earlier this year and it was sold out. It was kind of electric feeling and it was one of those nights where it really just couldn’t have gone better. I was a little stressed because it’s the Troubador but it really just flowed. 

On the other side of things, I remember I completely train-wrecked a show when I was like 16 back in Australia. We do this concert where all of the schools in the country are a part of it. About 15,000 people go and its on TV for about a million more. I train-wrecked my song with an entire 80-piece orchestra. Something happened where I got a little lost in the middle and we were just in different points in the song. It was hilarious and terrible. You need a nice train-wreck to humble you a little bit. 

The video for “Give Myself Away” was worked on by some pretty notable people like Courtney Cox and Murray Cummings. How did that all come about and what was it like to work with them?

Bizzarely enough, I’m actually just friends with both of them. I met Courtney at a party and we became really good friends. She really loves my music which is great and she filmed a live video of me playing Two Sides about a year ago. She was always like “I want to do a real video!” and had this concept that had all of this artwork that came to life through drawings and animations. She was good friends with Murray Cummings, who's done all of the Ed Sheeran things, including the Songwriter Documentary. So they both just did it with me! It was so fun and its really cool since they’ve been around their fair share of successful people. 

What’re your goals for the next year in terms of your career?

There will definitely be plenty of shows! I just did a mini tour up the west coast that was really fun. Moment’s Notice came out on Friday and I’ve been sitting on that one for a while. It’s been finished for about six months but it’s been written for over a year and I couldn’t wait to get it out. Its one of those songs that I feel really close to. To get it in some TV or a movie would be amazing because it’s very cinematic. There’ll be shows from LA to Georgia to New York and we’re going to SXSW. I’ll have an EP with a couple more songs and then a full album so I want to build momentum to do all that. The next six months are going to be really packed and it’s very exciting! 

Can you explain the story of the new single “Moment’s Notice”? 

Funnily enough, I had a publishing meeting and at the meeting before, I had given them all of my songs. It was probably like 28 or 30 of them that I’d written at that point. A couple days before that meeting, they said “oh, can you play us a couple new songs?” and I had already given them all of my songs two weeks ago. So, I stayed up all night the night before the meeting and I wrote two songs which are actually two of my favorite ones. One of them is “Eyes Set On You” which isn’t out yet and the other was “Moment’s Notice.” I wrote them at about 5 in the morning on organ, in maybe 30 minutes or something and produced a demo with a whole choir of just me singing. It came about kind of out of nowhere. Just an inspirational, middle of the night kind of crazy time. 

The song is really about me moving from Australia and starting again and realizing that I was on the right path all of a sudden. It kind of hit me the second that I landed because I felt like “oh, I can start again.” I had a bit of a tumultuous childhood in some ways and when I moved to LA it was like I wiped the slate clean completely. It honestly felt like this weird rebirth. The song’s about putting all that shit behind you and starting again. 

If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would you choose? 

I’ll give you a fake answer and then a more real one. I’ve always thought about this, like the deserted island thing and I think if I had a Motown Greatest Hits album I would never go crazy. Honestly, I would be totally fine. I could also take a Beatles album and be great forever. So that’s a version of what you asked I guess. I think one song I could listen to forever would probably be “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5. It’s kind of a weird one, but every time I listen to it, I feel great. I have never not listened to it and felt awesome. 

Tongue Tied Signature Question: How would you describe your music to a deaf person?

I would say it’s rustic and earthy. I don’t know, I think it’s also a little like the ocean because a lot of my songs are very deep and super intense and emotional. I’ve always loved those sorts of songs. I like ballads and really thought-out songs. But I also have a bunch of more wild songs and I feel like the ocean is an overwhelming beast. Sometimes I feel like a lot of my music is simple and deep like a calm day on the ocean, some of it is really all over the place. I would also say woody, like a tree. I play piano and a play guitar so it’s kind of like an old tree in that way. 

Check out Joel Taylor online:

https://www.thisisjoeltaylor.com

https://www.thisisjoeltaylor.com/about/

https://twitter.com/joeltaylormusic?lang=en

https://www.instagram.com/thisisjoeltaylor/

Photos by: Mae Krell

Article by: Kasey Gelsomino 

[discoverthevibe-blog]

Musical Web

While taking this course, I realized how interconnected songs can be. Different genres and themes intersect to create a whole web of musicality. Towards the end of this course, I recognized that so many songs in this class are extremely recognizable, even to those who have never delved deeper into musical analysis! I will be taking a look at the more recognizable pieces of music throughout history and analyzing them with a fresher, more well-rounded perspective than I had at the beginning of this semester!

Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMAtL7n_-rc

I don’t think much new analysis can come from analyzing this song again, since I’ve actually done a listening log on it twice, accidentally! Also, I’ve been exposed to that piece since I was young, being involved in learning instruments like the guitar, and most intensely, the piano. This song perfectly embodies the ragtime genre; there is lots of syncopation, bright, jaunty, and bouncy melodies, and lots of piano! As there are no lyrics to focus on, gaining a sense of tone may be tough for some, but for Joplin, it is not a challenge because you can absolutely hear the happy tone, in his actual recording. Also, by using a wave-like contour, Joplin is able to not only increase and decrease the volume but also the tempo of the piece, leading to some great musicality. 

I think that Candelaria’s “stream” of swing jazz isn’t necessarily influencing “Maple Leaf Rag;” in fact, I believe it is the opposite. Ragtime absolutely influenced drag. Rhythm is extremely important in both ragtime and jazz; the bass line in “Maple Leaf Rag,” even though it s only being played by the piano, is extremely prominent and lends it hand to being able to being played by an actual upright bass with no issues! Syncopation also leads to a very dance-like song, which swing jazz is very reliant on! To add onto this, improvisation is used heavily in ragtime and in swing jazz! The freeform ideas led to new and interesting songs each time a song is played. I see some connections to the song “Hello! Ma Baby” as there is syncopation as well as some danceability to the pieces. Although the aforementioned piece has lyrics as well as strings, there are definitely jazz and ragtime influences!

Bernard Herrmann’s “The Murder” from the film, Psycho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyIxdOctioo 

This piece is absolutely some of Bernard Herrmann’s finest work. It is so recognizable, and it is even mentioned in conversation! My dad, recently, even referenced the song when talking about a creepy hotel experience he had; it definitely led to some laughs today, but when the song and its film, Psycho, first premiered, the suspense the song built was crazy! The staccato strokes from the strings are so influenced by fear as they are so jarring and dissonant. Something I didn’t realize at first but realize now is that the strings section used glissandos; that fast-paced movement of fingers along the violins’ strings lead to some very nuanced tones. One doesn’t think to expect to hear such a scary tone from beautiful violins. No lyrics in the piece lead to a more focused scene, as one doesn’t have to analyze lyrics while already analyzing the scene in its totality. 

The classical music “stream” has influenced this piece the most. Music, as a form of entertainment, has been a part of history for so long. With the invention of new technologies, like radio, cinema, and television, music becomes a more integrated form of entertainment, as it is much more accessible to the general public. If this piece was composed for a classical theatre setting, I do not believe it would have garnered the same reaction. However, by using the classical music “stream” to its advantage, Herrmann harkens back to earlier and more old-fashioned orchestra tropes but completely turns them on their head by being involved in a horror film. 

John Williams’ “The Imperial March” from the film, Star Wars: A New Hope

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzWSJG93P8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8-8xeUvS1g

This iconic piece from the epic film, Star Wars: A New Hope, definitely derives from Candelaria’s “stream” of classical music. As it is performed with a full orchestra, classical music from earlier periods definitely inspired John Williams to create a full-bodied and dark song. In the actual scene, the music sort of takes the back seat to the gargantuan spaceships and Darth Vader commanding the scene. However, the music is necessary because it sets the tone. If the song were much happier, it would be confusing to the listener, as the characters in this scene are seen as “evil.” This song has to be one of the most memorable leitmotifs in all of film music, in my opinion. The trumpets are extremely menacing, the tempo is march-like, and overall, it is a forceful and controlling motif. To expand on the tempo, since the song is called a “march,” it’s important that a 4/4 tempo is put in place, so walking can be in time to the music. This is not a triumphant tune, however. It is aggressive and terrifying, and a shadow of mysteriousness shrouds the character of Darth Vader and his motives, by way of this piece alongside the costume design and filming. While other composers have used leitmotifs in the past, John Williams has certainly become a pro at it, examining Richard Wagner extensively, since he is the earliest composer associated with leitmotifs. 

George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynEOo28lsbc

Although I do not particularly like this piece, I cannot deny how important it is for musical history. I can absolutely see the classical “stream” affecting this piece as well as lots of jazz influences. The orchestration is absolutely classical, but the rhythm and influences from different cultures in the United States are wholly a part of jazz. The length of this piece is something I take issue with, since I already find the song boring; the different themes sort of drag on, and although there are solos from clarinets and pianos, focusing was just super difficult while listening again.  Dynamic and tempo differences are used wisely in this piece, which I have to commend. 

Arthur Collins’ “Hello! Ma Baby”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q6kG2r41lQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkjsN-J27aU

This piece has classical and jazz “streams” in it. I grew up more focused on the frog’s performance of this piece, rather than the original composer’s, which leads to some bias for which I enjoy more. I enjoy the lively animation and more lively performance that Looney Tunes gives, rather than just the piano and voice in the original performance. However, the former is much shorter and leads to a more bare-bones analysis. Since the frog’s performance is fast-paced, it cuts out a large majority of the lyrical genius that Collins was writing about, something I didn’t particularly focus on during my original analysis. Since minstrel performers usually performed this piece, back in the day, it took more of a humorous tone as time went on. “Coon” is referenced in the lyrics, which is indicative of this. The more I look into the lyrics, the more I find them creepy for today’s standards. In this piece, the singer has never seen his girlfriend’s face; he has only listened to her voice and inflection. While long distance relationships are much more common today then they were in the past, there are many more ways to connect than just talking over the telephone; what if the singer was being catfished?! All kidding aside, I’m glad I took another look at this piece, and I now have a newfound appreciation for it. 

Music, as a connector for all people, is so important. In this class, I realized that songs are connected a lot more than how they originally seemed. Popular music today has such deep roots in older pieces and in older genres. However, by taking bits and pieces from older genres, composers can create new and originally pieces that affect today’s society in very profound ways.