#he orbited around a bunch of musicians i was seeing at the time

[jaerie]

Visiting some old friends

[joemuggs]

Chimes of Freedom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[things2mustdo]

Nature has given humanity a roughly one-to-one ratio of adult men to women, but the most attractive women are being taken out of circulation to either join alpha male harems or participate in degenerate lifestyle choices. This leaves the average man practically no choice in settling down with a mentally stable and cute woman in her prime.

In Islam, a man is able to marry four wives, which is what my wealthy Iranian grandfather did on his way to siring 24 or so children that included my dad (the exact number is a mystery). He took away three women that an Iranian man of lesser means could have married, creating a societal imbalance, but that’s nothing compared to what we have in the modern Western world, where a single famous man can command the sexual attentions of dozens—if not thousands—of women in their sexual prime, spoiling these women for normal men who don’t have the ability to tingle their vaginas with the same intensity.

How many actors, musicians, and sports athletes are trying to plow through as much prime pussy as possible? How many Hollywood directors and music producers are leveraging their positions for sexual gain? How many club owners, restaurateurs, Arab sheikhs, and politicians are doing the same? Each one is taking way more beautiful women out of circulation than men like my grandfather, all while elevating their standards to such an extent that no average man can ever gain their love, let alone two hours—or even two minutes–of their uninterrupted attention.

We also have to account for female lifestyle choices that are designed to delay or prevent pair bonding and marriage. The biggest is career. Most girls, while embarking on a career, balance out the boredom of working a meaningless job by hopping on the cock carousel and banging at least a few men every year. By the time a girl hits 25 years old, any man who meets her will have to deal with a walk-in closet of emotional issues and hang-ups from being pumped and dumped as much as a 1930’s brothel whore.

Then there is the Instagram and Facebook lifestyle that creates crippling dopamine addiction, which causes a girl to only be satisfied if dozens of men are actively thirsting for her every day. I estimate that if a girl has over 500 followers on Instagram, she is so used to attention from throngs of men that the love of one man cannot possibly satisfy her.

We must also throw in the growing “travel blogger” lifestyle where, instead of using only her body to get attention, a girl uses pictures and video from exotic locations to enhance her beauty. Other girls, with nothing substantial to offer the world, decide to showcase pictures of pets or their tasty overpriced meals, but even that puts them on a dopamine loop that ruins their future interactions with men.

By far, the most damaging lifestyle choice women make is becoming a sugar baby, a politically correct term for “prostitute.” For some easy cash, she whores out her body to the highest bidder (some women combine Instagram and prostitution in a seamless package). How can such an Instagram prostitute ever settle down with a man who has a normal salary? There are also the hundreds of women who enter porn every year, some from seemingly stable families. Sadly, men are so desperate for love that many would wife up a former prostitute or porn star, but it’s highly unlikely those women will make for stable families.

The Western world is a sinkhole for women. The prettiest of the bunch fall into the hole and get spit out years later an entitled #MeToo hag who can never be happy, making the Islamic four-wife rule seem downright egalitarian. The sad truth is that if you meet an attractive girl today, she was pumped and dumped by numerous sexy men, prefers to nurture her career than children, is addicted to attention via the internet, and has participated in some kind of scheme to exchange social status or cash for her pussy. She’s more than suitable for a bit of fun, but would it be wise to seek a relationship with her?

Even with the obesity and short-hair epidemic, I still see a bountiful supply of cute girls I would happily reproduce with. I would love them, let them caress my beard, and lay my seed deep within their vaginal guts, but the problem is that those guts are not for me—they are for the Chads who would never marry her, the beta orbiters who await her newest selfie as if it were a source of food, or the rich and lonely men who would sponsor her for thousands of dollars a month. They’re taking her out of circulation at the time I want her most, and by the time they are done with her, I no longer want her. I guess I’ll try to weasel in a bang or two when she is not yet fully degraded, and enjoy the fleeting pleasure that comes from it as much as I can.

https://www.rooshv.com/how-to-stop-the-fall-of-women

An acronym that you’ll often come across is AWALT, which stands for “all women are like that.” It is used in response to someone trying to point out that a particular woman is different than all the rest and more deserving to be placed on a pedestal of some sort when it comes to relationships. While that acronym is useful for newbies who are just beginning to de-program themselves from egalitarian ideas spewed by the establishment, it breeds a hopelessness among men that they can never extract more than casual sex from women.

Most men have seen firsthand how women change due to the presence of corrupting factors in the environment. If you give a woman an open bar, she will over-consume and make decisions that harm herself. If you give a woman a smartphone with social networking apps, she will become a narcissist in a short amount of time, falling in love with her own image. If you give a woman a liberal education, she will come to firm belief than men were born to bring pain and slavery unto women.

Only a woman with an exceptional upbringing can resist alcohol, social networking, and university brainwashing, and for the women who can initially resist it, she will surely succumb after enough time and pressure. It is in this way that AWALT is true: all women who face corrupt influences in their lives will become corrupt and behave in a similar way that degrades their virtue, making them unsuitable for long-term partnerships. But if AWALT is true in describing the universal fall of women in the presence of toxic influences, it must also be true that they possess universal purity in environments which lack bad influences that attack her virtue.

A reliable corrupter of a woman’s virtue is having plentiful male choice. If over the course of five years a woman in New York City has her choice of 100 alpha male cocks, she will be unable to resist the thrill ride that these men offer. She will begin to structure her life around a neverending alpha male sex party where she receives and expects fun, excitement, drama, and entertainment in exchange for willingly accepting her place on various booty call rotations. During this time, she loses most ability to be a suitable wife and mother, or even to be a good person, because the alpha males who use her for late night sex do not place demands upon her that make her more feminine, loving, or nurturing. She becomes damaged goods, suitable for nothing more than casual humping.

But now let’s imagine that instead of being born in New York City, this girl was born in a poor Ukrainian village that only has a population of 1,000 people. For whatever reason, she was unable to get out of this village and a complete blackout of internet prevents her from meeting thirsty foreign men. It’s quite easy to see how she marries a village man while still young because it’s a better prospect than suffering alone to earn her bread in a place where employment opportunities are few. The environment a girl is placed in will mostly determine her worth as a life partner.

Most women who are put in New York City will, within a few years, default to becoming a promiscuous slut. Most women who are put in a tiny village with no way out, with little choice in men, and with positive religious influences, will default to being a good wife and mother, possessing normal and acceptable human flaws like all men have. Women put in specific environments will act in specific ways, which is why looking for a unicorn in a Western city is fruitless, since she’s within reach of the devil’s workshop. He will get to her and make sure she experiences all manner of vice.

Western nations facilitate the “fall” of women from a state of purity and innocence to one of abject corruption. I don’t believe women are inherently born to be degenerate, just like how I don’t believe men are, but once we put a woman in an environment that enables, facilitates, and even encourages her corruption, she will certainly become corrupt. But what if you can catch a woman before she inserts herself into this environment and then shield her from it? What if you grab her at the time she is about to jump into the abyss, and through your diligence, power, and knowledge, protect her from Western influences that will destroy her? Would it be safe to give your time, energy, love, and commitment to this woman? It’s important to note that I’m not stating you save a corrupt girl, since by then it’s too late, but to prevent a woman from becoming corrupt in the first place.

It is completely your responsibility to create the environment of a good home, a good city, and a good country to prevent the fall of your women. It’s your responsibility to create the right environment where all women remain good instead of succumbing to an evil where within a short amount of time she becomes a useless, tattooed, overweight, and masculine slut. It should be clear to you by now that women absolutely can not save themselves, and have no inherent resistance to the pollution that tempts them in this world. It’s solely up to us men to shield their natural virtue so that they become the wives and mothers that allow you to fulfill your biological destiny while furthering the health of your society.

It’s not a matter of telling a girl that sleeping around is bad or that Facebook is bad, because by then the ship has sailed and her soul is likely long gone. It’s a matter of creating the environment where women are restrained from sleeping around, blocked from becoming addicted to taking selfies, and prevented from becoming brainwashed by social justice ideas. We must stop them from entering the environments that destroy them. We must guard the door of evil that they are hurtling themselves towards while resisting evil ourselves.

Before you raise your hands in despair and claim that this is an impossible task, that Western society is finished, I say this: what is a society but a collection of the people within it? What is a society but an assembly of living humans that include ourselves? We are a part of this whole, and it’s up to us to ensure that the truism of “all women are like that” serves in our benefit and our society’s benefit instead of being at the forefront of our most terrifying nightmares.[culturewar]

Read Next: Women Must Have Their Behavior And Decisions Controlled By Men

After a long period in society of women having unlimited personal freedom to pursue life as they wish, they have shown to consistently fail in making the right decisions that prevent their own harm and the harm of others. Systems must now be put in place where a woman’s behavior is monitored and her decisions subject to approval of a male relative or guardian who understands what’s in her best interests better than she does herself.

Women have had personal freedoms for less than a century. For the bulk of human history, their behavior was significantly controlled or subject to approval through mechanisms of tribe, family, church, law, or stiff cultural precepts. It was correctly assumed that a woman was unable to make moral, ethical, and wise decisions concerning her life and those around her. She was not allowed to study any trivial topic she wanted, sleep with any man who caught her fancy, or uproot herself and travel the world because she wanted to “find herself.”

You can see this level of control today in many Muslim countries, where expectations are placed on women from a young age to submit to men, reproduce (if biologically able), follow God’s word, and serve the good of society by employing her feminine nature instead of competing directly against men on the labor market due to penis envy or feelings of personal inferiority.

The reason that women had their behavior limited was for the simple reason that they are significantly less rational than men, in a way that impaired their ability to make good decisions concerning the future. This was eloquently described by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in his important essay On Women. He described them as overgrown children, a comparison that any man who has dated more than a dozen of them can quickly agree to after having consistently witnessed their impulsive and illogical behavior firsthand.

Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all their life long—a kind of intermediate stage between the child and the full-grown man, who is man in the strict sense of the word. See how a girl will fondle a child for days together, dance with it and sing to it; and then think what a man, with the best will in the world, could do if he were put in her place.

[…]

…women remain children their whole life long; never seeing anything but what is quite close to them, cleaving to the present moment, taking appearance for reality, and preferring trifles to matters of the first importance.

[…]

That woman is by nature meant to obey may be seen by the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of complete independence, immediately attaches herself to some man, by whom she allows herself to be guided and ruled. It is because she needs a lord and master.

When you give a female unlimited choice on which man to have sex with, what type of man does she choose? An exciting man who treats her poorly and does not care for her well-being.

When you give a female choice on what to study in university, what does she choose? An easy liberal arts major that costs over $50,000 and dooms her to a life of debt and sporadic employment.

When a female lacks any urgent demands upon her survival, what behavior does she pursue? Obsessively displaying her half-naked body on the internet, flirting with men solely for attention, becoming addicted to corporate-produced entertainment, and over-indulging in food until her body shape is barely human.

When you give a female choice on when to have kids, what does she do? After her fertility is well past its peak, and in a rushed panic that resembles the ten seconds before the ringing of the first school bell, she aims for limited reproductive success at an age that increases the likelihood she’ll pass on genetic defects to her child.

When you give a female choice of which political leader to vote into office, who do they vote for? The one who is more handsome and promises unsustainable freebies that accelerate the decline of her country.

When you give a female unwavering societal trust with the full backing of the state, what does she do? Falsely accuse a man of rape and violence out of revenge or just to have an excuse for the boyfriend who caught her cheating.

When you give a female choice on who to marry, what is the result? A 50% divorce rate, with the far majority of them (80%) initiated by women themselves.

While a woman is in no doubt possession of crafty intelligence that allows her to survive just as well as a man, mostly through the use of her sexuality and wiles, she is a slave to the present moment and therefore unable to make decisions that benefit her future and those of the society she’s a part of. Once you give a woman personal freedom, like we have in the Western world, she enslaves herself to one of numerous vices and undertakes a rampage of destruction to her body and those who want to be a meaningful part of her life.

A man does not need to look further than the women he knows, including those in his family, to see that the more freedom a woman was given, the worse off she is, while the woman who was under the heavy hand of the church or male relative comes out far better on the other side, in spite of her rumblings that she wants to be as free as her liberated friends, who eagerly and regularly post soft porn photos of themselves on social networking and dating sites while selecting random anonymous men for fornication every other weekend.

Men, on average, make better decisions than women. If you take this to be true, which should be no harder to accept than the claim that lemons are sour, why is a woman allowed to make decisions at all without first getting approval from a man who is more rational and levelheaded than she is? It not only hurts the woman making decisions concerning her life, but it also hurts any man who will associate with her in the future. You only need to ask the many suffering husbands today on how they are dealing with a wife who entered the marriage with a student loan debt in the high five figures from studying sociology and how her wildly promiscuous sexual history impairs her ability to remain a dedicated mother, with one foot already out the door after he makes a reasonable demand that is essential for a stable home and strong family.

I propose two different options for protecting women from their obviously deficient decision making. The first is to have a designated male guardian give approval on all decisions that affect her well-being. Such a guardian should be her father by default, but in the case a father is absent, another male relative can be appointed or she can be assigned one by charity organizations who groom men for this purpose, in a sort of Boy’s Club for women.

She must seek approval by her guardian concerning diet, education, boyfriends, travel, friends, entertainment, exercise regime, marriage, and appearance, including choice of clothing. A woman must get a green light from her guardian before having sex with any man, before wearing a certain outfit, before coloring her hair green, and before going to a Spanish island for the summer with her female friends.

If she disobeys her guardian, an escalating series of punishments would be served to her, culminating in full-time supervision by him. Once the woman is married, her husband will gradually take over guardian duties, and strictly monitor his wife’s behavior and use all reasonable means to keep it in control so that family needs are met first and foremost, as you already see today in most Islamic societies. Any possible monetary proceeds she would get from divorce would be limited so that she has more incentive to keep her husband happy and pleased than to throw him under the bus for the most trivial of reasons that stem from her persistent and innate need to make bad decisions.

A second option for monitoring women is a combination of rigid cultural rules and sex-specific laws. Women would not be able to attend university unless the societal need is urgent where an able-minded man could not be found to fill the specific position. Women would not be able to visit establishments that serve alcohol without a man present to supervise her consumption. Parental control software on electronic devices would be modified for women to control and monitor the information they consume. Credit card and banking accounts must have a male co-signer who can monitor her spending. Curfews for female drivers must be enacted so that women are home by a reasonable hour. Abortion for women of all ages must be signed off by her guardian, in addition to prescriptions for birth control.

While my proposals are undoubtedly extreme on the surface and hard to imagine implementing, the alternative of a rapidly progressing cultural decline that we are currently experiencing will end up entailing an even more extreme outcome. Women are scratching their most hedonistic and animalistic urges to mindlessly pursue entertainment, money, socialist education, and promiscuous behavior that only satisfies their present need to debase themselves and feel fleeting pleasure, at a heavy cost for society.

Allowing women unlimited personal freedom has so affected birth rates in the West that the elite insists on now allowing importation of millions of third world immigrants from democratically-challenged nations that threaten the survival of the West. In other words, giving women unbridled choice to pursue their momentary whims instead of investing in traditional family ideals and reproduction is a contributing factor to what may end up being the complete collapse of those nations that have allowed women to do as they please.

I make these sincere recommendations not out of anger, but under the firm belief that the lives of my female relatives would certainly be better tomorrow if they were required to get my approval before making any decisions. They would not like it, surely, but due to the fact that I’m male and they’re not, my analytical decision-making faculty is superior to theirs to absolutely no fault of their own, meaning that their most sincere attempts to make good decisions will have a failure rate larger than if I was able to make those decisions for them, especially with intentions that are fully backed with compassion and love for them to have more satisfying lives than they do now.

As long as we continue to treat women as equals to men, a biological absurdity that will one day be the butt of many jokes for comedians of the future, women will continue to make horrible decisions that hurt themselves, their families, and their reproductive potential. Unless we take action soon to reconsider the freedoms that women now have, the very survival of Western civilization is at stake.[culturewar]

Read Next: People Should Not Be Allowed Unlimited Personal Freedom

[tardis-sapphics]

Could you please write something about Thasmin going to Pride together? Thanks!

i know this ask is like fuck-off old but i didn’t forget i swear!!! i wanted to do it justice and hopefully this makes up for the very long wait!

They’d be forgiven for mistaking the thumping for an earthquake.

It starts deep, low, reverberating in their very bones with an urgency that demands to be felt. Hands shake with it; feet are planted firmly on the dusty, rocky ground. On instinct, Yaz lurches and her hand clutches onto the Doctor’s bicep. And then – even then, especially then – the thunder makes itself felt, answering back to the double pulse with something equally organic, something equally alive.

In the far reaches of the universe, on some distant corner of a galaxy and millennia away from their time, they feel the thundering of something familiar. At first, Yaz believes it’s the stubborn human condition driving them towards this same-sense importance – to prescribe something of their known to the unknown, to distort something, almost, to make it palatable – but the Doctor’s earlier announcement dispels that notion. Not that it doesn’t exist; just that it doesn’t exist here. Humanity’s ability to see themselves amongst the stars was slow at first – but once achieved, it was unstoppable. And here is the unstoppable: on a lonely planet, orbiting a star in a solar system far more expansive than the one that bore Earth. Here, humanity found the lonely, and in it found something worth anchoring onto.

They have landed just to be heartened by the unstoppable.

There are worse planets, Graham decides, frowning down at the barren land. Dust thrives in long reaches, extortionate motions. But, he adds, nor is it the best.

The Doctor looks offended. ‘Honestly, you humans! You’re never satisfied, are you?’

Despite the apparent dissatisfaction, when the Doctor beckons, they follow. They are satisfied enough to follow her unstoppable.

Yaz would follow forever, if that were feasible. As they walk towards the thunder, her hand trails down the inside of the Doctor’s arm, fingers alighting on the folds of her coat, the orderly bunches at the crease of her elbow. This will do in the meantime. This will more than do.

Thunder does not exist without lightning, though the latter has an easier time of being obscured if the observer so wishes. Like all proper adventurers, though, the four time-travellers do not fit into this category. Danger’s threat is an invitation for those whose curiosity manifests as a need to help. If a tree is hit by lightning, and no one is around to see it,  a tree is still singed. And so they are pulled by it; the charge, the ions, and the naked, brilliant electricity. They do so, blinking underneath sunglasses at the lonely star, on the lonely planet. They do so, entwined entirely by a need to help.

Sometimes, however, thunder is not a threat – at least, not to those who have no reason to feel threatened. Sometimes thunder is but a celebration of itself; a comment on the naked, brilliant notion of its own existence. Sometimes thunder is an invitation to more than just the adventurers. Sometimes, a drum beat is not a signal of war but the joy of champions.

Lightning is here to stay. Flags flutter in the distance, hoisted high, anchoring the once-lonely to the celebration. All the colours of the spectrum belong here, manifest relief fused into a defiance against the monochrome of the expected; the suppressing; the conformity. Onlookers come to gather under them, the unapologetic no longer terrifying as it would have been, millennia ago. A procession of the familiar: it’s this they feel in their bones. The drum beats, the praises for a feeling nurtured in biology, in identity. Almost unimaginable, being miles from home – but entirely reminiscent of it.

‘Is that–?’ Graham asks.

‘Pride,’ Ryan and Yaz answer in unison. A similar glance to each other, a smirk of acknowledgement. This solidarity is something barely discussed between the two, not for a lack of concern but for the innate recognition of it. Jokes about Ryan’s crushes, pronouns flitted between without thought, are commonplace.

As for Yaz – well, her arm is still wrapped tight around the Doctor’s.

‘Brilliant,’ the Doctor murmurs, flashing a grin to her, so close by her side.

‘’Scuse the obvious question, Doc,’ Graham says, ‘but what’s Pride doing here thousands of years in the future? Thought things were getting better, on the whole.’

‘Good question, Graham!’ the Doctor beams. ‘It does seem a bit outdated here. But old beliefs have the uncanny knack of staying alive, especially as peoples get older and older. I don’t know if this particular colony went back on all the progress – it happens sometimes – but it’s more likely that Pride morphed into a human tradition. Depends on which colony you go to, really, and what time.’

‘Well, for our sake, I really hope it’s a tradition,’ Graham answers. ‘Not sure I fancy coming face-to-face with a homophobe today.’ He receives a round of nods.

‘Best to be where the party is, eh?’ the Doctor asks her friends. Now, murmurs of assent.

They take in the thunder, and get taken in by it.

Yaz has marched in the Sheffield parade for two years now, police uniform on, to the simultaneous delight and consternation of her community. She is at once lifted by the liberation her institution has taken, especially amidst a growing backlash in her contemporary world – but also weighed down by the oppression the uniform symbolised; the knowledge that the law is vulnerable to the humans that make them, and the endangerment of the vulnerable it brings in turn. It’s a constant unsettlement, but at least here, that conflict does not have to count. What counts is her enjoyment.

She wonders whether that intrinsic disharmony exists in this time, on this planet, in a further developed context. She wonders what the relationship between citizens and law enforcement is here.

The Pride march is not cordoned off and neatly packaged, like they have become back at home. There are no metal fences where marches are directed by an overseeing power. Its power is its own. The flow is its own – the thought, the inclusion, all natural. This pull to belong is for the lightning living, wild living. It is untamed by arbitrary concepts such as ‘marchers’ and ‘audiences’. The wild beast encompasses the streets of the colony and all alive are participants. They are all sprawling, hungry for the sight of themselves; hungry to be witnessed in nature.

It has made itself known to each other, to themselves, through the drum band, the only regimented display within the mass. The sprawl curls itself around the sound, protects it. Participants amplify the sound through whistles and new instruments; analogue and electrical instruments blend new technologies and old successes to create the perfect cacophony. Cloaked in flags unchanged by the daunting progress of millennia, the musicians, the shouters, and the listeners are flying on the gusts of their own thunder.

Deep, rich colours, and the bright and beautiful. Robes and garments and uniforms, with rainbows and tri-colours, quad-colours, sewn into their very lining. Pastel blues and pinks decorating white chest garments. Colonists, doused in glitter, throw handfuls at each other. It glimmers as it falls in the baking starlight, impossible not to witness. When it touches the dusty ground, it evaporates, leaving no trace behind.

There is no point in spectating. There is no chance. As the four arrive, they are pulled, gentle intention expressed in grabbing hands, deeper into glorious furore. It is a carnival of delight: Yaz is immediately doused in glitter by the colonist next to her and she laughs. It sticks to her hair, her face, her clothes. She adores it.

She lost sight of Graham and Ryan, lost them to the belly of the beast. They have let themselves be swallowed, stomping in time to the beat like they were already here; consumed by it like they were always going to be. But the boys are not her priority. All of her is at the forefront, in this place that demands it, demands for her to see the very best of herself – and there is one person she must share this with.

This living, loving mass parallels the Doctor’s energy, but even so, Yaz can find her. Lost in it, she seems to command her own space, her own brightness. She sees a flick of blonde hair, and hazel eyes lock onto her own. The Doctor excuses herself from admiring a genderfluid flag and inches her way to Yaz.

There’s an earthquake happening that reflects her own, a pounding full of yearning. Echoed in the two hearts in front of her –  she knows it, she knows her girlfriend’s heartbeats almost as well as her own – it seems they have found a place to broadcast it. Her hands come up to the Doctor’s shimmering face, palms stained pink-purple-blue by a handful of glitter. Blonde wisps are caked in colour. Their hearts are bursting. This glorious beast, nature in roaring joy, moves to survive; and it adapts its stream around the two of them.

‘You having fun?’ the Doctor asks, breathless. Her hands come to rest on Yaz’s waist. The lonely wanderer, found a place to anchor.

Words are not enough, not with everything else around them so enigmatic, so vibrant.

So Yaz does not wait. In lieu of an answer the Doctor already knows, Yaz moves forward and presses her mouth to the Doctor’s, euphoria tasting sweet as their lips slot into place. She grips tight to taste it louder, louder than the drums, and above them, they are sprinkled again with the rainbow – unstoppable, and the lightning living, thundering through them.

[astrophobia-space-blog]

Status Update: On hiatus (and a preview of some audio drama script!)

Hey folks! I haven’t been updating this Tumblr for a few months. I really appreciate all of your support, and you deserve to know what’s going on. So, here’s the official announcement:

Astrophobia — the audio drama, and the comic — are officially on-hold. :(

The long and the short of it is: I (Brandon) have some substantial chronic health problems. And they kept getting in the way of production so many times that I eventually had to bite the bullet and put the project on indefinite hold. I really hate doing that! All my writing projects are my babies. But of all the ideas I’ve come up with, Astrophobia is one of my all-time favorites. And I’ve been really excited to share the world that we’re developing with everybody.

Is this the end of our traumatized band of space adventurers? Nope! Megan (voice actor) and John (musician/producer) are still committed to the project. And they’ve let me know that I can take all the time that I need to get my health better. Meanwhile, Joe (the comic artist) has had to move on to other projects. But I’m hoping that, when the stars align, we’ll be able to make the comic version happen!

In the meantime, I’m dabbling in prose fiction. (For several reasons, including that it’s easier to produce around my health flares, and because if I have to take some time off from it, my absence isn’t impacting someone else in the chain of production.) And one of my goals with it is to produce some Astrophobia short stories and sell them to magazines and such! So there may be Astrophobia content sooner rather than later.

Again, thank you for your patience and support. I’m going to get back to this project as soon as humanly possible. For now, I thought I’d leave you with an audio drama monologue I wrote for Commander December Primrose that I’m partial to. (I’m really looking forward to hearing Megan record a version of this at some point!)

Orpheus, personal log. Hashtag "mission." ...And hashtag "anxiety."

[PAUSE: COLLECTING HER THOUGHTS] ...So, the longer we're out here, the less comfortable with our mission I'm getting. It's not... I don't mean the official mission. I mean our real mission. The one none of us actually talk about. Because, let's face it...

...Our mission is to die.

I, uh. A couple minutes ago, I made the mistake of looking up the history of deaths related to space exploration. I kind of skimmed it. I got through about the first fifty years — but by then I was too anxious to keep going.

I mean, they didn't teach us this stuff in Worlds History class! We learned about "Apollo 11" and the first moon landing, sure. But we didn't learn about "Apollo One." And that they were using a pure-oxygen breathing mix in the cabin of their vessel. There's a reason nobody uses pure oxygen in space! Because it catches fire. ...Like it did during an Apollo One launch rehearsal. And killed the whole crew.

Oh, speaking of Worlds History class: They taught us about Yuri Gagarin from the Soviet Union. And how he was the first person to reach space. But they didn't teach us about how he crashed a jet in a training exercise a few years later. And died. And they also left out that he was the backup pilot for the "Soyuz 1" mission. Where the parachute failed, and the descent module crashed. Killing the actual pilot.

Let's see... [PARAPHRASING FROM TEXT SHE'S READING] That first fifty years, there were two different American, uh, "space shuttles" that blew up... One during the launch, and the other during reentry... And there's... uh... well... Then there was Laika.

The first animal to orbit Earth was a dog. From the Soviet Union. She was a stray. They picked her up off the street. Ran some tests. Named her Laika. And then they shot her into space. But...

...They hadn't figured out how to de-orbit a spacecraft yet. They shot her into space. And they knew she wasn't coming home.

The Orpheus? Everyone on this ship? [PAUSE] Every single one of us is a "Laika." [PAUSE] I think that's starting to get to a lot of us.

I can see it on peoples' faces, each time we launch a warp buoy. A "message in a bottle." Our condition, current location... and where we're warping to next.

We do that so... when we disappear? When we stop sending updates back... I mean, there's no way for Earth to know how it happened! But this way, they'll know where we died. We, all of us on the ship. We know that. And it's right there, on everyone's faces.

I always look around when we do buoy-deployment. It's, like... everyone's jaws are clenched. And they're looking straight ahead. But they're not really looking at anything. [PAUSE] Or maybe they're looking at their own mortality? [PAUSE. DRYLY:] Wow, listen to that. I should quit my job and become a space poet.

I mean... the whole Orpheus Program? Our mission is to visit other star systems. One by one. And see if any of them hold threats to us. But, if we find a threat? Well. Unlikely that we'll live long enough to tell anybody.

So we clench our jaws. And send the buoys. And don't talk about the fact that, if we actually accomplish our mission, it's going to kill us all.

My point is... We — I mean, people. Us, as a species. Humans. We killed a stray dog, to help us all out. We killed her for our own knowledge. And... now...

...Now it's my turn. And Boone's, and Amadi's, and Wukong's.

It's a suicide mission. And we all signed up for it.

[PAUSE] There was one other early space program death that caught my eye. An American. I don't remember the name. He was flying a training jet. And a, uh, goose smashed into his canopy! His windshield shattered. Shards of it got sucked into his engines. Engines flamed out. He ejected. But he was too close to the ground for proper parachute deployment. And... yeah.

So maybe we aren't a bunch of Laikas. Maybe we'll go out like that American, instead. Victims of random chance. Colliding with "space geese."

So. I guess there's that to look forward to...

Brandon Seifert Austin, Texas April 21, 2018

[player-0ne]

Estranged - Chapter Two

Chapter Name: Rosalina

Chapter Rating: T for Teen

Story Rating: E for Explicit

A03

Peach had never been the type of person to get possessive or jealous over someone else. Even in romantic relationships, she was generally able to let her partner do whatever he wished and trust that he would be loyal to her. That was why Peach couldn’t make sense of her current behavior and feelings towards a certain mayor who had walked back into her life.

Pauline had been charming from the get-go, and the two of them had instantly hit it off, becoming fast friends. The woman would often hug Peach, hang out with her when she was feeling lonely, and teach her self-defense in return for baking lessons. They had been spending a lot of time together, and Peach loved how she felt whenever she realized that she was going to see the delightful woman again. Of course she had invited Pauline to her ball that evening, and of course Pauline had been very charismatic in striking up conversation with the other guests. She was a politician, after all, she had to be a people person, and beyond that, she was just plain likeable and sweet.

Back to the problem at hand. Or- well… Peach scolded herself. It was hardly a problem that Pauline seemed to be getting along very, very well with her friends Daisy and Rosalina. It wasn’t a problem at all that Rosalina was the only one out of the bunch who was single besides Pauline, and she seemed to be feeling surprisingly… not shy tonight. It certainly didn’t make Peach grow slightly angry when she saw Pauline fussing over Rosalina, who blushed a little as Daisy joined in and teased her about whatever it was that they were talking about.

Peach walked up to them, greeting them politely, and stepping in-between Rosalina and Pauline. She didn’t do that because she was jealous, of course, she did that because there was the most space there, that was all. At least, that’s what she told herself. Everyone politely greeted her in return, before they fell back into their prior conversation.

“Princess,” said Pauline, “you didn’t tell me that you were gonna invite a literal goddess! She’s amazing, Rosalina- show her what you can do!” Rosalina looked to the side, slightly embarrassed, before waving her wand and producing a burst of magic, around which, millions of tiny stars seemed to orbit as if they were planets. With a flick of her wrist, the tiny stars circled the small group of women, before returning to her wand and disappearing into thin air. Everyone clapped, and Peach found herself feeling a little bit angry again. Why had she invited the goddess? Because they were close friends, and it was petty for her to get upset over the fact that Pauline was fitting in with the rest of the group. Calm down, Peach.

It was when Pauline praised Rosalina excessively, and the goddess responded by blushing and acting incredibly shy, that Peach decided to put logic aside. How jealous could she possibly get before she would do something stupid? She smiled, looping her arm through that of Pauline.

“Dinner should be ready, girls,” she chimed, “we should head to the dining room.” Everyone agreed with her, as it had been a long time since the party had started, and they were growing quite hungry. Rosalina looked at Peach and Pauline’s looped arms, eyes flicking from Peach, to the arms, and then to Pauline. Daisy regarded the rest of them with an amusement that only Peach could detect.

“Something funny, Daisy?” she asked innocently.

“Oh, no!” scoffed Daisy, “I was just thinking about all of the great food we’re gonna have. Let’s go!” She passed Peach, smirking at her once she knew that only she could see, before leading the way to the dining room. As they all walked and made idle chatter, Pauline cast a quick glance down to Peach, furrowing her brow.

The straight one was acting even weirder than usual. It was just like her to be completely disinterested in Pauline’s advances until she turned them on someone else. With mild amusement, she turned to regard Rosalina, who was walking (hovering?) by her unoccupied side.

“What’s it like living out amongst the stars?” she asked, genuinely curious. Rosalina seemed to be startled out of a thought, and she paused for a moment to silently repeat the question before answering it. A small smile crossed her face.

“Well, I’ve lived there for so long that it’s all I can really remember,” she explained, “so I don’t have much to compare it to besides the occasional visit to the Mushroom Kingdom. It’s very... tranquil, and time seems to stand still when there’s nobody out there besides the Lumas and I. It does get a little lonely, though, without other humans. That’s why I stop by so frequently. Lumas make excellent company, but there’s something about human contact that just can’t be replicated.” Pauline nodded, smiling.

“I think I know what you mean,” she said, “I mean after all, I chose to be mayor of New Donk City.” Rosalina hummed contemplatively.

“It must be nice, to be surrounded by so many people all of the time,” she mused. Pauline shrugged.

“It’s nice most of the time, but sometimes I do just want to get away from it all. But hey, if you want to give that lifestyle a shot, you’re always welcome to come see me,” proposed Pauline.

“I think I’d like that,” responded Rosalina, smiling a little.

Peach silently simmered, and they arrived at the dining room. She had pre-set the table so that she was sitting at the head with Pauline to her left and Rosalina to her right, which was fortunate for their current situation. Peach honestly wasn’t sure if she could handle the two of them sitting next to each other. Daisy, who was on the other side of Pauline, was enjoying every second of her friend’s wrath. She had never seen her get jealous before, and this was amusing to her.

She watched as the four of them made conversation, seeing how Pauline’s eyes would intentionally linger on Rosalina for just a bit longer than usual, and how whenever Rosalina caught her staring, the goddess would blush and look away. Each time that this happened, Peach would huff and look a little annoyed. Honestly, in Daisy’s opinion, she had it coming. Pauline had been quietly courting her for the past few months, and Peach had given nothing in return, because she was supposed to be straight. Now, Pauline found somebody else to pursue, and Peach seemed upset.

In hindsight- did Peach even realize that she was jealous romantically? Daisy had to hide her small chuckle with a napkin. Her friend was so oblivious to everything, even her own emotions, and it was both parts cute and pathetic. Daisy decided that she should fan the flames. Pauline deserved to court at least one woman, and Daisy would ensure that it was either Peach or Rosalina. Her sister could get in the way of her own romance, but it was just annoying for her to intrude on that of another.

“Hey, Pauline,” Daisy intervened, “were you and your band gonna perform tonight?” Pauline’s eyes lit up with genuine passion for the subject at hand, and she nodded.

“Yeah, we were going to do it a little after dinner so that everyone could dance to it,” she responded, wearing a huge grin.

“You perform?” asked Rosalina. Pauline redirected her gaze to the goddess, and she nodded.

“Yes, I sing whenever I have the time to set up a gig,” she said, “it’s nothing much, but I get a kick out of it.”

“Oh, she’s amazing!” Peach intervened, before backing up and seeming slightly embarrassed at her sudden outburst, “sorry! I just… Pauline has a really good voice, and you have got to hear her band play, Rosalina. You’ll never hear anything like it.”

“Well, now you’ve got me intrigued,” mused Rosalina, offering a coquettish smile to Pauline. Peach internally scolded herself.

“Why Miss Rosalina, I’m honored,” responded Pauline, smirking a little. “I could perform any song that you like, just say the word.” Pauline caught herself, “Not-not tonight, obviously, but if we’re together sometime then I could prepare it for you.”

“I’ll have to take you up on that,” giggled Rosalina, “music is something that I miss dearly when in space. I can still hear it at certain places, but it’s usually very quiet out there.” Rosalina’s face lit up, “oh, and I’m sure that the lumas would love to hear you! I don’t think that they’ve really ever heard a full-on musician before!”

“Is this an invitation for me to come over?” asked Pauline. Rosalina smiled, nodding.

“I’d like to have you, yes,” she responded coyly. Pauline’s heart skipped a beat. Had she just..? Daisy didn’t externally react, but she was reeling. Oh MAN she had not expected that from the introverted star-woman.

“The feeling is mutual,” purred Pauline, prompting a smile from Rosalina. Holy shit. Daisy looked to Peach, who seemed completely fine. Right, she was straight. She had absolutely no idea what Rosalina had just proposed. Still, Daisy did notice her hands clenching together in a nervous tick, just discrete enough for nobody else to notice. Dinner wrapped up slowly, with Pauline and Rosalina flirting behind an ill-fitting mask of innocent tabletalk.

When it was done, Peach introduced Pauline and her band, and they took their places, preparing to perform. Pauline seemed uncharacteristically shy, but she launched herself right into it. The lack of vocal warmups surprised Daisy, but she supposed that Pauline knew what she was doing, and it didn’t seem to affect her voice during the songs.

Daisy looked to Rosalina, who was very close to the front of the stage, looking like she was practically in a trance. When she wasn’t looking at Pauline, in her gorgeous dress and incredibly smooth movements to accompany her singing, she had her eyes closed and was swaying absently to the beat. Daisy realized, with a slight twinge of pain, that she was genuinely interested in Pauline, and the feeling was mutual. This, of course, left Peach. The woman looked genuinely happy to be able to see Pauline perform, and she was watching her excitedly and cheering her on when it was appropriate. She didn’t notice Rosalina, having eyes only for Pauline, and Daisy wondered if she even knew how she felt for Pauline yet. Peach was a little obtuse when it came to these things.

She was good at flirting but bad at understanding anything beyond heterosexual interactions, and she might not even understand her own feelings because of this. Daisy supposed that, at this point, with Rosalina hanging onto Pauline’s every word and Pauline singing just for her, it would be better if Peach never realized the full extent of her feelings for her. It would cause some jealousy, but at least there wouldn’t be heartbreak.

The concert ran on, until Pauline arrived at the final number. It was a slow, sultry song. The crowd didn’t notice it, but it was definitely directed at Rosalina, and Daisy wondered absently if the timid goddess could handle all of this at once. To her surprise, she saw Rosalina smirking coquettishly up at Pauline as she sang and nodding her head to the beat. This was what she wanted in a partner. Daisy had never seen her try to romance someone before, and it was clear that the quiet, introverted woman was not at all shy when she knew that her feelings could be reciprocated. Once the song and bows were over and the roar of the crowd finally died down, Pauline stepped off of the small stage that she had been allotted by Peach.

She was immediately swarmed with amazed onlookers who showered her with praise until her cheeks were red, and it took her quite a while to find Rosalina, who had waited for the crowd to die down. She did like people, but she didn’t care to mingle with whole swarms of them at once.

Daisy couldn’t hear what was being said, but she did see when Rosalina stood on the tips of her toes, planting a small kiss on the edge of Pauline’s lips. She saw when the woman smiled and reciprocated, kissing her directly on the mouth and rubbing a bit of her red lipstick off on the other woman, who clearly didn’t mind. Daisy also saw Peach, staring at the two of them with wide eyes, her mouth agape. She decided to approach her confused friend as Pauline and Rosalina continued to… get acquainted.

“Hey Peach,” she said, trotting over to her, “‘sup?” Peach looked to her, seeming to be snapped out of a trance.

“Oh… I…” she paused, looking over to Pauline and Rosalina, who were now shamelessly holding one another close and kissing. Nobody else seemed to mind in the slightest. “Is that… can they do that?”

Daisy smiled a little.

“Peach, women can be attracted to other women, and Pauline is definitely gay,” she said, “we’ve established this.” Peach’s eyes widened for a moment, before she covered her mouth with her hand.

“I… oh…” Peach furrowed her brow for a moment, before promptly turning and walking off. She was not seen for the rest of the party, which was probably a good idea on her part. Pauline and Rosalina made no effort to hide their interest in one another, and while they remained civil, they weren’t afraid to walk around with their arms around one another’s waists or shoulders. To Daisy’s amusement, they also left the party soon after, telling her to tell Peach that they had a wonderful time and were really thankful that she had invited them.

They left together, and it was clear what they intended to do.

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Pauline was never one to beat around the bush, and it seemed like Rosalina wanted to cut to the chase as well. They had both decided to go to Rosalina’s place for the night, where Pauline became absolutely transfixed by the Lumas, insentient stars, and planets, forgetting her original intent. Rosalina, finding her enthusiasm to be adorable, was more than happy to drop her prior motives and show her around the place, watching in delight as Pauline found every little thing that had been mundane to Rosalina just moments prior, to be absolutely amazing!

While she found the woman extremely attractive, and her intention was to spend the night with her, she also found that she was growing a little attached to her. Maybe this wouldn’t be a one night stand, if Pauline felt the same. One of her lumas, a deep red one, seemed to take an interest in Pauline, who was absolutely in love with it. She played with it like a dork, and Rosalina had to hide her laughter.

“It looks like this little one has taken a liking to you,” she chimed, sitting next to Pauline on her bed. Pauline actually giggled a little as it twirled around her and she petted it, and Rosalina felt her heart… swell? She furrowed her brow, placing a hand over her chest. This was unusual for her. It was similar to when she slept with women, but somehow, it felt softer in a way. Smiling a little, Rosalina just decided to enjoy it, continuing to watch Pauline as she played with the stars.

Without warning, the little Luma flew up into the air, twirling once, before flying out the door. After a beat, it flew back in, seeming like it wanted Pauline to follow. She turned to Rosalina, who stood up calmly, moving over to the Luma.

“What is it, my child?” she asked. Although it didn’t really sound like the Luma said anything, it moved as if it were speaking, producing a strange, otherworldly noise, and Rosalina’s cheeks turned slightly red.

“Oh… alright, if you think she’d like that,” managed Rosalina, “thank you.” She turned to Pauline, who looked curious.

“I…” Rosalina was a little red now, “I know that this wasn’t our original intent, but if you’d like, this Luma knows of a very beautiful planet that’s not too far away from here where we might lay in the flowers and watch the earth from afar?” Pauline blinked, before also blushing.

“I… uh… yeah,” she managed, “I’m down for that. Lead the way!” Rosalina masked her excitement and led Pauline to the Launch Star. Once they arrived on the planet, Rosalina miraculously landing without actually touching the ground, Pauline could only look around in awe. It was a very beautiful planet indeed. It was very clearly a garden, and there were many species of fauna that she had never seen before, growing from the ground, the terraces, and the bushes all around them. However, it seemed that Rosalina and Pauline were alone on the planet. The feeling that Pauline got with this realization was unparalleled by any sense of amazement that she had ever felt before. It was somewhat like stepping off of a ledge and realizing that you were falling, except it felt good and positively exciting. She walked around a little, in complete awe, and Rosalina followed her quietly.

Finally, the Earth came into view.

“Wow…” was all that Pauline could say.

“Yeah, wow…” Rosalina agreed quietly, sitting down in the soft grass as Pauline joined her. She stared down at the planet quietly, seeming to marvel in its beauty.

“Earth is such a peculiar, endearing little place,” she quipped.

“Hmm?” asked Pauline, “how so?” She had taken to lying back on the grassy hill, using her arms as pillows behind her head.

“There are so many of you there,” responded Rosalina, “and yet, just like all other planets, it appears small and fragile from afar. Without looking into it, one couldn’t see what it’s truly made of. It’s such a beautiful, complex little thing.” Pauline was silent. She had never thought of it that way, and honestly, it made her feel… in love with her own planet, all over again. There was a long moment of comfortable silence before either of them spoke again. Rosalina laid back, joining Pauline in star/earthgazing.

“Rosalina,” Pauline spoke pensively.

“Mmm?” asked Rosalina, growing a little drowsy.

“What drives you?” asked Pauline.

“What?” Rosalina was more attentive now, curious as to what the woman was saying.

“You know- what makes you get up each morning and do what you do? I feel like… I know that we just came here to do one thing and then leave, but you’re just such an interesting person, I really want to get to know you a little better first. What drives you?” asked Pauline. Rosalina was slightly taken aback, and her heart rate increased as she blushed a little.

“I suppose, in a general sense, it’s the Lumas who drive me,” she responded, “they depend on me, and provide me with friendship and support, and I love and take care of them.”

“But what about you?” asked Pauline.

“Hmm?” responded Rosalina.

“Let me think of how to phrase this…” Pauline paused for a moment, before appearing to figure it out, “what do you want to do for yourself? As in, what interests do you have that just revolve around you?” Rosalina paused and mulled this over. In all honesty, she rarely thought of herself, and really just minded the Lumas.

“I… really haven’t thought about it,” she confessed, “what about you?”

“Well,” Pauline was able to respond immediately, “I’ve motivated by the need to constantly be moving forward. I want to become a stronger, trustworthy individual so that my people can really depend on me, and so that DK can’t mess with me ever again.”

“That doesn’t sound like it orients around you, either,” Rosalina mused. Pauline was quiet for a moment.

“You’re right,” she said, mentally scolding herself, “you know… maybe the two of us should just take a day off. We could use some time to get to know ourselves -and one another- a lot better than we do.” Rosalina paused, before responding.

“I’d quite like that,” she decided, “but where would we go?”

“I’ve always wanted to visit Shiveria, but it’s rather cold there,” responded Pauline, “and we don’t have to limit ourselves to Earth.”

“I don’t mind the cold so long as I have someone to keep me warm,” responded Rosalina. Pauline blushed a little.

“Touché,” she said, “but really, it is quite cold there. If we went, you’d want to bring something very warm to wear outside. Oh, I know of a much better place!”

“Mmm?” asked Rosalina. She was drifting off again, and she subconsciously moved closer to Pauline so that she could rest her head on her shoulder. Pauline smiled affectionately, daring to run a hand through the woman’s hair, causing her to sigh blissfully.

“Well, you and I could go to Seaside Kingdom,” she murmured, “it’s very warm there, and they’re known for their clear waters and generally gorgeous scenery.”

“I’d love to go.” When Rosalina spoke, it was so quiet that she could barely hear it. It was clear that she was about to fall asleep, and so Pauline nudged her gently.

“Wanna head back, you cutie?” she asked. Rosalina made a noise of protest and pressed herself closer to Pauline’s body. Chucking affectionately, Pauline picked her up, carrying her bridal-style.

“Come on, let’s get you home,” she said.

“Not yet…” murmured Rosalina, opening her eyes and wrapping her arms around Pauline for better support, “I don’t want this night to end just yet.”

“Neither do I, but if you like, I’ll be here to pick you up for Seaside Kingdom first thing tomorrow morning. Or rather, tomorrow afternoon. You should get some rest.” Rosalina grumbled, but agreed. They launched back to her comet observatory, and Pauline set her down. She was prepared to leave, but Rosalina stopped her, still holding one of her hands.

“What is it?” asked Pauline, turning around to face her.

“This…” murmured Rosalina, standing up on the tips of her toes and giving Pauline a swift peck on the lips, before pulling back and looking embarrassed.

“S-sorry,” she said, avoiding eye contact. Pauline pulled her back in, pausing and looking into her eyes before kissing her again, this time more slowly. When they broke apart, the air felt… different, somehow. It was as if, in that instance, everyone and everything around them had ceased to exist, just for a moment. Pauline smiled, still cupping Rosalina’s cheek with her hand.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, smiling, “goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” responded Rosalina. She watched the woman leave, before returning to her quarters and falling into a deep, content sleep.

[carrickbender]

My Sunday seven, aka, I promise I'm not complaining....

1. First of all, thank you to all of you who reached out and it and sent good karma for my post the other day. I apologize for complaining, as I know so many of you who are dealing with so much more BS than I am and it really is not very fair or cool of me to even mention it. But I love you all for reaching out, and believe me it is highly appreciated. 2. On Friday, I finally got in contact with an orthopedic Physicians office, and they will be contacting me tomorrow on a date for an appointment with them. This is great, because I need to get fixed... And I don't mean snip-snip, no more Mommy Daddy button either! LOL so that in itself is absolutely awesome news. 3. Aaron and I played this weekend at the local Festival known as art walk, and it was a blast. We only played for an hour, and we might have had 20 people who actually sat on the bleachers and listen to us, but there were tons of people Milling around and tons of people who stopped and listened and moved on, but clapped at the end of songs. It was great to get Aaron back on the stage for the first time after he got sober, and I think it took a lot out of him to do it. He was super Brave about it, and I was grinning from ear-to-ear. During the beginning of one of the songs we covered, which is the Traveling Wilburys song called "Handle With Care", I even made mention of the fact that it was great to have my best friend back onstage with me again. You know, we joke about stuff but he truly kind of is the Edge to my Bono. I'm the guy who thinks nothing of getting up in front of a crowd and singing and working a crowd, whereas he is the guy who kind of settled in behind his guitar and goes to work. It's kind of funny, but it's how I Dynamic is these days and probably always will be. 4. During the days performance, I might have also found us a drummer, or should I say someone who is more than willing to play drums for us. My friend Jacob is an outgoing, charismatic, nuttier than nutty commercial fisherman who also happens to be an immensely talented musician. He plays drums, he plays guitar, he sings, and he's learning The craft. What's great is that in my wanting to Corral him and put him into our orbit, as it were I have this vision of creating a band that is a bit like the eagles... And no, we're not going to be that band that you turn off cuz you're having kind of a rough night... LOL! What I mean to say is that Aaron has very much a Don Felder vibe going on, minus the ego. Jacob reminds me a lot of a singing drummer by the name of Don Henley, and that he's very focused and is always working and looking two steps ahead. And then you have me, the songwriter, who is just as focused and is driven but is enough of a jackass that I'm fun that I could most definitely play the role of Glenn Frey in the band. Not that I'm comparing Us in town or musicianship to the Eagles, God no and never, but if that kind of rule. Now, if I could only find a another guitar player who is a little bit more like a reform Joe Walsh and a bass player who also sings like Timothy B schmit. A fella can dream, right? 5. So I got a whole bunch of offers over the weekend for paying gigs for this summer, which is absolutely great. It won't make up the income gap for me not fishing, but it most certainly will help. And on top of all of this, we are having some great progress with the two big music festivals that I'm organizing out here in Westport and in Hoquiam later this summer. The one in Westport is definitely taking on a life of its own, as we are most likely going to be sponsored by a couple of very large surf companies, and some other very big names so that are artists performing can get a decent paycheck and have great exposure at the same time. I'll keep you guys posted, it might be boring, but it also might be one hell of a ride. 6. So on a personal note, this week I've made and refashioned an idea for myself. I decided that part of my problem is that I need to go through a process more often than I am of rhe committing to my goals and dreams. Because I've come to the conclusion that it is not for lack of ability to do these things, but rather it's that I don't achieve them because I don't recommit and honor the initial obligation to myself of following through with my ideas reaching their goal. Honestly, it's not even the fact that I'm not following through, but rather the fact that I need to make sure that every day I make that commitment to myself. And maybe I'm wrong, but if I recommit to those goals for myself, I feel like I can Inspire others to reach their own goals, and within my own community we can reach our Collective goals together while helping each other up the ladder, as it were. For many years, I had a hard time committing to myself and to my goals because of a lack of self-worth. And while I sometimes still struggle with that lack of self-worth and self soothing and building my own ego from the feedback that I received from others, I know that it is important for all of us to sometimes sit back and say that we really truly do matter here and no matter how small of a contribution, it's still a contribution. And those goals, whether they be lofty or just barely rising from where you are right now, are still important and necessary and just as amazing as other people's goals. And in recommitting to myself, I feel like I honor those goals and those things about me that I truly do love and appreciate. I hope this makes sense, because I think it's something that all of us do and maybe I'm just late to the bandwagon of figuring out that this is one of the ways that successful people succeed. And that we committing to one's goals, and verbalizing and vocalizing that commitment everyday is super important to keeping your eyes on the prize as it were and keeping going. Does that even make sense? 7. And as this is the last of my Sunday 7 today, I would like to reiterate how much I appreciate all of you and what you do for myself and for each other as part of this community. When I said some of the things that I said this last week, and questioned myself looking out at all of you and the amazing things you're doing, I hope that that did not come across as angry at you for being amazing, because that's not what I meant. I really truly do enjoy seeing each and everyone of you do well, or start the walk back to the road to Wellness and a recommitment to the joy that is living. I just got a little bit sideways, and I just wanted to make sure tonight that all of you know how appreciative I am of everyone of you being supportive in my journey as a Fisher poet, as a singer-songwriter, as someone who is actively looking to become more healthy, and as a human being. Y'all make this planet spin just that much better, and you don't even know it! Have a great week!

[thetomhanksmovieblog]

#4. That Thing You Do!

(PG, 1h 48m, Comedy/Drama/Music, 1996)

Now for a movie I will never run out of praise for. Wholesome and rewarding, a local boy band’s miraculous skyrocket to fame in 1964 finds its perfect tempo while paying cultural homage in the Tom Hanks directed-and-acted one-of-many-ones hit wonder, That Thing You Do!. In a word? Refreshing.

Cool cat Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott) just wants to play drums. Long after the glazed ‘n’ dazed customers have left and the books have been cooked at his family’s appliance store in Nowhere, Pennsylvania, Guy retreats to the basement with his idol Del Paxton on vinyl to sit on his throne and deal out rhythm like only a boy desperate to make it big can. Here, there is no housewife wanting to buy a washer, here, the only record needle Guy deals is back to the top of his most prized album, Time to Blow. On his throne, he is king; on his throne, Guy Patterson is Spartacus.

Drummer needs a band, right? (I’m a musician - drummers’ll tell you they don’t.) Guy gets his break when he sits in with local band The Wonders. Chad, the original drummer, broke his arm playing leapfrog over a parking meter. But actually though! I love that scene. It’s half of the band looking all serious, meanwhile Chad and the bass player are jumping over meters like a bunch of no-good scally-wagging top-poppers. The other thing about the bass player was how long it took me to realize that he does not in fact have a name beyond the bass player. When credited, he’s referred to as T. B. Player - the bass player?? The world may never know.

The Wonders start playing locally, cut some records, sign a deal, life is good. Then, the true big break arrives - The Wonders have caught the attention of Mr. White (Tom Hanks), who is looking to sign the boys to the Play-Tone Galaxy of Stars and launch the band into true orbit.

Ambitiously filling the roles of director, writer, and co-star, Tom Hanks crafts a masterpiece of timing and dialogue in That Thing You Do!. He wastes not one iota of script, each line either serving to develop the characters, crack a joke, advance the plot, or do all three at once. Each character is distinct in terms of conversation and affect, from funny Lenny (Steve Zahn) to brooding Jimmy (Jonathon Schaech) to even the purposefully faceless bass player (Ethan Embry). Each Wonder is a boy you know, or a person you have been. In a way, we all spend time being ‘the bass player’ at some point.

The expertly timed dialogue reflects Tom Hanks’ Hollywood tenure and proximity to all the big writers. The script also highlights Hanks’ own wit and experience growing up in Southern California. You could watch this with your parents and see them recognize the show playing in the background at Patterson’s Appliances. Mr. White coaches the boys before each performance with a tagline familiar to any musician that there is no time for idling around and letting the audience grow cold or letting the applause die out: “you unplug and you run!”. Mr. White is always quick to offer the boys compliments on their looks, too; whether in black suits or red suits, they look great no matter what.

Fay’s (Liv Tyler) shining one-liner is her break-up with Jimmy, who has been two years too arrogant to see the true devotion before him which he can only imitate in his songs. Some may snub Tyler’s emotionless delivery, but it’s the flatness of her voice and stillness of her face that shows the exhaustion of loving without return: “shame on me for kissing you with my eyes closed so tight.” You tell ‘im, Fay.

Fictitious jazz legend Del Paxton’s words of wisdom to Guy ring true not only for any musician, but any person looking to hold the present together beyond honest capability. As Guy watches his one-hit wonder band fizzle out as if in a supernova, Paxton reminds Guy how impermanent the glitz before him is: “bands come and go, but you gotta keep playing.” 

How relatable is this for you? I was in two bands in college, and each had the right people in the right place at the right time. My rock orchestra saw its fifteen minutes when we had the chance to open for Heart until our set got rained out. Summer ran out, and I had to go back to school. My old time band saw a hint of traction on the contra dance circuit before the day we all had graduated and were slingshot far, far away from each other. The gigs were good and the memories greater. As I know for me and I’m sure for all of them, I’ve just had to keep playing. In no way does the passage of time or accumulation of distance diminish the value of what we had. Like 1964, the year had to end at some point.

Speaking of 1964, while at the College of Wailing and Mayhem, I took a four-credit course in my senior year on the music of The Beatles. I kid you not. Easily the most engaging and knowledgeable professor I had the pleasure to study with. That Thing You Do! did its homework in paralleling The Beatles, not counting obvious references in the script. Like The Beatles, The Wonders lose their original bass player and replace their original drummer. Both go for a name pun: before Mr. White changed their name to something less confusing, it was The Oneders (the oh-NEE-ders??). For both bands, their hit break-through single was a slower song made great by sneakily speeding it up (see “Please Please Me”). Some say Mr. White has a male lover in the extended edition to mirror Brian Epstein, manager of The Beatles, but my copy of the movie leaves all of that to the imagination.

As if this movie isn’t enough fun to watch, you can tell it was a fun time to make. Reading through the list of actors and cameos, Tom Hanks was clearly throwing a block party for his family and friends and just wrote it off as filming. Even Bryan Cranston appears for a moment, and Hank’s wife Rita Wilson plays the waitress at the jazz club.

Possibly the most thrilling scene is when the boys hear their single on the radio for the first time. Wherever each Wonder is in Erie, they’ve got their ear tuned to the local AM waves. The very second when they hear the first bar of Guy’s drum beat, they all flock to the appliance store, tripping over themselves, running to be together, basking in the pure ecstasy of the moment. The dream that each of them had visions of, Jimmy and Lenny and Guy and Fay and the other one, all saw a glimpse of it eclipse with reality when, for maybe two minutes, they ruled local air. There is jumping and crying and screaming. There are moments like these in everyone’s life, like getting into college, or getting engaged, or watching your garden bloom in the full sun of spring for the first time. The Wonders are hitting a milestone, maybe one they thought they would not see. They start something big, and it’s only the first of many. We know how the story ends, but in that moment, they can’t even dream of waking up. Anything could happen.

P.s. -- go see “Baby Driver” before it leaves the theater! It’s a good time.

P.p.s. -- even if you don’t find yourself watching this movie, you’ve at least got to give the single a shot!

[benxsamuel]

A lecture by Warren Ellis

My job is just sitting in a room making shit up all day. I’m not complaining.  But the best part is that I get to meet people, all kinds of people, in probably dozens of different fields.  Because I hate silos.  The idea that you find your specialty and stay in it.  I mentioned that I never went on to higher education.  I’m one of those terrifying random auto-didacts you read about, usually in news stories about sudden unexpected axe attacks or bombing campaigns against vending machines.  I’m not even one of those freakish deep-thinking uncontained comprehensivists like Buckminster Fuller, whom some of you will probably have to look up afterwards.  He once taught at MIT, where I spoke just a couple of weeks ago, and his course was called Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science. Which is probably another way of saying Arts, Design and Computer Science.

Fuller also taught at Black Mountain College, a weird experimental school in North Carolina – it’s near a place called Asheville, close to where I visited on book tour last winter, and we should maybe talk about Asheville one day – it used to be tobacco country, but when other pressures caused the government to remove a crucial financial crutch, the area collapsed back from 1400 acres of tobacco ground to a hundred, killing the local economy and emptying lots and lots of buildings that artists and musicians moved into for pennies – but, Black Mountain College – the point of the place from the start was that it was interdisciplinary. All the departments cross-pollinated each other. 

And that’s kind of how I work and move around the place.  All the time, I talk to directors, musicians of all kinds, artists, designers, coders, security threat modellers, genetic engineers, space doctors, philosophers, actors, writers, actual mad scientists.  I met Ev Williams at dinner when he was still building out Blogger and I was just a bloody comics writer – but I was in the Bay Area to speak onstage at a “future of the web” conference next to a musician called Thomas Dolby and a software engineer called Grady Booch.  Not because I am brilliant or special but because when the opportunity to step outside my perceived silo comes up, I grab it. 

Specialisation worked out pretty interestingly for arts, science and the humanities in the 20th Century, sure.  I mean, unless you were into philosophy, which was completely subsumed by academia and strangled in the dark.  I should apologise to my philosopher friends for that, but they’re aware of it  -- Peter Sjostedt publishes through Psychedelic Press to get his ideas out of the silo.  The 21st Century is going to work a little differently.  Nobody was ready for Bucky Fuller and his comprehensivist geodesic dome bullshit in 1950, and Black Mountain College didn’t last twenty five years, but, this year, if we don’t pay attention to everything and learn from everybody, then we’re probably all screwed. The best bit of my life is that I get to talk to everybody, about everything, and put people from a bunch of different disciplines in the same room, and I get to listen and learn and apply that to whatever I do next.  It’s a full speed life, and it’s riddled with challenges large and small, and I might still go down with arrows in my back, as Bruce Sterling said about me – but it’s entertaining as all hell. 

And the point to this is – this is what the future is going to look like.  Probably needs to look like.  And that’s going to be where you’re living.

But let me start this next bit with something else. 

If I were giving this talk a few years ago, I’d be talking about atemporality, the appearance of a long pause in the culture, the idea of Manufactured Normalcy that gives everything that grey JG Ballard pallor of banality, and Marshall McLuhan’s warnings about seeing everything through the rear view mirror.  But I imagine most if not all of you have the feeling that everything’s gone a bit Mad Max Fury Road.  I know people just a generation or two older than you who are off to learn permaculture farming or buying houseboats that can survive a trip across the North Sea. 

From here, the Nineties look like the bloody Enlightenment.  Back then, we were just a hungover post-imperial nation that was expected only to fuck, take drugs, make art and dance really badly.  Now, the fight for the future is on.  The fight for diverse and conscious voices, the fight for privacy and secure communication and home automation that makes sense, the fight for news and the fight for art that gets to say what it wants and design that looks forward and anything that isn’t just there to please the reactionary forces of xenophobic chinless ex-bankers and the racist daughter of a vicar from Little England and an angry orange pensioner in the thrall of actual fucking Nazis. 

On Sunday night I read a headline including the term “weaponized artificial lifeforms.”  Shit’s gotten weird.  There are people at Brandeis inventing an actual new form of matter called a self-propelling liquid. Dogs can detect cancer by sniffing a bandage.  In the last couple of months, we’ve discovered evidence of two mass extinction events we previously didn’t know about.  As of a week ago, NASA are tracking a star that orbits a black hole every thirty minutes. It’s all strange, and it’s all getting faster and faster, but it’s all also the stories of where we are right now. 

And the cave paintings of Chauvet Pont D’Arc have just turned out to be older than anyone though.  The cave art – the first narrative visual media in the world – is some thirty five thousand years old.  The stories of where we were right then. That’s how long we’ve been doing this. 

I have two great loves.  History and the future.  And I use them both as tools to try and see where I am right now, and to try and describe what I think it looks like.  Which is also the work of journalism.  Reportage and narrative.  See how I connect everything together and make it look like I’m smart, while also clearly making shit up.  I’ve been doing this a long time.  One day you too will be able to bullshit like me. 

But the future is where we’re all living tomorrow, and it’s down to us both to summon it and to look ahead to see what shape it may arrive in. 

Speculative fiction and new forms of art and storytelling and innovations in technology and computing are engaged in the work of mad scientists: testing future ways of living and seeing before they actually arrive.  We are the early warning system for the culture.  We see the future as a weatherfront, a vast mass of possibilities across the horizon, and since we’re not idiots and therefore will not claim to be able to predict exactly where lightning will strike – we take one or more of those possibilities and play them out in our work, to see what might happen.  Imagining them as real things and testing them in the laboratory of our practice – informed by our careful cross-contamination by many and various fields other than our own -- to see what these things do. 

To work with the nature of the future, in media and in tech and in language, is to embrace being mad scientists, and we might as well get good at it. 

—From his opening lecture at York St John University this year. I’m in awe of this man. 

[jezfletcher]

1000 Albums, 2018: The Top Ten

10. Skerryvore - Evo

(Celtic rock) Right in my wheelhouse is the confluence of Celtic folk, pop and rock, and Evo from Skerryvore really delivers exactly that. It’s has a kind of rousing stadium sound to it, but performed with some trad twists that always makes it sound fresher than your average kind of pop rock. Much like my #1 album of 2016, The Space Between from Jamie Smith’s Mabon, this is the kind of album which was always going to vault up the ratings. My pick of the tracks it Hold On.

9. Orbital - Monsters Exist

(techno) A pretty monumental album from Orbital, 90s beatmakers extrordinaire, which manages to wrangle all of their dark, thumping electronica, and their humour into one tight little package. My pick of the tracks is the sprawling Monsters Exist, but you could just as easily fall in love with tracks like Hoo Hoo Ha Ha or P.H.U.K.. This sounds a little bit like their 2001 album The Altogether, which is one of my favourite albums of all time. This won the week easily the week it came out; so easily that I didn’t necessarily think about it much. But when it came time to relisten, I appreciated anew just what a fine album this is.

8. Dudley Benson - Zealandia

(contemporary chamber music) This was something of a revelation to me. This was one of Sam’s picks, and something that I’d failed to find in my screening. But this is really quite wonderful music, akin to the Mercury-winning Benjamin Clementine we listened to last year. It’s music with a real sense of novelty to it—music that sounds like music will sound in the future. It’s based around chamber music ideals and baroque instrumentation (harpsichord features prominently), but it maintains a kind of pop structure that adds an accessibility to it. That might make it less academically complex as Clementine, for instance, but it also makes it the kind of music you can devour wholeheartedly. I have two particular picks: Birth of a Nation and It’s Otepoti’s Fault.

7. The Fratellis - In Your Own Sweet Time

(indie rock) I’ve actually never listened to the Fratellis before, although they’ve had a somewhat illustrious career before now. Coming into this album fresh though is quite an experience though. You feel a little bit as though they’ve completed everything they wanted to complete, and now, with an album like In Your Own Sweet Time (their fifth), they can just let rip and have fun. And this absolutely comes through in the music—it’s riproaring stuff, just full-throated and unapologetic about what a good time they’re having. It’s also daggy, but it’s done with such abandon and sincerity that I was dragged along with it, grinning every step of the way. There’s lots of pick on an album like this, but even amongst all the goodness, there’s a big standout in Starcrossed Losers.

6. Cosmo Sheldrake - The Much Much How How And I

(baroque pop, art pop) A wonderfully quirky album from a very talented musician, The Much Much How How And I is the debut album from Sheldrake, after a teaser of his style in his EP Pelicans We, which we also listened to this year. A multi-instrumentalist, Sheldrake must play around 100 instruments on this thing, ranging from plinky strings to oddly tuned percussion, to clarinet, all backed up by his affected vocals. It’s chamber pop in some sense, but it’s also mixed with the music you’d find in a turn-of-the-century circus, or the soundtrack to the inevitable approach of the clockwork army. It’s utterly unlike anything else we listened to this year, and that’s enough to propel it this high in my list. My top pick is Wriggle, but I also rate Birth a Basket, Hocking and Egg and Soldiers.

5. Jeremy Messersmith - Late Stage Capitalism

(orchestral pop) From the first moments I started this album, I could tell it was going to be a yearly standout. It’s a kind of effortless throwback pop rock, which both manages to sound evocative of 60s pop, while having the clean, crisp edge that makes it feel fresh and modern. On top of that, there’s just some really classic songwriting in here—tracks like Purple Hearts feel like the kind of track which could have been a hit in any era since the 1950s. While Purple Hearts is a big standout for me, I’m also very fond of the melancholy ambivalence of Monday (“Monday, you’re not so bad”, he croons), and the swooning All The Cool Girls. It’s a really quite wonderful album.

4. Moon Taxi - Let The Record Play

(indie pop) I’m pretty surprised to see this so high—it’s the highest album on this list which didn’t end up taking out an Album of the Week award the week it was released—but on relistening I was shocked at how bloody good it is. This is, absolutely, the kind of album which I have just devoured in the past. It’s pop rock with jazz and funk influences. It’s got a prominent horn section. I mean, even just look at that cover art. You know it’s going to be fun. But the even better part is the density of top tracks. Even many months after hearing it, I not only get my top track stuck in my head (Two High, which is awesome and you should go listen to it), but I find myself humming along to Let the Record Play, Good As Gold, Nothing Can Keep Us Apart and Trouble. This is the sort of thing that’s going to get me in just about any week of the music project. And yet it didn’t win the week when we listened to it. Funny about that.

3. Kyle Craft - Full Circle Nightmare

(glam folk) Kyle Craft had my #2 album of the year in 2016, with his debut Dolls of Highland, which was a revelation, and just a bloody good album. He’d released a couple of respectable, but somewhat underwhelming filler singles in 2017, so I was approaching his sophomore effort with some trepidation. But boy oh boy was I wrong to worry. This is every bit as good as his first effort, recapturing all of the energy and glam swagger, and putting it forward with his brassy bombast. Here we have tracks like Fever Dream Girl and Heartbreak Junky which run the gamut from melancholy introspection to punchy full-throated sass. This was absolutely the album I wanted from Craft to follow up on his exceptional debut: it’s more of the same, to show that he can pull out the same style and verve that made the first album so good. If there’s one reason that this is #3 of the year when the previous album was #2, it’s that it does lack that delineation from the first album. But that, as I said, is a strength as well. I feel like I’m expecting something new from album number three though, and given Craft’s talent, I can imagine a bunch of ways it could go where he really ratchets it up to the next level. I’ll be waiting.

2. Jukebox The Ghost - Off to the Races

(power pop) This is an amazing collection of music, and has a density of quality songs that beats just about anything on this list apart from my #1 album. Unsurprisingly, that’s why it’s in my #2 position of the year. You know you’re in safe hands from the very beginning, with the Queen-channelling, raucously complex opening track Jumpstarted (which will also be featuring prominently in my Top Tracks of the Year list). But the hits keep coming, with the power pop Fred Astaire, almost chamber-work like Time And I and plaintive Diane. There are more I could mention. This is just exactly the kind of music I’m here for—and for them to give me so many different flavours of it across the album is a real treat. A very worthy #2 of the year from me.

1. The Go! Team - Semicircle

(vaguely alterna-J-hip-poptronica) In the end though, I can’t go past this pretty awesome album from stylistic provocateurs The Go! Team. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed some of their previous work (although I’ve not done a proper deep dive into it), but even this album is pushing them somewhere different. Recorded with a youth choir and what sounds like a high school marching band, it manages to capture their same style but package it up in a different way and the results are fascinating. But beyond being academically interesting, it’s just great fun. We have tracks like the steel-drum infused If There’s One Thing You Should Know, the plunderphonic Mayday, which incorporates a Morse code beeping into its main driving rhythm, the tight jazz-rock stylings of All The Way Live, or title track The Semicircle Song, which climaxes with a bunch of the singers introducing themselves with their name and star sign (because why. the hell. not). This was a strong winner of Album of the Week the week it was release (and the reason why Moon Taxi didn’t get a look-in that week), and I think I’ve always been quietly considering it my Album of the Year from when it was first released. But there’s nothing like making it official, and it feels good to finally make an honest album out of Semicircle. There we have it for another year. There were genuinely some amazing albums this year, and I find it very, very satisfying to look over the best of them. It absolutely makes the effort and the time we spend on this project worth it. Tomorrow, I'm going to post my top tracks of the year, without commentary, and also post a public playlist of all of my top tracks, in case you want to give it a whirl. Believe me that 2018 (like 2017 and 2016 before it, and maybe even years before we did our 1000 Albums project) was an excellent year for music.

[megadarkbouquettidalwavethings]

Five visions for the future of music

Welcome to the (not so) distant future.

The year is 2018.

Music is changing fast, but can the humans keep up?

Here’s a handful of possible outcomes.

Go boldly everybody.

1) Your favourite singer is not real

One of Japan’s biggest pop stars Hatsune Miku (above) is not a real person.

But that small detail didn’t prevent the humanoid singer from releasing another new music video last week.

She may also have some duets lined up – given that she’s already collaborated with Pharrell.

If the name of the fictional J-pop act is unfamiliar, then try this one on for size:

Roy Orbison.

The Big O died in 1988 but now his 3D hologram world tour will come to life, alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, on 8 April in Cardiff.

His son, Roy Orbison Jr, who hopes his dad’s avatar will one day have a Las Vegas residency, says: “We’re really excited we got the opportunity to do this: the first big tour of a deceased artist with a hologram.

“I don’t think it’s possible yet for the hologram to walk out into the audience so there’s definitely a lot of potential for live application.”

He adds: “But most importantly this is just the icing on the cake.

“The cake is those amazing songs that my dad wrote and his incredible voice.”

Rapper, activist and actual woman M.I.A believes virtual alter egos can benefit living musicians too.

“Artists are at the cusp of embracing AI. But what is political activism in AI phase?” she pondered at Meltdown.

“I think ‘Should I make my next video in virtual reality instead of me?’. I find that sexy – new technology.

“I could take the hippy route of singing to people face-to-face… or I could stream my virtual shows to people’s bedrooms around the world so you can be at my show wherever you are.”

She went on: “The amount of data AI can pick up on is so fast growing that the future me will be way better anyway!

“But will the future me be less politicised?”

Speak to James Skelly of Merseyside psych rockers The Coral and he’ll tell you he would have made the digital changeover years ago.

He says: “We wanted a holographic version of The Coral, when we were first doing well in about 2002, to tour Japan as us.

“If there was a group that could do another gig, as well as us, and we could split the profits, I’d be up for it!

“But you need songs – it’s always about songs.”

For all we know, the future may have already started for Guy Garvey of Manchester band Elbow.

“How do you know that we are not already holographic?” he quips.

Well, quite.

2) The live parameters have shifted

From the hippies at Woodstock in 1969 to Ed Sheeran and his loop pedal at Glastonbury this summer, the festival experience has been forever changing.

Bluedot Festival – Photo: BLUEDOT FESTIVAL

By next summer, virtual and augmented reality – as well as “3D mapping” – could mean they are more interactive than ever before.

Ben Robinson, creative director of Bluedot Festival at the Jodrell Bank Observatory (you know, the one in Hitchhikers Guide), is giddy at the thought of “shifting the parameters”.

“We had Orbital playing [in 2017] who, 20 years ago, were the very cutting edge, looking at lasers and light production making it more than just some guy standing on a stage,” he says.

“Now today the incorporation of visuals and the production that goes on is quite insane.

“3D mapping manipulates the look and feel of a 3D object. It’s been done on castles to make them look like they’ve fallen down.

“Now people can experience being on the stage with the artists. Or the gig could move off the stage.

“We are a generation spoiled with possibilities.”

Animated heroes Gorillaz hosted their own one-day festival, Demon Dayz, at Margate theme park Dreamland last summer.

Co-creator Jamie Hewlett told the Daily Star that he and Damon Albarn may be getting “too old” but Ben sees no reason why the show can’t go on without them.

“In the past a band’s legacy was they left a record and VHS recording of a concert. Now they can leave the tools for someone else and be just as effective 50 years in the future.”

3) The recording studio is in your laptop

Noel Gallagher confessed to Radio X’s John Kennedy last month that he had never actually met the bass player on his new album Who Built The Moon?

Jason Falkner was doing his thing down the line from LA, while Noel was having his mind blown in Belfast and London.

Noel said: “It was the entire opposite to the thing I’ve ever done. My thing with Oasis was being in a room with a bunch of people and eye contact.

“Here I am at two in the afternoon talking to a guy on an iPad and for him it’s four in the morning and I can hear the song coming through his speakers and he’s saying ‘What do you think of this? Maybe if I do that?’

“And I’m like ‘this is so far out it’s unbelievable’.”

Butch Vig, former Nirvana producer and drummer with Garbage and 5 Billions in Diamonds, confirms such technology is also now available to new bands, who are short on cash but long on distance and imagination.

“There’s a new editing programme where you can be working on the same song in real time in different cities,” he says.

“You have to be creative with the tools you’ve got and, because of the digital technology, everybody can have a really powerful recording studio in your laptop.”

Beth Orton (who incidentally describes Hatsune Miku as “the music industry’s perfect woman”) embraced such kit on her latest album Kidsticks and in some cases preferred computer-generated sounds over actual instruments.

She says: “The ability to play the keyboard and the sound to be any sound possible was very freeing. That would influence the melodies that you created.”

But just a little of that human touch still goes a long way in the creative process.

“Even making an electronic record it was about the connection with the producer and the other musicians.

“I personally like a bit of imperfection.”

4) There’s a direct line between you and your favourite act

Jack White’s Third Man Records reward their subscribers with deliveries of exclusive limited edition pressings.

DJ Gramatik went a step further last week by becoming the first artist to “tokenise” himself, meaning fans who buy the token using the cryptocurrency Ether can potentially share in his future revenue.

Jeff Smith from music databse Discogs believes such block chain technology will “set a direct line from creator to consumer to be able to send things directly, without any form of piracy”.

He says: “We could see subscription platforms, like Third Man records, being able to send out Jack White exclusives without them being traded or shared in any way.”

That’s not to say that fans won’t still crave physical records and material from their new crypto-favourites.

“We’re definitely seeing a universal unplugging and physical music becoming a major part of peoples lives again.”

London hip hop star Loyle Carner is not currently available in token form and he’s happy to keep fans waiting for the follow-up to his Mercury-nominated 2017 album Yesterday’s Gone.

“A song comes out and people say ‘I like that – OK now I’m bored of that. Where’s the next one?’,” he explains.

“Singles are like chapters from a book and if you want to hear my music you’ve got to wait for it.”

5) But new music technology will not be for everyone

For all the head-bending future technology, for many, music always was and always will be about the people… man.

Neil Hannon from the Divine Comedy says: “I’m going to come across as a complete Luddite now but I believe music only gets worse the further you take people and humanity out of it.

“I foresee if they insist on going down this non-existent route then you’re only going to get another punk of some description that rewrites the rulebook.”

Punks like Irish rockers The Strypes maybe?

Bass player Peter O’Hanlon says: “Our fresh approach will be that we just come and play the gig! Everybody else is flying across the stage and we just stand in front of you and play.”

Guitarist Josh McClorey agrees: “The other stuff is cool, but it’s a gimmick.”

Compatriot Lisa Hannigan won’t be found jamming over the internet or appearing live as a hologram anytime soon.

“I don’t think that’s going to be my bag of chips!” says Lisa.

“I just like rocking out a jam with my friends. I can barely work the camera on my phone.

“Cancel the Lisa Hannigan Hologram tour. We’ve lost the cable!”

Just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should and as we hurl ourselves into the new age, fellow folkee Marcus Mumford prefers to hold on to the sacred spirit of the past.

He says: “I don’t know what the future of music is going to look like but if I’m not playing I don’t want no part of it.

“If it sounds good and people are having a good time, then it’s enough for me.”

Source: BBC

The post Five visions for the future of music appeared first on Breaking News Top News & Latest News Headlines | Reuters.

[music-research-strategies]

Characteristics of Bone: A Memorie

https://amerarcana.wordpress.com/

...bone represents the very source of life, both human and animal. To reduce oneself to the skeleton condition is equivalent to re-entering the womb of this primordial life, that is, to a complete renewal, a mystical rebirth. 

-Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy 

The characteristics of bone describes the music of Glenn Spearman (tenor saxophone) and Marco Eneidi (alto saxophone). They have moved beyond bone now, yet bone is eternal. Civilization can never defeat bone. For the sake of the memory of Glenn and Marco, I will skip the rigmarole of making an acrostic of their names, and whatnot. You need only to find recordings and listen: listen to their material. You need to run it down from before the beginning for yourself, and after. Many others are more qualified than I to give detailed accounts of the lives of Glenn Spearman and Marco Eneidi. It was only dumb luck and poverty that led me across their paths in the first place. 

I was homeless San Francisco in 1993 just a few months after coming from San Diego. I came up Highway 5 to attend the state university. I had even sold my drum kit to barely afford the essentials. This is when I discovered the infamous San Francisco burrito and the salsa verde, which my buddies still refer to as “the drug.” El Castillito made them huge, by San Diego standards, and the wasn’t far from my place on 26th and Alabama. My job at the recycling center at school didn’t pay but once a month. I had to starve in between checks. Not dire by any account. I loved it. I was a Creative Writing student after all. I’d starve and smoke and nibble and drink wine. Within a month of living in in the city, sunrise to sunrise. I was pushed out of a ratty apartment in no time. I discovered Food Not Bombs and Homes Not Jails through the Epicenter Zone, a Punk community center. They had a switchboard hot-line service for those in need. No one really had cell phones or the internet. I made my way to a Homes Not Jails meeting. They had left over free soup from Food Not Bombs. A dude I met there let me crash in his attic. Jeremy Graham. We talked about what I thought was music and I what I thought was literature. He is a lawyer now and still comes to my shows 23 years later. Jeremy gave me a tape of John Coltrane’s last album “Expressions”, Frank Wright’s “One for John” album (with Bobby Few and Noah Howard), and Glenn Spearman’s Double Trio.

“...(Cecil) Taylor drafted (Glenn) Spearman for a big band…(t)hat led to a few gigs with Cecil’s other bands, a seven-piece group which played for dancers, and a six-piece Cecil Taylor Unit including (Raphe) Malik, Jimmy Lyons, William Parker and Rashid Bakr ‘That’s where I got my advanced degree in music,’ says Glenn.”  

Bassist Lisle Ellis has been a great conduit for me, and the other young pups I ran around with. Lisle was a later addition the Glenn Spearman’s Double Trio. He was the only one as far as I knew. I saw them perform as much as possible. Great musicians, bunch of dudes: William Winant (percussion), Donald Robinson (drum kit), Chris Brown (piano), Larry Ochs (saxophones), Lisle on bass and Glenn. I still don’t really know the other guys well. Lisle linked me to pedagogies and practices of the Creative Music Studio in New York around the mid-70’s, Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor and beyond. Plus, he remains super accessible. He ran a workshop out of his apartment in the Upper Haight in San Francisco. Had us doing all kinds of exercises. He introduced to me violinist India Cooke which led to trio project, ESP, with bassist Kimara Dixon (a dude, now in Atlanta). She was teaching me to listen demonstrating loads of patience. Lisle joined us once on stage at Beanbender’s in Berkeley. India, Glenn, Chris and, maybe, Willie, back then, were on the faculty at Mills College. Larry was/is a part of ROVA Saxophone Quartet as the “O.” He performed the “Bedouin Hornbook,” back in the day. Donald fixed cars and drove the smallest car. It only fit a driver and drums. It was a Le Car or old school Honda Civic or something. Simply legendary. 

India and Glenn were my Black Arts Movement - West. I uncovered Ishmael Reed and Marvin X a bit later, after music. Many Black artists, intellectuals and Creative Musicians passed through the San Francisco Bays’ industry of thought, but I wasn’t really hip to it at the time. I was a struggling student and political activist. I staunchly rejected MTV and Hollywood because Chuck D, KRS ONE and Bad Brains told me to, thankfully. I switched majors from Writing to History to Philosophy & Religion and kept yo-yoing in and out of school. I kept up political education and service-based activism. Francis Wong, Jon Jang, Fred Wei-Han Ho and the Asian Improv Arts crew were quite explicitly positioned the music in an international, multi-ethnic nexus of resistance strategies and cultural progress. Rest in power, Fred. His book Sounding Off!: Music as Resistance / Rebellion / Revolution. There remains a lack of radical analysis and language amongst my community of Creative Musicians. Jason McGill and I interviewed back when Royal Hartigan gave him a residency at San Jose State. We heard Free Jazz as get-free-or-die-motherfucker! Years later Fred warned me about my academic language and intellectual tendencies. Fred was an action man. I mean, you just gotta talk to people and build. I find myself now digging through the past relationships and realities I simply missed in the ol’ Bay Area Creative Music scene. 

Unlike most cities, homeless persons, street persons, are quite visible up and down certain streets at all hours in San Francisco. I saw my fair share working with organizations affiliated with the Coalition On Homelessness. People have many reasons for escape, I can’t judge. What got me was that I recognized myself in the blatherings and bangings of some ecstatic urchin, high as fuck, banging away on buckets and pans for change, or for no reason at all. I stopped and stared not knowing if I was seeing my future self. A child of an alcoholic, though never an excessive user of any such thing, I only sought something behind the music I craved and worked through. Chasing Creative Music made me feel how that tripped out dude looked. People on the day to day are truly Improvisers: improvising a meal, a living, a laugh, so-called sanity. Navigating these streets and institutions will sure put you on a different plane. Just like how solitary confinement creates insanity. The complexity of the Double Trio saved my life. People say that kind of thing sometimes, and when it’s true it’s true. ROVA also turned me out. Composer, all around musician and bassist for Earth, Don McGreevy recently reminded me of all legacies of complexity, wonder and mastery that we inherited from this continuum of Creative Music. The bar is quite high. 

I was hungry for that essential transmission from improvisors with teeth. Experiencing the Double Trio was a kind of an initiation. My crew of musical and personal allies were transitioning into Creative Music enthusiasts at the same time. We imbibed all that we could. Performances spaces took on a sacred and profane quality. I only spoke to Glenn once or twice. I interviewed him on the phone after he quit doing chemo. He said he only wanted to self-medicate and finish his work peacefully. I trust that he did. 

Last I saw Marco, it was in February 2015. We ran across each other in Vienna, Austria on a Tuesday night. I was hunting for him. Black Spirituals, my band from Oakland, CA, performed while on tour with the iconic drone Metal unit Earth, from Seattle. We found ourselves in the fortunate circumstances of having our meals, booze, venue and sleeping accommodations all under same roof, or rooves in this case. European venues do it good that way. Drink up and load out in the morning, like a human being. I befriended a Viennese chap, an artist or philosopher unlucky in love, who joined me in a cab at midnight. We cut through the immaculate city in search of Marco. We found him, gray-faced and dogged, preparing to go home. He had been running the New Neu York/Vienna Institute of Improvised Music. Dude looked exhausted as he greeted his former apprentice, sort of looking past me. He was looking for his bed, no doubt. The poor bastard exchanged a few words and promptly left after informing us how avoid the entry fee at the venue door. He disappeared into the night, into history, and, all too soon, into the awaiting arms of the ancestors. I guess I thought he’d be a buoyant Henry Miller with a tart over one shoulder, tobacco smoke pouring out over too many words, a fifth in his breast pocket, and rubber soles under his heals. I think I just wanted to see his horn-playing stance one last time. That night, though, I performed improvisations with no-non-sense, badass musicians and threw back a few with Hans Farb from Festival Konfrontationen in Nicklesdorf. He knows all my Free Jazz family intimately. He is like an uncle I never knew was out there. 

Several years before, during one of Marco’s orbits from Vienna to the San Francisco Bay Area, I was able to host him. I booked a gig at Omiiroo Gallery in Downtown Oakland. It was my duty to spotlight him, feed him, give him a $100 bucks, and the stage. My man Githinji set it up. He taught me how to make Kenyan black-eyed peas for the occasion. “Gotta use coconut milk, brottar.” I arranged for additional catering from the Afghan spot down the street. And since the gallery didn’t have a proper bathroom, I made further arrangements with the Afghans to keep everybody comfortable. My band at the time was called Mutual Aid Project, a free jazz collective. We had undergone and performed the very first iterations of Decolonizing the Imagination together. Nick Obando (alto saxophone), Tracy Hui (guitar) & I performed composed analyses and democratic spaces to confront the tenets of colonization that brought our peoples to this land and still persist in our everyday lives. Rarely work with such deep cats. However, they were rightfully annoyed with me because I opted to perform solely with Marco. The next night, I must say, we opened for him at the Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco with Jamaaladeen Tacuma (electric bass), Lisa Mezzacappa (acoustic bass) and Vijay Anderson (drums). That gig with Marco was mine. My brother was shooting video, sort of. Some hot, young thing was sitting in the front row. My pops and his lovely wife brought their friends up from Oxnard and down from Napa-tasting. See, it was my dad’s birthday. I felt like an apprentice when I first pulled Marco’s coat and now I was a journeyman. We did two sets. I never released it. It’s just a thing I had to do. 

In early 2000’s, I worked with Marco as his sometime drummer. He was the kind of guy who lived in a van in NYC, so I heard, and schlepped his axe everywhere. Someone actually stopped me from doing that myself when I lived in DC. Back 

[megadarkbouquettidalwavethings]

Five visions for the future of music

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Hatsune Miku: She’s not there

Welcome to the (not so) distant future.

The year is 2018.

Music is changing fast, but can the humans keep up?

Here’s a handful of possible outcomes.

Go boldly everybody.

1) Your favourite singer is not real

One of Japan’s biggest pop stars Hatsune Miku (above) is not a real person.

But that small detail didn’t prevent the humanoid singer from releasing another new music video last week.

She may also have some duets lined up – given that she’s already collaborated with Pharrell.

If the name of the fictional J-pop act is unfamiliar, then try this one on for size:

Roy Orbison.

The Big O died in 1988 but now his 3D hologram world tour will come to life, alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, on 8 April in Cardiff.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Rob Orbison: In Dreams and now in holograms too

His son, Roy Orbison Jr, who hopes his dad’s avatar will one day have a Las Vegas residency, says: “We’re really excited we got the opportunity to do this: the first big tour of a deceased artist with a hologram.

“I don’t think it’s possible yet for the hologram to walk out into the audience so there’s definitely a lot of potential for live application.”

He adds: “But most importantly this is just the icing on the cake.

“The cake is those amazing songs that my dad wrote and his incredible voice.”

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption M.I.A finds technology ‘sexy’

Rapper, activist and actual woman M.I.A believes virtual alter egos can benefit living musicians too.

“Artists are at the cusp of embracing AI. But what is political activism in AI phase?” she pondered at Meltdown.

“I think ‘Should I make my next video in virtual reality instead of me?’. I find that sexy – new technology.

“I could take the hippy route of singing to people face-to-face… or I could stream my virtual shows to people’s bedrooms around the world so you can be at my show wherever you are.”

She went on: “The amount of data AI can pick up on is so fast growing that the future me will be way better anyway!

“But will the future me be less politicised?”

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Can the real Coral please stand up

Speak to James Skelly of Merseyside psych rockers The Coral and he’ll tell you he would have made the digital changeover years ago.

He says: “We wanted a holographic version of The Coral, when we were first doing well in about 2002, to tour Japan as us.

“If there was a group that could do another gig, as well as us, and we could split the profits, I’d be up for it!

“But you need songs – it’s always about songs.”

For all we know, the future may have already started for Guy Garvey of Manchester band Elbow.

“How do you know that we are not already holographic?” he quips.

Well, quite.

2) The live parameters have shifted

Image copyright Bluedot Festival

Image caption Bluedot Festival

From the hippies at Woodstock in 1969 to Ed Sheeran and his loop pedal at Glastonbury this summer, the festival experience has been forever changing.

By next summer, virtual and augmented reality – as well as “3D mapping” – could mean they are more interactive than ever before.

Ben Robinson, creative director of Bluedot Festival at the Jodrell Bank Observatory (you know, the one in Hitchhikers Guide), is giddy at the thought of “shifting the parameters”.

“We had Orbital playing [in 2017] who, 20 years ago, were the very cutting edge, looking at lasers and light production making it more than just some guy standing on a stage,” he says.

“Now today the incorporation of visuals and the production that goes on is quite insane.

“3D mapping manipulates the look and feel of a 3D object. It’s been done on castles to make them look like they’ve fallen down.

“Now people can experience being on the stage with the artists. Or the gig could move off the stage.

“We are a generation spoiled with possibilities.”

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Gorillaz

Animated heroes Gorillaz hosted their own one-day festival, Demon Dayz, at Margate theme park Dreamland last summer.

Co-creator Jamie Hewlett told the Daily Star that he and Damon Albarn may be getting “too old” but Ben sees no reason why the show can’t go on without them.

“In the past a band’s legacy was they left a record and VHS recording of a concert. Now they can leave the tools for someone else and be just as effective 50 years in the future.”

3) The recording studio is in your laptop

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Noel Gallagher: “I’m in the UK – what time is it there?”

Noel Gallagher confessed to Radio X’s John Kennedy last month that he had never actually met the bass player on his new album Who Built The Moon?

Jason Falkner was doing his thing down the line from LA, while Noel was having his mind blown in Belfast and London.

Noel said: “It was the entire opposite to the thing I’ve ever done. My thing with Oasis was being in a room with a bunch of people and eye contact.

“Here I am at two in the afternoon talking to a guy on an iPad and for him it’s four in the morning and I can hear the song coming through his speakers and he’s saying ‘What do you think of this? Maybe if I do that?’

“And I’m like ‘this is so far out it’s unbelievable’.”

Butch Vig, former Nirvana producer and drummer with Garbage and 5 Billions in Diamonds, confirms such technology is also now available to new bands, who are short on cash but long on distance and imagination.

“There’s a new editing programme where you can be working on the same song in real time in different cities,” he says.

“You have to be creative with the tools you’ve got and, because of the digital technology, everybody can have a really powerful recording studio in your laptop.”

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Beth Orton: Perfectly imperfect

Beth Orton (who incidentally describes Hatsune Miku as “the music industry’s perfect woman”) embraced such kit on her latest album Kidsticks and in some cases preferred computer-generated sounds over actual instruments.

She says: “The ability to play the keyboard and the sound to be any sound possible was very freeing. That would influence the melodies that you created.”

But just a little of that human touch still goes a long way in the creative process.

“Even making an electronic record it was about the connection with the producer and the other musicians.

“I personally like a bit of imperfection.”

4) There’s a direct line between you and your favourite act

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Jack White: “It says ‘Dear Stephen’, thanks for your support’

Jack White’s Third Man Records reward their subscribers with deliveries of exclusive limited edition pressings.

DJ Gramatik went a step further last week by becoming the first artist to “tokenise” himself, meaning fans who buy the token using the cryptocurrency Ether can potentially share in his future revenue.

Jeff Smith from music databse Discogs believes such block chain technology will “set a direct line from creator to consumer to be able to send things directly, without any form of piracy”.

He says: “We could see subscription platforms, like Third Man records, being able to send out Jack White exclusives without them being traded or shared in any way.”

That’s not to say that fans won’t still crave physical records and material from their new crypto-favourites.

“We’re definitely seeing a universal unplugging and physical music becoming a major part of peoples lives again.”

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Loyle Carner: Fighting for your right (to not release more music yet)

London hip hop star Loyle Carner is not currently available in token form and he’s happy to keep fans waiting for the follow-up to his Mercury-nominated 2017 album Yesterday’s Gone.

“A song comes out and people say ‘I like that – OK now I’m bored of that. Where’s the next one?’,” he explains.

“Singles are like chapters from a book and if you want to hear my music you’ve got to wait for it.”

5) But new music technology will not be for everyone

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Neil Hannon: People person

For all the head-bending future technology, for many, music always was and always will be about the people… man.

Neil Hannon from the Divine Comedy says: “I’m going to come across as a complete Luddite now but I believe music only gets worse the further you take people and humanity out of it.

“I foresee if they insist on going down this non-existent route then you’re only going to get another punk of some description that rewrites the rulebook.”

Punks like Irish rockers The Strypes maybe?

Bass player Peter O’Hanlon says: “Our fresh approach will be that we just come and play the gig! Everybody else is flying across the stage and we just stand in front of you and play.”

Guitarist Josh McClorey agrees: “The other stuff is cool, but it’s a gimmick.”

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Lisa Hannigan: “Can you plug me back in at the back please?”

Compatriot Lisa Hannigan won’t be found jamming over the internet or appearing live as a hologram anytime soon.

“I don’t think that’s going to be my bag of chips!” says Lisa.

“I just like rocking out a jam with my friends. I can barely work the camera on my phone.

“Cancel the Lisa Hannigan Hologram tour. We’ve lost the cable!”

Just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should and as we hurl ourselves into the new age, fellow folkee Marcus Mumford prefers to hold on to the sacred spirit of the past.

He says: “I don’t know what the future of music is going to look like but if I’m not playing I don’t want no part of it.

“If it sounds good and people are having a good time, then it’s enough for me.”

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