#her music has this dark atmospheric quality that really draws me in | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sugary-sheep · 3 years ago

Text

An Analysis of How Deltarune Chapter 2′s Soundtrack Made Me Feel, Copied From My Discord Thread

Girl Next Door - a very good track for the beginning of the game. It serves to strongly establish noelle as a familiar, friendly character, since you might not have bothered learning too much about her in chapter which makes sense considering the later revealed fact that kris and noelle are chidlhood friendsIt doesn't have any strong hints of bittersweet, it's just a plain happy melody. You're just starting the game after all.

My Castle Town - this is where the first twinges of bittersweet/nostalgia come in.It's meant to bring back memories of your adventure three years ago, chapter 1. You're back "home," at least from the player's point of view, and the player is the one that all the music panders to. (which wouldn't be a thing to note if the game wasn't so meta). It isn't very strongly bittersweet though. It's a calming melody, meant to ease you into the world, and doesn't draw too much attention to itself. If Girl Next Door is a warm breeze, then My Castle Town is the pleasant chill of fall.

Queen - this song is a wacky and fun melody, borrowing both carnival rhythm and instrumentation. It has twinges of deeper emotion and all that but it's mainly just a funny clown theme for everyone's favorite clown: Queen.

A CYBER’S WORLD? - it starts off with the main melody outlined on a chiptune low-res synth, which drops into a rich collage of higher-res synths. It evokes emotions of adventure and energy and anticipation, while also being neutral enough to act as a backdrop for all the silly things you do in the cyber fields. it's a really damn good song. it doesn't tug on the heartstrings necessarily but it just. it's so nice to listen to.

A Simple Diversion - it’s. a simple diversion. chip tune rendition of the queen motif. it's good. nothing much to analyze.

Almost To The Guys , Cyber Battle , When I Get Happy I Dance Like This - (combined since basically the same instrumentation and the same motifs) god I fucking love these songs so much. they are so happy and sensitive and soft and warm. They are like the auditory version of a hug. idk what drugs toby fox put into these songs but it fucking. they fit these funny guys so perfectly. it's just a silly fun theme about these fun little dudes. it's energetic and happy and makes you wanna dance. It doesn't take itself too seriously and it's just. It solidifies that this is a Silly game with Silly things that happen and fun people that you can be friends with.

Cool Beat - too short to analyze.

When I Get Mad I Dance Like This - same as Cool Beat

Berdly’s Theme - bringing back the CLOWNS, this time without a harpsicord though. it's a synthesizer melody and emphasizes the silly gamer antagonism that berdly provides, while not painting him as a bad person. just an antagonist.

Smart Race - this is a particularly tense battle theme, playing off of the semi-betrayal and kind if indignation you feel towards berdly since like. He's a lightner like you! and he's working for queen! what the FRICK.

Faint Courage - an uplifting melody that (tries) to soothe the pain of getting a game over. The crunched nature of the synths is notable though, compared to other soothing songs on the soundtrack.

Welcome To The City - This is the first song that really starts to dip into the nostalgia. It's still an upbeat and adventurous melody, but like. Your friends just left you, and you're exploring the city alone. It has a lot of flourishes and flair that reminds you that you're in a cool exciting city, and slowly becomes more uplifting as it goes on, but still keeps the distinctly minor sound. (if it's in a major key shut up I don't care). It's also the theme for the time you spend with noelle, and like. in that context, it feels more like a friendly nostalgic melody than a bittersweet feeling. the familiarity of Girl Next Door is back, and honestly it borrows a lot of emotional cues from Girl Next Door. They are double edged and the feelings they evoke are very context sensitive. it can be a friendly warmth, or a wishing for better, older days.

Mini Studio - a return of the resistance motif. noticably lower res synthesizers but like. your funny little dudes are here :]

cool mixtape - Clown to the MAXIMUM. not in that it's the most carnival inspired but like. it's really bombastic and fun while also being built around queen's clowny and wacky motifs. The instrumentation also adds to the non-serious quality, making it sound like. well, a shittily recorded mixtape. Lol. It’s great.

Hey Every ! - This song evokes all the emotions of as corrupted seen on tv advertisements with a dash of clown. Very distinctly wacky upbeat song.

Spamton - This is where the creepy factor of spamton starts to kick in. It brings on the menacing atmosphere of being in this alleyway with an unstable puppet salesman who jumped out of the dumpster, however the silly vocals do take a LOT of the edge off the creepiness. Which is fitting for spamton. because he would more intimidating if his dialogue wasn't so ridiculous and silly, and if he wasn’t such a silly little guy.

Now's Your Chance to Be A - a very groovy and slightly menacing battle theme that makes you wanna get out of this situation, but it's not like. scary. it's just a little bit creepy. Like a haunted house. it's a really fun song though. the edge mostly serves to accentuate the wacky and fun qualities of the song, like salt enhancing the sweetness of a dessert.

Elegant Entrance - This has the same menacing/eerie quality as spamton’s battle theme, but much more genuine. it takes the formerly clowny harpsicord used with Queen’s themes, and makes it sound much more regal. It's not bittersweet though. just intimidating.

Bluebird of Misfortune - a VERY strongly minor sounding song, and while it's not a super deeply resonant sadness, it does minimize the wacky/funny factor.

Pandora Palace - the first majorly bombastic song. It's the buildup to the climax, and has a very unique blend of regal, groovy, and energetic sounds with a small sprinkle of bittersweet, mostly to build tension.

KEYGEN - really cool and gives an appropriate feeling for unlocking the door into the SECRET BOSS.

Acid Tunnel of Love - very relaxing, very happy melody. it almost dips into bittersweet at times, but is a solidly uplifting and soothing melody. It's a rest for the soul.

It's Pronounced "Rules" - Rgal in a way very different from Elegant Entrance and Pandora Palace. It's a kind of pretentious regalness, and is a big return to clowniness. Because Roulxs is a pretentious clown man.

Lost Girl - It’s. very bittersweet and nostalgic. It has solid uplifting moments to balance it out, but it's. not a super happy song. it's not a super sad one either. it's just. contemplative. emotional. it'd be a good song to cry to.

Ferris Wheel - A combination of Lost Girl and Girl Next Door, both in mood and actual motifs. It's got a lot more warmth than lost girl, and the chiptune main melody gives it the silliness it needs to take the edge off it’s bitersweetness. The upbeat and kinda whimsical harmonization helps with this too. It's a theme for two girls having an awkward but really nice and fun gay moment.

Attack of the Killer Queen - oh man.oh MAN.Such a good song. It's absolutely bombastic, fulfilling all the promises of epic finality and regal power that have been set up throughout the mansion section. It makes queen feel like a POWERFUL and intimidating villain for honestly like. the first time in the game. It also has the emotional quality, the feeling of un-rightness, once again driven by berdly being an antagonist, but the context is stronger, since you had just had the emotional connection with him and bringing him to your side.

Giga Size - this song does not let down any of the pressure from killer queen. it has all the menacing strength that you would expect from it, and takes the regal intimidation up to another level. it's supposed to make you feel like you've lost, and as far as the player knows, they have. Also it's a lot longer than you would expect??? the soundtrack is honestly filled with really short songs. but Giga Size is one of the longer ones, despite the short amount of time it actually plays. I don't remember ever being in that portion of the cutscene long enough to hear the full thing. it's worth a listen to if you haven't already.

Powers Combined - the uplifting counterbalance to Giga Size. It gets you pumped, and it has an air of finality stronger than attack of the killer queen. This is the final push. you're on the precipice of victory.

Knock You Down - This theme continues everything from Powers combined. It's less bombastic than Attack of the Killer queen, though bviously it's still very energetic and cool. It's serious in a more uplifting sense, but also quite tense. there is a lot on the line. This is the do or die moment. It both hypes you up and calms you down, and evokes a very particular emotion, especially given the context. Really good for getting in the zone.

The Dark Truth - another song that, while more emotional, doesn't hit super deep. Imo it feels like it’s going for an "exaggerated" sense of danger and sadness. Which makes sense if it's meant to instill some doubt in ralsei's credibility. it's still a very serious song, but it feels like it's trying a little too hard. (not necessarily in a bad way)

Digital Roots - a very menacing song, and probably the most truly menacing song in the soundtrack. Sets the atmosphere for the basement perfectly.

Deal Gone Wrong - This is the climax of Digital Roots and the whole process of getting the secret boss. You're in real danger now. The puppet man wants to make a deal, and he wants your soul.

BIG SHOT - woooh boy. This song carries a lot of this menace, but brings in a ton of bombastic energy and a little bit of clown as well. it's like Now's Your Chance To Be A, but more intense. The vocal editing really adds so much to this track. The motifs are very well used, and it's just an incredibly fun and dramatic song. it's groovy! it's wacky! it's intimidating! It gets you pumped! it's a very good song

A Real Boy - This one is a really nice song. it's got a very nice uplifting quality and there's a very subtle and like. almost angelic sharp pad in the background of it that you wouldn't immediately notice adds a lot to the texture of it, combined with the crunched and low res main synth. the background of that scene fits it perfectly. Childishly painted sun and sky and all that. He’s a real boy now. You freed him :). He can escape his strings now :)

dialtone - It’s like if you took one of the more emotional songs in the soundtrack and made it a little silly. Which makes sense. You're supposed to feel kinda bad for him, but he's still a weird wacky guy who just tried to kill you.

sans. - what do I need to say. it's sans's theme. it's wacky in an extremely chill way. it contrasts with basically all of deltarune's wacky characters, and that's perfectly cool. sans is a chill guy, especially in this game.

Chill Jailbreak Alarm To Study And Relax To - this one is just toby having fun. It's napstablook's theme with an alarm in the background. it's funny, it serves it's purpose as a gag. it's great.

You Can Always Come Home - this one has the nostalgic quality that I've been talking about very strongly, but the melody is just. It's so soothing and uplifting that you can't help but feel warm inside. it might be cold and snowing outside, but for now, you're home. you're with your family, you're sipping hot cocoa. Everything is right with the world, if only for a moment. You can always come home.

Until Next Time - another soothing melody, being a corrupted version of Don't Forget, and it evokes a lot of the same emotions, if a bit less strongly. It plays into the mystery of the ending, and would probably suit the snowgrave route pretty well. It's a good ending song in general though. It doesn't drown you in emotion. It lets you feel how you felt about what you just experienced.

Before the Story - really strong song. It's hard to fully analyze it given like. there isn't a lot of gameplay context. but it is a very dark and rich song. it's really good.

Berdly (Rejected Concept) - This song sucks ASS. it's like. pretentious. but also so cringe fail at the same.

#deltarune #deltarune chapter 2

17 notes · View notes

anystalker707 · 5 years ago

Text

Cuddles

Pairing: Gerard Way x Fem. Reader Genre: Comfort/Fluff Summary: (Y/n) loves cuddling with Gerard - they're just friends, but (Y/n) wants more than that. Written: 12.19.2019

"Again?" Gerard asks and I nod, hugging my pillow. He smiles and steps aside, "Come in."

My eyes hurt at first, the light of his dorm room made a great change of lighting compared to the hall's darkness.

Without a word, I throw myself at his bed, taking the place close to the wall, and pull the covers over me, not letting go of my phone in my hand.

Gerard chuckles before closing the door and turning off the lights, moving to lay down beside me on the bed.

"What happened?" He asks quietly.

"I think I got used to coming here every night." I smile, "Couldn't get any sleep."

"And the studies really are stressing, hm?" I nod and remember he can't see me because of the darkness, so let out a small hum in agreement. "Wanna cuddle? Like last time?"

"What do you think I'm here for?" I chuckle grabbing my phone and setting in a playlist of calm music, all in the same style. Like, Demons, Titanium...

The low music starts filling the room slowly, creating a comfortable atmosphere, that's contributed by the soft night lights. It's a string with dark blue star shaped lights hanging on the bed's headboard.

Smiling, I adjust myself so I'm laying against Gerard with my head on his chest and hugging his torso. He also moves, making his legs intertwine with mine as he hugs me back.

I practically melt against him. He is so warm... I couldn't help but try to synchronize our breathes, considering it was inevitable to notice his since I'm glued to him.

With my head on his chest, I can hear his heartbeat the whole time. Sometimes sounds like it is synchronized with the music. A nice sound.

After the first song, he starts running his fingers over my back, drawing small patterns.

Everything is so pleasing that makes me feel like I'm totally taken off of my everyday life. A moment of distraction from the stressful routine.

"I'll move to your dorm at once." I joke chuckling.

"I wouldn't complain." Gerard says and I smile.

I start letting my eyelids fall, but not completely.

The silence makes me uncomfortable- well, not exactly but makes me want to come up with a subject just because I think he'll get bored if I don't.

I search in every corner of my mind for a decent one, but always meet either with a stupid subject or nothing.

Finally, I give up about it, letting myself be carried away by the moment.

It doesn't matter for how long we do it, but I always end up wanting more, so I might enjoy it the most, huh?

I don't exactly remember when all of this started. I guess it was on the night Gerard invited me over to watch something. A movie, I believe. While watching, we decided to cuddle. It was already late when the movie came to an end, we were both tired, so we just put the laptop away and continued cuddling, eventually sleeping.

After six other nights and movies, I started coming just to cuddle and chat and gradually, it started happening almost every night. Finally, here I am.

And of course, I'd lie if I said I didn't get close to him and, inevitably, fell for him.

Looks like I got to see his personality more and more each time and it didn't disappoint me once. He is amazing.

Considering everything, I'd like to confess to him, however, I know I don't have any chance, hm? We're good the way we are. Friends. Friends and something more, that has nothing to do with romantic feelings.

Still, the feelings for him consume me from the inside. Sometimes, I get to the point of almost confessing but God, if there's any, seems to always be on my side. There's always something preventing me from staying it. A person interrupts us, the bell rings, whatever.

I believe it's better this way. It's perfect. I prefer having someone to talk and cuddle with every night than having an awkward classmate that we know a lot about each other but have to pretend we don't.

It happens more than we think, doesn't it?

"Can you come tomorrow? I have a great movie I think you'll like and I want to talk. I could do it today but" Gerard sighs hugging me tighter for a moment, "it's too nice."

I chuckle smiling, "Sure. What do you want to talk about?"

"I want some advises. Girls, y'know. I'm liking one from my extra classes. I don't think you know her." He says with a simultaneously excited and happy voice.

"Of course. I'll help."

"Hey." Gerard smiles opening the door to his dorm.

As I walk past the doors, the soft sound of Demons, this time not by Joji but by Imagine Dragons, fill my ears. I sit down on his bed, with my back against the wall and let my legs hang off of his bed. My pillow is nicely placed on the bed, by his.

Gerard closes the door and turns off the lights, letting the dark blue tone of his night lights softly light the room.

"How did it go?" I ask as he sits by me.

He bites down on his bottom lip with visible frustration. "Well, she rejected me. She said she wants to focus on the studies now and won't be able to focus on a relationship. It was a nice rejection, though." He presses his lips together in a sad smile.

"Heyy, it wasn't totally bad, though? Now you'll be able to get rid of all the nervousness, random wonders, dazing offs..." I shrug, "I know it's hard, but you got to know she doesn't like you and the 'what if's will stop haunting you. She couldn't see the amazing person you are but she's right in focusing on the studies, not everyone has the capacity of studying and dating. However, the most important,"

I say pulling him to lay down with his head on my lap, "is that you need to continue being the amazing person you are. You never needed anyone to keep this amazing personality so no one will destroy it. Sorry for rambling immediately, but it's true and you need to hear that."

"That's a lie." He says and I hum confused. He looks up at me, "You always help me. You're always pulling me up and opening my eyes to the world."

I smile and start running my fingers through his hair, "Thank you. It still wouldn't be worth anything if you didn't accept the help or knew how to use it. You continue being the amazing person you are by yourself. You don't need anyone to complete you because you are what you are by yourself."

"You don't need to say all those nice things! I'm not the person you describe, I have more flaws than anything."

"But you do your best."

"And it continues the same. I'm who I am thankfully to everyone close to me, mainly you who has always been here for me. Only that you say are just... lies." His eyes fall, looking away.

I cup his cheek, "They're true, they're what I see. What is really there; none of these are lies. I like telling people their qualities because, almost always, they don't see it themselves. For example, no one ever told me. I grew up depressed and that's why I don't want other people to be. I really care about you."

Gerard looks up at me and blinks a few times. He opens a grin, "You're the toughest person I've ever seen. I see how some people treat you and you stand there, strong. I can't believe no one ever noticed how fantastic you are." He gives me a look, "I won't say I'm sorry because I know you won't like it."

He chuckles, making me crack a wider smile, "However, you really are worth it. You're someone I would give up on a lot of things just to have your friendship because I know you'll never let me down or let me get myself down. Y'always do the best to make people around you feel good about their lives and themselves and that's a hell of a talent!"

"Stop making me look better than I am! I simply try, I'm shitty even at making the others happy." I caress his cheek with my thumb.

"You're resisting- wait!" He pauses with a grin, "You agree I'm amazing, right?" I nod. "And also agree you're not amazing." I nod. "Then let's make a deal! I'll accept I'm amazing if you accept you're too!" He smiles widely and excitedly.

The smile on his face makes me melt in the inside, loving the way he looks. Gerard seems to emanate positivity.

"Okay." I exhale, "I give up, but only because then you can accept you're amazing."

"Then say it!"

"No! It's a lie-" He interrupts me.

"And the deal?"

I sigh, nodding. "I'm amazing. Good?" I rise an eyebrow, giving him a side smile.

"Congrats!" Gerard chuckles and pulls me down to a hug - as far as possible. "Why don't we cuddle as usually?"

"Of course!" I instantly agree and we adjust ourselves to the position we cuddle in every night.

I sigh happily listening his heartbeat as my head rests comfortably against his warm chest. His arms lazily hang around me as I'm held against him.

For the first time since I got in the room, I pay attention to the song and relax, to the sound of Northern Downpour.

I allow my finger to draw small patterns on Gerard's chest. He hums pleasantly when I do so, causing me to carry on with the actions.

Oh, I don't want this to ever end.

#emocore #emo #my chemical romance #bands #mcr #mcr x reader #x reader #gerard x reader #gerard way x reader #gerard way imagine #gerard way #imagine #writing #oneshot #fanfic #comfort #fluff #my post

158 notes · View notes

artificialqueens · 4 years ago

Text

Make The Most of the Dark (Bitney) - Puppy

Summary:

Bianca is playing a babysitter for her cousin and a group of her friends at prom.

Courtney has come with someone else but they seem to have gotten distracted.

What happens when they lock eyes and meet up again?

Inspired by Madonna’s “Crazy For You”

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28301046

A/N: Merry Christmas, folks. This was for @opalescent-cheetah for a song fic challenge. I hope you all enjoy and have a happy holidays.

Swaying room as the music starts

Strangers making the most of the dark

Two by two their bodies become one

Bianca observed the dancing couples in front of her and hoped no one heard her laughing over the music. The DJ just switched to a different track: something schmaltzy and slow, almost like how that night had been. Some of the couples in front of her honestly looked ridiculous to her. Most of them were either glued together or it was very obvious it was the first time they had danced together. Were they waiting for a third person to sandwich themselves between? If they were leaving room for Jesus, the space between could have fit Him and two other disciples.

She wasn’t intending to spend the past few hours leaned against the wall of the gym counting down the minutes, but here she was: standing in a dress she sewed herself and her reddish-brown hair in a fancy updo. She’d been to cotillion, and the atmosphere was much different. If those instructors ever knew what she was up to now, they’d probably have the biggest fit.

Bianca came with a few friends, but she didn’t really have a date. One of them practically begged her to drive, but she wasn’t aware that she was bringing a whole squad. They didn’t hate her, they just needed a designated driver if/when things got too much. Knowing that particular friend group, things were to get too much.

I see you through the smokey air

Can’t you feel the weight of my stare

You’re so close but still a world away

Among the dancing couples and general modes of merriment, someone started to approach her. Bianca squinted, as one of the disco lights was right in her eye. “Do you want me to unlock the car? You have to get whatever it is yourself. Just try not to hurt yourself on the way…” She did a quick double take and, realizing her mistake, she apologized profusely “Oh my god, I am SO SORRY. I thought you were someone else.”

“It’s fine,” the other girl responded. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah… at least you aren’t one of my charges. Good thing you’re just one of those short-skirted, nice-titted, blonde bitches.” Oh shit… that definitely came out wrong. Please don’t leave me here. She hissed through gritted teeth.

“I’m one of many. Glad you think these are nice though.” She laughed; her blonde curls bouncing with every sound, and Bianca couldn’t stop staring at them. Great, she wasn’t offended. Her sense of humor… wasn’t strange, but it took some getting used to; it’s very off-putting at first listen. “Wait… don’t we have a class together?”

“Yeah! AP Lit.” The auburn-haired girl slowly nodded her head. “You’re Courtney, right?” She nodded her head. “Cool…” The tension between those two wasn’t awkward, per say but “So… what brings you over here? I’m just looking to see if those guys don’t do anything stupid,” She gestured to a group on the other side of the gym, loitering by the punch bowl. Bianca silently prayed they didn’t spike it. “And then to drive them to the after party… wherever it is. Probably some Motel 6 in the middle of nowhere…. Or some sketchy apartment uptown.”

“The apartment isn’t that sketchy,” Courtney added, then stopped herself. “Well that depends on who’s hosting this year. Is Jared hosting again?”

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. No one told me and I might not know until I get back in the car. Dory wasn’t invited, so I assume she and her friends will be crashing.”

“Wait, Dory?”

“Adore. My little cousin. She’s visiting from Azusa and she wanted to see what the scene was like. How was I to know she’d bring an entourage?”

“Oh my…”

“And you’re still dodging the question there, Court.”

“My date kinda blew me off last minute. Very last minute, now that I think about it.”

Well, that answers that question, Bianca let out a breath before answering. “Oh shit…”

“And it sucks because I drove her here! Just for her to spend all her time with someone else!” Courtney stared directly at her ditcher as she picked a few petals off her corsage. “She loves me, she loves me not.”

For a time, the two girls just stood there, wallowing in their own problems. They stared at each other, unsure of their next move. Bianca could only just take in her classmate’s beauty and the fact that she came with a date only made it better; there was nothing more beautiful than the unattainable, she always said. However, there was this chance. There was still something about Courtney that just itched at her brain a certain way. They were never really close, but there were always qualities she admired: her effervescence, the way she just lit up whatever room she was in.

“I think I should make her jealous.”

“What?”

“Why not make her jealous? She’s dancing with someone else, so obviously, I should get back.” Courtney replied, though her mind may not have been the most sound. Revenge often clouded this sort of judgement.

Some gears turned in the girl’s mind. The next song came on and Bianca pulled her classmate into the center of the gym. “B, what are you doing?” But she didn’t say anything more as the two girls wordlessly swayed along to the music, a little closer than what they had been before.

Courtney laid her head on Bianca’s chest and stared directly at her date with a look of both pettiness and regret. This may have seemed fun in the moment, but they just had to talk it out sooner or later. Maybe this was some big misunderstanding that could easily be cleared the next day. Yes, her girlfriend was great, but no one should ever feel like a third wheel on their own date. Being with this… mutual friend at best felt comforting, motherly.

The blonde looked up at her dancing partner who stared back at her. There was this gravitational pull drawing themselves closer and closer until their lips briefly met. “Sorry… I shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t I?” Bianca quietly apologized before being shushed.

“You’re good.” The other girl hesitated a bit before continuing. “You can keep going if you want.”

“You sure?”

Courtney nodded again and reinitiated the kiss.

Sure the two had their own things to worry about, but in this moment it was just the two of them in the middle of the dance floor. Nothing else could have escaped that feeling.

What I’m dying to say, is that

I’m crazy for you

Touch me once and you’ll know it’s true

I never wanted anyone like this

It’s all brand new

#rpdr fanfiction #bianca del rio #courtney act #bitney #high school au #lesbian au #song fic #fluff #puppy

9 notes · View notes

putschki1969 · 5 years ago

Text

H-el-ical// Music Explanation

Notes: These short comments from the pamphlet provide a lovely insight so I thought I would translate them for you. Please enjoy!

pulsation

Hikaru comment

The song conveys a strong sense of sprinting forward and since I knew that it would be my first song, I wanted to make it feel like a powerful beginning. At first I was really worried because I had no idea what I was doing but then I realised that if I kept worrying I wouldn’t be able to come up with anything good. That’s why I focused on my feelings at that time and the way I had been dealing with music so far. I just put all of that into words. For me as Hikaru// this song is about finding the strength to get up again when you are down, how to move on when you are depressed. It’s not something that simply passes by, from my experience so far it’s a conscious decision, “all right! I will try again and persevere!” It’s that kind of feeling I wanted to put in my lyrics. “Let’s live in a way that makes it possible to come to terms with the meaning of life!” That was going through my mind while writing the lyrics, I felt very much alive during that time. Perhaps I have already conveyed these feelings little by little to all my fans who have continuously supported me but when I actually put them into words I think it became a very strong message.

Gushimiyagi comment

Of course I had known of Hikaru//-san's previous activities for many years so initially I felt a bit lost when trying to write a song which would suit Hikaru//-san's vocals. I wanted to do my best, after all I had to create a song that would perfectly fit the image of Hikaru//-san. I think I was quite reckless when I made it. The first time we met, I brought a short demo tape with me and told her, "this is more or less the direction I wanna take and we will expand it from there...” The song gradually took shape. It was supposed to have an image of “presenting/announcing H-el-ical// for the very first time”, so I was very adamant about having a lively chorus and a sense of moving fast. I tried to make it sound catchy and impressive. Back then Hikaru-san didn’t really tell me what she thought of the song so I would really like to ask her now *laughs*.

Avaricia

Hikaru comment

Transitioning from “pulsation” to “Avaricia” I really wanted to have something different. I didn’t want to stick to just one genre, I wanted to sing songs with many different elements so when I first heard the song I immediately thought, “ohh, I like this!” In the case of "pulsation", I think it is a rather straight-foward song since I am expressing my life experiences and thoughts but when it comes to this song, it is very vague, indirect and between the lines, it can have various meanings depending on the listener. "Is it meant this way or that way? This kind of interpretation doesn’t apply to me but it might apply to someone else." So depending on the audience, the song can come across as very sexy or you can interpret it as having a strong message. I also used this song to play a little with words. When I started writing the lyrics I wrote the following line for the first verse, “ひと時だけのアイズ/hito toki dake no aizu”. アイズ written in katakana was supposed to have a double meaning, it could have been understood as “eyes” or “cue/signal”. But since we also had English translations for all H-el-ical// songs I eventually settled on “eyes” to make the translation less confusing.

Gushimiyagi comment

I made this song at the same time as the first song but since that one had a rather normal beat and a sense of sprinting I wanted a big change for the next song. I composed this with a quintuple/triple measure. Its tricky acoustic sound makes it sorta feel like jazz but I guess it ended up being more along the lines of folktronica. The song has both a digital as well as an analog feel to it. I pretty much created this song to be the exact opposite of “pulsation”. When I gave the song to Hikaru//-san I feared it would be hard to find lyrics that suited the beat but to my surprise she really enjoyed playing with the words. Her lyrics combined with the melody really add to the atmosphere, they left a lasting impression on me.

Splendore

Hikaru comment

The first thing that came to mind when I listend to the song was “fantasy”. That’s why I added some fantasy elements to my lyrics. For a period of time, I was working part-time at a nursery school for some social studying. The children I worked with were honestly a ray of sunshine, they were shining so brightly and they all lived in the here and now. When we grow up we always worry and think ahead, our dreams and hopes become goals that start to feel real. So for a moment, let’s not do that, let’s just live life and enjoy ourselves in the present! I wrote the lyrics with this sort of fantasy element in mind, “I want to fearlessly grab the sparkles in front of me and hold onto them forever.” That’s the image I wanted to convey. Also, this song was written during an extensive back and forth between Gushimiyagi-san and myself.

Gushimiyagi comment

When I started on this, I simply wanted to try composing a song with a four-on-the-floor rhythm but apparently I am not the kind of person that can write bright and lively music like that so instead of sounding like an exciting piece of electronic dance music the song turned out to have a rather quiet and calm passion *laughs*. I was imagining a night and the starry sky. It's dark but there is some sparkling, like seeing Peter Pan flying across the sky. When I read Hikaru//-san’s finished lyrics it all made sense to me, the way she created a sort of fantasy. The song does express all of that so she really managed to put everything perfectly into words with her lyrics.

Amanhecer

Hikaru comment

When I first received the demo tape for this song, I couldn’t help but think of “water” or the “waterside”. It has a slightly gloomy vibe. It left a strong impression on me so I wanted to write lyrics that did proper justice to the melody, I wanted listeners to get a real feeling for the sceneries and sensations of it. The song is pretty quiet but I felt like adding a certain youthful charm. Not a mature one nor a child-like one, I thought a lot about it but an adult view wouldn’t have fit the song so I settled for a feeling that’s slightly adolescent *laughs*. I created a bittersweet love story. In this kind of song the vocals stand out a lot so I sang it with a breathy voice and only let my voice become louder and stronger when I wanted to emphasise a certain word or line. I had to adjust a lot while recording the song.

Gushimiyagi comment

Here I wanted to create a song that started with vocals. The first thing you hear is a breath, I wanted everyone to be able to enter Hikaru//-san's world from the very first second. I wanted people to immediately be smitten by Hikaru//-san’s voice. Just like "Splendore" this was originally meant to have a “night” theme but I eventually changed it to a dawn-like atmosphere. The acoustic guitar and drums feel a lot more understated compared to the previous three songs. The rhythm is very simple and clear. Usually during the recording you do a lot of takes in order to pick the best one but each and every one of Hikaru//-san’s takes was amazing, just the expression was slightly different. Each take had top-notch quality, it was refreshing but also difficult to choose one.

yolcu

Hikaru comment

When it was time to make this song we were just starting to think about doing a live. So I asked for a track that would pump up the crowd during a live performance. This song has an exotic feeling so I wrote the lyrics while thinking of the Middle East. There is a bit of mystery, it feels like you are running through the streets of Aladdin’s town, making it past the crowds and eventually arriving at a plaza with a big fountain. I had these sceneries in mind so I put them into words. It was a lot of fun to write this song. However ... while it was fun to write lyrics for this sort of tempo, it is incredibly hard to remember my lines *laughs*.

Gushimiyagi comment

The theme of the song was to create an exotic vibe. “What ideas should I apply to make it sound exotic?” This is what I kept asking myself when I wrote the song. I ended up with EDM which in this case stands for exotic dance music *laughs*. By the way, I made this with a lot of vigor so the tuning was quite special, while writing I had no idea what chords I was using *laughs*. The title of this song is Turkish, I think the title should always be chosen by the person who is writing the lyrics. All H-el-ical// song titles, including the title "yolcu", were chosen by Hikaru//-san.

Existence

Hikaru comment

The line "do you remember~" is repeated multiple times on purpose. When you keep saying the same words over and over again, they aren’t easily forgotten, instead they get imprinted in your memory. By repeating lines, I wanted to create impactful lyrics. Also, this was the first time I wrote proper English lyrics. When you have a song where the same melody gets repeated you need something that draws attention. I guess I could have written something in Japanese but I wanted the song to have a different feel. It's not uncommon for Western music to have repeated lyrics. So I wanted to try something like that for this song. The H-el-ical// project is produced by Japanese people of course but I want everyone overseas to listen to my music as well. I want to create music that can be loved and accepted by all kinds of people. I would be very much interested in continuing to take on such challenges.

Gushimiyagi comment

This is a nice guitar rock piece. I wanted to create something that would sound like a Foo Fighters song. When I sent the first demo to Hikaru//-san, I added a short note saying that this was like an American rock song. Hikaru//-san wrote a big portion of the song in English and the title is also in English.

Fili

Hikaru comment

I wanted to add an element that I had never used before, I wanted it to have a Northern European vibe with a somewhat grassy feeling. However, when I first expressed that wish to Gushimiyagi-san, he looked at me quite puzzled, “what do you mean exactly?” I tried to answer him as best as possible *laughs* “I guess something with an earthy atmosphere. Something that makes me think of grass-covered plains...” When I got the song I thought a lot about it, I kept replaying it in my mind and came up with a few lyrics so I could try singing it. I started wondering whether it really had an earthy atmosphere. Eventually I realised that this song is not so much about the earth itself, it is about history. The history of each individual but also the course of history regarding our entire earth. "I'm alive right now because of the eternal flow of time." It’s this kind of image I had in mind when I wrote the lyrics. By the way, the title of this song means "poet" in Gaelic.

Gushimiyagi comment

This song sounds a bit Celtic doesn’t it? Hikaru//-san experienced many different world views as part of Kalafina, there were quite a lot of exotic and oriental elements in their music. For the H-el-ical// project I did my own interpretation of that by trying to find the best way to convey this image as a solo artist. It is quite celtic but not too ballad-y. I am once again using a triple measure and even though it technically qualifies as a ballad, the drums, percussion and timps are heavily accentuated. Hikaru//-san’s previous activities very much align with my own vision and world-views. It’s not about holding on tight to that old image but there is certainly no need to throw it away completely. I'm sure fans will treasure it as something that has become part of Hikaru//’s image.

Tsumugu

Hikaru comment

The title for my concert is also "Weaving/Spinning ~TSUMUGU~" so I decided I wanted to create a song that I could sing at the end of the live. That's the reason why we tried to make a very simple song. All the thoughts and feelings I experience when I get to meet the fans, when I get to communicate with them... Having that in mind I wrote the lyrics. This interview is being done before my concert so I haven’t had the chance to be on stage as H-el-ical// yet but when I wrote the lyrics I tried to imagine what the live performance would be like. I also wanted to remove any sort of extra filter when I wrote them. Typically when you are talking with someone, you want to look your best, maybe even show off a little but in this case I didn’t want to think or worry about any of that. I really expose all of myself in these lyrics so the song is quite embarrassing for me *laughs*.

Gushimiyagi comment

This was always intended to be the final song of the live so I made it with that in mind. “What would be a suitable climax for the concert?” I kept asking myself this question while composing the song. I consulted with Hikaru//-san so she could share her personal opinions and views regarding the previous seven songs as well as the upcoming live. When I made the song I thought, “yes, I think this track will be appropriate for the occasion”. It was quite easy to write it since I had a clear vision.

#kalafina #hikaru #helical #hikaru//#helical//#h-el-ical//#my translations #my translation #long text post

49 notes · View notes

faakeid · 5 years ago

Note

Can you recommend me some good tv shows or movies that get you hooked

Wow, I’m surprised to find a gem in my ask box, thank you for that anon~. I will separate the list by types of media (movie/TV series) so it can be easier to classify.

And they will have different styles, so you can just look for something that fits your mood

TV Series

Sharp Objects: I love Amy Adams. She’s such a queen and the roles she gets are superb. This series is based on a book of the same name written by the author of Gone Girl. It’s about a journalist who has a lot of traumas and needs to go back to her hometown to report some murders that are happening there. The vibe of this series is really good. If you like mystery/suspense this is a good catch. Just has one season, so you can marathon it well (mystery/drama/suspense. TW to self harm).

Mindhunter: I really like serial killer stories and this is based in real life events. Basically it show how the perception we have now of serial killers started to exist, in terms of how now the police tries to understand the mind of the person. So we see a lot of real life serial killers portraited there and mixes of the main characters personal lives. I didn’t watch the second season yet, but the first one got me hooked well. It’s not fightening, but it may describe some unsettling scenes, so if you are sensitive just ignore this one;

100 Days of My Prince: I’m just enjoying the opportunity to mention this drama and I know I’m cheating but idc. I don’t care much about kdramas and I’m not recommending this just because Kyungsoo is in it. Far from it. I’m doing it because I started watching it at 2 pm and finished at 11 pm of the same day (with my hack techniques but ok) bc I just couldn’t stop. Loved the Woon Deuk/ Lee Yeol and Hongshim, the side characters, the villains, the plot. I admit the last episode was weak compared with the rest but not enough to not recommend this and want to watch it again. (mystery/romance/drama)

Dark: OMG THIS IS PERFECT. AMAZING. NO WORDS. If you love time traveling and just stuff that will mindfuck your brain, GIVE IT A CHANCE. I was traveling at the time I started to watch this masterpiece and I gave up many opportunities of sightseeing to watch the two seasons. Yes, it’s that good (mystery/time travel/mind fuck).

The Perfectionist: I’m recommending this more for the Pretty Little Liars nostalgia than because of it’s quality and because I got hooked by it. There’s also the book, but the series makes a link with PLL when they put Alison DiLaurentis as a main character. There’s some references, mystery, some romance too. A similar formula. But you can give it a try, it makes no harm (suspense/mystery/romance/drama/teen);

Banana Fish (ANIME): ok, I know it’s an anime but it has 24 episodes and a good story. It was designed by the same studio that did Yuuri on Ice and you can see the similarities on the drawing style. The characters are catchy, the plot instigates you to keep watching the next until the end. The second half of it didn’t please me TOO much, but it’s still really good. It mentions some heavy themes like minor prostitution, but I like the way this subject is shown. (action/mafia/drama).

MOVIES

Joker: because WHY NOT. This movie is just too good. Period. Could feel how raw Joaquin Phoenix was during his interpretation, the themes spoken without being sappy, the catharsis. Phenomenal even if you don’t like super hero movies. This isn’t even a super hero movie but ok.

Doukyuusei: it’s so sweet, so pure, it makes me want to fall in love every time. It’s an anime beautiful portraited and just beautiful, tender, soft. I recommend reading the manga that fills out a few blanks the movie has tho (anime/romance/”yaoi”).

The Lobster: Really good. It’s a dystopic romance, which discuss about it and the lack of it. The messages it has touched my heart tenderly, it can be raw but beautifully raw. Loved it (drama/romance/dystopic);

Get Out: watched three times and it gives you an uncomfortable feeling you know? Of knowing that something will happen, something is wrong and nothing is right. Loved the acting and the way the tension is built (suspense/terror [sort of]);

Batman Begins: that will be the last superhero movie I recommend. I know everyone LOVES dark knight and I like it too, sort of. But everyone seems to sleep on Batman Begins???? Unacceptable. The atmosphere, how they built Bruce Wayne/Batman duality, Gothan being like a living being. It marked me more than the dark knight and you can see it became an inspiration to other movies that came after that (action/super hero).

Donnie Darko: one of my favorite movies of all time. Donnie is weird, but I think everyone can see a bit of themselves on him. The soundtrack is amazing, right gold from the 80s (weird/paralel universes).

American Psycho: a rich mothefucker is surrounded by other rich mothefuckers who compete between themselves to see who’s richer. What could go wrong? A classic and still have messages for us today without being whiny and political correct (terror/slasher/crazy shit).

Moulin Rouge: the last one because I want to give other options and this is an amazing musical/romance story. Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman make such a couple here it warms and hurts my soul every time.

#movie rec #film recommendation #anon #answered

18 notes · View notes

secret-diary-of-an-fa · 5 years ago

Text

Hidden Gems of the Silver Screen (And, to a Lesser Extent, the Telly)

It can’t have escaped your notice that the majority of my more recent posts (and fuck knows I’m not posting regularly at the moment) are about movies and TV. The reason for that is pretty simple: 2019 has, surprisingly, yielded some great movies and TV... and also some really torrid shite. On the one hand, films like Ma, Brightburn and The Perfection continue to breathe new life into the horror genre. On the other hand, sci-fi as a cinematic and televised thing continues to ignore its actual audience in favour of sniffing its own farts in a sound-proof chamber designed specifically for next-level virtue-signalling. One thing I will say about the dreck of 2019 is that it’s interesting dreck, at least so far. Another Life, for example, isn’t just bad: it’s mind-bogglingly, fascinatingly bad, as though someone set out to make the worst TV series imaginable and accidentally created a portal to another dimension made entirely of crap.

With all the amazingly wonderful and transifxingly terrible visual media on offer lately, it’s easy to forget that there’s a rich repository of films and TV series from just a few years ago that you’ve probably never watched. You see if you, like me, are a snooty, card-carrying member of the elitist intelligentsia, you probably missed films and TV series that looked dumb as soup on the surface on the grounds that they weren’t worth your time. Luckily for you, I’ve dived nose-first into the detritus of our dying culture, so you don’t have to, and I’ve ferreted out the diamonds from the pig-swill. Without further ado, I’d therefore like to present my list Easily Overlooked Gems.

1. Mandy The phrase “Nicholas Cage stars in a sword-and-sorcery rape/revenge thriller” does not inspire confidence. It’s therefore easy to ignore Mandy and the promptly forget it ever existed. Which is a shame, because it’s kind of a work of genius. The plot is exactly what you’d expect: a cult kidnaps, rapes and kills Cage’s girlfriend, Mandy, and Cage sets out on a mission of revenge culminating in a blood-bath. The nature of the revenge quest is what puts a sting in the film’s tail- or tale, if you’re feeling puntastic. You see, a lot of the bad guys exist in a constant hallucinatory haze after taking a drug that sent them mad after one dose. In order to fight on their level, Cage has to take a dose too. As a result, the world around him slowly but surely transforms into a nightmare landscape that looks like a cross between a D&D illustration and the cover of a heavy metal album and his grubby, personal mission of fury takes on the unmistakable resonance of a Conan-esque hero’s quest. By the end of the film, you have to wonder if Cage has actually slipped into some sort of alternate dimension or if he’s just lost his game-pieces completely. In places, it’s nearly as painful to watch as Landmine Goes Click (crikey, there’s one for the history buffs) but it looks and feels like Beyond the Black Rainbow. Worth your attention just because of how weird it is. I give it a solid four-out-five decapitated rapists.

2. Baby Driver Nothing about Baby Driver suggested it would be a good film: the way it was advertised as a car-chase movie trying to be cute; the stupid title; the fact that it came and went through cinemas like a fart in the night. Which is a shame, because it’s secretly brilliant. It’s a highly stylised crime film populated with the archest archetypes money can buy (to the point where some of the dialogue has a weirdly beat-poetic feel to it). It’s saturated colour palette and off-beat affect actually have something of a full-colour Jim Jarmusch flick about them. The hook, of course, is that the lead character (only ever referred to as Baby, because he’s got a punchably youthful face) has tinnitus and therefore has to listen to music constantly to drown at the buzzing in his head. The practical upshot of this is that a) every single scene is overlayed with surprisingly great and situationally appropriate music and b) he goes through life like he’s always dancing, so his way of moving lends to the film’s easy-going sense of flow. It also explains where his preternatural driving skills come from (I mean, not really, but within the context of the plot): he’s used to sliding effortlessly into patterns and rhythms because of the music thing. All of this could make a terrible film, of course, but execution is everything and, to everyone’s surprise, especially mine, this flick was executed with an astonishing level of panache. I rate it ten out of ten grizzly motor way pile ups.

3. Nightflyers It’s not just films that get overlooked as the tide of culture washes back and forth, like a great big sea of effluent. TV series also vanish unduly into the dustbin of history. Case in point, the criminally underappreciated Nighrflyers: Netflix pre-Another Life sci-fi offering that was actually good. It’s a pretty classic set-up: a group of mismatched wing-nuts on a spaceship, all of whom have secrets that that will threaten to tear them apart while they try to make contact with an alien life-form. What elevates Nightflyers is just how fuck-uped the cast are. There’s an angry British psychic whose spent his whole life in captivity in case he goes full Scanners on somebody’s head, a guy who only ever appears as a hologram for reasons too twisted to explain here, his evil mother whose uploaded her mind to the ship’s computer and gone batshit crazy, a genetic superbeing and a hacker who can send her mind into computers via a dodgy implant and who may or may not be drifting out of touch with the human condition. It’s great. 6 and half billion out of 7 billion monkeys, boiling in the void.

4. Hardcore Henry No, I don’t know who thought that title was a good idea either, but the point is that Hardcore Henry has no motherfucking right to kick as much arse as it does. It was clearly made on a budget that would embarrass a Youtube shampoo commercial, but it just flat-out rocks. Shot entirely in first-person, it follows the adventures of a mute cyborg as he seeks revenge against the bastard psychic entrepreneur who first built him then tried to kill him. Along the way, his main ally is a dude who keeps dying and coming back to life in a series of identical bodies but with radically different personalities and haircuts (this is eventually explained, but I’m not going to spoil it for you). It’s premise is demented, it’s surprisingly well-choreographed and its soundtrack is an aphrodisiac for your ears. Also, Tim Roth is in it, so that’s just yer seal of quality right there. It came out to a lot of fanfare and many, many cinema trailers back in the day and was then promptly forgotten about as soon as it launched. So I’m dragging it kicking and screaming back into the limelight. It’s on Netflix right now, so go watch it. I rate it a solid 11 out of 15 creepy duplicates of Tim Roth.

5. Upgrade Another lesser-known film about a cyborg. Unlike Henry, however, this cyborg’s life doesn’t so much ‘rock’ as ‘suck balls’. He gets crippled and then ends up with a sentient computer chip in his head that allows him to remote-control his own body despite not having a working spine anymore. Naturally, his experimental tech attracts the attention of some unsavoury characters and he and his brain-chip have to work together to figure out what’s going on, often through a series of ultra-violent, gory fight-scenes that horrify the protagonist himself. Of course, all might be well, except that the head-chip is a homicidal little shit that clearly has its own agenda. I give it at least 0000 0111 out of 0000 1001 painstakingly restored vintage kill-bots.

6. The Tick The Tick isn’t as overlooked as everything else on this list, especially since there have been a couple of previous televised incarnations of the franchise to lay the groundwork. However, I still feel like the modern iteration doesn’t quite get the love it deserves, so I’m throwing it out here. Following the adventures a mad, amnesiac and possibly stupid superhero and his neurotic sidekick, The Tick explores a world where superheroes aren’t the paragons of good from classic comics, the corrupt psychotics of The Boys or Watchmen, or the eternally struggling, walking moral life-lessons of modern cinema. Instead, they’re just ordinary people operating at various levels of competence/incompetence and mental illness and working within a bureaucratic, wildly inefficient framework. That might not sound like a recipe for a successful TV series, but it really is. Drawing out the mundane, human side of heroes and villains against the backdrop of cataclysmic, civilisation-threatening events makes for infinitely compelling and very, very funny viewing. It’s kind of doing for the superhero genre what Futurama did for sci-fi a few years back. It’s also where the phrase and/or popular song ‘seven billion monkeys boiling in the void’ comes from. My rating is four out of five sapient, homosexual boats (which will make sense when you watch it).

7. The Void Amid the high-budget horror extravaganzas of recent years, it’s easy to forget about the void, which feels like the best story H.P. Lovecraft never wrote and looks like David Chronenberg tried to adapt a Heironimous Bosch painting... in the ‘80s. The actual plot concerns a group of people getting trapped in a hospital by murderous cultists and discovering dark secrets and, arguably, a whole other dimension in its basement. You’re not exactly there for the plot though: The Void is a mood-piece and an exercise in visual FX craftsmanship. You’re there to drink in the atmosphere and see what each new cosmic horror looks like. I am delighted to award it ten out of ten unspeakable whisperers in the darkness. That’s enough for two barbershop quartets, an emcee and a supporting act.

8. Happy Death Day It’s Groundhog Day but as a horror film starring a really annoying lass in her late teens has to keep dying horribly until she learns to stop being such a terrible person... and also kill her murderer with a little help from her newly-minted, non-cunty friend. There’s a sequel that I haven’t seen yet, but the original is a low-key, oft-overlooked delight. I give it 9 out of 11 suspiciously similar corpses.

#Secret Diary of a Fat Admirer #films #tv shows #movies #Mandy #Baby Driver #Nightflyers #The Tick #The Void #Tick #happy death day #Upgrade

13 notes · View notes

nightslain · 5 years ago

Text

GETTING TO KNOW THE MUN :

NAME : Sin NICKNAME : Lord Pog, Cursed FACECLAIM : Depends how I feel that day (Mr Bubz is usually the go-to) PRONOUNS : She / her HEIGHT : 5′6″ BIRTHDAY : 10th Jan, Capricorn AESTHETIC : Watercolour paint, jazz music, rainy nights, winter time, ghost stories at 3 AM, lamplight, dark chocolate, tea and cookies, waistcoats, Gothic and cosmic horror, magic and the occult. Y’know, stuff. LAST SONG YOU LISTENED TO : Giants by Bear Hands FAVORITE MUSE (S) YOU’VE WRITTEN : I have loved writing for all the muses I’ve picked up and kept hold of through the years, though I gotta say Leon has kind of outshone and upstaged them all! While I may still well love each and every one of my others to this day lmao Leon has asserted himself as queen bee since showing up, that’s for damn sure.

* GETTING TO KNOW THE ACCOUNT : WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO TAKE ON THIS MUSE : An ask meme, initially. I was prompted by a good friend of mine to try my hand at a Castlevania muse after watching and enjoying Season 1, and the muse they suggested to me was the one and only Leon Belmont. Needless to say, it was pretty much love at first sight after answering that ask meme, and his muse clicked into place so damn fast from the word go. He felt like a natural fit for my style and my type, though I was initially hesitant to pick him up simply due to the lack of content for his character to utilise for icons etc. It was a recurring joke though in my friend group I would adopt Leon if he appeared in Season 2, and well. What do you know? There he was, in the most beautiful oil painting I’ve ever seen. I took that for the cosmic sign that I was sure it was, and never looked back lmao.

But aside from that? Like I’ve said, Leon as a character was just so attractive in concept to me, despite the lack-lustre job that the game did with his presentation. His innocent, compassionate personality, his bravery, his rad design and gorgeous Kojima artwork lmao of course all played individual roles in catching my eye. Aside from him just being My Type though I had actually been dying to explore a new fandom and more specifically, a hero/villain dynamic at that point too, so when Leon and Mathias dropped into my lap as if from Heaven itself, I was powerless to resist.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE ASPECTS OF YOUR CURRENT MUSE : That for a man so revered, he remains humble, kind and grounded. He is not a perfect man, no, but he is a good one at heart, remaining unsullied by the horrors of war that he’s witnessed or the hardships he’s lived through. He has had a difficult lot in life with losing both his parents around age six and having the regimes of becoming a knight being beaten into him since that same tender age, but Leon never seems to complain about his lot in life. He takes things for what they are, learning to look for the beauty in what he does have and strive to do better, be better--if he doesn’t like something, he’ll change it or die trying. And that really shows in how little hesitance he has with breaking the shackles of the church--and yet even then behaves with some honour (even if to a fault) letting his sword stay with the church it belonged to sooner than stealing it to aid him on his venture into Walter’s castle. Even when his ideals of striving for goodness and always pressing forward are challenged so horrifically by Mathias’ betrayal, and Leon loses absolutely everything in his life, he still doesn’t let that embitter him. He gets up and resolves to be what the world needs, all the while holding on to his inherent kindness and sense of honour. He is a hero of his own story, but an unsuccessful one in the sense he never achieves his goal, but passes on the torch so that his children can do so for him, which is also interesting to me. As I said, Leon is truly is a representative of hope, turning his seemingly hopeless situation into something that would go on to benefit and protect mankind for centuries.

WHAT’S YOUR BIGGEST INSPIRATION WHEN IT COMES TO WRITING : My friends, 100%. I bounce off of my Mathias so often in my interp that I often have to explain all of the massive story we’ve fleshed out for them to others a lot of the time! Which is inevitable really, since his story hinges on Mathias as it is, so naturally a lot of my inspiration comes from our OOC discussions and storytelling around them and their world. But as an independent entity, most of my inspiration for Leon simply comes from the playlists I’ve compiled around him; ya’ll have probably guessed from my tags that Sleeping At Last is oddly enough one of the recurring bands I listen to when trying to get his muse going. But also, watching through the current seasons of the Netflix show works wonders--Leon may not be an active player in it, but I feel even more than the games, the show immerses me thoroughly in that kind of world with its music, atmosphere and visuals. It really helps draw out his muse when he’s being stubborn just to give the show another glimpse! FAVORITE TYPES OF THREADS : Anyone that reads my threads or RPs with me has probably figured by now that angst is a very prevalent theme on this blog, though in all honesty that’s quite unavoidable with how tragic Leon’s story and many other muses that he hangs out with are! But that’s not all I like to write. I enjoy digging between the lines, looking at the seemingly mundane parts of a character’s growth as even the little moments in their life can prove as monumental stepping stones for other parts of their character. Some of the best threads I’ve had are just the muses being forced to talk about something at length while not doing any meaningful activity, and so many revelations and understandings and epiphanies have come from really engaging the muse’s voice quite in that way. I also really enjoy threads that challenge my muse in some way, either emotionally or physically--or even both, in context with threads regarding an enemy force that can really get inside Leon’s head as well as give him a run for his money in combat. BIGGEST STRUGGLE IN REGARDS TO YOUR CURRENT MUSE : Balancing his innocent, naive personality with also having him cut a regal and noble figure. It isn’t always difficult, though they are two things that don’t necessarily go hand in hand in a seamless fashion all the while, and so it can be a bit of a challenge figuring out how to apply both qualities in harmony in my interpretation. That’s the kind of thing I feel the game was going for but failed to achieve, and I certainly don’t want to end up in that same boat. Leon as far as I see him was always meant to be a heroic and lordly figure, but to act as foil to Mathias’ more traditionally stoic, calculating and severe energy with his youthful, bright-eyed and more emotional nature. Stately and proud, ferocious and brave, but gentle and kind. A lot of things to roll into one, this guy!

TAGGED BY : @putrefactie ILU!!! 💖⭐

TAGGING : @ghostlyanon @dominatie @lunarvvitching @holyresolve and whoever else wants it yall God Bless.

#⚜ :: OOC┊Person of Sinterest #{ah i have tired myself out rambling all night LOL MY FAVOURITE HOBBY}#{i have a lot of feelings that i cant condense into memes but i try bc i LIKE TO SHARE}

4 notes · View notes

fluidsf · 6 years ago

Photo

Resonant Visions 3 Alan Licht & Loren Connors: Into The Night Sky (2010) Reviewed format: Digital Album on FAMILY VINEYARD Welcome once again to the Resonant Visions review series on my blog. Today I've got for you this excellent 2010 Digital Album by American guitar improvisers Alan Licht & Loren Connors titled Into The Night Sky. This album was released by FAMILY VINEYARD. In the cover artwork for this album I immediately got drawn to the big thin pinkish circle on the stark black background. The circle is open, pointing at a probable kind of "open cycle" in the music on this release but also abstracting the concept of the night to a single minimal shape lighting up the darkness. It's definitely a great Album cover that in an abstract manner matches the music contained on this album and grabs the attention without spoiling the atmosphere and style of the music too much. Unfortunately I couldn't find artwork credits in the description on Bandcamp, but regardless a fine stand out album cover. In the download of Into The Night Sky you can find this album cover in good resolution as well as the two album tracks in 16-bit/44.1kHz CD quality. Onto the music on Into The Sky Now and the connection I found between the cover artwork and the two album tracks. Into The Night Sky features two improvised live performances recorded in 1996 (Map of Dusk) and 2006 (Into The Night Sky). These live recordings find the two guitarists performing in wonderfully blending, inventive and genuinely immersive guitar melodies, ambiences and experimentation. Map of Dusk starts off the album. Right from the beginning it's obvious that Alan Licht & Loren Connors found a great way to divide "roles" in their performances, with one guitarist handling the main lead and the second guitar creating both accompanying chords or handling an experimental, sometimes noisy background of guitar feedback, effects or string noises. The lead melodies are oftentimes quite melancholic and light, feeling like a musical interpretation of soft orange light shining in the darkness of the quiet night. The bluesy twists add some mild sadness to the ambience of the melodies. Indeed more than just musical instruments Alan Licht & Loren Connors are really feeling the tones, melodies, textures they are creating, shaping them to sometimes blend into eachother like a gentle cloud of warmth covering the listener but they are also not afraid to at times create intriguing contrast between eachothers musical elements, with juxtapositions of abstract (atonal) structures of tones going with the warm lead melody or letting a wave of resonant feedback almost cover the other guitarist's tones. The music is often moving at a calm slow pace, like putting a magnifying glass on the melodies, even the core elements making up the guitar's sound and fluctuating, manipulating these to shape constantly evolving new directions the melancholic guitar melodies flow into. In a way it's like describing a long walk in the night, quiet contemplation, thoughts shifiting from good memories to bad memories (the harsher parts in the piece at times almost shifting towards heavily distorted Noise). The balance between "exploration" and balance in the performance also enhances the immersive introspective element of the music which is never quite the same and allows the listener to have his / her own interpretation of the meaning / feeling these tones / ambiences / noise conjur up. A wonderful performance. On Into The Night Sky Alan Licht & Loren Connors create an atmosphere that again has that subdued "night" vibe but with a much more mysterious sounding shimmer around it. Both guitarists are now playing in more blending metallic kind of tones, with wah wah and delay effects being used to create deep distant abstract clicking resonant guitar tones that accompany the often haunting guitar chords. The tonal and textural manipulation of the guitar sounds is also brought more to the foreground in this piece with sections of the perfomance sounding like clouds or even rivers of strange silvery glimmering almost alien sounding guitar string sounds that gave me a feeling of wandering around in the night while ghostly washes of subdued light appear around me. Into The Night Sky mixes its melodic elements with elements of textural experimentation that made me think of Sound Art and indeed both pieces on this album have both a strong musicality but also feeling for the actual textures and manipulation of these into environments, situations, shapes maybe even a kind of personality that really draws the listener inside the music like combinations of two organic mysterious beings creating the music from their state of being. So all in all Alan Licht & Loren Connors have created some excellent sonic explorations here through there performances and also have such interplay between eachother, evolving the performances over time in such smooth almost composed manners that it'll most likely leave you wanting to listen to more work from these two excellent artist when the album is finished. I'd definitely recommend this album to fans of Free Improvisation looking for more ambient, subdued performed music but that is also varied and sprinkled with bursts of Noise and feedback elements. But also if you're interested in what it sounds like when two musician's are so tuned into eachother performances and sonic manipulations that their music becomes a combined whole, a new entity created through improvisation go check out this album. Digital Album is available from the FAMILY VINEYARD Bandcamp page here: https://familyvineyard.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-night-sky

#digital download #underground music #independent music #family vineyard #2010 #free improvisation #sound art #avant garde #album #alan licht #loren connors #into the night sky #resonant visions #experimental music #album review #ep cover artwork #design review

3 notes · View notes

juniorformulamotorsport · 6 years ago

Text

Wednesday, 13th/Thursday, 14th October 2010 – Monaco, Days 1 and 2

I’ve been missing in action for such a long time now that it’s very hard to know where to start, so I’ll make it simple and go with where I am right now and what I’m doing. After a long complicated summer, Lynne and I are now in Monte Carlo, at the Columbus Hotel, and will be until Sunday afternoon, when we fly back home. The ever present sound of building work is an old familiar one here as the locals continue to expand into the surrounding sea or dig massive tunnels underneath the rock, all in an effort to make this tiny Principality function more efficiently and make more money for the rich among its inhabitants. It occurs to me that I haven’t been here for getting on for a decade, and as we drove in from Nice airport, it became clear that while many things have changed beyond all recognition, the street patterns that we both used to know so well have not altered that drastically. We’re here visiting a good friend of ours, Skil Piccione, and while she originally wanted us to use her apartment while she went away, she is now staying put and has thus treated us to a room at the Columbus, which is far and away the most ridiculously generous things anyone has done for us in a very long time. I’m very, very grateful and intend to use the next few days to try and rest and recuperate after everything that has been happening this year, and to try and draw breath before the winter sets in and everything is dark and gloomy at home.

And that was how we ended up at Birmingham airport this morning, sitting in Costa coffee having breakfast (medium skinny vanilla latte, fresh fruit and yogurt and granola), while we waited for bmibaby to announce our flight to Nice, which duly took off and landed on time (and we even got the emergency exit seats), where Skil collected us and drove us to the hotel. Apparently we’re having dinner with her and Clivio tonight at a new place over on the old harbourside where we’ve spent a lot of time over the years. Looking forward to that, especially given how hungry I now feel. It’s been a long time since that coffee and granola…

And now it’s time to get unpacked, get changed and go out for an aperitif and a stroll around Monte Carlo and see if everything really is still where we left it.

Thursday got off to a bit of a bit of a bad start one way and another, mainly due to the intake of copious amounts of alcohol on Wednesday night. It started with a raspberry caipirinha each in the hotel bar, then champagne at Skil’s as we were introduced to her gorgeous Maine Coon cats, Cookie…

And Eden.

From there we went to dinner with her and Clivio (who was about to shoot off to Magny-Cours for a French GT3 race and so could only manage the one night) at le Virage on Tabac corner. The meal was tasty though the risotto was somewhat undercooked, which was a pity given how good the breadrolls and the cheese straws were, and for that matter the starter of…, but the kir beforehand and the bottle of wine with the meal was probably where we should all have stopped. Instead we came back to the hotel and had a round of mojitos, and then I topped that off with a martini, so frankly my sore head this morning was entirely of my own making.

It didn’t stop it being pretty uncomfortable in the gym, even when I failed to complete my training session because I managed to switch the treadmill off 20 minutes in and couldn’t get it to restart. I gave up at that point and retreated to the room to shower and then we headed down to breakfast only to run into Allan McNish’s Mum and Dad, who were there on babysitting duty. We haven’t seen Bert in about 15 or more years, but we all recognised each other which was nice, and we played catch up while we ate our breakfast.

After breakfast Skil had arranged to pick us up and take us to the Thermes Marins where we could sunbathe, swim, and in my case have another go at my run, using the gym there. It was all very civilised on the sun terrace overlooking the yacht harbour, and the pool was very pleasant once I got over the saltiness of the water in there. After a swim, a sunbathe, and a huge fruit cocktail (of kiwi, orange and apple) I felt almost human again, and actually managed to complete my run, before it was time to change and leave to wander around and check out whether all the parts of Monte Carlo were still where we’d left them.

Skil had appointments to keep so she dropped us off at the Café de Paris, and we took it from there, strolling round past the infamous Tip-Top which is probably no longer the disreputable haunt it used to be, then down past Loews (which presumably should not be called that anymore as the hotel name has changed) towards the tunnel. We got a bit side-tracked at that point by the Japanese gardens, which we realised we’d never seen before, so we veered off and took a turn over the various bridges, through what may be a replica tea house.

It was delightfully peaceful in there, with Koi carp swimming happily around, a turtle basking on a rock, and a tiny little duckling that had managed to get temporarily separated from its mother. From there we wandered through the tunnel (which always unnerves me slightly after an incident in the early 1990s with a Scuderia Italia F1 car and Pierluigi Martini – I’d not even been introduced to him at that point and there he was trying to kill me) and down to the harbour where we stopped for lunch and watched as a variety of disorganised looking individuals went on with attempting to build the track for the weekend’s Kart Grand Prix. To be fair, laying a cable across a main road using a glue gun when the traffic is still coming through as normal did seem a bit tricky…

Lunch was pizza, not something I would usually eat in the UK, but this was a proper southern French pizza with a very thin crust and not too much cheese, tomato and chorizo topping.

It was very good as was the fruit cocktail I ordered, which contained various ingredients like banana, strawberries and what the translated menu informed me were “cramberries”. Presumably on the grounds that there were a lot of them in a very small space…

Once we’d had lunch we struck out towards the old town, opting to walk up the hillside path instead of taking the soft option of staying on the flat as far as the carpark at the end of the harbour and going up in the lift. The old town is just as peaceful as always, with a lot of the touristy type places now shut for the winter, but there was plenty to occupy us as we ambled around, including the palace, the seriously unreal guards outside, and the views back down over the old harbour and over all the relatively new territory on the Fontvielle side.

We opted not to take a tour of the interior and instead made our way back via the alpine garden, where there seemed to be much excitement going on over a trout that was in the pond with the Koi carp and that kept leaping to the surface in between ever faster laps of the water. It seemed more than slightly out of place, but maybe it lives there normally.

From there it was back down again, stopping for a mid-afternoon drink at Stars’n’Bars for old times’ sake, and for the entertainment offered by the karting paddock which was being set up on the car park in the middle. The cabaret came in the shape of an Italian team, who had parked their truck successfully but were now attempting to erect an awning by committee. You would think they had never done it before, the amount of head-scratching it was causing them. When they finished we applauded and raised our glasses to them. And then we left just in case they thought it meant we wanted to buy them a beer too.

It was time to meet Skil and go back to the hotel but we did have coffee in a bar in the Metropole shopping centre, and ended up having a brief chat with Lucas di Grassi, who was also having coffee, with someone who was presumably his girlfriend. He said he was still a bit sore after his crash at the weekend but still alive, which was what mattered. We left it at that and wished him well next time out.

Back at the hotel we changed, rested for a short while before meeting Skil for dinner. This time she took us to a Capo Sushi, where the food was superb (though unfortunately the music was too loud for us – apparently Thursday night is disco night in there with a buffet provided too at a price the locals can’t resist. I think different music might have worked for us but the repetitive stuff being played just made us all want it to stop. It didn’t take away from the quality of the sushi and sashimi though, especially the eel and the scallops. With our eats ringing we retreated and moved round to Casio square, heading for Moods, a new music bar which Skil wanted to try. And that was a very smart move on her part as it turned out. Playing on Thursday was Robin Trower, who Skil hadn’t heard of but we had. We reckoned it would be good and it was.

We couldn’t get a seat (there are tables on the main floor) but we could stand at the bar on the mezzanine, which was great on several counts, not least because it meant we could dance, which blues guitar always makes me want to do. The band played a blindingly good set of around 90 minutes, and we danced and I took a handful of photos, the whole atmosphere being amazingly relaxed and good fun. It helped that there didn’t appear to be an entry fee either. The leaflets said your first drink would be 22 Euros each but that didn’t seem to apply when I went to the bar (mind you, 38 Euros for 2 glasses of wine and a G&T was a bit of a shock but in the end we worked out that it meant we’d paid just under 20 Euros per head for a terrific gig which gave us a bit of perspective on it). The band finished just before 11 and we left for Skil’s where we spent a little time playing with Cookie and Eden before returning to the hotel the long way round after we failed to negotiate our way out of the correct car park exit from the flats! Wearing high heels and with sore feet from dancing it was not what we needed but we figured out where we were quite quickly and eventually found our way home, where we slept soundly, undisturbed by mad quacking ducks and early morning helicopters (we’d figured out how to fly the aircon so we were able to shut the window overnight).

Travel 2010 – Monaco, Days 1 and 2 Wednesday, 13th/Thursday, 14th October 2010 - Monaco, Days 1 and 2 I’ve been missing in action for such a long time now that it’s very hard to know where to start, so I’ll make it simple and go with where I am right now and what I’m doing.

1 note · View note

aion-rsa · 3 years ago

Text

Visions of Dune: Bringing the Ultimate Sci-Fi Epic to Life

https://ift.tt/3zfRQIh

The story of 2021’s Dune begins with a kid falling in love with a book. Before he was the world-famous film director of Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve was a teenager who devoured sci-fi novels. When he was “between 13 and 14,” he remembered seeing “these eyes.” The iridescent blue eyes were on the face of a man staring at the young Villeneuve, painted by Wojciech Siudmak, for the 1970 French paperback translation of Dune. Villeneuve was utterly mesmerized by the cover. “When you’re a kid, the covers can really make an impact,” he says. “The artists that were drawing them were so talented that even though I had never heard of Dune, I was drawn to that title and the simplicity. I was always attracted to the desert.”

Like many serious readers of science fiction, Villeneuve’s obsession with Dune began free of artistic pretension. “I instantly fell in love with it for several reasons,” he says. “The way Paul is trying to find his identity while finding his home in another culture, with the Fremen. I was fascinated by the way they need to survive and adapt…I have always been in love with biology, the science of life, of nature. The way Frank Herbert used biology was insanely beautiful. To me, reading Dune is like a paradise. The book stayed with me all these years.”

When you talk to Villeneuve now, childhood giddiness illuminates the corners of everything we’re talking about. Yes, Villeneuve loved Star Wars, too (“The Empire Strikes Back is always good for the soul,” he says). But what makes Dune so much different from other popular heroic epics is that, despite the escapist sweep of the story, its underlying message is anything but escapist. The story of Paul Atreides is not an aww-shucks hero’s journey. In her 1978 review of Star Wars, Ursula K. Le Guin referred to the protagonist of that film as “Huck Skywalker.” And when you think of the story of Dune in that way, no one would confuse Paul Atreides with any member of the Skywalker clan.

The story of Dune concerns a powerful family—House Atreides—being pushed into a terrible situation on the planet Arrakis by opposing forces on all sides. Smack dab in the middle of that is the notion that Paul could—and will—initiate a huge uprising against his enemies at some point in the future. Paul, and his parents—Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac)—set out to do good, but create even more conflict as a result.

“At the very core of Dune is a warning,” Villeneuve says. “Anyone who is trying to blend religion and politics—that is a dangerous cocktail. I think Herbert wrote it as a warning, [against] leaders that pretend to know what will happen, who pretend to know the truth, who might be lacking humility. When someone behaves like a Messiah, you have to be careful.”

A Boy and His Sandworms

One of the messiahs of Dune is a guy destined to have multiple names: Muad’Dib, the Kwisatz Haderach, and, of course, Paul Atreides. On our planet, he’s known as Timothée Chalamet. Ferguson says that Chalamet’s unique qualities as an actor were the “essential” elements that make the movie work. “Timmy brings the smaller to the grander,” she says. “He’s carrying this huge movie, and it’s lazy of me to use this word, but he brings such an indie feel to it.”

When it comes to “indie” films that nearly everyone knows about, Timothée Chalamet is one of the most famous male actors on the planet in 2021. From his roles in Call Me By Your Name to Little Women, Chalamet has the kind of star power that is subtle and undefinable, because as Ferguson points out, he’s not playing the role to seem like a big movie hero. Paul Atreides is the opposite of a Han Solo or Captain Kirk type, and so is Chalamet. “I always tried to bring Paul Atreides back to the ground,” Villeneuve says. “I told Timothée, you are the hero, of course, you are a tremendous fighter. But I think you have the burden of having a very strong instinct that will be boosted by spice.”

Chalamet reveals that in terms of becoming that “tremendous fighter,” some of his hand-to-hand training happened in a wine cellar while filming Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch. Chalamet also asserts that working with Villeneuve on Dune didn’t feel like being involved in a Hollywood blockbuster, and that transitioning from The French Dispatch to Dune made perfect sense. “It felt like working on a high-level indie,” Chalamet says. “I haven’t worked with the Coen Brothers, but I imagine it would be like this, just on a bigger scale. The Dark Knight is what made me want to act. It has incredible behavioral specifics. It has incredible performances and in the middle of it are sweeping cinematic sequences. In a way, Dune is like that. When you can get on a project of this size that has this much dramatic integrity, working with one of the best directors in the world right now, it’s exactly what I wanted.”

Chalamet says that beyond fight training, immersing himself into the world of Dune and “spending time with the props,” was important to feel a connection to the objects of Paul’s world. He also didn’t shy away from the idea that this was yet another adaptation of a beloved book. “I learned that from Greta Gerwig when I did Little Women. Nobody minds another good movie based on a good book.”

But for Chalamet, the journey isn’t quite over. “I’m champing at the bit to film Part 2,” he says. “I read all of Dune Messiah in lockdown. I’m ready.”

A New Dune, For Everyone

Perhaps unfairly, being really into Dune carries with it a kind of connotation that only the truly nerdy at heart get why science fiction devotees are so obsessed with the spice. John Hodgman makes two jokes about “Third Stage Guild Navigators” in his book Medallion Status. In Russian Doll, Nadia uses the phrase “Jodorowsky’s Dune” as a nerdy password to gain access to a back room. When Patrick Stewart was cast in Star Trek: The Next Generation, to his fellow castmates he was “the guy from I, Claudius,” while to writers like Michael Chabon, he was “the guy from Dune.” Unlike Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings, the broad appeal of Dune has always been tentative. But, in addition to Chalamet’s favorable comparison to The Dark Knight, Villeneuve makes it clear that the purpose of this Dune wasn’t to just make book readers happy.

“It would be so easy to make a Dune movie only for hardcore fans,” Villeneuve says. “My goal was to please the hardcore fans, that they feel the spirit, the poetry, and the atmosphere of the book—but to make sure that someone who had never heard about Dune would also have fun and understand the story. I had to make sure that everyone would be on board right at the beginning.” To that end, the new Dune sports a radical narrative shift from the source material. In this version, the opening narration and framing of the story is given by Chani (Zendaya), a member of the Fremen tribe, native to Arrakis.

Villeneuve describes this as one of his “bold” decisions but stresses that the narrative point of view doesn’t change the story at all. Logistically, the story of Dune is about House Atreides coming to take over the spice mining on the planet Arrakis. The native Fremen have been abused and tortured by previous occupiers, House Harkonnen, so in the new opening narration, Chani wonders “who will be our new oppressors,” a line not spoken in the book. Instead, the narrative framing of the novel is from the quasi-historical point of view of Princess Irulan, a woman Paul eventually marries for purely political reasons. So, what Villeneuve has done by giving the opening narration to Chani is flip the point of view from the aristocracy to the working class.

Villeneuve also says that elevating Chani’s role, and the roles of several of the female characters, was all because the movie required “bold” decisions to become the best film version of the story possible. “A book and a movie are totally different mediums. I had to make certain decisions. This is why I decided to make the first book into two movies. I had to condense some ideas to tell the story in the most eloquent way possible so that it will be understood by everybody,” Villeneuve says. But he’s also quick to point out that adaptation is not the same as leaving things out on purpose. “When you adapt it’s an act of vandalism. You will change things. But, from the beginning, I said to the crew, to the studio, to the actors: ‘the bible is the book. We will, as much as possible, stay as close as possible to the book.’ I want people who love the book to feel like we put a camera in their minds.”

Ferguson’s Lady Jessica is arguably the character who sets the story of Dune into motion. In this future-world, the mystical matriarchal order of the Bene Gesserit can control the sex of babies that are born into its sisterhood. And in defiance of her orders from her fellow Bene Gesserit, Jessica had a son, instead of a daughter. Jessica asserting her right to choose, in essence, makes it all happen. Ferguson believes the emotional power of these stories is more important for audiences than the nitty-gritty specifics. “We can go into some kind of nano version of ourselves, but if it doesn’t read through on the screen, to the audience, it isn’t worth doing.”

Movies

Dune Review: A Sci-Fi Legend Is Born

By David Crow

Sponsored

Giveaway: Win the Dune Audiobook

By Kayti Burt

Talking about accessibility, Ferguson says that she believes the new Dune represents an ongoing paradigm shift of artistic and thoughtful science fiction in the 21st century. “Once the door’s open and you know that there are so many incredible stories within science-fiction storytelling, there’s musicality and rhythm that is needed to create these worlds within worlds, it’s very complex, everyone doesn’t get it.”

But, even though there are levels of “philosophy” and “complexity” to Dune, Ferguson feels that the film doesn’t operate in spite of its level of detail, but because of it. “The sandworms, the resources of the stillsuits, I could go on forever,” she says. “In this film, it’s the details, the smaller things that matter.”

Seeing the Future

Spoiler alert: if you’ve never read Dune, the book itself actively tries to spoil the pages ahead. Whether it’s snippets of imaginary historical texts that open each chapter or the prophetic flashes of Paul Atreides, the story of Dune sprinkles flavors of its own future into the beginning, middle, and end. There are many reasons why Frank Herbert’s book reshaped the notion of what an epic science fiction novel could be, but the idea that the narrative is always a little ahead of itself is a big part of its addictive power.

“It’s not something you’d have any sort of self-conscious perspective on,” Chalamet says, speaking of Paul’s early moments of clairvoyance in the story. Before Paul goes to the titular planet of Arrakis and meets Chani, he has glimpses of his future, and later, during a fateful first meeting with a sandworm, the near-magical spice brings that vision into focus. Chalamet says that in playing Paul, these scenes required careful subtlety in order to convey a realistic sense of knowing one’s own future.

“It’s a layer,” Chalamet explains. “As opposed to lucidly having visions of a pleasant landscape. These aren’t futures that are something [Paul would] would be happy to skip into. What he’s seeing and feeling is a visceral experience of a hyper-specific telling of tragedy, but also that he has a hand in that tragedy. If you were going through that it would be a hell of an experience.”

As Chalamet points out, the spoilers for Dune “have been out there for four decades,” so, for old fans, the true lure of the new film version is discovering how the things we know are coming, will make us feel. For longtime spiceheads, watching Chalamet in the first Dune trailer was like the opposite of Paul’s traumatic flash-forward: we see the hyper-specific events, and we’re hoping for an emotional victory. For those who have waited for a perfect film version of Dune for several decades, there’s almost no “self-conscious perspective” left. From the tribulations of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unmade film to David Lynch’s divisive 1984 version to the uneven Sci-Fi Channel iterations from the 2000s, hoping for a worthy adaptation of Dune, has, for fans, been a hell of an experience.

But this time, with this director, and this cast, the future looks good. And yet, even if you know every spoiler, and have every detail of every character’s journey clear in your mind, with this Dune, we still don’t really know what the emotional future holds, exactly. The Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear tells us “fear is the mind-killer,” and so, for the new Dune, the hope must flow.

A Dune Movie Trilogy?

When directing Timothée Chalamet through his visions of the future, Villeneuve says he was careful to point out that “the future is shifting, the future is always in motion, so it means sometimes these visions are not always accurate.” The same could possibly be said for what audiences can expect for a sequel to Dune. As Chalamet confirms, “we’ve only filmed the first part of the story,” meaning, what everyone will be waiting for next isn’t a sequel to Dune, but simply the rest of Dune. With a TV series in the works for HBO Max—Dune: The Sisterhood—how much more of this world should we expect?

According to Villeneuve, the goal is a trilogy.

“I always thought there would be two movies for the first book. And I always thought Dune Messiah would be a powerful film. I always saw a trilogy.” Chalamet is also primed for one more film beyond Dune: Part Two, revealing that he thought Dune Messiah “was amazing, and in some ways, more traditional than the first book. I’d love to do it, when and if we—hopefully—get to it.”

In addition to a pandemic and the shifting schedules of various actors, completing Dune: Part Two any time soon seems overly optimistic. But Villeneuve is hopeful that he will make the trilogy. “Well, my mind didn’t go much further after that!” he says. “That’s already a lot. The books after that get a little more complex. But I do see three movies.”

In an uncertain time, Dune feels like a shockingly prescient social lens. Ferguson says she believes that “when people are depressed, they go for musicals or sci-fi,” and that Dune serves as a kind of balm for the anxieties of the culture at large. From climate change to imperialism, the book and the film shine an adventurous light on what Chalamet believes isn’t a prediction of the future, but rather “a projection” of what might happen. If Dune does its job, it won’t just start conversations about the future of cinema, but perhaps the future of the planet, too. In real life, there may be no golden path for humanity, but for now, with one ambitious work of cinematic expression, the sleeper has awakened.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Dune opens in cinemas and on HBO Max on October 22

The post Visions of Dune: Bringing the Ultimate Sci-Fi Epic to Life appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3ln2lou

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

1 note · View note

frederator-studios · 7 years ago

Video

vimeo

Elise Simard is an animation director and homemade special effects expert with a style all her own. In the tradition of the avant-garde, her films don’t tell a single linear story; rather, they evoke the feelings of many stories, happening all at once, and all around us. Soon we’ll be able to experience her vision literally all around us, as she ventures into VR filmmaking. I hope you appreciate “Opening Hours” above, and her other films—“Breakfast” is the most introspective 2 minutes you’ll have all week. Elise has a wonderful ability to see the artistry in the ordinary, a knack that we can all aspire to. And beyond her talents, she’s a great person. Enjoy!

What can you tell us about ‘Opening Hours’?

It’s inspired by Jarry Park in Montreal; all the little lives that live and visit there. The park is big enough for many different energies to co-exist. It holds one of my favorite swimming pools in Montreal—I was inspired to explore what it’d be like if the pool had an occult, mysterious power. The goal was to open these different pockets of atmospheres, bringing people from one place to another without a traditional story.

Where did you study animation?

I went to Concordia University in Montreal to get a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts. I focused on design for two years, but fell in love with film animation, and began taking as many classes in it as I could. I was drawn into the animation program particularly because we were encouraged to be experimental. My first student film was even in 16mm!

Vintage! Why do you think animation was your calling?

I’ve always seen things from a cinematic angle, like viewing the world in shots and scenes. I’m excited by little things that inspire stories in me. At first, I was the atypical animation student in my class - I didn’t draw! It was only once I entered the program that I learned how to do so.

Whoa! So what'd you use to animate, before you had sweet drawing skills?

I used lots of cut-outs and raw materials - I still do! My first films, I drew on or around little pieces of tape and wood. I layered materials then photographed them, creating images just for the lens. And I played with how light draws out textures, which is still a focus in my work. With lighting, I can create a library of special effects, all self-generated.

What are some of your techniques?

There’s compositing, which lets me create my own computer graphics. And photographic compositing: exposing part of an image, covering it up, then exposing it again. Optical printing, as well. “Afloat at Dawn” demonstrates the effect of these techniques with lighting and texture. I shot on film for a long time before transitioning to digital.

What motivated that change from film to digital?

I grew curious about the potential of using new technologies to create. I actually just began a Master’s program for 3D animation a few months ago. I’m experimenting with VR especially. I’m still learning the basics, playing with the software and cameras.

That’s awesome. What do you imagine doing with VR?

I’m exploring its potential to create textures and luminous effects. I’m very excited about where it might go! I’m attracted to texture as a tool for storytelling, to evoke different emotional states. It’s difficult for me to describe exactly what I’m going for with VR… especially as I don’t yet know myself! It’s a new challenge.

Let’s talk motifs in your films, namely one: bears. What draws you to them?

Hmm, I’ve never really thought about that! They do show up quite a bit. I suppose because I prefer a subject barely moving at all, and very subtle movements. And I imagine bears as being very languid, so they inspire that kind of light motion for me. I suppose that’s why I’m drawn to them.

It’s funny, just yesterday I found the first thing that I ever animated in school: a bear walking! I’m doing tests on it in VR now, and it crackles, it’s so textured. It’s acetate, plastic, and the ink is 10 years old: chipped, yellowed, embedded with bits of dust. It’s a lovely discovery.

I love your ‘tiny musical’ “Breakfast”; what’s the story behind it?

I wrote the song in university. When I got the chance to spend two months at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre in Wales making a film, I had to choose a project very quickly. So I decided to record the song, with the lovely Clara Ortiz Marier singing. The film stemmed from the song. It was lightweight animation—everything I needed to create the film was in my suitcase.

vimeo

Where does sound usually come into your process?

Sound is very important in my work. I usually start with sound, then fine tune it to what I see in my head. Process-wise, I’m drawn to technical challenges and using formal elements, like sound, to evoke feelings and moods. I try to be as intuitive as possible in the way that I sculpt story.

Your work is avant-garde; what are your thoughts on narratives?

I’m so bored when I’m locked into a narrative! I use it as a starting point. For example, “Beautiful Like Elsewhere” is a scifi film, written with a clear narrative. But in creating the film, I backed up—I wanted to evoke a sense that you are viewing this story from another dimension. A more lyrical, visceral experience. Part of that is editing from the gut, rather than editing to a script.

How did your fascination with lighting come about?

As a child I played with mirrors a lot. I loved seeing how light reflected off of them, and how it changed when I altered the angle or amount. I would sit with mirrors in dark closets, experimenting. My Grandma had crystals - a whole basket of them - and I’d shine light through them to reflect on the walls. I suppose it makes sense that I’ve become an artist now! Although for the longest time, I was considering paths deemed more ‘practical’.

Was your family skeptical when you chose to study art?

My mother actually told me to do it. I didn’t care for what I was pursuing, and one day she said to me, “You know, art is what you love to do. Not everything needs to be hard. Why don’t you study it?” I’m lucky; my family was always encouraging.

Do you have a favorite among your films?

My latest film is always my favorite. So right now, it’s “Beautiful Like Elsewhere”.

As part of the NFB, you collaborate with other filmmakers often. How is that experience?

Yes, I’ve worked for other artists a lot, and I’ve been very fortunate—everyone that I’ve worked with has been open to my ideas and creations. And they’ve opened up their processes to me. I’ve learned from everyone with whom I’ve collaborated.

Who are your biggest inspirations?

Lately, I’ve been inspired by the book Thought-Forms by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater; it was created at the turn of the 20th century, and inspired the making of this magical bum. I’m very interested in transforming sex into lyrical and immersive forms right now, and this is part of a 3D experiment I’m currently undertaking.

I deeply admire Agnes Varda; her warmth, presence, and audacity are so inspiring. Even more so now that I am entering this new and wide open field of VR and emerging tech. There are qualities of her work that I’d love to see translated into VR. I’m not sure how it all relates yet, but I’m keeping an open mind.

Thank you for sharing your work with me Elise! Best of luck on all of your projects. I can’t wait to see where your VR ventures take you, and the medium as a whole. It’s good to know there are artists ensuring that it won’t just be “a toy” after all!

- Cooper

#The Frederator Interview #Elise Simard #NFB #Canadian animation #independent animation #Agnes Varda #Opening Hours #Breakfast #Afloat at Dawn #Frederator Studios #VR #Interview #artists #artists on tumblr #animation #avantgarde #experimental #Concordia University #fine arts

42 notes · View notes

alivingroomatthebottomofalake · 7 years ago

Text

My Top 100 albums of 2017

I listened to too much music in 2017. It was hard to keep track. Pop music was weak as fuck, I didn’t really find much joy in it, but I was finding roughly 10-30 albums each month that I could really enjoy in other genres. Many of these were releases on small labels. I must admit, listening to this much music made it hard to enjoy this much music. I don’t think I’ll be doing this in future. I have whittled it down to the 100 albums that came out in 2017 that I spent the most time with, that really lasted in my mind as great new music, i.e. my favourites, and while I try to be objective about my criticism, it’s still about what speaks to me specifically. Everything beyond the top 10-20 is in a pretty vague order, vaguer as it goes, with the final 20 being albums I liked a lot but didn’t spend as much time with, hence the vaguer reviews). I’ve limited each review to roughly 100 words (fewer as we go along, in fact, I tapped out towards the end because I got tired of writing. This took longer to do than I planned and fuck it), and as with last year’s list, I’ve intentionally avoided the use of genre words and pointless artist comparisons (as much as is possible). Check each record out on the merit of the content, not the style, and you will enjoy more.

1. Bjork - Utopia

Utopia sees Bjork return from the darkness with a fresh optimism, and also a fresh process and palette of sounds. The open form/narrative led song writing, and seemingly meandering vocal style that has been gradually replacing the pop style of her early albums has firmly cemented itself, and while not having an obvious verse/catchy chorus form, or club banger beat might be a barrier for the uninitiated, it is one of the album’s strengths, as Bjork explores the themes of the lyrics with some incredible arrangements and some of the most curious production experiments of her career, creating probably the most Bjork album yet. It’s dense and joyous, takes no prisoners in its honesty, and is lush as fuck.

Favourite tracks: Arisen My Senses, Claimstaker

2. Shackleton and Vengeance Tenfold - Sferic Ghost Transmits

Undulating and pulsing bells, acoustic and synthetic percussion, and cinematic swells of scifi synthesizer drones and blips framing a half spoken, half sung narrative about some dark shit. It’s the juxtaposition of the deep, almost monotone delivery of the tormented lyrical content and the brightness of the production, the activity in the sounds that really makes this music come alive. There’s something otherworldly and ancient about the material, curious and yet familiar. The poly-rhythmic patterns and the rich palette of sound textures draw one in for repeated listening, making this a highly addictive record.

Favourite track: Five Demiurgic Options

3. Children of Alice - Children of Alice

There’s so much going on in this music. A strange collage of textures and instruments play out a montage of ideas, flowing together in a seamless exploratory form. If there’s a story here, it’s not being expressed in any literal terms, yet the mood seems to flow in a radiophonic sort of way, and the listening journey is a blast. There are moments that the album falls into recognisable bursts and loops of what could be called “music” but the tracks don’t dwell on developing these ideas in any uniform or traditional fashion, and the pleasure here is how the disjointedness and variety keeps the listener on their toes, especially when several opposing genres and tonal centers begin overlapping. Then the magic really starts to happen.

Favourite track: Rite of the Maypole - An Unruly Procession

4. Saicobab - SAB SE PURANI BAB

What seems on paper as a really simple combination of instruments, becomes an intricate map of rhythm and unexpected sound interplay. The compositions are led by the voice and sitar, and glued together by a percussionist and double bassist. The backings are often as furious as the foreground energy, but the mix gives the instrument hierarchy a tension that totally serves the music. There is an additional level of intrigue in the quality of vocal treatments and fx that elevates the strangeness of the record. At times the energy is chaotic, but the music is highly organised, and while striking the balance of these feelings is no easy task, Yoshimi and co get it right.

Favourite tracks: aMn nMn, Bx Ax Bx

5. Dustin Wong & Takako Minekawa - Are Euphoria

Well, this is such an apt album title. The music on Are Euphoria is itself dancing. This is music reveling in process. Nothing ever really feels settled, but without giving off an unsettling feeling. Rather, it’s an exciting kind of bliss, the thrill of the search. Beats morph tempo, melodies orbit the tonic but hardly resolve, busy textures scratch away beneath nonchalant, liquid vocals, it’s all very quaint, yet mature and highly addictive. Mostly this album is just fun. Fun because one can hear the joy that went into it, and the euphoria is not just expressed, but easily received.

Favourite tracks: Zaaab, Haha Mori

6. Rabit - Les Fleurs Du Mal

“Chop it up”, says the voice that opens this album, giving perhaps an obvious indication of the process behind the music that follows. Sharp strikes of strings and cut up bits of dialogue in various languages merge with mangled atmospheres and asymmetric synth melodies. There’s a lot going on in this album, but never too much at a time. It’s immersive, but there’s a sense of buoyancy. The album carries a dark quality throughout most of the themes, but it’s an enjoyable darkness, less overt terror, more curiosity. There is a prettiness that pervades the evil. Another aptly titled album.

Favourite tracks: Possessed, Ontological Graffiti, Bleached World

7. Yazz Ahmed – La Saboteuse

Yazz Ahmed’s trumpet tone is impeccable, and on this album she has assembled a cast of amazing players to deliver some incredible moments of ecstatic musicality. There’s a lot of brilliant soloing, infectious melodic themes and well-planned arrangements. The balance of light and shade, big and small, old and new, is constantly moving, like a tightrope walker, balanced and sure footed, but never at rest, never without risk. The album is a constant slight of hand, lulling the listener with warmth and gentle caresses, but beyond mere background moods, it’s full of adventure, and one can’t help but accept the quest it presents.

Favourite tracks: Al Emadi, The Space Between the Fish and the Moon, Bloom.

8. Emel - Ensen

Emel has the most haunting, captivating voice I have heard in forever. I don’t even really know what her songs are about, because she is from Tunisia and sings mostly in Arabic. This album is sombre in tone, and occasionally brutal. The drums sound huge, although they sound like small instruments turned up with great urgency. Even at it’s subtlest moments the album is urgent and immediate. That’s not to say the album is direct or blunt, it’s full of elegance and finesse, but it isn’t really nice, it’s beautiful and human, and it’s the latter quality that perhaps lets the darker side in.

Favourite tracks: Lost, Kaddesh, Ensen Dhaif.

9. Somi - Petite Afrique

This album was a surprise. The tone is set with a little soundscape/collage of music and dialogue snippets, and then segues into a beautiful reworking of Sting’s Englishman in New York (substituting Englishman for African). The chords are re-harmonised and the lyrics altered, translating a new meaning. Moving onward, the theme continues, lyrically exploring racial identity, and musically pushing the boundaries of African and African American music traditions. It’s a soulful and militant record. It’s catchy, but fully loaded with potent messages, wicked grooves, and hot arrangements.

Favourite songs: Black Enough, The Gentry.

10. Adult - Detroit House Guests

Adult invited a bunch of artists to stay at their place in Detroit and collaborate on some music whilst there. Artists including Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Michael Gira, and Douglas J McCarthy (and more) contributed ideas and vocals to the album. It’s a trippy, synth laden affair. Lots of cool modular sequences and minimal beats, matched with mantra like vocal passages, all whirling around together to create a pretty arty combination of club music and experimentalism. It’s a slow build over about the first 4 tracks, but once it gets going, it’s just a blast to move your body to. However, the weirdness doesn’t let up, and makes for great listening and dancing alike.

Favourite tracks: We Are a Mirror, This Situation.

11. Arca - Arca

It was such a surprise to hear Arca sing. Having produced tracks for so many vocalists, it was probably only a matter of time before they got on the mic. Arca’s voice expresses a sense of fragility, but it’s a deep and personal fragility, definitely not musical. Of that, there is confidence, expertise. The melancholic melodies are expertly accompanied by very sparse instrumentation, and the results are elegantly spun threads of sonic gossamer. But the album does take off and hit hard at times, with some instrumental tracks more reminiscent of earlier Arca works, but they’ve developed the sounds and ideas further, and these moments fit with the new sung material well.

Favourite Tracks: Anoche, Desafio.

12. Noveller - A Pink Sunset For No One

Noveller, aka Sarah Lipstate plays all this beautiful ambient music on an electric guitar. Her sounds are amazing, and the way she weaves it all together with a single instrument is masterful. I think what I appreciate about this record is the virtuosity it displays without ever needing to stand out. The tracks are all quite subtle, and even when the dynamics swell, it’s not about showing off, it’s about tension and release. They are great compositions, and Lipstate’s consummate execution make them a dream to immerse ones self in.

Favourite tracks: Rituals, Another Dark Hour.

13. Dale Cooper Quartet and the dictaphones - Astrild Astrild

Composed of lush, noise riddled drones, moody saxes and dreamy vocal croons, Dale Cooper Quartet & the Dictaphones perfectly invoke their namesake. Like a dreamy cinematic tribute album, but with all the right grit and character to own it. There’s some amazing atmosphereic floating choir “ahs” drifting between the sax lines, and some incredible soundscape tracks that barely feature any “notes”, they swell and dip and build some tension, interspersed with only a few dynamic peaks. The album is all tension and only a few moments of release, but they are beautiful releases. It’s a long album, with long tracks, and it’s a commitment to listen, but worth every second.

Favourite tracks: Pemp ajour imposte, Son mansarde roselin

14. Craig Taborn & Ikue Mori – Highsmith

Tarborn’s incredibly virtuosic avant –garde piano playing blends perfectly with Mori’s masterfully designed electronic textures. The two become one, effortlessly creating new worlds of sound with each gesture. Each piece explores the sound sources in a unique way. There’s a constant juggling of hierarchy that makes for interesting tensions, and while the complexity of the rhythmic textures and atonality make the album dense with information, it also has a really fun quality. The energy keeps it entertaining, but the talent and artistry elevates the listening experience to a state of enlightening euphoria.

Favourite tracks: Music To Die By, Variations On A Game

15. Black Quantum Futurism - Telescoping Effect Pt. 1 Soundscape

This album was composed/designed to accompany the words of Rasheedah Phillips, whom I was lucky enough to see perform with Moor Mother recently. On its own, this music is a powerful work, and an eclectic listening experience. There’s a sense of narrative built in to the collage of sounds and genre, a sci-fi attitude pervades the nature of electronic and synthesized elements, all the while balanced by a celebration of black American culture. It’s intense, and intensely musical without needing to fall back on tropes or tunes. Music that balances on that fine line between radiophonic story telling and acousmatic concrete/collage, with a fresh and engaging character.

Favourite track: 1919 (Saros Cycle)

16. Matt Mitchell - A Pouting Grimace

This album is dense, atonal, and rhythmically manic. It sounds like free improvisation, but feels highly organised. To be honest, I don’t want to know which it is (lies, I want to know everything). The virtuosity of the musicians is incredible, but the artistry in both the compositional forms, and how fearlessly the music is expressed are the real strengths of the record. The organised chaos could be annoying or pretentious, but it’s neither, it’s tasteful, exciting, and incredibly contemporary.

Favourite tracks: Mini Alternate, Heft.

17. Sarah Davachi - All My Circles Run

Davachi explores drone, stasis, duration, and the potential of simplicity in four different ways on four different instruments. The pieces for strings, voice and organ respectively, work in similar ways, with overlapping sustained tones gradually replacing one another, but the final piece, composed for piano is obviously a different approach, a kind of La Monte Young era minimalist approach to piano playing. The piano work isn’t out of place or character though. The album is broken up in the middle with “chanter”, another piano piece with a similar feel that ties the whole thing together at the end. It’s some incredible ambient background music, but also beautiful for deep listening.

Favourite track: For Organ.

18. Nicola Ratti – The Collection

Ratti’s Collection begins with a sophisticated arrangement of minimal rhythmic pulses and blips, some overlapping tones emerging from some swells of noise, developing slowly and gracefully into a gorgeous understated composition. The tempos and patterns change from track to track, but Ratti maintains a consistent quality and palette of sounds and across the album, doing as much as possible with the sparse instrumentation. It’s a brilliant album of delightful electronic sounds and intriguing patterns.

Favourite tracks: L2, L8.

19. Merzbow, Keiji Haino, Balazs Pandi – An Untroublesome Defencelessness

This is ultimately a drum record. Balazs Pandi is a monster. The drumming is off the hook. Haino and Merzbow exist as energy, fuelling the onslaught. That’s not to say the album is without variation or dynamic. The record has plenty of variety, up and down moments, subtlety, brilliantly crafted noise, beats, riffs, even some shouted vocals that tie it all together. It’s a sonic journey of discovery. Writing about music like this feels pointless because it taps into something more primal than words. However it feels more political than primitive. This music is reaching into the depths of the human condition.

Favourite track: How Differ the Instructions of the Left from the Instructions of the Right? (Part III)

20. Cleric - Retrocausal

Holy shit. Cleric do everything, like, they play all the notes, all the styles, all the… volumes (?). This album covers a lot of ground, and it doesn’t hold your hand or buy you breakfast first. Fuck, the first track alone is a relentless journey of musicality and brutality. Some of the heaviest riffs of the year, but also some maniacal juxtapositions and ruptures that cause it all to be even more interesting and intense. In the end though, this music is all the more engaging because it stretches so far beyond mere “heaviness” and brings in all these extra colours and feels. Not to mention, it’s great to have a heavy band with some idea of contemporary tonality that stretch beyond diatonic neoclassical lameness or drop D minor modal bullshit. Cleric fucking rule.

Favourite tracks: Ifrit, Resumption.

21. Dead Cross - Dead Cross

To think I almost didn’t bother checking this out. What a loser I’d have been. Dave Lombardo put a hardcore band together, and got Mike Patton involved on vocals, and it totally works. Some great lyrics on here, and Patton is on top form, showing no signs of going soft. The star of the record is the drums, Lombardo is a tight and ballistic barely even covers it when he’s underway. The song writing is also a highlight, the riffs and breakdowns, and overall catchiness of the album really makes this some brutally infectious music.

Favourite tracks: Idiopathic, Grave Slave

22. Alessandro Cortini - Avanti

This album is very special. I feel lucky in that my first hearing of it was a live performance. I saw Alessandro give a talk about synths and his process making the album, and then saw him do the album in full, with old home movies that his grandfather made playing in the background. The record is a beautiful nostalgic reflection. Made entirely with a EMS Synthi AKS (processed through guitar pedals) the beautiful drifting tones and the simplicity of the melodies makes this the kind of music one could be lost in forever, swept up in a daydream and forget time altogether.

Favourite tracks: Aspettare, Iniziare

23. Demen – Nektyr

Demen make soundtracks to dreams. This music is pacifying and disarming. It is spacious, lush, expansive, and yet reserved. Elegant, is perhaps the most apt adjective. The drums are huge and distant, drenched in reverb, as is almost everything, giving the music it’s floating quality. The hamonic shifts are few and far between, making the subtlest of transitions feel enormous. While some tracks begin with long emphasis on emptiness, the dynamic and emotional range of this album is not to be underestimated.

Favourite tracks: Niorum, Illdrop, Ambur.

24. Mary Halvorson Quartet - Paimon

I’ve been a big fan of Mary Halvorson’s guitar work since her appearance on Trevor Dunn’s Trio Convulsant record. Here her playing and arranging are put on fine display as she interprets Zorn’s Masada material, for Book of Angels volume 32. The Quartet of drums, bass, and two guitars makes for a thicketed texture, and the musicians approach the material this way – texturally – more than they cover traditional jazz quartet roles. There’s still plenty of attention to the melodic frameworks of the original compositional intent, but the group has a tendency to go full battle royale in the solo sections, rather than politely accompanying. The soloing is superb, but the madness is part of what makes the Masada material so special, and Halvorson and co have captured it beautifully, adding a masterful spark and character to this ongoing series of releases.

Favourite Tracks: Yeqon, Chaskiel.

25. Pinkcourtesyphone - Indelicate Slices

Richard Chartier makes beautiful ambient sounds into dreamy musical landscapes. His new record, Indelicate Slices is a beautiful collection of such music. As the title may suggest, this record isn’t sweet background soundscapes to bliss out to, Chartier is delving into some gritty, dark territory on this album, playing with some suspense and pushing the extremes of what the genre may accept. There are some long moments of almost nothing but the tiniest record crackle, which says something of the artist’s minimalist attitude. It’s exciting to hear this approach to sound, from the negative perspective, as opposed to the tendency for bliss and serenity. The dark mood creates a sense of expectation, which Chartier only pays off in small doses, but they are worth the long moments in between.

Favourite tracks: minimumluxeryoverdose, in voluptuous monochrome

26. Nadah El Shazly – Ahwar

Hailing from the Cairo underground scene, Nadah is a beautiful singer, with an eclectic musicality and and abstract sensibility. Collaged forms of music swirl around, tonalities layer up in exciting unresolved ways, and yet it is always soulful. This is a really colourful record, with carefully attended to arrangements, plenty of chaos, but never a mess.

Favourite tracks: Barzakh (Limen), Palmyra.

27. Gravetemple – Impassable Fears

The tone of this albums is abrasive, the bass and guitar tones (if they even are instruments) are sheets of steel against gravel against my brain. It’s ugly in the most perfect way. It’s almost impossible to think of this as music – almost – but the human voice makes the intensity of the crunching somewhat physical, visceral, and the physicality of the drumming binds it all into something one can truly feel. Then somewhere in the middle the album introduces melodic electronic sounds, crunched, low res sounds that bleed into a fresh roaring onslaught. It’s full of surprises, but the gems protected by berserkers. This is not one to go into lightly, but fucking perfectly rewarding for those with courage.

Favourite tracks: Elavúlt földbolygó (World Out of Date), Domino, Áthatolhatatlan félelmek (Impassable Fears)

28. Nazoranai – Beginning to Fall in Line Before Me, So Decorously, the Nature of All That Must Be Transformed

From the long slow build of drums and curious noises, opening up to a cinematic landscape of another world, there’s a lot at play here, lots of colour, lots of restraint. It’s as if this group have only a small idea of the headroom they have to play with, and approach the music with calculated precision, allowing for a gradual, yet slow growth. The first track takes about 20 minutes to peak, and it’s a delicious, almost spiritual high point. Part 2 comes down for a moment, just enough to find a new path, before it begins to tear shreds off the feelings created in the first part, until it gets to the magic and truth at the core. When the vocals begin, all seems revealed, the search is over. The final 10 minutes is an unbridled expression of intensity, joyously reveling in the phenomenon of sound. It’s fucking awesome.

Favourite track: Part 2.

29. The Body & Full of Hell - Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light

Abrasive and dense, the pairing of these two bands ascends to dizzying levels of heavy. Maximum weight and intensity scrape through your ear-holes with this one. A really clever blend of electronic and brutal metal elements, the former used sparingly to add highlights to the later, such as the abrasive synth tone in the opening track, or the bouncy kick and vocal fx in track two. It could be a bit pompous, or even a bit generic “noise band”, but it’s way more fun. It really sounds like this was made in a playfull way, and thus the music keeps you playing along throughout the onslaught.

Favourite tracks: Earth is a Cage, Farewell, Man

30. William Basinski - A shadow In Time

Basinski returned in early 2017 with a new album, 2 new works that continue the trajectory of his career, and adding a new sense of depth and density to his palette. The album plays with some familiar Basinski processes, the reverb feedback, gradually unfolding over a long duration, stretching and smearing the tones of loops until they become some kind of trans-sensoral phenomenon. The compositions seem more deliberate on this record, with less reliance on loops for loops sake. There’s a clear sense development in both tracks that make them engaging in a new way. I always like Basinski, but I’m loving this more than usual.

Favourite track: A Shadow In Time.

31. Félicia Atkinson – Hand in Hand

This album is a delicate and bold blend of pulsing electronic melodic sound, atmospheric incidental sound, and spoken word. Atkinson’s words and sounds aren’t expressly trying to teach or convey a sense of importance, but there’s something about the delivery that makes every moment feel important, something that needs to be learnt, or learnt from. Compositionally, Atkinson is a master at balancing textures, and the record explores a lot of sonic variety. On the surface the album is calm and you could almost tune out of it, but it is an album of exquisite detail.

Favourite tracks: Adaptation Assez Facile, A House a Dance a Poem

32. Ifriqiyya Electrique - Laa La Illa Allah

This album has a deep dark atmosphere, and dare I say it, something ritualistic is brewing away beneath these tunes. From the masses of percussion, the cave like reverb, and the mantra like chanting vocals of the first track, this group from North Africa have made a captivating collection that weaves in some upbeat bangers, and some super distorted, rumbling bass, creepers to make a potent spiritually cleansing record. I have very little knowledge of the where or who of the group, but it’s certainly not your typical nice easy world music for a day on the green. It’s gritty and up close and uncomfortable, but also kind of ground shaking and infectious.

Favourite track: Stombali - Baba 'Alaia

33. Anjou - Epithyma

Epithyma opens with a series of crossfading, delicate loop slices, melting and morphing shape, pulsing, but never really landing or forming in any repetitive musical sense. Anjou is sneaky with melody, it’s there, sliding around the periphery, never truly taking over or coming into focus. It’s perfectly ambient, by definition. As ideas are exhausted, they’re so naturally replaced and seamlessly transitioned from that one forgets what came before, or how long it may have been. A beautifully constructed collection of synths and space.

Favourite track: Soucouyant

34. Walker Harris English - Walker Harris English

These 4 pieces feel like meditations on existentialist cinema rather than just music compositions. There’s something so haunting about it, and instantly immersive, like being lost in “the zone”. The trio have so masterfully developed and transmutated a realm of unfathomable beauty and familiarity into a mystery. Very little needs to be said beyond that. It’s incredible, subtle music. Listen to it.

Favoutie track: A2: Beyond House

35. Sevdaliza – ISON

This is one of the best singer/electronic music releases I’ve heard in a very long time. It has cool, chill grooves and tasty as fuck sound design, creative arrangements, and it manages to be totally current and on trend whilst unashamedly embodying myriad influences that could be easily failed retro pastiches, but instead serve to strengthen the record, and heighten the moods it’s invoking/expressing. Very disappointed that this didn’t seem more mainstream appeal, because its way better than many things of the genre that had half the content/detail.

Favourite tracks: Hero, Marilyn Monroe.

36. Idles: Brutalism

Idles is a brutal reality check. Working class punk rock too late for the world, self-aware, spitting in the face of bullshit and calling it what it is. They are angry, and they have a very good sense of humour about the world and their position in it. They also know sound. The drums and bass are solid bricks and the guitars are like swarms of killer bees. It all serves the lyrics, which I will leave you with a taste: “The best way to scare a Tory is to read and get rich/I know nothing I’m just sitting here looking at pretty colours”.

Favourite tracks: Mother, Well Done, Rachel Khoo, (Fuck it, all of them are brilliant).

37. Xiu Xiu - Forget

Forget is a pretty tidy record. I don’t know if that’s a compliment for Xiu Xiu, but I guess what I mean is that it is cohesive and coherent in a way that translates more directly than many of their earlier releases. I first heard this band live, and so my idea of Xiu Xiu is tied to the stage in a really hypnotic and noisy way, but I found this album has deepened my appreciation of their agenda/aesthetic more than before. Jamie Stewart’s voice sounds better than ever, and the arrangements are lush and exciting.

Favourite tracks: Queen of the Losers, At Last, At Last.

38. Trespass Trio – The Spirit of Pitesti

Sax, bass, and drums is an amazing combination of instruments. It never fails to capture my attention. Trespass Trio keep it simple and soulful, angular and loose, and constantly adventurous. The title track is a dirge like exploration of time and space that conjures an ocean of moods. There’s a few upbeat tracks that swing and hit and dance about the ring in confusing fashion. Very cool stuff.

Favourite track: In Tears.

39. Ulfur - Arboresence

Icelandic composer Ulfur opens his new album with a droney string motif that cinematically crescendos with the sounds of rain, culminating in a blistering explosion of black metal blast beats. This sets the mood for the various extremities one should be prepared for over the course of the record. Ulfur weaves between moody songs and soundscapes, electronic rhythms, dreamy psych-pop and dense spectral sound paintings. A truly unique and eclectic record, masterfully handled.

Favourite track: Tómi› Titrar

40. Ryuichi Sakamoto – Plankton: Music for an Intallation By Christian Sardet and Shiro Takatani

Plankton is an hour long composition by Japanese legend Ryuichi Sakamoto, designed for an installation that explores and documents the nature of the namesake micro organisms. It’s a subtle and immersive piece. Drawing on the philosophy of ambient, washing across the background with all its splendour and detail, free to be ignored or enjoyed on whatever terms you prefer. I could put this on repeat all day long.

41. Hogni - two trains

Two trains begins with a gorgeous Icelandic choral work, perhaps as a statement of identity, of origin, but it quickly moves on to more contemporary sounds, with Hogni’s beautiful falsetto voice leading the way through string laden electronic beats. The choir sounds return here and there over the course of the record, and there’s a great blend of light and dark moods on the record. I’m impressed with the way the variety of styles approached on here works, especially considering the more commercial bent to the song styles. Brave choices and good songs.

Favourite track: Komdu me>

42. Thor & Friends “The Subversive Nature of Kindness”

Thor Harris delivers a feast of percussion on this record of repetition based minimalism. Each track takes a very simple motive and builds on layers of percussive melody with synth and voice and strings, taking the simplicity to very moving emotional, and cinematic places. It’s all very considered and my only criticism is how safe it all feels, which I guess is the point; kill them with kindness. It’s beautiful music.

Favourite track: Swimming with Stina.

43. Mario Batkovic – Mario Batkovic

I never could have thought I’d be writing about a solo accordion album in my yearly list. Maybe I’ve been listening to too much Pauline Oliveros over the last couple of years. That’s a good thing. Mario Batkovic is an amazing accordion player. The album highlights his virtuosity as an instrumentalist, as well as a consummate composer, but it also shows him investigating sound, delving into the tone of the instrument, and exploring what it can do. This is what makes me love it, because Batkovic presents the instrument as more than notes, and delivers a rich and complex series of sound paintings.

Favourite tracks: Gravis, Desiderii Patriae

44. Wadada Leo Smith – Najwa/solo reflections on Monk

Trumpet player Wadada Leo Smith released two great records this year. I am including them together only because I feel that his “Solo reflections on Monk” gives insight to the work on Najwa. Najwa is an ensemble record, with 4 guitars, and most notably to my ears is the bass tone of Bill Laswell. Each piece seems to be a moving tribute to a master of the jazz idiom, from Ornette to Coltrane, and the album explores this devotion in character. The dedications are blistering, joyous harmolodic/spiritual jazz experiences, while the title track feels like a tribute to Miles, a bare amorphous atmosphere, perhaps presenting the trumpeter’s influence as honestly as it can be. What is great about these two albums side by side, is hearing a modern master of the idiom pull new things out of the influences, and show that regardless of the instrument one’s hero played, the content is what inspires, not just the tool.

Favourite tracks: Najwa, Ohnedaruth John Coltrane: The Master of Kosmic Music and His Spirituality in a Love Supreme

Also: Adagio: Monkishness - A Cinematic Vision of Monk Playing Solo Piano

45. Ben Frost - The Centre Cannot Hold

Frost had a fucking busy year, with a bunch of EPs, TV and film scores, and this full-length album (Edit: I just finished Dark, and if I could find the OST album I would be rating that in my top 20, it’s phenomenal). The Centre Cannot Hold is more of what Frost is known for with his solo works. Dense harsh sound pounded, tenderised, and compressed into musical forms, often forcibly. But Frost’s sensibility as a composer of sound and music doesn’t lack subtlety or musicality, and the production is such high quality that after a few minutes the static and distortion become such natural entities, allowing the listener into the beautiful tones and warm beats tumbling throughout the record.

Favourite Tracks: A Sharp Blow in Passing, All That you Love Will Be Eviscerated.

46. Laraaji - Sun Gong/bring on the sun

These two albums seem to play best as companions. Bring on the Sun is a multifaceted exploration of minimal/ambient ideas using zither and mbra, voices and other sounds, beautifully recorded and performed. Sun gong uses metallic percussion as a drone instrument, and explores similar ground with different tools. Both albums are dense with content and yet easy to absorb, offering a constantly engaging and surprising experience on repeat listens. I actually feel bad that I haven’t spent enough time getting to know every nuance of these two records, as they have so much to offer.

Favourite tracks: Sun Gong No.1, Laraajazzi.

47. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe - Levitation Praxis

In a similar vein to Laraaji, Levitation Praxis sees Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe perform a beautiful series of sounds in a barn full of Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures. The resonance of metallic forms in such a reverberant space is intoxicating, and Lowe uses his dreamy falsetto voice to commingle in the reverb bringing a warmth and humanity to the cold steel sounds. The presence of the space is felt in the recording, the shuffling of a body through the room, the intuitive nature of the performance, all factors that make listening to this special.

48. Kyle Motl – Transmogrification

A collection of solo double bass improvisations recorded over two days. Motl explores his instrument intimately, pulling sounds from the wood and steel and hair and shaping them into gorgeous careful music. There’s not a lot more to say. The album presents an imaginative and adventurous spirit making abundance with very full tools.

Favourite track: Urrong.

49. Kid Koala (with Emiliana Torini) - Music to draw to: Satellite

Sweet tunes, with a delicate balance of scifi and mellow pop. Emiliana Torrini’s voice is beautiful, and it breaks up the atmospheric instrumentals really nicely. This is some pretty easygoing music, great evening chill out soundtrack stuff.

Favourite tracks: Collapser, Photons.

50. Flaming Lips - Oczy Mlody

The Lips made a trippy as fuck, synth pop record. It’s totally acid, and only those who have the experience will know exactly how perfect it is. The lyrics are totally oldschool tripper lyrics. It’s kinda perfect at this stage in there career to just own that shit. It has some great sounds, and the comfortable nature of the music is constantly shifting, and gets a bit mucky from time to time. Definitely feels like acid to me.

Favourite tracks: There should be unicorns, Listening to the frogs with demon eyes

51. Shackleton and Anika - Behind the Glass

This goes here on the list because it’s so incredibly similar to Shackleton’s other record with Vengence Tenfold, and although it’s just as good, I felt two albums like this in one year wasn’t fair to put them so close together. Proves how pointless this rating system is. Anika’s voice and words are cool as fuck, and the sounds, production, and arrangments are hypnotic. Enjoy.

Favourite track: The Future Is Hurt / Dirt and Fields

52. Will Guthrie - People Pleaser

This is another great album that I heard for the first time as a live performance. Will has amassed an odd bunch of sounds/samples and collaged them into something quite abstract to accompany his percussion and drums. It’s quite a mission. It has a punk quality to it, sounds a bit DIY and noisy, and I love it for that. Unfortunately I’ve only got it on vinyl and have paid no attention to the track transitions. Just check it out.

53. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe - Kulthan/Marlek

Two very cool modular synth albums, that are both 2 long tracks that explore very simple repetition/minimal ideas, probably each a single synth patch. Lowe has been doing a fair bit of this lately and I’m really enjoying it. It’s not super ground breaking, it’s just cool music. Lowe uses his voice as a subtle element in there with the machine which really elevates the sounds to a higher level, and gives the music a mystical feel.

Favourite track: Magnamite

54. Boris - Dear

Boris return with massive drums and some dense as fuck doom. I think my favourite thing about this band is the way the simple pounding weigh of the band is juxtaposed against the vocals, which are, for lack of a better word, beautiful and clean against the heavy tones.

Favourite songs: Deadsong, Kagero

55. kara-lis coverdale - grafts

Grafts is a single 22 minute track. It would seem that it is made up of a whole bunch of simple little loops, grafted together. I’m not really sure if that’s the idea or not, but it makes sense. The sounds are gorgeous, and the piece flows seamlessly. It’s a great work and can be enjoyed repeatedly with much depth to be discovered over multiple listens.

56. Moor Mother X Mental Jewelry - Crime Waves

It’s moody, dark, angry, bold, and it’s gonna fuck with you. The lyrics are heavy. It’s not quite hip hop. It sits more in line with the recent afro-futurist/punk movement. I love it. I saw Moor Mother Goddess live in January and her shit is the real deal.

Favourite tracks: Death Booming, The City.

57. Nicole Mitchell - Mandorla Awakening II: emerging worlds

This is a psychedelic free jazz odyssey, on the Sun Ra level. It inhabits so many sound worlds, it’s cosmic. The flute is the focus, but it’s full of some amazing percussion and string passages that blur the lines between late 1960s scifi film and gypsy music. It’s kinda hard to pin it down, which is why I love it so much. Great music in the car. So much happening.

Favourite tracks: Egoes War, Forestwall Timewalk, Staircase Struggle.

58. Colin Stetson: all this I do for glory

I love Colin Stetson. Every year he tries something new. This album opens with a cool little beat based track, which caught me off guard, and the beats/percussion continues throughout as a feature of the record.. His sax tone is still dirty as fuck, but no longer the only focus. I love the way he has tried some vocal things on here, which sometimes sounds like he’s singing while playing the sax (I wouldn’t be surprised) and the percussion stuff is very cool. Tracks still fall into the classic Stetson, repetitive minimalism/arpeggio word, but it’s still refreshing and surprising.

Favourite tracks: Like Wolves on the Fold, In the Clinches

59. Thurston Moore - rock and roll consciousness

I guess what I love about this, its that it takes a bunch of really aggressive and noisy elements, things one usually expects from Thurston Moore, but it uses them as this really positive tool, and explores a really trippy type of happiness. It’s almost summertime, getting high on the beach music. It really caught me by the heart.

Favourite tracks: Turn On, Exalted.

60. Kaitlyin Aurelia Smith - The Kid

What an incredible universe of sound Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has created. The more I listen to this, the more baffled and in love with it I become. I’m always finding new nuances, and there is a lot of ideas drifting through this record. This album is more focused on the “song” than her earlier works, and there’s a lot more beats and vocal led tracks. The beats are grainy and glitchy, and the vocals are very processed with harmonies from vocoders and such. I like the songs, but I love the synth instrumental bits. Overall, this album is super playful, and colourful, and lots of fun.

Favourite tracks: Who I Am & Why I Am Where I Am, I Am a Thought.

61. Mere Woman – Big Skies

What a fucking great sound. Sydney’s Mere Women have produced an enormous sound, and they have some great beats and lyrics. Ultimately, the guitar sound is what has captured my attention the most, but I’m really excited by the overall package, the consistency of the songwriting and the way each some has a clever, stripped back and focused character. There’s never a generic beat or form.

Favourite songs: Big Skies, Drive.

62. Binker and Moses - Journey to the mountain of forever

A fantastic 2 disc set with one album entirely drums and sax duets, and the second disc augmented by some additional saxes and drums, trumpet, harp, and tabla. It’s the perect background music for art making, and that’s how I usually listen to it. Disc two is the shit!

Favourite tracks: The Shaman's Chant, Valley of the Ultra Blacks.

63. Nadia Sirota – Tessellatum

Nadia writes such epic string arrangements, I can’t even tell what instruments I’m hearing after a while. It’s an exploration of drone and rhythm, but it feels super fresh, and it avoids a lot of minimalist clichés while still seeming canon.

It’s a deep listening, immersive, durational work, and as such, it needs to be listened to in full, perhaps a few times, to really be appreciated. Totally worth the time.

64. Ecca Vandal – Ecca Vandal

Feels like the most mainstream thing on my list is a DIY local who brings the party and the fight on her debut record. It’s probably the best pop record of the year, and one of the best local releases in years. Ecca is a phenomenal performer and a great songwriter. Her team, the band and collaborators, have really made something fresh, mashing a lot of different genres together, and making if work. The best thing is how courageously heavy and out there the riffs are.

Favourite tracks: Price of Living, Future Heroine, End of Time.

65. Actress - AZD

Beginning with some totally cool blippy synth bits, AZD takes its sweet arse time building up into the masterful dance album it is. Once it does, each cut is just as perfect as the next. This is the perfect music for late night house party dancing.

Favourite tracks: Fantasynth, X22RME, Falling Rizlas.

66. The Necks - Unfold

Four nice long tracks, each with a different mood to explore. The Necks are masters of the long unchanging, durational improvised sound world. On this album, the focus is less on groove and more of texture, and the organ plays a central role in the first two pieces, giving this a kind of spiritual, 1960s, Terry Riley/Alice Coltrane kind of vibe. The percussion takes more of the lead on the last track which is more rhythmic, but still not really a groove. Great stuff for sure.

Favourite tracks: Overhear, Timepiece.

67. Jeff Mills - Trip to the Moon

Jeff Mills scored the old 1902 silent film, A Trip to the Moon, using beautiful synthesisers and playing with all the oldschool scifi tropes, reworking it into a delicate collage of music and soundscapes. What’s great as a listening experience is that the transitions that would no doubt seem obvious with the film, create surprising forms in a purely musical realm. Very cool stuff.

Favourite tracks: Rocket Spaceship Destination, Outer Space, Bewilded, But Not Confused

68. Lau Nau – Poseidon

Finnish artist Lau Nau has a dreamy and delicate sound, but it avoids being overly twee and meh with some lush arrangements and her cool, lazy vocal style. I’m a fan of the string sound on this record, and the subtle fx processing/electronic textures, which totally fly under the radar, but serve to really enhance the mood. Occasionally things get a bit more outrageous, and bizarre, and it adds t the overall adventure of the record.

Favourite tracks: Unessa, Suojaa uni meitä, Kun lyhdyt illalla sytytetään, ne eivät sammu koskaan

69. Cornelius - Mellow Waves

I love Cornelius, and it has been so long since he released anything, so this had me super excited. Point was a life changing record, and the follow up, Sensuous, was good, and mellow Waves is still pretty good, although I feel like Cornelius has a thing he does and it’s pretty clear now that that isn’t about to change much. Mellow Waves is more cool Cornelius tracks, lots of sudden blips and shifts in reverb, lots of polyrhythms and noisy guitar solos. Quaint and sophisticated yet also kind of raucous. I can’t help but feel he does this sort of thing in his sleep, but it’s still good music.

Favourite track: Sometime/Someplace.

70. Avey Tare - Eucalyptus

I like this so much better than Slasher Flicks, and the recent Animal Collective Painting with… Avey has developed a really interesting bunch of ideas, ranging from loose psychedelic meanderings, to straight up pop folk tunes, all built around voice and acoustic guitar, and punctuated by strange arrangements of sounds, worked on in collaboration with the genius Eyvind Kang. It’s relaxed and ambitious at the same time. A curiosity of sorts, with lots of depth.

Favourite tracks: Ms. Secret, Selection of a Place, Coral Lords.

71. Black Cube Marriage - Astral Cube

Chicago instrumentalist Rob Mazurek leads this ensemble of improvisers and sound adventurers. The results take on many forms, with shifting and cascading textures and rhythms bursting with noise and all manner of avant shit on display. It’s a little bit chaotic, but it represents masters of their art doing what they do best.

Favourite track: Syncretic Illumine

72. Graham Lambkin & Taku Unami - The Whistler

Well, I mean, what even is this? On the surface the record comes across as nothing more than a bunch of random recordings. Maybe that’s what it is. Stuff is happening, it has been recorded, and it’s really fascinating to listen to. The first disc sounds like someone in a workshop, occasionally whistling while they work. Disc 2, titled Small Mistakes In Nature has instruments being played at times, and the sounds of the outside world, and really flows on into bizarre headspace of where the hell am I and why? To be honest, this is an acquired taste and sometimes a frustrating listen, but it’s something I like, so…

73. Brooklyn Raga Massive – Terry Riley in C

I’ll begin by saying, I love Terry Riley and I love In C, so this was an easy win. Traditional Indian classical instruments playing an amazing piece of western music, that itself was inspired by Indian classical traditions. It works, and it’s a fucking awesome version of the piece. Just do it.

74. Jlin - black origami

Curiously, it took me a while to get into this. Something about the sound is too clean, and I couldn’t quite get into it. But after a few tries, it got me hooked. I think what I dig is the types of patterns and the choices made in terms of percussion sounds and vocal textures. It has such a cool feel and great movement, but it’s abstract enough to ponder and delve into with the ears as well as the body. I saw Jlin a couple of times live recently, and it translated so well that the album got back on my radar.

Favourite tracks: Enigma, Nyakinyua Rise.

75. SUBHEIM & MONOLOG - Conviction

A very cool dark, downtempo mix of drones and throbbing beats. With lots of space, some lush guitar, and plenty of swelling dynamics. Not much to say about it, it’s simple and tidy, and calculated.

Favourite track: Wone

76. Erin K Taylor - Source

Source is 1 track, almost an hour in length. Centered around a field recording, with bird calls and a trickling stream, and the very distance sounds of traffic. After a while it sounds like other sounds are being subtly added into the mix, but I’m unsure how much this is edited/constructed, and how much is just captured. Eventually, there’s some vocals, and the planning and artistry is revealed. This is a deep listening album and really requires patience and attention. It has some surprised buried in there, that will reward you for your time.

77. Pan Daijing - Lack

Maybe this could have made it higher on the list. Listening back again now, it is so much more interesting than I remember. The voice seems to be the central connecting element of the work, and Pan Daijing constructs a variety of abstract forms, punctuated by noise and synth, and a mix of acoustic instruments (what sounds like dulcimer on the opening track). All very cool stuff.

Favourite track: A Loving Tongue

78. Smakos - A Vampire goes west

Synth based instrumental music, all very atmospheric and cool, with what seems like a strange narrative throughout. The sound is a bit distant, with a sweet little reverb to it, and it plays on the nostalgia a bit with the blippy arpeggios floating through the tracks. Very cool use of sampled voices in the background too.

Favourite tracks: One Day We Will Trip Out From Star To Star, Picnic In A Multiverse Cassette.

79. Schnellertollermeier - Rights

Minimal math rock type stuff. The first track caught my attention by barely doing anything for the first minute and a half. But then things develop, and grow and the patterns are fun. It takes a while, but gets pretty heavy. Each track follows a similar formula, building up from a simple polyrhythmic idea, but they are cool ideas.

Favourite track: Round

80. Ex Eye - Ex Eye

Colin Stetson teams up with Shahzad Ismaily, Greg Fox, and Toby Summerfield to make a kind of Baritone sax centered (for lack of a better word) metal album. It’s heavy and chaotic and mixes up the genre elements in a fresh way. Nice to hear more sax in heavy music. This album takes some risks and it pays off.

Favourite track: Opposition/Perihelion; The Coil

81. Deradoorian – Eternal Recurrence

Stripped back and mellow, moody, lush, emotionally rich and dynamic. All this and more, Angel Deradoorian has made some beautiful and thoughtful tracks. I often get lots in this record, and just let it play on repeat because it’s a bit short, and it’s really hypnotic. Aptly titled I guess.

Favourite tracks: Return-Transcend, Ausar Temple

82. Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke, Oren Ambarchi – This Dazzling Genuine “Difference” Now Where Shall It Go

More pounding noise, guitar and drum improv, from three fucking legends of the game. It’s wild and full of energy and never really lets up. Keiji Haino has been mad busy with these kinds of collab albums of late, and somehow, they’re all winners. Check it out if you’re into this sort of thing.

83. Platform - Flux Reflux

An album of avant garde improvisation, with some incredible sounds and textures. Platform seem like a pretty hip group, and they craft a bunch of really cool, diverse pieces.

Favourite Track: Reflux

84. Tyshawn Sorey - Verisimilitude

Moody, dark and slow, atonal and pointalistic modern jazz type stuff. Led by Percussionist Tyshawn Sorey, and with some amazing piano playing by Cory Smythe, Verisimilitude offers a lot of very creative and interlectual approaches to new music, crossing over the contemporary classical avant garde and free jazz worlds seamlessly.

Favourite track: Obsidian

85. Matt Nelson, Tim Dahl, Nick Podgurski - GRID

Four tracks of screeching bass guitar, sax, and drum interplay. It’s noisy as fuck, and really interestingly constructed. There’s a form of instrumental torture at play, but everything is completely in sync. The group operate as a single unit. Destroying everything with blissful abandon.

Favourite track: (-/+)

86. Trio Heinz Herbert - The Willisau Concert

A live improvised album of electronics, drums, and guitar, some of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. It moves between abstract and odd to pulse driven and musical in waves of expressive brilliance.

Favourite track: Fragment Z / Brugguda

87. Bérangère Maximin - Frozen Refrains

Aptly titled, Frozen refrains could well be just that, a small collection of time stretched moments. But it’s a lot more, and it takes a little patience to delve into. It really teases you, and makes you wait, but the detail in the sound design and in the micro forms of the long seemingly unchanging sound scapes are rich and exciting once you really listen.

Favourite tracks: Burn and Return, Clash.

88. Ohmslice - Conduit

This album is a mishmash of bizarre processed percussion, synthesiser, and abstract/surreal poetry, with some crazy guitar and horns in there for some bizarre accompaniment. It’s actually really compelling, and the words make it seem all the more interesting.

Favourite tracks: Crying On a Train, Broken Phase Candy, Paint By Numbered Day

89. Here Lies Man – Here Lies Man

This review is a cop out, (this is where I tapped out of writing in general) but… This is a dirty psychedelic rock/afrobeat cross over record, and it is pretty cool. I enjoyed it a bunch of times, not much more to say.

Favourite tracks: I stand alone, Belt of the sun

90. Perera Elsewhere - All Of this

Dark moody beats and singing. I liked it a lot. Something kinda post triphop, downtempo type music with cool modern production ideas. Definitely worth a few listens.

Favourite track: Girl from Monotronica

91. Locust Toybox - Drownscapes

David Firth of Salad Fingers fame has always made music under this moniker, but this is the first in a while, and usually his music is kind of broken beat type stuff. This is a lush dreamy ambient album, and it’s totally gorgeous.

Favourite tracks: Return To The Meadow, Birthday Lungs

92. Chicago/London Underground - A Night Walking Through Mirrors

An excellent live free jazz album that I spent quite a lot of time with in the first half of 2017. Beautiful sounds and textures, great players. Put it on at night.

Favourite tracks: Something Must Happen

93. Wolf Eyes - Undertow

Abstract and noisy, with cool spoken word bits. I was a bit surprised by this one. It’s trippy and dark, which I like.

Favourite tracks: Undertow, Thirteen

94. Lee Gamble - Mnestic Pressure

This is just some cool electronic music that I enjoyed. It’s not solely focused on beats, and that makes me happy.

Favourite tracks: Istian, East Sedducke

95. Tomutonttu – Kevätjuhla

Cool and exotic sounding electronica. Beautiful sounds full of curious charm and otherworldliness.

Favourite tracks: Kuteen valoon I - Lukin jalka, Operaatio satamassa

96. Juilia Bloop - Roland Throop

Cool loops and beats, amounting to some excellent atmospheric oldschool sampler music. Very chill and yet very clever.

Favourite tracks: Too Many Ghosts, Let’s have some music

97. Cologne Tape – Welt

A really eclectic and exciting mishmash of ideas and instruments on this one. Moves from blippy electronic experiments to bombastic drum focused stuff but always with subtlety and an atmospheric quality.

Favourite tracks: Welt 2, Welt 4, Welt 8.

98. Rafael Toral - Moon Field

This is a brilliant electronic/scifi style soundscape album. It’s a weird and beautiful combination of sound design/fx and abstracted music ideas.

Favourite track: The Stars

99. Bellows - Sander

Beautiful and sweet tape loops and synth patterns. It’s really simple and sophisticated.

Favourite tracks: Untitled #2

100. Do Make Say Think - Stubborn Persistent Illusions

A really good collection of ideas in a genre that doesn’t often have any. I enjoyed this a lot.

Favourite tracks: Bound, And Boundless, As far As The Eye Can See.

Honourable mentions.

There were a whole bunch of albums I enjoyed that didn’t technically fit the list, compilations, and a few EPs, all great but not right for a full length album list. I also left off a bunch of things that I thought were great, but I just didn’t have time to delve into it all. I wish I had’ve had more time with a bunch of albums.

That all said, these two albums deserve a mention, but not in the top 100 because both these albums were recorded in 1975, and only released in 2017. They both show innovative legends doing their respective things as well as can be expected, and are both gorgeous listening experiences. Neither needs more detail than that.

Terry Riley & Don Cherry Duo - Live 1975

Organ minimalism and trumpet improvisations, a meeting of two legends, a conversation through the medium of music.

Suzanne Ciani - Buchla Concerts 1975

Ciani demonstrates the potential of the Buchla synth, in all its glory. What more do you need.

2 notes · View notes

gemmasianpowellphotography · 4 years ago

Text

Pre - Production - Lost and Found Research

25.02.2021

Melania Brescia

Melania Brescia is a fearless photo manipulation expert. She’s also a self-portrait photographer who specialises in conceptual work.

Melanie’s work is dark and ethereal at the same time. She’s not afraid to experiment with all kinds of colours, compositions, and angles.

I like the concept of this image above. The flames appearing from the subjects mouth and then dark tones of the image settings add depth and a story in a surreal way.

The lighting direction in the image above comes in soft and bright from the top right side. The subject is positioned facing the light and I like the shape of her legs, the leading lines of the path and lower wall to the left and then the arch way and the open door. There is colour grading with both subject and location and a tranquil atmosphere.

Platon Yurich

Platon Yurich is a conceptual photographer and filmmaker. Every image in his portfolio focuses on a different theme and composition. He can make simple landscapes stand out thanks to his image manipulation skills.

Not all of Platon’s images are edited, though. He knows when to use props and when to rely on his photo manipulation skills to create seemingly impossible scenarios.

This image above made me look twice. It shows creativity and concept of a beautiful city skyline backdrop and a male painting it to reveal. What the subject is wearing is an important feature and the bowler hat holding the bucket in one hand while reaching up high using the roller paint brush in the other hand.

Images like the one pictured above show a good sense of creative imagination and surrealism. I like the refection and the fact the subject and musical instruments are floating in mid air makes me wonder what would happen when they all come crashing down. It has been composited very smartly and the viewpoint and scale has played an important part when creating this one.

Erik Johansson

According to his biography, Erik Johansson views a photograph not as a moment, but as an idea. He blends and manipulates several images together to create a surreal scene.

Johansson says he aims to make that scene look as realistic as possible. Even when capturing a physically impossible world.

From unzipping a road to installing the moon. His work questions reality while creating an impossible yet inspiring scene.

Into the woods where both colour grading and light have played key. The imagination of traveling up an escalator holding shopping bags and arriving in the middles of dark, cold and mysterious woods it quick chilling. The fact the subject is wearing red makes me think back to the story of little red riding hood lost in the woods. Its dark yet innocent. The position of the escalator and how the subject walks off from right to left works really well.

The image above I admire the concept of time being washed away floating by amongst the waves. The scale of the clock is important to note in comparison to the small scaled figure on the hand of the clock. The light in this one is coming in from the left hand corner as we can see from the face of the clock.

Robert Jahns

Robert Jahns (Nois7) may be a photo manipulaton artist, but his work is so well done, the images look lifelike. Jahns is an art director, photographer, and digital artist. He creates vibrant painterly images using photo manipulation techniques.

While his work often plays with the impossible, he uses the natural world to give In a life-like quality to his art.

The image below tells a tale of a gateway to a fantasy world. The colours are so vibrant and bold and the imagination of an elephant holding it all together floating over the city.

The viewpoint in this images above is important to the over all objective - top of a skyscraper building rollercoasting down, Surreal and composited well. I really liked this one showing the people strapped into the chairs and the colour of the seats are strong red which stands out well demonstrating both fear and danger.

Andric Ljubodrag

Andric’s style is exceptionally clean, intriguingly hyper-realistic and always a combination of effortless visual simplicity and refined mood. His portfolio spans from still life to landscape, from portraiture to highly complex conceptual work, CGI and visual consulting. His imagery is often infused with understated humour, but always elegant and iconic. “A good image should always leave some questions unanswered, remaining interesting in a new way every time we see it,” he says.

This one above used as part of commission work for Heineken, I love both tones, textures and the concept the cold bottle of beer is coming out of the roots of the tree and stands tall as a tree trunk. The colour grading works really well within the image too and the source of light is from above through the trees.

This image above is simple and slick. Its a great advert for beer. The beautiful backdrop beach setting is clear, crisp and refreshing - just like the ice cold beer. It doesn't even need a label and the humour lies in the fact there is a nude beach sign to the far right of the subject drawing your eyes back to the foreground the main subject of the bottled beer sitting tall on the wooden stand with a slice of lime at the top of the bottle. A create composite advert for Corona.

#preproduction #lost and found #research

0 notes

nimzzz · 7 years ago

Text

“So, What’s Your Favourite Type of Music?”

A good question.

A classic icebreaker. A great conversation starter. A brilliant way to assess a potential new friend.

Except with me. Ask me this question, and expect silence – or expect to be pretending to look interested after 6 hours of me pondering out loud over the plethora of genres – with your eyes glazing over and regretting your decision to ever consider me a “potential new friend”.

I wish I was joking.

Now, I’m not just being pretentious; hear me out.

It’s just – I love all music. Music is such a universal language – a form of expression of emotions, a communication that transcends cultural and language barriers. It can be used as a political statement or to add an extra dimension to media in the form of soundtracks. And I love it all.

As you may have noticed, I love a good list on this blog. This one: it’s a big ‘un. Lists within lists of artists in the hope that you will branch out and listen to something different – or indeed recommend more music to me (please)!

(Unfortunately, because I don’t pay for WordPress Premium, I cannot embed videos or audio into the post – so for every artist I mention I have linked a music video of theirs you can check out. I have also got a spotify playlist of all the music mentioned here that you can listen to here while reading!)

Here goes.

Bands

I’ll start with bands. For the majority of my teenage years, I liked to listen to the stereotypical “emo” music – the pop punk and rock that stemmed from the garage/grunge revolution in the late 90s and 2000s. I refused to listen to pop music. I assumed none of it had musicality or the deep meaning that is offered in these bands. Some of those iconic bands, such as Green Day or My Chemical Romance, I no longer listen to, but the likes of Welcome to the Black Parade will always be nostalgic anthems.

Having moved to University, I am actually getting back into those old bands again, as I finally have the chance to see them live. You Me At Six were incredible at Leeds festival last year, Fall Out Boy‘s dystopian narratives are gripping (particularly notable in the album Save Rock and Roll), and I love the authenticity and full-on Northern-ness that is represented in Arctic Monkeys‘ music. The rawness of Foo Fighters as the modern(ish) equivalent to Nirvana is also fun to listen to. Lyrically, I think Twenty One Pilots are definitely worth listening to, even if you don’t like the duo’s musical style. They juxtapose hope and despair, and faith and existentialism in a clever yet sensitive way.

Mayday Parade, however, were my ultimate favourites out of the “emo” class. Their songs are just saturated with emotion and the sound itself is relatively musically complex.

I tend to go through phases with bands and music (such as my mad Mcfly phase when I was fourteen #GalaxyDefendersStayForever), but one band I will never grow tired of is Muse.

If you were to take my personality and put it into a band, the end result would be Muse (and not just because I share a birthday with Matt Bellamy).

Muse Playing Live in 2012

Muse draw inspiration from classical music, philosophy, science, jazz, politics, social issues and even other popular culture and blend it together in a heavy, yet melodic, rock trio. They are also incredible to see live – they put so much thought and meaning behind the set that somehow relates to the songs and creates an intricate story. I love the use of the Benedictus of Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcellis in their album Drones, and the fact that The Resistance is based off Orwell’s 1984, and that Origin of Symmetry was greatly influenced by Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto.

Muse are the definition of art in my mind – they are musically complex, versatile, challenge world views and make you think. Every thing they do is down to the last detail and tells interesting narratives.

Guys, if you listen to one band in your life, listen to Muse. Don’t just take my word for it. Listen.

2. Pop

If I told the fourteen year-old me that the nineteen year-old me would love pop, I would have scoffed. I actively didn’t listen to pop. I was adamant not to be caught up in One Direction mania. I had a hatred for Justin Bieber. (I was such a music snob.)

I have to say that my taste in pop music fluctuates more than any genre. In two months time, this post will be outdated. There is always so much music coming out that it’s impossible not to get new favourites all the time, if you ask me!

Dua Lipa

Staying at Tamara’s

Currently, I am loving George Ezra‘s new album: Staying at Tamara’s. It fits in so well with the beautiful summery aesthetic of last week. It has a light-hearted sound and all in all, the songs are bops. Dua Lipa is a current icon of British diversity and multiculturalism, and her self-titled album is well put together and catchy. She is widely becoming a global sensation, and for good reason. On a complete contrast to her dark sound, I will always love the funk and soul infused songs of Bruno Mars‘ music, as well as his unique voice and catchy tunes. Other notable mentions are Florence and the Machine, Jess Glynne and (call me basic but) Ed Sheeran.

Of course, I am a big fan of the cheesy oldies and one-hit wonders of the naughties. I am also a huge musicals and disney nerd.

The problem with many popular artists is that they’re really original and authentic until they’re overplayed. There’s a fine line between a well-known, catchy song and an annoying earworm.

3. Classical Music

(Or, to be more specific: Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th Century music.)

There is a plethora of subgenres and types in classical music. Maybe it’s because it’s my first instrument, but I’m particularly partial to solo piano music. For this, there are a multitude, my favourites including Liszt and Debussy. I believe Chopin, however, truly is the king. The Etudes complilation is stunning; his Waltzes are beautiful. My ultimate favourites on the other hand are the Ballades. I first came to love Ballade No. 1 through the Japanese animation Your Lie In April and, it’s just exquisite.

Your Lie In April character Kousei Arima playing Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in G Minor

Favourite piano concertos of mine include all of Rachmaninov‘s concertos, Grieg‘s piano concerto, and Tchaikovsky‘s Concerto No. 1.

In general, I mostly listen to romanticism and early 20th century Russian music. I love that it can be used for political protest against the Soviet union without even using words – I mean, you can hear and analyse the rich emotion Shostakovich‘s Symphony No. 5, especially the third movement.

Although I am more likely to listen to relatively modern romantic and 20th Century music, we mustn’t forget the sphere of influence of the early composers. We wouldn’t have such vibrant and diverse classical music today if not for Bach‘s baroque genius, especially in his fugues. Mozart gets a little samey to listen to, but he really helped build the foundations of classical music.

In modern classical music, it’s often very atonal and avant garde, which at first I could not listen to. (Give me tonality!) But, being exposed to it more and more, I am beginning to see the genius behind the likes of Stravinsky and Schoenberg, even if I don’t particularly listen to them.

Modern classical music I definitely do listen to is soundtracks. They are often a gateway to classical music through other popular culture. John Williams‘ composed a library of amazing soundtracks, including Star Wars and Jurassic Park. Hans Zimmer‘s iconic works include Pirates of The Caribbean and the Hidden Figures soundtrack (one of my all-time favourite films). Hands down, the most iconic film score has to be The Lord of The Rings soundtrack by Howard Shore, whose other works include the soundtracks of The Hunger Games and How to Train Your Dragon.

The iconic soundtrack of Lord Of The Rings is perfect accompaniment to its scenery

5. Jazz

My love for jazz is largely due to my grandfather, who is pretty much a walking jazz encyclopedia. I also have the privilege to immerse myself in jazz music at university.

Jazz’s roots stem from horrific black oppression in America. Blues music originated in the fields of the slave trade, and New Orleans marching bands were gatherings of African-Americans who were displaced after slavery was abolished. The combination of these things as well as the western classical tradition influenced early jazz in the 1910s-20s. Jazz’s rich history and emotion can be heard so well in the music.

Early jazz pioneers in the Dixieland (20s) period included The Original Dixieland Jass Band and King Oliver. I don’t usually listen to this early jazz because of its old recording quality, even though they are just as important in the development of jazz. The 1930s marked the swing period, where great artists like Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald made their names. From the 40s onwards, the style of bebop was born, and some of my favourite jazz artists from this era include Oscar Peterson, Miles Davis, Stan Getz and Charlie Parker.

While South African jazz artists like Abdullah Ibrahim and Brazillian artists like João Gilberto frequent my listening list, I mostly listen to contemporary jazz. Last summer, I had the privilege of seeing the Billy Hart quartet and Joshua Redman at the Village Vanguard in NYC. The best way to enjoy jazz is live in an atmosphere like that; the music is made for it.

The Village Vanguard in NYC is one of the best venues I’ve been to

A clarinet inspiration of mine is Anat Cohen, who covers a broad range of the jazz spectrum. Furthermore, I love artists that take core elements of jazz and put their own twists on it. Herbie Hancock was one of the first artists to do this in the 40s, fusing jazz, electro and funk styles together. For example, Snarky Puppy are a large contemporary instrumental group that use jazz harmony in many of their albums. Similarly, solo artist Jacob Collier uses modern music technology and multi-layering techniques with jazz harmony to produce complex and interesting music. Nubiyan Twist are an British jazz group incorporating Afro-jazz and hip hop into their style, and I was only introduced to them recently. There is so much to choose from!

One-Man jazz-infused musician Jacob Collier

Many people say jazz is dying. But there are so many ways to keep it alive. start by listening.

6. K-pop

Dear reader, I am going to let you into a little secret. A guilty pleasure of mine. And that is Korean Pop.

My love for K-pop is purely superficial. It goes against everything I stand for within art – meaning, authenticity, musical complexity. It’s a manufactured industry that is full of flaws, including overworking and paying artists unfairly.

But it’s mesmerising.

Seventeen’s MV “Don’t Wanna Cry”

Watch one music video – or even better, a live performance – and see the highly trained voices and slick choreography and beautiful people and you’ll be hooked. With the world getting smaller and the internet the way it is, it’s never been easier to fall down the K-Pop rabbit hole. It’s a mish-mash of all pop-like genres, with a fusion of multicultural influences – with the most popular groups specialising in the sounds of Hip Hop and EDM. It’s as much, (if not more) of a visual experience as a sonic experience.

K-Pop singer Ailee performing at the 2018 Paralympics Closing Ceremony

If you are persuaded, here are my recommendations. Sonically, I think the soft sound of band Day6 or the soulful voice of Ailee are fantastic. Choreography-wise (and looks/popularity-wise), my favourite groups are BTS (you’ve probably heard of them – they beat the likes of Justin Bieber in a popularity vote at the BBMAs), Seventeen (there are a lot of them), Blackpink, KARD (one of the few mixed groups), GOT7 and EXO.

I dare you to try listening to a new genre this week. I also dare you to recommend me more music! If you want to have a nosey – here’s a link to my spotify.

My favourite radio stations:

Radio 1 (Their greatest hits show especially)

BBC Radio 3 (both new and old jazz and classical music, as well as live concerts like the Proms)

BBC Radio 6 Music (who doesn’t want to hear about the new stuff?)

Absolute Radio (commercial radio with the #NoRepeatGuarantee for all your rock, indie, and nostalgic needs)

Classic FM (not as wide repertoire as BBC Radio 3, but their Facebook page’s memes are on point.)

Stay sound!

– Naomi

“So, What’s Your Favourite Type Of Music?” A good question. A classic icebreaker. A great conversation starter. A brilliant way to assess a potential new friend.

#albums #bands #classical #emo #funk #indie #jazz #kpop #muse #Music #music videos #musician #pop #recommendations #Reviews #rock #songs

2 notes · View notes