#i just like to sit and literally play the vocal lines of certain songs and notice like how hes moving along the scale what intervals hes

[mellotronmkll]

I have so many thoughts about john linnell as a composer of melodies SPECIFICALLY divorced from all other aspects of his songwriting there's so much to talk about with everything the band does but I literally spend like an embarrassing amount of time just sitting and playing linnell's vocal melodies on piano and analyzing them I'm just so so so obsessed with the way that man constructs melodies it's really special .

[mediaconsumernightwriter]

The Rampant Success of boygenius

Finishing a sold out tour dressed as the literal Holy Trinity and now coming up to an SNL performance, it’s safe to say boygenius isn’t the underground indie supergroup that they once were. Due to the status of indie royalty that Phoebe Bridgers has acquired the past few years, the group grew in popularity with her.

I have to be honest, my introduction to them wasn’t successful. I first listened to their first project boygenius when I was doing a deep dive into Phoebe’s discography. I had no idea who the other two were and didn’t care much, since I didn’t love the ep. I have changed my mind on a good portion of these opinions.

Everyone on TikTok freaks out about Phoebe (and Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, etc.) so obviously when the new songs came out, it was all I was getting on my fyp. It appealed to my curiosity. So when the record came out, I listened to it. I could give you a detailed list of thoughts on each song, since I wrote them down (just let me know if you’d like something like that for a post), but I won’t. What I will tell you is that after 7 months since the album came out, I sit here with a “always an angel, never a god” tattoo on my leg. How did this happen?

First, I fell in love with certain songs in the record, one of them being Not Strong Enough. I usually don’t listen to lyrics on the first listen but the lines I have tattooed resonated with me. Secondly, they’re sung by Lucy Dacus. A year ago, I wouldn’t be able to tell you who she was. But that’s the beauty of boygenius: I discovered a beautiful soul, singer, songwriter, woman, etc. and usually the gateway for boygenius is Phoebe, as I mentioned, but you end up falling in love with Lucy and Julien. I fell harder for Lucy, since she’s my favourite artist at the moment (and I shamefully haven't listened to Julien’s music).

I think the appeal of boygenius to the main public, even if it’s mostly lesbians in love with the singers in the group, is that they each have their own fanbase, sound, unique voice, and they all bring something different to the table. Every boygenius fan has a favourite “boy” (as with everything) but they support the band because they see how much love and respect the boys have for each other. If you’re wondering why I’m calling them “boys”, you’re just not in the fandom and that’s okay.

Also, the music is good. I haven’t talked much about it, but you put three talented songwriters together and you’ll obviously get good music. The instrumentations are also beautiful and so well put together with the lyrics and harmonies. One of my favourite songs is Without You Without Them and that’s an acapella opening to the record, starring stunning vocals and harmonies from the boys. I’d recommend it.

I’m excited about their performance on Saturday Night Live, since Phoebe’s sparked so much controversy last time. There’s also been a request for “real musicians” to perform on SNL again, whatever that means, but if there is such a thing as real musicians, the boys are it.

I will make a separate post on Lucy someday, maybe focusing on my favourite songs and lyrics, and maybe report to you when I listen to Julien’s music. For now, I leave you with another beautiful lyric that makes me hopeful to fall in love, if not in this life, in the next one. “If you rewrite your life, may I still play a part?”

[isopodonanescalator]

OKAY SO. who wants to talk about rent? because I DO!!! this afternoon i saw a production at this random little theatre downtown. (i’ll add pictures at the end btw) it was a bunch of college kids in the show, and let me just say: they were cast SO perfectly it’s not even funny. i want to go character by character because it was really awesome and i loved it and i forgot how much i loved this show (even if it has some flaws), but before i do a character analysis and such, let me give some background info! i had front row seats, and since there wasn’t really an actual stage, the actors were directly in front of us and that was super cool!! there was a couple bits of audience interaction which i liked and i also made eye contact with a couple people and i almost died. onto the characters!!!

starting off strong with Roger because he’s my favorite! the vocals were so strong and full and i was blown away by how amazing he was (im in love with him no joke like holy crap) he made me cry MULTIPLE times in the second act because he showed his emotion so strongly and it like radiated off of him. ALSO HE MADE EYE CONTACT WITH ME NOT ONCE, BUT T H R E E TIMES!!!!!! I DIEEEED I SWOONED I CRIED OMG 😭😭😭 um but yeah his vocals stunned me and he showcased his emotions very very well! (he was also really attractive but that’s irrelevant)

next up is Mark because it just seems wrong to not put him after Roger 😭 he played his role so wonderfully and it was really insane how much resemblance he had to the character!!! like he looks exactly like how Mark should look and it was perfect. i really liked his mannerisms and the way he articulated certain lines scratched my brain very good!! his voice was ALSO phenomenal and his mother (who was sitting next to us) told us that he hadn’t sung in TWO YEARS so for him to sound that good after not performing in a musical for so long was literally amazing!!! he also made eye contact with me after Angels death while i was crying on my friends shoulder, and he like gave me a little nod which was very lovely. i really enjoyed how he played Mark, 10/10 fr!

Tom Collins next: his voice had such a nice bass tone to it and it was really pretty and eep! i absolutely LOVED how he looked at Angel almost any chance he had throughout the show, and i don’t know if it was staged or it was a character choice but i liked it. i don’t have much else to say about him because i payed a lot more attention to Roger (😭) but he also did a really great job!!!

ANGELLLLLL!!!! OH MY FREAKING GOODNESS I REALLY LIKED HOW SHE WAS PORTRAYED IN THIS PRODUCTION! i was very scared at first because of the fact that it was a small performance and i wasn’t sure how good it would be, but the actor was amazing. also: the costuming department absolutely AAAATTEEE with all of Angels outfits because they were on point! my friend and i freaked out every time there was a costume change because they were all so cool! the actor had such a lovely vocal range and i think it was sooo perfect for the character!!!

Mimi was ICONIC. first off, she was about my height which i was super excited about because you don’t always see a lot of super short girls playing the leads. she was like a foot shorter than Roger and she was so cuteeee!! her voice was SO strong and she had really nice breath control, but she had a lot of vibrato, which kind of threw me off at first. overall, i loved the way she played her, she made her very sad and she seemed super torn throughout a lot of the show.

i’m going to put Maureen and Joanne into one paragraph because i don’t have a lot to say about them. Joanne had a REALLY nice belt like her voice was supported and loud and take me for what i am was BEAUTIFUL!!! between her and Maureen that song was super good and you could almost feel the tension. also i have No Day But Today written on my converse, and Maureen saw them when she was on the ground near us during one of the scenes, and she pointed and smiled!

that’s really all i have to say, but feel free to ask about anything if you’re curious (that’s mostly for @loganschwarzy because i know you were wondering about Angel)

this was their set, and there was a bunch of parts of the walls that spun and worked like doors which i thought was THE COOLEST!!!

before the show started they were playing city noises over the speakers which was also cool!

these are my converse that Maureen pointed at!

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 7/18/2023

idk man i just work here

listening

not another rockstar, maisie peters. spotify

this is a little poppier than i generally prefer-- the first knee-jerk comparison i can make for the vocals is taylor swift, esp in the first verse? luckily for everyone, i was white-knuckling it down the katy freeway (26 lanes. never again) and did not have the extra concentration necessary to skip it on whatever autogenerated dance playlist spotify spat out for me. as a fellow woman with a Type, i must tip my hat to ms peters.

Hmm, funny I could pick 'em in a line up, line up Pretty certain I could do it with my eyes shut, eyes shut A little self-obsessive and I sign up, sign up Where's the pen? Where's the line?

@pasta-pardner has made a gorgeously lush electronic/indie pop cowboy playlist. my very favorite song (so far, still have it on loop) is Horsie by Twilight Circus Dub Sound System. it sounds like the opening theme to Samurai Champloo. it ripples and grooves. it lives somewhere between rock and reggae. the whole album is incredible music to hang out to.

-

reading

retractionwatch (my beloved) linked out to datacolada.org in a recent article and my ears perked up. data colada gets REAL deep into the investigative reporting of specific papers, including some fascinating excel sleuthing. they use CalcChain!!! i thought i was the only one who used CalcChain!!!

CalcChain tells Excel in which order to carry out the calculations in the spreadsheet. It tells Excel something like "First solve the formula in cell A1, then the one in A2, then B1, etc." CalcChain is short for 'calculation chain'.

one of my worst traits as a person is that i looooooooove an academic trainwreck. i love watching academia eat itself. i love watching people get caught for sloppy shit like "excel file sorted REAL weird, pointing to tampering with individual data points"

-

watching

new jennings motor sport!!! the oil change is. hough. impressively disgusting. oil does some funky shit when it's been sitting for ??? decades

-

playing

ive been playing genshi/n impact like it's my job. having a lot of thoughts about crunch, and content, and player expectations vs shareholder expectations and Line Go Up and if AAA free-to-play video games are at all ethical to play for anyone ever, but hey! look at this snarky catgirl!

also lol. lmao. this is a game for children. we are all aware of the restrictions and limitations placed upon games for children in the chinese and american markets so yeah the answer is going to be yes, every time

-

making

lately i have been going to my best friend's house after work (what an unimaginable sentence a month ago) and hanging out and watching whatever toddler shows are on tv while we shoot the shit and i knit. there's another half-repeat on the baby blanket for the baby who has just turned four months old, but it's in the car and the night is dark and full of mosquitoes.

i literally cannot do any life shit, even most doctor's appointments, until i have a real physical stable address so all i am really doing is knitting and playing genshi/n and opening and closing my email like the fridge. i have one security deposit back from the old mass apt plus one more paycheck (but, crucially, not the nearly $2k from the roach apt and we are rapidly approaching lawsuit time) so the cat and i are a little bit more stable/able to put down a security deposit on something else the minute it comes along. this would not have been possible without the incredible generosity of readers like you during that very bad first week here. thank you. i want to do some sort of thank you...stream? liveblog? series of posts about something? but i'm not sure what yet. stay tuned. tell me your thoughts. what would you like to see?

[hooned]

🪡 track 01: FATE

GOOD LORD WHAT A WAY TO START AN ALBUM. u can clearly see na these ppl Know how to make a statement when it comes to music bc WHO TF OPENS WITH SUCH A GREAT SONG RIGHT OFF THE BAT ❓❗ like i wish this was a biased opinion. wow but it’s not ❓ it’s really Just. So. Good. are u hearing the vocals & the harmonies behind jake’s voice while he’s singing ‘fate’ over & over again ❓ coz DAMN that sent me to heaven and back wtf goosebumps all over ❗ the melody, their voices, the lyrics, EVERYTHING IS CHEF’S KISS. i know i said i’m claiming bills as my favorite child in this album but MAN. FATE IS RIGHT NEXT TO HER WOW. what a great start ZAMN. 😵‍💫🎻❤️‍🔥

🪡 track 03: SACRIFICE (EAT ME UP)

if u’d let me paint u a picture, this song is what getting pulled into the deep feels like. having ur lungs be filled with something similar to water, making it hard to breathe, like every beat just pulls u back in.

“there is no end to my falling, deeper, take my hand, to you, my life, it's okay even if you eat me up.”

LIKE ❓ THE LYRICS MATCH THE MELODY AND THE BEAT SO MUCH ❓ the song sounds exactly what it feels to let something fill u, eat u up whole; that intense feeling of wanting to be consumed by love ❗ i’m no advocate of letting love be the ONLY drive in ur every step BUT THIS SONG MIGHT JUST CHANGE MY MIND WTF EAT ME UP ALL SANE THOUGHTS & REASON THROWN OFF THE CLIFF. I AM A PERSON THAT LOVES ❤️‍🔥❗ WATCH ME BURN ❗

🪡 track 04: CHACONNE

ok first of all SUNKI U DID NOT HAVE TO EAT EVERYONE UP LIKE THAT WTF ❓ jaws on the packing floor YES 😵‍💫 next, this song. This Song. is the song for all my future sad, emo, body rolling i fear. it just has That vibe to me. 🎻 i couldn't find an eng trans of the lyrics but the automatic sway my body reacts ❓ [im no dancer so trust me when i say it’s a #horrendous sight but] U GET ME ❓ IT’S JUST ONE OF THOSE SONGS ❗ when they say music is the language of the soul, chaconne is what they have in mind. when this song plays while i’m washing the dishes i won’t be held accountable for the ceramics that will break bc istg I WILL DROP EVERYTHING I AM HOLDING. 😵‍💫 just listening to it again right now makes me want to stand up again ❗ when i literally just sat down ❗

🪡 track 05: BILLS

when jake, riki, and jungwon said that track 5 is their favorite for some reason, i thought it’ll be a dancey song. BUT ZAMN WAS I WRONG ❓ oh god where to start with bills 😵‍💫 first of all here’s the trans of the lyrics:

“i don't want to let you go, can't we just turn back, no time.”

LIKE ❓ just with these lyrics u can already see how heartfelt and how feels inducing this song would be [& with hee’s vocals UGH star boy never misses holy fuck wow] i am not lying when i say i cried like. but what kills me. what absolutely wrecks me. was that guitar intro GOD WOW MMM YEAH. ❤️‍🔥 u know how certain progressions pull u in ❓ idk how music does it man but THAT INTRO ❓ painted an entire picture in my head. it gave me longing ❗ it gave me dread ❗ it gave me wishing and hoping and wanting a love that stays ❗ it gave me love that desperately perseveres despite whatever was holding it back ❗ and one thing about me is that I. WILL. EAT. THAT. KIND. OF SHIT. UP. 🏋🏼‍♀️ idk why it’s titled ‘bills’ ❓ all i know is that there is a metaphor lying in there somewhere tying bills and a love that yearns and wishes and stays AND I WILL BE HERE TO SING IT ON TOP OF MY LUNGS WHEN IT DROPS.

u are right boys, this one’s gold. [sobs]

🪡 track 06: KARMA

now her. HER. she is what attention please & mixed up would be if they had a daughter. they all sit together in one table. a happy family — a happy ‘i don’t give a fuck’ family, if u may. MAIN SLAYERS. the ‘u can’t sit with us’ bffs.

“you can't save me forever, oh yeah, you just stay right there, so what with fate, i don't give a what, the one that connects us, karma i don't give a what.”

the pump and serotonin the line ‘i don’t give a what’ gives me ❓ THAT’S RIGHT. I DONT GIVE A FLYING WHAT ❗ [i am definitely saying the fuck word at their concert yes TOTALLY it’s the only right way to sing it] a head banger ❗ her cousin blockbuster would be so proud ❤️‍🔥 good lord it’s so good i can already see myself jumping to this song. ppl in public commute would see a girl banging her head with headphones on and they will know, ‘she's listening to karma by enhypen’ 🧑‍🎤🎻 SO GOOD.

🪡 title track: BITE ME

and last but DEFINITELY NOT THE LEAST. her. the title track. queen bite me. she’s instantly up there among the list of enhypen’s best songs, i fear. when jake said that it’s a song he doesn’t get tired of even after hearing it overand over ❓ he’s being SO REAL. bec i’ve been listening to the bits they give us nonstop since yesterday and GOD. it’s laced with crack i am telling u. and jake singing the lines [i’ve always been vocal about my love for jake’s tone and MAN] it’s perfect. 😵‍💫i’ve known like 10 seconds of her and she already owns me.

“it's you and me in this world, come back to me and tight me, if i'm dreaming, just come kiss me and bite me.”

OK ❓ I HEAR U ❓ I’M OMW ❓ [it’s sososo good i apologize for the person i will become when she comes]

wrote an entire fucking thread about my initial reaction to the tracks and bc i am insane in the membrane and over sharing on the internet is my middle name [not being able to shut up it the first] i’ll send it here as well !! hihi ❤️‍🔥❗

[adhdsix]

i gotta sleep soon so ive decided i will finally dump a buncha my headcanons here aswell adfhsf theyre all in here but im gonna copy paste them as a post as well because i wanna ill be updating the doc a lot but i probably wont edit the post much notes slight spoilers but not much? i dont think? mono is written to be the tallest because rcg is more like a bonus i guess? but she is the tallest + oldest (this goes for other similar things written abt six, mono and/or rk) some of these are more like what-if scenarios (ex. modern stuff mentioned like cars) that could fit maybe in an au of sorts rather than entirely canon all links are safe

Six

she/it/they

ADHD

Tasteblind, but sensitive to certain food textures

Shortest by a lot, youngest but not by much Zero sense of time

Likes lullabies, gets Mono to sing them to her (likes to make up her own versions sometimes) Short attention span, unless she’s insanely invested in something

Definitely bites ice cream Uses Mono like a cat tree, climbs all over him, loves to sit up on his shoulders or just literally drape herself around his neck like a scarf (Mono eventually gets used to it, but she still can’t stay there for long or it starts to hurt) (possibly a little random but think like .. them + )

Likes most toys but hates dolls, usually tears them apart/messes with them for fun Not a huge fan of rain, but the sound is calming, and she loves the aftermath, which includes the smell, dew on grass, just how everything looks, worms and snails coming out of hiding, and splashing in puddles

Likes teddy bears (big and cuddly, plus, reminds her of Mono)

You are not immune to her puppy eyes. Raincoat Girl is probably the only person who is

Collects things a lot, gets attached to certain items for a random amount of time When she learns a new phrase or word, she loves to repeat it to herself ( not really in the “ look at me i learned a new word and i'm gonna use it all the time “ type way, she just finds it entertaining, kinda like vocal stimming ) Does a similar thing when she finds something that someone else said funny, mocks them by repeating it and giggling

Likes making "nests" out of her stuff

Definitely occasionally runs on all fours, it's usually not for too long though.

Most of the time it’s momentarily while she's already in the middle of sprinting, to give herself a boost with a bound or two, or if she trips or feels herself falling forward while running she'll shift onto all fours which is is how she originally developed that "reflex", to prevent herself from falling while running, but eventually she started using it a little more often 

She can also just walk normally on all fours too but she usually only uses it while running 

She likes to show off her object collections to Mono, he’s very supportive :] Loves long car rides, as well as Runaway

Brings mono gifts (usually dead rats, birds, etc. or bizzare objects from her collection that reminded her of him for whatever reason)

Hates drinks like soda or sparkling water, anything fizzy is a no-no

Likes shiny things Her pupils widen (that cat thing) when she sees something interesting, or something/someone she likes Plus her eyes shine in the dark / in photos sometimes, they usually look red

Mono gave Six their lighter

Heterochromia, their right eye is a dark, reddish brown, the other is milky white

Always chewing on stuff

Fidgets lots, stim buddies with Mono Six stims by rocking on her feet, bouncing, cracking her fingers and shaking fists most often She also vocal stims lots, mostly by repeating animal noises

It’s got tons of freckles

She likes to sing, and is very good at it but doesnt get to very often

it’s favorite things to sing are hypno and sunshine ( 11:11 hypno, sunshine )

Not super into arts, but loves to draw, and is very fascinated by origami

Often refers to Mono as a nerd (affectionate) (also sometimes dork)

Purrs, growls, hisses etc. Because she doesn't talk much, she adapts more animal-like ways of communication, not only vocally but also physical stuff (slow blinking, headbutting stuff, mostly cat-like traits and reflexes. also she likes to drop stuff off of shelves and tables just bc its fun)

Doesn't know her own strength a lot of the time

Very touch starved (they all are) even if she doesn't realise it

Flinches and/or swats others away when touched Eventually they get used to Mono, he's the only person that can touch her at all, but she still has limits

No sense of others personal space though

She’s great at tracking things, mostly small animals

Super ticklish, not very happy that Mono found out 

Very visual memory

She really loves all types of music, ranges from things like 100 gecs type stuff, to calm instrumental kinda things, literally anything with maybe a few exceptions Shark teeth, very sharp, loves making dents in stuff with them

Cat-like claws too (retractable maybe?? why not.. it usually has them out though) Love-hate relationship with snow, they find it weird and kind of icky, but Mono teaches her how to make snow angels, forts and snowmen, and she loves snowball fights (Mono regrets teaching them about those though), plus she adores going back inside and just drinking hot chocolate with Mono and sometimes other friends :]  Mono he/she Tallest of the three, oldest as well  Colorblind He has vitiligo Loves all sorts if arts and crafts, often drags Six into making stuff with him Her hair is very soft, even if it doesn't look like it Very touchy-feely, with others and with objects Knows and respects others boundaries. Six does not He will often push his own boundaries though He’s very protective, usually feels the need to put others safety and health in front of her own A little naive, will protect even if she isn’t getting anything in return from the person(s) Likes skirts! Mono loves to learn about his friends and their personalities, strengths, weaknesses etc. to use for their own benefit! For example, he has a different way to cheer up each friend, and does his best to include them in stuff he thinks they'll also like Loves any happy sounding music the most, but listens to lots of other stuff too (a few songs that remind me of him not lyric-wise but like, sounds like he'd listen to them, are She Wants Me (to be loved), Dancing in my Room, Sunday Best and Sunkissed type stuff, I don’t know music genres so) Favorite drink is probably coffee Loves all sorts of soup!! Has lots of nicknames for Six! Mostly uses kitty and shortcake (it hates them but gets used to them, only from Mono though; some of the other kids use them to get on her nerves, doesn’t end well for them) Love loves bugs! Six likes them too, but isn't as interested as Mono and Runaway (she likes to eat them) Runaway he/they Almost as tall as Mono, noticable difference though He loves chocolate milk and tea Probably the most reasonable out of the three Despite this, he still likes to annoy them (mostly Six) Similarly to Six, he sucks at keeping track of the time Likes goldfish snacks a lot His nomes are always nearby when he is Really likes coloring books and puzzles They love the sound of pianos, not the best at playing it but likes messing with them in his free time with Six (their rare bonding moments) Loves any instruments really, pianos are just his favorite Has the biggest sweet tooth Also loves bugs!! Mono and him are bug buddies His favorite bugs are caterpillars and butterflies, he isn’t a very big fan of spiders though (Mono didn’t used to mind them, but after the hand incidents in the hospital, he finds them icky; too similar) Bonus; RCG  she/they Tallest as well as oldest (again, not oldest by much though) Big sister vibes Super supportive Usually in charge of keeping others in line, doesn’t mind a little chaos here and there though (even if it doesn’t usually end well) Also has a few freckles, not nearly as much as Six Lots of energy that often rubs off on the others when she’s around Probably the most responsible, great with kids younger than her Loves teaching the others how to do stuff, has the longest attention span which makes it easier Very playful and teasing, but still knows and respects boundaries when it comes to that kinda stuff Gets easily stressed out and nervous when she doesn't know what to do, as she feels like she always has to be responsible aaaand thats all 4 now! i might do more characters like comic kids if i get enough ideas but thatll be in the doc if i ever do pleas share with me ur hcs and ideas too!!!! if u wanna i would love 2 see them!!

[nctsjiho]

Jam Session

warnings: none

era: Summer of 2020

❀ Mark and JiHo have a little jam session in her room

A soft knock sounded at the door of JiHo’s room. She hummed loud enough for the person behind the door to hear and soon after the door opened. JiHo looked up from her position on her bed, where she had made herself comfortable with her phone in her hand. In the doorway stood a sheepish looking boy with wide innocent eyes. A chuckle pushed past JiHo’s lips as she eyed Mark’s timid figure. “What’s up?”

Mark took a step into the room and held up his guitar that he had brought down from his dorm, five floors up. With a confused look JiHo spoke, “You know Haechan’s room is on the other side of the hallway right?” The boy just ignored her and settled down in front of her on her bed.

“I’m not here for Haechan.” This confused JiHo more. It wasn’t unusual for Mark to come down here with his guitar. The members would sometimes have evening jam sessions - though usually they would be held on the 10th floor since the 5th floor had some uptight neighbours. When it was just Mark and his guitar coming over, it was either because him and Haechan wanted to practise some covers and play around a bit, or him and Taeyong were planning out some potential NCT or SuperM songs. So it came as a bit of a shock to hear that Mark wasn’t planning on doing either of those things.

“What brings you here then?” The girl squints, curious about why he had come down all this way. “It’s just been a while since we’ve sang together. So I thought-” “Oh no, dude I’m not singing.” JiHo interjected. The boy sighed and threw his head back a little. “Dude, I haven’t heard you sing like this in such a long time!” Mark whined causing JiHo to start feeling bad. “You know I don’t really sing. And definitely not like this.” She motioned to the guitar.

Mark knew that JiHo was insecure about her voice, something that no one understood because she could’ve easily been a main vocalist if she had the confidence for it.

“JiHo listen, I don’t care if you suck or if you sound like an angel. There’s no pressure, no one is watching. It’s literally just us, jamming for fun. I can even bet you that my voice will crack at least once if we sing together.” He explained trying to ease the tension. JiHo smiled a little at his last statement. “Well, your voice cracking, that’s just a given.” She commented with a mischievous grin which had Mark groaning. “Okay fine, but please. Just this one time.” His fingers fidgeted around the strings, like they were waiting for JiHo’s signal to start strumming a song.

A few seconds pass in silence before JiHo exhaled loudly. “Okay! Only this one time. And afterwards don’t you dare bring your guitar anywhere near my room.” Mark nodded excitedly. “I’ll use that guitar right there then.” He joked, pointing towards the guitar sitting in the corner of the room. JiHo rolled her eyes but didn’t comment on it further and Mark began strumming a familiar tune on the instrument in his hands.

Back in 2019 JiHo had once told Mark that ‘Superhuman’ was probably one of, if not her favourite song of theirs. She loved performing that song so much and was sad when the their promotions and the tour ended.  She also shared about how singing it together that one night in the air bnb in Brooklyn was one of her favourite memories. Some of the boys were either drunk or extremely sleepy, but they all sang it together and it became such a fond memory.

That’s why Mark had figured out the cords and a good arrangement to play it on the guitar. An acoustic version specially made for JiHo. The girl’s eyes were looking down to her lap where her hands tapped along to the rhythm of the song and they began to sing. They kind of figured out who was singing what part at what times, with JiHo mostly singing the main vocal line with Mark harmonizing and him taking his own rap parts when JiHo stopped for him to sing.

“If you wanna feel it say yeah~” “Yeah~” Mark added and he let the last note of the guitar ring through the room. The two basked in the lingering mood of the song before Mark spoke up. “You’re such a good singer, you know that right?” JiHo just dismissed the compliment with a wave of her hand and Mark decided to just move on to the next song.

They sang a plethora of different songs. Some being their own, some being mainly rap songs, but most were some Mark thought would really fit JiHo’s voice.

“Once you gain a bit more confidence I swear you can just take Doyoung hyung or Taeil hyung’s parts.” Mark laughed, but he was being somewhat serious. He really believed that JiHo had a great voice and there wouldn’t be a reason for her not to get more vocal lines and high notes in their songs. Not that he didn’t think she wasn’t doing a good job as a rapper. On the contrary, she was doing too good of a job to only get the small amount of lines she does get, but that was just one of the down side of having so many members in a group. There were so many members who didn’t get that many lines, luckily they would get more on side tracks in the album or they would have more parts in a next comeback.

JiHo had only given the boy a sad smile, fully aware that her confidence was the main culprit in her career and her live in general. She wouldn’t like to admit that her confidence - or well, her lack thereof - had gotten in the way of opportunities because she had been quick to turn them down at the thought of stepping out of her comfort zone. The boys knew about this to a certain extent, but if only they knew what kind of jobs and opportunities she had turned down, she would most likely have all of the boys nagging at her.

She was so good at faking her confidence on stage, but when it came to certain things, her confidence tanked completely and she’d rather turn away one of the best things that could ever happen to her, than to confront it and possibly get engulfed by anxiety. Luckily she didn’t always have to fake confidence, she was pretty happy with her dance and rap skills and she didn’t care too much about looks as she kept her body healthy and in good shape almost all of the time. It was mostly the singing that made her anxious so she was happy for the amazing vocalists in her group being in charge of all that responsibility.

Mark had stood up and sent the girl a thumbs up. “Cheer up, dude. You did really great and I had a lot of fun.” “Yeah, I actually had a lot of fun as well.” A playful smile formed on the boy’s lips. “So tomorrow again?” Before JiHo could protest Mark walked out the room. “See you tomorrow!” JiHo rolled her eyes at Mark’s antics, but smiled when he heard Haechan stop him in the room and yell at him for betraying him and not coming to sing with him instead.

She actually hadn’t mind singing with Mark. Initially she was a bit nervous, but then again it was only him and her and if anyone else were to hear her it was only going to be her roommates who’ve already heard her sing enough times before. Not quite sure if Mark was actually going to stop by the next day to sing together again, JiHo got herself ready to go and sleep. This time she didn’t dread the thought of singing and for once was kind of excited to sing.

---

Side note: This wasn’t really Mark focused ig (?? idk), so I’m gonna try to do another Mark post soon-ish (don’t count on it). This idea just came to me an hour ago and I only have a few hours left before I post this, so I wrote it pretty quickly. It’s not really that good of a post so I’m sorry for that. (if you haven’t, my previous post ‘Still My Favourite’ with Jeno was pretty cute so you could read that one, I posted it yesterday ^^ shameless self promo on my own blog wow-)

[songbirdmusicnc]

What’s in a Song? | What to Look for When Choosing Your Next Solo

It's one thing to be in an undergraduate, post-graduate, or professional setting where often, if your next piece is not outright assigned to you, you have a number of parameters to keep you within a certain genre, a particular period, or even a specific language. I can write volumes about this. Oh, the seemingly endless search for the answer to one of the most dreaded questions I could have been asked during my studies back when I was in my 20's: "What aria have you chosen to sing?" NEWSFLASH: I am not 20. I'm not even 30. So, you can put two and two together, that this was long before the convenience of online searching through the wonders of Google, Bing and DuckDuckGO. In fact, I would have paid small sums of money (on a student budget 😂) to have had access to any of those three tools to find a number of things when I had to pump out arias like bread in bakery. (Umm, not so sure about that analogy. It was the first thing that came to mind, but you get my drift I think. lol)

For one, I would have completely worn out Google Translator. Like, seriously. 😐 I would have had shortcuts on my computer and on the home screen of my flip phone (yes, flip phone...don't judge me 🤨) that took me directly to literal translations of the arias and choruses I had to perform every single week. The inner dialogue during that process alone was like having to report to after-school detention. Agonizing!! 😩 "So, who's word-for-word translation should I trust? So many of these students actually speak these languages, so they're not looking up anything like I have to. Should I just ask them?! Well, no. I can't let them know that I know that I don't know what I'm saying!!😩" Ugh. I don't miss those days at all. But! But, I got through them just fine, thank you Jesus. 😁 Recalling this is actually a bit comical to me now; I remember those days very well. At the same time, there is a lot to be said about the art of searching out the text, finding its meaning, and being faithful to it.

Given my strong background in the Christian Church, I cannot deny the one Bible passage that instantly comes to mind when examining the process of searching out what one is saying in order to partake of its eternal value. I am referring to Acts 17 verse 11, where it says in the NASB translation, "Now these people were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.." It was the careful examination of what the Bereans were told, not merely how they felt about that message, that not only intrigued them, but moved them to take action. They diligently searched the Scriptures for themselves as a means of verifying that what they felt was not only wonderful, but inherently true. Both were important to them, and therefore Dr. Luke (the Author of the Book of Acts) attributes nobility to them. Wow.

Well, that's great spiritually speaking. But what about being on stage? I mean, why spend a single minute placing an emphasis on foreign language text when more often than not, people in the audience aren't even fluent in? A number of things can be said about that. The most important thing I believe can be said is that taking that extra time pays off later; for the singer must connect with the text if they want to connect with their audience. This brings me to the point of this post, answering the question, what is the absolute most important element I look for in a song: Personally inspiring text.

I'll reiterate. The singer must connect to the text they are singing if they want to connect with their audience. This is true for all performing arts that involve speech or singing. I can't tell you how many interviews I've watched of actors discussing the roles they've played that they didn't necessarily like per sae, but they still got cast in that role, and then delivered an outstanding performance. How? Each and every one of them will tell you that they found a way to personally connect with the script. The words coming out of their mouths. But isn't that absolutely necessary for actors? I mean, an actor who is not believable in what they say is not acting at all. They may as well be Siri or Alexa, rattling off a bunch of pre-programmed data with no life and no feeling. (Sorry to all the artificial-intelligence-loving techies out there...😌) Similarly, a singer needs to find a means to personally identify with some aspect of the role they play or more specifically, the role they sing. The result? Well, when coupled with superb vocal technique, you've got yourself an unforgettable experience for your listeners right there, and not simply a performance.

This stands true no matter the genre. It is, in my humble opinion, the number one most absolutely necessary element for a Christian singer. (That's a lot of positive assertion, but it's true...) If a Christian singer is taking on the enormous task of delivering the timeless message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ--whether they are exhorting and encouraging the audience with an inspiring message of hope and deliverance, or reverently singing praises directly to God Himself--then that singer best be connected in the heart to the words they sing. For, above all else, it is the testimony of an individual's encounter with God that drives home the message and its profundity. People want to feel the power of the lyrics to the classic hymn, "It Is Well". And furthermore, they want to know why when you sing it, tears gush out from your eyes and theirs. Why was your performance of it so moving? Why did they have flashbacks of their early childhood, sitting on a wooden pew, surrounded by family and community? The answer to that has layers of truth, the key one for this particular discussion being your personal experience oozing from your lips as you utter the words, "Christ has regarded my helpless estate and has shed His own blood for my soul." The text. Yes, I get it; the voice, the technique, even the vocal nuances. But more-so than anything, your heart poured out through words, riding on an unshakable melody that calms the troubled mind and offers a moment of comfort to a broken heart--even if only for a moment. That's the effectiveness you want as a singer.

So, getting back to the original question: What should you look for when you are browsing the endless world of YouTube for your next great song? Text that moves you. Text that speaks to you. To YOU...personally. You should find the song that makes you cry and do that one. If there's a song that makes you so happy you feel like doing cartwheels every time you hear it, do that one. (I literally have a song like that. It's called "Everything" performed by TobyMac. 😏😌) But don't just pick the song that has 65 million views! Please, no! Choose what moves you personally and something you can expound on for at least five minutes with no music and no soundtracks. Just you and the text, dissecting it line-by-line, looking for the author's possible intended meanings, and adding your own life story to it, bringing out what it means to you. If you can't do that to the song you're about to start working on, skip it. It won't be worth your effort and it won't be worth the audience's time. They'll know it, too. You'd just be mimicking someone else's art form and they'll say to themselves, "I could have stayed home to listen to this song on loop mode and kept my money to myself." No. Use your heart to search with your eyes and find the song that speaks to you. You can only reach people to the depth at which your own heart is involved in the song.

-Sharine Buchanan

Owner, Songbird Music LLC

Sharine Buchanan is the Owner of Songbird Music LLC. She earned her Bachelor's of Arts degree in Music with High Honors from the University of California at Berkeley, and her Masters of Music degree with an emphasis in Vocal Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (valedictorian). She lives in North Carolina's Wilkes County, the foothill of the Brushy Mountains, where she relocated in 2013 to join an international ministry, faithfully serving her pastors in music and various aspects of their ministry.

To inquire about studying voice with Sharine, email her at teachme@songbirdmusicnc.com, or call 510-220-4077.

[neo-shitty]

toffee!

ah yeah, i think quarentine has given people some opportunity to actually just sit with the person they are, rather than be rushing around for the person they want to become. its good you got smth good out of isolation! ah thats great! hope you had fun and ur partner in crime speeds back home so you can get out more hehe.

ah yeah ty, good suggestions.

hmm good point, i was sort of putting it separate to the whole not-sexualising thing, but yeah. mmm yeah i totally agree, some of the enhypen fics/imagines *shudder* and even reading innie stuff is just a bit *icky* cos everyone still thinks of him as our agi ppang. yeah def would be good but sadly this just seems to be the world we live in. :(

ah yes the holy masterlist (not sarc) i have actually read in the rain and gladius maximus before, but ill go look for in class! oooh thats good! character development lol. hmmmm yes champagne problems was the angst to end all angst, that shit hurt. it was actually one of the first of your fics i read and i recall almost crying over the whole thing, it was so heartbreaking, i can see how it almost made you want to drop angst. good that youve allowed yourself some lee-way tho :)

hehe thats so cool. okay here we go, ill try not to be mortally offended (/hj)

cheese - yes same, i liked it but that was all there was, it wasnt a super standout track. it was rlly underwhelming for me but some of the hook is super catchy so there is Redemption (tm) in store for cheese maybe

thunderous - mmm, yeah at first i totally agreed, i think they suffer from too much good music syndrome, that all their other tracks are such fucking bops its hard to stay at that level of perfection. the choreo was beautiful tho and tbh, the track has grown on me since ive been watching all the vids abt it. its my brothers favourite track

domino - YES GODAMMIT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE TITLE TRACK. the raps, the vocals, the vibes, the fucking domino sound in the back? i would have streamed that shit on repeat. but tbh, as good as it is, it doesnt have that sort of grandness/oomph that skz seems to like in their title tracks so i can see why they chose thunderous (tho domino would have been so good) *sigh*

ssick - yeah same, not my fave track by a long mile, the crowd cheering was a ?strange? choice and the chorus was a bit bare/empty, plus like i mentioned earlier, it was kinda funny to me for some reason but ill still play it if im playing thru the whole album

the view - ahh one of those not like other girls (/j) i honestly think its just a good party song, just a bop to play in the background when nobodys rlly paying much attention. its pretty generic pop music but catchy

sorry, i love you - hehe yeah i thought it was going to be sadder as well, but i rlly loved the fact that they all just got to sing, which almost never happens, i dont think ive heard felix sing for a long time, so i enjoyed it. wasnt rlly a standout track but i just casually like it. looking forward to the fic haha

silent cry - this song i swear, some bits are rlly good and then others are just? why?? it does sound like a dance song tho idk. definitely not one of my faves either

secret secret - YES its so good! its such a chill song and i love their vocals in it. the combination of lo-fi/fake strings backup stuff and their heavenly vocals just makes it *chefs kiss* im listening to it rn and just... its so beautiful. it gives me pumped up another day vibes ya know? like my pace is edgy get cool, this one is energetic another day i feel like. overall i love it

STAR LOST - ah thats so cool! i didnt know that! on first listen this song had a similar vibe to secret secret but then the beat came in and ahh its such a good song. i can totally imagine them putting this song to a concert footage vid, this song is so sweet.

red lights - LMAO YES ITS SO AWKWARD WHY DOES IT GO ON FOR SO LONG ah thats good! yeah good point, its quite intense hehe. but that is my fave trope and this is lowkey my favourite track on the album so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ just the combination of hyunjins and chans voices, the backing music, the lyrics ahh red lights my beloved

surfin’ - yes lmao its always a shock, i feel like they should have put gone away in between them, but its such a fun cute song, i cant get rlly mad. yeah, as an aussie i think im contractually obligated to like beaches lol. sand im not such a fan of, but my familys rlly into fishing and my brother loves bodyboarding so we stay at a beach house at least twice a year and we live like 5 mins from 3 different beaches (hehe all aussie cities are on the coast lol) so thats cool. do you like beaches?

gone away - ah gone away my beloved, i love this song sm, its just so pure and showcases their vocals and lyrics so well. yes the pitch change is very out of the blue, i feel liek they went directly from seungmins soft vocals to hans powerful ones which was an interesting choice, but hey, im not complaining

wolfgang - YES IKR ah im so happy he got to be included in that era and song. yeah its such a full on song i cant rlly listen to it if im in a quiet mood but its very motivating :)

hehe mood, i hope they do! ahhh no rest, but at least you wont have to pull a blink and wait a year for any word from the group lol. im not rlly into nct but im excited for them! ah hopefully youll be able to sneak some rest into that chaotic schedule, with enhypen (idk if u stan but yeah) squeezed into it haha

<3 w.a. 🐺

i wheezed at partner in crime, it reminded me of smth. i have a lee know fic in the drafts that i wrote 'in honor' of him (and his departure-ish). i'll tag you when i finish it, if you want. it's a rather hilarious one.

oh my god. based on my experience on the collabs i've joined before, writing explicit shit for '01 & '02 is not accepted (nct's maknaes) but with enha's hyung line '01 & '02 somehow it's okay? i do a double take every time i see fics like those i mean, technically, it's legal but still what the fuck. maybe it's just not for me at the moment. not at us venting our frustration about this. it's just something that's so accepted here that i am (in all honesty) slightly uncomfortable about. but oh well. that's kpop writerblr for you.

man i could've linked all the fics in the ask instead so you wouldn't have to go looking for them! i think i saw you like in class the other day (the fic i renamed into sharp-tongued, god it took me a while to remember the new title). describing champagne problems as an angst to end all angst is one way to put what i was feeling back in december. it just hurt to write and admit?? if that ever happened to me i would prolly cry :d

okay back to the album talk! i love how you answered with more thoughts. i love exchanges like these! i am a victim of the cheese hook and it's now one of my favorite tracks in the album. PLS, TOO MUCH GOOD MUSIC SYNDROME. that's on our self-producing kings 😌💅 also, your brother has taste! as i am typing this, domino's currently playing in my head and i realized that too, that it doesn't have that 'vibe' of a skz title track. honestly, this could be a title track of another group. ssick is starting to grown on me because i found the beats cool kdjsk not the not like other girls 😭 the view is the generic pop that i don't like but i get why a lot of people enjoy it. sorry i love you scratches a certain itch that i find myself singing the first few lines every time i remember it. i too would want to hear felix sing more!

> a mini junction on the album talk bc i got side tracked. on that topic, i want skz to switch positions at some point like i know those allrounders are capable of doing so. specifically, i want to hear seungmin rap!!!! (yk in the recent weekly idol he talked faster than changbin in a challenge and changbin is like the fastest rapper in kpop that's active atm if im not mistaken. my dandy boy has some potential and i want it UNLEASHED.)

back to album talk. silent cry is basically sad music to twerk to. secret secret is definitely one of my favorite tracks :( i loved how you compared the tracks HAJSAH i burst out laughing bc yk what, you're right! i want to make a star lost edit of skz but i simply do not have the time i want to cry. i love the song so much. ok, my dreaded track, red lights. idt i have played the track since we last talked. my friend sent me the lyrics tho and i'm itching to write a twisted au out of it. idk if you're comfortable with yandere but somewhere along those themes. the obsessive type of love that's sweet at first but turns rotten. IMAGINE IF THEY PUT GONE AWAY BETWEEN ASHJA it's like going from 50 shades to the notebook.

i was about to ask if you lived near the coast and you literally mentions it here god im so stupid. yes i LOOOOOOOOOVE beaches so much. living in an archipelago is fun :( i live in a part of the country that's more island than city so every time i want some vitamin sea it's accessible. i heard the waves in australia are great :( anYWHOOO gone away :(( every time it plays im compelled to skip it because it makes me sAD AND NOWADAYS I DONT HAVE THE TIME TO BE SAD. contrary to you, i dislike my quiet moods because i tend to overthink a lot.

i have this little analogy about how there are stays that enjoy songs the generic pop + mellow songs and then there are other stays that enjoy the noisy tracks. in my mind, it's like a perfect balance that makes me feel like all the tracks are loved in the end. just by different people.

PULL A BLINK. bro i fucking hate yg entertainment. they have the biggest kpop girl group LOCKED in their basement when they could be (and i mean this in the most business-like way not morally) milking money of the quad. they're yg's biggest hope at not being bankrupt atm so it's a damn fucking mystery to me as to how they aren't doing anything. (jk i just realized lisa solo album soon, but i still need a ot4 cb hELLO)

i stopped looking forward to the teasers. rest > kpop boys. i don't want to sound like a cult member but have you tried checking out nct? are they just not your thing? (i get it tho, that's one hard group to get into). and yes i do stan enhypen!

wow i love how long these asks are! they're like online penpals. but i also want to ask about you! how have you been lately? are you feeling okay both mentally and physically? how's the weather there? do you have anything that you want to talk about? maybe an interesting book you read? feel free to bring up anything you want to share! i'm getting conscious about talking about myself HAJHSJ

and yet another long answer B) i am sooo sorry T___T should these ask exchanges feel draining to you, feel free to stop sending them in AAAA

[babyboyregressor]

Just an updated about me thing big and small version

ABOUT BIG ME

• I go by Benrey, but I'm also okay with nicknames like Benn, BenBen ect ect

•He/They/It pronouns plz and thank you

•I'm t4t n i like trans guys n enbies ig

•I like gaming, drawing, singing (not good at it but it's a huge vocal stim thing for me) and makeup

•Speaking of stims! I go nonverbal a lot so I vocal stim a lot. Especially singing songs. I whistle or sing random notes to try and convey my emotions when words are too hard. I almost always have my headphones on so I can listen to music and to block out noise to a certain degree. I mimick a lot as well. I have certain sounds I like to listen to as well. I have a half life soundboard on my phone because some of the noises are fun and help me calm down, especially the barney voice lines, he has been a huge comfort character for me since I was in middle school.

•Half life and hlvrai are some of my special interests, I absolutely love Barney Calhoun and Gordon Freeman!

•Some of my favorite video games aside from hl are minecraft, Left4Dead, Dead by Daylight, Cod, The Isle, Gang beasts, Resident Evil specifically biohazard and I haven't played village yet, Justice League, Mortal Combat, I have other games too but I cant think of them and I dont play them as much.

•I have a cat Gazlene, Gaz for short, but I live with 9 cats, 3 one month old kittens and 2 kittens who are a few weeks old and then the two moms and my cat and my brothers cat.

•I love the movie Luca, the jurassic park/world series, including camp cretaceous, and Tangled, The rapunzel story has been my favorite story since I was a literal baby.

•I love the smells of Lavender, Lemons, and Pine

• I love horror even though sometimes it can be a bit much for me, especially with loud noises and jumpscares, but some are cool! I really like the halloween movies, mostly the new one that came out in 2018 I think? Story was kinda off I think but its coolio

•I'm bad at makeup but I love putting makeup on people

•I chew on everything and I like to nibble people sometimes but usually I just bite my nails and fingers, although I got some chewlery so that's not happening as much anymore

•I live off energy drinks and sweets

•I have really bad anxiety when it comes to calls and facetime cause I never know when to talk and they often cause me to calm up and go nonverbal

•I'm learning asl!

•My favorite songs as of now are How can I tell him by jens lekman and Him by James Marriott

All about little me!

♡I'm usually 0-3

♡I has ALOT of pacis, I have maybe 15-20 adult ones and like 1000 babies ones i dun use no more

♡I has no cg cause my last one was bads

♡ I sings lots nd color pictures and loves luca lots an punzel

♡I like dinos my fav s a baryonyx!

♡I have a bunch of onesies and a bunch of short overalls and a skirt overall toos, s pink and looks like a cupckae!

♡I like kitties a lots but dogs are loud n scary sometimes

♡I like to be a cowboy somtimes toos cus cowboys are cool! Like rango

♡ i always follow da rules cause rules keep u safe

♡I like iced water and warm milk, and strawberry n chocky milk

♡I like games! I like res evil n minescaft

♡um I dont talk lots unless I'm 3 but usuawy s 2 or smoler

♡Wjen I'm 3 I usually am more excited and talkitives and I like to wear overalls and "big kid" outfits but I'm still baby, I real like to run around and play and info dump about stuff or listen to cgs voice and follow rules

♡when 2 I like to sit aroun n watch tv and hum or if I had a cg I like to follow them around eveywhere and hold onto them and whisper to them and sing them songs or crawl around and shove stuff in my mouth cause why nots and I almost always have my paci cupped to my shirt, I also love to follow the cats around at squeal n babble about them. I usually wear my onesies n maybe a big hoodie or smth and I almost ALWAYS have a stuffie I also clap a lot and LOVE to follow rules and do things for my cg (which again I dont have but if I did okay we theoretically talkin bros), even if its jus grabbing them smth or answering a question. I know a couple of small signs like dada milk juice I love you and how to spell baby for when I dont wnana talk but usually it's just messy signs mixed with stimming, babbles, squeals, and giggles

♡when I'm younger than that I usually like to sleep a lots and I never talk aside from either small short babbles or loud long babbles of nonsense, I always have a onesie or smth like that one I always have my binki/paci and I love love love to be carried, like plz hol me am smol. I usually just wanna snuggle and be held n fed tbh I know how to say milk and dada in sign that's it

Dats it! Next I'll post what makes me small or what my dream cg, nursery or paci would be like, oh or maybe showing all my onesies and pacis! I dunno eyt

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 7, Number 4

Axel Ruley x Verbo Flow

A little bit of optimism is creeping into the air as Dusted writers start to get their shots. We’re all starting to think about live music, maybe outside, maybe this summer. But as the spate of freak snow storms demonstrates, summer’s not here yet, and in the meantime, piles of records and gigs of MP3s beckon. This early spring version of Dust covers the map, literally, with artists representing Pakistan, Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK and the USA, and stylistically with jazz, rock, punk, rap, improv and many other genres in play. Contributors include Jennifer Kelly, Justin Cober-Lake, Bill Meyer, Ray Garraty, Patrick Masterson, Tim Clarke and Bryon Hayes.

Arooj Aftab — Vulture Prince (New Amsterdam)

Vulture Prince by Arooj Aftab

Arooj Aftab is a classical composer originally from Pakistan but now living in Brooklyn. Vulture Prince, her third full-length album, blends the bright clarity of new age music with the fluid, non-Western vocal tones of her Central Asian roots. “Last Night,” from an old Rumi poem but sung mostly in English, lilts in dub-scented syncopation, the thump and pop of stand-up bass underlining its bittersweet melody. An interlude in some other language shifts the song entirely, pitting vintage reggae reverberation against an exotic melisma. “Mohabbat” (which is apparently Urdu for sex) soothes in the pristine instrumentals, lucid guitars, a horn, scattered drumbeats, but smolders and beckons in the vocals. None of these tracks feel wholly traditional or wholly Western and modern day, but sit somewhere in a well-lit, idealized space. Timeless and placeless, Vulture Prince is nonetheless very beautiful.

Jennifer Kelly

 Assertion — Intermission (Spartan)

Intermission comes from an alternate timeline. Founding drummer William Goldsmith started his musical career in Sunny Day Real Estate and had a notable stint with Foo Fighters. To cut the biography short, Goldsmith took a decade off from the music industry. He's returned now with Assertion, joined by guitarist/vocalist Justin Tamminga and bassist Bryan Gorder (both of Blind Guides, among other acts). This band picks up in the late 1990s, imagining a new path for post-hardcore/post-grunge music. The trio's name suits, as the songs' energy and the lyrical assertiveness develops the intensity of the release. The group works carefully with dynamics, neither parroting the loud-quiet tradition nor simply pushing their emo leanings toward 11.

“The Lamb to the Slaughter Pulls a Knife” epitomizes the album. The track sounds like Foo Fighters decided to get dirtier rather than more arena-friendly, while the lyrics mix violence with emotional persistence. First single “Supervised Suffering” finds triumph in endurance, turning the aggressive chorus into something of a victory. “Set Fire” closes the album with something more delicate, but it's just the gauze over a seething anger. Goldsmith's time off seems to have served him well, as does collaborating with some new partners. Assertion makes its case clearly and effectively, and if the intermission's over for Goldsmith, the second half sounds promising.

Justin Cober-Lake  

 Michael Beach — Dream Violence (Goner/Poison City)

Dream Violence by Michael Beach

“De Facto Blues,” from Michael Beach’s fourth solo album, is a barn-burner of a song, rough and messy and passionate, the kind of song that makes you want to take a stand on something, who cares what as long as it matters to you. It snarls like Radio Birdman, slashes like the Wipers and follows its muse through chaos to righteousness like an off-cut from Crazy Horse, just back from rockin’ the free world. It’s got Matt Ford and Inez Tulloch from Thigh Master on guitar and bass, respectively, Utrillo Kushner from Colossal Yes (and Comets on Fire) on drums, and Kelley Stoltz at the boards, and it’s a killer. The rest of the album is varied and, honestly, not uniformly astounding, but there’s a nice Summer of Love-style psych dream in “Metaphysical Dice,” a slow-burning post-rocker in the title track and a driving, pounding punk anthem in the opener “Irregardless.” Beach has been splitting his time between San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia, and lately settled on Melbourne, where he will fit like a native into their thriving punk-garage scene.

Jennifer Kelly

 Bloop — Proof (Lumo)

Proof by BLOOP (Lina Allemano / Mike Smith)

The trumpet is already a catalog of sound effects waiting to happen, and Lina Allemano knows the table of contents by heart. So, to shake things up, she has paired up with electronic musician Mike Smith, who contributes live processing and effects to Allemano’s improvisations. A blind listen to Proof might leave you with the impression that you’re hearing a horn player jamming with some outer space cats, and we’re not talking about hip, lingo-slinging jazz dudes. In fact, everything on these eight tracks happened in real time. Smith’s a strategic intervener, aware that too much sauce can spoil the stew, so he mixes up precise layering and pitch-shifting with more disorienting transformations. It’s hard to say how much Allemano responds to the simulacra that surround her brass voice, but there’s no denying the persuasiveness of her melodic and timbral ideas.

Bill Meyer

 Bris — Tricky Dance Moves (TrueStory Entertainment)

Bris left some music behind when he died in 2020, but it took almost a year to shape these recordings into a proper CD. The label CEO Mac J (a fine artist himself) could easily capitalize on his friend’s death, stacking Tricky Dance Moves with features from the artists Bris never would have worked with. Yet the album was prepared with the utmost care, not giving an ugly Frankenstein monster feel. Bris’s references to his possible early death are scattered throughout the whole tape: “Heard they wanna pop Bris cause they mad I’m poppin.” Almost every song could be easily turned into a prophetic tale (a cheap move one wants to avoid at all costs). Nonetheless, something is missing here. Or maybe it is just an image of death that disturbs the whole picture, making us realize that this is the last we’d hear from Bris.

Ray Garraty

 Dreamwell — Modern Grotesque (self-released)

Modern Grotesque by Dreamwell

I recently read an interview with Providence’s Dreamwell breaking down in almost excruciating detail the influences that led to the quintet’s sophomore full-length Modern Grotesque. I kept scrolling past Daughters and Deftones and Deafheaven and increasingly disconnected influences like The Mountain Goats and Nina Simone. I went back to the top and looked again. I typed Ctrl+F and put in “Thursday.” Nothing. This is preposterous. I may not be in the post-hardcore trenches the way I once was, but even I’d know a good Full Collapse homage if it swung a mic right into my face the way this one did; hell, just listen to “The Lost Ballad of Dominic Anneghi” and tell me singer Keziah Staska doesn’t know every single word of “Paris in Flames.” That may not look like flattery on a first read, but too often, bands striding the emo/pop divide have chased the latter into sub-Taking Back Sunday oblivion; what Thursday did was much harder, and Dreamwell has ably taken up the torch here. That they did it unintentionally is a curious, bewildering footnote.

Patrick Masterson

  Paul Dunmall / Matthew Shipp / Joe Morris / Gerald Cleaver — The Bright Awakening (Rogue Art)

It’s a bit perplexing that reeds player Paul Dunmall hasn’t spent more time playing with American musicians. He’s firmly situated within the English improvisation community, where he’s perhaps best known for his longer tenure with the quartet Mujician, and his ability to double on bagpipes has allowed him to establish links between improvised and folk music. But

his jazz-rooted approach makes him a natural to work in settings such as this one. When Dunmall toted his tenor to the Vision Festival in 2012 (even then, it could be costly to lug multiple horns on a plane), he found three sympatico partners in Fest regulars pianist Matthew Shipp, double bassist Joe Morris and drummer Gerald Cleaver. They all hit the ground running, generating a barrage of pulsing, roiling sound for over 20 minutes before the piano and drums peel off, leaving Morris to sustain momentum alone. Dunmall’s gruff, spiraling lines find common cause with each of his fellows, and the gradual addition and subtraction of players from that point makes it easier to hear the exchange of ideas, which often seem to take place between dyads operating within the larger flow.

Bill Meyer 

 Editrix — Tell Me I’m Bad (Exploding in Sound)

Tell Me I'm Bad by Editrix

Wendy Eisenberg’s rock band is like her solo output in that it snarls delicate, self-aware, mini-short stories in complex tangles of guitar, hemming in high, sing-song-y verses with riffs and licks of daunting difficulty. The main differences are speed, volume and aggression (i.e. it rocks.) and a certain communal energy. That’s down to two collaborators who can more than keep up, Josh Daniel on surging, rattling, break-it-all-down percussion and Steve Cameron, equally anarchic and fast on bass. The title track is an all-out rager, thrusting jagged arena riffs of guitar and bass forward, then clearing space for off-kilter verses and time-shifting, irregular instrumental interplay. “Chelsea” follows a similar chaotic pattern, setting up a teeth-shaking cadence of rock instruments, with Eisenberg keening over the top of it. “I know, perfectly well, that we’re not safe, safe from the men in power,” she croons, engaged in the knotting difficulties of the world as we know it, but winning.

Jennifer Kelly

Elephant Micah — Vague Tidings (Western Vinyl)

Vague Tidings by Elephant Micah

The new Elephant Micah album, the follow-up to 2018’s excellent Genericana, has an apposite title. Vague Tidings conveys an atmosphere of feeling conscious of something carried on the wind, a story passed on that may have shifted through various iterations, leaving only a sense of its original meaning. All that can be sure is that this is sad, sober music, unafraid to brace against the chill of mortality and speak of all that is felt. The instruments — guitar, piano, percussion, violin and woodwinds — move around Joseph O’Connell’s voice in stiff yet graceful arcs, distanced by an unspoken etiquette. Repetitive melodic figures, stark yet steady, gradually accumulate weight as they roll along like tumbleweeds. It’s a crisp, forlorn country-blues, in no hurry to get nowhere, carrying ancient wisdom that seems to acknowledge the empty resonance of its own import.

Tim Clarke

 Fraufraulein — Solum (Notice Recordings)

Fraufraulein’s music is immersive. Anne Guthrie and Billy Gomberg beam themselves, and us along with them, Quantum Leap-style directly into multiple environments in medias res. Through the clever employment of field recordings, they transport us to a hurricane-addled beach, performing a voice/piano duet as driftwood missiles careen through the air. In another “episode,” the manipulation of small objects conjures up the intimacy of a water garden filled with windchimes. Partners in both life and art, Guthrie and Gomberg are also consummate solo artists. He is a master of spike-textured drones, while she explores the intimate properties of physical entities. Like a child tends to resemble one parent while borrowing subtle traits from the other, Solum identifies more with Guthrie’s electroacoustic tendencies than it does with Gomberg’s electronics. This is in stark contrast to 2015’s Extinguishment, which felt a little more balanced between those two modes. Both approaches work, yet Solum feels more meticulously crafted and nuanced. Careful listening unveils multiple subtle tones and textures, and each piece is an adventure for the ears.

Bryon Hayes

 Gerrit Hatcher / Rob Magill / Patrick Shiroishi — Triplet Fawns (Kettle Hole)

Triplet Fawns by Gerrit Hatcher / Rob Magill / Patrick Shiroishi

The album’s title implies a crew you wouldn’t want on your yard; while those adolescent ungulate appetites do a number on your bushes, the hooves are hacking up your grass. But if they knocked on your door, saxophone cases in their respective hands, you could do worse than invite them around the back for some blowing. Hatcher, Magill and Shiroishi present with sufficient lung power to be heard fine without the reflective assistance of walls, even when they aren’t making like Sonore (that was Gustafsson, Vandermark, and Brötzmann, about a dozen years back). This album, which was released in a micro-edition of 100 CD-Rs on Hatcher’s Kettle Hole imprint, builds gradually from restrained melancholy to pointillistic jousting to a climactic blow-out, and the assured development of each piece suggests that each player was listening not only to what each of the others was doing, but where the music was headed.

Bill Meyer

A.Karperyd — GND (Novoton)

GND by A.Karperyd

On his second solo release, GND, Swedish artist Andreas Karperyd broodingly ruminates on snatches of musical ideas that have been percolating in his consciousness over extended periods. Anyone familiar with his 2015 debut, Woodwork, will find these 55 minutes similarly immersive, as Karperyd manipulates live instruments such as piano and strings into shimmering, alien tapestries. Opener “The Well-Defined Rules of Certainty” appears to take Fennesz’s Venice as its blueprint, issuing forth cascading, percolating tones that tickle the ears. “The Desire to Invoke Balance with Our Eyes Closed” and “Failures and Small Observations” have a Satie-esque elegance to their piano lines, albeit refracted via a hall of mirrors. The 12-minute “Reminiscence of Tar” sounds like a slow-motion pan across the hulking mass of a shadowy space station. And closing track “Mummification of an Empire” slowly fries its piano in static, then unfurls wistful melodica and throbbing synth across the wreckage.

Tim Clarke

  Kiwi Jr. — Cooler Returns (Subpop)

Cooler Returns by Kiwi jr

Kiwi Jr.’s brash, brainy indie pop punk vibrates with nervy energy, like the first Feelies album or Violent Femmes’ 1983 debut or that one great S-T from the Soft Pack. Those are all opening salvos for their respective bands, but this one is a second outing, suffering not a bit from sophomore slackening. Instead, Cooler Returns tightens up everything that was already stinging on the Toronto band’s debut and adds a giddy careening glee. An oddball thread of Robin Hood-ness runs through the disc, with Sherwood forest getting a nod in the title track and “Maid Marian’s Toast” tipping the love interest, but these songs are anything but archaic. “Undecided Voters,” the single jangles harder than anything I’ve heard since Woolen Men, slyly upending creative pretensions in a verse that goes: “You take a photo of the CN tower/you take another of the Honest Ed sign/Well, I take photos of your photos/and they really move people.” Has it been done before? Maybe. Does it move us. Yes indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

 Kool John — Get Rich, Die $moppin ($moplife Entertainment)

A year ago, Kool John was shot six times. Yet you wouldn’t know about it from the general mood of Get Rich, Die $moppin, his first tape since then. He does name one song “6 Shots” and explicitly mentions the shooting accident a few times on other songs, but his bouncy music says he wasn’t hurt bad after all. The beats perfectly match the rhymes, playfully ignorant and ignorantly playful. Kool John still doesn’t mix with broke people, doesn’t return calls if it’s not about money and “doesn’t get stressed out.” Instead, he gets high. His new tape is nothing groundbreaking, even though he’s pretending that is: “If I had no legs I’d still be outstanding.”

Ray Garraty

Nick Mazzarella / Quin Kirchner — See or Seem: Live at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival (Out Of Your Head)

See or Seem: Live at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival by Nick Mazzarella / Quin Kirchner

 Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this recording is that the titular festival happened at all. While most festivals either canceled or went on line, Chicago’s Hyde Park Jazz Festival dealt with COVID by spreading out. Instead of big stages and indoor shows, last September it staged little pop-up events on sidewalks and in parks. So, if the sound of See or Seem feels a bit diffuse, it’s because it was recorded with a device propped in front of two guys playing on a grassy median. There are moments when the buzz of bugs rises up for a second behind Nick Mazzarella’s darting alto sax and Quin Kirchner’s brisk, mercurial beats. But the thrill of actually playing in front of some people (or actually being surrounded by them; when there’s no stage and social distancing is in effect, it makes sense to walk slow circles around the performers) infuses this music, extracting an extra ounce of joyousness from Mazzarella’s free, boppish lines, and adding a restlessness charge to the drumming, as though Kirchner really wanted to squeeze as much music as possible into this 31-minute set. This release is part of Out Of Your Head Records’ Untamed series of download-only albums recorded under less than pristine conditions. A portion of each title’s income is directed to a charity of the artists’ choice; the duo selected St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.

Bill Meyer

 Dean McPhee — Witch’s Ladder (Hood Faire)

Witch's Ladder by Dean McPhee

Finger-picked melodies cut through haunted landscapes of echo and hum on this fourth LP from the British guitarist Dean McPhee. Track titles like “The Alchemist” and “Witch’s Ladder” evoke the supernatural, as does the spectral ambient tone, reminiscent of Chuck Johnson’s recent Cinder Grove or Mark Nelson’s last Pan•American album. Yet while an e-bow traces ghostly chills through “The Alder Tree,” there’s also a grounding in lovely, well-rooted folk forms; it’s like seeing a familiar landscape in moonlight, well-known landmarks suddenly turned unearthly and strange. The long closing title track has an introspective air. Pensive, jazz-infused runs flower into bright bursts of notes, not quite blues, not quite folk, not quite jazz, not quite anything but gorgeous.

Jennifer Kelly

 Moontype — Bodies of Water (Born Yesterday)

Bodies of Water by Moontype

Margaret McCarthy’s voice swims across your headphones like being on an innertube drifting languidly downstream. Typically, saying someone’s vocals are like water indicates a degree of timidity or laziness, obscured in reverb or simply buried by the mix, but on Moontype’s debut LP, it’s a compliment: McCarthy floats across the different styles of music she makes with guitarist Ben Cruz and drummer Emerson Hunton. You notice it not just because she often sings of water or because it’s right there in the title, but also because the Chicago trio hasn’t settled on any particular style yet — just listen to the three-song stretch at the heart of the record where achingly beautiful alt-country ballad “3 Weeks” leads into “When You Say Yes,” a sub-three-minute power-pop number Weezer ought to be jealous of, followed immediately by crunching alt-rock swoon and first single “Ferry.” All the while, McCarthy lets her melodies drift to the will of the songs. I’m reminded of recent efforts from Great Grandpa, Squirrel Flower and Lucy Dacus, but the brief, jazzy curveball of “Alpha” is a peek into whole other possibilities. Bodies of Water is a fine record, but perhaps its most exciting aspect is how much ground you can see Moontype has already conquered. One can’t help but wonder what sonic worlds awash in water await.

Patrick Masterson   

 Rob Noyes / Joseph Allred — Avoidance Language (Feeding Tube)

Avoidance Language by Rob Noyes and Joseph Allred

The 12-string guitar can emit such a prodigious amount of sound, and there are two of them on Avoidance Language. If Joseph Allred and Rob Noyes had planned things out in order to avoid canceling each other out, they might never have picked their instruments up, so they just started playing and listening. The result is not so much a summing of two broad spectrums of sound, but an instinctual blending of similar textures that ends up sounding significantly different from what either musician does on their own. Even when Allred switches to harmonium or banjo, as he does on the album’s two shorter tracks, the music rushes in torrential fashion. Their collaboration is so compatible that it often seems more like a recital for one big stringed thing played by one four-handed musician than a doubled instrumental duet.

Bill Meyer

NRCSSSST — S-T (Slimstyle)

NRCSSST by NRCSSST

There’s no “I” in NRCSSSST but there’s plenty of swagger. The Atlanta-based synth pop band, formed around Coathangers drummer and singer Stephanie Luke and Dropsonic’s Dan Dixon, taunts and teases in its opening salvo “All I Ever Wanted.” Luke rasps appealingly atop Spoon-style piano banging, and big shout along choruses erupt from sudden flares of synths. It’s all hedonism, but done with conviction. You haven’t heard a big rock song kick up this much fun in ages. “Love Suicide” bangs just as hard, its bass line muttering like a crazy person, unstable and ready to explode (and yet it doesn’t, it maintains its restraint even when the rest of the cut goes deliriously off the rails). Dixon can really sing, too, holding the long vibrating notes that lift these prickly jams into anthemry. It’s been a while since a band reminded me of INXS and U2 without sucking, but here we are. Sometimes guilty pleasures are just pleasures.

Jennifer Kelly

 Zeena Parkins / Mette Rasmussen /Ryan Sawyer — Glass Triangle (Relative Pitch)

Glass Triangle by Zeena Parkins, Mette Rasmussen, Ryan Sawyer

Harpist Zeena Parkins and Ryan Sawyer have a long-standing partnership in the trio substitutes Moss Garden, a chamber improv ensemble with pianist Ryan Ross. But swapping in Danish alto saxophonist Mette Rasmussen brings about a change, not just in instrumentation, but attitude. She plays free jazz like a punk, impatient and aggressive, and Parkins and Sawyer are up for the challenge. This music often plays out like a battle between two titans, one blowing and the other pummeling, while Parkins seeks to liquify the ground upon which they stand. She sticks exclusively to an electric harp whose effects-laden tone is disorientingly alien, blinking beacon-like one moment, low as a backhoe engage in earth removal the next. The combination of new and old relationships promotes a combination of instability and trust that yields splendid results.

Bill Meyer

 claire rousay — A Softer Focus (American Dreams)

a softer focus by claire rousay

In film, soft focus is a technique of contrast reduction that lends a scene a dreamlike quality. With A Softer Focus, claire rousay imbues her already intimate compositions with a noctilucent aura. She has created a dreamworld with sound. One glimpse at the glowing flowers that grace the cover art created by visual artist Dani Toral, with whom rousay closely collaborated on this release, and the illusory nature of the record is revealed. The reds, oranges, blues and purples of deep twilight are reflected in both the textures rousay weaves into her soundscapes and the visual themes that Toral conjures. Violin, cello, piano and synth are the musical origins of this warmth, which rousay wraps around environments crafted from the sounds of everyday life. She recorded herself moving about her apartment, visiting a farmer’s market, observing kids playing and just existing. These field recordings of the mundane, when coupled with the radiance of the musical elements, are magical. Snatches of conversation become incantations; auto-tuned vocals are the whisperings of spirits; fireworks explode into brilliant shards of crystal. With A Softer Focus, rousay takes a glimpse into the beauty of the everyday, showing us just how precious our most humdrum moments can be.

Bryon Hayes

Axel Rulay x Verbo Flow — Si Es Trucho Es Trucho / Axel Rulay (La Granja)

Axel Rulay must be kicking himself right now. With more than three million plays on the original version and more than five million on the remix that adds verses from Farruko and El Alfa into the fray, the Dominican is cruising into our second pandemic summer with an unbeatable poolside anthem — and to think, after years of clawing his way up through the industry dregs, working to get his name out there, all he had to do was make himself the chorus over Venezuelan producer Manybeat’s 2019 tropical house trip “El Tiempo.” Presto: Massive visibility in the Spanish-speaking world and a song that ought to transcend any linguistic barriers unlocked even if the best I can manage is a title that translates as “If It’s Trout It’s Trout.” Expect that long-desired Daddy Yankee collabo to follow any day now.

Patrick Masterson

  Rx Nephew — Listen Here Are You Here to Hear Me (NewBreedTrapper)

Rochester rapper Rx Nephew trailed brother-turned-archrival-turned-back Rx Papi’s coming out party 100 Miles and Walk’in by just a few weeks with the 53-minute all-in proposition Listen Here Are You Here to Hear Me. Unlike Papi’s Max B-ish smoothness, Nephew is all rough n’ tumble through these 17 tracks, provocative pump action with narrative bursts of violence and street hustling delivered with a verve most akin to DaBaby or, in some of his more elastic enunciations, peak Ludacris. A recent Creative Hustle interview provides some insight: The first time he went into the booth, “I didn’t write anything. I just started talking about selling crack and robbing people.” The stories haven’t stopped since. If he can keep putting out music as engaging as Listen Here…, Rx Nephew is destined for more than just the margins; until then, we have one of the year’s densest rap records to hold the line.

Patrick Masterson

 Nick Schofield — Glass Gallery (Backward Music)

Glass Gallery by Nick Schofield

Nick Schoefield, out of Montreal, composed these 13 tracks entirely on a vintage Prophet 600, the first synthesizer to designed to employ the then-new MIDI standard established by the instrument’s inventor Dave Smith and Roland’s Ikutaru Kakahashi. The instrument has a lovely, crystalline quality, floating effortless arpeggios through vaulting sonic spaces. Though clearly synthesized, these pieces of music resonate in serene and peaceful ways, evoking light, water, air and contemplation with a simplicity that evokes Japan. “Water Court” drips notes of startling purity into deep pools of tone-washed whoosh and hum. “Snow Blue Square” flutters an oboe-like melody over eddying gusts of keyboard motifs. The pieces fit together with calm precision, leading from one beautiful space to the next like a stroll through a museum.

Jennifer Kelly

  Archie Shepp — Blasé And Yasmina Revisited (Ezz-thetics)

The Ezz-thetics campaign to keep the best of mid-20th century free jazz on CD shelves (yes, CD, not streaming or LP) breaches the walls of the BYG catalog with a disc that issues one and a half albums from Archie Shepp’s busy week in August 1969. Blasé is a stand-out for the participation of singer Jeanne Lee, whose indomitable and flexible delivery as equal to the demands of material that’s be turns pungently earthy and steeped in antiquity. But the rest of the band, which includes Philly Joe Jones, Dave Burrell, some harmonica players, and a couple members of the Art Ensemble, is also more than equal to the task of filtering the blues and Ellingtonia through the gestures of the then-contemporary avant-garde. “Yasmina,” which originally occupied one side of another LP, makes sense here as an extension of the raw, rippling “Touareg,” the last tune on Blasé, into exultantly African territory.

Bill Meyer

 Juanita Stein — Snapshot (Handwritten)

Juanita Stein was the cool, serene, Mazzy Star-evoking vocal presence in the Aussie dream-gaze outfit Howling Bells, and she plays more or less the same role on her third solo album. Yet she is also the source of mayhem here, kicking up an angst of guitar-freaked turmoil on “1,2,3,4,5,6” then soothing it away with singing, hanging long threads of feedback from the thump-thump-thumping blues-rock architecture of “L.O.T.F.” and crooning dulcetly, but with a little yip, in the trance-y title track. This latter cut reflects on the death of her father, a kindred soul who wrote a couple of Howling Bells songs for her and passed away recently. It distills a palpable ache into pure, distanced poetry, finding a cool, dispassionate way to consider the mysteries of human loss.

Jennifer Kelly

 The Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums — Wabi Sabi (Sowiesound)

Wabi Sabi by Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums

Over its 30 years together, the Tiptons Sax Quartet has done less to hone its sound and more to figure out how many styles to embrace. The group (typically a soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone sax joined by percussion and even including some vocals) can dig into trad jazz but sounds more at home in exploration, adapting world music or other traditional American styles. The title of their latest album, Wabi Sabi refers to the Japanese concept of finding beauty in and accepting imperfection. The Tiptons, despite that sentiment, don't approach their play with a sloppy sound; in fact, they're as tight as ever. The understanding of impermanence and imperfection does help contextualize their risk-taking. When they turn to odd yodeling on “Moadl Joadl,” they find joy in an odd vocal moment that highlights expression and discovery over formal rigor. When they tap in New Orleans energy for “Jouissance,” we can connect the dots between parades and funerals, celebrating all the while. The whole album serves as a tour of styles and moods, always with an energetic potency. If it's more of the same from the Tiptons, that just means continuance of difference.

Justin Cober-Lake

[have-each-others-six]

time will tell, she’ll see us through (pt. one)

hey, it’s been a while, huh?

welcome to my first fic in like six months! this is another multichap, probably around six parts- let me know how often you’d like parts to come out. right now i’m thinking daily, but i don’t know, so if you have an opinion let me know in the replies!

okay, that’s enough of me talking. enjoy cathy angst!

tw: death, blood, beheading later in the chapter

***

“...yf ye be lerned in that scyence that ys possyble ye may of one word make a whole sentence, and yet nott at all tymes arryve at the true meanyng of the writer, as yt appyrs by thys your exposycyon apon my wrytyng.”

-Catherine Parr, in a letter to Thomas Seymour just before her marriage to Henry VIII

***

When Catherine Parr first notices she’s lost her manuscript, it’s four in the morning and she’s the only one awake.

She’s biting on her lip as she finishes the last page, blue pen smearing under her hand as her scrawling handwriting marches crookedly across the paper. This story- the story of the queens as separate from Henry, what they actually did with their lives, who they really were, their story- is the culmination of literal centuries’ worth of work.

If she doesn’t write this down, then they’ll be forgotten, lost to the wastes of time as simpering mistresses who were merely accessories to Henry’s reign.

The show is good, but the show is temporary, the legacy of that is temporary, and this manuscript is something physical that she can hold in her hands.

The last line is scribbled on the cheap notebook paper she’d had to use for the last page. It’s almost anticlimactic, how fast it is, and Cathy leans back in disbelief, the pen hanging limply in her cramping fingers.

“It’s done,” she whispers aloud, and her earbuds are still playing the instrumental hardcore rock she listens to while working, and the street outside is still crowded with London traffic, and Anna is still snoring down the hall.

Everything is exactly the same as it was a few minutes ago, except everything is completely different, shifted into a sharper focus through a new lens.

She’d started writing the last page at rehearsal, ripping a page from the awfully torn-up notebook that tech used to read lighting cues because her full manuscript was still in the greenroom, scribbling down line after line of her sudden idea as the other girls did vocal warm-ups around her.  

“What page is this, five thousand?”Anna had joked, sitting down next to her onstage and nudging her with her shoulder, looking down at the slanted scrawl on the ruled lines.

“It certainly feels like it,” Catherine had replied absentmindedly, completely focused on the page in front of her as Anne did handsprings onstage in beat with the warm-up tongue twister, and Anna had left and let her be, knowing how she needed to get her ideas down if she was going to focus on the show.

What she told Anna wasn’t just placating. It had felt like it, honestly. This has been her whole life for… well, her whole life. And now it’s four in the morning, and she’s listening to heavy metal music, and it’s done.

She reaches over to where the rest of her manuscript sits on her desk, her eyes locked with pride on the last line of the page, but her hand lands on an empty table.

A pit yawns open in her stomach. No, no, no. It has to be there. It’s always there. She looks up, hoping against hope that her hands are deceiving her, but her eyes confirm it. Her manuscript- her life’s work- is gone.

Catherine gets to her feet quickly, going to her desk drawer and ripping it open, but it’s not there either. It’s not on her bookshelf, or on her bedcovers, or under her dresser- it’s like it’s disappeared. 

She finds the papers in her desk again and spreads them out on the ground, kneeling in the center of the chaos and rifling through them frantically. Half-finished short stories and spindly outlines of landscapes flash past, but her thick stack of paper that she’d tied together with an old piece of ribbon remains missing.

She tosses aside cards and songs and tirades written in French, but it becomes clear that the manuscript isn’t in her room, and she sinks back on her heels. There are tears on her face and panic in her heart, and her mind races feverishly as she tries to think of anywhere else it could be. She’s only dimly aware of her own foggy exhaustion.

As she digs through the papers on her floor, the words and pictures on the pages start to blur together in her hysteria, and it’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone-

“Cathy?”

The voice is tired and soft, and when Catherine looks up she sees Aragon standing there.

“Everyone’s going to wonder where you are when they get up,” Cathy points out in a quiet voice in lieu of a greeting, her cadence trembling slightly. Aragon usually gets up before everyone else and makes them breakfast.

“They won’t wake up for another two hours,” Aragon replies calmly, picking her way carefully through the scattered piles of paper to get to Catherine, a shivering, unstable island in the sea of words. “What happened?”

“My manuscript is gone,” Catherine whispers lowly, grief thick in her throat, and Aragon shifts closer to avoid falling on any of the papers, her eyebrows knitting together. 

“What?” she asks quietly, surprised. “I thought it was-”

“It was everything,” Cathy interjects softly. “It was all of my memories, and everything about our lives, and everything about- about Mary that I could piece together,” she says, her voice breaking on the name of her tiny daughter. “It was everything,” she repeats.

“Don’t use the past tense yet,” Aragon says gently. “It can still be everything. We’ll find it, I promise.”

“How can you promise?” Catherine asks, shaking her head. “How do you know?”

Aragon shrugs and gives her a gentle smile. “I don’t. I believe, though, which is almost as good.”

“Your confidence is incredibly reassuring,” Catherine grumbles, running a hand over her face to try and bring herself into a rational frame of mind, attempting to organize her papers back into some sort of categorized piles. “Where could it even have gone?”

“Did you take it anywhere recently?” her godmother asks, gathering up a sheaf of stories in her arms and sorting them into a desk drawer.

Cathy nods quickly, snapping her fingers in realization. “Yeah! Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, I took it to the theater last night, and then before that to the coffee shop. But I know I took it back home,” she says, the sudden energy leaving her body, certain of her memory of placing it in her bag.

“Well, it’s not here, so we may as well try it,” Aragon replies with a shrug. “However, I’m going to suggest that you try and get just a little bit of sleep. I know that you don’t want to,” she says, holding up her hand to interrupt Catherine’s protests, “but I think your memory might be more reliable if you sleep for a while. I’ll make some breakfast for when you wake up, and then I’ll drive you to the theater. Deal?”

Catherine sighs. “Fine,” she mumbles, trying to hide her yawn, but Aragon notices it and takes her to her bed, tucking her in and fluffing the pillow.

“Sleep, darling. I’ll wake you up when breakfast is ready,” she says gently, pressing a soft kiss into Cathy’s hair. “You’ll feel better. I promise.”

Grumbling, Catherine pulls the comforter a little tighter around herself for security and buries her face in her pillow, her mind racing as she thinks about where her manuscript could possibly be and if it’s been stolen, or ripped, or if pages are missing-

Eventually, her anxiety sputters out like a bad engine, the panicked thoughts appearing farther and farther apart, and she falls into a fitful sleep. When she’s scared, her nightmares are always more vivid, and today is no exception.

She’s standing in a castle.

It’s always a castle.

Sometimes, Henry is there, screaming at her as his old, wrinkled face turns purple with rage. Sometimes, it’s Mary, her little girl, wandering through the hallways and calling desperately for her mama.

And sometimes it’s just Cathy, all alone in the dark.

Tonight, though, she’s sitting in a dining hall, the other queens seated in ornate chairs along the table. Their faces are all lit by the candles that are dripping wax on the tablecloth, their features garish and overdrawn in the too-deep light.

Cathy is having a conversation with Katherine, realizing that they’re speaking in the ancient English of their old lives with its heavier vowels and thicker consonants, but she’s distracted from this thought when she feels a shiver scrabble its way up her spine for some reason as she glances around the room. The hearth crackles as it should, the heavy drapes let in the watery light from outside, and every so often Anne will laugh and the sound will carry over to where Catherine is sitting.

It reminds of her days as a royal with Henry, but she and these women were never all in the same room together in their old lives, kept apart by circumstances beyond their control.

She’s lost in thought about the past, her conversation with Kit having tapered off, when she hears a scream that sends an awful chill down her spine.

It’s Aragon.

Her godmother’s body crumples unnaturally, the expression on her face contorting into one of anguish, and suddenly Catherine knows that she’s watching her die. A half-scream gurgles out of Aragon’s throat as Cathy tries to get up from her chair, but for some reason she can’t move, a force much greater than she can oppose keeping her where she sits. 

No one else is reacting, even as blood dribbles awfully out of the side of Aragon’s mouth and she twitches and jerks uncontrollably, a startling juxtaposition in the glamour of the austere hall. 

Cathy needs to wake up, she has to wake up, she can’t just sit here trapped and watch Aragon die, but when she closes her eyes tightly and opens them again she’s still sitting at the head of the table, her heart pounding in her chest.

She falls still after a few minutes, and Catherine’s unable to contain her scream anymore. “Is anyone going to help her?” she shrieks, gesturing at Aragon’s unmoving form, panic settling horribly in her chest as all of the other girls just tilt their heads and look at her curiously.

“Who?” Anne asks her in the old tongue, somehow sounding like both her modern and first self at once, furrowing her brow in courteous confusion with a pleasant smile, but the typical wicked spark of mischief in her eye is absent, heightening Catherine’s anxiety. She processes the question a little after it’s asked, and dread seeps into her mind once she realizes what it means.

“Catherine of Aragon,” Cathy says slowly. “Henry’s… Henry’s first wife. Henry divorced her for you.”

“The name doesn’t ring a bell,” Anne says with a polite shrug, the phrase sounding anachronistic in her mouth. “I haven’t a clue who you’re talking about.”

“Anne, come on,” Cathy pleads desperately. “You can’t forget her, she’s a part of your life- of all of our lives.”

“I don’t remember any Catherine of Aragon,” Anne replies, voice shifting into a firmer tone. “I apologize, but I really don’t.”

“She’s right there, for God’s sake!” Catherine shouts, finally able to get to her feet, and she gestures at the body, oh God, Aragon’s body, with her eyes rolled back into her head and blood dripping grotesquely from the corner of her half-ajar mouth, and Anne looks offended at her outburst. 

“You don’t speak to a lady in that manner,” she says coolly. “You of all people should-”

She’s building towards an argument, and Catherine starts to feel some sense of relief as Anne’s familiar temper clearly starts to rise within her, but then a sharp, clean line draws itself across her neck and her head lands on the floor.

Cathy screams again, Anne’s blood coating her hands, and no one reacts, continuing to make respectful conversation and discuss benign things like hunting grounds and the weather.

“She- she-” Catherine sputters, unable to form a full thought in her terror, because Anne’s body is still slumped in the chair while her head is on the ground, dark eyes reflecting the light of the fire.

“What, dear?” Jane asks, looking at her with concern. 

“Anne is dead! Can’t you… can’t you see it?” Cathy asks desperately, voice fractured with fear, and Anne’s blood spreads through the carpet, soaking Cathy’s shoes.

“Who’s Anne?” Jane replies, looking thoroughly puzzled. “I don’t think I’ve ever known an Anne. Perhaps I had a maid named Anne once?”

“Anne Boleyn!” Cathy screams. “She was beheaded on charges of adultery!”

“There’s no need to scream, love,” Jane says gently. “I don’t think any of us ever knew this Anne girl, but we’re sorry for your loss, we truly are,” she tells her, and the other two queens nod sympathetically.

“You really don’t remember her?” Cathy asks softly, fearfully, but before they can respond Jane lets out a guttural cry, back arched in devastating pain, and then falls completely silent, her eyelids twitching unnaturally.

“No, I don’t think we do,” Anna replies with a genial smile, looking as if she can’t hear the low groan that sounds from Jane’s chest, her breath getting raspier with every second that passes. “Katherine, have you ever heard of an Anne Boleyn?”

Kit shakes her head, her own cousin’s name seemingly unfamiliar to her as Jane’s body begins convulsing with fever across the table. “Sorry, Cath,” she says apologetically. “We really just don’t know who you’re talking about.”

Jane seizes, and Catherine rushes to her side and tries to keep her still but she’s beyond help, her pulse stalling under Catherine’s fingertips and her shuddering breaths shivering into silence.

“No…” Cathy whispers, her eyes filling with tears. “No, no, come on, Jane, come on.”

She vaguely registers Katherine asking who Jane is, but she can’t focus on that or her heartbreak will spill over and she won’t be able to save the rest of them.

“We need to make sure Anna’s all right,” she says urgently, standing up quickly and abandoning Jane’s body, but when she turns around Katherine is looking at her quizzically and Anna’s body is limp where she sits.

Catherine almost doesn’t bother to check, knowing what she’ll find, but she knows her friend deserves a proper send-off so she walks over anyway, her feet feeling like they’re made of lead.

Anna is dead, her hands cold and hanging off the arms of the chair- Cathy’s liveliest friend is still and silent, the light stolen from her eyes, and Cathy doesn’t even have enough space to process the grief that’s coming in waves from every death she’s witnessing.

Cathy knows what’s coming next. She whips around and rushes over to Katherine, and she feels her hand graze against a corpse and she’s definitely running over patches of blood-stained carpet, but she can’t stop. She needs to make it to her before whatever this ungodly curse is takes her too.

“What’s going on?” Katherine asks, completely confused, and Catherine just pulls her close, tucking the girl’s head under her chin in a final attempt to protect her.

“Please, God, don’t take this child,” she whispers. “Please.”

Her pleas are in vain, however, and suddenly a huge gash rips its way across Katherine’s neck. The girl screams in agony, her body curling against Cathy’s, and before she can comfort her or try and delay the inevitable, another cut slices across her neck and her head falls off onto the floor.

Catherine jerks away from the now-headless body, her dress dripping with blood, and she gets to her feet slowly, swaying where she stands.

She goes to Aragon’s body and kneels in front of her godmother.

There’s a Latin prayer of mourning that they would say together on the days that the absence of their children felt like it was a physical weight on their shoulders, an attempt to try and soothe the grieving ache for their babies that never leaves.

This grief is fresh, not so much an ache as a stabbing, violent pain, but she begins to say the prayer anyway because Aragon deserves a proper farewell.

“Re… requiem æternam d-dona ei, Domine et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace.” She swallows, and then says the English. “Eternal rest… eternal rest grant unto her, Lord, a-and let per… perpetual light shine upon her. May- may she rest in peace. Amen.”

She walks to the bodies of the rest of her friends- her family- and mumbles blessings for their souls to travel safely through whatever afterlife they believe in. It’s nearly impossible, to look at these people who had been so alive and bright and true and see them broken and glassy-eyed and tinged gray, but she can’t leave them without saying goodbye.

As she says her sort-of prayers, the faces of the bodies begin to become strange in her mind- unfamiliar. When she gets to Jane, she has to think for a moment before she can remember the woman’s name, and another moment before she can remember her connection to her.

Dread shoots through her, ice-cold and immobilizing, as she realizes what’s happening.

She’s forgetting.

Just like Anne, just like Jane, just like all of them did as Cathy watched them die one by one. She’s going to forget them. 

Lost to the wastes of time.

She needs to remember all of it, every little thing about them, she needs to hold six people’s history inside of her instead of just one, because if she doesn’t then they’ll all just disappear and she doesn’t know how to live without these girls.

That’s why the manuscript is so important, if she’s being honest with herself. She wants to tell their story so she can’t forget them, so that no matter what happens there’s a tangible record of their lives.

Focusing hard on her memories, she struggles to hold onto them, but it’s like cupping water in her hands, the past slipping away into some unreachable part of her mind, and she feels tears gathering in her eyes but by the time they fall she can’t remember why she’s crying.

She’s terrified- she doesn’t know who these bodies are, surrounding her, and she feels like she should remember, she feels like she has to remember, but she can’t, and when she tries to run she trips over someone’s long-cold arm, and she’s falling, falling, falling-

Her eyes fly open.

[yourkimjaejin]

Beyond Live - NCT: Resonace [Global Wave]

This post has been a long time coming but so much happened during this concert!

Sometimes I can’t believe I began to stan NCT just this year when it feels like five years already. I just wanna take the chance to thank the boys for their hard work during the holiday. For me, NCT really brightened up my holiday season so thank you

Now that the sappy stuff is over, Enjoy the post AGzen’s ~ Love, Author Izzy

First off let me say, Moxy and Juno were almost about to box SM’s management for their setlist. SM’s original list for AG had SLAP, WTTJ and Breakout. Moxy and Juno were not having it!!

“I thought we promised fans never before seen stages!! We want to perform more of the B-Sides fans never got to see. Unless you’re suddenly gonna announce that AG will be holding a Beyond Live, We’re gonna need this setlist to change, NOW!” ~ Juno

So the compromise the company came up with was this, Two b-sides chosen by fans and one title track that they girls decide on. 

NCT AG’s twitter put up a post asking AGzen’s for their favorite AG b-sides. From that, AG’s twitter put up another tweet. This time it was a poll. The top four AG b-sides were listed. The two songs with the highest votes would be the songs the girls would perform. 

The fans chose and the songs were Circle Game and Give It Up

The general consensus on why the fans chose those songs was they wanted to see the girls flex their vocal talents. AGzens knew that the had dance and rap in the bag. AG’s b-sides truly revealed how much vocal talent lies in AG 

AG, themselves, decided to perform Breakout as their title track song. The girls adore the song and figured it had been awhile since they last performed it

I’ll reveal more about the new performances when we get to their placement in the show itself but for now, let’s move ahead to showday!! ~ Author Izzy

When Taeyong and SM finally announced that he would take a break to heal, SM let Taeyong pick who would fill in for his parts at the Beyond Live

Moxy arrived with the rest of AG and Jisung. On the way there, Moxy got a text from Shotaro while they were on the way to the venue

Noona, when you get here, You need to check in with Channie....I think he’s freaking out a little...

As soon as they parked, Moxy ran inside to find Doyoung pointing her to an empty dressing room. Sungchan was walking in circles, frown lines looking permanently etched on his face

SC - I don’t think I can do this noona. I can’t take Taeyong’s place. What if the fans hate me for this!

M - *Pulls Sungchan down to sit next to her* Channie....You are not taking Taeyong’s place. You’re covering for him so he can finally get some rest and the fans know that. They are gonna be so proud you because I already am *Kisses his cheek*. And so is Taeyong. You are gonna do great, Channie!!!

Moxy hugs him tight causes a smile to bloom on his face

M - Now lets get in one more practice in before the pre-record. I wanna make sure that second verse is flawless ok?

SC - Ok, Noona.

Moxy watched Sungchan run over Boss choreo with Mark and Juno one last time. Sungchan visibly relaxing and finally starting to have fun. Juno kept an eye on her dongsaeng during the recording

AG had a run through of one of their performances after The Boss unit+ Sungchan finished their pre-record

All of the girls had sparkles in their hair and graphic eyeliner around their eyes for makeup. 

For the 90′s love performance, Hannah was once again rocking her ICONIC black outfit. This time her hair was in a ponytail, certain strands with crimped for volume. AGzens posted a ton of pictures of Hannah’s abs

“How did we not notice Hannah’s abs before!!!”

Aurora was looking every bit of the queen she is during the Work It performance. Her costume was a new short two piece dress with lace on the skirt. Aurora’s hair was down and curled on the ends. 

Aurora rocked her lines as usual. She got real sassy when her rap line came up. 

“Sass master Aurora reporting for duty!!”

During the first mnet, Haechan pointed out that technically this is AG’s first concert and asked Hannah and Aurora how they felt

H: I think we put a a lot of pressure on ourselves to put our best foot forward since this is the first time czennies will see us in a concert setting. 

A: Yeah, I while this is cool we really hope things will open up soon so we can have our own concert

The rest of the members began ‘ooo’ing at Aurora’s comment

Next Stage: Nectar

Hannah was the definition of do it like a dude in this performance. All of her fans were drooling over her.

The next stage was Give It Up by AG. The song has been rearranged to include Hannah. Hannah did a quick change into her costume while Juno, Moxy and Aurora started the stage

They actually performed from the backstage area to the main stage. By the time that got close to the stage doors, Hannah was finished changing. Hannah entered just as her part started. The girls were all wearing skinny jeans, cropped basketball jerseys with black t-shirts underneath and platform vans.

LORD HAVE MERCY!!! DID THESE GIRLS SING THEIR BUTTS OFF!!

MTM (Musical Theater Moxy) came out to play with her best friend Queen Juno. These two vocals were on another level. 

And don’t sleep on Aurora and Hannah, they held their parts down!

The members of AG were strutting like they were filming their own version of Strut by the Cheetah Girls.

And at the end they nailed their final note, harmonies on point and no loss of breath

“Ok I knew AG had pipes....but DAMN THEY HAVE PIPES!!!!”

“Why is literally everyone a main vocal in AG. It’s truly unfair...”

Once the girls finished, Aurora took off her basketball jersey and handed off to Juno. The three older AG members walked off the stage, leaving Aurora. The Dream members joined her. Jaemin handed off her leather jacket to put on for the Ridin’ performance

Next we have the Make A Wish performance........................WITH MOXY COVERING TAEYONG’S PART!!!!

Taeyong had picked her to cover his parts. SM wanted one of the guys members to do it but Taeyong stopped them

Taeyong: Moxy’s got this! Trust me. (And got this she did)

Moxy’s swag level on stage is normally around a 8 or 9. For this MAW performance she somehow turned it up to 15. Moxy went into this performance wanting to make Taeyong proud but also show him that he had nothing to worry about. That the 22 members of NCT could manage with out him

Moxy literally runs off stage to get ready for the All About You performance. Jaehyun tells the fans that Moxy isn’t doing this Mnet because she is getting ready for the next performance

During the All About You performance, If you were watching Mark or Moxy’s face cam, you would have seen the two of them upstairs on the bed messing with each other (That sentence sounds bad doesn’t it??? I promise it was clean fun ok?). 

At one point, Moxy was kneeling behind a seated mark, dancing and hold her camera out in front of them

After All About You, Moxy runs backstage again to change into her dress for Circle Game

After the Without You performance, Juno walked on the stage behind them towards the door Jaehyun used. When Juno appeared on the other side of the door, AG’s performance of Circle Game started. 

The home stage was lit with somber lighting, The girl were all wearing white dresses and were standing on the bottom level of the set, each in front of a microphone. 

The loud, boisterous voice from their last performance were replaced with soft and somber tones. The melodies and harmonies were beautiful. After the first chorus, the girls move the microphone stands out of the way

Once they get to the bridge the girls do some small choreography that they made up themselves an hour before the show started. 

When the girls finished Circle Game, Juno left through the door again to join Taeil, Renjun and Xiaojun for My Everything. 

After Dream performed Go and Deja Vu. You could see how happy Aurora was to perform with all the members of Dream. She even missed Mark messing with her hair and calling her mean mug. 

From there, AG performed Breakout. The stylists for this concert had to carefully plan the girls costumes. The stylist left the prison costumes a went with a more simple costume. Choosing clothes that still Incorporated the bright orange jumpsuits

Moxy’s costume was particularly soft because after Breakout was a performance of Touch for 127. Fans rejoice at the chance to see soft Moxy on stage again. Next is Hannah in her all denim outfit for Bad Alive. 

Lastly, 127 did a performance of Kick It where Moxy covered Taeyong verse two rap

During the fourth mnet, Aurora almost cried like Sungchan when she got her chance to talk to the fans. 

Aurora: AG has been a group for two years and we haven’t been able to tour or do a concert yet. So to be here, performing for the fan’s in front of us and across the world, words can’t describe to feeling. My mom.......S-she took time off of work.....*she sniffles, Hannah and Mark put an arm around her* to see me and my sisters perform live. Eomma, I hope I made you proud tonight. I love you and I’ll see you soon.

Juno joining in on the clownery of Mark’s beginning line from Resonance

Moxy, once again covered Taeyong’s part during the Maw section of Resonance. 

During the surprise live with the maknae line, Haechan was making fun of Moxy literally running around backstage to change costumes. Moxy made to attack him but Haechan ran off

AG revealing that their favorite stage tonight was Nectar!!(I mean whose favorite stage wasn’t Nectar.)

Juno, Moxy and Hannah all saying hello to Aurora’s mom during the surprise live. 

[autistic-reptile]

AUTISTIC PEOPLE: I need your opinions on a product idea!

I'm currently in a design/UX graduate program, and in my physical computing class we were talking about AI and robots and such, and I came up with this idea for a product for autistic people that I want to get opinions on??

this wouldn't necessarily be a school project (as it would take much longer than a quarter to even design fully) but it would be more like a passion project on the side.

full disclosure: I have NO idea if this would ever get past the point of simple sketches and designing (i.e. I don't know if I'll ever have the skills or resources to even attempt to prototype something like this, let alone make it a real product), but I want to see if there's interest in the concept.

THE IDEA:

a robot (with a camera) that sits on your desk or in your room, that you can program to recognize and respond to certain stims. the robot would use a mix of user-reported information and data collected from AI training/machine learning to be able to accurately recognize a user's unique stims (probably only vocal stims and motion-based stims). obviously, you would only record stims that you do when anxious or upset. when it detects one of these stims, it would ask the user something along the lines of "are you okay?" and the user could respond "yes" or "no" (either outloud, by touch, or by clapping/something else that would work well for nonverbal people that doesn't require the user to go touch the robot). if the user says they are not okay, then the robot can execute a variety of tasks (depending on what the user has said they want to happen - this would be VERY customizable). for example, maybe it could:

alert a parent or caretaker that the person is in a stressed state and/or needing assistance

talk through the stress with you by having you repeat a mantra, or go through breathing exercises

remind you to try to replace your stim with another stim (if this one is harmful)

play a song or some other auditory noise that calms you (or a visually calming stimulus if a large display was incorporated)

(if hooked up to smart house devices) dim the lights and lower any ambient noise

that's the basics of it, I literally thought of this last night so I haven't had much time to really flesh out details or anything.

my questions for you all are:

would you have an interest in this? does it sound like it would be helpful for you or just gimmick-y?

do you have stims that are only negative (i.e. you don't do them when you are happy or just bored)? my worry is that stimming is more complex than this makes it out to be, and that many people may stim the same way no matter what mood they're in, in which case this product would just be annoying.

what other suggestions do you have for possible things the robot can do to help? what would help YOU that a robot could do?

[puppypaw-wc]

okay it’s time for some rhythm ranting (i came up with that and i am so fucking proud of myself for it)-

so rhythm heaven megamix is the fourth rhythm heaven game, preceded by three other games (as you may guess): rhythm tengoku for the gameboy advance, released in 2006 in japan only, rhythm heaven for the ds, released in 2009, and rhythm heaven fever, released for the wii in 2011/2012 and for the wii u in 2016. as megamix’s name implies (esp it’s japanese/korean name, rhythm tengoku (in japan)/rhythm world (in korea) the best+), it’s a mix of lots of rhythm games from past games. not all of them, though, because the developers wanted to spite us by not putting bon odori in. /j oh and like people like dj school and shit and it’s not in it. people modded dj school in though, no i am not kidding, people literally modded in a full game and i don’t know how. i mean donk-donk and tambourine have also been modded in somewhat for remixes but anyways back to my point-

the rest of this’ll be under the cut tho-

so one of my main problems with megamix is some of the game choices. rhythm tengoku only had 25 unique, non-sequel rhythm games. out of those, nine were excluded. that’s almost half. for perspective, though, three of those games are bon odori, rap men, and toss boys, which basically need audio cues to be played. bon odori relies on it’s song, where you clap whenever they say “pan” and clap twice quickly when they say “panpa”, rap men relies on its audio and you do something different depending on three different kinds of cues, and for toss boys you need audio cues to know who it’s being tossed to. and logically, they’d likely want to translate the games, so given that they seemingly didn’t get that big of a budget for dubbing, they weren’t included... but quiz show was. what’s the problem with quiz show, you may ask? well rhythm heaven as a game is a rhythm game. quiz show literally doesn’t require rhythm. basically the host will press the button a certain number of times and in order to pass the game you just need to press it the same amount of times. that’s literally it. in megamix you get the game’s skill star if you press it to the same rhythm, but it’s still not required. it’s also dumb because you literally have to play it perfectly in order to pass it. all you need for a perfect is to press the button(s) the same amount of times. if you press a button the wrong number of times, the game ends once the number you were supposed to hit it is revealed. quiz show is literally pointless. the only times it’s used well are in remixes in tengoku. in remix 6, at least in silver, it uses the previously played game, the clappy trio, as a hint, with the host asking, “how many members are in the clappy trio?”, before hitting the buttons three times. in remix 4, the rhythm for both the quiz segments goes with the music. i mean on the last one he can add an extra press and it’s fucking bullshit but whatever. i’m not mad. but my point is that in megamix, they added a game that doesn’t require rhythm as opposed to a multitude of actually liked games from tengoku. there’s non-included games that don’t require audio cues, i should add. showtime, polyrhythm, tram and pauline, wizard’s waltz, and for fuck’s sake, thinking about it, the games that likely weren’t added because of audio cues wouldn’t HAVE to be dubbed. just do what the tengoku fan translation did and translate the on-screen subtitles but leave the audio in japanese. please just give us bon odori stop holding them hostage-

i talk about tengoku but i’m pretty sure rhds is the game with the most non-included minigames. ds was played sideways, almost purely using the touch screen with the exception of rockers 2 in the last set of games. it had a unique control scheme, with three types of controls: tapping, where you just tap the screen with the stylus or your finger; flicking, where you flick your stylus or finger like you’re making the end of a checkmark, according to “the secret of flicking” reading material thingie you can read when you unlock the cafe; and sliding, where you just. slide your finger. megamix only has tapping, and even then that’s only when you’re using simple tap mode and i don’t want to imagine how that handles games that use the b-button. as i mentioned, tengoku had almost half of its games missing. ds has twenty-five rhythm games if you include the credits game airboarder. ten of those weren’t included. that may not seem like a lot, but ds is most peoples’ favorite rhythm heaven game, and two of the most loved games in the fandom, dj school and love lab, are from rhds, and neither was included in megamix.

fever has the least cut games over all, with only five of its original rhythm games being cut. fever had twenty-nine original rhythm games, with one more (rhythm test) also appearing in its remix 10. the ones that didn’t make it in are tambourine, donk-donk, tap troupe, shrimp shuffle, and night walk. night walk’s exclusion was probably since gba night walk made it in and they didn’t know how to name them differently, bUT YOU DID IT WITH THE KARATE MAN GAMES??? DID WE REALLY NEED ALL OF THE KARATE MAN GAMES, A PREQUEL, AND A NEW GAME? THAT’S FIVE DIFFERENT KARATE MAN GAMES IN MEGAMIX. THAT’S TOO MANY TIMES TO PLAY THE SAME GAME. granted only three of those times are required to beat the game (prequel karate man, gba karate man/karate man returns!, and karate man senior), but my point still stands, they gave us literally every karate man game but not night walk or something. it’s especially dumb to me because they gave figure fighter both a prequel and its sequel because they looove figure fighter... instead of including shrimp shuffle, which really desperately needs to be included, please let me know what a frame-perfect input looks like so i don’t keep getting barelys that look fine because like all my inputs are barelys but they still break the perfect-

,,, onto another thing before i break something or kill someone.

so the dubbing for megamix is a little odd. as i said, the game likely didn’t have that big of a budget for dubbing, especially when compared to other games in the series. the prologues for games use the same three or four generic fonts despite the japanese version using the original fonts, the returning games that have lyrical songs just use the original version of the song with the exception of fan club 2, the two lyrical remixes weren’t dubbed (komeki no story, lush remix’s song, is simply instrumental with english audio, while in the japanese version it has lyrics. i’m a lady now, honeybee remix’s song, is in english regardless of audio), and lastly,,, the dubbing for the returning tengoku games where there’s vocals.

so in space dance, the whole game uses audio cues. there’s three of them in total: “turn right”, where you press the right d-pad button on “right”. note that when they say it it does not sound like they are saying turn right. at all. i’m not sure why, it’s not just the gba’s bad sound quality because well. bon odori exists. and also because it’s the same in megamix when you use the japanese audio. my immediate thought is accents but i don’t know if japanese accents are a thing. might just be because of the fact that japanese people tend to pronounce r’s as l’s? not sure though. “let’s sit down”, where you press the down d-pad button on “down”. it also doesn’t sound like they’re saying “let’s sit down”. and lastly, “pu-pu-pu-punch”, where you press the a-button on “punch”. in order to punch. because that’s a dance move. like seriously, space dance is fun but how is this a dance? um anyways, in the english version of megamix they changed it so it’s more clear what’s being said but the dubbing’s not the best. firstly, they changed “turn right” to “and pose” even though that is definitely not posing. it’s weird since. that’s the only one that was changed. i don’t know how to describe what they did to space dance and most of y’all probably don’t play rhythm heaven so you don’t understand, so here’s a perfect gameplay of space dance with japanese audio (it took time to find), and here’s one with english audio. ,,, okay so the english one’s of cosmic dance because i. forgot what exactly i was doing. and got distracted looking through the comments. so now i know that they still reused space gramps’ voice for cosmic girl in cosmic dance. which like. wut? you redubbed it but you. you still reused. you still reused space gramps’ voice for her? megamix dubbers are you okay? i’m kind of concerned.

the other game that has audio is purely japanese audio. marcher/marching orders. it’s a keep the beat game where you play as a squadmate following the sarge’s orders. the rhythm heaven wiki’s description for it is basically what i said but they’re better at describing things then me so.

“In this game, a rookie is undergoing marching training with her squadmates while following their Sarge's orders. The player controls the rookie at the end of the line. There are four commands that the Sarge will yell.

"Attention, March!"

"Attention, Halt!"

"Left-face, Turn!"

"Right-face, Turn!"

The player must perform these with proper timing along with the other squadmates. Just before the game ends, the squadmates will be moved offscreen, still marching as the game ends.”

in the japanese version, the commands he says are obviously different, though i. do not know what he is saying. so have my attempts at romanizing it.

“gento susume!” = “attention, march!”

“gento commoback!” = “attention, halt!”

“meski meek!” = one of them? i don’t really know which and it feels inconsistent, at least in marcher 2. i think it’s right-face turn but i’m not one hundred percent sure.

“meski peek!” = the other one. so i think left-face turn.

,,, yeah i don’t know japanese, sorry if this (as in literally any of this) is offensive to anyone that does. i’m just trying my best. the wiki doesn’t say what he says in the japanese version. unlike for other games.

now in the japanese version, the sarge has a somewhat deep voice. but in the english version... he doesn’t.

um here’s a perfect in tengoku and here’s one in megamix that i think has english audio since. it says it’s the english version in the description. but i’m not listening to it.

u h my last nitpick with megamix is the prequels. so prior to lush remix, almost all the games played are prequels, easier and shorter versions of the actual games. after lush remix is completed and the towers of lush woods are unlocked (i’m just taking this from the wiki, wtf is lush woods), all the games from then on are the original versions, with “2″ or something else stuck onto them for the games that had prequels. this makes it irritating to find certain games on the wiki because it’s just like “no i don’t want normal wii micro-row i want wii micro-row 2 rhythm heaven wiki please” or whatever. also the picks for games that have prequels are all over the place, and some of the prequels’ music doesn’t seem to fit and makes it feel like all the patterns in the prequels for games like rhythm tweezers and clappy trio are the exact same. is it the exact same? because if so then that’s cool (i suck at rhythm tweezers and clappy trio-) but also very boring. i get that they wanted to start people with something easy but some of the games that have prequels were already easy. karate man (gba) is literally the first game in tengoku but it still has a prequel. rhythm tweezers is the second game but it has a prequel. clappy trio’s the fifth and it has a prequel (granted it is kind of hard). fillbots is the third in ds and it has a prequel. air rally is relatively early on in fever. you get my point. and the weird thing is that in some cases at least, games that have prequels which remove stuff from the actual games don’t have practices for things in the actual version. for example, air rally’s prequel doesn’t have forthington (the cat) changing distances, except for the last one which he apparently always catches, but wii air rally obviously does. granted, the rhythm’s the exact same when he’s far away (for some reason? i don’t think that’s how it should work-),  but it should still have practice. oh and in air rally they just completely removed the clouds that semi-block the visuals later in the game. yeah i don’t know either. that seems to be the only instance of that occurance, though.

another prequel nitpick: so i love rhythm rally. like it is the best game in ds imho. it’s fun, it’s not that hard (it is kind of hard but i still have fun), though i do play on emulator, god knows how hard it is when you’re like me and don’t know how to consistently flick dear god send help- but u m in megamix rhythm rally has a prequel. which may not seem bad or anything until you learn something. megamix rhythm rally is the shortest game in the series. showtime from tengoku is seven seconds longer while munchy monk from ds is twelve seconds longer. rhythm rally’s prequel is thirty seconds long. thirty seconds. t h i r t y s e c o n d s . d,,, don’t paddlers literally have to play ping-pong to not get like. really sick? i don’t think thirty seconds is a long enough ping-pong game to avoid that- y’all’s planet is literally named ping-pong but you only play for thirty seconds. on top of a flower. okay wtf is with the scenery on this planet, it has a resident rhythm heaven void that we should be concerned about why are there so many voids, s p a c e i t s e l f , a giant flower, and a giant cake. two concerning things and two things that are weird but not concerning. seriously though why are there so many voids in the rhythm heaven world? someone should look into this, i’m concerned.

u h anyways that’s all. have a good day.

[nikkigrand]

There’s no easy way to say this, but I’m abandoning all of my works. Everything.

This post is going to be long, honest, triggering and deeply personal. So for those who don’t want to read through all of my bullshit, the gist is that I’m not emotionally or mentally capable of writing anymore.

TW ARE IN PLACE.

If you’ve followed me for a while, then you know that my boyfriend was killed in Afghanistan last year. Since then, my life has been a breathless decline into self destruction. I didn’t know—I still don’t know—how to recover from happily waiting for his return to painfully knowing he never will. I swear that some days I feel like he’s still out there and some day he’ll come home and this will all be just a bad dream. I want to wake up to a reality where he steps off that plane and into my arms, where I don’t keep a crumpled old t shirt that smells more of me than him under my pillow, where the shock of hearing certain songs doesn’t make me throw up. A reality where I don’t have to sit in front of his ashes every time I visit his mother and look at his singed necklace around her neck.

I wanted nothing more than to wake up. Just wake the fuck up and feel alive again because for so long I had felt this choking pain and grief and misery and then nothing.

Everything became an escape, something to fill that void in me. I tried all the healthy things. I ate, I worked out, I ran. I talked to people about how I felt and reached out, but nothing helped. I volunteered, i planted trees and flowers, I channeled my grief into kindness. I tried to take all this pain and turn it into something beautiful, and still I felt nothing. I was falling falling falling into this black pit and was reaching for anything to keep me from hitting the bottom.

So I started chasing highs. The standard shit at first. I drank so much alcohol that I’d wake up in bushes with my friends, limbs tangled in ways that left me sore and stinging for days because who the hell passes out in a Rose bush?

At first, drinking was fucking hell, because no matter how much I drank I’d always end up with my head cradled in the palms of my hands, fingers digging into my scalp as I screamed and wailed and asked why why why why when he was so close to coming home and why was life so goddamn mean??? I’d be in bar bathrooms, just curled in the corner and sobbing like a dramatic princess until my friends carried me out. This happened about a dozen times before it just stopped, because I figured I wasn’t drinking enough if I could remember everything.

So I drank more and more and more and then I realized that it wasn’t making me feel better, it wasn’t doing anything for me.

So I started smoking. Just weed, you know. Nothing too crazy at the time. But all that did was make me hyper-fixate on all of my failures and short comings. It made me hate myself so viscerally, so deeply that I wondered if this is who I truly am at my core. A mean bitch who drinks, smokes, parties. A maneater who fucks these poor kind hearted men to fill that hole her dead man left inside her and still finds herself cold and numb after because it’s not enough. It’s never enough.

I’m sure you know where this is going. But I hated myself. I’m a beautiful girl, I’m not blind, and yet I found myself to be so fucking ugly. So fucking ugly and grey and all I wanted—all I needed—was something to breathe life into me the way life itself did before.

I just wanted to feel happy and normal. Only for a little while. That need was so encompassing it would grip my insides and I’d cry from how much I wanted it, how much I had convinced myself I needed it. It was all I fucking wanted.

So the bumps came. And then the lines. And then whole baggies to myself. And it felt amazing, it was wonderful. The world was alive, things were different. I had more energy, more life in me than I had in months. Then the other type of lines came and it made me feel like I was floating away. There was no pain, no misery, no death hanging over my shoulder to remind me that the strength of your love can’t make people stay.

But soon, that too wasn’t enough. Like every other thing, I felt there was something better, something that could make me feel more. So here is where I tell you about all the pills I popped, all the different colored presses and how each one pulled me out of that hole I was falling into and deposited me above the ground —much higher than I could have ever dreamed of—and filled my grey world with beautiful gorgeous colors.

Then I can tell you about all the tabs I let dissolve on my tongue, or fully swallowed out of impatience, all of the lines of ketamine I combined with ecstasy and acid in one night. The things I saw, the way I felt—it took me far from this dismal life and was addicting. I was chasing something every weekend until it became every other day, chasing some feeling I still can’t name, and I knew that it was ruining me.

My grief and my drugs were killing me, and I knew it. With every cotton mouth, every clenched jaw, every pounding headache, I fucking knew and didn’t care. I’d look at my friends faces and I knew, I knew they loved me and would be devastated if they knew what I was doing, and I still didn’t care. What was life if it felt this empty?

My grades dropped, i turned down a contracting job I wanted for years, I spent all my money on psychedelics and stimulants, and it had gotten to a point where I’d pop a pill while sitting at home just because I didn’t want to be sober and didn’t want to think about how fucked up my life was becoming.

Then one day I was at a concert, high in the clouds with a joint settled comfortably between my lips and frizzy hair piled messily atop my head, when I saw a girl get carried out the venue by medics. She was probably a few years younger than I am, and i remember looking at her face impassively as they pushed through the crowd with her body thrown over this bear of a man’s shoulder as if in slow motion. She was pale and foaming at the mouth, with her arms dangling limply down his back, and she looked dead—she was dead. I knew in that same way you know that the sky is blue when the sun is up, I just knew.

And in that moment—those few seconds it took me to acknowledge that she had most likely overdosed and died—this intense yearning shot through me, so strong that I felt it in the crooks of my fucking elbows, like I wanted to embrace whatever the fuck it was that I desired to live inside me, and this voice cried out, “I wish that were me.”

And you know what, I didn’t even know I had spoken until the guy next to me shoved me in the shoulder and said, “no you don’t.”

And that terrified me. I remember dropping the joint, fumbling it in my shaking fingers, burning myself on the lit end, before handing it off to that same random guy and running off to get some air.

I’m not stupid and I’m not blind. I know I’m depressed, I know I’ve got issues, but I had never said something so suicidal out loud up until that point. I’ve never vocally wished for death and even as I sat there, as I looked out at the people outside the venue huddled together doing whip it’s and killing brain cells, I still wanted to be that poor dead girl on that man’s shoulders.

That was it for me. I remember calling an Uber home on the spot and taking everything I had and flushing it. Im not going to sit here and lie to you and tell you that it was easy. I had convinced myself that I needed these things to make me happy, and i don’t know if I can ever see life the same way after them. The feelings you get off these things are otherworldly, it’s so damn good, but they come at a price. You dont feel the same way you did before you took them, and you never will. You’ll never be who you were before that high, but you can almost convince yourself that it’s worth it. So it was pretty damn hard to take my neon presses, my rocks. my capsules, my bud and my tabs, and flush them down the toilet.

Almost immediately after I did it, I cried. Mostly because i had flushed hundreds of dollars down the fucking toilet, but also because I had become that girl in those cheesy college movies. You know the one, the one where the party girl gets addicted to drugs and goes on a bender and her whole life is just one big goddamn tragedy that won’t end. I hate those fucking movies and I, for the life of me, could not believe I was that girl.

I had been military, straight laced with a good head on my shoulders and a hard worker. I was smart, respected, the girl everyone wanted to bring home to mom. And now I was a hot mess crying in my bathroom because I had just flushed my addiction down the shitter.

Now I’m just home, trying to gather the pieces of myself in a way that doesn’t cause long term damage when I’ve yet to hit my 27th birthday.

I still go out with my friends. They know nothing about what I’ve done because I’ve always gone out and done things alone. This is the first time I’ve ever spilled my guts.

So where does FanFiction come into play in all this. Well, it’s simple, really, if you’ve gotten to this point and picked out all the mistakes in grammar. My brain is so fucked up that I can barely write a passable 3 page essay. I can’t remember words, much less how to string them together to form something beautiful in the way I used to. Trust me, it kills me and I’ve agonized over it for hours. I once tried to take this amazing idea I had and put it to paper but it would just not flow. Nothing made sense. Where before writing was effortless and focused, now my brain could barely concentrate on forming a sentence that didn’t sound like gibberish.

My attention span is so short that I literally have to isolate myself with no internet and my textbooks to get work done. It’s so bad that I have anxiety and panic attacks about the fact that I feel like a whole dumbass with one brain cell, where before I was proud of my intelligence and could hold decent conversation.

I’m still pretty, as if that fucking matters, but now I’ve got a stutter and can’t hold eye contact because my paranoia makes me think they’re judging me. And let me tell you, I’m so fucking pissed about that because I know it’s just my fried brain thinking these things, and there’s no one to blame but myself.

And I still feel empty and numb. How can I write about love and human emotions when I don’t feel anything? How can I write about looking at someone and loving them when the memory of love faded like my lover’s ashes in the wind? I just can’t.

I know love as it whispers against my skin with each interaction between me, friends, even other men, and yet I look at them and feel absolutely nothing.

So Yeah, I can’t write my stories if I can’t get my brain or my heart to work.

I’m really sorry to all my loyal readers. I really am. I wish I had been stronger. Thank you for all of your support throughout the years.

Don’t do drugs.