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catharrington · 4 years ago

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Strawberry Seeds and Love Potions. (T, 2.4K words)

@harringroveweekoflove day 2: LOVE POTION && MYTHOLOGICAL CREATURES. Also including: witch Robin, post season 3 recovering Billy, flustered but giving it his best Steve, and cat boys. Or cat men? No, cat boys.

***

The coffee mug clicked onto the table with an otherworldly menace. Steve’s brown eyes darted to it, then back up to Robin. He furrowed his brows in a question. But before he could open his mouth, she held up her hand.

“It’s not poison,” she explained.

“Could have fooled me, Robs,” Steve hissed.

“It’s called a potion, dingus. It’s going to help!” She pushed the cup farther down the bar. The diner around them was mostly closed, and Robin was the only waitress in the place. Her peach colored apron brought out the green of her wide, devious eyes.

“Potion... poison... that’s like one letter different,” Steve leaned back in his stool away from the mug.

“Wow, so you know how to spell. What other skills will you showcase, The Amazing Harrington?” Robin’s lips curled up in an evil grin, leaning her body over the bar to dig the insult farther.

Steve just scoffed. Putting his elbow up on the bar and shielding himself as he tried to get back to the open College text book he was supposed to be reading. All the words were rushing together in swirls of black and white. He pushed his thumb into his curved bottom lip to try and force himself to focus, chewed on the pad of it, but he could swear the mug was mocking him.

Could swear he could smell that strawberry pink liquid Robin had poured for him when he ordered a simple black coffee.

“Drink it,” Robin snapped.

“No,” Steve growled.

“Are you going to grow a backbone and actually confess then?” She quirked one brow up.

Her face was so condescending. So smug. Steve hated how much he knew that look, how it made him sort of fond for her.

“I mean,” he sighed. His walls crumbling in defeat. His fingers coming up to join in worrying his bottom lip. “I mean I might?”

“It’s been a year Steve. A year of following him around like a little stray kitten! A year of ‘Oh Billy, I’ll give you a ride!’ ‘Oh Billy, how was physical therapy?’ ‘Oh Billy, pay attention to me!’—“

“I get it, I get it!” Steve turned towards her again to motion with his hand to keep it down. Waving his wide palm around until Robin’s pursed face cracked into a giggle. “Just keep it down, would you?”

And he turns over his shoulder to survey the empty diner before he’s got enough courage to look at her again.

“Yeah, okay. I’ve got a fat, stupid crush on Billy. And I know that I’m the most embarrassing and dumb guy you know. But...,” he trails off. Eyes wandering back down to the coffee cup. “It’s not the same as Nancy Wheeler or even Tammy Thompson. So much can— no, so much has gone wrong. If I... confessed right now, It would just make everything too much for him.”

His fingers nervously tick across the mint green bar. Wishing like hell he could cross them in front of his chest and make a barrier.

Robin takes a step forward. Her own fingers an inch away from his. She twitches like she can’t make up her mind if she wants to grab them. Like someone worrying their bottom lip if they are going to pick the last slice of pie in the diner’s glass container. But she does, reaching out to lay her skinny fingers and their chipping black nail polish over his own.

“Dingus,” she starts lovingly, “you don’t know any of that.”

Steve scoffs, rolls his eyes like he’s going to turn away, but Robin holds his hand tightly.

“You don’t know if it’s too much for him, or what he wants. And you don’t,” Robin took a second before continuing, her breath hitching, “you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

Hawkins, Indiana is the poster town for unknown tomorrow’s. Steve knows way too well about that. The tunnels crawling with slime and vines that play host to the monsters of the world.

But Billy, he surely knows better than anyone. It’s been a whole year but noone’s going to ever forget what he did. What happened to him under the control of a creature called The Mind Flayer. How Billy used himself like a human shield and died to try to make up for it. Just to come back with an electric jolt to his tattered heart.

They had to stitch new lungs inside his chest. He called himself Zombie Boy now. Called the patchwork scars heavy metal.

Steve just smiled. Nodded his head as he watched Billy climb out the crumbled wreckage of his shell. Climb out a new man, a man Steve caught himself falling head over heels for.

“You’re right, Robs,” Steve exhales.

“Oh, what was that?” Robin giggled, leaning in to hear better.

Steve pushed her away by their joint hands. Wiggling his fingers afterwards as if cursed.

His breath quipped and held tight in his chest as he turned back to the coffee mug. It sat waiting for him. The light red liquid swimming with foam and black seeds at the top. As if no matter how long it sat, it was always freshly prepared.

Steve gripped the handle of the white mug hard. Thought about how quick Billy’s body hit the ground when he died. How quick it all felt to Steve who had to helplessly stand back and watch it all.

He lifted the mug to his lips and drank in desperate, greedy gulps.

And as he finished it and slammed the ceramic back down on the bar, he didn’t immediately feel different. His mouth felt strange, the red juice had a powdery after-taste and much more seeds than his gag reflex was expecting. But as he screwed up his face from the flavor, he didn’t feel changed. Or empowered. Or whatever Robin was trying out with this magic spell.

“I don’t—,” Steve started, but his voice stopped just as it started. His head pounded like a drum was beating right next to his ears.

Doubling over in his stool, he gripped at the sides of his head in a panic. His whole skull felt like it was vibrating. Shifting around even, his scalp moving at the top of his head as if something were to burst out.

Steve grabbed two fist fulls of his hair and groaned through the wave of pain. Burying his chin in his chest to try and stop the noises before they came. It was so painful, but somehow only lasted a second.

As sudden as it came, he felt fine again.

Steve jerked his head up to scream at Robin , when he noticed her eyes wandering to the top of his head.

He followed them with hesitant fingers, slowly running up his now messy head of quaffed brown locks under his fingertips brushed something new.

Giving an undignified yelp, he drew his hand backwards as if burnt. His eyes were wide and pleading with Robin. But she watched him right back with the same face. As if she didn’t make this, as if it wasn’t her poison potion that created this.

Steve timidly touched the new addition to his head again. This time he didn’t finch as his fingertips sank into hair that felt soft as fur. Following it up to a point, and then feeling as it curved inwards to softer peach fuzz.

He could feel something, as his fingers moved, he could feel them as easily as if he were touching the lobes of his ears.

Because he was touching his ears.

A quick glance to a dingy mirror hanging at the back of the bar confirmed it for him. There was a pretty pair of brown cat ears sprung from the top of his head.

“Robin,” he breathed. Unable to fully grasp how he felt. “What was that drink exactly?”

She blinked at him, gathering her thoughts before she cleared her throat. “It’s um, it’s supposed to be a charm. An aid, like-like an enhancer. It said it would bring out the traits that the person you craft the potion for desires the most.”

Then she stopped to laugh, her red lips caught between gaping open or turning up on the corners in a mocking laugh. “I didn’t— wow! I thought worst case scenario would be you’ll turn into an asshole like you were in high school. B-But this?”

Steve looked from her back to the mirror. Wrapping one hand around the pointed triangle of his ear. Pushing it down just to watch it perk back up again.

“I’m... I’m a cat boy?” Steve stutters out a gasping breath.

“Well, more like a cat man, really,” Robin tries to help. “Come on, you’re almost old enough to buy beer.”

“Really helpful, Robs, thanks so much for the curse and now the insults!” He shouts.

Holding up her hands in defense, her smile doesn’t drop. Even in her shoulders Steve can see she’s quivering with laugher.

He feels along the base of his new ears. How the fur is the same color and melts almost perfectly into his own silky hair. How it feels good, actually, to scratch his blunt nails there just like how a house cat would enjoy it.

“This isn’t some trait. Or some, something that Billy would find attractive in me.” Steve groans. “This is some freaky kink!”

Robin finally clasps her hand over her mouth to dam up the waterfall of laugher. It hits against her palm in a muffled, annoying, cruel noise. She shakes her head as if she wanted to argue but couldn’t get past how funny she found it.

“You must have mixed up the wrong stuff, Robin! Put the wrong magical thing in the mixture!” Steve tried to shake his head out to unstick his thoughts.

He runs his hands through his hair as he does when he gets flustered, and now his cat ears bend with the motion so they don’t get tugged on. Folding neatly onto his head before bouncing back up to attention.

It felt so weird, but somehow it didn’t feel very different at all. They acted as if they’ve always been there.

“Yeah, okay, that’s it,” Steve nodded to himself. “You gave me the wrong potion. It’s okay, it happens! Just whip up a new one that’s for reversing cat ears. That’s in your witch book right?”

Robin kept her hand over her mouth and kept shaking her head. She wasn’t replying to anything Steve said. And it was honestly making him more mad than the new ears on top of his head.

“Hey, is it really funny enough for all that?” he mused.

Then Steve looked back up at the mirror. He turned his head side to side to admire the way his ears moved with him. How they were his hair color on the outside then a flushed pink in the very middle. How there were strands of lighter brown between that and those reminded him of how highlighted his hair gets in the summer sun.

“I don’t know. I think they... I think they sort of suit me?” He shrugged.

Robin dropped her hands and her laugher was louder without it, but she managed to catch her breath to finally reply. “Oh, they suit you alright. You’re a natural at this stuff, Garfield.”

Steve furrowed his eye brows. Cat ears folding down on his head in defense. “I’m not orange,” he hissed back.

Robin opened her mouth with likely more insults and no actual help from the aspiring witch who caused all this mess, when she was interrupted. The bell above the entrance letting out a loud ding.

The front door, painted in matching mint green like the bar, swung open. And like he was summoned, like his ears were simply ringing so much from being talked about he hunted down the source, in walked Billy.

He was wearing a grey hoodie. One of many that he collected once he got discharged out of his hospital. This one Steve was familiar with, because it was his. Handed down with a coat and a couple other winter items as Steve feigned indifference over concern about Billy’s California blood staying warm. An old Hawkins High baseball league logo sitting right in the middle. It’s fading green and orange design still bright enough to make Steve’s breath catch in his throat.

“Hey, Harrington,” Billy greeted. He lifted his big, scarred hand to wipe the hood down from his head. Letting loose the wild mess of short curls that are regrowing on his head.

“Hey, Billy,” Steve croaked out. His voice was awkward. His face, he knew, must be blushing bright red.

He turned to seek help from Robin, but the swinging door that lead into the kitchen was rocking back and forth on its hinges. She must have run away as soon as Billy came in. And Steve was too busy watching his entrance to even notice.

Cursing under his breath, Steve racked his brain with an excuse. Some logical way to explain why he had sprouted two new fluffy ears off his head.

He felt like he was playing a pinball machine in his head. Flashing lights and jingling noises were going off. But nothing was coming to him. He couldn’t find any words to offer at all to Billy.

So he whipped his head to the side, watched as Billy stopped glancing around the empty diner to finally settle on Steve.

And he watches as Billy’s gorgeous, totally unfair pretty blue eyes lift to see the cat ears on his head.

“Woah, Harrington,” Billy exhales like he’s blowing a mouth full of cigarette smoke. “That’s really—,”

“I know, Billy, okay! It’s um, um?” Steve waves his hands around as if that can turn the wheels of his thinking some more. But he can’t think. Not well anyway, when Billy’s standing here looking so handsome, so warm, and so alive right in front of him.

“Yeah, okay, I can totally explain this—,”

Billy cuts him off with a soft chuckle. Just under his breath. Steve closes his mouth quick enough to make his teeth click.

“I don’t know, Steve. Ya don’t have to explain it. It’s kinda cute, actually,” Billy drawls out his words low and soft. And then smiles at him.

A second ticks by. Billy’s boots skid on the tile as he steps even closer. All the way until he’s right next to Steve. Grabbing the back of a stool right next to him.

And Billy hasn’t taken his eyes off Steve’s ears once. And he’s got a little sparkle in them like the first time Billy got a point over him during basket ball practice back in high school. And oh, oh.

“Cute?” Steve parrots back.

“Yeah, super cute,” Billy confesses.

#harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #harringrove fic #my fic #harringrove fanfic #steve/billy #harringrove moodboard #harringroveweekoflove #harringrove week of love #cat boy Steve #cat boys in my Harringrove week of love? it’s more likely than you think #my moodboards

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musicollage · 4 years ago

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Atlas Sound. Logos, 2009. Kranky (USA) / 4AD (UK). ( Lyrics & Music – Bradford Cox ) ~ [ Album Review | 1) Pitchfork + 2) Pop Matters + 3) Drowned In Sound + 4) NME + 5) Prefix Magazine ]

1) As we've gotten to know Bradford Cox over the last couple of years through shows, interviews, and blog posts, one of the Deerhunter frontman's most appealing qualities is his deep and nuanced appreciation of the music of others. Some musicians listen to records to see how they work, check out the competition, or trawl for ideas; by all available evidence, Cox feels records, deeply. If he was born without musical gifts and couldn't sing or play an instrument, one can imagine him working at a record store, amassing an enviable collection while driving people on a message board crazy with the sureness of his detailed opinions. Whatever you think of his exploits as an indie rock media figure, Cox's music fandom is easy to identify with and also offers a portal into his own work.

Atlas Sound, Cox's solo alias, in one sense serves as a sort of laboratory for figuring out what makes some his favorite music tick, away from the expectations of his main band. Two collaborations on Logos, the second Atlas Sound full-length, are excellent examples of how music listening can be absorbed into original work. First is "Walkabout", a track Cox wrote and recorded with Noah Lennox from Animal Collective, whom Cox got to know during a European tour. Though Cox's music shades dark and Lennox's is often flecked with uncertainty and doubt, "Walkabout" is the sunniest pop tune of either of their careers. Coasting on a buoyant, twinkling keyboard sample, it is a starkly catchy and irresistible, a clattery post-millennial Archies tune that straddles perfectly the border between simple and simplistic. Interestingly, it also sounds very much like a Panda Bear tune.

Then there is Lætitia Sadier of Stereolab, who wrote the lyrics and sings lead on Logos' "Quick Canal". The song opens with some gorgeously textured organ chords and soon a steady-state beat and drums rise up in the mix, setting the kind of relaxed-but-propulsive neo-krautrock scene that Stereolab perfected very early on. Here Cox gets to play the part of the late Mary Hansen, adding "la-di-da" trills behind Sadier as she intones phrases in her unfailingly lovely, for-the-ages voice. He even throws in a "Jenny Ondioline"-style rupture about halfway through, sending the track into a breathtaking shoegaze section for its final four minutes, wherein it floats magisterially on a pillow of shifting guitar feedback. "Quick Canal" is almost nine minutes long and it doesn't waste a second.

On these tracks, the confidence Cox shows in melting his aesthetic into the soundworld of other musicians is striking-- both are unqualified successes, very different from each other but among the best things Cox has ever done. But they also sound a lot like the music his collaborators are known for. Cox's sympathetic support and sense of how to construct songs with others suggests a desire to expand the parameters of what Atlas Sound can be. And given his willingness to let others take the microphone on an Atlas Sound project on these cuts, I can't help but go back to Cox's words on Logos before the album was released, which suggested that this was to be less introverted and that was "not about me."

And then I remember that the cover of the album consists of a photo of Cox with his shirt off and the lyrics in the first two songs start with the word "I", which suggests that we probably shouldn't take these statements very seriously. While the songs may or may not be "about" Cox in the strictest sense, the overall vibe is at least as introverted as 2008's Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, and every note bears the same signature. With its strummed guitars, hushed double-tracked vocals, and tunes more reliant on ambiance and feel than melody or rhythm, Logos feels every bit as diaristic and personal, but with Cox, that's a plus. At this point, we're not looking to this guy for commentary on the outside world; we want to hear him wrestle with private demons in the sanctuary of his bedroom, bathing every sound in reverb to give the illusion of space and as a sonic balm against loneliness and figuring out how to make music as affecting as the stuff he loves to listen to.

So tracks like "The Light That Failed", "An Orchid", and "My Halo" (the latter two, though different in tone, are further entries in Cox's growing line of melancholy waltz-time shuffles) function primarily as the kind of eerie, blown-out mood music he has become very good at. They are amorphous sketches that still manage to convey feeling, capturing the sort of sad, exhausted, and fragile emotional state that is Cox's area of expertise. "Shelia", a taut pop song with a great chorus hook, is a change-up, though the repeating refrain "No one wants to die alone" fits with the rest of the record's themes. And "Washington School", with its dissonant chime of metallic percussion that sound like gamelan or evilly out-of-tune steel drums, contains the record's most interesting production, with thick drones reminiscent of Tim Hecker and menacing rhythm track.

So some things are different, some are the same, but all of it works well together. It's true that every time Cox ventures out of his comfort zone on Logos, you wish that he'd go even further and embrace extremes-- of tunefulness, tradition, noise-- that don't necessarily come to him naturally. He may yet take a big leap with Atlas Sound, but here the steps away, though rewarding, are tentative. For the rest of the record, Logos feels familiar and assuring, another affecting dispatch from a corner of indie music that is increasingly starting to seem like one Cox pretty much owns.

2) Take a quick gander at Deerhunter's discography and you'll notice a clear stylistic trajectory. From the confrontational noise of "Turn It Up Faggot" to the ambient preoccupations of Cryptograms to the straight-up indie-pop of Microcastle/Weird Era Cont., it's plain to see that as the band has evolved over time, its songwriting has increasingly tended toward the more accessible end of the spectrum. Unsurprisingly, it appears that Bradford Cox's other songwriting vehicle, Atlas Sound, is following a similar arc. On Logos, his second album under the Atlas Sound moniker, Cox provides us with 11 songs that are far less insular, though no less dreamy, than those he has penned in the past. While his fractured compositions still evoke the myth of the bedroom pop auteur, the songs on Logos sound considerably more refined than the lo-fi sketches being churned out by many of his peers. This, as it turns out, is a very good thing.

To wit: "Walkabout", the track that had the blogosphere buzzing with anticipation for the better part of the summer. Built around a squelchy organ sample lifted from the Dovers "What Am I Going to Do", the song simultaneously recalls both the acid-tinged psychedelia of Black Moth Super Rainbow and the technicolor pop of Brian Wilson. Of course, it's impossible to mention "Walkabout" without acknowledging its co-creator, Noah Lennox, a.k.a. Panda Bear. In many ways, "Walkabout" bears Lennox's fingerprints more than it does Cox's, with Lennox's wistful vocal harmonies echoing throughout the track's four-minute runtime. It's easy to see why Cox chose to leak "Walkabout" well in advance of the release of Logos; bright, bubbly and infinitely catchy, the song perfectly captures the mood of a fleeting summer afternoon and stands as one of the year's best singles.

"Walkabout" is obviously a standout, though it's also an outlier when approached within the context of Logos. While some may feel as if they've been misled, the good news is that the rest of the album is no less rewarding, if not quite as instantly gratifying. Take, for example, the opening suite that leads up to "Walkabout". Pitting disjointed acoustic guitar strums and distant, reverb-soaked vocals against a backdrop of aqueous noise, "The Light That Failed" succeeds at drawing the listener in while still keeping her at arm's length. "An Orchid", meanwhile, presents the listener with a dreamy ballad that feels like an indistinct outline for a Deerhunter song. Cox's vocals and the song's guitar hook are buried just deep enough in the mix to force the listener to dig a little. When "Walkabout" finally hits, it feels like a reward well earned.

Luckily, "Walkabout" isn't the only nugget of pure pop bliss to be found on Logos. "Shelia", a disarmingly straightforward slice of jangly college-rock, proves hard to shake, with its Pixies-esque melody and sun-bleached three-part harmonies. Lyrically, the song serves as a world-weary rejoinder to the sweetly nostalgic refrain of "Walkabout" ("What did you want to be / When you grew up"), with Cox explaining, "No one wants / To die alone", before promising the song's titular subject, "We'll die alone / Together." It sure goes down easy, though.

Cox has publicly acknowledged that Stereolab were his favorite band in high school, so it should come as no surprise that given the opportunity to collaborate with Lætitia Sadier, he puts his best foot forward. On "Quick Canal", he lovingly builds up and tears down a cathedral of sound for Sadier to inhabit, layering a deep bass groove, tambourine hits and a wall of gently panning organs atop a steady, shuffling beat. Midway through, the song falls apart, briefly taking a detour into glitchy noise before giving way to a squall of fuzzed-out guitars. Try as Cox might to obfuscate the vocals, however, Sadier's voice proves indefatigable. To her credit, she sounds right at home here, bouncing her voice off of the song's jagged edges to produce a track that's equal parts haunting and triumphant.

With regard to electronic composition, on Logos Cox sounds more confident than ever before. Samples and electronic instrumentation form the underpinnings of many of the album's songs, though not to conspicuous effect. Penultimate track "Washington School" illustrates this point better than perhaps any other on the album. Opening with a loop built from fragments of a minor key piano line, the song soon piles on a pounding, bass-heavy beat, chimes and a playful synth line, blossoming into a full-on folktronica number that recalls Four Tet circa Rounds. Somewhere in the distance, Cox's disembodied voice rings out: "Shine a light / On me."

If Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel was the product of Cox's willful isolation, then Logos is the sound of the auteur stepping outside of his bedroom to engage the world outside. Though it cedes little of the hazy delivery that made Let the Blind… so compelling, Logos brims with a wide-eyed energy all its own, conveying a palpable sense of optimism that's all too rare in Cox's oeuvre. This isn't too surprising when one considers the circumstances; the path that led Cox to the album's creation -- globetrotting tours with his idols, collaborations with some of the most distinctive voices in indie rock -- is the stuff of dreams for hermetic music nerds. Perhaps that's why Logos sounds as vibrant as it does: it's the result of Bradford Cox living out his dreams rather than just dreaming them.

3) One of many unsatisfactory things about end-of-decade retrospectives is that musicians are rarely so accommodating as to plot their careers in nice, convenient ten year cycles. Nonetheless, that’s how posterity tends to remember them, regardless of finer details. Thus the Kinks are Sixties artists, the Clash a Seventies act, Talk Talk an Eighties band, Nirvana from the Nineties, and you’d comfortably stick a punt on The Strokes and Sufjan Stevens ending up defined by this decade we’re exiting.

But what of Bradford Cox? Even if you were aware of Deerhunter's raucous 2005 debut ”Turn It Up Faggot” at the time, you're a wizard or a liar if you foresaw how their frontman was going to fill the years 2007 to 2009. That is to say: three Deerhunter albums (‘tis a fool indeed who views Weird Era Cont. as anything other than a record in its own right), two EPs, and a solo project as Atlas Sound that’s yielded God-know-how-many free downloads, as well as last year's Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, and now – an epic 22 months later - Logos. That all of this bar the odd freebie has been good to exemplary is simply astonishing, and points to an artist whose profligacy and cult popularity has him nicely set up to be a defining artist of the next decade.

And yet... anomalous as ”Turn It Up Faggot” may seem, such scabrous origins are indicative of a palette that has been cooling and quietening ever since Cox first intersected with the limelight. The soundbite-friendly ‘ambient punk’ aesthetic never really lasted beyond Cryptograms, with Microcastle canning the abrasiveness in favour of reasonably straightforward shoegaze set off with dreamlike Fifties flourishes. Having arrived at something like a commercial sound, another artist might have stopped there; however, Cox has ploughed right on through, this year’s Rainwater Cassette Exchange far and away Deerhunter’s most introverted work, a retreat into quiescent childhood reverie.

Logos has much more in common with Rainwater... than Let the Blind..., for the most part ditching the dissonant electronics in favour of delayed acoustic guitars and old-time pop structures. On the face of it, it sets out Atlas Sound’s stall as simply being whatever Cox may do sans Deerhunter. Yet in a way the 'ambient solo project' tag still kind of makes sense. Strictly speaking ambient music is defined not by instrumentation, but by its evasion of the consciousness. Whole swathes of Logos are blurred and indistinct - technically melodic, hooky songs treated and delivered in such a way that they all but self-negate, leaving nothing but fleeting impressions: the winsome viola that arrives in ‘Attic Lights’, just as Cox mutters ”maximum pain, maximum effect”; the gay singer’s unsettling yearning for traditional marriage on ‘Sheila’ ("we’ll die alone, together"); the barely discernible mantra ”all is love” that briefly ghosts through ‘Washington School’.

This might sound like a way of romanticising an unmemorable album, but that's far from the case. These songs are bunched together into two dreamy, fog-like passages that serve as a backdrop for a handful of the most tangible tunes Cox has ever written, soaring atmospherically above the misty dreampop. Opener ‘The Light That Failed’ roots itself in the consciousness through eerily torpid glitching, Cox’s disconcerting use of something approaching a falsetto, and the doomy langour of its titular lyric. It sets up an album that frequently drifts into disquieting areas, yet never quite follows through on this early moment of dread. Indeed, delightful Panda Bear hook up ‘Walkabout’ serves as definitive proof that the light hasn't failed at all. While much of Cox’s early pop obsession speaks of a desire to creep out of the now entirely, ‘Walkabout’ is far more tangible and good natured, thanks largely to Panda Bear’s high, comforting tones and the appropriation of the hook from actual vintage Sixties pop gem ‘What Am I Going To Do?’ by The Dovers. Ironically for a song built around a 40-year-old tune, nothing, else on Logos has ‘Walkabout’s immediacy, though the excellent title track comes close, a rattling Strokes-alike number slightly removed from the world by Cox’s arsenal of floaty FX.

As we’ve known ever since last year’s leak of the Logos demos, the centrepiece is the eight and a half minute, wholly electronic ‘Quick Canal’. Though tamed a little from the leaked 13 minute instrumental, this more mannered, Laetitia Sadier-sung incarnation is a better fit here, and still towers above the skyline. The Stereolab singer adds an inescapably Enya-ish quality to the gentle early stages, but by the time the song’s swooshing, snowy motorik has kicked into full gear she fits in immaculately, an aloof Old World passenger on a song charged with haughty European electronica. It perhaps doesn’t sound so jaw-dropping as it did in isolation, but a lot of that can be attributed to an intentional effect of the surroundings. Those short, subliminal songs serving to filter away reality and focus, like half remembered dreams that leaves the senses baffled and feverish.

Logos is a gorgeous, hallucinatory and somewhat sickly outing. While there's every chance he'll wrong foot us, and soon, this record is entirely in keeping with the increasingly self-erasing route Bradford Cox has taken as a musician; it's hard to stifle a shudder at that blanked out cover image. Maybe Cox will go on to be a star next decade - he's a gregarious, prolific man liked by critics. But listen to his music, and that doesn't feel quite right. Maybe he'll become an icon. Or maybe he’ll finally make his escape from our timestream entirely, leaving us to wonder if he was ever there at all.

4) Much like Starbucks, Bradford Cox has become a ubiquitous presence. What with his work with art-rock outfit Deerhunter, his involvement in Karen O’s official soundtrack for Where The Wild Things Are, and now this, his second solo offering under the Atlas Sound banner, you’d be forgiven for thinking that such familiarity will start to breed contempt. But you’d be way off the mark.

There are two things you should know about this unlikely lo-fi hero of gangly deportment (he has Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder that stretches his limbs and strains his heart) and a girlish speaking voice (the affliction for this is yet uncertain). Firstly, it is impossible to dislike him (just see Wayne Coyne’s spoof argument with him on YouTube, branding Cox a “dick”). Secondly, his creative output has proved him to be one of – if not the – most forward-thinking and inspiring musicians of our generation.

So, as Cox takes time out from Deerhunter, along comes ‘Logos’. Less of an experimental minefield than its predecessor, ‘Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel’, it sees Cox weave in and out of dream-like sequences, such as the sombre ‘The Light That Failed’ and ‘Quick Canal’, the latter featuring the sweetly masculine vocal of [a]Stereolab[/a]’s Laetitia Sadier; while ‘An Orchid’ pitches in as the aural equivalent of a David Lynch storyboard, guided along with looped noises and whimsical vocals.

It’d be easy to overlook Cox’s lyrics when the soundscapes are this rich and ornate, but there’s a delicate exploration of the most human of sensibilities and yearnings on ‘Logos’. He opens up the emotional vaults on ‘Sheila’, pining softly that “no-one wants to die alone… we’ll die alone together”. Likewise with ‘My Halo’, where Cox reveals “My halo burned a hole in the sky/My halo burned a hole in the ground… so I wait for polarity to change”. There’s much warmth and playfulness to be found here too, the unfeigned honesty and childlish desires expressed on ‘Walkabout’ – featuring the falsetto of [a]Animal Collective[/a]’s Noah Lennox – with its lyric “What did you want to see?/What did you want to be when you grew up?” being a case in point.

Cox may have tagged Atlas Sound as just another side-project, but ‘Logos’ is a clear indication that his solo creative output is just as richly rewarding as what came before.

5) For a project originally started as a way for Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox to give a voice to his despairing isolation (he records completely alone) as a teenager, Atlas Sound is starting to sound like an arena-filling, widescreen pop project. Logos, Cox’s second proper solo album, takes the dense, gray worlds of Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See, But Cannot Feel and puts them through a rainbow, delivering a splendid album.

If there’s one word to describe Logos, it’s “watery.” And in that regard, Logos shares a lot in common with Merriweather Post Pavilion (and Deerhunter’s Rainwater Cassette Exchange from earlier this year). Both albums trade in dreamy avant-pop landscapes buoyed by soggy atmospherics. “Criminals” sways like a shipping vessel in choppy seas, while the album’s great closing third (“My Halo” through the title track) sounds like it was transmitted from that underwater base in the third season of Lost. Cox is still reliant on the general ambiance that envelops his solo work, but here he’s willing to let his vocals float above the mix. And while musically this is brighter, he’s still all Debbie Downer. Old standby lyrical tropes of growing old (on “Sheila” Cox sings “we will grow old” like he’s reassuring someone else), loneliness (“Attic Lights”) and lost hope (“The Light that Failed”) show up repeatedly, and he still sounds like he’s on his deathbed when he sings.

But for an album created largely by one guy alone in his room, the guest performances shine the most on Logos. Stereolab’s Lætitia Sadier wrote the lyrics for “Quick Canal,” a sprawling, shoegazey track that never loses its motorik motion, peaking repeatedly in its eight minutes. The bubbly “Walkabout,” the high-profile track with Animal Collective’s Panda Bear lives up to all the hypertext spilled about it this summer, delivering the best of both Panda Bear’s effervescent youthful innocence and Cox’s wistful yearning.

Logos, while just the second solo album from the frontman for a band of marginal fame, represents the latest and greatest chapter in Cox’s ride to indie stardom. He rose to prominence mid-decade as a confrontational trickster riding blog-hype (circa Cryptograms), continuing with a solo album to build his brand (Let the Blind), an indie-rock masterwork (Microcastle) and a solo album of nearly as high repute (Logos). As for what’s next, Cox has remained mum (though Deerhunter might be taking a hiatus), but with Logos, he ensures we’ll all be waiting.

#rock music #art rock #atlas sound #bradford cox #kranky #4ad #2009 #2000s #2000s rock #pitchfork #pop matters #drowned in sound #nme #prefix magazine #review

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brightlotusmoon · 8 years ago

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Sneak Peek: A “Mikey The Lifegiver” side story

So, while working on the “Spirit And Oxygen” fic, I got poked in the writerbrain by yet another “Donnie thinks about how much he adores Mikey” story that didn’t quite fit, but maybe it could, so right now it’s going to be a side story, at least until Season 5 rolls around and we get canon confirmation on some things.

Stuff that is my heacanon here: 1) Shinigami is in a polyamorous relationship with Karai and Michelangelo, and the girls have their own bedroom in the lair. 2) Raph has taken a shine to Shini and her attitudes on life and is so proud his little brother has such an awesome loveperson who is also banging his awesome sister. 3) April has finally decided to try dating both Donnie and Casey, although she’s spent more time with Don, and casey doesn’t mind. 4) Both Splinter and Shredder are dead (Karai killed Shredder, take that Leo, although Leo was there too and got some hits in). 5) The Might Mutanimals are very involved in the turtles’ lives. Mondo has learned first aid from Dr Rockwell and engineering from Don. 6) Leo and Karai have been duel sensei-ing and still argue over who gets to be Actual Sensei. 7) Abandoned military bases are turned into hide-outs for the more vicious, feral, and angry mutants in every borough. Mikey, Mondo, and Shini like to try and find them to befriend the tamer, friendlier ones. Karai and Raph wind up getting angry out of love and fear. 8) Mikey is Donnie’s assistant in the lab and is a field medic who uses his emotional reach to comfort the injured. I don’t know if any of it will reflect in real canon. We shall find out in March. I did see the Korean leaks and I’m not saying a damn word. Also, I am happy to discuss where the rest of the story might go and how and why, and I’ll probably switch to another perspective like April (Storm) or Karai (Iron) or Ghost Of Splinter (Wind) or Shinigami (Magic). Mostly I’m just in love with writing Donnie talking about Mikey, and this would be my third Earth And Oxygen fic in the “Mikey The Lifegiver” series. (PS, Mikey is Oxygen, duh. Don is Earth, Raph is Fire, Leo is Water. The Tumblr post for Mikey The Lifegiver is the second most popular blog post I’ve written so far. The first one is me waxing pagan about all those winter holidays from dozens of religions with hundreds many gods) Also, for my regular readers: You knew this sort of thing was gonna happen again. It’s all I write. Apparently, though, since 1999, I’ve had the most wonderful contemporaries and competition. You hardcore Mikey fans, you’re the best, I love you all.

Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick, And think of you Caught up in circles confusion Is nothing new Flashback warm nights Almost left behind Suitcases of memories, Time after Sometimes you picture me I'm walking too far ahead You're calling to me, I can't hear What you've said You say go slow I fall behind The second hand unwinds If you're lost you can look and you will find me Time after time If you fall I will catch you I'll be waiting Time after time If you're lost you can look and you will find me Time after time If you fall I will catch you I'll be waiting Time after time After my picture fades and darkness has Turned to gray Watching through windows you're wondering If I'm ok Secrets stolen from deep inside The drum beats out of time If you're lost you can look and you will find me Time after time If you fall I will catch you I'll be waiting Time after time You said go slow I fall behind The second hand unwinds If you're lost you can look and you will find me Time after time If you fall I will catch you I'll be waiting Time after time

-Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time”

Earth And Oxygen: Time After Time

Donnie’s dreaming hard again, and he cherishes it. Usually is dreams are soft and quick, minnows in a stream, full of chrome and rust and the scent of oil, and there are tiny things in his hands, beeping and whirring, and there are giant things in front of him, clicking and rumbling; and the scars all over his hands reminds him that these are his, he made them, and they make sounds at him as though they are praising him.

Almost a year ago, shortly after Splinter died and Shredder died and Karai moved in, things began happening that challenged every science imaginable, but Donnie learned to be completely fine with it. Aside from Leo and Karai in a constant subtle battle over who would be sensei, Raph mellowed out and Mikey stopped pranking. Donnie was the only one who recognized Mikey as the catalyst: after enduring a series of traumas that they wouldn’t wish on their enemies, Mikey had become quieter, softer. His odd hyperfocusing moments turned on books without pictures and science documentaries and Donnie spent three weeks spying on him; it was no surprise when Mikey caught him each time, because Mikey had changed the most. Donnie and April ran every single test, and Mikey endured them with a strange fidgeting patience, but Rockwell in the end explained that Mikey’s Dimension X brain had finally caught up with him. He was almost like April. Don stopped being surprised when a beaker full of An Unusual Chemical dropped from his hands and floated back up to the table, despite it only being him and Mikey. Mikey, who folded his arms and grinned cheekily, and that was the day Donnie went to the closet and handed him a lab coat with his name on it.

Between their rotating autistic traits and interests, Donnie with engineering and physical science and Mikey with social sciences and cultural studies, they managed to create Things that made the lair easier to live in. With Mikey around, it was easier to navigate the entire city and study humans’ patterns, so certain stores, warehouses, junkyards, and clinics would stay their “borrowing” targets. With Donnie around, they had vehicles and cloaking devices to move further and deeper in.

So Donnie dreams heavily, about jumping from roof to roof in Staten Island, looking for that one military facility that up until now always had staff. Mikey is right behind him, ready with both kusarigama and grappling hook. Donnie stops and signals, and Mikey presses right against his carapace, wrapping one arm around his waist, extending the other to aim the grappling gun. Don signals again, and Mikey pushes off and practically flies – scratch that, he literally glides – and Donnie feels perfectly utterly safe as he casually throws an arm around his little brother’s shoulders. Mikey wouldn’t let them drop; they’d only hover. That’s how good he’s gotten. The grappling hook keeps catching on roof edges and Mikey lets it hover and glide to the next and the next, and they keep going.

They’re on the roof of the facility, over a mile from where they started, and Donnie pries open the secret door and they move in, and their flashlights roam. They remove their backpacks when he finds the correct room, and collect the items he’s already listed on his T-Phone. It’s silent, it’s swift, and the only thing that warns him is Mikey’s hiss and his voice in Donnie’s head: Donnie, get DOWN—

And Donnie flattens himself on the floor and the creature grazes him with a long metal toe as it leaps over him, and his right shoulder and bicep both rip open wide and his body spills blood rapidly. But it’s not the pain that makes him scream. It’s the strangled screeching gasp, full of pure agony and horror, that Mikey makes from somewhere behind him. No living creature should be making a sound like that unless it’s about to die...

There is precious seconds of heavy silence, and he hears Mikey make that familiar, inhuman growl that all the turtles make when enraged, when their human sides shrink and their literal reptilian brains take over with crushing power. The creature howls in pain and shock, and Mikey lets out a roar that contains Donnie’s name scrawled into it, and then there is crashing, there is stabbing, punching, shrieking, snarling, bones cracking and flesh squelching and liquid spurting and other noises that Donnie will hear in his post-traumatic nightmares. Donnie crawls forward, collapses on his back, turns around and forces himself to stand.

The creature has Mikey pinned to the ground, and shadowed blood is pooling everywhere. And then Mikey kicks and flips the creature over with a furious shriek, and through the darkness Donnie sees his teeth flash in a savage grin, you do not want to see that kind of smile on Mikey’s face, and Donnie sees him coated in shadows, launching again at the creature, smacking his nunchaku again and again…and then the creature stops moving, stops making noise; and Donnie hears his own harsh, pained breathing, and his brother’s harsh, pained breathing, and he manages to call out, “Mikey, are you okay?”

There’s a pause. “I’m always okay, Dee,” comes a breezy reply, but it is thin and strained. “Hey, Dee, what’s hurt on you?”

“My right shoulder and upper arm, but I can patch it up. You?”

A longer pause, much much longer.

“Can I take a raincheck on answering that?”

Donnie feels his gut turn to ice. “Mikey?”

He sees the dark figure of his brother hold up a finger. “Just…gimme…a sec.”

Within that second, Mikey falls to his knees. Donnie feels himself lurch forward. His eyes strain. The shadows on his brother are not shadows. They are too shiny. He’s covered in it.

No. No. Please, no, not again, I can’t handle this again.

It’s not the blood loss making Donnie feel so dizzy. He struggles to move, and watches, in slow motion, as Mikey falls over completely, smacking the floor, and it is a wet smack, and liquid is still pooling around him. And Don starts to hyperventilate, because he’s not sure where the light switch might be in this room and where the first aid kits are, and suddenly the darkness is too dark and the floor opens up and he is being swallowed, and he cannot reach Mikey, and then he falls, and as he falls his T-Phone rings, and something presses its energy button, and it’s blaring in his ears, louder and louder, calling MIkey’s name.

Donatello bolts up screaming, and it is too dark and he can’t see. A door crashes open. A body launches at him, and before he can take another breath, a pair of arms are wrapped around him and a plastron is pressed against his, and his chin is on a broad muscley shoulder, and the scent he breathes in is pure Raphael.

“Raph,” he squeaks out. “Hey--”

“Sshhh, Donnie, easy,” the hoarse voice murmurs. “It was a dream. You’re okay.”

He finds himself awkwardly patting his older brother’s upper carapace, trying to politely pull away. “Raph…Raph, I realize that…can I breathe? Please?”

Raph pulls away, green eyes serpentine in the darkness of his bedroom. The way his head tilts, too.

“I’m fine, Raph. I promise. I know it’s a nightmare.”

Those eyes and that head tilt remain fixed on him.

“Donnie, this is your fourth nightmare. Do you realize that?”

Really?

“Um. No?” He’s been so busy between his lab and the sectioned-off infirmary that Rockwell and Slash and Casey helped build that he sometimes doesn’t remember going to bed.

“Well, it is. And I’ll bet it’s the exact same one. Yours are weird.” Raph sits back, agura style, and Donnie draws his knees up to make room. “They’re like clockwork. Once a week. And, y’know, this is the fourth week since--”

“I know. And you guys dragged me to my own bed when you knew I wouldn’t stay here.”

“You did this time,” Raph points out.

“True. Wait, I did?”

“Congratulations on a full twelve hours of sleep, bro. It’s ten in the morning.”

Donnie feels his eyes grow wide. He throws the covers off and jumps off his bed. “I’m missing work, I--”

Raph’s strong hand slaps against his chest. “Remember what we all agreed on? Until your shoulder and arm is fully functional, you don’t do anything complex without someone helping you. I hope you were planning on asking someone.”

Donnie narrows his eyes. “Do you know how to handle the complex alien chemicals I need to work on? Plus the newer components of the retromutagen?”

“If not me, you have April. Or Rockwell. Or Shini.”

Donnie sighs, looks at his immobilized arm, and sighs again.

“You’re a stubborn bastard, Hamato Donatello.”

“You’re worse.”

“I am a paragon of complacency, little brother.”

And Donnie winces. “Try not to call me that?”

“Oh. Right. I forgot. You’re right. Sorry, Don.”

Donnie sighs and gets dressed.

“Um.” Raph rubs the back of his head. “So, nothing’s changed this morning. That’s…like, good, right? Kinda?”

“Kinda,” Donnie says. “It means that Mikey is continuing to heal. Which is the best we can hope for in this situation.”

As he heads out of his room and toward the lab doors, Raph catches up. “You should eat something first.”

“I need to check his vitals and change his IV bags.”

“Karai did that.”

“Even the GI tube?”

“Yeah, that one too.”

Donnie pauses. “I just need to see…”

“Donnie.” Raph is impossibly firm, and very soft. “Donnie, everything you could do has been done. We’ve watched you and learned from you for a whole month. It’s a routine. And part of the routine is that those of us who aren’t doing the routine help ourselves first. It’s your turn.”

Donnie is very silent as Raph steers him toward the kitchen. Leo is finishing up eggs, toast, and tea. Shinigami is making two more plates.

“Oh, you got him up! Good morning, Donatello. Did your nightmare complete itself?” The witch’s smile is knowing and polite, and he has gotten used to her specific brand of sass. She is, after all his little brother’s girlfriend and his sister’s girlfriend.

He mumbles “yes” because shrugging his shoulders still hurts. He eats mechanically, even as he is poked at to make conversation. Raph has started giving him daily protein shakes. There is one next to his plate. He drinks it and crushes the bottle, casually proving how fine he is. Sometimes the others forget how strong he is.

He misses having Mikey around to defend him.

“I’ll be in the infirmary,” Shinigami says, and Donnie startles. When he looks at her, he sees dark, deep circles under her eyes. Her fair complexion is blotchy and even paler than usual. And he wants to slap himself. She loves him. She has so much love, she loves Mikey and Karai. And Karai, to see her baby brother like this. Abruptly, he stands up, wraps his arms around Shini, and grips her like one of Mikey’s famous octopus hugs.

She simply buries her face in his neck and holds him tight.

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musicoccurred · 7 years ago

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Kamasi Washington

Who: Kamasi Washington Where: Saturn Birmingham When: December 5, 2017

*Note* This is a guest post by MO friend and frequent contributor Brett Lass.

The suit feels heavier today than it did when I was in training. I am watching with abstracted vision the pre launch software flicker and display code on the many tiny monitors of the cockpit as I bring the visor down over my face. An aural vibration fills the cabin and remains constant underneath the other automated clicking and whirring noises. The computer does everything nowadays, I just sit here like an “L” lying on its back suspended in air and strapped into a metal phallus with wings and thrusters and a body full of foam and circuitry pointing towards the clear blue sky, ready to penetrate the atmosphere. The hiss of ignition beginning followed by multiple ascending, high-frequency pitches. The comms crackle, a countdown through the static. We leave the ground with rattling speed. I close my eyes and grip the armrests and say a little wordless prayer in my head. Tense with excitement and anxiety as the boosters roar, it is as if there are hands on me, pulling the skin of my face back and pushing down onto my stomach. Through one meekly lifted eyelid, I watch the blue sky slowly fade to black. Once again, we endeavor towards the stars, we are supersonic, and I swear to God, I hear the sound of a tenor saxophone warming up.

An intriguing, oft echoed remark about the sax man from Los Angeles is that he is not here to save jazz or bring back jazz, but rather that he exists as a musical anomaly, or to put it another way, he is a spiritual and melodic force all his own. Take a look at any photograph of Kamasi Washington away from the stage lights and there is a certain kind of reverence that hangs over him that I assume he must be at least slightly aware of. Case in point: his meditative posture, the ceremonial dashiki, and the way he seems to hold his saxophone the same way one would hold, say, a ritualistic cane; resting it against the body and slightly over the shoulder. His Coltrane-influenced sound has drawn comparisons to “A Love Supreme,” an album considered John Coltrane's masterpiece that merged spirituality with jazz. Whilst the themes of spirituality as it pertains to religion is not as much on display in Mr. Washington's work as they are in “A Love Supreme,” it still can be easy to link his music to more spiritual themes as he spent parts of his childhood playing saxophone in a gospel band, so one still gets the impression that there is a lot of soul and deep meaning behind works like “The Epic” and “Harmony of Difference.” I personally discovered Kamasi Washington when I heard the beautifully smooth arrangements underneath Kendrick Lamar's lyrics on “To Pimp a Butterfly.” I'm not sure I've ever felt as emotionally conflicted about a song as I did when I first heard the fifth track on “T.P.a.B.” called “u.” In it, Kendrick is shouting and repeating the words “loving you is complicated” over a gorgeous, subtle saxophone sweetly crooning in the background before the song shifts and then Kendrick performs as a person in a drunken, bitter state condemning someone and running down a list of all of the disappointments and unforgivable betrayals that that person has committed, again with Kamasi's sax underneath. It is a serious, deeply cutting song, yet also absolutely beautiful. That album really opened up a new world to me in many ways, and one of those avenues introduced me to artists like Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Vince Staples, Frank Ocean, and, of course, Kamasi Washington. In May of 2015, Mr. Washington released his first album, “The Epic.” If you'll indulge your humble writer for second, let me ask you a rhetorical question. If you were going to release your first album to the world, would you ever in a million years think it should be a dense, 3-hour long, triple disc album? Because that's exactly what “The Epic” is, and it is a genius piece of work. The fact that I'm a neurotic fop aside, I don't think I would ever have the chutzpah to put together something so long form and bold for my first album, even if I was already well steeped in jazz music, raised in a large, musical family, and had the honor of working with artists like Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, and the experience of arranging music for a multitude of other artists like Mr. Washington had done at the point that he recorded and released “The Epic.” It is an exquisite, lengthy album that should definitely pass through your ears at some point in your life. With his next full length album expected to drop in 2018, he released the “Harmony of Difference” EP back in September of this year and it is a promising listen of things to come.

The packed house at Saturn was a wonderful sight to see. I was uncertain what kind of draw a jazz band would pull in Birmingham, especially one taking place in the Avondale neighborhood. Kudos to the Saturn and Seasick Records marketing departments for doing a really good job advertising this show. I recall seeing videos and posts on social media for months in advance so clearly they were just as hyped for the show as the throng of people who came out this evening were. The audience itself was impressively diverse, normally I don't really care about the demographic an artist draws, but it was hard to ignore the fact that there was an interesting mingling of people who attended the show who were either young or college aged or older folks in the 40+, 50+ range.

Los Angeles based trio (plus touring drummer) Moonchild opened the show, they had a pretty nice sub sect of fans in the crowd who were familiar with their songs. I had actually never heard their work prior to tonight. They reminded me a lot of bands like Hooverphonic and Morcheeba, but with an additionally jazzy twist. In my research I found that their influences contained acts such as J Dilla and Flying Lotus, which when I think back to their set I could hear a little bit of Dilla and Fly Lo in their music. Amber Navran was very expressive on stage as she sang and danced between two keyboard players (Max Bryk and Andris Mattson). One of the cooler parts of their set would be when the trio switched away from the synthesizers and vocals over to the brass section, Amber and Max on saxophones, Andris on the trumpet. As if that were not enough, they also showcased their talents in the woodwind section on a song with Amber on the flute and Max on the clarinet. Their sound was smooth and soulful, easy listening to bob your head along to. Moonchild were definitely up to the task of bringing the chill vibes, so now that we were all nice and relaxed, it was time for us to put our tray tables up, stow away our carry ons, leave our problems at the door, and prepare for our epic journey.

“You guys ready to blast off?”

Out stepped Kamasi Washington and his band, which included two drummers, Tony Austin and another person I will cover in just a moment, the sweet harmonies of Ms. Patrice Quinn, Brandon Coleman on keys and wearing a gigantic cat head that I presume he found on the costume rack located in the Saturn backstage area, trombone player Ryan Porter, and Mr. Washington's father, THE Mr. Washington (a.k.a. Rickey Washington) on soprano sax and who was also decked out in some very colorful ceremonial garb alongside his son who sported a half black, half one quarter green and white polka-dotted and one quarter black and yellow striped dashiki. I couldn't tell if it was him because he came out wearing a mask at first, but Ronald-freaking-Bruner Jr. was at the helm of one of the drum kits on stage. I could easily devote a good page or so to how much I love his drumming on “The Epic,” and his work with his brother Stephen Bruner (a.k.a. Thundercat), and his debut album that dropped in early 2017, “Triumph.” (Forgetful writer's note: I cannot recall the bass player's name who was filling in for Miles Mosely and for some weird reason I did not make note of it. Googled my butt off, but alas could not track down his name. Apologies.) As we took off from Terra, the band opened their set with the aptly titled “Change of the Guard” showcasing the band's talents one by one in a steady build up before Kamasi Washington approached his spot at the center of the stage and unleashed the fury with his tenor sax. A little later in the set we were treated to a jazz rendition of “Little Boy Blue,” which was a cover of sorts off of an album titled “Spangle-Lang Lane” and whose tracks are comprised of jazz-ified compositions of old lullabies that was released this year by trombone player, Ryan Porter. At the midway point of the set, Mr. Washington tells us a story about how himself and Ronald Bruner Jr. met way back when he was 3 and the future drum virtuoso was just a 1 year old and was already killing it on the drums, upstaging a young Kamasi at his own birthday party. As a kind of intermission, Tony Austin and Ronald Bruner decided to have a conversation with each other, using only their drum kits as a means of speaking. It was a gorgeous improvisation between the two drummers with their respective styles weaving in and out of each other for a good 5 minute “conversation” before breaking off into dueling drum solos. If you couldn't catch this live at the show, definitely check out some of the uploads on YouTube, well worth the time. Sadly, our journey above the atmosphere could not last forever. The set clocked in somewhere around two hours and change, and it really did not feel like that long of a show, and this was a weeknight after a long day at work plus I was suffering from a bad sinus cold, I don't know where I got the energy from (for argument's sake, let's just say it was the power of music). I seriously cannot recall a show that I have been to where I did not stop moving my feet and bobbing my head along to the music on display. This was easily one of the best shows I've ever seen. It ticked all of the boxes as far as what I would consider something near perfect in a live performance; a tight as hell set, a star studded lineup, good interactions with the crowd, and, especially, bringing it even though you're not in a bigger city. Also, I must reiterate how great it was to see such a large crowd show up for Kamasi Washington. Birmingham needs to bring more artists like this to town so they can gain further exposure and raise the profile of the city as a place that welcomes more than just the 44th coming out of retirement tour of Garth Brooks, not to mention to also expose a city on the rise like Birmingham to a more eclectic mix of talents. For the time being though, it was great to have a chance to see the stars with Kamasi and his band but I suppose it is now time for me to touchback down to earth. It's lonely out in space, anyway.

#concert #kamasi washington #musicoccurred #Birmingham Alabama #seasick records #jazz

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thesinglesjukebox · 6 years ago

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ZEDD & KATY PERRY - 365 [4.22] Title means a year, score can't even break a week.

Katie Gill: Jesus Christ, we get it Zedd! You like the ticking clock noise! You don't have to put it in all of your songs! And now you're extending the clock & time theme to the lyrics of the chorus? You can tell this is Zedd trying to move past the fact that he can only write one song while kind of flailing at the whole 'write a different song' part. At least Katy Perry sounds decent. [3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Even without the music video, one gets the sense that Katy Perry is playing the role of someone who's utterly obsessed, their behaviors so extreme that they're acting like a programmed robot. You'd think that for the lack of humanness that Katy has successfully displayed throughout her entire career, this would be her moment to shine. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's not; she's unable to create a sad or grim undertone to her lifeless vocalizing, and nothing about this is secretly poignant. Katy's popular because of her innocuous nature, and her existence is so uninteresting that even her most controversial singles don't turn away fans -- these people are only listening because her music is always the safest approximation of whatever slightly-dated music trend is most acceptable. In that way, "365" is Katy at her best. [2]

Katherine St Asaph: I can see this being a grower like "One Kiss"; it shares a nocturnal tenseness and just-simmering-over lust. Both Zedd and Katy Perry keep their usual song-ruining to a minimum, though Zedd's still attached to that damn ticking sound, and the amount of computer processing it took to make Katy's voice that high and fluting could probably be used to crash the bitcoin market. It's also way too short, though that's nothing a strobing dark-dance remix couldn't fix. [7]

Iris Xie: Katy Perry is attempting to channel her Orientalist, racist colonizer energy again that was pulled off to a severely nonconsensual and hypnotizing effect in "E.T." and "Dark Horse." She tries to be captivating, but Perry actually trips and falls out of rhythm with the instrumental while trying to sing quickly to embody some sort of catchiness, like she's frantically trying to turn back time to her glory days by talk-singing a contemplative version of the rising and falling verses in "Peacock." Zedd prepares the instrumental with a beat that sounds like fingers tapping against a filled metal water bottle with the dynamics stretched out. Additionally, the use of the chimes and flutes is meant to evoke a more mysterious feeling, but it comes off as more like a flattened exoticism than anything else. The main redeeming quality is the somewhat fluid post-chorus that calls back to the greatness of using the cadence of a sequence of numbers to create a well-wrapped package, but that is barely utilized. I just don't need a racist pop star who makes blackface shoes, yellowface with geisha appropriation, and mediocre songs. What am I supposed to reluctantly dance to during Pride weekend in the basic-ass white gay clubs? "Firework" was at least "cash in on the gays" levels of opportunistic awful, so you can intentionally dance away to your oblivion and exploitation. Katy Perry was reliably there for you if you needed a problematic bop! But this has almost nothing redeeming, except the ability to elicit bored disgust from me and a compulsion to buy Oriental rugs. [3]

Ryo Miyauchi: Zedd injects some blood to his usually-plastic brand of EDM with steadily rocking kick drums and a ringing synth so metallic, you can sort of taste it. But the actual human connection in "365" is more soulless than the music of his peers. While the post-Purpose production might call for Katy Perry's breathy vocals, it lands in an awkward dead zone of a mood that feels a little too cold for it to feel sincerely affectionate yet too limp for it to scan as manic obsession. [5]

Alfred Soto: Maybe the ticking clock that's Zedd's aural corsage is his way of reminding listeners unwittingly of The Tell-Tale Heart. Yet for once Katy Perry underplays as if she knew what made "Friday I'm in Love" and "Saturday Love" work like mad, even if Zedd nips and tucks her voice like Joan Crawford did her face. [6]

Thomas Inskeep: There's no popstar alive I loathe more than Katy Perry -- really, I'd even rather listen to Ed Sheeran -- so it brings me minor joy to report that this is just as shit as I expected. "365" is nowhere as good a song as "The Middle" (thinking that Zedd just got lucky with that one), and Perry's vocal of course is obnoxious, since, y'know, she's not actually a good singer. Here Zedd reduces her to just another EDM/pop "girl singer" presence, except that her inherent awfulness can't help but imprint itself on the record. Oh, and said record is trop-house -- how au courant in 2019! [0]

Stephen Eisermann: Katy Perry does a good job of matching Zedd's interesting, faux exotic, production, which is a huge step up for the embarrassing attempts at hip-hop relevance from the last album. The song is more of the same lyrically, but sonically it's so pleasing and so clearly meant for a dance floor that the lyrics are easy to overlook. [6]

Will Adams: The clock ticking doesn't work not just because the gimmick is played out, but because it doesn't fit with the timeframe Katy's in. 365 days is a long time, but there are those crushes, missed connections, and dying flames whose lingering what-ifs can haunt you for at least that time. In the song, this is played out in the bridge, switching from her wanting someone around all the time to thinking about them all the time, desperation mounting as the melody does the same. It adds stakes, which is more than can be said for most of Zedd's recent output. [6]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

#zedd #katy perry #music #pop #pop music #new music #music video #music writing #music reviews

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ohhhdis · 7 years ago

Text

If I Believe You

Title: If I Believe You Pairing: Gladio/Noctis Prompt: Songfic Shorts 3/3 (maybe 4…?) Summary: Forced indoors by a Summer storm, Gladio and Noctis try to make the best out of their situation: a hot hotel room with no electricity and only candlelight to guide an impromptu dance. (Takes place while on the road to Tenebrae) Warnings: Sexy shirtless Gladio and seriously, way too much fluff. Notes: The perhaps final story in a series of short songfics based around Ignis, Prompto, and Gladio’s special relationship with Noctis, with an emphasis on the song’s words, both literal and figurative. Also, for full, highly-recommended effect, please give ‘If I Believe You’ a listen! These are ficlets inspired by and for @kaciart and the awesome Final Fantasy XV works. Check out their stuff!

The downpour was relentlessly rattling, smacking into the metal roof of the hotel, situated right above their top-floor-room heads. The sound was almost deafening, keeping runoff from drowning their balcony and their room. It had been two night’s stay in Lestallum with the weather as it was, a lush, beautiful landscape of Duscaen country outside, normally so explorable, now flooded by seemingly endless rain and wracked with clapping thunder and lightning. The retinue had understandably taken the hikes on the plains for granted, the hot Summer sun hung over the highway in the Regalia, top down and shirt sleeves rolled to the shoulders. All the amenities of the tourist town like the rich markets and shoreline restaurants were completely isolated now, closed up and hauled indoors, waiting for the waters to recede so they could get on with their busiest season.

Of course, that also threw a wrench into an important road trip, being that there was no road to explicitly follow.

Ignis and Prompto were gone from the hotel room, probably seeking reprieve from the heat oppressing their single-room, open balcony, and with current misfortune, no electricity. No power, no fans. No lights.

Noctis had always run cold; he held a standing love affair with the sun, with the heat of campfire and a car under an open sky. Gladio had watched him from his bed as he casually strolled about the room lighting small candles with complimentary matches, bathing the walls in dim orange glow before he’d set himself down in the chair closest to the balcony to watch the storm pass through. Candles, in the middle of the hottest season, during a power outage. His hair and skin appeared damp, even with only shorts and a thin shirt on, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. He stared wistfully at something out there, and Gladio stared at him.

He probably had something he could read buried in his bag by the door, but then, he didn’t seem to want that kind of distraction right now. One thing Gladio definitively wanted was to drown out the noise of taptapTAPTAPtaptapTAPtap. Over and over and over, louder here and there, then quiet, then the wind would pick up, quiet again; it wasn’t pleasant. He picked up his phone, swiping his thumb against the lock screen before tapping away at something. The little ticks of the phone’s keyboard was just different enough of a sound that Noctis perked up, resting his cheek in his hand to look over at the bed.

Gladio looked up quickly from his phone to catch the prince by surprise and his grin widened. “You as bored as I am?”

A raised brow, though he hadn’t moved from his curled position leaning on the arm of the chair. “I happen to like quiet sometimes, but….yeah.”

That was plenty answer enough for Gladio to tap once more on his phone, before sliding it down to the end of the bed as he stood up.

He was a tall man, always the tallest of their group, with thick muscles and a long core, incredibly fit in every way and unafraid to flaunt it, though in this case, he was probably shirtless for the temperature. Noctis’ gaze was delayed in following up with Gladio’s as he approached slowly, and the latter was certain to have noticed it. From behind him, the phone’s speaker let out some simple drum scales and smooth, synthetic waves as warm and heavy as the low light and thick heat around them, slow and burning deep with mood.

I've got a God-shaped hole that's infected. And I'm petrified of being alone; it's pathetic, I know…

A big tattooed hand reached out to Noctis. “Up. Let’s dance.”

Noctis actually laughed, a single, quick one of disbelief, though the offer actually managed to shift him from his place.

And I toss and I turn in my bed. It's just like I lost my head! (Lost my head...)

For all his incredulous humor, though, he wasn’t saying no. And Gladio didn’t seem to be in a mood for their usual banter. He was looking at Noct like they could be walking through hell-fire, and it wouldn’t be hot enough to keep the two apart, still smiling, with bright spots of candle-light reflecting off chocolate eyes.

The lyrics were paused for an extended moment of mellow bars, mild and enticing, and so Noctis took the hand, and Gladio took him up the rest of the way.

And if I believe you? Would that make it stop, if I told you I need you? Is that what you want? And I'm broken and bleeding, and begging for help, and I'm asking you Jesus, show yourself.

Noctis had another love affair with dancing, though it was far more secret than could ever be uncovered than his love of warmth. It had been a long while into their relationship and even longer since their friendship to have any idea that Gladio enjoyed some kinds of dance, though being with Ignis and Prompto, all four of them together revelling in one another’s company, trusting their passions and joys to each other. It looked like this was going to be just another one of those entrusted moments, but this was...so much quieter.

I thought I'd met you once or twice, but that was just because the dabs were nice and opening up my mind, showing me consciousness is primary in the universe. And I had a revelation:

They had two hands held and the others were embracing each other while they swayed, so slow and careful they might actually appear to be still. The initial concern of matching their differing heights and knocking toes seemed to fade quick, and it surprised Noctis how easily this became like a recurring thing, something they’d done together countless times. He let his head his forehead drop onto Gladio’s chest, and they danced.

I'll be your child if you insist. I mean, if it was you that made my body, you probably shouldn't have made me atheist?

I'm a lesbian kiss, I'm an evangelist and "If you don't wanna go to hell then, Miss, you better start selling this."

Gladio’s hand at the small of his back was a welcome weight, strong and familiar, just as it seemed his own hand lost in long dark brown locks of hair were. Gladio was a protective, possessive man, though by his delicate touch, Noctis might never know it of his guard. He was also fun and serious, imposing yet watchful, and where Ignis was ever at his prince’s right side, Prompto ‘checking his six’, Gladio was the shield at the front. The unbreakable, the stone statue of resolve, and all it took to chip into the syrupy center was a chorus swelling up, just a little, and a choir of voices:

And if I believe you? Would that make it stop, if I told you I need you? Is that what you want? And I'm broken and bleeding, and begging for help. And I'm asking you Jesus, show yourself.

A long, long, quiet but for the song’s muffled flugelhorn, the rain crashing down harder and harder, to no real concern of theirs.

If I'm lost, then how can I find myself?

Noctis turned his head, still buried against Gladio’s chest, and smiled up at his dancing partner, who was looking right back at him with his always red-rimmed, thoughtful eyes, and he dipped his head in low to share a slow, innocent kiss.

If I'm lost now, then how can I find myself?

“Maybe you’ve got a few good ideas. Once in a while.” Noctis breathed against him, their lips still very nearly touching.

If I'm lost, then how can I find myself?

#gladnoct #gladio x noctis #ffxv fanfiction #final fantasy xv #ffxv #kaciart

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peterhongwrites · 7 years ago

Text

(Ch. 4) Hugh Jadhav and the Detention Escape

Hugh tapped the teacher’s wooden desk with a wooden pencil. He tapped once, twice, three times. The “clack!” sound of each tap bounced around the walls of the classroom. It echoed off the off-white drywall, past the wood grain desks (all but one empty, aside from a vague shadowy presence inhabiting them), and met with the ticking clock. Hugh slouched back in the chair, still tapping. Above his head, the chalkboard spelled, in wisped-white letters:

1. NO TALKING

2. NO MISBEHAVING *

* (DEFINITION ACCORDING TO PERSONAL BELIEFS)

3. NO LEAVING

Molock, sitting in the one desk not occupied by a vague shadowed presence, traced a finger up the length of his red horns, then hung loose from his desk.

“Hey,” Molock spoke. “Hey, you.”

Hugh, without un-slouching himself from the chair, replied, “yeah. Me.”

“You. Detention guy.”

Hugh repeated, “yeah. Me.”

“Guess what?”

Hugh repeated, “yeah. Me.”

“Detention guuuuuuy,” Molock sat back up. “I’m bored.”

Hugh repeated, “yeah.”

“Detention guuuuuy. I’m bored!” Molock drummed at his desk with his hands. Rat-tat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat-tat. “Let’s play a game detention guy. You and me. Come on!”

Hugh took a second in silence. He soaked in the quiet seconds. His desk was so tranquil. His body, at rest. He’d found peace. Then, he sighed. He unknotted his spine from the chair, and sat up. “Uh. Sure. Why not.”

Molock cut a sharp grin into his face. “Good answer! Let’s play 20 Questions. I love, I mean love, 20 Questions. And I wanna get to know you, detention guy!”

Hugh grumbled for a bit under his breath, before breaking into, “yeah, okay, whatever.”

“Okay! I wanna start, detention guy. I always start when I play 20 Questions.”

“Shoot.”

“Okay! So…” Molock grinned, questions swirling around his tongue. “Let’s start with a softball. Were you legally born a Detention Guy? Or is that something you took on yourself?”

Hugh made no reaction. “The name’s Hugh. Uh. Last name, Jadhav.”

Molock drummed his fingers again. “Hugh. Huuuuugh. That’s nice. Hyooooo. Hugh Detention Guy Jadhav.”

Three seconds ticked by on the clock: one, two, three.

“Huuuuugh. It’s your turn.”

“Oh. Uh… hold on. Uh…” Hugh felt his brain strain to lift a thought into his head. His mind felt heavy and thick. His back longed to droop into the chair. After a few seconds, Hugh finally spoke: “Okay. Your name.”

“Creative. Call me Molock. Or Molly, if you want. You can always call me Molly.”

“I’ll go with Molock.”

“Aw. Oh well…” Molock said. “Hey, hey. I got Question #2 ready: where’d you come from, Hugh Jadhav?”

Hugh tapped his pencil again. “Downtown. City in the United States. It’s a place on Earth.”

“Nice place?”

“It’s the worst.”

“Better than here, though?”

“Mm. Probably,” Hugh replied. “Okay, my turn again?”

“Nope.”

“Nope?”

“Question #3: Why are you here?”

“That’s a kinda broad question.”

“Like, here. in detention”

“Oh. Well, I’m supervising.”

“Why?”

“Cause supervising gives me extra credits.”

“And you want that… why?”

“Cause I wanna do good at school.”

“And you want that… why?”

“Cause I want the biggest grades.”

“Why?”

“Cause… I don’t know how to love myself?”

“Hah! You’re funny, Hugh. Funny funny.” Molock leaned in closer to Hugh, with an arm snaked up to his chin. “Okay, your turn. Come at me. Gimme any question you like.”

“Okay. Then how ‘bout this. Why’re you here?”

Molock face knotted into a frown. “Okay, different question.”

“Uh, okay? Guess we’re moving on?”

Molock looked away. “That’s none of your business, Hugh.”

“Okay, okay, it’s none of my business. If you say so, whatever.”

Molock tsk’d and clicked his tongue. “We’re going too slow. Let’s get to the good stuff already!” Molock grinned again, and looked directly into Hugh’s eyes. “You got anybody you like, Hugh?”

Hugh felt hot air rise in his chest. “Uh… uh, what?”

“You like? Anybody? Hello? Come on, you can trust me.”

Overhead, a flickering noise cracked and buzzed. All the shadowy presences at the other desks shifted for a moment, blinking in and out.

“No. What?” Hugh’s eyes turned up to the ceiling. “What the heck was that?”

“Hey hey, Hugh, you gotta face your problems with courage, you know? Otherwise, it’s no good. Can’t just avoid the question...”

“No, the noise. What was that?”

The noise crackled again. Something in the ceiling sizzled away. “Huuuuugh. C’mon.”

“No, I think it’s the--”

A “shock!” sound cracked and surged from the ceiling. It snapped right through Hugh and Molock’s eardrums, “shock!, shock!” The room went completely dark. The familiar sights of the classroom, the outlines of the desks and cabinets, were barely visible under the shroud of the blackout. Hugh could hardly even see Molock’s silhouette in front of him, coated in the shade.

“--the lights. Crud!”

Hugh breathed a choked sigh, and rubbed furiously at his temples. “Just my luck. Just my luck.” Hugh wanted to kick the desk. But Hugh wouldn’t. Hugh was reasonable. If Hugh kicked the desk, it would just mean a hurt foot and a not-hurt desk. He breathed. He was reasonable. He’d calm himself. “Okay. Okay!”

“Hugh, is it okay?”

“It’s okay, Molock!” Hugh turned his eyes around the classroom. “I read-- I read, okay, about the emergency protocol like, a million times. A. Million. Times. I just gotta, gotta find the emergency pack, it’s…” Hugh felt his way around onto the bumpy plaster wall of the classroom. Everything was dark, but his eyes remembered the sterile white color of the walls. He hugged onto them, and sidled on over to the other end of the room. “It’s over there, somewhere. Uh. Crud. Just gotta…”

Hugh felt around in the corner where the backpack should have been. After flailing his arms for a few moments, his fingers hooked onto a fabric strap. “Here! It’s over here. No worrying.”

“No worrying, Hugh?”

“Nope, nu-uh.” Hugh felt for the zipper. The backpack growled upon as he pulled back on it, and Hugh put his hand into the open flap. Fingers fumbled over unknown edges and shapes in the backpack before finding the cold, metal touch and curve of a flashlight. Perfect. Hugh took the flashlight out from the bag, and switched it on. “No worrying, Molock.”

Instantly, a harsh ray of yellow light beamed out from Hugh’s hands. A circle of the classroom revealed itself: a desk, a flyer for some club on the wall, and Molock’s red face.

Hugh looked straight at Molock. “Okay. Okay. Come on, we’re moving out.”

Molock looked at the door, then back at Hugh. “Moving out?”

“Yep. Moving out. Going. We’re leaving this place. Bye-bye. See you later. Let’s go.”

Molock pointed at the chalkboard. “The rules, though?”

“Emergency protocol’s rules too. Heck, it’s probably like, super rules, compared to that.”

Molock’s eyes spun around the room. His pointer finger shifted on over to the other desks. “What about those? The vague, shadowy presences? Don’t they gotta evacuate too?”

“They’re not on my roster. Just you.”

Molock’s eyes looked away. “But uh.” He licked his lips. “The game. We haven’t finished the game-- you didn’t finish the question.”

Hugh sighed, and shined the flashlight back to the door to the hallway. “Listen. Molock? I’ll level with you here. I don’t wanna answer that question. Not a bit. Not even zero percent of me wants to answer that. But if it makes you feel just a teeny bit less weird about getting out of here, I’ll tell you any dirty little thing you wanna know ‘bout me. Okay?”

Hugh reached his hand over to Molock’s. Molock turned his hands up, and strutted to the door. “Hey, hey. I can go. I can go. No worry, right Hugh?”

Hugh turned his head to the doorway. “Yeah. No worry. Okay. Let’s just move already, okay?”

Hugh grabbed onto the doorknob, turned and opened. The two boys walked on through.

* * *

It was dark in the hallway. Seemed the lights had gone off, not just in the classroom, but all over the floor. Hugh and Molock walked together in silence across the hall. The only sight they had was the harsh, battery-focused spotlight searing in front of them. The only sound, the heavy “clack!” rhythm of their footsteps over the tiled floor.

His eyes focused forward, Hugh spoke, “so. Who I like.”

Molock took a second. “Huh?”

“Who I like. You wanted to play this weird game; you asked me who I liked.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“You aren’t excited ‘bout this, are you?”

“No, no! Ack. Sorry. Come on, Hugh, I wanna hear!”

“O…kay.” Hugh continued to walk. “So. I guess, I do have someone I kinda like. Kinda.”

“Uh-huh?”

“He’s. Uh. Well, he’s kinda close, I guess. Met him at school, actually.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s… I dunno, honestly. He’s a lot. He’s a big ol, stupid lot. Gets into fights and stuff all the time. But I guess I like him. Can’t tell you why. Even I got absolutely no clue. But I like him.”

The sound of something surged through the hall, then. It was a “click!” noise, muffled, far off in the distance.

“God! Can’t this hallway ever just be normal? Can’t we ever just, walk through the hallway like a normal hallway, without some weird noises, or spirit meeting, or quest or whatever? I swear to god, if there’s a quest coming on…” Hugh rambled to himself, continuing to walk. “Ugh. Sorry Molock. I just hate this stupid hallway so much. I wanna fight this stupid hall so bad.”

No response.

“Molock?”

Hugh looked back. Molock had stopped walking.

“Molock, what the heck. We gotta keep moving. We gotta get to the evacuation meeting place.”

Molock breathed a heavy, lead breath. Hugh felt it fall in front of him. Molock did not move.

“Hey. Hugh…” Molock spoke. “I have another question for you.”

Hugh heard the clicking noise louder now. It was moving through the hall.

“What? Come on Molock, just spit the damn thing out.”

“Hugh… have you ever broken any rules?”

“Rules? Uh… let’s see.” Hugh thought. “I littered on the street once, when I was in 6th Grade. Okay, I tried to litter. But I’m a weenie. So I ended up grabbing the soda can I threw away off a gutter and carried it all the way to a dumpster. That’s all I remember.”

Molock stood in place. “So… you never broke the rules before.”

“I don’t… think so?”

The “click!” grew louder. It turned a corridor towards them.

“Heck is that noise?” Hugh asked.

Molock swallowed. “Good… That’s good Hugh. Real good.” Molock breathed another lead breath. “You must be a good person, Hugh.”

“Uh, I dunno about that. What I do know is that we gotta move. So, Molock, if you wanna continue this--”

Hugh reached a hand to Molock.

The noise drew louder. Hugh could hear many clicks within it now.

Molock did not grab Hugh’s hand.

“Molock.”

The noise drew louder. It was close.

“Molock?”

The noise drew louder.

“Hugh. Hyoooo. That’s a fun name you got, Hugh. You’re really funny, Hugh.”

The noise boomed in Hugh’s ears, “CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK”.

Before Hugh realized, Molock jumped out into a sprint, running away from the noise. Molock zoomed, ran, ran down the hall, turned to a door, jammed at the doorknob.

“Molock, what the heck are you on about?” Hugh yelled.

“Damn it.” Molock cursed at the door. “Damn it, damn it! Damn it! Damn it!”

Hugh blinked. Without warning, Molock fell down right where he stood. Hugh caught a blur of something strike at him. The blur moved onto Molock, snapping at his ankles, spreading over him. “Damn it!” Molock, voice muffling underneath, “please, please,” he yelped, and snapped, and thrashed his arms everywhere. “Please!”

Molock shut his eyes. He felt his pulse pump slower. His limbs felt limper by the moment.

“Please…” Moloch moaned. “I’m sorry, I didn’t-- didn’t…”

Hugh shined the light over Molock’s body. And he saw it. The shape of the clicks. Their bodies. Their eyes.

No time thinking. Hugh held the flashlight up, and slammed it down on the clicks.

“Hah…” Molock breathed, a few of the clicks moving off his face.

Hugh slammed the flashlight down again. And again, and again, and again. He smashed the steel-cast against the clicks over and over.

He wrenched his fingers down through the mass of clicks, fumbling for Molock’s body underneath. His hand grasped onto Molock’s body. He pulled him through, beating off the wriggling mass over him.

“Hey. Hey, you. We’re leaving! You hear me? You got your ears working?”

Molock’s eyes looked dizzily at Hugh. Hugh chiseled the last group of clicks off of Molock’s body, and held his arm over his other shoulder.

“And you idiots,” Hugh said to the clicks now, “better hear me too. Alright?”

Hugh turned on his heels, and ran.

Hugh ran away from the clicks.

He ran fast. He ran hard. He threw the clicks off his back. He slammed off the clicks that hung onto their bodies. Hugh ran, ran, ran. Hugh ran far away, deep into the hall.

After a long time of running, their noises faded away.

Then Hugh stopped. He was in the middle of the hall, around some lockers. His breath kept running; he breathed again, and again, and again, and his lungs felt like collapsing at how many times they blew up and deflated.

“Crud,” Hugh breathed out. “Crud! God,” and again, “what a load of-- crud!”

Hugh’s hands skittered over the backpack, pulled out a bottled water, and rushed it to his lips. The droplets spilled down his throat and over his shirt. “Okay. Crud! Okay. I think… I think we lost them. Crud! Sorry. Crud!”

Molock sat down on the hallway tile. Hugh coughed, and crumpled down next to him. “Crud,” Hugh whispered again.

Molock sat still. He moved nothing.

“Hey…” Hugh wheezed. He held out the water bottle. “Take a sip. Come on, big guy.”

Molock turned his head over to the bottle. His eyes were glazed over. Then, he looked over at Hugh.

Molock laughed.

He laughed loudly. Enough to rattle the lockers in the hall.

“Hugh!” Molock said. “Hugh, you really are funny…”

Hugh shook his head. “Okay. I’m funny, Hugh’s super funny, ha ha ha.”

Molock stopped laughing. He paused for ten seconds.

“Okay, so…” Hugh said. “We’re playing a game. Here’s another question. What the heck?!”

Molock did not speak. He waited another couple seconds.

“Maybe that’s not so good a questi--”

“Hugh,” Molock said. “I wanted to ditch you.”

Hugh looked at Molock. Molock didn’t look back. “Figured.”

“I wanted to-- to leave you behind, back there.” Molock looked up. “Didn’t work. They wanted me.”

“I saw that.”

“Hah! You’re good Hugh. You really must be.”

Hugh rolled his eyes. Hugh had been saving it up for the opportunity, but he finally rolled his eyes. “O-o-o-okay.”

Molock took the bottle of water, and tilted the bottle down over his lips. He drank for 5 seconds. His adam’s apple bobbed up, down. He pulled the bottle back, and grunted.

“Hugh.”

“Molock.”

“I was really gonna leave you there, so I could get away.”

Hugh felt a good opportunity coming on for a second eye roll. “So what? It’s over. It’s done.”

“It’s not over. They want me. They’re coming back. Listen closely.”

Hugh turned back to the hall. A faint, clicking noise crept down the walls.

“Hugh.”

“Molly.”

“They’re not fast. But they catch up.” Molock strained his bones, and stood himself back up.

“Next time, Hugh. Leave me behind.”

Hugh groaned.

Hugh audibly groaned.

“God,” Hugh said, “why is everyone so stupid. Why did the universe let everyone be stupid. And why does everyone feel like they got the right to say stupid stuff?” Hugh stood up. “Anyways. The door to the evacuation room is down the hall, left at the turn, two rights, and then straight. I don’t got a map or anything telling me that. It’s one of those, your heart knows, things. Stupid halls. We’re going down there.”

“Hugh.”

Hugh took another sip of water, and put it in the bag. He helped Molock back onto his shoulder. He started walking.

“If you can say my name,” Hugh said, “you can ask some questions. Come on. We’re playing a game.”

“I’m sorry, Hugh.”

“That’s not a question, Molock. That’s a statement.”

Molock shook his head. “Hugh.”

“Say my name one more time.”

Molock paused.

“Really? Nothing?”

Molock breathed. “Favorite food.”

Hugh kept walking.

A click echoed off the lockers.

“Coffee. If that counts. It’s also my least favorite, cause I’m difficult like that,” Hugh replied. “It’s awful. Awful stuff. But I think if I stopped drinking the stuff for a day, even a day, I’d crumble up to dust, and die.”

Moloch made no reaction.

Hugh turned a left.

“Hugh,” Molock said. He had a thought. He shook it away. “Hugh. Favorite music. Tell me your favorite music.”

The click turned left, behind them.

“Music. Music, music… Honestly. I don’t really listen to music. Not a music guy. But my music taste, hoo boy. I got none. I like anything I hear. Doesn’t matter if it’s rock, pop, heavy metal, jazz. Never heard a song I really hated.”

Hugh turned right.

The click turned right.

“It’s getting closer, Hugh.”

“If you aren’t asking questions, I will. Favorite color.”

Moclok blinked. “Red. Hugh--

“Red?”

“Yeah, red. So--”

“God.”

“What?”

“Just thinking about how hysterical that is. Your favorite color is red. You’re red. You’re literally red. Your favorite color is literally just you.”

Hugh turned right, again.

The click turned right, again.

“Straight down. I see the door, Molock.”

Hugh walked down to the door.

The click moved over to Hugh’s heels.

“Molock, tell me your favorite music.”

Hugh walked closer.

“Molock? Music. Catch up with me here.”

Hugh was close now, doorknob a few steps away.

“Molock?”

Hugh looked back.

A dark tendril had hooked onto Molock’s ankle. Already, the clicks started moving over him.

Molock was perfectly still. “Hugh,” he said, without looking at him. “Go.”

Hugh blinked. “Stupid.”

Clicks continued to climb themselves over Molock’s body.

“Hugh. I screwed up. I screwed up real bad. And I did something-- I did something really awful.”

Hugh clicked his tongue. “Yeah.”

“You don’t get it, Hugh. Really bad. Something you just can’t forgive.”

Hugh inched closer to the doorknob, still holding onto Molock. He felt every tremble that ran through Molock’s body.

“I wanna tell you. I wanna tell you how bad it was. I wanna tell you, but I--”

Hugh kicked at the door. “So don’t! Just don’t! Problem solved!”

“You don’t get it, Hugh. You’re a good guy.”

“Jesus, I’m not! I’m a dumb teen!”

“You’re a good guy. But me, I’m being punished. I did something wrong. Now I’m getting taught a lesson. You don’t--”

“Oh my god!!” Hugh yelled. “Shut up!!”

Hugh wrenched himself forward to the door, with the weight of Molock and the clicks tugging against him.

“Just shut up! Shut it!”

Hugh reached to the doorknob, and began to pull.

“I screwed up! I did something unforgivable--”

“I don’t care! Hear me? Oh my god! I don’t care! I don’t care whatever you did! I don’t care whatever happened! Jesus Christ! Why the hell would I?”

“Because! These things! They want me, want me to learn--”

“Oh whatever! Learn, learn, learn, I’m not your nanny! I don’t care what lessons you gotta learn!” Hugh grasped at the brass touch of the doorknob, but was pulled back again.

“I don’t care what stupid vague lesson you gotta learn! And I really, really don’t care if you wanna throw yourself in your own wallowing pile just cause you gotta learn it! You know what? You’ve got years and years to go off and screw things up just as bad some other day-- and maybe, maybe you learn something, and it’s all great, or you don’t, and it sucks!” Hugh shouted. “Look! If you really wanna learn, go say sorry, think a little about it, try not to do it again, and play nice! Or whatever! It’s not my problem! You! You’re on my roster! You are!”

Hugh’s fingers wrested away, grappled right over the doorknob.

“So! Shut up, and let me fix this already!”

Hugh turned the doorknob. He wrenched himself, and Molock in. The two boys tumbled into the other side of the room. Hugh slammed the door back before the clicks could slip through. White light seared over them from the ceiling.

Hugh gasped for breath. Molock wheezed. Hugh coughed. Molock tried to catch his breath. Hugh heaved air in and out.

“Okay,” Hugh spat out, in between husky breaths, “get into your homeroom’s,” cough again again, “single file line. That’s Class,” cough, “71-P.”

Molock wheezed again.

“Hear me,” Hugh said, “Molock? 71-P.”

#writing #short story #prose #hugh jadhav and the many magical journeys

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