#it's just I've heard all these songs before/they're a little dated and I'm exploring for new music and not looking for 2015's greatest hits

[rimouskis]

>searching for character/ship playlists >finds one >opens it >first songs I see are by taylor swift, twenty one pilots, and melanie martinez >closes it >repeat ad infinitum

[genericpuff]

1. Have you read Circe by Madeline Miller + Song of Achilles ~ if you have what are your thoughts

2. In the original what was your favorite male character drawn out (mine was Hermes only bc I found him hot😓)

3. How long do you think it’ll take you to ‘finish’ your story, like do you have a set date: 2026,2027, even 2030🙈🙈

4. What’s your backstory on tattooing and art, was this your initial plan

5. Fave girl character, (mine is Minthe only bc she reminds me of my younger self since I seemed to only choose realtionships where I get here)

thank youuu

ahaha so many questions! I'll answer them as concisely as I can :>

1.) Song of Achilles is on my shelf, I've been meaning to read it all but I haven't been able to make time for it, I might try and do so before the new year! I've definitely heard great things :>

2.) Hephaestus! He gives me such older brother vibes, he just seems like a really chill and snuggly guy LOL Only complaint about his character design is the fact that he's constantly using running blades (sure they look cool but they're not practical for casual wear, you're supposed to use them for, y'know... running lmao) but that's really it, I think his arc with Aphrodite in S3 was poorly written tbh especially with how rushed it was, but overall not the worst treatment out of the cast.

3.) Definitely don't want it to take until 2030 LMAO It's gonna depend on a few variables, including update schedule (I'd really like to get back to posting once a week again like I used to but I don't think it's gonna be possible for a little while u.u""") and how long the final scripts come out to be. Ideally though I'd like it to be wrapped up within another year or two. This definitely isn't one of those "work on it indefinitely" type projects, I have an end goal in mind and I don't want it to take over half a decade like my last comic project did LOL

4.) Never expected to wind up making Rekindled or in tattooing. I'm kind of a "fall into it" type person, I do what feels right in the moment even if it's not what I initially planned for (within reason, of course! I've learned to sit on new ideas and plans for a bit before pursuing them to ensure I'm actually into them before diving in lol it helps me avoid the impulsive ADHD-fueled decisions 😆). I sort of had a plan for myself back in primary and high school - I wanted to become a video game concept artist, but over time as I got into making comics and after I graduated college, it just never really happened. It's never too late, of course, but right now I'm having a lot of fun tattooing and making comics in my free time ! I think I'd still be making comics even if I ended up in game dev, it satisfies my storytelling side haha

5.) If you mean specifically LO, yeah, Minthe here too. Which is wild because I remember when I was still a huge fan of the comic and was on the "fuck Minthe!" train. Now that I've explored the comic with a more critical eye, I sympathize with her way more and I really hope she had gotten a more satisfying conclusion. Still, she got away from Hades and Persephone's nonsense so that's better than nothing LMAO but I definitely want to explore her side more in Rekindled as the story unfolds, I have some fun plans for her <3

[theeverlastingshade]

The Collective- Kim Gordon

Solo albums from musicians who were once or currently in a revered band present a tricky prospect. If the musician going solo makes music that hews too closely to the sound of their revered band, they run the risk of lapsing into diminishing returns that fail to retain the idiosyncrasies of their bandmates and can verge on self-parody. If the musician going solo alters the style of their music too dramatically from what they were doing in their revered band, they run the risk of abandoning the qualities that made their band’s music so revered in the first place and can come off as painfully out of their depth. Listening to Kim Gordon's 2019 debut solo LP, No Home Record, you wouldn't get the sense that these considerations fazed her in the slightest. That album's blend of noise, industrial, and trap music presented a perfectly natural yet satisfying path forward for Gordon's solo work which she continued to follow to excellent effect on her recently released 2nd solo LP, The Collective. TC, in all its brazen, blown out glory, is the strongest album that Gordon has been involved with outside of her work in Sonic Youth to date, and it represents the best case scenario for any musician in this position.

On songs like "Paprika Pony" and "Cookie Butter" Gordon flirted with trap cosplay, but TC is a full-length exploration of those experiments. Producer Justin Raisen returns behind the boards, and he continues to lend his canny, hyper modern touch to Gordon's evocative imagery without watering down their corrosive edges. Most of these songs fuse walls of industrial guitars with combustible trap drums and serrated synths for a brutal but cohesive sound. Raisen provides just enough of a modern art-pop flavor to these songs that the music lands with an unusual approachability for something so beholden to noise. The tinny 808 drums juxtaposed against volatile shards of white noise on “The Candy House” provide a haunting allure well before Gordon’s eerie, heavily manipulated vocals emerge for some actual rapping during the bridge to remind us that witch house still has plenty of juice in 2024. “Tree House” begins like an early but tamer Sonic Youth cut in miniature before a brittle hi-hat/snare rhythm imbues the music with a contemporary twist without compromising its momentum. These songs are just as noisy as anything that you could reasonably expect from Gordon, but they're also disarmingly tuneful and rhythmically immediate. There's not a ton of sonic variation on display throughout TC, but it's extremely impressive to hear how much variation Gordon and Raisen manage to achieve within these narrow sonic parameters without lapsing into diminishing returns.

The blend of trap and noise is such an inspired, compatible pairing that the general sound of TC never overstays its welcome even after 11 different executions of what’s essentially the same idea. And while the relatively narrow sonic scope results in a few songs that bleed together somewhat, particularly during the middle section, there are a handful of highlights that are among her most inspired work to date. Opener "BYE BYE" convincingly reimagines an alternate timeline where Gordon rose to acclaim as a full-blown plugg rapper, with her dead-pan vocal delivery and rhythmic cadence floating above the propulsive 808s and incendiary synths, culminating in the purest realizations of those early trap forays to date. "Psychedelic Orgasm" applies nightmarish cement mixer guitars with blown-out drums that crawl at a trudging tempo and some vocal affects reminiscent of Burial for a particularly nasty sounding concoction that does wonders for the overall pacing and sonic variety on display. And while the cutting pose that Gordon strikes on "I'm A Man" wears a little thin and feels like a slight retread of past critiques, the plume of noise that expands and contrasts throughout its runtime is some of the most appealingly abrasive music that I've heard all year. Very few musicians her age and/or who operate in her stylistic circles would even attempt this sort of thing, and she largely pulls it off with aplomb.

While the aforementioned “I’m A Man” doesn’t have any lyrics that are among Gordon’s most striking to date, there are plenty of other songs on TC that do. Most of the songs on TC deal in mundane observations and non-sequiturs strewn together in impressionistic patchworks, but Gordon’s acerbic wit imbues the imagery with plenty of personality and charm. On the disarmingly vulnerable “I Don’t Miss My Mind” Gordon drops the cool veneer for some unusually direct verses that show a more sensitive side of her “Crying in the subway/Remembering the day/The liquid kiss, it don’t exist/Your money breathes, I feel the leaves/Yeah, industry of nothing” while “Dark Inside” finds Gordon in top form as she dunks on the fallacy of American exceptionalism “Send in the clowns/Send in the army/You want to be American/Go get your gun/You’re so free/You can shoot me”. While the concrete critiques aren’t as ample as seemingly random lines about calling a groomer or buying absurdly expensive potatoes, it all coalesces into a striking collection of late capitalist vignettes punctuated with sublime sound design. It’s incredibly inspiring that, at 70 years old, Gordon’s artistry remains so full of curiosity, a critical eye, and an adventurous spirit.

Essentials: “BYE BYE”, “Psychedelic Orgasm”, “I’m A Man”

[thispabulum-blog]

It's Not What You Say, It's What I Hear

Thoughtful Thursday

Today's post is about music, so instead of pictures we're just gonna get some links to the songs that I have listed in my OkCupid profile under "Five songs I'd put on a playlist to send to a crush" (there's ten of them).

I'd like to see if I can articulate one of my personal pet peeves (and if you know me well you'll likely have heard me complain about this before). I am aware that this is incredibly petty and makes me seem kinda bitchy, but I stand by it because when you get down to it, I'm a petty bitch.

There's this thing I've seen a lot online in people's dating profiles and such, where when they're trying to explain their musical tastes, they will say either

"I like all types of music, except rap,"

OR

"I like all types of music, except rap and country,"

and either of these statements piss me off to no end. It is one of my most prevalent Hard No red flags. If I decide to talk to someone who states something like this, you can bet it's one of the first things I bring up, so that I can try to get them to explain it in more detail.

But Why?

Basically my reasoning is that it's narrow-minded, and also often classist/racist. Also that I tend to take things literally. I'll try to expand on that.

For the record, I don't really like rap, but I do like country (older country, not modern pop-country or stadium-country).

Issue 1: It's narrow-minded.

In the conversations that I've had with people who say things like this, this statement falls apart under even slight scrutiny. If you ask them more specifically what genres of music they like, it's usually just things like pop, indie, rock, lo-fi, electronic, alternative, maybe emo. Which is fine, but is not "all types of music".

1.A. The Inclusive: If they do branch out into any other slightly more niche genres, like maybe reggae or metal or swing, quite often their definition of "liking" a genre of music is that they're familiar with one or two (usually very famous) songs/artists within that genre, and have made no attempts to explore any further.

This makes me feel a little bit gatekeep-y, but I'd just rather someone be honest about their level of interest in a thing. One of the hallmarks of pretension, in my opinion, is misrepresenting your level of knowledge/expertise/involvement in a subject based on limited experience.

In case you're curious, this is the note I made in 2016 about Ways to Avoid Seeming Pretentious:

Don't put down other people's interests, especially if you don't know your audience.

Be honest about the level (and source) of your knowledge on a topic.

Don't assume that your listener is dumb or doesn't know what you're talking about.

1.B. The Exclusive: Any amount of prying will determine that they're not talking about bluegrass, mariachi, acid jazz, gypsy punk, or baroque, folk, or parody. And when I've asked people about things like that, they get really dismissive, like of course not. Of course I don't listen to those garbage genres. And it's this kind of dismissal that rubs me the wrong way, because what it says to me is that they don't consider those genres to be music - both in the literal sense that if they were tasked with listing musical genres they would not come to mind, and in the sense that when presented with them, they claim they don't qualify.

This plays into my biggest pet peeve, which is people operating under the assumption that there's only one right way to do things, that their feelings or opinions represent the vast majority of opinions, or that their way of doing things is the One Right Way.

It's the shrugging off that gets me. Again, I don't give a fuck what kind of music you listen to, as long as you're not a dick about other types.

Issue #2: It's classist/racist.

This is the one where people often start hating on me. Don't get me wrong - it doesn't bother me if people don't like rap or country! You can like whatever music you want, and it doesn't make you racist or classist.

But the attitude behind this statement is that rap and/or country music are somehow less than, and the assumption that of course you'll agree with that statement - or at least not take any issue with it.

Rap and country have historically been low-hanging fruit; easy targets for the ridicule of "haha that's not real music" in the same way that bagpipes and accordions are as instruments. How many jokes have you heard along the lines of "Every rap song talks about bitches and hoes" or "Every country song is about trucks and some guy's woman left him and his dog"? Don't even get me started on jazz, which falls under the same category but doesn't get brought up as much, because of 1.B.

Now, how many of the same types of jokes have you heard about K-pop? Or ska? Or indie folk? I'm willing to bet it's not many.

My feeling is that this is because these genres are associated with marginalized groups - rap with PoC and country with poor whites - and that making a specific point of mentioning not liking one or both serves as a kind of dogwhistle to denote something like "don't worry, I'm white and affluent", or "I'm not trashy".

Is this always the case? Obviously not. Just as every person who dislikes rap or country isn't always racist/classist, everyone who says this isn't always racist/classist. But it's enough to make me reconsider people.

Another point, which is an extension of this idea:

Let people enjoy things, for fuck's sake.

This is more or less pointed commentary at Dr. Strangelove, but it applies to a lot of other people. He loves The Beatles, absolutely. I...don't. I don't think they're terrible, and I will concede that they were very innovative in trying new and different things with music. But I don't think all of their music is lyrically or musically genius (they had plenty of songs that were just "baby I love you", like every other pop band). more than anything, they seem like they were really pretentious and full of themselves. One of my favorite ways to annoy him was when he would play a Beatles song (either a recording or on a musical instrument) I'd say something like "huh, what song was that? I've never heard it before" because it was so unfathomable to him that I wouldn't have an encyclopedic knowledge of their catalog.

I've mentioned before how much of a snob Dr. Strangelove was about music, and how much he directed that at me, whenever I would listen to something he didn't like. He couldn't just not like it and tolerate it quietly, he was compelled to make me turn it off or change it, or complain about how terrible it was. Not that he didn't like it, but that it was objectively bad.

And I hate that shit.

You're allowed to like whatever music you want, but so is everyone else. Just because you don't enjoy something doesn't mean that it's bad or that people are stupid for liking it.

Cuddlebug listens to nothing but EDM (which I have only once asked him to turn off - Camellia is too discordant and makes me anxious).

Meeko Neko listens to K-pop and also metal (and a ton of other niche genres that I can't identify or discern), most of which don't really do it for me.

Aquaman listens to some good stuff, but also a lot of Frank Zappa, which I find incomprehensible.

Item 9 has been telling me about concerts he's going to lately of these emo/alt bands I've never heard of or gotten into.

You don't have to like the same things, but don't shame someone over liking something just because you don't enjoy it.

I don't know if I have a huge point here, but maybe the next time you're tasked with explaining what kind of music you listen to, just talk about what you DO like, instead of what you DON'T.