#or is it just patrick with some vocal effects.

[wentzologist]

am i the only one who painstakingly listens to old fob songs trying to figure out when it’s the other guys doing backup vocals instead of patrick. like “tonight im writing you a million miles away” WHO is that.

[cosmicangst]

ok ok ok i just got home and as always here are my thoughts

really enjoyed colin lemoine's take. in terms of just pure vibes hes a step closer to damon daunno than reeve carney. he's not as boyish comic relief as nicholas barasch and he feels like the most.... grounded?? orpheus i've seen. he acts out the "touched" aspect without flanderizing orpheus into just his naivete and rendering him foolish and infantilized. the best way i can describe it is that he just seems like an optimistic but ultimately ordinary guy you could meet at a grocery store line who also happens to be plagued w Unfortunately Blessed with Musical Visions by the Gods Against His Will Syndrome

amaya braganza!!!!! jesus what a vocal powerhouse. her flowers killed me. something about her vocal inflection or acting choices really made her grief over losing her life and her love so visceral. she would be right at home at the obc recording because her voice was pitch perfect. she has a terrific belt but it's during the quiet moments where she's the most effective. like at the end of all i've ever known you can really feel she's already mourning her loss before she's even lost anything which is why flowers was more heartbreaking than normal

will mann is the most intriguing part of this cast to me. hermes actors have the choice of landing on the spectrum of objective narrator to a guardian figure. will feels like the most paternal. you get the sense that not only did he observe orpheus grow up he also had an active hand in raising him. when orpheus nervously stops during epic iii will says "go on, baby" with "baby" obviously ad-libbed 😭 like yes that is his baby

my only real critique of this performance is that the show doesn't actually pick up until way down hadestown. not sure if the cast just wasn't feeling the crowd or themselves until that point (it was a sunday night so i get it). i just make note of this bc livin it up on top is this high energy number that felt strangely middle energy for some reason lol anyone who was experiencing the show for the first time and had no frame of reference wouldn't notice anything amiss but bc im abnormal and pedantic i definitely noticed

and this is by no means a critique of lana gordon's persephone whose lady of the underground is one of the top highlights of the show. she brought the roof down during "there's a crack in the wall".

which brings me to my favorite part of the show: matthew patrick quinn. i didn't think anyone could replace patrick page in my heart but i was just in love with everything matthew brought to this character. he manages to combine facets of patrick and kevyn morrow's hades that i love together. matthew has kevyn's slick charisma and anger but he has patrick's power and world-weariness. he's this incredibly tall, serpentine, and long limbed figure that towers over everyone. patrick as an intimidating and antagonistic force felt like an ancient old god who can break your house by inducing an earthquake but matthew's vibe is more like he could literally be the snake that could tempt you out of a garden of eternal paradise

he and lana are also 🔥🔥🔥 like you can simultaneously feel the millenia of history between them but they also have the chemistry of two hot people going on a date for the first time after a long period of slowburn. the resentment, the familiarity, he way he's obviously repressing his desperation to keep her and both trying to look unaffected and turning to their vices when they reject each other's touch i could absolutely scream

which is why i was sobbing by the end of epic iii. i think the catharsis was just a lot lol and they were so playful during their dance too! like actual lovers who have the most absolute fun during good times. matthew does this little wiggle for her when they're sidestepping and im 100% sure lana broke character and they both started laughing it was so sweet

anyway the fates, the ensemble, everyone was astounding and im gonna see if i can grab another cheap balcony seat before they leave in a week to see if i can catch j antonio rodriguez as orpheus

[aurevoirmonty]

JUDAS PRIEST – Sad Wings Of Destiny (2025 remaster) 

The same record label that recently released a great remaster / remix of JUDAS PRIEST first album, now is making available the legends’ sophomore work ”Sad Wings Of Destiny (2025 remaster)”. American based Exciter Records (after a deal made with Gull Records), presents this fresh remastering, obtaining a stunning sound quality. With this second album released in 1976, Priest began to create the heavier rhythms and strong twin melodies which helped to pave the way for the still malleable metal genre. Independent label Gull Records provided a mere £2,000 for Judas Priest to lay down what would become one of metal’s most revered and influential albums and, arguably, the first true bona fide traditional heavy metal work. Musically, “Sad Wings Of Destiny” is the album on which Judas Priest consolidated their sound and image, and not only one of their best, but also one of the most influential metal albums of all time. Much has been said about the amazing vocals of Rob Halford and the killer guitar work of K.K. Downing and Glen Tipton. And while they absolutely deserve the praise, not as much credit has been given to the rhythm section of drummer Alan Moore (only album with the band) and bassist Ian Hill. They lock in together and form the pounding, driving rhythms that went on to help define heavy metal.

The songwriting on this album is incredible, ahead for its era, and the diversity, awesome. In my humble opinion is the most creative album from Judas Priest before becoming a killer rocking machine (which I also like as well). Pulling together two old songs from 1973, Priest’s “Whiskey Woman” (written with original singer Al Atkins) and “Red Light Lady” from singer Rob Halford’s previous band Hiroshima, the group molded the indomitable “Victim of Changes.” The nearly eight-minute opener displays a wide dynamic range in rhythm, texture, and mood with heavy riffing, a melodic ballad section, and extended guitar leads. The heavy riff alternates with a cappella passages, Halford breaking into screaming falsettos during the slow break and dramatic conclusion of the song.

Following the now Priest classic that has stood tall for more than four decades came “The Ripper.” A concise, yet devastatingly effective track that further played with clever arrangements and sudden and arresting tempo changes. A busy, chugging, riff-heavy rocker with arrangements inspired by Queen – particularly in the high-pitched layered opening vocals and classical-tinged twin guitars. “Dreamer Deceiver” is a classic metal ballad with terrific atmospheres complete with some of Halford’s most ear-piercing falsettos, serving as introduction to the heavy “Deceiver” which follows it, a rhythm-heavy, Sabbathian track.

“Prelude” features some mood changing awesome keyboards, then “Genocide” is a forward-looking, riff-heavy rocker, bearing the influence of heavy rockers such as Deep Purple’s Woman From Tokyo. “Tyrant”, with its driving guitar riffs and concise construction, is part of the first seeds of what would flower into the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement. Then closer “Island of Domination” is a heavy rocker with a complex riff in a style reminiscent of their contemporaries Black Sabbath.

”Sad Wings of Destiny” boasts one of the most recognizable album covers in Patrick Woodroffe’s Fallen Angels. Depicting an outstretched angel surrounded by flames on the ground, the band’s trident emblem made its first appearance hanging from the angel’s neck.

Following the release of ”Sad Wings of Destiny”, the band consciously decided to break their contract with Gull to sign with CBS. Knowing this meant forsaking their rights to the songs as well as revenues, (they would later reclaim copyright ownership of these songs) it was a move made out of necessity. Little did Judas Priest know that they had just created a heavy metal masterpiece. Every single song on this album is amazing, ever changing. It’s not perfect due to money / production limitations, but this very good remaster solves many things.

01 – Victim of Changes 02 – The Ripper 03 – Dreamer Deceiver 04 – Deceiver 05 – Prelude 06 – Tyrant 07 – Genocide 08 – Epitaph 09 – Island of Domination

Rob Halford – vocals Glenn Tipton – guitars, piano, organ K. K. Downing – guitars Ian Hill – bass Alan Moore – drums

[zzzallnite]

- The Extraction -

“Room service!” I knock on the door of the suite room. After a few seconds, a man opens the door and let me push the cart in. Inside, the room is lit with warm yellow light and simply decorated with a few pieces of rather unknown painters. The middle-aged guest signs to me to put the cart next to his bed, while he loosens his dress shirt down to the third button and leaves the unfastened necktie hanging on his shoulders. He loudly continues his conversation on the phone in a foreign language out in the balcony, assuming that I don’t understand anything. But in fact I do: he is talking about a delivery of a new biometric scanner to a governmental building in Vienna. I quickly take a glance at the man’s wallet on the coffee table when he’s still busy yelling at the one on the other side of the line with a funny accent outside the balcony. “PATRICK MUELLER. Head of Research and Development. AXIUS GmbH.”

Mr. Mueller hangs up on the phone and gets inside, expecting me to already leave. But I’ve got a surprise for him: I was waiting for him to enter the room and before he notices anything, I quickly put him in a headlock. “Arrrgh...Was...ist...los...? Arrghh...” He tries to pull by arm away from squeezing his carotid artery that pumping oxygen-rich blood to his brain, allowing the man, or any other person for that matter, to stay conscious. But his effort is all in vain as I have been practice this move a thousand times already. He succumbs to the sleeper and goes limp in seconds; before he passes out, the man lets out a faint “hrrrghh” pur like a kitten, which I find rather amusing. But there’s no time, I have other business to deal with. I immediately squirt a potent central depressant disguised in the form of a nasal spray; the drug was created by our genius engineers, who claimed the effect would be instant and the receiver wouldn’t recall anything, which may come in handy as I don’t want him to remember my face nor this encounter. I wait for 10 seconds... 20 seconds... 30 seconds... Mr. Mueller’s mouth slightly opens to take in some fresh oxygen for his brain, which was momentarily cut of just a minute ago, but his thin salt and pepper hair is still resting still on my chest, as he remains soundly asleep. Knowing that the sedative has done its magic, I drag the man by his armpits to his bed and lay him on his back.

“Target’s acquired,” I say to my communicator, “Proceed for next steps.”

“It’s about time!”, my partner answers back while she gives me the instruction of what to do. The cart I brought in earlier was just the cover for our little gadgets for this extraction mission. “Okay, first we need his fingerprints. Lay his right hand on the tablet; it will send the data to our field agent in Munich.”

“Next, I’ll need you to use the scanner on both of his irises at the same time.”

I try to lift both of his eyelids on one hand and hold the hand-held device that resembles a barcode scanner with the other. The man’s body twitches a little as the laser sweep across his eyes; I hold my breath for a second and let out a sigh of relief when I realize that he’s still out for the count.

“Here comes the trickiest part: voice recognition. But don’t worry; we’ve got just the right toy for it!”

“What the hell?”, I mumble to myself while looking at the unbelievably strange-looking device that looks like a shock collar and ball gag.  I could hear my partner giggling while she instructs me on how to use it. The collar acts as a the larynx stimulator, which send an electrical zap to activate the vocal muscles and the gag is a microphone to record to sound coming out of it. All I need to do is to cause his diaphragm to contract so the air in his lungs could come out, by punching it at the right place, which wouldn’t be a problem for me. “What if he wakes up?” I tell my partner, and she reassures me that if the knockout spray works fine then there won’t be an issue, but poor Patrick may have an unexplained stomach pain tomorrow. I open his shirt all the way to his belly button and proceed to gut punch the man; he lets out a faint “hurgh” noise as my fist contacts his solar plexus. I swear I could hear a snort on the other side of the communicator.

“His name has two syllables; you need to do it twice, consecutively.” I follow the direction and gut punch the still unconscious man two more times. Now I can clearly hear multiple people howling next to my ear. “Ok thanks for the effort, but we already has his voice recording from the reception!”, my partner says while trying to contain her laughter.

“What are you doing that for?”, I grind my teeth.

“Well, just because we are on a mission doesn’t mean we can pull a prank on our coworkers at the same time. Besides, the man won’t realize a thing. We already had the necessary data so you can retreat now. Unless, of course, you want to spend some sexy time with Mr. Mueller.”

I have to admit, I am aroused by his whole look right now: silver fox, curly chest hair, disheveled business attire, out cold and vulnerable. But his attitude earlier on the phone just slightly turns me off, and also I can see a ring on his finger – he’s married, although probably very unhappily, I still don’t want to be a home wrecker. I only do one last favor by taking a pic of Mueller’s junk for my girl back at the office, but a limp one doesn’t make any sense. I awkwardly put the shock collar around his penis and scrotum and zap it until his soft puppy turns rock hard.

A solid 7 inches... Maybe Patrick was happily married after all...

I undress the unconscious man, leaving only his brief and dress socks on, and put him in a silk robe, so that he could doze off the drug comfortably until morning, as a thank you for his cooperation. I pull out the cart out of the room, turn off the light and make a smooth escape, for another mission well-done.

[denimbex1986]

'The lack of advance detail about this episode had led to wild speculation about it possibly featuring returning actors, characters and monsters, while Doctor Who magazine even had a redacted cast list last month. Some pondered whether Ncuti Gatwa might put in an early cameo as the Fifteenth Doctor opposite David Tennant. In the end, it was a multi-Doctor adventure of sorts, just perhaps not in the way some people had been hoping.

Effectively a two-hander for Tennant and Catherine Tate’s Donna, it explored a theme we’ve seen before in Who during stories such as Listen or Flatline – that there is something nameless and shapeless lurking at the edge of our understanding of the universe, and it is coming to get us. This time, though, it came disturbingly in the misshapen form of Tennant and Tate themselves.

The show’s bigger budget was evident on screen, as that was surely the longest corridor the Doctor has ever run down, and the hover-car put the Segways the Doctor and Donna rode in her 2006 debut, the Runaway Bride, to shame. The robot looked like it would have been fun if it had been given anything much to do, but that it was doing not very much, and doing it very slowly, turned out to be the point.

This story hinged on the performance of the two stars and the work of the design and VFX teams. Tennant and Tate were impeccable. The look, feel and realism of the shape-shifting menace varied. As specials go, it didn’t feel as special as the Star Beast had the week before, but it finished with a lovely dose of the much-missed Bernard Cribbins, and the set-up for what looks to be next week’s explosive finale of the Fourteenth Doctor’s brief but welcome era.

Sum it up in one sentence?

The Doctor and Donna get the runaround on a giant slowly self-destructing spaceship … and find they are chasing themselves.

Life aboard the Tardis It didn’t take place in the Tardis, and it wasn’t with the real Donna, but as promised by Russell T Davies in advance, this episode firmly asserted that the destruction of half the universe during Flux, and that the Doctor was not born on Gallifrey, are facts in the Whoniverse. This will disappoint a vocal section of fandom that were rather hoping the new showrunner was going to airbrush out or undo the Timeless Child concept introduced during Jodie Whittaker’s tenure by Chris Chibnall.

Fear factor Remembering that there are children in the audience, this special managed to balance the chilling idea that someone – or something – is gradually becoming the perfect facsimile of you, with the frankly laugh-out-loud unexpected giant stunt arms.

Mysteries and questions This didn’t feel like it had any elements in it setting up story or character arcs, with the main mystery being why the Doctor usually uses the sonic screwdriver to read every alien spaceship control panel they come across if they can just do it themselves by translating some numbers. And is it really “mavity” now?

Deeper into the vortex *The Hostile Action Displacement System of the Tardis was first introduced in 1968 Second Doctor story the Krotons, and barely mentioned again until it was the reason for the Eleventh Doctor and Clara to get stranded on a sinking submarine in 2013’s Cold War. * The Fourth Doctor once told Romana in the Douglas Adams-penned the Pirate Planet that he had to give Isaac Newton “a bit of a prod” to discover mavity – by climbing up a tree, dropping an apple on his head, then explaining it to him “afterwards at dinner”. * The actor playing the Doctor has faced off against themselves playing the villain before, notably with Patrick Troughton playing both the Time Lord and the evil dictator Ramón Salamander in 1967’s Enemy of the World, and Tom Baker getting made up to look like a cactus as the anti-hero in 1980’s Meglos.

Next time Neil Patrick Harris! The Celestial Toymaker! A doll sending the whole world mad with its giggle! And presumably, as it has been in the trailers, we get to see Jemma Redgrave back as Unit’s Kate Stewart in their swish new Avengers Tower knock-off in London, and hopefully a little more Bernard Cribbins.'

[fearsmagazine]

ABRUPTIO - Review

DISTRIBUTOR: Pending

SYNOPSIS:  “Les Hackel hates his life. He works a dead-end job, was just dumped by his high-maintenance girlfriend, and still lives with his nagging mom. One night, he discovers a fresh incision behind his neck. His friend Danny tells him it's a bomb, that someone has implanted one in his neck, too. And then the messages start coming in, forcing Les to carry out missions with deadly results. Les is partnered up with a series of oddball characters to commit heinous tasks. The violence escalating around him, Les pieces together the clues that reveal the horrific plans to breed a monstrous race of beings.”

REVIEW: Evan Marlowe’s screenplay is a nice blend of satire, science fiction and political commentary. His main character, Les Hackel is an amalgamation of J.D. Sallainger, William S. Burroughs and Hunter Thompson character who suffers from more contemporary issues.

Marlowe’s screenplay takes a classic 50’s/60’s science fiction tale and adds a bit of Lynch and Cronenberg to it, then takes it to another level with amazing life-size puppet designs that give the film a surreal and trippy feel. Enhancing all that is a fantastic vocal cast that brings these performances to life and at times allows you to forget you are watching puppets. As Hackel’s life begins to spiral out of control he contours bizarre characters that he is accepting of, unlike Dorothy in the land of Oz. Marlowe keeps Hackel grounded and easily accepting of the deadly tasks he is assigned without questioning them. When the police become involved they are aware and accepting of everything Hackel has done, but there is something lurking in his past that they are trying to get him to admit to. Marlowe seizes and engages the viewer’s attention with this wickedly delightful tale that ultimately pulls back the curtain in the final act to expose the story’s dark secret. For all its freakish elements the story builds tension and suspense to culminate in a shocking release.

With 30 credits to his name, features and shorts, the production values of the film showcase Marlowe’s talent as a director, cinematographer and editor. He obtains performances from both his voice actors and puppeteers that bring these characters to life.  I enjoyed their work as there was such a life quality to their performance, yet there was something reminiscent of the human puppets of the Jim Henson studio. Given the grotesqueness of several of the character designs, the film is still beautiful to look at. There are several scenes that are almost monologues, or where characters discuss social or philosophical issues, and the director magically edits the sequences creating energy and a nice pacing. The film took several years to complete. While he did not have to worry about his puppets aging, the film’s execution and look are cohesive and seamless. The gory special effects are intense and very lifelike, and reminded me of some of the early films of Peter Jackson. The score by Patrick Savage and Holeg Spies adds another level to the film as it accentuates the visuals, the action, and adds another dimension to Hackel.

ABRUPTIO features a first-rate cast of actors voicing these characters. Rather than going with performances that are caricatures, they create characters that have peculiar ticks that flown through the puppet designs to enchant the viewer. Some of the actors are clearly recognizable, a few become apparent when viewing the credits.  Actor Sid Haig voices Sal in one of his final film appearances.

ABRUPTIO is currently doing the festival circuit, and while I highly recommend seeing it in a theater, if there is a streaming opportunity don’t pass it up. Evan Marlowe delivers a mad-cap genre classic full of dark humor and gore. It is a ride not soon forgotten. Marlowe is a talented visionary and I am excited to see what he serves up next.

CAST (voices): James Marsters, Hana Mae Lee, Jordan Peele, Christopher McDonald, Robert Englund, Darren Darnborough, Rich Fulcher and Sid Haig. CREW: Director/Screenplay/Cinematographer/Editor - Evan Marlowe; Producers - Kerry Finlayson & Kerry Marlowe; Score - Patrick Savage & Holeg Spies; Lead Puppet Designer & Fabricator - Jeffrey S. Farley; Lead Puppeteer - Danny Montooth; Visual Effects Designer - John Sellings. OFFICIAL: www.abruptio.com FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/AbruptioFilm TWITTER: N.A. TRAILER: https://youtu.be/MUGGBqrYL1A RELEASE DATE: Pending, a selection at numerous film festivals

**Until we can all head back into the theaters our “COVID Reel Value” will be similar to how you rate a film on digital platforms - 👍 (Like), 👌 (It’s just okay),  or 👎 (Dislike)

Reviewed by Joseph B Mauceri

[thekidsarentalright]

unpopular fob opinion!!

i personally cannot stand the vocal effect/metallic reverb they added to patrick’s voice on srar or ab/ap. i didn’t notice it for a really, really long time until I listened to fob’s albums back to back a few months ago! in certain songs it’s hardly noticeable and in others it’s very jarring, and for this reason I hardly spin srar or ab/ap anymore — which is soo unfortunate bc I think they are such fun, experimental albums (and also feat. some of pete’s best lyrical work).

yk this is so interesting to me bc i. literally listen to their entire discog on shuffle for hours a day and don't really notice the vocal effect? maybe it's bc i like that kind of thing in music tho so i just don't. notice it! totally understand if it isn't ur thing, production like that can Really make or break a song/album! maybe one day you'll be able to enjoy them again for the lyrics if nothing else!

[novumtimes]

Danica Patrick Takes A Jab At President Biden In Ongoing Support for Donald Trump

Danica Patrick has been incredibly vocal recently with her opinions on the current Presidential campaign. Although more known for her illustrious racing career, Patrick is now becoming increasingly known for her support of Donald Trump. Recently, Patrick took to Instagram to claim that Trump, at 78, has shown more effective leadership during the recent Hurricane Helene crises than current President Joe Biden. Her comments followed the devastation of Hurricane Helene, which wreaked havoc on the eastern United States, causing over 100 fatalities. Responding to Trump’s reaction to the natural disaster, the former NASCAR driver posted to her Instagram Story, as reported by First Sportz: “Acting more like the president than the president.” Danica Patrick looks on in the Paddock before the F1 Grand Prix of USA at Circuit of The Americas on October 24, 2021 in Austin, Texas. Danica Patrick throws shade at President Biden. Danica Patrick looks on in the Paddock before the F1 Grand Prix of USA at Circuit of The Americas on October 24, 2021 in Austin, Texas. Danica Patrick throws shade at President Biden. Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images Patrick’s involvement in political discourse is not limited to social media. She has been a vocal participant in the Reclaim America Tour, a campaign initiative throwing support behind Trump. Speaking at one of the events in Las Vegas, Patrick explained, as Newsweek Sports previously reported: “People didn’t like that. People looked at me like I was some radical right-wing MAGA. MAGA has got this awful connotation to so many people and you know what? All it did was light a fire. “I will not be judged to live in America, be a proud American, say ‘I love America’, and want to make America great again. I won’t be judged for it. Instead of quieting down, I am gonna get louder! “I was raised in a middle-class family. My parents love their garden; they still do. But my parents instilled really good values in me. Instilled values to dream really big, to be honest, and to work hard.” In a separate interview, the former driver opened up on her political stance, commenting: “Here is where I stand with SOME current issues and politics. I am not a liberal. I am somewhere between republican and independent,” she said. “I think our country should be run by someone that knows business and has integrity. I believe we should be able to speak freely. “I love this country, and I have lived in other places. I believe when people of different opinions speak face to face, we realize we are more similar than different. “I don’t believe everything anyone says. I have been very torn over the years if I should give a [crap] about politics or just live the life I want as an example. I have been doing the latter. The reaction today is definitely interesting… since all I said was, I love this country.” Source link via The Novum Times

[forastic]

Jam session project

UCSC DANM grad school winter 2023 - week 6 (feb19 - feb25)

The prompt for this project was to create a gift for someone that you could not deliver. After deliberating about making something really sad or angsty, I decided to make a project I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while. 

I’ve had dreams where I can pick up a guitar and play it effortlessly - my every pluck and strum sounding beautiful. I’m not a guitar player. I decided to make this interactive project for myself when I’m dreaming - a gift I cannot give.

I was unable to get a guitar, unfortunately, so I settled on two keyboards and a microphone. I created an ableton live project with 3 instruments. One keyboard controlled a pad sound, mostly made of slightly detuned square waves with a slow attack and decay. The other keyboard controlled a lead sound, with a little bit of portamento and heavy delay effects. Both sounded a little sad and video gamey (they were influenced by disasterpeace’s work on Fez) and were made in KiloHearts Phase Plant soft synth. The microphone input had a series of compressors and EQ, as well as a little distortion and delay. It also had auto-tune on it, set to G major.

The keyboards both had midi effects on them that corrected every note press to the G major pentatonic scale.

I’ve been thinking a lot about fail states in games and player agency. Is a fail state necessary to feel like a player has agency in games? No, of course not. But how about music? Guitar hero is fun, but it’s basically advanced simon says. There’s very little room for improvisation in it - you’re doing it right or wrong. Picking up a musical instrument can be incredibly intimidating as the learning curve is steep. How much failure in music performance is necessary for a feeling of agency? I wanted to make it impossible to sound bad, but possible to sound better. I wanted the person interacting with the jam session to feel free to explore and improvise.

I set up the two keyboards and the microphone deliberately, so the participants would be required to look at each other. In jam sessions a lot of what is conveyed is through eye contact and subtle body motion. I wanted my amateur musicians to be able to intuit this just from deliberate positioning of instruments.

I also wrote on post-it notes near the two keyboards, encouraging people to play with the octave buttons built in. There were also instructions - the keyboard with the lead had a note saying “Play one note at a time! Play a cool melody!” (the instrument was set up to be monophonic). The pad keys said “Hold down 2-3 notes at a time!”

I had members of my class (and patrick) try it out. They played for a couple minutes, then switched stations.

I received some good feedback about what it felt like and how to improve. The vocals needed better monitoring - without hearing the autotune clearly the singers were still feeling as though they could fail. I really want to try this with an electric guitar, so I’m going to prioritize that next time.

Here are some videos I captured of the test:

https://youtu.be/oVpKE83XiQY

https://youtu.be/ECR9qt01Rv8

https://youtu.be/to_qYGYHo4E

[millionsknives]

hadestown thots (as requested):

first of all here’s a pic of the cast after curtain call sorry its only six pixels wide

also im pretty sure i was standing right next to one of the ensemble members (alex puette, tall guy standing behind orpheus in the picture) on the subway earlier that day

ok what is there to say about patrick page that hasnt already been said. i love it when he enters with ‘i missed ya’ and the people in the audience who aren’t familiar with the show are like wtf [nervous laughter]. the role was literally written for him so it’s no surprise that he just owns it but after seeing him my memory was wiped of the hades i saw on tour i genuinely cannot remember the other guy because patrick page is Thee Guy

eva noblezada STOLE. THE MF. SHOW. seeing her perform live changed me and changed fundamentally how i see the show. when i saw the tour in los angeles it felt like orpheus was the main character. but with eva’s eurydice it’s her world and we are just living in it. her eurydice wants so badly and it comes through brutally despite her insistence that she doesnt need anyone or anything and her fear to have anything lest it slip away. every note was exactly where it needed to be, the quality of her voice and technique is stupendous, even when she’s sobbing on her hands and knees her voice is clarion and pitch perfect. i saw her at the stage door after and SHE said thank you to US and i was like no no no no thank YOU.

jewelle blackman as persephone slayyyyed she’s kinda crazy and i love that for her, though i wish some of the vocals could have been altered to let her go into her super low range like she did when she played one of the fates

sayo oni was orpheus and i loved himmm. famously i am not a fan of reeve carney’s orpheus (sorry) so me n emma were elated to have a fresh voice in the mix. his voice was clear and sure and gorgeous and i had been kind of afraid that even if orpheus was really good he would b overshadowed by eva because she’s such a powerhouse, but they matched & blended well in skill and vocals and i had nothing to worry about. orpheus 2 me only works as a character if he’s naive and childlike and ya boy pulled it off so well.

malcolm armwood was a fantastic understudy hermes (pictured below at the stagedoor with his BEAUTIFUL family and/or friends), although i really REALLY wanted to see lillias white in the role just to see what flavors she would inject to hermes as a woman, mainly in her relationships w persephone and orpheus. but it was fun to have a young hermes bc most of the hermes that i’ve seen/heard have been like 40+ but armwood brought a youthful buoyancy to the role that contrasted with the aged hades+persephone but still seemed older and wiser and ageless next to sayo oni’s childlike orpheus

the fates were much more vindictive and close to villainous in this version. on tour they were a more neutral force

the tour didnt have the elevator in the middle of the turntable, instead there was a door that opened up to the back of the set with red lights that looked like the front of a train. (this was very cool and in some ways i liked it better bc the bway version just had the drum kit there instead). obv the elevator as the route to hell is unmatched when orpheus turns around at the end but my ideal production has both the train lights door AND the elevator for maximum effect so hades et al can exit/enter via the train or the immediate descent underground as the situation requires

[petewentzisblack1312]

omg people claiming patrick uses autotune PLS that reminds me of this podcast where he said he didn’t use it for like all of tttyg except for one song bc he had destroyed his voice due to overuse and not knowing as much technique but people acting as if he “needs” it are so annoying like there is a difference between using it with intended purpose and like using it bc you can’t hit a note correctly or whatever idk anyways patrick is like an insanely talented singer and i will die on this hill

patrick genuinely hates autotune so much like i bet he can HEAR the difference (i personally always can, even more "natural" uses) and he hates using it but if he didnt at least once or twice every now and then when he overexerts himself (which is more often than necessary because he keeps writing fucking arias all the time lmao) hed literally shred his vocal chords. like one time in the studio travie kept being like "dude just autotune that shit" and patricks 5 foot nothin ass squared right the fuck up and tore him a new one to get him to hit that note on his own lmaooo. hes very precise and if theres autotune in any fob song hed use very little and make sure its at a point where it blends in with the rest of the song enough its difficult to tell.

as a composer hes super detail oriented too (im p sure joe has to keep him on track and make sure he doesnt write himself to death bc soul punk is SO MUCH all at once, not a second goes to waste) and very dedicated to getting the exact sound he wants and autotune really can only do so much. i think what people are hearing, if anything, is his layered vocals. prehiatus its usually a bunch of very different tracks with different rhythms and occasionally ambient stuff like layering his vocals to make a choir but post hiatus he does this thing where he does like 3 vocal tracks that are pretty much the same except its 3 different takes so theres slight variation, and maybe with some harmonies or in a different octave at some points and for specific notes, on mania especially. it has a shephards tone effect where you cant quite hit the note right because its like 3 notes at once, each with the slight variation of being done at different times. add to that actual different vocals (like the end of twin skeletons where theres the 2 different phonetics being sung each with their own harmonies), it can sound manufacturer, which it is, but its not autotune. just layered out the ass.

man i went full mask off music nerd there haha. i hope you found this illuminating tho!

[backslashdelta]

in honor of the anniversary of the end of fob’s hiatus, i will be needing to know ur ranking of srar 🤲

Ana my beloved what a wonderful question to celebrate a wonderful occasion!! I will gladly give you my SRAR ranking. Note that I love every single one of these songs, so something being low doesn't mean I don't like it.

1. Young Volcanoes. When this album came out, this song replaced Hum Hallelujah as my all-time favourite FIB song ever, and it held that spot until the full version of Lake Effect Kid came out after MANIA. Such a damn good song.

2. Alone Together. This song is just??? So good??? So powerful??? I DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU'RE GOING BUT DO YOU GOT ROOM FOR ONE MORE TROUBLED SOUL LIKE LITERALLY THIS SONG IS SO GOOD such a close close second place

3. Save Rock and Roll. I mean... we have Elton John here. Come on. They really are saving rock and roll okay? Okay.

4. The Phoenix. This song goes hard okay??? Like I listen to this and I am PUMPED and I want to go wreak havoc somewhere. I am feeling EMPOWERED.

5. Miss Missing You. This one is so pretty!! I always love Patrick's voice, but there's just something about it in this song that I really really love.

6. Death Valley. Okay so this is an absolute banger it's so good and then that little bit where it gets kind of quiet???? Damn I just- so fucking good. I love them.

7. My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up). And yet another banger, this album is just full of them!! Their songs know what I did in the dark, and what I did in the dark was jammed out to this fucking song.

8. Where Did the Party Go. This is a funky little song isn't it? The party went wherever they went because how could it not??? That didn't make sense. I'm not sorry. But when Patrick's voice gets right low 🥵

9. The Mighty Fall. This song is very... like... gritty? I love the bit of a growl Patrick gets in his voice at parts. It's not quite a banger because it's slower but it still goes hard, you know?

10. Rat a Tat. IT'S COURTNEY BITCH. Honestly at the bottom of this list it's very hard to rank the songs because they're all so good and definitely still really love this song, it feels wrong to put it this low but I love them all so much. Some really good vocal moments in this song. I could just. Melt listening to his voice I swear.

11. Just One Yesterday. I think this is the lowest because a) it's a slower one and b) I think I have a tendency to not like their songs that feature other artists so much? As you can see with the rest of the bottom 3 lol. But STILL it's a beautiful song and I love it.

And here we are at the end! Thank you so much for this question. Also, this inspired me to make some FOB song sorters (which I used to figure out my SRAR ranking!!) so if anybody wants to do those feel free!

[dearly]

Pete Wentz (6:39:20 PM): Hey Ryan Ross (6:39:39 PM): hey Pete Wentz (6:40:09 PM): Is this the guy fro poanic at the disco Ryan Ross (6:40:23 PM): yeah im ryan, is this pete? Pete Wentz (6:41:12 PM): Yeah Ryan Ross (6:41:18 PM): hey man Pete Wentz (6:42:37 PM): How arer you Ryan Ross (6:43:17 PM): im not bad, working on a paper for english. hows everything with the new record? Pete Wentz (6:44:37 PM): Going really well Pete Wentz (6:45:04 PM): How's everything wiht your band are those just remixes Ryan Ross (6:46:01 PM): awesome, yeah we only did those on my laptop because we cant get into a studio yet. but we still have alot of those parts live and full band Pete Wentz (6:46:25 PM): Does it have samples like that Pete Wentz (6:46:42 PM): How many people are in the band.... Are you guys all in hicghschool Ryan Ross (6:47:20 PM): do you mean do we use a sampler? our drummer uses a drum sampler which we put some of the stuff on, and he plays some of it Ryan Ross (6:47:43 PM): im in college. im 18 the other three of them are 17 and in high school Pete Wentz (6:48:26 PM): Like of the pure volume site songs what would not be part of your live show Ryan Ross (6:50:18 PM): well right now the synth stuff because we need a keyboard player. we are trying out a few guys soon though. and some of the drum parts are different. Pete Wentz (6:50:48 PM): I absolutely love the stuff Ryan Ross (6:52:16 PM): but we have two guitar players one sings and i play lead. its kind of hard to describe it. we are a rock band but about half of a song will be dance-ish or sort of 80s sounding Ryan Ross (6:52:28 PM): really? wow thanks alot man Ryan Ross (6:53:12 PM): it really is a huge compliment coming from you Ryan Ross (6:53:35 PM): i was actually really suprised you listened to it Ryan Ross (6:53:40 PM): i didnt expect you to see it Pete Wentz (6:54:00 PM): Is there some pics of you guys anywhere Ryan Ross (6:55:10 PM): no, we are taking them pretty soon for the website, its just not done yet. i have some just of me on livejournal. but thats wierd haha Pete Wentz (6:56:09 PM): Yeah fuck get some to me Pete Wentz (6:56:19 PM): I think I may come see you in californaia Ryan Ross (6:56:44 PM): really? Ryan Ross (6:57:08 PM): that would be awesome Pete Wentz (6:57:46 PM): I've been listeneing to those songs nonstop. Is the band a side thing or is it gonna be fulltime? Ryan Ross (6:58:20 PM): no its full time Ryan Ross (6:59:24 PM): well aside from school. which sucks Ryan Ross (6:59:32 PM): but we want to do this Pete Wentz (7:00:00 PM): When are those kids out of school Ryan Ross (7:00:26 PM): the drummer and bass player are graduating early. so like january and other guitarist/singer graduates in the spring Pete Wentz (7:01:16 PM): Nice Pete Wentz (7:01:23 PM): Do you know about my label Ryan Ross (7:01:46 PM): yeah i think i saw something a while ago on a journal entry, is gym class heroes the only band on it right now? Pete Wentz (7:03:10 PM): Yeah. I signed the academy. But they are fbr strictly gym class and I am looking for another Pete Wentz (7:03:33 PM): The cool thing about it is I just met with waner and they want both of the bands and to give me an imprint Ryan Ross (7:03:55 PM): oh cool i like the academy alot, oh i see yea i was going to ask you about that Pete Wentz (7:04:03 PM): Which pretty much means a lot more money to promote cool artists Pete Wentz (7:04:14 PM): You guys plays out a lot? Ryan Ross (7:04:39 PM): thats awesome man. actually no we just kind of started this thing up a few months ago, the show in victorville is going to be our first one Pete Wentz (7:05:51 PM): Really Pete Wentz (7:05:56 PM): Interesting Pete Wentz (7:06:11 PM): How much do you guys practice Ryan Ross (7:06:45 PM): we've been trying to figure out the best way to do this stuff live, and we've been having a hard time on figuring out how to make it sound good. depending on the place we might not be able to use all the electronic stuff that we want to do which sucks but alot of venues, at least here might have a hard time setting us up. we practice at

least 4 times a week so like. between 24-30 hours a week Pete Wentz (7:07:09 PM): Nice Pete Wentz (7:07:21 PM): I am gonna come to the show Ryan Ross (7:08:13 PM): we wish we could more often. but school is getting in the way. and it sucks cause parents think its a waste of time playing music and want me to focus on school. im sure you know how that is. Ryan Ross (7:08:23 PM): thanks alot man really Pete Wentz (7:08:55 PM): I do Pete Wentz (7:09:05 PM): What are peoples reactions to it Ryan Ross (7:10:04 PM): some good some bad. everyone is so into post hardcore stuff these days that some kids just brush it off. which is fine but then some kids like it cause its a little different i guess Pete Wentz (7:11:30 PM): Can that kid sing live? Ryan Ross (7:12:54 PM): yeah, he's been taking voice lessons for a little bit so thats starting to help him Pete Wentz (7:13:19 PM): Is he on? I mean on here he sounds awesome Ryan Ross (7:14:21 PM): yeah he's on pitch, we recorded that stuff with like a 100 dollar vocal mic. the only effects we used was pretty much reverb on the main parts. Pete Wentz (7:14:42 PM): Yeah sounds good kind of like patrick Pete Wentz (7:14:47 PM): I like it Ryan Ross (7:16:57 PM): yeah thats the only thing we get that alot. and thats just how the kid sings. we like your band but we dont want to sound like you guys, or be compared to fob all the time you know? but yeah he is aware that kids say he sounds like patrick so he's just trying different vocal stuff sometimes. Pete Wentz (7:19:06 PM): Here's the thing if I show you guys interest a lot of crappy labels are gonna come and do the same and I don't want a huge mess out there. I mean how interested are you guys in going fulltime when you can Pete Wentz (7:19:19 PM): Yeah you'll get eh patrock thing but how many people. Sound like hime Ryan Ross (7:19:47 PM): so you really think we've got potential then? Pete Wentz (7:19:54 PM): I do Ryan Ross (7:20:05 PM): i've wanted to play in a band for my job ever since i started high school at least. Ryan Ross (7:20:07 PM): we all want to do this Ryan Ross (7:21:05 PM): its like i cant put enough dedication into anything exept playing guitar and writing Pete Wentz (7:23:01 PM): I'm with you Ryan Ross (7:24:05 PM): but yeah. i cant see myself doing anything else but playing in a band, cause every job i've ever had ive hated it Pete Wentz (7:24:57 PM): You don't have a picture of the band Ryan Ross (7:25:44 PM): no, but if you need it i could have my buddy take some tomorrow at practice Pete Wentz (7:26:58 PM): That would be rad Ryan Ross (7:27:37 PM): okay we'll take some Ryan Ross (7:28:08 PM): are you online much? Pete Wentz (7:33:12 PM): Sometimes Ryan Ross (7:33:35 PM): okay, i was just wondering if this was your email incase you arent on i'll just send them Pete Wentz (7:34:17 PM): Yeah send it here for sure Ryan Ross (7:34:36 PM): okay Ryan Ross (7:34:55 PM): dude this better not be a joke, it better be you Pete Wentz (7:35:12 PM): It is Pete Wentz (7:35:34 PM): But there are a lot of fakers out there Ryan Ross (7:35:55 PM): okay. yeah i know someone has shown me like fake journals of you and stuff. thats creepy Ryan Ross (7:36:10 PM): thats why i asked if it was you for sure Pete Wentz (7:36:32 PM): This guy who is iming me is your manager Ryan Ross (7:37:03 PM): is it xxxtoughffxxx ? Pete Wentz (7:37:22 PM): Yeah Ryan Ross (7:37:38 PM): i dont know if he's our manager. he's our friend, he's been helping us out with a website, merch and the show in victorville Ryan Ross (7:38:35 PM): he's starting a company up and he wants to help us out Pete Wentz (7:43:04 PM): Ah I got t Pete Wentz (7:43:32 PM): It Pete Wentz (7:43:37 PM): You guys are awesome and if its what I think it is I want ti to be thenext academy Ryan Ross (7:44:58 PM): wow thanks alot. i hope you like the stuff live, its not completely different but it is different. i mean the singing is the same and all that. Pete Wentz (7:47:46 PM): cool Pete Wentz (7:48:06 PM): You guys look good. The chicks gonna be swooning? Ryan Ross (7:48:38 PM): once we get

a keyboard player who can do all of the sampling we want to do it will be alot better too. its like we know how we want to sound, but just finding the right way to do it i guess is what we are working on. Ryan Ross (7:48:40 PM): hahaha Ryan Ross (7:48:51 PM): i dont know man, we look alright i guess Ryan Ross (7:48:57 PM): we look young Pete Wentz (7:49:42 PM): Youngs not abd at all Pete Wentz (7:49:47 PM): How does the singiner look Ryan Ross (7:50:05 PM): dead sexy. Ryan Ross (7:50:41 PM): he's no pete wentz. but still Pete Wentz (7:51:42 PM): Hahaha Pete Wentz (7:51:54 PM): Goddamn as long as he looks cool.singing Pete Wentz (7:52:14 PM): For sure send me pics and all how many songs you guys have? Ryan Ross (7:52:39 PM): haha Ryan Ross (7:53:00 PM): kk Ryan Ross (7:53:54 PM): we've only got 4 right now, its been tough to write since school started and everyone's busier. and those are the first 4 songs we've written as a band. at the show we'll play those and a cover of new order maybe. or depeche mode. we dont know yet Pete Wentz (7:56:08 PM): Nice Pete Wentz (7:56:21 PM): I gotta run Pete Wentz (7:56:32 PM): But ill hit you on here later Pete Wentz (7:56:38 PM): Send me those pics and write the hits Ryan Ross (7:56:43 PM): okay dude. good talking to you Pete Wentz (7:56:43 PM): Peaaaaaace Ryan Ross (7:56:44 PM): hahaha Ryan Ross (7:56:47 PM): later man Pete Wentz is away from the computer as of 7:56:51 PM. Auto response from Pete Wentz: Igot99problems Pete Wentz is back at the computer as of 10:05:48 PM. Pete Wentz is away from the computer as of 10:06:23 PM.

[dustedmagazine]

Dust: Volume 8, Number 2

David Ramirez

February’s a short month, so this is something of a short Dust especially after the gargantuan, clear-the-pipes-out January edition.  Still, you ought to find something of interest in this diverse set of album reviews, whether you’re into experimental electronics, anime-inspired pop, thrashy death metal or Chicago footwork.  Have at it, enjoy, and let’s get onto that in-like-a-lion business.  Contributors included Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Jonathan Shaw, Justin Cober-Lake, Patrick Masterson and Bryon Hayes.  

Ilia Belorukov — Someone Has Always Come (Sublime Retreat)

Someone Has Always Come by Ilia Belorukov

Evidence suggests that Ilia Belorukov is allergic to idleness. Besides running the Intonema label and playing reeds with improvisers, including Birgit Ulher, David Stackenas, Vasco Trilla and Jason Kahn, he pursues a sideline in bleakly atmospheric electronic music. Someone Has Always Come slots into the latter category. The album projects a massive presence, with long, low tones looming like moisture-burdened cloudbanks seen just before dusk. Squint with your ears, however, and you’ll hear a lot more happening, although it’s not always clear what it is. Electrical sounds sizzle and pulse, and radio captures mutter, flickering deep in the murk. Chase them with your ears, and you’ll happen upon another layer of sound, mostly collected on Russian streets and train platforms. Turn it up loud enough for everything to register and you’ll find yourself feeling very small indeed.

Bill Meyer

 Beshken — Pantomime (MATH Interactive)

Beshken layers frantic cybernetic grooves atop mysterious surges of tone, creating a brightly colored, precisely drawn alternate universe of musical sensation. The disc’s animating personality is the cover’s cartoon cat, a mime who scrambles, jitters and scampers headlong through the album’s many part sonic structures. To support his adventures, Pantomime combines live and programmed musical textures in an antic, continually shifting way. That’s why “Social Suicide” is alternately so fractious and lyrical, with scratchy, bumpy, syncopated drum cadences (that’s Matt Bent on kit) running into velvety lush swells of synth and vocal choruses.  It’s not quite clear why you’d center such intricate, engaging soundscapes on a non-speaking character, but Pantomime is like a dream that brushes past linear logic on its way towards its own internal way of making sense. Musically, it reminds me a lot of Mattias Aguayo’s giddy rhythmic electro-pop, though set in an anime movie, not the world around us.

Jennifer Kelly

 The Body & OAA — Enemy of Love (Thrill Jockey)

Enemy of Love by The Body & OAA

By this point it’s a certainty that the Body loves a collaboration. Since 2015, the band has released nine full-length collaborative records (including multiple outings with Thou, Full of Hell and Uniform), more than twice the number of LPs the Body has released under its own name. Whichever way you want to total things, it’s an impressive amount of music, much of it as excoriating as it is great. This new collaborative record with producer and digital musician OAA (artistic sobriquet of AJ Wilson) sharpens the Body’s ongoing exploration of electronic music, and issues in some ear-splitting sounds. For all its outsized clamor and crunch, Enemy of Love is a bit soulless — which may be the point. You don’t make songs like “Barren of Joy” or “Miserable Freedom” in order to sustain anyone’s tremulous grip on the meaning of existence. But what has always made the Body’s music so hair-raisingly effective has been their engagement with the embodied (hello) nature of pain and dread, its human dimensions. OAA, on the other hand, is a creature of Clubland, which has little interest in mortification or fear. Enemy of Love has some tracks that generate excitement (“Fortified Tower”) and interesting engagements with digitized noise (“Obsessed Luxury”), but it all feels a little too produced, too studied and removed from the rigors of the flesh. Except for the ears. They’ll still hurt, plenty.

Jonathan Shaw 

 Cryptum — Vile Emergence (Caligari Records)

Vile Emergence by CRYPTUM

Caligari Records has a sharp ear for emerging underground metal bands, and Cryptum’s 17-minute blast of thrashy death metal deserves your attention, if you’re into this sort of thing. The Joliet-based band plays fast and filthy, with particular emphasis on the speed of the proceedings. It makes sense. Band members Kyle Pooley (skin thumpin’) and Carlos Santini (git grindin’) also play in gross-out, deathy thrash act Molder. Like that band, Cryptum does not produce elevated experiences; you get four three-to-five minute portions of toothsome, riff-rich death metal, celebrating the gruesome aesthetics of vaguely SF-oriented horror: think the famous sequence in Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) during which Norris’s head removes itself and slowly dangles its way to the floor, hanging by gloopy and multicolored connective tissue, and you’ve got the general idea. But while it’s not pretty, Vile Emergence sure manages to be fun. Santini’s leads are engagingly gonzo, and Matthew Aguilar’s bass fills out an athletic bottom end that pummels even as it shifts from canter to gallop. Give the tape a spin or two — or maybe meet it on its own terms: coat it in something wet and malodorous and munch on it.

Jonathan Shaw

 Hunter Diamond + Charles Rumback — We Stand (Curio)

We Stand by Hunter Diamond + Charles Rumback

We Stand inaugurates the Metal and Wood series, which is a project undertaken by Chicago-based reeds player Hunter Diamond. Diamond has been on the city’s scene for a number of years, performing in a variety of leadership and side-person capacities, but Metal and Wood seems to be both a self-assessment and a statement of identity. It will comprise a series of duos with drummers, each offered as a download or a short-run, blue-faced compact disc. This is an exposed, no-net setting for any improviser, and the first thing that We Stand shows is that Diamond knows how to pick ‘em. Rumback is a highly sympathetic accompanist, ready with the right or pitch to enhance atmosphere and maintain momentum. He is attentive to qualities of sound, leaving room for Diamond to express shapes, develop lines and vary attacks unimpeded. On tenor sax, Diamond adopts a gruff, frayed tone; on clarinet, his low notes are warm and imploring. There will ultimately be five more releases in this series; other participants include Mike Reed, Dana Hall, Lucas Gillan, Justin Peake and Quin Kirchner.

Bill Meyer

Marcelo Dos Reis — Glaciar (Miria)

Glaciar by Marcelo dos Reis

No matter your view, the time will come when you want to see something different. For Lisbon resident Marcelo Dos Reis, the grass is greener elsewhere phenomenon may have impelled him to say, “enough of the beach, give me some ice and snow!” The guitarist’s solo album Glaciar evolved from a residency in the Alps, and the mountainous echo seems to influenced its sound, since his bold, single-note leads are often chased by fading echoes of themselves. His amplified nylon-stringed guitar even takes on an almost Santana-like sustain on “II.IIII” (even though it is available on CD and digital formats, the album is sequenced like an LP), with bold, single-note leads sailing over chunky loops.  The outcome is a far cry from the discrete abstractions he plays with Chamber 4 or the acidic textures he contributes to Fail Better! But hey, sometimes you want to go somewhere different, and he hasn’t abandoned poised stance that makes him a valued contributor in those ensembles.

Bill Meyer

 The Howard Hughes Suite — High & Lonesome (self-released)

High & Lonesome by The Howard Hughes Suite

Cowboys don't typically live in London. Then again, they don't typically make ambient Western music that stretches the tones of a pedal steel guitar. The Howard Hughes Suite specializes in just that sort of thing, varying his levels of weirdness and melodicism. New album High & Lonesome focuses on the ambient side of his work, but where Steel Hymns followed more in the footsteps of composers like Brian Eno, this collection springs from the American Southwest. The pleasure in the disc lies not just in the way that the artist turns that topography into textured music (a nice addition to a burgeoning genre), but also in his ability to expand the tone of his guitar. The Howard Hughes Suite explains that everything on the album came from a pedal steel, and at times it's almost difficult to believe. He wrings a synthesizer or organ sound out of it for his foundational tones, but then alternates from country strings to something almost brassy to develop his pieces. The album was born from anxiety and sleeplessness and, in response, it effectively soothes and warms. Closer “Hinterland” is too broad in scope to serve as a lullaby, but the Howard Hughes Suite does find a little optimism in his dark nights. However he twists his guitar sounds, he finds a proper way to deliver that peace.  

Justin Cober-Lake

  Kariu Kenji — Sekai (Bruit Disques Direct)

Kariu Kenji - Sekai by bruit direct disques

Sekai, or “world,” is a lockdown album, recorded unaided by its author Kenji Kariu (also of the unclassifiable punk/experimental/prog band OWKMJ, which OMG, lookie here!). Largely quiet and shaded with melancholy, it twists the contours of gentle bedroom pop into oddball, evocative shapes. The main ingredients in play on the title track are wistful vocals, a droning, wheedling organ and some outsized crashes of percussion. Slumberous textures, indeed. They wouldn’t be out of place on one of the softer Yo La Tengo albums. And yet these quiet components are canted sideways into edgy, disturbing patterns. It’s sweet pop with the bottom dropping out. Likewise, “Atelier” has a gentle, bossa nova sway, lit by the twinkle of electric keyboards, punctuated by finger snaps. But while it drifts towards easy listening, the cut also has its own strange laws of gravity. You’re in a pleasant, well-lighted space where none of the usual rules apply.

Jennifer Kelly

Kill Alters — Armed To The Teeth L.M.O.M.M. (Hausu Mountain)

Armed To The Teeth L.M.O.M.M. by Kill Alters

Beset by severe OCD and Tourette’s syndrome the mother of composer/vocalist Bonnie Baxter obsessively recorded her daily conversations and arguments. On Armed To The Teeth L.M.O.M.M. Baxter and her cohorts, producer Nicos Kennedy and drummer Hisham Bharoocha, use samples from these recordings to create an unnervingly intense maelstrom at the juncture of industrial techno, noise rock and hyperpop. It mirrors the mother’s quest to control the chaos in her mind and the child’s daily attempt to negotiate that chaos. The result is a disturbing but nuanced portrait of their relationship in which distress mixes with dark humor, tenderness and the realization that both were victims of the misogyny that punishes unruly women. It closes with the mother— “Let me find a song, a real good one, for you to cherish and remember me by.” This is not easy listen but it will stay in your mind.

Andrew Forell

 Leider — A Fog Like Liars Loving (Beacon Sound)

A Fog Like Liars Loving by Leider

It is hard to convey how sad and ghostly these songs are. They drape funereal grey colors of cello and viola and flute over slow thumps of rhythm. They conjure boggy shadows through which singer (and violist) Annie Gårlid floats spectral tones and puzzling phrases “Nose…bleed,” “Do you find it funny?” and “Love her, love her.” Composer Rishin Singh made these haunting pieces out of the barest thrum of mournful vibration, a dirge, a lament, a banshee wail tamped down to low volume and disembodied. The longest cut, “Great Expectations,” hazards a long, glistening treble tone undergirded by the grumbling consonance of cello. It proceeds so slowly as to hardly move at all, floating between rooms like a mourner after a funeral. Sorrow accumulates in soft suffocating piles, but then, after enough of that, the viola turns frantic and dissonance. A scree of tortured strings rears up suddenly in shock and disbelief. So much to grieve over, so much to rage against. So much fog and death.  

Jennifer Kelly

 A Place To Bury Strangers — See Through You (Dedstrange)

See Through You is an oddly sequenced, strangely listless entry on the APTBS catalog. Leader Oliver Ackerman with Sarah and John Fedowitz on drums and bass don’t really hit their straps until the last third of the album with the rollicking bass driven “Broken” and the garage girl group smear of “I Don’t Know How You Do It’ with Sarah Fedowitz sharing vocals. The final track “Love Reaches Out” cops Peter Hook’s bass line from “Ceremony” albeit with Bernard Summer’s diffident vocal styling along for the ride. Elsewhere, various approximations of The Scientists’ swampy noise and Ministry level brutalism never quite overcome the flat production that undermines some impressively heavy playing and Ackerman’s ear for melody.   

Andrew Forell

David Ramirez — Rules and Regulations

After taking some stylistic adventures over his last two albums, singer-songwriter David Ramirez strips it back for his new EP Rules and Regulations, returning somewhat toward the folkier sound of his earlier work. It might be related to the process, as he and his band recorded these six tracks live in the studio. When “Can You Hear the Silence?” stares deep into a lonely desert night, the immediacy of the recording gives it a boost. Ramirez wrote these songs over the past few years but discovered they didn't quite fit on any of his albums. That fact might suggest that only hardcore fans will need Rules, but the cuts hold up well, pointing more to the focus of his full-length releases than to the quality of these pieces. The top two performances come at the end of the disc. Ramirez has been performing “Put in the Work” on tour for a while (such as touring has existed in the past while), and getting it on record gives us an excellent treat. This rendition leans heavily on country influences and a certain weariness rather than the big-voice stage performance, giving new insight to the lyrics. Closer “I Believe You” came as a response to the Brett Kavanaugh/Christine Blasey Ford hearings. Ramirez turns his support for a survivor into a broader work of compassion through a classic melody, giving a beautiful finish to yet another valuable EP from the songwriter.

Justin Cober-Lake 

 Jana Rush — “Lonely (Feat. DJ Paypal)” (Planet Mu)

Wanna see the most Chicago thing February had to offer this side of a snowstorm? Then take a look at the latest video from Windy City footwork producer Jana Rush and Berlin-based Teklife affiliate DJ Paypal, which features dancers under Lower Wacker Drive’s sodium glow putting in the moves to a track that snags a line from Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” and trips it up almost beyond recognition. To me, Rush is at her best footworking jazz samples (as it was with “Moanin’” on last year’s excellent Painful Enlightenment), though perhaps that’s too purist a way of looking at the style given what else she’s proven she can do. The forthcoming Dark Humor EP, out in March, wedges this one right in the middle of the track list; what lies on either side is a tantalizing prospect, sure to be one of the year’s most notable releases — but it’s also possible she’s led with her strongest foot forward here. The shape of jazz to come is right.

Patrick Masterson

 Uwalmassa — Malar (Divisi62)

Malar by Uwalmassa

Uwalmassa is the home group of Divisi62, a Jakarta-based “sound and visual arts label” that’s existed since 2016 and is led primarily by producers RMP and Wahono. What’s going on here is very much a blend of haunted atmospherics (even featuring vocals on “Putung”), rhythmic workouts and local flavor of the finest freshness — or, in more formal artist statement-type jargon, “marrying acoustic sonics with a contemporary outlook that reflects their Indonesian identity.” Their backgrounds are undeniable in tracks like “Majuh” or “Caruk,” which sound like a Sumatran SND or Dakono Demdike Stare. The level of intricacy and cohesion to these songs, which never outstay their welcome, is stunning for someone interested in sound design — but even if you’re not, there’s enough going on here to do more than merely stroke your beard at.

Patrick Masterson

 Ben Wheeler — Lurji T’algha (Crash Symbols)

Lurji T'algha by Ben Wheeler

American ethnomusicologist Ben Wheeler has been living in Tbilisi, Georgia for almost a decade. In addition to researching the music of the Caucasus region, he both practices and teaches modular synthesis. He also runs Mountains of Tongues, a project that seeks to promote the musical traditions of the locale he now calls home. In Lurgi T’algha Wheeler expresses another passion of his: Soviet-era electronics. He conjured up the six soundscapes presented here using an East German synth and a Soviet effects unit, aided by a drum machine and a loop pedal. The title of this cassette is Georgian for “blue wave” and upon listening, one immediately gets the impression of being unmoored and drifting in a vast ocean, or perhaps floating in space and inhaling the luminous gases of a far away nebula. These soothing yet surrealist images begin to crystallize and eventually erupt when Wheeler deploys snappy static pulses, evoking the electronic experiments of early industrial music. This all comes to a head when “Spider Crab” appears, shedding any semblance of cacophony and leaving only a pointillist landscape of synthetic bliss in its wake. Crash Symbols provides a stunning visual accompaniment in the form of an eight-panel j-card, the imagery on which is striking and could pass as the graphical score to this dreamlike journey in electronic sound.

Bryon Hayes

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

Stage and Screen Sharing

by Patrick McShea

Social Skills Instructor Stacy Smith wanted to convey just how challenging last year’s abrupt shift to remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic was for The Children’s Institute of Pittsburgh. An initial challenge she had to solve was how to keep virtual learning engaging.

“Some of our students don’t even like watching TV,” Stacy said.

Not only did in-person collaborations with programs like Museum on the Move at CMNH have to be transformed into a remote experience, but the school day also had to function differently for students with unique needs. The 119-year-old organization serves more than 6,000 children each year at seven campuses across western Pennsylvania, helping to heal, teach, and empower individuals with special physical, social, and emotional needs.

Individualized instruction is the hallmark of Educational Services at The Children’s Institute, a characteristic readily apparent when Stacy recites a typical schedule for a student at the campus in Squirrel Hill.

“Morning groups of around six students last 15 to 30 minutes, and after that they would each have individual teaching sessions. They’d have individual speech, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and social skills or other ancillary classes. We work with some students to master abilities that aren’t even considered in other schools, like the balance required to simply walk in a hallway,” Stacy explained.

Museum on the Move programs provide a field trip-like role amidst such regular instruction, with museum educators using authentic materials to enrich presentations about dinosaurs, fossils, rocks and minerals, insects, and animal adaptations. Stacy cited Quintin Peacock, an educator who recently left the museum to pursue a master’s degree in education, as a particularly skilled in-person presenter in 2019 and early 2020, before the COVID pandemic forced the program into a remote, but still interactive delivery system.

John Bitsura holds up a turtle shell during a virtual presentation.

Museum educators John Bitsura and Aaron Young received Stacy’s praise as remote delivery heroes for their dedication to The Children’s Institute’s students and willingness to innovate.

“These guys were the only outside group we had this year and we were very fortunate to have them,” she said.

While some students returned in-person this school year, for the Museum on the Move “field trips” to maintain their effectiveness in a remote format, a familiar teacher needed to be an active visual and vocal participant. Technology and screen-sharing enabled both Stacy and the CMNH team to easily participate in presenting to the students together.

“I’ve always been on with them, and it’s been really nice that they’ve been so welcoming with me being a part of their presentation,” she said.

Aaron Young and Miley, a blue-tongued skink.

For the museum, the feeling is mutual. Aaron praises the radiant energy Stacy brings to the virtual programs and credits her constructive feedback with their continual improvement. John points to the solving of Zoom problems and a joint performance of a rap song about geology as key pieces of the collaboration. He also summarized this year’s efforts as creating the foundation for a wonderful partnership.

Patrick McShea works in the Education and Visitor Experience department of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

[followthebluebell]

Hello there! I have a question regarding hyperthyroidism if you don't mind. We took our cat to the vet because he was vomiting after every meal (he's okay now) but the dr was worried about him losing two pounds in less than two months and brought hyperthyroidism into question. I was just wondering if you could tell me some telltale signs of the condition? What should we look out for that we could report to the vet? Thank you for your time!

Hello! c:  Hyperthyroidism is VERY common in cats, especially senior kitties, which is why senior bloodwork is important.  Thankfully, it’s easy to manage with medication (unless your kitty is allergic to that particular medication, but we’ll get into that later).

Weight loss - these kitties lose weight FAST!  The hormone that they’re overproducing eats up a LOT of energy, so they lose a lot of weight quickly.

Increased appetite - they want to eat.  Like a LOT.  But no matter how much they eat, they still lose weight.

Increased thirst - Likewise, they need to drink more.

Increased urination - what goes in, must come out. 

Sunken eyes - this leads to a very distinctive Sunken Eyes look.  They look somehow hollow.

Here’s an old picture of Oliver, back before he started his radioactive iodine treatment.  See how sunken his eyes look?  His coat is also pretty patchy from overgrooming, which is partially related to his (then) hyperthyroidism. 

Poor grooming - they don’t feel well.  They don’t WANT to groom.  You can see that in Oliver above, but you can also see it in Patrick (the orange and white boy)

Weird stance -  You can see it in both Oliver AND Patrick, to different degrees.  Oliver is almost standing with his feet flat against the surface, while Patrick is almost knock-kneed. 

Increased vocalization - this one is more subjective.  Having a thyroid condition SUCKS.  And cats that are raised by humans tend to be more vocal than ferals.  They know that, if something is wrong, they Gotta Talk It Out with their humans.  So a cat experiencing discomfort, may be more talkative.

Increased aggression - again, this is connected to how the cat feels.  You know how, if something is wrong with your health, little things that usually don’t bother you might make you snap?  It’s the same with cats.  They seem grumpier for seemingly ‘no reason’. 

Vomiting - yep, that’s another one.  It’s more minor than the others in my experience, but still worth mentioning.

The good news is that hyperthyroidism CAN be managed.  It can either be managed with medication (commonly methimazole or felimazole) or radioactive iodine treatment.  Most people prefer the methimazole, because it’s much cheaper.  It’s available in pills or a transdermal form that you can just rub in their ears.  The pills are more effective, but some cats just Won’t Accept Pills.  So you work with what you can.

Now Oliver is particularly interesting because he’s allergic to methimazole.  It caused him to break out in hives, his appetite dropped, and he was just doing poorly.  So the next idea was to irradiate his thyroid.  This is done with a radioactive form of iodine.  Since the thyroid is the ONLY part of the body that utilizes iodine, it’s very controlled.  This essentially destroys part of his thyroid so it’s no longer overproducing the hormone in question. This means he doesn’t need methimazole ever again.

Unfortunately, it’s expensive.  It also runs the risk of destroying too MUCH of the thyroid, so the cat becomes hypOthyroid instead of hypERthyroid.  It’s still managable, thankfully.  I actually wrote a short post about Oliver, comparing him before and after he started his iodine therapy.