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dustedmagazine · 3 years ago

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Dust, Volume 7, Number 8

Big Thief

Our August collection of short reviews contains more big names than usual with singles from Big Thief and Dry Cleaning, a digital compilation from Thou, live music from Obits and a side project from members of the Bats and the Clean. Never fear, there are obscurities as well, including an improv guitar player even Bill Meyer had hardly heard of, a Norwegian emo artist in love with Texas and a death metal outfit verging into psychedelia. Our writers, this time including Tim Clarke, Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Ian Mathers, Chris Liberato and Jonathan Shaw, like what they like, big or small, hyped or unknown. We hope you’ll like some of it, too.

Marc Barreca — The Sleeper Awakes (Scissor Tail)

The Sleeper Wakes by Marc Barreca

Odd connections abound here. One might not expect the usually acoustic-oriented Scissor Tail Recordings to make a vinyl reissue of an electronic ambient music cassette from 1986, any more than one would expect its maker to currently earn his crust as a bankruptcy judge. So, let’s just shed those expectations and get to listening. Unlike so many lower profile electronic recordings from the 1980s, which seemed targeted for a space next to the cash register of a new age bookstore, this album offers a profusion of mysteries that compound the closer you listen to them. It’s not at all obvious what sounds Barreca fed into his Akai sampler. Japanese folk music? Church chimes? A log drum jam? Tugboat engines? One hears hints of such sounds, but they’ve been warped and dredged in a thin coat of murk, so that the predominant experience is one of feeling like you’re dreaming, even if your eyes are wide open.

Bill Meyer

Big Thief — “Little Things” / “Sparrow” (4AD)

Little Things/Sparrow by Big Thief

Who knows how much more music Big Thief might have released in the last 18 months if the pandemic hadn’t tripped them up? Given the creative momentum generated by 2019’s UFOF and Two Hands, it’s fair to assume the band have plenty of music waiting in the wings. “Little Things” and “Sparrow” arrive with no sign of a new album on the horizon, so are probably being released to promote Big Thief’s upcoming US and European tour. Both songs clock in at around five minutes and handle musical repetition in different satisfying ways. Reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac’s “Everything,” but hyped up on caffeine, “Little Things” feels like an exciting new direction for the band. It cycles through its whirlpooling, modulated acoustic guitar over and over, the frantic little sequence of chords never changing; the interest comes from the ways in which the rest of the instruments bob and weave in the ever-shifting, psychedelic mix. “Sparrow” is a more traditional Big Thief song, sparse and sad. Its melancholic sway is enlivened by some beautiful wavering vocal harmonies as Adrianne Lenker paints a picture of a Garden of Eden populated by sparrows, owls and eagles, culminating in Adam blaming Eve for humankind’s fall from grace.

Tim Clarke

Simão Costa — Beat Without Byte: (Un)Learning Machine (Cipsela)

Beat With Out Byte by Simão Costa

Piano preparation often makes use of modest resources — bolts and combs, strings or maybe just a raincoat tossed into the instrument’s innards. By contrast, Simão Costa’s set-up looks like took all of the entries in a robotics assembly competition and set them to work agitating a snarl of cables that met the pirated telecommunication requirements for an especially crowded favela. But whether it’s twitching motors or Costa’s own hands doing the work, the sounds that come out of his sound remarkably rich and cohesive. He stirs drifting hums, metallic sonorities, and stomping rhythms into a bracingly immediate sonic onslaught.

Bill Meyer

Cots — Disturbing Body (Boiled)

Disturbing Body by Cots

Disturbing Body is the low-key debut album by Montreal-based musician Steph Yates, who enlisted Sandro Perri to produce. Where the songs are pared back to mostly just vocals and peppy major-seventh chords on nylon-string guitar — such as “Bitter Part of the Fruit” and “Midnight at the Station” — comparisons with bossa-nova classics such as “The Girl From Ipanema” inevitably arise. Where the tempo is slower, the chord voicings are less sun-dappled, and Perri’s arrangements call upon a wider palette of instrumental colors, the songs venture into more interesting terrain, calling to mind a less haunted Broadcast. There’s an eerie sway to the opening title track, backed by rich piano chords and clattering cymbal textures. Fender Rhodes and the light clack of a rhythm track give “Inertia of a Dream” an uneasy momentum. And forlorn trumpet, percussion and piano situate “Last Sip” at closing time in a forgotten jazz club. There’s something evasive yet subtly intoxicating at work here, the album’s ten songs breezing past in half an hour, leaving plenty of unanswered questions in their wake.

Tim Clarke

Dry Cleaning — “Bug Eggs” / “Tony Speaks!” (4AD)

Bug Eggs/Tony Speaks! by Dry Cleaning

A few months on from the release of their excellent debut album, New Long Leg, Dry Cleaning have put out two more songs from the same sessions, which are featured as bonus tracks on the Japanese edition. For a band whose unique appeal is mostly attributed to Florence Shaw’s surreal lyrics and deadpan delivery, it’s heartening to hear further evidence that it’s the complete cocktail of musical ingredients — Shaw plus Tom Dowse’s inventive guitar, Lewis Maynard’s satisfyingly thick bass, and Nick Buxton’s driving drums — that alchemizes into their winning sound. The verse guitar chords of “Bug Eggs” are naggingly similar to New Long Leg’s “More Big Birds,” while the instrumental chorus has a yearning feel akin to album highlight “Her Hippo.” Maynard’s bass tone on “Tony Speaks!” is absolutely filthy, swallowing up most of the mix until Dowse’s guitar bares its teeth in a swarm of squalling wah-wah, while Shaw’s lyrics muse upon the decline of heavy industry, the environment, and crisps.

Tim Clarke

Flight Mode — TX, ’98 (Sound As Language)

TX, '98 by Flight Mode

In 1998, well before he started Little Hands of Asphalt, Sjur Lyseid spent a year in Texas at the height of the emo wave, skateboarding and going to house shows and listening to the Get Up Kids. TX, ’98 is the Norwegian’s tribute to that coming of age experience, the giddy euphorias of mid-teenage freedom filtered through bittersweet subsequent experience. “Sixteen” is the banger, all crunchy, twitchy exhilarating guitars and vulnerable pop tunefulness, its clangor breaking for wistful reminiscence, but “Fossil Fuel” waxes lyrical, its guitar riffs splintering into radiant shards, its lyrics capturing those youthful years when anything seems possible and also, somehow, the later recognition that perhaps it isn’t. It’s an interesting tension between the now-is-everything hedonism of adolescence and the rueful remembering of adulthood, encapsulate in a chorus that goes, “Well wait and see if there’s no more history/and just defend the present tense.”

Jennifer Kelly

Drew Gardner— S-T (Eiderdown Records)

S/T by Drew Gardner

Drew Gardner has been popping up all over lately, on Elkhorn’s snowed in acoustic jam Storm Sessions and the electrified follow-up Sun Cycle and as one of Jeffrey Alexander’s Heavy Lidders. Here, it’s just him and his guitar plus a like-minded rhythm section (that’s Ryan Jewell on drums and Garcia Peoples’ Andy Cush on bass), spinning off dreamy, folk-into-interstellar-journeys like “Calyx” and “Kelp Highway.” Gardner puts some muscle into some of his grooves, running close to Chris Forsyth’s wide-angle electric boogie in “Bird Food.” “The Road to Eastern Garden,” though, is pure limpid transcendence, Buddhist monastery bells jangling as Gardner’s warm, inquiring melodic line intersects with rubbery bends on bass. Give this one a little time to sit, but don’t miss it.

Jennifer Kelly

Hearth — Melt (Clean Feed)

Melt by Hearth

This pan-European quartet’s name suggests domesticity, but the fact that none of its members lives in the country of their birth probably says more about the breadth of their music. The closest geographic point of reference for the sounds that pianist Kaja Draksler, trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, and saxophonists Ada Rave and Mette Rasmussen’s make together would be Chicago’s south side. Their dynamic blend of angular structures, extended instrumental techniques, and obscurely theatrical enactments brings to mind the Art Ensemble of Chicago, even though the sounds on this concert-length recording rarely echo the AEC’s. But it is similarly charged with mystery and collective identity.

Bill Meyer

Klaus Lang / Konus Quartett — Drei Allmenden (Cubus)

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Drei Allmenden (translation: Three Commons) treats the act of commission as an opportunity to create common cause. For composer and keyboardist Klaus Lang, this is a chance to push back against a long trend of separation and stratification, with musicians bound to realize the composer’s whim, no matter the cost. Invoking works from the 16th century, he penned something simple, flexible and open to embellishment. Then he pitched in with Konus Quartett, a Swiss saxophone ensemble, to get the job done. The three-part piece, which lasts 43 sublime minutes, amply rewards the submersion of ego. Lang’s slowly morphing harmonium drones and Konus’ long reed tones sound like one instrument, enriched by tendrils of sound that rise up and then sink back into the music’s body.

Bill Meyer

Lynch, Moore, Riley — Secant / Tangent (dx/dy)

Secant | Tangent by Sue Lynch, N.O. Moore, Crystabel Riley

Electric guitarist N.O. Moore is barely known in these parts. I’ve only heard him on one album with Eddie Prévost a couple years back, and the other two musicians, not at all. But on the strength of this robust performance, which was recorded at London’s Icklectick venue, it would be a loss to keep it that way. They combine acoustic sounds with electronics, courtesy of guitar effects and amplification, in an exceedingly natural fashion. Each musician also gets into the other’s business in ways that correspond to the one spicy suggestion made by one cook that elevates another’s dish to the next level. Susan Lynch’s clarinet and flute compliment Moore’s radiophonic/feedback sounds like two flashes of lightning illuminating the same dark cloud, and her vigorously pecking saxophone attack mixes with Crystabel’s cascading beats like idiosyncratically tuned drums. This is one of the first albums to be released on Moore’s dx/dy label; keep your eye out for more.

Bill Meyer

Maco Sica / Hamid Drake Tatsu Aoki & Thymme Jones—Ourania (Feeding Tube)

OURANIA by Mako Sica / Hamid Drake featuring Tatsu Aoki & Thymme Jones

Ourania is named for the muse associated with astronomy in Greek mythology, and the album has an aim for the stars quality. In 2020, Chicago’s Mako Sica lost not only the chance to play concerts, but one third of its number. Core members Brent Fuscaldo (electric bass, voice, harmonica, percussion) and Przemyslaw Krys Drazek (electric trumpet, electric guitar, mandolin) could have just hunkered down with their respective TV sets. Instead, they booked themselves three other musicians who make rising above circumstances a core practice. The duo convened at Electrical Audio with Hamid Drake (drums, percussion, Tatsu Aoki (upright bass, shamisen), and Thymme Jones (piano, organ, balloon, trumpet, voice, recorder, percussion), rolled tape for a couple hours, and walked out with this album. The 85 minute-long recording (edited to about half that length on vinyl, but the LP comes with a download card) exudes a vibe of calm, even beatitude, with twin trumpets and Fuscaldo’s echo-laden, nearly word-free vocals weaving though a sequence of patient grooves like migrational birds on the glide.

Bill Meyer

Mar Caribe — Hymn of the Mar Caribe (Mar Caribe)

Hymn of the Mar Caribe b/w Rondo for Unemployment by mar caribe

Some musicians burn to make something new; others generate attention-getting sounds designed to maximize the potential of their other earning activities; and others, well, they just want you to sway along with their version of the good sounds. Mar Caribe falls into that last category. This Chicago-based instrumental ensemble has spent most of the last decade maintaining a robust performance schedule, and it would seem that recording is pretty much an afterthought; a photo of the test pressing for this 7” was posted in May 2019, but the release show didn’t happen until August 2021. Sure, COVID can be blamed for part of the delay, but one suspects that mostly, these guys just want to play, and they didn’t bother to stuff the singles in the sleeves until they knew when they’d next be leaning over a merch table. The titular suspends anthemic brass and pedal steel over a swinging double bass cadence, and if there was a moment during the night when the band invited the audience to pledge allegiance to their favorite drink, this is what they’d be playing while they asked. Guitars lead on the flip side, whose busy twists and turns belie the implied laziness of the title, “Rondo For Unemployment.”

Bill Meyer

Mint Julep — In a Deep and Dreamless Sleep (Western Vinyl)

In A Deep And Dreamless Sleep by Mint Julep

These songs traverse a hazy, dreamlike space, diffusing dance beats, dream-y vocals and synth pulses into inchoate sensation that nonetheless retains enough rhythmic propulsion to keep your heart rate up. “A Rising Sun” filters jangly guitar and bass through a sizzle of static, letting tambourine thump gently somewhere off camera, as voices soothe and reassure. “Mirage” pounds a four-on-the-floor, but quietly, angelically, like a disco visited through astral projection or maybe a really rave-y iteration of heaven. There’s an ominous undercurrent to “Longshore Drift,” in its growly, sub-bass-y hum, but glittering bits of synth sprinkle over like fairy dust. This is indefinitely gorgeous stuff, ethereal but surprisingly energizing. Dance or drift, take your pick.

Jennifer Kelly

Monocot — Directions We Know (Feeding Tube)

Direction We Know by Monocot

Directions We Know is an LP of free-form freak-outs generated by an instrumental duo that includes one musician who you might expect to perpetuate such a ruckus, and one that you might not. The more likely character is drummer Jayson Gerycz, who may be known for keeping time with the Cloud Nothings, but has shown a willingness to wax colorizing in the company of Anthony Pasquarosa, Jen Powers and Matthew Rolin. The happy surprise is Rosali Middleman, whose singer-songwriter efforts have kept her guitar playing firmly in service of her songs. She doesn’t exactly abandon lyricism in Monocot, but the tunes serve as launching ramps for exuberant lunges into the realm of voltage-saturated sound. On “Ruby Throated,” the first of the record’s four extended jams, Middleman lofts rippling peals over a near-boil of drums and churning loops. By the time you get to “Multidimensional Solutions,” the last and longest track, her wah-wah-dipped streams of sound have taken on a blackened quality, as though her overheating tubes have burned every note.

Bill Meyer

Obits — Die at the Zoo (Outer Battery)

Die At The Zoo by Obits

Few aughts rock bands held more promise than Obits. The four-piece headed by Hot Snakes’ Rick Froberg and Edsel’s Sohrab Habibion emerged in 2005 with a stinging, stripped-back, blues-touched sound. Froberg’s feral snarl rode a surfy, twitchy amplified onslaught, that was, by 2012 a finely tuned machine. I caught one of the live shows following Moody, Standard and Poor at small club in Northampton the same year this was recorded (so small that I was sitting on a couch next to Froberg, oblivious, for 20 minutes before the show), and what struck me was how well the band played together. The records sound chaotic, and that was certainly there in performance, but the cuts and stops were perfect, the surfy instrumental breaks (“New August”) absolutely in tune. At the time this set was recorded in the Brisbane punk landmark known as the Zoo, the band was near the peak of its considerable powers—and regrettably near the end of its run. Die at the Zoo is reasonably well recorded, rough enough to capture the band’s raucous energy, skilled enough so you can understand the words and hear all the parts. It hits all the highlights, blistering early cuts like “Widow of My Dreams,” and “Pine On,” the blues cover “Milk Cow Blues,” and later, slightly more melodic ragers like “Everything Looks Better in the Morning” and “You Gotta Lose.” The guitar work is particularly sharp throughout, its straight-on chug breaking into fiery blues licks and surfy whammy explosions. It’s a poignant reminder of a time when American rock bands played ferocious shows halfway across the world (or anywhere) as a matter of course and a fitting eulogy for Obits.

Jennifer Kelly

A Place To Bury Strangers — Hologram (Dedstrange)

Hologram EP by A Place To Bury Strangers

A Place To Bury Strangers returns with a new rhythm section and renewed focus on the elements that made its version of revivalism the loudest if not brashest of the New York aughties. Sarah and John Fedowitz on drums and bass join Oliver Ackerman on the five track EP Hologram which is the most concise and vital APTBS release for a while. For all the criticism of copyism thrown at the band since their early days, APTBS has always been as much about Ackerman’s production skills and feel for texture as musical originality and the songs on Hologram sound fantastic at volume. Beneath the sonic onslaught of fuzz and reverb, not a brick is misplaced in this intricately constructed sonic wall. True “I Might Have” is pure Jesus & Mary Chain and “In My Hive” a Wax Trax take on Spector but Hologram is an endorphin rush of guitar driven noise bound to make one forget the world, if only for a while.

Andrew Forell

Praises — EP4 (Hand Drawn Dracula)

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Jesse Crowe’s work as Praises has been ongoing since 2014, but has shifted in tone, instrumentation and emphasis since then. While the first two EPs have more of a full, rock band feel, the third one and 2018’s full-length In This Year: Ten of Swords took things in a more electronic, sometimes industrial direction. It was an even better fit for the rest, probing creativity evident in Praises’ work, and 3/4s of the new EP4 are in a pleasingly similar vein. The echoing, ringing denunciations of “We Let Go” and “A World on Fire” are fine examples of Praises’ existing strengths, but the opening “Apples for My Love” is immediately captivating in a very different way. Gauzy and rapturous, it’s a reverie that keeps the satisfying textural detail of the other songs but turns them to different ends. It’s not something that was missing from Crowe’s work before — again, the other tracks here are also very good — but a reminder that what Praises has shown before is not the extent of what they can do.

Ian Mathers

The Sundae Painters — The First SP Single (Leather Jacket)

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“This is a supergroup, is it not?” someone asked the Sundae Painters bassist Paul Kean on social media last year, to which he responded, “Some may choose that title. We prefer superglue.” Kaye Woodward, his wife and longtime bandmate in both The Bats and Minisnap, takes the lead vocal on “Thin Air,” one of the pair of A-sides found on their new band’s debut seven-inch. From the outset, Kean’s unmistakable bass playing and Hamish Kilgour’s (The Clean/Mad Scene) drumming lock into a psychedelic march, with the other instruments weaving like kites above, vying for position on the same breeze. “You fight your way down/You fight your way up/You wait for the dust to settle,” Woodward sings. A few gentle strums cut their way through the parade, and a guitar calls out gull-like from above, before everything trails off as if something potent has just kicked in. On the flip side, “Aversion” has an old friend-like familiarity to it, soundwise (if not lengthwise) sitting somewhere between VU’s “The Gift” and “Sister Ray.” Things begin a little stand-offish, though, like you’ve interrupted a guitar pontificating to a rapt audience — it turns its head to look you over, falling momentarily silent, before picking right back up where it left off. Kilgour’s spoken vocals join the conversation, as the song builds towards a groovy kind of fever pitch. “You look a little stoned,” he says, before responding to his own observation. “Well me I’m a little bit groggy/But it ain’t too foggy/I can see some way of getting out of here.” By this point, both guitars (played by Woodward and Tall Dwarfs’ Alec Bathgate) are full-on screeching and howling, and as the song sputters to a sudden finish, our man’s left waiting for someone to buy him “a ride out the gate.”

Chris Liberato

Thou — Hightower (Self-released)

Hightower by Thou

Hightower is the latest in a string of digital compilations from Thou, most of which collect songs that have been previously released on small-batch splits, 7” records and other hyper-obscure media that briefly circulated through the metal underground. You might be tempted to pronounce that a cynical cash-grab, but Thou has posted Hightower (along with previous compilations, like Algiers, Oakland and Blessings of the Highest Order, a killer collection of Nirvana covers) on their official Bandcamp page as a name-yo’-price download. Thanks, band. Beyond convenience, Hightower has an additional, if a sort of inside-baseball, attraction. The band has re-recorded a few of its older songs with its latest, three-guitar line-up. Longtime listeners will recognize “Smoke Pigs” and “Fucking Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean,” which already sounded terrifyingly massive back in 2008 and 2007, respectively. The expanded instrumentation, new arrangements and better production give the songs even more power and depth, all the way down to the bottom of the effing ocean. Yikes. And there are a few additional touches, like K.C. Stafford’s clean vocals on “Fucking Chained…,” which provide an effective complement to Bryan Funck’s inimitably scabrous howl. Rarely has being pummeled and feeling bummed out been so vivifying.

Jonathan Shaw

Tropical Fuck Storm — Deep States (Joyful Noise)

Deep States by Tropical Fuck Storm

Fueled by exasperation as much as anger, the new album by Melbourne’s Tropical Fuck Storm rounds on the myriad ways in which the world has become a “Bumma Sanger” as leader Gareth Liddiard puts it on the eponymous song about COVID lockdown. A roiling meld of psychedelic garage garnished with elements of hip hop and electronic noise it’s close in method and mood if not sound to another Australian provocateur JG Thirwell whose Foetus project girded maximalist surfaces with rigid discipline. If the Tropical Fuck Storm sought to mirror current conditions, they succeed but lack of clarity in both production and intent makes Deep States a frustrating experience. Backing vocals from Fiona Kitschin (bass), Erica Dunn (keys and guitar) and Lauren Hammel (drums) leaven Liddiard’s blokey pronouncements and there are some good sounds and biting words but the band’s determination to overelaborate and underdevelop musical ideas makes this album seem like a lost opportunity.

Andrew Forell

Marta Warelis / Carlos “Zingaro” / Helena Espvall /Marcelo dos Reis — Turquoise Dream (JACC)

Turquoise Dream by Marta Warelis, Carlos "Zíngaro", Helena Espvall, Marcelo dos Reis

Turquoise Dream documents an example of an encounter that is a mainstay of avant-garde jazz festivals, in which out of towners mix it up locals that they may or may not know. This particular concert, which took place at the Jazz ao Centro Festival in 2019, is one such encounter that deserves to live past the night when it transpired. It featured three stringed instrument players who live in Portugal and a Polish pianist who is based in Holland. But they don’t sound like strangers at all. Violinist Zingaro, cellist Espvall, and guitarist dos Reis blend like flashes of sunlight reflecting off of waves, adding up to a sound that is bright and ever-changing. Warelis, who is equally resourceful with her head under the lid of her piano as she is at the keyboard, adding fleet but substantial responses to her hosts’ quicksilver interactions. The result is music that is resolutely abstract but closely engaged.

Bill Meyer

Wharflurch — Psychedelic Realms ov Hell (Gurgling Gore)

PSYCHEDELIC REALMS OV HELL by Wharflurch

Wharflurch is just plain fun to say — but there are at least two ways in which the name also makes sense for the band that has chosen it: it has a bilious, nauseous quality that matches the vibe of the pustulent death metal you’ll hear on Psychedelic Realms ov Hell; and if you separate the words, you can conjure a sodden, rotten wooden structure, swaying vertiginously over a marshy expanse of water, which is filled with alligators and decaying organic material. Imagine that sway, and that stink, and then imagine yourself collapsing into the viscous fluid, soon to be gator chow. Sounds like Florida, and that’s exactly from whence Wharflurch has emerged. Which also makes sense. Is Wharflurch’s music “psychedelic”? Depends on what you hear in that word. If you want to see hippies dancing ecstatically on a verdant, sun-drenched stretch of Golden Gate Park, then no. But if you have spent any time in the warped, dementedly distorted spaces that psychedelics can open (less happily perhaps, but very powerfully), then yes. Wharflurch likes to accent its meaty riffs and muscular thumps with weird flutters and electronic effects that frequently have a gastric, flatulent quality to them. The saturated and sickly pinks and greens on the album art do a pretty good job of capturing the music’s tones. So do the song titles: “Stoned Ape Apocalypse,” “Bog Body Boletus,” “Phantasmagorical Fumes.” Still game? I’m sorry. But I’ll also be standing right there next to you, on that wobbly, lurching wharf, watching the gators swim near.

Jonathan Shaw

Whisper Room — Lunokhod (Midira Records)

Lunokhod by Whisper Room

That the title of Whisper Room’s fifth album is taken from Soviet lunar rovers makes a certain sense, given how potentially frustrating it might have been for the trio to be working at such a distance. Generally their other records are recorded live, in one room, seeing Aidan Baker (guitar), Jakob Thiesen (drums) and Neil Wiernik (bass) exploring simultaneously, hitting whatever junctions of psychedelic/shoegazing/motorik sound come to them. With Baker in Berlin and travel understandably limiited, this time they recorded their parts separately, layering them together (and bringing in sound designer Scott Deathe to add the kind of pedal processing their sound engineer normally does live). The result certainly sounds as collaborative as ever, seven seamless tracks making up nearly an hour that makes the journey from the friendly, clattering percussion of “Lunokhod01” to the centrifugal ambience of “Lunokhod07” feel perfectly natural. Even though it explores just as much inner and outer space as Whisper Room ever have, there’s something very approachable about Lunokhod that makes it one of their best.

Ian Mathers

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antiques-for-geeks · 4 years ago

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Game Review: Beyond the Forbidden Forest

Cosmi / 1985 / C64

‘An archer took a stroll through the deep dark wood…’

With one eye firmly on Halloween, we’re going to review some games that used to make us breathe heavily, grasping our joysticks tightly in our sweaty palms…

Beyond the Forbidden Forest starts dramatically with flashes of lightning against a starlit sky. With every flash comes a crack of thunder from the C64’s SID sound chip, before the title of the game is revealed against the darkness. It’s obvious even at this point that the game's author, Paul Norman, was aiming for something much more cinematic than the average computer game of the era.

You start, alone, in an overgrown forest. You are an archer, sent to slay the dreaded Demogorgon, who legend says can only be killed by a golden arrow to the heart.

Your character occupies the middle of the screen. You can walk through the forest to the left and to the right. You can also walk into and out of the scene. Sometimes trees or bushes can obscure your view. There’s a primitive parallax scrolling effect so that the trees in the foreground move more quickly than those in the background, which could charitably be described as decent for the time.

There’s nowhere to actually ‘go’ in this game, and the forest isn’t there to be explored. You’re not really alone, you see. This forest is actually the scene of a desperate fight for survival.

The first creature you encounter is the scorpion. The scorpion will enter from the side of the screen and will rush straight at you. Like all this game's enemies, he gets his own special musical theme that plays during the encounter. This is where you run away! If he reaches your archer he’ll messily jab your organs out with his stinger, to the accompaniment of a kind of musical shrieking noise generated by the SID. Imagine something like a primitive version of the score that plays in Alfred Hitchcock's ‘Psycho’ when Janet Leigh gets stabbed in the shower. This game doesn’t pull any punches for its death scenes, that’s for sure.

It’s behind you!

Luckily your archer can defend himself with his bow. Hold down the fire button and you’ll stand in place, aiming around the scene. A grey indicator bar moves up and down showing the elevation of your shot. Simply let the fire button go again to let loose an arrow. As you might imagine, it’s hard to keep away from a scorpion who is intent on perforating your innards while also stopping to pepper it with arrows, but this retreat, aim and fire mechanic is all a part of the game’s charm.

Plug the scorpion a few times and you get presented with a golden arrow, which appears from a spinning orb after an overly long fanfare plays. These golden arrows are important; you need to collect at least 4 to progress to the next stage of the adventure, and they also act as your ‘lives’. Every time the archer is killed you lose half of the stash of golden arrows, until the game is over. You will get very tired of hearing the victory fanfare, I assure you.

The next foe you meet is a massive worm, who rises out of the ground at various places in the foreground and background. Let him rise too many times without hitting him and he’ll swallow you whole, reappearing to regurgitate the bow, along with a healthy fountain of archer blood.

After that is a giant mosquito, who darts around the sky. He only takes one hit, but is tricky to get a bead on. He’ll drink your juices like a milkshake if he gets a chance, leaving only a crumpled heap on the forest floor.

Last up is… some kind of demonic frog / crocodile thing… who’ll jump about unpredictably and will mash your body like a pub piano at closing time.

He’s hungry for your offal.

One nice touch is the way that the game shows the passage of time in the forest. The sun sets, and eventually night comes, with the colours of the trees and sky changing appropriately. The day to night cycle welded to the ability to move in and out of the scenery prompted Cosmi to market this game as having ‘OmniDimension 4D`. This was sadly typical of the shameless bullshit marketing departments would churn out in the 80’s.

Once these 4 different foes are defeated, it’s back to the scorpion again, in an effort to gather enough golden arrows for an assault on the caverns, which lie... beyond the forbidden forest. See? Although 4 arrows are technically enough to progress, you’ll want more than that to have a realistic shot at what comes next. To progress to the caverns, you have to to pause the game with F1 and then press F3. If you don’t do this the forest encounters repeat until you die or your patience runs out.

Once within the caverns you face off against 3 final foes.

The Bats: A group of bats flutter around the cave. One of them is a golden colour, and that’s the one you need to shoot. You only need one hit, but it’s flight is fast and unpredictable.

The Hydra: This four headed monstrosity fills the entire screen! Each head can shoot fire, and you’ve got to dodge about to land a hit on each one. Succeed and he’ll stop moving and turn to stone.

The Demogorgon: Squatting over a pit, this massive beast follows your movements with his head, shooting deadly bolts from his eyes that will disintegrate you instantly. Shoot him in his glowing heart to win the game and free the land from his evil!

I appear to have misplaced my skin.

Beyond the Forbidden Forest surely must be the most ‘‘Commodore 64ish’ game of all time.

Chunky blocky graphics? Very. Lots of muddy browns and muted greens? None muddier. Bone rattling soundtrack courtesy of the SID chip. All present here.

It was also creepy, atmospheric, and with all the sudden and violent deaths, really quite nasty… for a computer game of the 80’s at least.

Trivia

This is the sequel to ‘Forbidden Forest’, which is probably a bit better known and generally held in slightly higher regard (even by the game’s author). There was a third game in the series released in 2003 for Windows PC. It’s a third person 3D effort, which sadly looks pretty generic and uninteresting. There aren’t even any gory death scenes!

Playing it today

Only released on the C64, and copies are getting rarer. Easily emulated, but bear in mind that the function keys are important on this one.

Commentariat

Meat: This game could be the poster child for anyone who considers C64 graphics to be dull and unappealing, but behind the ugly front there’s a lot to admire here. The ‘gore’ is also hilarious! With the notable exception of the head chopping in Palace Software’s ‘Barbarian’, games of the era were very timid in their depictions of graphic violence. I guess this is about as close as we were going to get to a survival horror game in the 80’s...

Pop: I got this one on a magazine cover tape, and was immediately hooked on its strange atmosphere, shocks and gory death scenes. I was a latecomer to the C64, and by that point these graphics really looked like a dog’s dinner. Despite that I still found myself playing this game quite a bit. Aiming the bow at enemies in the foreground and background feels a little tricky initially, but it can be mastered. My main issue now is how long the player resurrection and golden arrow presentation scenes take. Skipping repetitive cutscenes was a luxury you were so rarely afforded in those days.

Sadly I never went ‘beyond’ the forest, because I didn’t have a clue that the keyboard was required to progress to the next stage of the game.

Score card

Presentation 8/10

Starting with the fantastic cinematic introduction screen, this is a game that goes the extra mile to involve the player in its world. There’s even a proper ending sequence with its own musical theme. The various versions of box artwork are all, however, distinctly amateurish.

Originality 8/10

Made before all games started to look and feel the same, this is obviously the work of a single individual. It doesn’t look, sound or play like any other game of the time… except perhaps for its own prequel.

Graphics 6/10

Undeniably ugly, blocky, untidy and muddy. Also somehow atmospheric and appealing. The screen filling hydra is a pretty impressive piece of work for the time. Gets an extra point for splashing the pixelated claret about.

Hookability 7/10

From the first moment the scorpion scuttles over and messes you up with its stabber you’ll either want to see what other horrible fates await you in the forest… or switch the computer off in disgust.

Sound 9/10

A series of memorable tunes, played by the C64’s SID chip in the style of a demented horror film organ. Though it’s somewhat crude, few soundtracks at the time were better suited to the on-screen action.

Lastability 7/10

It takes some time to get used to hitting the different foes with your arrows, but there are ultimately only 7 different types of enemy to face in this game. Despite that, it puts up a decent challenge, and you'll want to make it to the caverns to see what horrors are lurking in the darkness.

Overall 7/10

A game with plenty of quirks and flaws, which it overcomes by sheer force of personality.

#review #halloween #AFG #antiquesforgeeks #retrogaming #C64 #gory

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coffee-and-kpop · 8 years ago

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Greek Gods AU || Part 1 || Yoongi

pt.1 | pt.2

Words: 1505

Genre: Greek gods AU, hella angst, some fluff

Summary: Easy is the descent to Lake Avernus; night and day the gate of gloomy Dis is open; but to retrace one’s steps, and escape to the upper air, this indeed is a task; this indeed is a toil. - Virgil

He wasn’t supposed to have brought the candle into the hotel; he was sure there was a policy against open flames in the room. But he’d snuck it in anyway, only so he could fall asleep as the flame twitched beside him. He couldn’t smell it, even though the scent was supposed to remind him of rolling waves and the sun.

Jungkook rolled back over, this time away from the candle. He curled into himself, feeling tiny in the large queen sized bed as he curled smaller and smaller. He stared at the drawn curtains in his line of sight, trying to imagine the world passing by outside; he couldn’t. He could barely feel himself, laying in this bed. It was almost as if he didn’t exist at all.

Somewhere above his head, the soft sound of a piano was played.

Yoongi swung his sledgehammer, bringing the heavy end down into the awaiting window of an unsuspecting Mercedes. The glass exploding into a multitude of glittering shards, raining all over the plush leather seats. A small portion of the shards twinkled down onto Yoongi’s shoes, covering the black boots in pieces of a rainbow.

The car’s alarm started blaring half a second later, piercing the otherwise quiet suburban air with shrill, mechanic chirps. Yoongi glared at the contraption as if it was an annoying pest that had just dampened a few moments of his lazy Sunday afternoon. Turning, he broke into a light jog and flew away from the car before it could bring unwarranted attention to his presence.

Yoongi was angry, if the sledge hammer vs. car windows showed any sign of that. Once he’d jogged far enough away from the piercing screams of the Mercedes, he ready his sledgehammer for another swing. The red car bellowed loud moans as Yoongi’s weapon crashed into its front windshield, causing the whole pane to cave in, a large impression of the hammer’s face sent a web of blistering cracks out from the middle.

Yoongi smirked to himself, and began jogging again. He hit car after car, each time aiming for a different window than the last until the whole block was erupting in a cacophony of blaring, shrieking, moaning alarms.

In sounded to Yoongi like a sea of the souls of the damned.

He walked away from his realm in the suburb amongst the tormented cars, letting their screams follow him as his feet covered long strides of the cement. The sledgehammer, which had suddenly become quite heavy in his hands, was dragging behind him lifeless, a dog on a stiff leash. His pet scraped the cement, sending up a never-ending loop of scraping like nails on a chalkboard. The noise made Yoongi’s hair stand on end; blood pumped through his veins in an attempt to shrink away from the noise. He made no motion to stop it.

The sidewalk passed him on and on, the groveling of his sledgehammer the only thing keeping him company until he found himself standing in front of a dilapidated building. It was an ugly shaped stack of bricks and mortar; the neon sign’s flashing lights were out except for a few mismatched letters. The pink and yellow V, O, L whined, a dull buzzing like an insect. Yoongi walked under it and continued to the door. The glass was frosted as he pushed forward, making sure to dump his sledgehammer with great force into the empty umbrella holder by the rotting newspaper dispensers.

The front desk was empty, leaving no frowning face to watch Yoongi has he made his way up three flights of stairs and into his room. The door squealed like a mouse trapped in the jaws of a snake, in pain and on the verge of death.

Room 306, Yoongi was sure, was decorated like all the other rooms in the motel: complete with an uncomfortable piece of cardboard for a mattress and an uneven side table. Yoongi didn’t mind the un-comfort of the place; he really didn’t even mind the faint smell of mold that tinged the air and became trapped in his lungs. He was used to it within minutes of breathing.

He threw himself on the bed, the duvet rumpled around the left side of the bed, exposing the sheets like innards. He’d discarded various objects in the bed, and now he laid amongst them, closing his eyes and pretending he wasn’t breathing; he was an inanimate object like all the rest.

He unplugged his headphones from an old disc player, deciding that listening to music outloud would be more beneficial to his unbeing-ness that listening to it in his head; if it was all in his head instead of surround him, he’d be forced to dwell in the knowledge that he was, in fact, here. He didn’t want to be here.

In fact, Yoongi didn’t want to be anywhere. He never wanted to be anywhere ever again. Not after he’d been left hallow. Yoongi saw her brown eyes glittering at him now, and threw his arm over his eyes with a groan.

Spring may have been a happy time to all, but Yoongi felt cold as ice. She’d left him, and now he was wallowing in a sea of piss stained sheets and little orange pills. He pushed play on the disc player, feeling the classical music envelop him.

She’d loved listening to it, and she’d been the one that made him this disc, only days before they’d parted. During long afternoons when they were younger, Yoongi would play for her, not because he particularly wanted to play the piano for hours on end, but instead to see the magic that glittered in her eyes as the notes flitted around her.

Yoongi would play every afternoon away, and she would sit atop his piano, with her legs crossed, listening. He remembered his favorite afternoon, when her brown hair curled in a perfect, messy way around her face. A look of confusion furrowed her brows while she listened to him.

He didn’t say anything to her, instead just simply continued to play. It wasn’t a song he’d played for her before; in fact, he’d only just written the song the previous night. It was the story of how they met, of how they fell in love. Somewhere deep inside her eyes, Yoongi knew she was drawing the puzzle pieces together; she knew what the piano’s notes meant.

A look of bliss washed over her face, pulling her eyelids down heavy. She kept listening, her fingers stained red from the pomegranate she’d been eating. The afternoon sun had settled, and even though the window’s curtains were blown open, the setting was dark around her.

In that moment, Yoongi knew what love was.

In this moment, Yoongi knew how love was lost.

He’d met her swiftly, and falling for her was like falling inside a field of flowers: plush and dynamic. He’d smiled more than he could ever remember, and while the brown piano stayed faithfully in the corner of his room, she’d stayed faithfully in his heart. She was his first true love; he’d written that for her in a strung of notes played gallantly.

Now, though, she was gone. The flowers were blooming outside as winter went, but Yoongi had never felt more dead. He felt as though ice was eating through him, covering him layer by layer. Everything was coming alive outside his open window: everything except Yoongi.

She’d taken every bit of him when she left, and now he was forced to walk around alone, nothing to console him but the screams of car alarms.

The music in his disc player was building into a crescendo, and falling just as quickly. This was metaphoric, Yoongi was sure. A banana peel rotted beside him; a glass of stale liquor sat on his dresser. Yoongi stuck another capsule of orange into his mouth, swallowing it dry. It burned as it struggled on the path to his stomach.

Yoongi felt the end coming nearer for him, though try as he might it would never fully reach its destination. He’d wake up in the morning, cotton in his mouth and a pounding sadness in his head. He’d pushed and pushed and pushed, and she broke her promise. She didn’t stay with him until the end.

This spring would be the hardest of Yoongi’s life. You’re a bastard, he cursed himself. The whelps he mentally gave himself barely stung. He lifted his arm away from his face and glanced over at the window; he never closed the curtains. His face turned upwards, and the sun sank.

He looked at the sky, and he thought of her.

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hathaway-hayes · 8 years ago

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The Epiphany (come ultimatum)

Tumblin’ beer bottles, Chase the walls opposite With a trip, tinkle And lack of desired shards. They, Like the mirror unbroken, Leave me to feel complete, Even though I don’t want to. Sip after sip, and an entirety Jealous for the shattered, I seek, if only, “left behind,” Abandoned by he or she One more reason to ingest Amnesia, prayers atop the Altar – “destroy.” But yet I’m happy. I’m truly happy, God-damnit. I’m happy with the frigid And colder “ones,” who endure – To love, to hate, And everything in between, On hand, and within innards. I’m euphoric Because I know this separates, To draw a line in the sand, Leaving me time to trod upon Timeless And pretend that all’s good In the end; The end wherein Piano players bleed digits, Professors profess truths, Dogs piss on trees And I, simply I Muddle, muck and make way Towards something, An idea I’ve never known – The epiphany of ultimatum.

- L.C.

#the epiphany #the ultimatum #time to leave #poem #writerscreed #poetry #writing #prose #poets on tumblr

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frostedkookie · 8 years ago

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Greek Gods AU || Part 1 || Yoongi

pt.1 | pt.2

Words: 1505

Genre: Greek gods AU, hella angst, some fluff

Jungkook’s bed in room 206 was lumpy. The duvet scratched against his pants leg, making sure to leave every spot of exposed skin chafed the following morning as he slept. Not that he was getting much sleep here. He rolled over on to his opposite side, watching as the flame flickered diligently atop the candle placed beside his bed. He wasn’t supposed to have brought the candle into the hotel; he was sure there was a policy against open flames in the room. But he’d snuck it in anyway, only so he could fall asleep as the flame twitched beside him. He couldn’t smell it, even though the scent was supposed to remind him of rolling waves and the sun.

Somewhere above his head, the soft sound of a piano was played.

In sounded to Yoongi like a sea of the souls of the damned.

In that moment, Yoongi knew what love was.

In this moment, Yoongi knew how love was lost.

She’d taken every bit of him when she left, and now he was forced to walk around alone, nothing to console him but the screams of car alarms.

He looked at the sky, and he thought of her.

#kpop #kpop scenarios #kpop au #bts #bfs scenario #bfs au #min yoongi #suga #yoongi scenario #yoongi au #suga scenario #suga au

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buytabletsonline · 7 years ago

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After writing up Nintendo’s Wednesday reveal of its new Labo playsets (coming April 20 to the US and Japan and April 27 to Europe), I realized I’d forgotten to add an important word to the article’s introduction: “what.”

More specifically, the drawn-out, question-marked version I should have shouted when the product’s reveal video played out. (“Whaaaaat?!”) I’m a big fan of Nintendo’s physical-toy era in the ’60s and ’70s, back when company legend and Game Boy creator Gunpei Yokoi came up with engineering wonders like the Ultra Hand and the Ten-Barrel Puzzle. As a result, I was immediately charmed by the physicality and toy-controller possibilities of the reveal video, which included everything from a motorcycle steering chassis to a 13-key piano to a string-loaded fishing rod—all built by players with a mix of pre-cut, pre-marked cardboard, sensing stickers, plastic, string, and more.

But then I began wondering: exactly how does everything work with Nintendo Labo? In particular, what the heck is going on with Labo’s most insane offering: a full-body robot suit?

Player, piano

Understanding how Labo-constructed Toy-Cons will work starts by analyzing this image, which we break down in the text below. The rest of this gallery shows how the Nintendo Labo piano is put together.

Nintendo Labo will combine the Switch console, its Joy-Con controllers, and buildable cardboard sets.

The debut video shows how to put the piano set together. Start with individual, foldable cardboard pieces.

Getting closer.

It’s missing something.

Oh, right. The Switch.

There’s also a slot for a Joy-Con to be inserted, visible here on the left.

Nintendo has not answered precisely how the Labo Robot Kit will work, either in its reveal videos, Labo’s official sites, or hands-on impressions posted by other outlets. With the limited info I’ve gathered, I’m taking it upon myself to offer educated guesses while commenting on why I have a serious case of Labo love.

We do know quite a bit about Labo based on hands-on reports that went live at the same time as Nintendo’s Wednesday video. The Labo Variety Kit was demonstrated at length to various outlets, and the “how” of the Variety Kit’s cardboard piano—which recognizes 13 distinct keys and a number of modulating knobs—was explained as follows by The Verge:

The Joy-Con that slots into the back [of the Labo piano] has a camera, which can see the back of the keys so that it knows which ones you’re pressing and then relays that information to the Switch. The sound-modifying knobs, meanwhile, each have distinctive stripes that are associated with their respective sounds, so that the camera can tell them apart.

To be clearer: the right-side Joy-Con, which ships with every Nintendo Switch, comes with an infrared camera and four additional infrared sensors. These are apparently enough to create Labo’s distinct combination of positional and visual data. When fed by patterns on the cardboard parts and “reflective” stickers, they can individually recognize no less than 14 simultaneous points of interactivity.

We have to wait for more direct access to all of the Labo creations (which Nintendo calls Toy-Cons) to break down exactly how every single one of them works. When we get our hands on Labo later this year, we will do just that. For now, let’s focus on the Labo Robot Kit, which was not shown off during any hands-on press previews—but appeared for long enough in Labo’s debut video to reveal juicy information.

We can start by looking at the Labo video’s footage of the cardboard piano’s assembly. Labo walks its players step-by-step through the process of building a Toy-Con, and it includes see-through 3D models of the construction every step of the way to teach users (assumedly, our world’s future engineers) exactly how this stuff works. By the end, builders have gotten the piano pretty much fully built, at which point they must insert the right-side Joy-Con into the back of the piano, so that its IR camera rig can see the piano’s full innards.

The reveal video shows Labo instructing players to test the piano’s buttons and dials, in order to test the IR sensor. This screen, which includes a touchscreen option for kids to move the camera around and see how the piano is working, actually shows 19 distinct sensing positions, including 13 purple “keys,” a pair of dials (one red, one green) directly above the keys, and four larger boxes. (We still don’t have full information about exactly which of these keys, knobs, and other elements must have sensor-boosting stickers attached.)

This wealth of data, above and beyond a mere 13-key rig, is important as we transition to the Labo Robot Kit.

Go-go Labo rangers

The Labo Robot Pack comes with everything seen here. (We break it down in the text below, along with more thoughts in this gallery.)

Nintendo

Another look at the pack in its construction phase.

As arms and legs move, so do the white strips.

We’re still wondering how exactly the strips’ position relates to real-life movement.

Be a robot.

“Moooom, the back fell off my robot suit again!”

Oh, and of course, this game’s robot TURNS INTO A CAR. The video shows the player bending his knees to transform.

Nintendo’s official Labo Robot Kit site includes images of the full kit’s basic, exterior design. In the first image of the above gallery, the left-side image shows two handheld wands made entirely of cardboard, while two foot clips made of plastic are shown as connected directly to the backpack, not fully extended to the floor. That’s made clearer on the model’s feet on the right-side image. Also in that right-side image, both the handheld and foot-clipped parts are connected to string that runs through the backpack itself.

If we go back to the reveal video, we see a brief shot of the backpack’s exposed innards, before a final piece of cardboard is slapped onto the back. Four apparent levers can be seen, each with a white strip at different levels. We can tell based on the official product image that each limb’s string runs through the top of the cardboard backpack, aligned with each of these levers. As you move an arm or a leg, each white strip moves up and down.

The backpack’s back-side flap of cardboard includes a holder for the right-side Joy-Con, and again, its IR sensor points at the innards, including these white strips. Should there be any doubt that these are the backpack’s primary trackable points of data, notice the video’s footage of the Robot Kit’s accompanying game. Its robot hero has four visible levers on its back, mirroring the same design that players wear.

Additionally, the non-camera Joy-Con is mounted to a small cardboard-and-plastic headset, which a player wears for some sort of control in the game itself. This could be meant for head-tracked camera movement in the game, or for directing a player’s motion or attacks. But it’s definitely not up there just to make a kid look silly.

One question remains: what other, finer points of data might Labo’s Robot Kit be equipped to handle, a la the cardboard piano’s wealth of sensing data? The fact that Nintendo didn’t demonstrate a working version to the press could mean that there’s more to the kit; the best evidence to support this guess is the backpack’s use of three large holes on both its left and right sides. These may accommodate additional connections, either by string or some other doo-dad. There’s also the possibility, of course, that this four-lever system is not yet optimized enough for public testing.

Coming soon: a “more-power” glove?

Some of Labo’s concepts were teased in Wednesday’s video without an accompanying product announcement, like this steering wheel and pedal combo.

What’s really exciting about the steering wheel is this sticker-sensor array, which has no less than ten points of data for the Switch’s Joy-Con IR sensor to translate into a control system.

The rest of this gallery includes other teased Labo Toy-Cons that don’t appear to have an announced release yet. First: a huge joystick with a wedged cardboard base, for the sake of 360-degree flexing.

A bird with flappable wings.

A camera with rotatable lens. (Pokemon Snap 2, maybe?)

And a big pistol that resembles a flare gun.

Either way, the beauty of the IR-tracked backpack is its sheer design flexibility. If you were asked to build a fully tracked four-limb robot suit from scratch, meant to interact with a video game system, you might imagine no less than four hardware-connected sensing rigs to track basic movement—or more if you want to account for, say, ball-and-socket joints. But Nintendo will only employ one IR sensor to record four distinct limbs’ movement. There’s work to be done to engineer the rest of the physical rig, of course, but this “single-sensor” system saves users the trouble of, say, ordering laser- and wire-connected parts from Alibaba.

That’s a lot of design modularity for Labo’s future. Labo essentially declares that the Nintendo Switch already includes enough sensors and electronics. From there, Nintendo, or its fans, can engineer entirely different build-it-yourself kits based on this base with nothing but cardboard and stickers. The possibilities are wild. I’ve already imagined one idea, based on my own VR experiences. With an angled, wrist-strapped glove, Labo 2.0 could aim an IR sensor at a single human hand and, at the very least, track the basic movement of individual digits, if not the fingers’ bending at knuckles. (A second Joy-Con could join the party to determine angle and rotation, which might deliver convincing spatial hand tracking.)

Our last image gallery, directly above, includes five Toy-Cons that do not appear to have announced releases yet. Since it’s advertising these preview concepts early, Nintendo clearly sees a future in the Labo line. Its control possibilities really could go in as many wacky directions as I’ve just guessed with my own Toy-Con Glove idea.

Already before launch, Nintendo’s Labo approach feels like a much better path forward in the gimmick-filled control world than what’s come before. The era of locked-down, $90-and-up control peripherals has long passed. Players generally do not want to be saddled with a pricey, space-filling control mechanism that only works for a few games—a fact that spelled doom for everything from Kinect to Guitar Hero. The Switch has succeeded, in part, by giving players a familiar suite of controls to play as they see fit, either at home or on the go. The system also just so happens to have just enough sensing tech built in to accommodate crazy control styles… for those who want to buy add-on kits and construct their own Toy-Cons. Everyone wins. It’s brilliant, even before it exists.

Listing image by Nintendo

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#buytabletsonline buytablets buytablet iphone5s technology iphonegraphic mobile electronics

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dustedmagazine · 6 years ago

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Dust Volume 5, Number 3

Photo by Rene Block, Courtesy of the John Cage Trust

In like a lion, that’s how we’ll do March at Dusted, which is to say in a gigantic leap, with blood and innards trailing from a toothy predator’s mouth. Well, that’s the hope, but actually, we’ll probably just listen to some music and write some reviews. Case in point: this edition’s Dust candidates, which include sci-fi techno, a blissed out dub version of “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” a Portuguese guitar duel, some churning stomach fluids and a percussive interpretation of koan-like John Cage. This time, the team was limited—just Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Jonathan Shaw and Peter Taber—but mostly enthusiastic. We hope you’ll find something to like, too.

CMD — Obscure Worlds (Several Reasons)

Obscure Worlds by CMD

On the face of it, CMD’s Obscure Worlds is a sci fi-themed techno album, which doesn’t do much to separate it from the broader genre. Scratch the surface, and you find an album of detailed techno vignettes that refuse to stand still. In less than three minutes, “Uneven Landing” layers crushed static onto knocking digital debris, with a rapid-fire kick added to the mix two minutes in. On “Obscure Manifestation” a foundation of pulsing static sets the stage for otherworldly peals of feedback. “Death of a Galaxy” reaches toward the undulating bass engineering of an Yves de Mey track. “Through the Wormhole” hints at industrial fuzz a la AnD while maintaining a bit more restraint, with a switch-up in the kick pattern four minutes in that isn’t exactly characteristic for techno. Given the density of musical ideas, many of the tracks could have been extended, but they last long enough to satisfy. If the album’s concept was intended to prompt a creative, concise set of techno variations, it did the trick. Obscure Worlds feels like getting a glimpse into a techno sound-design obsessive’s sketchbook, in the best possible way.

Peter Taber

Julien Desprez / Luís Lopes—Boa Tarde (Shhpuma)

youtube

The title translates from Portuguese as Good Afternoon, and from the sound of this record it was. Both Julien Desprez and Luís Lopes are known for bringing the electricity to jazz ensembles, but when you put a couple of guitarists together it’s possible that they will connect around the instrument, not any particular genre. So it is here, but just what instrument are we talking about? The electric guitar? The amplifier? The pedals? Or all of the above? Let’s go with the latter, because this music is more about the interplay of timbres, textures, contours and sound waves than melodies, harmonies or beats. Imagine the jousting of train sounds issuing from converging valleys, the shudder of twin flexing suspension bridges or maybe just the shared sweet spots of a couple guys who probably wore out more than one CD player spinning Thurston Moore and Nels Cline’s Pillow Wand. Or don’t imagine at all, just listen to this artifact of one good afternoon in Lisbon.

Bill Meyer

Carol Genetti / Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson — Chyme (Suppedeneum)

Carol Genetti’s vocals operate beyond the boundaries of language. On Chyme, which is named after that gurgling stuff that sloshes around in your stomach after you eat, she electronically manipulates and juxtaposes sounds that humans have been making since before they thought up the first words. You might get disoriented trying to make sense of her pre-lingual exhalations and utterances, so visual artist Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson has prepared a listening score for each of the CD’s four tracks. Each score is a vibrantly colored, circuitously shaped paper cutout, the handling of which will put you (back?) in touch with the experience of pre-GPS, map-based navigation. Anderson’s combination of vibrant colors and text cues prod you out of passive listening and into a vocal / visual interaction with the sounds, which are by turns eerily beautiful and absolutely hackle raising. You will not encounter another record like Chyme.

Bill Meyer

Golden Daze—Simpatico (Autumn Tone)

Simpatico by Golden Daze

Hold up, you don’t need musical difficulty all of the time. No, there are hours and days and (occasionally) weeks when you don’t want propulsion or tension or contradictory impulses in your tunes. Life itself is full of that shit. You want something easy. You want something like Golden Daze’s Simpatico, an edgeless, frictionless, limpid pool of baroque pop, with soft whispery vocals and sumptuous clouds of guitar flurries and bright bars of electronic keyboards, unending prettiness, unconflicted lemon-y wistfulness. “Blue Bell,” the single, is like the Clientele with the bones picked out, an enveloping haze of pastel colored sound. There’s a bit of drumming in a song called “Drift,” but it only seems to heightened the disembodied floating-ness of the song’s breathy sway. “Simpatico,” at the end, emerges out of haze and fog, with warm, brushes of guitar and soft, dreaming verses, then slips out of sight. Golden Daze indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

Golia, Kaiser, Moses, Smith, Walter — Astral Plane Crash (Balance Point Acoustics)

BPA 18 Astral Plane Crash by Golia / Kaiser / Moses / Smith / Walter

p>Henry Kaiser, Damon Smith and Weasel Walter are Plane Crash, a guitar-bass-drums trio tough enough that it doesn’t have to act tough. The musicians’ common bonds are an appreciation for the atomized activity of vintage English free improvisation and a shared determination to communicate intensity through intent and focus, not bluster. Things get cosmic when you bring in West coast woodwind veteran Vinny Golia and drummer Ra Kalam Bob Moses, who played with Rahsaan Roland Kirk at an age when most kids are first trying to cadge their parents’ car keys. Moses and Golia had never played together, but they roomed in the 1960s, and their presence complicates Astral Plane Crash’s prevailing MO of quick micro-interaction in interesting ways. The flutes and saxophones run thick and slow under APC’s dust devil swirl. And Moses and Walter sound like their having a blast making like converging storm clouds, each pelting hail stones from a different direction so there’s no way you won’t get a chill down your neck. At two tracks and a hair under 80 minutes, this is all-in stuff, but when the changes come as quick and compelling as they do here that’s a feature, not a bug.

Bill Meyer

Matt Hannafin / John Cage—Four Realizations For Solo Percussion (Notice Recordings)

Four Realizations for Solo Percussion by John Cage & Matt Hannafin

In a life of ideas that spans 79 years, a guy might change his mind. John Cage famously expressed disregard for jazz, the most notable American manifestation of musical improvisation in the 20th century. But his problem was more with corrosive expressions of the self and human prejudice than it was with improvisation per se, thus his preference for chance operations. You can’t impose your personal bullshit when you submit to the random. Near the end of his life he dropped his opposition enough to write compositions that invited improvisation, which was distinct from chance operations. If that sounds like a convoluted process, consider the name of this tape’s first piece. “c Ȼomposed Improvisation for One-Sided Drums with or without Jangles” reads like a koan, which makes some sense given Cage’s engagement with Buddhist teachings. That’s just one of the four pieces that Oregonian percussionist Matt Hannafin recorded for this tape (or download, which is probably a more Buddhist format than a tape). In his hands, Cage’s music becomes a vehicle for feeling both the presence of a healthy blow and the unoccupied presence of the variably proportioned spaces where Hannafin isn’t hitting anything.

Bill Meyer

Gerrit Hatcher — Parables for the Tenor (Astral Spirits)

Parables For The Tenor by Gerrit Hatcher

One listener’s marvelously wigged-out sound is another’s torture. An audience member’s transformative listening experience might be in response to a sound producer’s moment of hollow display. You might hate a person’s most sincere expression or be deeply moved by something they do with their fingers and lungs while they try to remember where they left their bottle opener. Chicago-based tenor saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher had these existential quandaries in mind as he recorded the six solo tracks on this tape, and who’s to say if that’s why this music has such bite? Maybe it’s better to note that he makes sounds that feel linked to the work of certain Sun Ra associates and Archie Shepp into statements that don’t sound irrelevant at the tail end of the second decade of the 21st century. Hang with him while he blows and you might be changed, either because he’s ripping transformative shapes in the air or because that’s already where you’re taking yourself. Either way, what do you have to lose?

Bill Meyer

Hübsch Martel Zoubek — Otherwise (Insub)

Otherwise by Hübsch, Martel, Zoubek

There’s a world of improvised music that never crosses that precious Yankee border, and this is group is part of that world. Take one German tuba player, one Canadian viola da gamba player and another German on piano, throw in some pitch pipes and a synthesizer and what do you have? You have the raw material for a session of highly refined interaction. On the spectrum from process-oriented to outcome-oriented improvisation, these musicians tend more to the latter pole. The piano has been prepared to render gamelan-in-a-box sonorities, the tuba’s tones consistently gravitate towards ground-liquifying depths and the strings buzz in splintered contrast. The music unfolds patiently, never lapsing into clutter or confusion, and yet it never telegraphs the next move.

Bill Meyer

Jäh Division—Dub Will Tear Us Apart…Again (Ernest Jenning)

Dub Will Tear Us Apart...Again by Jäh Division

A jokey side hustle with an aughts all-star psychedelic pedigree, Jäh Division grooved hard, if obscurely, joining a love of dub, a reverence for Joy Division and a clutch of old keyboard gear. The line-up well exceeded solid with Brad Truax on booming, reverb drenched dub bass, Barry London manning a garage sales’ worth of vintage electronics (Roland RS-09, Realistic Concertmate MG-1, a Moog) and Kid Millions busting up organic and synthetic drums. This disc collects songs from a 2004 12-inch, plus bonus material including covers of Desmond Dekker’s “Fu Manchu” and Jackie Mittoo’s “Champion of the Arena.” These two are trippily wonderful, but the heart of this goofy fever dream is a nodding, pulsing, synth wreathed version of “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” It’s a jam that could go on for days or last only a second (technically it goes ong a bit over four minutes), as it distills post-punk and reggae and experimental art rock into an unending now.

Jennifer Kelly

Miscarriage — Imminent Horror (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Imminent Horror by Miscarriage

Much alike Stormy Daniels’ description of the Chief Executive’s fungoid phallic member, the world didn’t really need this tape from international doom metal crew Miscarriage (who hail from Sweden and the United States) — but now that Imminent Horror is here, it’s sort of hard to ignore. And once you’ve heard it, you’ll have a hard time removing it from your memory, much as you might like to. Lots of metal bands like to talk about how “disgusting” and “putrid” their music is. Miscarriage do more than talk. The noises they make sound and feel like a huge bubble of noxious gas painfully working its way through a diseased intestinal track. It’s slow. It’s gross. It doesn’t create any sort of pleasure. It’s only minimally more coherent than listening to the aforementioned Chief Executive attempt to speak in complete sentences. In all those ways, Miscarriage have made music for our times. Good luck to us all.

Jonathan Shaw

Shady Bug—Lemon Lime (Exploding in Sound)

Lemon Lime by Shady Bug

Shady Bug, out of St. Louis, makes a mathy pop so stretchy and bendable that you expect a bo-oi-oi-ing when its wandering melodies snap back into place. Under the guidance of classically trained Hannah Rainey, the band sets up intricate, jerry-rigged machinations that work by their own logic. Yet though complicated, these tunes have a vulnerable sweetness to them, mainly due to Raines’ hiccupy sincere delivery, which tips and lists as the wind blows. “Make It Up,” the single floods the sonic plane with power-washing blasts of amplified guitar, then cuts to a jittery next-to-nothing of angling, cross-cutting guitar lines. It’ll remind you of Pavement and, more recently, Speedy Ortiz, except in a fetching, kid-sibling-ish way that tugs at your sleeve and your heart.

Jennifer Kelly

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