#pop culture (and by extension i suppose culture in general) fascinates me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

felinevomitus · 4 years

Text

Sebastian Melmoth: Imaginary Futures

Sebastian Melmoth l-r: Laura Michelle Smith, Peter Jordan, Ilia Rogatchevski, Tomoko Matsumoto. Photo: Artem Barkhin.

Sebastian Melmoth has seen various stages of activity since I established the project back in 2006. Intended to operate as a conceptual antithesis to popular music, to begin with, the group existed in name only. At the time, I was mildly obsessed with the life and work of Oscar Wilde and, upon discovering that Wilde took up the pseudonym of Sebastian Melmoth during his self-imposed exile in France (1897-1900), decided to call my imaginary band in his honour.

The name is referential. It is a combination of Saint Sebastian and Melmoth the Wanderer. The former was an icon for the underground gay community in Victorian England and the latter, a Gothic novel by Wilde’s great-uncle Charles Robert Maturin, first published in 1820. Due to his own castigation by polite society, it is likely that Wilde greatly empathised with both Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom and Maturin’s central antagonist (a man who takes to wandering the Earth after selling his soul to the Devil in return for immortality).

The literary nature of Sebastian Melmoth was the project’s founding principle. The first few years were littered with attempts at writing sincere songs that pointed towards literary hallmarks. Sunshine Blues, for example, namedrops Rodion Raskolnikov, the anguished protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment (1866), while Manskinner references a peripheral character from Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1994).

This way of working was typical for us. Books were read in parallel to the creation of the music, lyrics and visual artwork. Each activity informed the other, creating a fluid symbiotic network of overlapping information. Like is often said of Sonic Youth, I wanted Sebastian Melmoth to operate as an obscure gateway drug to other works of literature, pop culture and art with each release having a tight conceptual idea supporting it.

Sebastian Melmoth began life in earnest as a high school four-piece, with myself on rhythm guitar and vocals, Miranda Collett on lead guitar, Joe Dibb on keys and Elias Razak on drums. Peter Jacobs replaced Elias after a while, but before long the group downsized to an acoustic anti-folk duo in the vein of the Moldy Peaches. The underlying theme of our debut album, Insanity’s Insanity (self-released, 2010), was the absurd nature of everyday reality. This is evidenced by the title, which was lifted out of Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 play Rhinoceros.

While looking for a job on Gumtree, I came across a psychedelic indie outfit called Clinker (at that time a quartet, but now a duo consisting of Peter Jordan and Tomoko Matsumoto). They were advertising for extras to cast in their new music video So We Say (Dir. Ambrose Yalley, 2009). We became friends and eventually started making music together. They produced Insanity’s Insanity and even remixed a few of the tracks from that album, but our collaboration didn’t realise its full potential until a little later.

youtube

Sebastian Melmoth - Sunshine Blues (DTT Mix)

Our next releases, In der Tiefe (self-released, 2011) and The Nausea of Being (self-released, 2012), were at the same time more ambitious and conceptual than our first long player. Pointing their fingers at the works of Carl Jung and Jean-Paul Sartre respectively, these companion albums broadly concerned themselves with existentialism. In der Tiefe (German, in the depths) took drug psychosis as its principal theme. Not unlike Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void (2009) the central protagonist uses psychedelic drugs to delve deep into the rabbit hole of his psyche in an attempt to capture and control his ‘shadow self’. The German title was appropriated from Fritz Lang’s silent sci-fi classic Metropolis (1927) and, in its original context, referred to the bottom level of the titular tiered city: the domicile of the working classes.

The Nausea of Being expanded on these ideas, rising, as it were, from the depths and surfacing on a desolate landscape of social destitution, political corruption, alcoholism, murder and religious dogma. Sartre, Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett all greatly influenced me around this time. I remember reading Sarte’s 1938 novel Nausea, where the narrator experienced crippling anxiety in the face of everyday interactions, and thinking that his experiences were not far from my own. Tracks such as Waiting for Godot, Paintstripper Blues and Godemiché echoed the work of the authors above and attempted to illustrate what I saw, at the time, as the core elements of the human condition: alienation, despair, lust, self-destruction.

Peter programmed the drums, played bass and, along with Tomoko, pretty much moulded our sound on these two albums, but the next couple of years saw a period of transition, both in terms of lineup and musical direction. Laura Michelle Smith joined us on drums, adding much needed rhythmic power to the live band dynamic, while Miranda left a short time after that to pursue other interests. Her parting contributions can be heard on Emetophobia (self-released, 2013). This eight-track EP was recorded entirely on GarageBand using drum presets and the inbuilt laptop mic for live instrumentation. Stylistically drawing from Atlas Sound’s Bedroom Databank series and the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s more lo-fi output, Emetophobia is still one of my favourite Sebastian Melmoth albums. The lyrics may be a touch naive and the sound imperfect, but these elements contribute to the album’s overall charm.

Being now in the business of making difficult music we found a couple of labels sympathetic to our way of thinking. After listening to an unsolicited copy of The Nausea of Being, Thomas Martin Ekelund commissioned us to compose thirty minutes of new music for his tape label. The result was In Ruins (Beläten, 2014), which is probably our best and most consistent work. It was described in one review as sounding “like a Britpop version of the Velvet Underground filtered through everything rock saw during the 70s, 80s and 90s”.

youtube

Sebastian Melmoth - Miet Mitzvah

While on the surface In Ruins may appear to be a breakup album, at its core, it is actually a complex study of fanaticism, personality cults and terrorism. Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry’s account of the Manson Family murders, Helter Skelter (1974), and Stefan Aust’s The Baader-Meinhof Complex (1985) both fed into the album’s sense of isolation. The latter book, which recounted the history of the Red Army Faction - a far-left West German militant organisation - was particularly influential.

After becoming increasingly fascinated with their story, I rechristened each of us after the main Baader-Meinhof members: Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin & Jan-Carl Raspe. At concerts we wore all black, save for a red armband adorned with an inverted white triangle, and performed theatrical psychedelic noise rock to the general bewilderment of all. While playing Wrong Side of the Sun, for example, I would typically invade the crowd and strangle myself with the microphone cable. This performance had roots in Viennese Actionism, but also functioned as an extension of Guy Debord’s push for the Construction of Situations. What we were trying to say was that all forms of fanaticism are dangerous, irrespective of their ideological origins, but I’m not certain whether this came across particularly well.

By this time we were regularly rehearsing in a garage underneath the A104 in east London. It was a cold, dark and unforgiving place. Apparently, the space had been an illicit marijuana farm before it became a rehearsal room. With notable latency, this knowledge trickled down to the local gangsters and the garage was broken into on a few occasions. Finding nothing but piles of cheap guitars, broken amplifiers and no marijuana our new friends left the place alone, but not before holding our besieged landlord up at knifepoint. Tensions in the band were also on the rise. Laura and myself were becoming more interested in musique concrète, graphic scores and improvisation, while Peter didn’t like this new direction at all, feeling that our strengths lay in songwriting and the traditional band dynamic.

It was against this background that our last two full length albums were recorded: Felix Culpa (OKVLT, 2015) and Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta (Must Die Records, 2016). We worked on these projects in parallel in an attempt to appease our diverging interests.

Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta is a garage rock record that nodded to our punk rock influences while also including elements of surf, psych and noise. The record title is a reference to a council of Senior Aboriginal Women from the town of Coober Pedy, South Australia who protested against the Australian government dumping radioactive waste on their land. Coober Pedy, which translates from the local Aboriginal language as “white man’s hole”, is not only famous for its opal, but also the fact that many of its residents live underground to escape the scorching daytime heat. Having spent our fair share of time writing music underground, we felt companionship with these people. Peter wanted an accurate reflection of the band as a live unit and, I suppose, the album manages to achieve that (some of the drum tracks were actually multitrack recordings from our concerts). The production is far from perfect, but the energy is there, which, in the context of a garage rock album, is probably more important than fidelity.

youtube

Sebastian Melmoth - Rooftop Surfing

Felix Culpa (Latin, happy fall) took on a slightly different approach. The majority of these songs were created during intense and heated sessions. Improvisation played a key role in its construction, but so did William Burroughs style cut-ups, digital manipulations and field recordings. At its heart, Felix Culpa explored the nature of the Fall: a condition of living in a permanent state of exposure; of opening oneself up to the Other. According to Slavoj Žižek, "the ultimate Event is the Fall itself, the loss of some primordial unity and harmony which never existed, which is just a retroactive illusion" (Event, 2014). Just like Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, this project also served to reflect what the band was at that particular moment in time: fractured, vulnerable and on the brink of disbanding. The album cover shows Gerhard Halbritter’s photograph of Andreas Baader’s death mask, which hints to the viewer that the creative drive behind Sebastian Melmoth had largely ceased to operate.

Each of our studio releases aimed to depart from the last. Not repeating ourselves was another key principle of the band. Towards the end, however, I began to feel that we were doing just that. I also felt that my songwriting had become contrived and breaking out of that mould was not an option supported by everyone. Additionally, I became uncomfortable with some of the characters in my lyrics. Songs such as Prosopagnosia or Foedi Oculi employ elements of sexism, sadism, oppression and violence in order to highlight the abhorrence of such actions. Even though I saw the explorations of these themes as a contemporary take on Maturin’s gothic horror, as time went on, it became increasingly difficult for me to justify them.

Our last show was at a tiny Clapton bar called Biddle Bros, in the summer of 2017. In my opinion, the show went better than expected. At that point we hadn’t rehearsed much or played live in a while. Peter disagreed. He felt that we lost something crucial along the way. Where once we had been theatrical, now we were just plodding along. I wasn’t convinced. Theatre is an open-ended format that can allow for modest gestures as well as flamboyant ones. We were coming from different directions and refusing to meet each other halfway. Peter was citing David Bowie and I was referencing Fluxus and Bertolt Brecht. At its core, this argument - not our first or last, but certainly our most public one - was saturated by our personal and professional expectations of one another. These expectations weren’t always met and neither of us were open to what the other person wanted. Whatever odd bits we had recorded around this time were self-released as an outtakes compilation called Devotional Songs for the Digital Age, in late 2018.

Not long after all of this, Olf van Elden aka Interstellar Funk reached out with a proposal to compile our more electronic cuts together on vinyl. We christened this new album The Dynamics of Vanity (Artificial Dance, 2019). The title is both a comment on culture's obsession with rehashing the past - the subject matter of Simon Reynolds's book Retromania (2010) - and our own personal navel-gazing. The title references a collage I had made as an art student that mocked the fashion industry's depiction of male underwear models. To my mind, they resembled intricate amphorae paintings and Hellenistic bronzes of Greek antiquity.

youtube

Sebastian Melmoth - Icarus

Although The Dynamics of Vanity is not a studio album, we approached its production with the same attention to detail as we would any other record. For the cover, we wanted to get across the stark, archaic beauty of the human body in motion. Stripped, Rammstein’s appropriation of Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938) was the main reference point, but so too were Andy Stott’s album covers, namely Luxury Problems and Too Many Voices. After some initial back and forth, the Amsterdam-based Australian designer Steele Bonus rendered these ideas in a post-punk fashion suited to our sound and aesthetic.

As we dug through our hard drives compiling the album, we unearthed a few unreleased remixes made by Peter and Tomoko. We decided to weave these rediscovered tracks into a new project, Imaginary Futures (MFZ Records, 2020), a record that reimagined our back catalogue as a suite of rave-ready dancefloor fillers.

While the album title, which alludes to the lost potential of disparate creative outcomes, was borrowed from Richard Barbrook’s 2007 book charting the emergence of the internet, it was the production, remix and DJ work of Andrew Weatherall that was the key inspiration for the our approach. The album’s flow and concept loosely mirrors Weatherall’s treatment of Primal Scream’s source material for Screamadelica, which itself resulted in their pivotal marriage of rock and acid house. The idea for the album was set before Weatherall’s passing, but his departure helped to calcify the direction of the mix.

Musically, our last two albums are pretty cohesive, despite the fact that they are both compilations and the material on them isn’t strictly new. They are collections of snapshots, taken over our decade-long recording history, that are bridged together by new contexts. The Dynamics of Vanity was curated by Olf and the bulk of Imaginary Futures was remixed by Peter and Tomoko, and my personal contributions to these projects was limited to administrative tasks, design and artwork consultation. That being said, they are fair representations of who we were: not ‘Best Ofs’ or ‘Worst Ofs’, but ‘Sort Ofs’.

youtube

Sebastian Melmoth - Accidentally Grotesque (DTT Mix)

Much like the albums described above, this essay is merely a rendering of our story and far from the whole picture. The text is not intended to be canonical. Many events, people and releases have been omitted for the benefit of readability. What I hope the text does is provide some background of our origins, processes and motivations.

As mentioned before, we haven’t played live or recorded anything new since 2017 and I doubt that we will do either of those things again. After fourteen years of nurturing the same idea, it has come to a point where I have said everything there is to say in this particular format. I have enjoyed developing this band with my many friends, and seeing it change over the years, but it’s finally time for us all to move on to other projects and for Sebastian Melmoth to cease his aimless wandering.

The Dynamics of Vanity is out now on Artificial Dance. Imaginary Futures is available via MFZ Records. Follow Sebastian Melmoth on Facebook and Instagram.

Ilia Rogatchevski

#sebastian melmoth #artificial dance #mfz records #artem barkhin #imaginary futures #The Dynamics of Vanity #new wave #post punk #experimental

0 notes

man-creates-dinosaurs · 7 years

Photo

For Halloween I decided I wanted to try and write about something spooky that nevertheless still fit in with the overall theme of this blog. To this end I’ve decided to write about the fascinating field of cryptozoology and my own interest in the subject from the time I was in middle school till now and about how my views on the subject have changed and evolved. Enjoy! CRYPTOZOOLOGY AND ME: A MEMOIR

When I was in middle school I went through a big cryptozoology phase. I chalk this up to a number of cultural influences. At the time my three favorite shows on TV were The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Invader Zim – all heavily steeped in the paranormal. For those who don’t know, cryptozoology refers to “the study of hidden animals” and its coinage is typically attributed to either Bernard Heuvelmans or Ivan T. Sanderson – who I’ll talk about more later on. For all practical purposes however, today the term generally denotes the vocation of “monster hunter” with the prize quarries being such legendary creatures as Bigfoot and the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster and other lake monsters including Champ the Lake Champlain monster and Ogopogo of Lake Okanagan, sea serpents, living dinosaurs such as the Mokèlé-mbèmbé – an alleged sauropod living in the African Congo – or the Ropen – a bioluminescent pterosaur inhabiting Papua New Guinea – , as well as such decidedly weirder and less biologically plausible creatures as the Jersey Devil, Mothman and the Chupacabra.

As a kid I read all the major cryptozoological authors: Bernard Heuvelmans (On the Track of Unknown Animals, 1955), Ivan T. Sanderson (Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, 1961), Loren Coleman (Field Guide To Bigfoot, Yeti, & Other Mystery Primates Worldwide, 1999), Jerome Clark (Unexplained! 2nd Ed., 1998), Coleman and Clark (Cryptozoology A To Z, 1999), Karl P.N. Shuker (From Flying Toads to Snakes with Wings, 1997), John A. Keel (The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings, 1994), Janet and Colin Bord (Alien Animals, 1981) and Brad Stiger (Out Of The Dark: The Complete Guide to Beings from Beyond, 2001). I also had a well-read copy of W. Haden Blackman’s The Field Guide to North American Monsters (1998) and readily consumed every cryptozoological related documentary or program that came on TV from Animal Planet’s Animal-X to Discovery’s X-Creatures – you can see the influence the X-Files had on pop-culture here! – to The History Channel’s History’s Mysteries.

Looking back on all this I’m not sure how much I really believed that cryptids – the nickname cryptozoologists use for the monsters they track – actually existed. But like many proponents of the paranormal I think it’s fair to say that, at the time, I had a very open mind about all of this.

It may also come as a surprise to many readers to learn that among the various cryptids my favorite wasn’t any of the alleged living dinosaurs or other supposed prehistoric survivors but rather Mothman. I don’t know what it was about the story of the Mothman that so fully captivated me. I think it must have been how utterly alien the creature seemed. By the time I was in middle school dinosaurs, pterosaurs, prehistoric marine reptiles, dragons and even giant bipedal apes were a pretty common part of my imaginary menagerie thanks to lifetime of consuming books and movies about dinosaurs. However until I read Keel’s 1994 book I had never heard of anything even remotely resembling a Mothman.

Today Mothman seems fairly well integrated into contemporary pop-culture – there was even a 2002 film starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney, though it did admittedly bomb upon its release – but for those who are unfamiliar here’s the basic gist as it has come down in the paranormal literature and is still being recounted to this day: Beginning roughly in November of 1966, citizens of the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia – located along the Ohio River – began reporting sightings of a creature which was described as a humanoid being with black/grey skin, red glowing eyes and a pair of giant bat-like wings which came out of its back. This gargoyle-like creature – which the local media would eventually dub “The Mothman” – was seen by dozens of eyewitnesses, usually in passing, though in one dramatic early encounter was said to have chased four young adults who were driving in excess of 100 mph down a deserted road. The sightings eventually came to an end nearly one year later in December of 1967 coinciding with the collapse of the area Silver Gate Bridge which killed 46 people. Many paranormalists, and even some cryptozoologists, have attempted to link the creature with the bridge collapse claiming that Mothman acts as a kind of harbinger of impending catastrophes.

By the summer of 2002 I was so obsessed with the story of the Mothman that I convinced my parents to stop by the town of Point Pleasant during our summer vacation to Niagara Falls. I wanted to see the town where Mothman had appeared. This would turn out to be a poignant trip for me because while on it I acquired the book Mothman: The Facts Behind the Legend (2002) by Donnie Sergent Jr. and Jeff Wamsley. Sergent Jr. and Wamsley were Point Pleasant locals who had undertaken the arduous task of combing through local and state newspaper archives and locating the original Mothman newspaper reports which they then reprinted – alongside original eyewitness statements, police reports, and letters exchanged between Keel and locals – in their book. Sergent Jr. and Wamsley don’t attempt to make any argument about what the Mothman was or wasn’t, their book is simply a collection of primary source documents about the phenomena which unfolded in Point Pleasant between ’66 and ’67. Being able to go back to the original reports and read them for myself had a profound impact on me because it demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Mothman… was a bird. In the original newspaper reports and statements delivered by eyewitnesses the creature which came to be known as Mothman is repeatedly described as a bird. It does not have the body of a man but rather is described as being as tall as one. It does not have red glowing eyes but is rather described as having red markings around its eyes. It does not have leathery bat-like wings but rather feathers and wings like a bird. In some accounts it is even described as having long skinny legs and a beak! In a few cases eyewitnesses describe seeing multiple creatures together in a flock standing in a field or a clutch of trees before flying away. Many witnesses - including those aforementioned scared twenty-somethings who claimed Mothman chased them down a road - reported that the creature produced a high-pitch squeaking sound. What these people are describing is likely a flock of sandhill cranes which stand six-feet-tall, have grey feathers, bright red patches around their eyes and as for the sound they make: just listen. Sandhill cranes are not native to West Virginia but do migrate down the Mississippi River making it conceivable that a flock could have gotten blown off course and ended up in Point Pleasant where they proceeded to scare the daylights out of locals unfamiliar with such large, odd-looking birds. Another possibility is that some sightings of Mothman were of a snowy owl, which is also uncommon in West Virginia. However as documented in Sergent Jr. and Wamsley’s book in December of ’66 several news outlets reported that a local farmer had killed just such an owl. It is worth noting that after this, sightings of the Mothman largely fell off and were replaced by reports of UFOs (which in all likelihood were, pardon the cliché but I’m being dead serious here, weather balloons). A few sightings that occurred in the area during the summer of ’67 appear to have been the result of common turkey vultures. What this means is that contrary to what the paranormalists like to claim the Mothman ‘flap’ did not occur over a 12-month period but only for about three months at the end of ’66/start of ’67 and was certainly the result of people seeing unusually large birds in the area.

However what Sergent Jr. and Wamsley’s book also demonstrated via their reprinting of sci-fi TV screenwriter turned paranormal investigator John Keel’s private letters with local residents was that Keel was actively manipulating information and witnesses in order to have their accounts match the scenario he had envisioned in which the small town of Point Pleasant played host to a virtual invasion of flying saucers and alien monsters portending the disaster which was the Silver Bridge collapse. Keel initially presented these ideas in a streamlined manner in a chapter for his 1970 book Strange Creatures From Time and Space which he would revise in 1994 as his cryptozoological/UFOlogical “encyclopedia” The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings. Between that time Keel wrote a more extensive version of the Mothman incident as he saw it in the form of a sundry mish-mash of paranormal potpourri that was his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies. Today more people know Keel’s version of the events then they do the actual eyewitnesses’ and while Keel’s books captivated me as a middle schooler nowadays I find them more than a little cringe worthy. Keel was vehemently anti-science, anti-academia, never cited his sources and often embellished and exaggerated events to make them read better.

The same year I became convinced that Mothman was just a misidentified bird I also encountered the magazine Skeptical Inquirer at a local Barnes & Noble. The cover story was “Evaluating 50 Years of Bigfoot Evidence” by researcher Benjamin Radford. I got the magazine and in six short pages Radford had disabused me of any notion that Bigfoot might exist. A final encounter with marine biologist Richard Ellis’ book Monsters of the Sea (1994) on a trip to the library convinced me that sea serpents and lake monsters were also likewise nothing more than figments of mankind’s imagination. My fascination with cryptozoology now thoroughly deflated I redirected by interests back towards world mythology and folklore; a path which eventually led to me obtaining two degrees in Religious Studies and teaching in the field.

I didn’t think much more about cryptozoology during my time in college with a few exceptions. In grad school I took a class on the paranormal in American culture and had to read the book Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture (2011) by Christopher Bader, Frederick Carson Mencken, and Joseph O. Baker. I ended up having a lot of issues with the trio of scholar’s methodology – for example the fact that they seemed willing to accept certain claims made by cryptozoologists at face value such as the idea that Native American lore is full of descriptions of Bigfoot-like creatures: it isn’t – but one point they do make and make well is that the kind of spin-doctor treatment employed by Keel when writing about the Mothman is rampant within the field of cryptozoology and goes all the way back to its very founders.

As mentioned at the top, the coining of the term cryptozoology is generally ascribed to either Bernard Heuvelmans or Ivan T. Sanderson. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1911, Sanderson attended Cambridge University where he obtained a BA in zoology and later an MA in both botany and ethnology. For a while Sanderson worked as a science popularizer penning articles and appearing on TV with live animals. However, beginning in the 1940s Sanderson developed an interest in the paranormal in general and cryptids in particular – especially Bigfoot and the Yeti – and began writing about such topics fulltime; mostly for pulp-style men’s adventure magazines. As detailed by Joshua Blu Buhs in his book Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend (2009), while Sanderson certainly seemed to believe that Bigfoot and the Yeti existed he nevertheless didn’t hold most Bigfoot eyewitnesses in high regard, which is to say nothing of his low opinion of his fellow Bigfoot researches. Despite such misgivings however Sanderson knew what his reader’s did and didn’t want to hear and as a result spun stories in which less than reputable eyewitnesses became upstanding citizens, crazy sounding sightings were reworked into more feasible narratives, and credulous cryptid hunters became competent men of action.

In 1948 one of Sanderson’s articles on the possibility of living dinosaurs caught the attention of Heuvelmans; a Belgian-French zoologist who had earned his PhD from the Free University of Brussels studying mammal dentition. Like Sanderson, Heuvelmans became enraptured by the idea of cryptids and spent the rest of his life writing articles and books on the subject. Two of these books, On the Track of Unknown Animals (1955) and In the Wake of Sea Serpents (1965), were especially influential and worked to establish what would become the overarching methodology of all cryptozoologists. The first of these, employed in On the Track, is what paleontologist Darren Naish has dubbed the “prehistoric survivor paradigm.” Simply put this approach advocates that when attempting to identify an alleged mystery animal the first route one should take is finding a prehistoric animal which superficially matches the description of said mystery animal and proclaiming it the creature you’re looking for. Application of the “prehistoric survivor paradigm” is widespread in cryptozoology with Bigfoot and the Yeti being identified as Gigantopithecus – an extinct species of giant ape similar to an orangutan from Southeast Asia –, sea serpents and lake monsters being dubbed extant plesiosaurs, pliosaurs, mosasaurs, Pleistocene era whales like basilosaurus and in the case of cryptozoologist Dennis Hall a long necked Triassic era reptile known as tanystropheus, supposed giant Thunderbirds being claimed as either pterosaurs or surviving members of a clade of large North American vultures known as Teratorns, and legendary African dragons being seen as evidence of living dinosaurs. In one remarkable case Heuvelmans even proposed that the Australian cryptid feline known as the Queensland Tiger might be an extinct species of marsupial known as the thylacoleo. Thylacoleo means “pouch lion” but the lion part of the name is metaphorical not literal since in life the thylacoleo would have looked more like a giant wombat then a tiger.

The problem with the “prehistoric survivor paradigm” should be self-evident. Namely that the animals in question are extinct, in most cases by many millions of years. Proposing that a supposed mystery animal is a relic from some bygone era is a bit like a detective assuming that a mugger who a witness describes as being a tall Caucasian male with dark eyes and a beard must be Abraham Lincoln simply because he matches certain aspects of the witness’s description. Cryptozoologists of course love to point to the case of the coelacanth; a Cretaceous era fish believed extinct until living ones were discovered in 1938 in the West Indian Ocean. However this prehistoric fish is something of a red herring. It is one thing to lose track of a fish in the fossil record. It is another entirely to claim that large marine and terrestrial animals such as dinosaurs could somehow survive for millions of years without leaving any evidence.

In the advent that the “prehistoric survivor paradigm” should fail, Heuvelmans’ second approach was to simply makeup an animal. This is what he does with wild abandon in his In the Wake of Sea Serpents. Have an eyewitness who claims to have seen an animal swimming in the water with brown fur, a long neck and tail, webbed feet and a horse-like head? No problem! This is clearly a description of an unknown species of giant long-necked, long-faced otter! Heuvelmans does this throughout Sea Serpents going as far as to invent nine whole new species of undiscovered sea monster. As Buhs notes in his Bigfoot book, Heuvelmans appears to have operated under the peculiar belief that as long as one could describe an animal so that it sounded scientifically plausible then that was enough to assume that it likely existed! Modern cryptozoologists still operate under this rubric. Loren Coleman, the most prominent cryptozoologist alive today and curator of the International Cryptozoology Museum located in Portland, Maine, follows Heuvelmans’ example perfectly in his 1999 Field Guide To Bigfoot, Yeti, & Other Mystery Primates Worldwide co-authored by Patrick Huyghe and illustrated by Harry Trumbore. In this book, Coleman proposes the existence of a dozen different species of unknown hominid ranging from extant Gigantopithecus and Neanderthals, huge “devil-monkeys,” swamp dwelling Skunk Apes, fairy-tale style “True Giants” and even a type of semi-aquatic species of primate with webbed claws and spines which he believes may be responsible for reports of the chupacabra – who we will come back to shortly.

Despite the fact that Heuvelmans and Sanderson’s methods were scientifically unsound, scores of self-professed cryptozoologists continue to use them to this day. And as Benjamin Radford notes in his book Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction and Folklore (2011) whenever the claim that cryptids are merely cultural constructions is raised cryptozoologists immediately point back to the alleged eyewitness testimony: the bread and butter of cryptozoology. People don’t have eyewitnesses encounters with cultural constructs they say. Except for the fact that they do. Human perception and recollection is extremely unreliable. People get confused, forget, misremember, make mistakes and unknowingly fabricate details even about some of the most commonplace and important events in their lives. With regards to seeing something that isn’t really there, a classic example is the case of the escaped red panda of the Netherlands’ Rotterdam Zoo in 1978. After news got out that one of the zoo’s red pandas had escaped its enclosure hundreds of eyewitness sightings from across the country poured in. Suddenly people were seeing red pandas everywhere and anywhere. Eventually zookeepers found the animal and determined that it had not traveled outside the zoo’s immediate vicinity. How then does one account for the multiple eyewitness sightings of the animal? Merely that people upon hearing about the escaped red panda became primed and expected to see it and so did. This same phenomena happens when people travel to places like the woods of the Pacific Northwest or Loch Ness. Because they’ve heard the legend of Bigfoot and Nessie they now expect – even if only subconsciously – to encounter the monster and as a result any unusual sight or sound becomes the beast. This is what celebrated folklorist Bill Ellis refers to as “Legend Tripping.”

Of course in some instances people actually do see some animal they can’t identify, but then we’re back to the sandhill crane in Point Pleasant. A former colleague of mine, Alan Rauch who specializes in the area of animals and their representations in literature and popular-culture, often speaks about the issue of “animal illiteracy” among the general public. The simple fact of the matter is that most people are not particularly familiar with the numerous creatures that inhabit this planet alongside us outside of those few domesticated animals we keep as pets or on farms and those celebrity animals found in zoos and aquariums like lions, elephants, gorillas, giraffes, dolphins, whales, etc... And many are also unfamiliar with the full capabilities of many animals. For example, few people seem to know that bears can move about on their hind legs, that moose and deer are excellent swimmers or that alligators are adept at climbing. The issue of animal illiteracy is undoubtedly responsible for a great many alleged cryptid sightings as was demonstrated in 2010 when a video posted online of a great frigatebird was mistaken by many Americans as footage of a pterosaur!

Once instances of legend tripping and animal illiteracy have been removed the small numbers of supposed cryptid sightings that remain often tend to be so outlandish as to raise serious doubts about their legitimacy. A good example of this is the case of the original chupacabra eyewitness Madelyne Tolentino; a Puerto Rican woman with an interest in UFOs and conspiracy theories who claimed that she encountered a creature identical to the monster from the movie SPIECIES (1995, Dir. Roger Donaldson) which she had just recently watched. Not only does Tolentino claim that she encountered this creature but that she was able to observe minute details about its anatomy – such as a lack of genitals – even though she was a considerable distance from it and that it levitated and communicated with her telepathically. She also claims that this was only the first of two chupacabra encounters that she had with the second occurring while she was taking a taxi across town! Despite the fact that Tolentino claims to have had two other eyewitnesses with her at the time of her first encounter no one has been able to corroborate her story, though her husband did at one point claim he was in possession of “chupacabra slime” similar in appearance to the ectoplasm seen in the movie GHOSTBUSTERS (1984, Dir. Ivan Reitman) though he could never produce the actual substance for anyone to see. Radford, in his aforementioned book Tracking the Chupacabra, concludes that if Tolentino is not perpetuating a hoax then she is likely a victim of confabulation; a psychiatric disorder in which a person loses the ability to distinguish between fact and fiction as evidenced by Tolentino’s conviction that the monster and events from the movie SPIECIES are real. Of course, even the most dyed in the wool cryptozoologists realize how ridiculous a story like Tolentino’s sounds, and so in the tradition of Sanderson and Keel will judiciously edit the tale when relating it in books and articles on the chupacabra removing inconvenient details and instead making it sound as if Tolentino merely had an eyewitness encounter with a strange animal.

In wrapping up, I want to talk about what renewed my interest in cryptozoology. As stated before, after the boom and bust cycle of my middle school years I didn’t think much about cryptids. I don’t regret the time I spent looking into the subject however because I love monsters and because I believe that learning about cryptozoology and then learning to recognize the flaws inherent in cryptozoological methodology as outlined above helped me to develop critical thinking and research skills that served me well as I began to peruse a degree in Religious Studies – an academic field where researchers are often confronted with many issues similar to those found in cryptozoology (i.e. the importance of primary source documents, the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, the deliberate and accidental blurring of fact and fiction, etc…)

Then in 2010/2011 I discovered the podcast Monster Talk (tagline: “The Science Show About Monsters”) hosted by Blake Smith with co-hosts Karen Stollznow and, for the first few years, Benjamin Radford. As Blake has explained many times over the years the idea behind Monster Talk was to do a show on cryptozoology and the paranormal that amounted to more than just wide-eyed mystery mongering. To this end Monster Talk is firmly rooted in science and academic scholarship. Each episode focuses on a particular topic with special guests called in to speak on specific matters. These guests are not only fascinating to listen to but have also provided me with a wealth of new reading material including such books and papers as Robert E. Bartholomew’s The Untold Story of Champ: A Social History of America's Loch Ness Monster (2012), Robert Lebling’s Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar (2011), Matt Alt and Hiroko Yoda’s Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide (2012), Christopher Josiffe’s article on Gef the Talking Mongoose, Joe Laycock and Natalia Mikels’ work on the connection between Nessie and Buddhism, and Brian Regal’s fascinating research on the history of the Jersey Devil. And now is a great time to be interested in critical approaches to cryptozoology too with multiple excellent books available. Two that come highly recommended are Darren Naish’s Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths (2017) and Abominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids (2012) by Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero.

To be clear, the aim of Monster Talk is not to ridicule cryptozoologists or those who believe or even just have an interest in such creatures but rather to try and separate history from legend and to do so with nary an ounce of cynicism about the subject matter. The hosts of Monster Talk are not doing this show because they think monsters are dumb. They clearly love monsters. It’s just that they believe (as I do) that it’s important to remain aware of where fact ends and fiction begins, and that often time truth is indeed far stranger than fiction.

Image: Acclaimed sci-fi and fantasy painter Frank Frazetta’s art which adorned the first cover for John A. Keel’s Strange Creatures from Time and Space (1970).

16 notes · View notes

jpstadtlander · 6 years

Text

The Ter'roc: Evolution - A Book About Our Alien Humanity

My loyal fans will know how long I've been "taunting" them with my sci-fi masterpiece "The Ter'roc" (a novel based on the short story in Ruins of the Mind). Well, it's finally becoming a reality. I'm in final editing now and we hopefully will be able to set a release date in the upcoming months though that release date will realistically be early 2020. Those who are just now hearing the name Ter'roc or have heard it before and have no idea what it's about... here's your chance to find out. The Ter'roc is not just another book I'm writing. It's the book. I have created an entire universe (think Star Wars, Star Trek, that kind of thing) with multiple unique species and cultures that go back billions of years. What really sets this universe apart from all others is the concept that humans were created by this species (Ter'roc) two hundred thousand years ago. It details elements in our history and how our religions, morals, intellect and technical advances came into play through their guidance. It also shows how (in this book) we have never been alone in the universe and we are a mere extension of the Ter'roc. I've decided that I am going to have to create a website - sort of a glossary that talks about the history, culture, and details about the Ter'roc. But it won't come out until the book is released. For me, it's been a deeply fascinating and intellectually stimulating story to weave. So, I've decided to take a moment and give you a peek inside the book, even if it is at least a year before you get to see the real thing. Here's a brief timeline that I have drawn up of this new universe: FYI: Gaia is the Ter'roc name for Earth.

The Preview

Wales, UK, 8304 B.C.E. Eògan had been working for the past four days on the foundation for his new hut that would soon house his young family. He was pounding on a stone so that it fit just right in the wall. His father, Faolan, was helping him carry stones from the nearby field to the building site and had gone off to retrieve some more. Eògan looked up to where he expected his father to be returning, carrying a few more stones in his make-shift sling. He was surprised to see another man coming toward him that he didn’t recognize. Wiping his hands on the grass, he stood up and walked over to meet the stranger. "Greetings," said Eògan. “Good day. I am Oushahn. I am looking for work.” the man replied, his accent was thick, strange. Eògan looked around the site, then looked at Oushahn. “Well, I could use some help working on this foundation. Can’t offer much at the moment, except a warm fire and some food.” “A warm fire and some food would be wonderful.” The two men and Eògan’s father worked for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. Come nightfall the three men were huddled around a fire outside the perimeter of the new fieldstone foundation. Faolan looked at the foundation behind him. “Men, we did good work today.” And he nodded toward them. “Helping is important,” said Oushahn. “It binds us together, enabling us to become better people and understand one another. It also helps with tasks we might not be able to do alone.” “I agree,” replied Eògan who looked up from the fire at his newfound help. The man’s eyes were glowing an iridescent blue. Eògan turned around to see if there was a light behind him that might be reflecting off Oushahn’s Oushahn’s eyes, but there was not. “Oushahn, your eyes . . . are glowing.” “Yes, that tends to happen at night.” He replied, calmly. Eògan looked at his father confused and cocked an eyebrow. “Why?” he asked. Instead of answering Eògan’s question, Oushahn said, “Do you believe we are alone here?” Then pointing to the stars, he asked, “Do you suppose there might be something out there, other than just us?” Eògan looked at his father and then at Oushahn, asking straight-forwardly, “I believe that the stars are the gods watching us. If there were others, would you know anything about it?” “I can teach you a great many things if you want to learn,” Oushahn replied, poking at the fire, again evading Eògan’s question. A moment of silence passed over the three, the fire crackling in front of them and thick smoke wafting in Oushahn’s direction. Finally, Eògan said, “I would like to learn whatever you can teach.” “As would I,” said Faolan. The two men listened to Oushahn tell of the mind’s ability to control objects, explaining how an ancient people had been around since the dawn of time that his people called “The Bereshit” and how the human existence, the mortal body, was just an illusion. Oushahn taught them of the importance of the stars to tell the days of the seasons and how the power of the sun could be harnessed to do great things. The United Kingdom, 2856 B.C.E. The caravan proceeded slowly over the rolling hills of the large British isle across the countryside that would one day be called the Preseli Hills. There were six horses leading the caravan. The two trailing horses of the six pulled a large wooden cart with solid wood wheels that Iodocus sat upon with his co-bogadh Seisyll. They were both in a hypnotic state, focusing on the massive stone that floated behind the cart. Each took turns in about thirty-minute shifts, concentrating on the levitation of the forty-foot slab. Light as a feather, bright as a star. Iodocus thought in a half-trance, seeing not a massive stone floating behind them, but rather a loose feather that he kept moving in his mind from side to side to catch the wind just right and keep it afloat as it followed the caravan. There were five other similar caravans following suit across the hills toward the site of the ancient circle. Iodocus was one of seventy from three different tribes who had been taught the old ways passed down through ancient times through the knowledge of the fathers. The Bogadhs had been taught that the power of the mind could move objects much larger than anything a normal man could move. It took years of training and mental discipline to master bogadh and as such those who could use it were highly revered. The teams were part of a collective group that followed the path laid out by their families who believed that long ago they were given instructions to build a bogadh structure that would one day send a message to the heavens. Detailed drawings on stone tablets had been kept for hundreds of years in the families that laid out how stones were to be cut, what materials they must be made from and how they must be aligned with the stars. Although Iodocus and his brethren did not completely understand the full breadth of their project, it was an honor to serve on it and help to build it to its completion. Only the high priests of each village knew the full plan that would one day laid out in the circle of what would one day be Wiltshire, England and how it would connect with the already old structure in Sí an Bhrú in the future land of Ireland. Sí an Bhrú had been built almost five hundred years before. There was very little left of the timber circle that had been created many generations ago in the circle that Idocus was to place the new stones in. They did not know back then that the wooden circle would both rot and fail to truly focus the bogadh energy. So for two generations, Iodocus’s tribe had searched with that of the two neighboring people to find stones that would truly work for the structure, and only in these western shores had they been able to find them. It was decided that the teams would cut out the massive stones using groups comprising hundreds of workers with seventy people in the caravans to transport the stones to the circle where they would once again be cut, to make many more stones and maneuvered into place. Egypt, 2603 B.C.E. The intense Egyptian sun beat down upon the parched sand. A lone buzzard circled in the distance, no doubt finding a rare meal in this unforgiving, scorched land. Abarax sat on the veranda in the sliver of shade provided from the Egyptian sun. He was looking at a drawing he had been working on for the pharaoh. His son sat beside him playing a game that his mother had taught him with a stone ball and a cup. The boy continued to push the ball across the decorative mat covering the floor and the ball made a ‘pop’ sound as it entered the cup, eliciting a laugh from the child. Again and again, the ball popped into the cup, prompting more laughter. Finally, his father looked at him, annoyed. “Imhotep, please. I’m trying to work. I must have this drawing done by tomorrow’s meeting.” “Why are you always drawing?” asked Imhotep. “Come. Sit up here on my lap and let me show you.” The boy walked over and sat on his father’s leg. He looked at the drawing up, then down. “Do you know what it is?” asked his father. “No.” “See this? This is a structure that has four triangles of walls coming to a point. It’s called a pyramid. This is important in the evolution of our people because it helps us focus. I am attempting to show the Pharaoh how the rays of the sun can be used to harness energy. Though the pharaoh’s visions are a bit skewed, he believes that a pyramid will help it guide his eternal soul to Ra.” “What is Ra?” “Ra is the word our people have given to what they believe is the God of the Sun. In truth, Ra is the ishkan, a plane of existence beyond this one where we live with one another after we die.” Abarax continued, “Do you see the sharp angles? If built from the right materials, they can help to focus our energy to achieve more than it would be capable of normally. There is a pattern here, but it is something that I will most likely not be able to complete in my lifetime. See these other pyramids? If perfectly aligned to these stars, they will help to enhance the ability of the ishkan that are buried far below and perhaps one day protect us.” Imhotep studied the drawing and pointed to a small building. “What is that?” “That is where we are now—the palace.” “Then those buildings, um . . . pyramids must be huge!” the child looked out over the plains of sand. He tried to imagine enormous pyramids standing in the distance but found it hard to visualize. “How could we build something that big,” he asked his father. “Ah, that is where a special gift comes in that few people know about. Do you know that the energy I spoke to you about—if we use our minds in a very special way, utilizing special tools, we can actually move stones, stones much larger than anything you can imagine, simply by pushing them with your mind. It’s called telekinesis. Our minds are capable of much more than most people think. However, my little Imhotep, this is a secret known only to a few, and, you must help me keep that secret. Can you do that?” “Yes, father. I promise.” China, Current Henan Province 2698 B.C. Tian was dressed in his summer robe and sat upon a log outside his home. He had finally finished working on the garden he had tended for the last four hours. Having enough time to relax, he pulled out his flute and began working on a song he had been writing for the last five months. Tian was a simple farmer who found peace in his garden and his flute, something that didn’t require him to worry about his crops or his daily stress. Times were tough in his village and beyond. Fighting to protect one’s land was a way of life. He had been playing his flute for twenty minutes when he saw a bright light flash, so bright that he had dropped his flute and shielded his eyes with his hand. Completely silent, the light faded away and he saw a man dressed in yellow robes walking toward him. Tian stood up and stumbled back, tripping over his top step and falling onto his porch. He pushed himself farther backward with his hands, trying to pull away from the strange man who appeared about two hundred feet away. Tian finally stood up to look at the man as he glided over to him, stopping about five feet from his front steps. The man looked normal enough, but his robe made of yellow and silver silk garnished with small black dragons was magnificent and intimidating. “Who are you?” Tian asked in fear. “I am Huang-Di. I have come to unite your people,” the man said. Read the full article

#aliens #historicalfiction #history #human #humanity #newworld #planets #sci-fi #science #space

0 notes

secretagentspydetectiveninja · 8 years

Text

The Misadventures of Prince Kim - chapter 7

(aka the royalty AU story)

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] [AO3]

Max was already learning so much over the next few weeks. Since recent hostilities had left most of the kingdoms rather isolated from each other without much contact or trade, he hadn’t been able to learn a lot about other places while he had been back at home, but now it felt like the whole world was suddenly at his fingertips. It was absolutely fascinating!

Who would have known that the Lahiffe Kingdom, of all places, had fertile plains completely dedicated to growing potato crops? Or that the remote Haprèle Kingdom had some of the most beautiful mountainous scenery in the world? And he had only heard stories about the incredible art and architecture of the Kurtzberg Kingdom, and now he was able to see some for himself just by asking his own classmate.

That was barely even the beginning of it. Despite most other kingdoms having comparatively low technology levels, they still had so much to offer. Why, oh why had previous generations of rulers not opened up their countries to allow this spread of knowledge and culture? Thank goodness places like this school existed, where people from all over the world could come together and share all of this. Max decided right then that he would do everything in his power to persuade the other kingdoms to lift their trade restrictions. Hopefully that would help the whole world advance together, ushering in a new age of peace and prosperity, where everyone would get along with each other and there would be no problems…

But of course that was too much to ask for. Peace? Prosperity? When people like his own friend Kim were going to be future leaders? He may as well say goodbye to the idea of global peace forever.

“Kim, you’re going to end up starting a war or something,” Max warned him, glancing up from his homework. Kim was trying to do his homework too but was procrastinating by making origami out of the paper he was meant to be writing on. Rather messy origami, too.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Kim muttered.

“Oh really? I heard you snapped Alix’s pencil the other day.”

“That was totally an accident.”

“Mhm. And I suppose it was also an accident that time you slammed the door in her face?”

“Obviously! She’s so tiny, I didn’t even notice her, so…”

Max rolled his eyes. “Can’t you at least try to get along with her? I don’t want my two friends to end up at war with each other, thank you very much. I think you two could be good friends if you were actually nice to her.”

“Oh Max, you know I love you, but I can’t be friends with someone like her!”

Max gulped and tried not to stare at his beautiful friend’s face. Oh Max, you know I love you… He pushed the phrase out of his mind. Kim meant it platonically, obviously. And anyway, not for the first time Max wondered if Kim’s sudden unexplained idiotic turn for the worse meant that something had happened at that detention. Maybe something decidedly other than platonic. A certain word kept popping into his mind to describe Kim’s recent behaviour if that was the case… tsundere. That wasn’t a good thing.

“You absolutely can be friends with her,” Max said. “If you’re friends with me, and I’m friends with her, then it’s definitely possible.”

“But she hates me anyway.”

“That’s only because you’re being a jerk. You managed to make friends with Adrien, didn’t you? And you’re good friends with Marinette too. I know you can do it. You just need to get over yourself first.”

“Can we just talk about something else?” Kim said quickly. “I’ve really gotta get this homework done, I don’t want to get another stupid detention.” He looked down at his crumpled piece of paper and frowned. “Uh… I don’t really get any of it. Which rank is below count and above baron and how would they be addressed? I don’t even know what that means. And what the heck is a courtesy title? Max please help…”

It took all Max’s self-restraint not to just take the piece of paper and do Kim’s homework for him. This wasn’t even difficult. Viscount was between count and baron, and one would be addressed as “Your Lordship”, and a courtesy title was… No, he shouldn’t. “Do your own homework, Kim,” he said. “I won’t help you with it until you stop being mean to Alix.”

“Hey, and what about her though? Threatening me with that snake? And making fun of my country for not having like… helicopters or whatever it was? She’s not exactly a nice person either!”

“Perhaps you’re both being idiots, but you in particular are being much more of an idiot. So until you stop doing that you can do your homework without my help.”

Kim pouted but didn’t say anything else.

Sports day was quickly arriving now that September was almost at an end. The weather here in this part of the Bourgeois Empire was still fairly warm at this time of year so it would be held outside in the grounds. Kim just couldn’t wait. This would be the perfect opportunity for him to show off how great he was at sports, and by extension, his whole kingdom! Lê Chiến was already famous for that, after all. Sports day was definitely going to be his day.

Since it wasn’t a mandatory event a lot of people weren’t going to be there – he guessed that Prince Nathaniel probably wasn’t going to attend, since he seemed to always try his best to stay as far away from other people as he could – but Kim decided to head down to the grounds early and get in a warm-up first. Max was planning to meet him there a little later, too busy in the library at the moment researching about something called a “constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy”, whatever that even meant. Kim knew he should probably spend more time on his school work like Max was doing, but that was just so much effort! And it was boring, too! If he was going to be at this school for three whole years then there was plenty of time for that later, so why not just have fun for now?

Walking down the corridors he heard a voice somewhere nearby and stopped… ugh, it was Alix. And Juleka too, judging by the quiet mumbling replies. He didn’t know anything about Juleka, she seemed alright, but today was not the kind of day he wanted to run into Alix. Hang on a second, she had just said his name… what was she talking about?

“…and yeah, Kim seems intimidating but he’s actually really sweet!”

Sweet? No way! He ran forwards and turned the corner to see–

Oh. It was just that stupid snake she was talking about. She had it wrapped around her arm and was showing it off to Juleka, who was leaning right in its face and gazing at it with her spooky red eyes.

“Awesome,” Juleka said. “Has he killed anyone?”

“No, he’s way too nice for that.”

“But… he could kill someone if he wanted, right?”

“Oh yes, definitely.”

Juleka grinned, and Kim noticed her teeth seemed to be rather sharp. “That’s so awesome. Hey, do you think you can get more deadly cobras as pets? The ones that attack and kill people?”

“Sure you can, but it would probably kill you too if you weren’t careful.”

“That would be the coolest way to die. Agonizing death by snake bite. I would love that.”

Okay wow, that was weird. Kim walked past them muttering, “You guys are crazy…” Out of the corner of his eye he saw them turning to look at him for a second, but neither of them said anything. Good.

Sure enough, Kim absolutely excelled at the sporting activities. He came first in the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, even the hurdles. He did lose a duelling match, but at least that was against Adrien, his friend, so that wasn’t too bad. Adrien went on to win the duelling competition anyway and Kim did find it in his heart to feel proud of him. There were also some events that Kim did not take part in, like jousting, since those weren’t big in his kingdom and he hadn’t really tried them much. Anyway, that seemed quite old-fashioned. Jousting? Really? What was this, medieval times?

He wasn’t planning to take part in the archery competition either but he changed his mind when it turned out that Max had decided to try it, saying that archery was a fairly “mathematical” sport and that it couldn’t be that hard. Kim was surprised to find that he really was quite good at it despite never having even tried it before – he was somehow even better than Max.

The sillier races took place towards the end of the day. Kim managed to do fairly well in the sack race, and tried his best in the egg and spoon race but somehow got beaten out by Alya and Chloé, who seemed to have their own personal rivalry going on between them. The trouble began when it came to picking pairs for the three-legged race. Kim had been planning to do it with Max, but it turned out that Max had already got bored and left. In fact, most of the class had by this point, and the royals were not allowed to team up with the nobles so there weren’t many people left to choose from.

“Hey Marinette, wanna team up for the three-legged race?” Kim asked.

“Ah sorry Kim, I’ve already teamed up with Alya!” Marinette replied. “But I could help you find a partner! Hmm, let’s see, who’s still here… Nino’s teamed up with Adrien I think, so not them… maybe you could... Oh hey Alix! Come over here! You’re really short, Kim’s really tall, it would be so funny–”

“What? No, I’m not teaming up with her!” Kim snapped, stepping away as Marinette grabbed Alix by the arm and pulled her over.

“I know you like winning and it would be harder like this, but come on, it would be hilarious! You’re both sporty and everything!”

“Yeah, Kim,” said Alix. “It’ll be fun.”

He shook his head. “No way. I’d rather just not do the race.”

“What? Why not? Weren’t you just asking Marinette to team up with you?”

“Yeah, exactly! Marinette! Not you!”

“Are you kidding me?!”

Kim had just about had enough. There was barely anyone left here anyway, no point staying. “I’m leaving!” he said, and stormed off.

Slightly later, in his room trying to do homework but feeling like bashing his head on the wall would be more productive, there was a knock at his door. He stood up and opened it to see Alix there, looking absolutely livid, with her pet snake wrapped around her shoulders and somehow looking in as much of a bad mood as she was. Without even saying anything she shoved Kim aside, stepped into the room and slammed the door shut behind her. “Kim, what the hell is your problem?!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know perfectly well what I’m talking about!” Her hands were curled into fists and she seemed alarmingly ready to start throwing out punches. Kim quickly took a step away from her.

“What, just because I didn’t want to do that stupid race?”

“This isn’t just about that race! This is about how much of a jerk you’ve been lately! And don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’ve been nice to everyone else, just not me. Making friends with Adrien, asking out Chloé – yes I know about that, we all do – always hanging out with my friend Max and trying to get him to do your homework for you…”

“Max doesn’t do my homework for me!”

“Stop trying to change the subject. The point is I know you see me as a rival for some reason, whether it’s the snake or the skating or being Max’s friend or whatever, but at least I’ve been trying to be civil. And I know I’m not that good at it. But I’ve been doing a hell of a lot better than you have!”

Alright, that was kind of true. Kim just didn’t want to admit it. “Your snake tried to kill me,” he huffed.

“If my snake wanted you dead, you’d already be dead, trust me. That being said, I think he’s getting peckish...”

The snake hissed and snapped its teeth menacingly. Kim took another step backwards, very much not liking where this was going. Surely she wouldn’t kill him with that snake, would she?

“So anyway, why do you hate me?” she continued, the snake still hissing and baring its fangs rather ominously. “Are you just jealous of my country’s technology or something? Still a sore loser that I beat you in that race? Are you scared of snakes and thinks that gives you a valid reason to act like a douche? Because that’s what you are, in case you didn’t know. And me and my snake both really, really hate douches.”

Okay, he really did not like where this was going. That snake looked hungry. Could cobras swallow humans whole? Or did they kill them with venom first? How long would that take? Would it be painful?

“Don’t forget, I’m a pharaoh, I outrank you by lightyears. I run an entire country and I can do whatever the hell I want. If I want someone dead, all I have to do is say so, and that’s it for them. They’re fricking dead. So if you think you can get away with being an absolute moron without having to face the consequences, you’re even more stupid than I thought!”

Dead? Did she actually say dead? Oh boy, she was going to kill him with that snake, he was certain about it now, never mind what Max said about that. He had messed up so bad. Seeing that snake, flicking its tongue out like a little lizard, clearly ready to pounce on him and kill him in the most painful way possible… He sank to his knees, terrified. “I’m sorry…”

“Fine, but don’t think a tiny little apology is going to solve everything, because it won’t! Unless you actually change your attitude then saying sorry is meaningless, so… Wait, are you – are you crying?”

“Please don’t tell your snake to kill me,” Kim mumbled, hastily wiping tears out of his eyes. He hadn’t cried in years at least, he was sure, and was not happy about breaking that streak. Hopefully no one else would find out.

“What? No, I’m not going to... I would never actually kill anyone! I was just angry!” She sounded less upset now, more concerned. “Did you really think I was going to tell my snake to kill you?”

“Uh… pfffft, no…”

She sighed. “Kim, are you afraid of me?”

“Nope.”

“Answer truthfully or I’ll go get my sceptre and whack you over the head with it.”

“Well okay, I hate snakes so your snake is kinda scary,” he admitted. “And… I guess… since you control the snake… well…” He wasn’t quite sure when he had stopped being so afraid of the snake and more afraid of Alix herself. Of course that was all tangled up in how he didn’t like her and thought of her as a rival and also had a crush on her… It was no wonder he hadn’t properly noticed.

“Yeah, I thought so.” She gave her snake a stroke and it stopped hissing, immediately backing down and resting its head calmly on her shoulder. “I should have known that would happen. Everyone always ends up scared of me. I guess my problem is a bit similar to yours, huh? You’re just an idiot, and I accidentally scare away anyone I want to be friends with.”

“Wait… friends?”

“Yeah, of course. I’ve been trying to be your friend, since you’re friends with Max and you didn’t act all weirdly over-respectful around me just because of me being a pharaoh, like everyone else does all the time. But now I’ve gone and messed that up, haven’t I? You’re scared of me now, just like all the others. Of course I can’t take all the blame for that, since you’ve been acting like such a jerk that I didn’t really have much of a choice but to confront you about it…”

So she really had been trying to make friends with him? Huh… maybe Max had been right after all. Maybe they would make good friends. Kim took a deep breath, thankfully feeling a little less afraid now.

“Okay, I was a jerk,” he said. “I was just… yeah, okay, I was jealous of your country’s tech. And annoyed you beat me in that race. And hated your snake. And just thought you were kind of annoying in general.” And trying to get rid of this stupid crush on you, he added silently. “But I really went overboard with that, and it would be cool to make friends, so uh… I get if you don’t want to now, but… I really am sorry. I’ll try and be less of an idiot. Max says I never think stuff through properly.”

“Max is definitely right about that. But…” She smiled suddenly, that genuine smile again. “He says that about me as well. I guess me suddenly storming in here and lowkey threatening to kill you may have been overboard too. But hey, it’s not like I’ve exactly got many friends, so I may as well make a new one. Are we friends then?”

She held out her hand for a handshake. Kim accepted, relieved.

“Anyway, I think if I run back now I might have time for the last few sports day races,” Alix said. “Are you coming?”

“No, I think I should probably do my homework…”

“Wait, really? Max would be proud! I guess I’ll see you later then, new friend.”

“Yeah, see you.”

She left the room. Oh thank goodness, that had turned out alright… He had been so sure for a few seconds that he really was going to die. And yet here he was, alive, with a new friend too. He certainly hadn’t expected the outcome to be that good. He wasn’t even sure he deserved it, looking back.

And the truth was that he didn’t want to go back to the sports day because he still felt shaky, like if someone suddenly startled him he’d have a heart attack and die. After all, he had just been in very close proximity to an angry cobra, so it was probably best to just rest a little for now. He had a reputation to keep up.

There was still one thing left to take care of, though. That annoying crush. If Alix was going to be his friend now then he’d better try and get rid of it before she noticed, or even worse, before anyone else noticed. Hopefully it would go away soon. After all, there were plenty of other cute girls at this school to fall for, weren’t there? Surely it was only a matter of time.

#royalty au #rest in peace prince kim. he fricking died #anyway HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I LOVE FRIENDSHIP #FRIENDSHIP IS SO GOOD I LOVE IT. EVERYONE SHOULD BE FRIENDS. EVERYTHING IS MY BROTP #miraculous ladybug #ml fanfic #le chien kim #max kante #alix kubdel #random stuff #the misadventures of prince kim #aish writes

8 notes · View notes

glamournews-blog1 · 5 years

Text

Vlada Tabachuk - Startup Fashion Week

Startup Fashion Week - Vlada Tabachuk

Vlada Tabachuk is an incredibly talented designer, she is based in Toronto and will be showing a full collection of unique apparel at Startup Fashion Week Runway Show on Oct 25. She is an incredibly talented designer

DO YOU DESIGN YOUR OWN CLOTHES, OR YOU HAVE GO TO LABEL?

I’ve always liked to up-cycle clothes I already had to give them a second life but I rarely make my own clothes from scratch. I’m not really a patron of one particular label and I don’t really subscribe too much to trends. I like to shop around for items that I could see myself wearing forever.

WHEN DID YOU FIRST REALIZE YOU WANTED TO PURSUE A CAREER AS A DESIGNER?

I’ve always known this is what I wanted to do. My life has taken me on a lot of detours but I would always end up doing something fashion related. Once I made the decision to attend the Fashion Design Program at Ryerson University, I started to feel like I was exactly where I was supposed to be and after graduation I just kept trying to start my own brand until my team with an investor found me and approached me.

ARE YOU SELF-TAUGHT OR DID YOU STUDY FASHION DESIGN?

I started sewing things when I was still a kid and tried to learn new techniques as I grew up. The DIY movement and creation of YouTube really helped me learn but I never felt that I could learn as much on my own as I could in a design program so I decided to get a degree from Ryerson University.

WHAT OTHER SKILLS ARE IMPORTANT?

I think the most important skills in any work are the ability to network, ability to multitask, and the ability to adapt. To me networking is how I get inspired by others and how I continue to educate myself in what I do. Being able to multitask is crucial because as a new brand I am always hit with multiple things that are ALL priority and nothing can be put off until later. Lastly, it’s very important to be able to adapt to any changes that have to be made to the original plan when issues arise. My biggest motto through the whole process of starting my own brand when things would not go according to plan has been “Make it work!” (Tim Gunn from Project Runway)

WHAT ARE YOU BIGGEST FEAR WHEN GOING OUT AND STARTING YOUR OWN LINE?

I can’t say there was ever a big fear of failure or disappointment when I was starting the brand with my business partners. Not to say that it wasn’t scary doing everything for the first time like registering a corporation, building a business plan, making big financial decision, creating mass production product etc. but I was never afraid of it turning out differently from how I expected. It’s rare that anything turns out how you expect so I went in ready to adapt and fail as many times as I needed until we figured it out.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PART ABOUT BEING A DESIGNER?

My favourite part about being a designer is putting on some inspiring jams, spreading a clean piece of white paper on the drafting table and spending the following hours/days figuring out how a garment will be constructed, how every seam will interact with the fabric, how the construction and complexity will drape and interact with a body, how the construction will affect the costs and manufacturing time etc. It’s at this stage that I really get to submerge into my own mind and play with this giant puzzle of sorts.

COULD YOU GIVE ME A DETAILED BREAKDOWN OF THE STEPS IN PRODUCING A COLLECTION...(FROM CONCEPTION TO THE RUNWAY)?

1. Come up with a concept and inspiration.

2. Do market and trend research.

3. Create a mood board that combines your ideas and what the market wants/needs for your collections season.

4. Sketch as many designs as are in your head following your moodboard as inspiration and consistency guide.

5. Choose your final designs and tweak them as needed to ensure they work together as a collection and that the construction of them will remain within your brand’s manufacturing cost bracket.

6. Find your fabrics, trims, and hardware.

7. Create production documents necessary to create patterns for the garments..

8. Started creating garment patterns, testing each one out in muslin and then in actual fabric. At this stage some changes are often made to fabric choices and designs in order to improve the overall appearance and to decrease manufacturing costs where possible.

9. Once the patterns are created, additional manufacturing documents are created that include a record of material quantities per garment, costs, and specifications. They are used for the brand to communicate with manufacturers, calculate production costs, and come up with retail prices for the garments.

10. Create and order care tags, hang tags, size tags, and brand tags.

11. Create double sample of each garment to use for photo shoots and promo while the manufacturer is producing the total quantity.

12. Plan and execute a look book shoot and create a stock of brand photos to use for social media and PR.

13. PROMO! Reach out to your network to share news of your new collection; create exciting and interesting social media posts; go out and be seen/heard; reach out to media to make them aware of this awesome thing you just did and get them excited about your new collection.

14. Get ready for the runway: model try ons, runway moodboards for Hair and Make-up Artists, start stocking up on thank you cards and gift merch.

( I hope this isn’t too much! I tried to condense it to crucial steps.)

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR BRAND?

Project 313 Apparel is a luxury street wear brand that is heavily inspired by techwear through it’s use of fabrics, fit, and function. I like to create items that stand out through small design details and manufacture them in fabrics that are both eco-friendly and unbelievably soft to the touch.

WHERE DO YOU GO FOR INSPIRATION?

I find the most inspiration just wandering around busy the streets and observing. Toronto is a fantastic city for that because of the vast diversity in architecture, culture, people, styles, tastes, music. I got design on my mind and my mind on design 24/7 so it’s never hard to find inspiration. I can look at any object and visualize an article of clothing that reflects it’s vibes or aesthetic so Toronto is truly a never ending supply of inspiration.

WHAT ARE YOU FASCINATED BY AT THE MOMENT AND HOW DOES IT FEED INTO YOUR WORK?

I am currently obsessed with exploring untraditional and challenging construction techniques. I am a glutton for a challenge. Our launching collection called Order x Chaos for Project 313 Apparel features some complicated style lines that are unconventional for hoodies and tees. It was a challenge to create an odd hood shape that looks like it sits on your shoulders but I love how it turned out.

HOW DO YOU WANT YOUR CLIENT FEEL WHEN WEARING YOUR CLOTHES?

We want the Project 313 Apparel customer to feel like they are draped in luxury and comfort when they are wearing our clothing. It is important to us that our clothes inspire confidence and become an extension of self. I think there is nothing worse (clothes related) than being constantly aware of what you are wearing because of a bad fit, uncomfortable fabric, or restricted movement that’s why Project 313 Apparel provides style that allows it’s wearer to be free to move.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONAL STYLE?

I would describe my personal style as “always in transition”. Although I don’t generally follow trends and on average buy only 5 new fashion items every year, I am constantly trying to reinvent my style through finding new ways to wear the pieces I already have. So my style is essentially a rotation of basic with a few oddly patterned pieces. For example some of my favorites are: pants with floral water colour print from Banana Republic, a men’s button up with ice-cream pops I found at winners, a Clover Canynon pull-over sweatshirt with interior design CAD graphic. One day I will fully commit to funky patterns but for now I feel like my collection is just not big enough.

IF YOU WERE A SUPERHERO, WHAT KIND OF POWERS WOULD YOU HAVE?

If I were a superhero I would want the ability to clone myself like Dr Manhattan (without the public nudity) so that I could do more at the same time.

IN YOUR OPINION, WHICH SUPER VILLAINS NEEDS FASHION ADVICE?

If I had to pick one... Doc Ock is probably in the bottom 10. His costume is just a bit boring. He looks like a middle school math teacher, stuck on primary colors, who also forgot it was Halloween so he pulled together a last minute “zucchini” looking outfit. His outfit is just not fear inducing whatsoever so he would really benefit from a makeover.

#Fashion Designer #Fashion Show #Fashion Week #fashion #Fashion #Startup #Startup Fashion Week #Startup Fashion #Canada #Canadian Fashion #Canada Fashion #Canada Fashion Week #Vlada Tabachuk #Vlada #Tabachuk #Project 313

0 notes

tgaoe · 7 years

Text

Andy’s 2017 Music Report

Favorite Albums, Favorite Songs, and other assorted temporally-specific ramblings.

Preamble

I. Dearth I listened to less music this year than I did last year, partly due to the immense amount of time required to finish my Master’s Degree, and also because I slept better. You may recall from last year’s treatise that I experienced something of a listening renaissance late in the year, turning to music during nights spent sleepless for work-related anxiety. 2017 marked my fourth year in my current job, and the first during which I began to feel confident in my own professional competence. Hence, less anxiety, fewer sleepless nights, less music. So it goes.

II. Duplicity, Disaffection Another reason. Prior to November 21st, I spent an inordinate amount of time listening to a single band, the band that made my #1 record from 2016. They were also my most-listened to band of 2017. I went deep into their back catalogue, full immersion, and I found such joy and pleasure in doing so. The band helped me through a fraught, life-altering personal ordeal. I traveled to see them play and it was cathartic. However, on 11/21 it was revealed that the leader of that band may have betrayed much of what he/they claimed to have stood for as steadfast advocates for kindness, equity, and empathy. The woman or women he hurt are the primary victims, but secondarily his hypocrisy destroyed a community of people who connected strongly with his music. I believe in rehabilitation. But I also doubt I’ll ever be able to listen to this band the same way again, if at all. I share this troubling information because it undoubtedly colors this list. For weeks after the revelation I only listened to songs sung by women, maybe to offset the damage somehow, maybe to avoid connecting with another secretly awful man.

III. Disappointment Last year I wrote extensively about how the absence of releases from legacy acts resulted in my exposure to an unusually large number of new/emerging artists. That trend of exposure continued this year, for unfortunate reasons. Most new releases by old favorites proved little more than pleasant. Though something like 20 albums from 2017 fall into that category, only five or six made my list of favorites, and even some of those did so despite caveats. I suspect this may have to do with the current circumstances of my life more than with the music itself, at least in some cases. For instance, Sleep Well Beast will not appear below, but I am the only National devotee I know who doesn’t love it as much as their previous records. Time will tell, I suppose.

IV. Derelict I devoted significantly less time to this project this year than I did to its previous iterations, probably 20 hours vs. the usual 40-60. I usually track favorites all year and begin writing in October. This year I was much less diligent, not commencing writing until mid-December. It shows, I’m afraid. I did not keep an actual Favorite Songs list, nor did I keep a running record of micro-moments.

Blame the Master’s. Over five months of work my research project ballooned to 18,415 words spanning 118 pages—characteristically about twice as long as it needed to be. It’s a mystery how I mustered the energy to eke out another 6000 words for this thing after all that.

V. Dingus As always, forgive my assumption that readers of this monstrosity possess a certain level of familiarity with prevailing music culture. The writing reads better that way. Also as always, please forgive the preposterous pretense that anyone would want to read this, the bloviations of yet another obsessive 30-something white man desperate for your attention.

My 19 Favorite Albums of 2017

19 favorites because 19 was how many favorites I had.

19 The World’s Best American Band White Reaper Big, stupid, shameless riff rock; a record as fun as its title is ridiculous. The band almost has the chops to live up to it too, blazing through ten hook-dense, hedonistic rockers with fatalistic abandon. No introspection here, folks. The only lesson White Reaper has to impart is, “If you make the girls dance, the boys will dance with ‘em.” Noted, dudes.

youtube

18 Cigarettes After Sex Cigarettes After Sex How to Make the Sexiest Music Ever, Apparently

1) Start with early Interpol. 2) Slow it down. 3) Tighten it up. 4) Strip away the fuzz. 5) Replace Paul Banks with Greg Gonzalez, a man whose smoky, sultry voice I mistook for a woman's until just now. 6) Drop the nonsense lyrics in favor of straightforward stories, proclamations, and invitations, all specific and intimate like the first xx record.

The result: a collection of variations on "Fade Into You" sans twang. Almost unfathomably sexy. The sexiest.

youtube

17 The Nashville Sound Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit I don’t love this album, but I do love all its songs. The Nashville Sound should have been a solo record with an accompanying full-band live release a few months later. The 400 Unit is so talented, so utterly professional that they can’t help but sound canned, over-produced, in a modern studio. Any old band off the street can be made to sound that way. What makes the Unit special is that this is how they sound live. They sound perfect. Perfection on record isn’t much fun.

Jason Isbell is the best songwriter of his generation. Case in point: Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” his best song and a contender for best song by anyone, famously concludes with the couplet,

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel That's all, I don't think of you that often

Isbell manages to casually convey the same sentiment through implication on Sound’s “Molotov”:

Another life but I still remember A county fair in steamy September In the Year of the Tiger, nineteen-something

He remembers, but not that well, not the year. He doesn’t think of her that often.

youtube

16 Need Your Love Sheer Mag The opening salvo of “Meet Me in the Street” and the sort-of title track tells you everything you need to know about Need Your Love, the surprising segue of anthemic nails-hard rebel rock into heartfelt, slinky soul-funk. Sheer Mag is everything 70s rock, all facets, plain and simple, in timbre, tone, and demeanor, fitted to modern pop structure and sensibility. Massive riffs, throaty hollers, cavernous sonics, never not danceable. The last 40 years never happened.

youtube

15 Something to Tell You Haim Four years ago I passionately engaged in a pointless internet debate on the false premise of the superiority of Haim vs. Lorde. Of course this was less about the actual artists than it was the debaters’ desperation for validation of our own tastes and preferences at the expense of others’, which is a stupid thing insecure young white men do for some reason. However, looking back now and comparing the two entities’ work and public personas does reveal fascinating differences in their approaches and cultural placements, especially considering the rollouts and receptions of both artists’ follow-up records. I’ll write more about Lorde later (spoiler), but she crafts songs that achieve timelessness and universality seemingly unintentionally, through trope subversion and highly specific and personal writing. Haim achieves the same through something like the opposite approach.

Every Haim song feels like a glossy new product behind a high-end shop window, displayed uniformly, calculated and designed for maximum value and mass appeal. I’ve said this before, but Haim recordings sound like money, sound expensive. Because they are. Haim recordings are light, airy, sleek, tight, and huge. The lyrics strive for universality by exploring standard romantic emotional states in the most vague, impersonal, situationally unspecific possible manner. We do not know the identity of the “you” in these songs. Hell, we don’t really who the “I” is. We can project whoever we want. These songs are perfect manufactured products. That may read as negative criticism, but it is not. The total orderliness of Haim songs forces order on anarchy. Haim songs make the world simple, make it make sense. Every question has an answer, every problem a solution.

There is an exception that proves the rule here, a more experimental Haim song that towers above the others by subverting those established expectations of order, transcends them to depict in actuality the true messiness of love. That song is “Right Now,” and it is a monster jam, likely the best song Haim has ever written. The structure is confounding, the melodies don’t time out naturally, nothing musically makes sense, is rational, in the same way feelings don’t and aren’t. There is a call-and-response with which it is almost impossible to sing along because the response comes in like half a beat later than every other pop song has trained us to expect. Feedback blares, clicks click, hums hum. “Right Now” is imperfect, and in that it is the most perfect Haim song. It came not from an assembly line, it came from a soul. Or souls. “Right Now” even allows a single reference to an actual specific event, a quiet conversation overheard through a window, which, even though still somewhat vague, gives the song a level of personal meaning to the narrator missing from, you know, every other Haim song. More like this please.

youtube

By the way, this short PTA-directed performance film is incredible, and suggests that everything I wrote in that second paragraph may be negated when the band plays live.

14 Graveyard of Good Times Brandon Can’t Dance Brandon Ayers's collection of mom's basement DIY songs plays as much like a friend's great mix cd as it does a solo artist's album, intuitively-sequenced and formally experimental in the sense that the dude seemingly tries any musical idea that occurs to him, and there are so many here: stoned weirdo neo disco, 80s soft rock, wall-of-sound shoegaze, earnest folk, synthy dance rock, 90s industrial and more, all effortless, catchy and united aesthetically by competent use of limited production resources. Ayers's lyrics are always either smart or hilariously, knowingly dumb as he explores a kind of mundanity inherent to a life of low-budget hedonism, as well as how much he loves his dogs, mom, sister, and grandma. Can't go wrong with that.

youtube

13 Villains Queens of the Stone Age Josh Homme and Britt Daniel have much in common culturally, both mid-40s men who have spent nearly two decades each as highly unlikely sex symbols, sustaining multi-decade rock careers, stalking stages with maniacal, borderline-predatory confidence. But musically they’ve shared few qualities until now. Villians has airless, precise grooves similar to some Spoon records, but, you know, with that Queens menace and evil. The QoTSA has always been a band about perfect playing, but this time Homme brought in preeminent funk racketeer Mark Ronson to help shape Villains. The result is the shortest, most accessible record the band has ever made. Actually, it is not the shortest—it just feels that way. Villians cooks, showcasing the same old Queens, aggressively showy and prone to extended digressions, but with arrangements more focused, lightweight, and compressed than ever before.

youtube

Make sure you stick around for the entire song. Trust me.

12 I Love You Like a Brother Alex Lahey What is happening in Australian that the country keeps producing these witty, confident female punk singer/songwriters? Alex Lahey’s style certainly mines a similar humorous vain to Courtney Barnett, but her approach is more energetic and less erudite. I always feel held at a distance by Barnett’s music; listening to it is almost a purely intellectual exercise. Lahey’s, however, has a casual immediacy that makes me want to smile and laugh and dance.

The title track is both punk as hell and sticky-sweet, a genuine love song from a sister to a brother, insanely catchy and refreshingly sincere. I am no one’s sister, and my brother and I, though we love each other, have never had a connection quite like the one Lahey documents here. Still, I so feel this jam. It follows the album’s opener, “Every Day’s the Weekend,” an actual love song, albeit one about having fallen for a broke, emotionally elusive charmer. “Fuck work, you’re here, every day’s the weekend,” is lyric of such powerful brevity, so effectively conveying the feeling during those times when someone exciting has unexpectedly exploded into your life. The hilarious “Perth Traumatic Stress Disorder,” another gatestormer, follows, and then the album starts to mutate into something more complex and interesting.

I Love You Like a Brother begins as an aggressive punk record, but slowly warps into atmospheric, radio-ready stadium rock. On a couple occasions this may be to its detriment, but as a whole the album serves as a solid testament to Lahey’s versatility as a writer. The lyrics of “Awkward Exchange” are comparatively anonymous to the earlier tracks, but the open sound, dynamic structure, and wordless chants beg for massive festival singalongs. It might happen. It should happen. The two approaches combine on “Lotto in Reverse,” perhaps Lahey’s greatest triumph here, an inward-focused dirge grafted onto a massive, hooky rock song that more than earns its prominent placement on Spotify’s Badass Women playlist.

youtube

11 Go Farther in Lightness Gang of Youths Christian music is terrible, almost all of it. Not just because it all still sounds like U2, but because none of it deigns to explore actual life as a flawed human who happens to be Christian. This is so intentionally. The Christian music industry is insidiously Randian; cynical and deplorable. Gang of Youths is fighting back, hard.

Singer/songwriter David Le'aupepe is a vulgar spiritualist, kind of a like an Australian David Bazan or Sufjan Stevens in the way he publicly struggles to reconcile his faith with his human proclivities. His studious lyrics often recall very early Bruce Springsteen, with their expansive vocabulary and wide-ranging cultural literacy. The band met in church (like U2!), yet the man swears with relish and documents his perceived failings as well as his issues with the spirtual institution to which he belongs. Get a load of this, from “Perservere,” which is actually my least favorite song on the album:

But God is full of grace and his faithfulness is vast There is safety in the moments when the shit has hit the fan Not some vindictive motherfucker, nor is he shitty at his job What words to hear, and I’m a mess by now 'Cause nothing tuned me in to my failure as fast As grieving for a friend with more belief than I possessed

Imagine that at Sunday service! If all Christian music was this nuanced and genuinely introspective then, well, Christian music wouldn’t be a ghetto. It would just be more music.

This album is long, almost feature-length, most of its 16 songs stretching beyond five minutes. Fortunately, the wealth of ideas and arrangements sustain the length, if only just barely. Gang of Youths are adventurously egalitarian in their consummate unoriginality, adamantly subscribing to the notion of Ecclesiastes 1:9, content to let Le’aupepe’s compelling narratives give the band identity as their arrangements freely pillage ideas from the most successful indie rock bands of the last decade, mostly those who can now fill arenas; the Killers, the National, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, LCD Soundsystemm Bloc Party. My favorite songs here pound forward relentlessly like Titus Andronicus. On some songs Le’aupepe’s words tumble out uncontrollably like Gareth Campesinos, on others his voice could be mistaken for Matt Berninger’s low growl.

Also, I’d be remiss to not mention how appealing I find it that there are no white people in this band. It’s rare and refreshing to hear this kind of massive music from a cultural perspective so different then my own.

youtube

10 Hot Thoughts Spoon Spoon is a band of consummate constants and variables. The band knows exactly what defines it, what listeners like, and they always deliver while also changing just enough to surprise. Every record, every song, reliably has three particular elements: an airtight hard rhythm groove, simple, catchy, repetitive; a masterful command of pop structure; and Britt Daniel’s enigmatic brand of ultracool, vaguely sexual vocal swagger. The other sounds around those elements, the atmospheres and tones, change with each record. Hot Thoughts delves deeper into the psychedelic G-funk timbres the band played with some on They Want My Soul, as Daniel continues to explore nonthreatening, acceptable ways to express desire. In short, it’s another Spoon record, and it rules.

youtube

9 Strangers in the Alps Phoebe Bridgers I keep coming back to lyrics. Lyrics draw me in like nothing else, the more smart, personal, and specific the better. Lyrics don’t come more specific and personal and smart than Phoebe Bridgers’s. She tells vivd stories, recounts memories of events and emotions by conjuring indelible, detailed settings and images with devastating depths of feeling, mostly over quiet, close-miced acoustic guitars underlaid with noninvasive strings and other atmospherics. Prepare to be haunted.

Though she sometimes doesn’t bother and the songs don’t suffer for it, as on the incredible “Smoke Signals,” Bridgers can also write the hell out of a chorus. Try not to get “Motion Sickness” stuck in your mind.

Strangers in the Alps does take a production risk I would understand some finding off-putting. Sometimes sound effects supplement and/or match lyrical events; a plane flying overhead, a boot crunching leaves, the kind of thing. It’s strange at first, but ultimately sets the album apart from others by similarly earnest stool-seated strummers.

youtube

8 Near to the Wild Heart of Life - year’s best title Japandroids I’ve seen this band play three times. The third was this year. Those previous had been with friends, and before the shows we drank and goofed around, celebrating our affection for each other and getting just the right level of lit up. This year I took a vacation day from my professional job, drove to St. Louis alone, and waited in line alone while reading a screenplay by one of the guys I used to go to shows with, eventually watching the show alone while nursing a single beer. It wasn’t the same. But it was still good.

Japandroids write what they know. Seven years ago what they knew resulted in a masterpiece, an album more relatable to me at the time than any other. Indeed, Celebration Rock remains my all-time favorite record, its ragged, propulsive riffage and emotional narratives of kinetic nights with close friends still have the power to take me back to that time, when I had more energy and a will to wildness. However, over the long interim between albums, the Japandroids’ lives and mine ceased to resemble each other. My closest friends moved. I have bills and a career and a generally pleasant, stable life—one distinctly not wild. Meanwhile, those dudes are evidently still globetrotting, every night out there swilling top-shelf tequila to nurse the heartache of intercontinental romance, living hard and loving harder. I no longer relate. As a listener I’m an observer now when I was once a participant. However, while I don’t connect with latter day Japandroids experientially, in a way the fact that Wild Heart still plays great for me despite that suggests that Japandroids is a legitimately great band on a musical level, rather than one just great for its ability to bash out messy, meaningful feelings..

These dudes are not shy about their laziness as songwriters, at least in terms of prolificacy. They release music as soon as they’ve reached the requisite minimum quantity of great songs, and it takes them forever to do so. Like the two previous Japandroids records, Wild Heart has only eight tracks, and they cheat even to amass that many. While Celebration Rock included a (totally awesome, raucous, thematically-appropriate) cover song, this time one Wild Heart track is an interlude, barely a song (“I’m Sorry [for Not Finding You Sooner]”), and another is just bad, sounding like a high school garage band trying hard to write a Japandroids song (“Midnight to Morning”). They really shouldn’t have let that one through. But man, the other six songs still kill with the same ferocity as before, some with an increased sense of melody and hook, and they all sound great live and feel great to shout along with, which, let’s be honest, is mainly what this band is for, and has always been for. The shouting just means a little less to me now.

youtube

7 Don’t Be a Stranger Nervous Dater Rachel Lightner has the gift, my favorite gift. She expels what she considers her worst qualities, and she does it through great songs; extremely catchy, smart, driving, dynamic punk songs. She does it publicly, with casual confidence. She makes it look easy and, most importantly, normal. Feeling how she feels is not unique. Sharing those feelings legitimizes them, creates a community around them. I mean, look at these lines:

Cause when things get quiet I feel uneasy I need my friends or at least just the sound of the TV To keep these things in my head from screaming “You’re inadequate! You’re a piece of shit! You could run forever but you’d never get away with it! And if people really knew who you were, They’d probably cover up the ground that you walk on with spit!”

If you can’t relate, then I envy you. If you can, and if you like punk, you need this band.

The players behind Lightner are also great, building arrangements that match incidental turns in the lyrics. The lines above are from the title track. Listen for how the song bends and nearly breaks as the narrative does the same, then recovers before almost breaking again. The band follows a formula, each instrument doing a specific job. Drums, bass, and one guitar lock into rhythm, while a lead guitar incessantly plays highly-involved tasto solo hooks. The band rarely veers from its set aesthetic, and when it does, it does so with purpose.

Occasionally a male member of the band will cameo, supplementing Lightner’s self-excoriations with early-2000s emo-screaming in the background. It’s a signifier that, intentionally or not, effectively ties Lightner’s music back to that era, an era that very intentionally excluded and delegitimized women’s voices. As has been proven time and time again in recent years, that was stupid. Women do it better. The contemporary women making emotional, personal punk music are doing it so well that nobody’s come up with a term like “emo” to dismiss it. I love being alive right now.

youtube

6 Big Fish Theory Vince Staples For when people ask what kind of music I like, that impossible question almost only asked by those who do not share the obsession, I have developed a stock answer of surprising accuracy. The smartest versions of punk, rap, and country. Country is a fudge, designed to open up a conversation about what “smart” country is. Dorks call it “alt-country.” Anyway. That’s a separate essay. You may have noticed that Big Fish Theory is the first rap record on this list. I am not tapped in to most contemporary rap. The slow, repetitive codeine scene doesn’t do it for me, and rap is more about single songs and premium playlist placement than it is about albums now. The album-focused rappers are dinosaurs. Four fossil-rap acts made solid records this year, and three made my list. Ranking them was difficult, and I am not at all confident in my final assessments. Vince Staples could have ranked highest another day.

Some days I like Big Fish Theory more than DAMN. Vince Staples’ world is less complicated, more concentrated and angry. Some days unnuanced anger is what I want. For fuel. Case in point, compare the two’s thoughts on the President and the country. First, Kendrick, hinting and contemplative:

Homicidal thoughts; Donald Trump's in office We lost Barack and promised to never doubt him again But is America honest, or do we bask in sin?

And Vince:

Tell the President to suck a dick, because we on now Tell the one percent to suck a dick, because we on now Tell the government to suck a dick, because we on now

And, of course, both men appear on “Yeah Right,” every bit as glorious a linguistic whirlwind as could be expected.

Also, I don’t know another rapper more musically experimental, forward-thinking, and adventurous than Vince Staples, including Kendrick. Vince is admirably without ego here (humble!); often letting the music overtake his voice, having faith in listeners to look up his words if they so desire. Much of Big Fish Theory is essentially modernized Chicago house with rapping, while also proudly West Coast. And it bangs, hard.

youtube

5 Melodrama Lorde This one took time. It took reading younger people’s perspectives to appreciate, grow to love. The first listen felt cold, staid. Pure Herione had been an instant rush, a loud announcement of a new, exciting pop personality, fully steeped in enthusiastically appropriated pop tropes of the time and letting Ella Yelich-O'Connor’s novel personality shine atop it all. Melodrama is different. She doesn’t shine, she seethes and writhes. She’s growing up in front of us, with surprising, precocious wisdom and emotional maturity.

There is nothing particularly contemporary about the sound of Melodrama. It’s less jokey, more earnest than Pure Heroine. And ultimately, despite that it does not provide the same sugary pleasure rush of its predecessor, Melodrama is far superior. It doesn’t sound like a time period, it sounds like first love and first heartbreak, because it is the manifestation of those. It sounds timeless, orchestral without an orchestra, because it is those things.

One track is a notable exception to the timelessness, and that makes it almost impossibly special. I will elucidate later in the Favorite Songs section.

youtube

4 DAMN. Kendrick Lamar Has there ever been an artist so deft at balancing/blending pure creative expression with commercialism? Until DAMN., Kendrick had achieved that balance through compartmentalization, by creating knotty, esoteric records, masterpieces, while also featuring on the most crass chart-bait singles imaginable. Another case in point: Kendrick made “For Free?” and appeared on the “Shake it Off” remix the same year. DAMN. inextricably fuses the two compartments without compromise. Almost every second of the album is both at once. Every song has earworm hooks and brain-breaking lyrical density. The record is jammed with potential singles, yet still works as a whole… even when listening to the tracks in reverse order. All hail. DAMN. is unquestionably the best album of the year, but even so, and even though I flew 1500 miles to see him play it live his hometown… it is not my favorite this year. DAMN. somehow isn’t even my favorite rap record, a late-breaking change-of-heart that took me by surprise.

youtube

3 RTJ3 Run the Jewels It’s too long. Let’s get that out of the way. But it’s all essential. For months I said that cutting “Hey Kids” and “Thieves!” would have made a better record. I was wrong. “Hey Kids” is the weakest track, for sure, but Killer Mike’s verse is straight up canonical, despite the relative frivolity of El-P’s bars and the idiocy of Danny Brown’s feature. “Thieves!,” on the other hand, after some close-listening and Genius deep-diving, is one of RTJ3’s best tracks, a massively ambitious dystopian sci-fi narrative that subtly riffs on Hamlet. Part of that ambition is manifested in a structure quite different from the straightforward presentations we’re used to from these guys; listening without the proper context doesn’t provide the furious pleasure typically associated with Run the Jewels.

Killer Mike & El-P were in an unenviable position prior to releasing this album. RTJ1 surprised everyone, even its makers; a no-stakes lark that happened to be much better and more special than that due simply to the sheer volume of talent involved. Expectations for RTJ2 had been high as a result, and they were exceeded as the band chose to treat the project with seriousness and gravity, leveraging their newfound fame and cultural relevance/reverence for conscientious advocacy. The result, RTJ2, is an unimpeachable classic, one I will listen to for the rest of my life. How could they top it, or even match it, without repeating themselves? By ratcheting up the ambition even further, and with it the risk.

Run the Jewels had been many things on their first two records; angry, funny, aggressive, stoned. Introspective was rarely one of those things. On RTJ3, the duo turn their focus inward, exploring feelings, emotions, and motivations as they apply to the external world in a manner they had never done previously. They also continue to make hilarious dick jokes.

The first and last four tracks are the best work they’ve ever done, the bookends especially. I didn’t appreciate just how great “Down” is until seeing the group close a couple live sets with it. The friends with whom I saw those shows and I were confused by that choice, but it caused us, or me at least, to listen to the song differently, to consider it as the type of song to close a set. Turns out, the choice was a great one. This band has become a band about hope manifested as anger and action, and no track conveys that notion better than “Down,” no RTJ album does it better than their third.

youtube

2 Turn Out the Lights Julien Baker Julien Baker creates stadium soundscapes using only a clean electric guitar and/or piano filtered through looping pedals. Many artists try this and fail. Especially in a live setting, it’s a cynical trick often deployed to impress perceived plebes, as I’ve seen Ed Sheerhan and, sadly, Elvis Costello, do in person. But for Julien Baker it is not a trick. It is seamless, unnoticeable; technical mastery not for its own sake, for impressing an audience, but for empowering expressions of deep feeling.

Turn Out the Lights is so much more than its production and arrangements, however. Baker is one of the most talented living writers, singers, and performers. Her percussion-less, entirely solo arrangements exist only to serve the themes of her songs. She’s one woman, onstage or on record, alone with the power of a full orchestra as she looses her interior on the world, her battles with addiction and depression, her fight to square an existence as a Christian and queer person, and her longing search for love and meaning through it all, the constant quest to hurt less.

youtube

1 After the Party The Menzingers If this were a list of “best” rather than “favorite” albums of the year, After the Party would be much lower, possibly not even included. There’s nothing innovative or original happening here, nothing generation-defining, no new ideas or calls to revolution. But there is an endless well of energy, feeling, and hyper-competent rock musicianship. The Menzingers have one of the most able rhythm sections working, serving the songs of two extraordinary writers, who seem incapable of picking up guitars without creating stadium punk hooks as indelibly catchy as they are heavy. This is smart, pure, meat-and-potatoes rock music, the meatiest and starchiest.

Beyond the wholly satisfying drive and force of the band on a primal musical level, these dudes have a real working-class, post-religious Midwestern mentality, despite hailing a little too far east to fully qualify. Many of these songs deal with how to gracefully age and settle while maintaining an uncommon resistance to traditional values. It should come as no surprise how strongly I relate. Earlier I mentioned Japandroids, how their initial records depicted the romance of early-20s debauchery and intense friendship. The true triumph of After the Party is how the The Menzingers manage to write about moving forward, building lives with partners, embracing careers and domesticity while also looking back fondly at bygone wild days without romanticizing them, fully owning that a calmer life is a better one, but allowing that the past was pretty damn fun.

After the Party may not become a timeless classic like other records on this list might, but this year it was the album to which I connected most. It was, and is, mine.

youtube

A Few of My Favorite Songs of 2017

8/7 “Truth Hurts”/“Water Me” Lizzo Lizzo should be a huge star. She’s like André 3000 good. She’s my Beyoncé.

Including these songs here is like an honorary Favorite Album spot. I listened to the two singles back-to-back more times than I did most albums this year. Lizzo has talent in excess of her excess of confidence and swagger.

Music journalists could not shut up about the two times Rihanna rapped on record this year, a little on the Kendrick album and on the only good 45 seconds of the N.E.R.D. album. Both instances earned effusive and universal praise. It bothers me that Lizzo doesn’t get that type of attention. She raps, sings, and writes far better than Rihanna, better than most pop stars working, really, and she often does it all in the same song, the same line.

“Truth Hurts” is a total kiss-off rap banger, insidiously catchy as it deconstructs and rebuilds the chorus of “Black Beatles” into something much better and exponentially more driving than its lugubrious origin. “Water Me” is an aggressive funk jam that Lizzo goes nuts over, showing off the full range of her voice, trying about a hundred different modulations and weird ideas. They all work, and together form some truly transcendent pop.

Check out her older stuff too, including a couple unlikely collaborations with Sadie Dupois from Speedy Ortiz (!) for my punk friends.

youtube

7 “What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?” Gang of Youths This isn’t another “Younger Us,” a song that so fully represents a period of my life that the opening chords still sometimes have the power to make me tear up. But it does take me be back to another time, and moves me in a similar way to the Japandroids classic. I haven’t told many people about this, but though I didn’t openly quit the church until a few months after graduating high school, I had struggled to maintain faith for a few years, even while playing in a devoutly evangelical Christian rock band.

“What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?” takes me back to a specific morning, a bone-cold, see-your-breath morning, driving to school my sophomore or junior year, listening to the first song from the second Spoken album and weeping at the lyrics’ longing prayer for help and guidance. In hindsight, Spoken made objectively bad music; comically derivative and poorly-structured. Throughout the Gang of Youths album, and especially on “Fire,” similar sentiments are explored and depicted more articulately, with far superior musical acumen. I’ll never believe again, but it’s nice to be made to have those feelings again, to experience unforced sympathy for another’s spiritual struggle.

youtube

6 “Right Now” Haim See the last paragraph of the Haim album entry above.

5 “Even” Julien Baker Julien at her most simple, most distilled, uncharacteristically just 4/4 quarter-note strumming an acoustic guitar, showing us that her layered productions would be nothing without the powerful songs beneath them. And what a song, karmic allusions and memories of conflicts.

It's not that I think I'm good I know that I'm evil I guess I was trying to even it out

Yeesh.

4 “Supercut” Lorde That word, and its power. Until recently no expression or single word existed to describe that wistful wash of isolated, curated romantic memories, warm-tinted flashes of the loveliest tiny moments of a lost relationship, ignoring fights and infidelities, only seeing sunshine. The good parts. And knowing its nature, indulging it with caution, recalling fondly and reliving without desire to return or recreate. “Supercut” could not have existed at any other time, on any other album, by any other artist. Lorde took the most modern of language and forged a work of art of crushing emotional truth; timeless, indelible, perfect.

youtube

3 “HUMBLE.” Kendrick Lamar I saw Kendrick play his first ever solo headlining arena show in his hometown. When it came time for “HUMBLE.”, the music dropped out after the initial “Hyeuh, hyeuh!,” and Kendrick let the crowd rap the entire song acapella while he just gazed around, observing in awe. The moment was magic.

youtube

2 “If We Were Vampires” Jason Isbell I’ll be honest. I don’t know how to write about this one without getting inappropriately personal. It’s been a hard year for me in certain relevant ways, and this incredible song has not helped matters.

youtube

1 “God in Chicago” Craig Finn The adjective “cinematic” doesn’t do justice to “God in Chicago,” which, despite lasting a mere four minutes and forty-five seconds, and not being cinema, is one of the best films of the year, a devastating, seedy road trip romance with a tight plot, loveable flawed characters, and an ambiguous ending. Craig Finn fronts my favorite band of over a decade, and yet this is the best thing he’s ever done. Every detail matters, every word and phrase considered and intentional. It’s Craig’s “Chelsea Hotel No 2,” a quiet meditation towering over an oeuvre of louder, more sensational and populist work. I love this man.

youtube

Appendices

I. Albums I enjoyed and/or listened to often but did not become favorites for whatever reasons Allison Crutchfield, Tourist in this Town Arcade Fire, Everything Now Big Thief, Capacity Broken Social Scene, Hug of Thunder Bully, Losing Charly Bliss, Guppy Cloud Nothings, Life Without Sound The Dirty Nil, Minimum R&B Drake, More Life Fat Joe/Remy Ma, Plata O Plomo Father John Misty, Pure Comedy Feist, Pleasure Craig Finn, We All Want the Same Things Japanese Breakfast, Soft Sounds from Another Planet Jay-Z, 4:44 Jens Lenkman, Life Will See You Now LCD Soundsystem, American Dream Migos, Culture The National, Sleep Well Beast Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, The French Press Ryan Adams, Prisoner Sampha, Process Sylvan Esso, What Now Tigers Jaw, spin The War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding Waxahatchee, Out of the Storm Wolf Parade, Cry Cry Cry Worriers, Survival Pop Yaeji, EP2 Yr Poetry, One Night Alive

II. Albums with which I was simply unable to spend enough time So many. Basically any album on any list covered on this site—the ultimate resource for end-of-year music dorkery--that I didn’t mention in my document I would have at least given a cursory try. That’s my normal process. There just wasn’t time.

III. A vain attempt to string together some final thoughts I’m exhausted, too exhausted to force a cute unified narrative onto my experiences with music this year beyond what I already have. As for the future… I’m excited, in a different way than normal. I don’t know what’s coming out next year. I haven’t done the requisite research. I’m into the idea of just letting it happen, letting New Music Fridays reveal themselves week-to-week.

Haha, just kidding. As soon as I post this I’m jumping in headfirst, making a 2018 Most Anticipated List. Sayonara suckers.

0 notes