#sonic wave mag

[blubushie]

hihihi can we get a part 2 for gun mistakes??? -leafanon

G'day leafanon!

FOR ANIMATORS/AUTHORS/ARTISTS PT. 2

SNIPERS WILL NOT STICK THE BARREL OF THEIR RIFLE OUT OF OPEN WINDOWS. Best case scenario is you’re sat in a mildly-uncomfortable chair while your spotter stands or sits next to you in an even more uncomfortable chair with a rangefinder. Before rangefinders were introduced (1990s and earlier) you were merely going off estimates (“That building is 50 yards, the next is 25, etc etc”). You never put the barrel out a window because it’d give away your position and put you AND YOUR SPOTTER in danger.

MOST MODERN SCOPES HAVE AN ANTI-GLARE COATING AND/OR A SUNSHADE TO PREVENT GIVING AWAY YOUR POSITION. This is especially useful when hunting as many animals (deer, turkeys, pigs) are incredibly vigilant and will bolt if they see the glint off a scope. This also helps with the sunlight hitting your scope and nearly blinding you from taking your shot. There are some cases of this still happening in “modern” times (notoriously the sniper duel between Carlos Hathcock and Cobra, a North Vietnamese sniper during the Vietnam War) but it’s very rare and scopes that are currently used by police, military, and most hunters don’t glint. This is what a sunshade looks like.

BULLETS DO NOT PENETRATE WATER WELL. Water density is much higher than air and the shape of bullets means they don’t travel well in water. Most bullets will fragment or fold upon hitting the surface of the water and their speed is greatly reduced. Supersonic rounds (such as rifle-calibre, up to .50) fragment within a metre (~3ft) of the water’s surface. Slower sub-sonic rounds (such a pistol-calibre) can travel up to 3m (~10ft). Once you’re a metre under the surface, however, it’s unlikely for any round under .50 to even penetrate you on contact as it loses most of its kinetic power. Arrows however are very aerodynamic and may maintain their kinetic energy up to 2m (~6) and perhaps twice that if you're shooting straight down.

RESEARCH. RESEARCH. RESEARCH. Know the weapons you draw/animate/write. It might not matter to you, but it will make or break it to your viewer. Is the weapon single-shot or does it use a magazine? What is the magazine capacity? What is the recoil? How do you reload? What do you do in case of a jam? Does your character know the weapon well? YouTube is your best friend in this regard.

CLIPS AND MAGAZINES ARE NOT THE SAME THING. These are clips vs magazines. Clips are open and hold the cartridge by the bottom. Magazines fully enclose the cartridges. Clips only hold rounds together to make them easier to feed into a magazine.

BLOODY TRIGGER DISCIPLINE. If your character is waving a firearm around with their finger on the trigger I am personally coming to kick your arse. You keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. YOU DO NOT POINT YOUR MUZZLE TOWARD ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO SHOOT.

PROPANE TANKS WILL NOT EXPLODE IF YOU SHOOT THEM. Also, handguns are rarely powerful enough to pierce propane tanks. CARS WILL NOT BLOW UP IF YOU SHOOT THE PETROL TANK.

IF YOU FIRE A FIREARM IN AN ENCLOSED SPACE IT IS GOING TO TEMPORARILY DEAFEN YOU. GUNS ARE BLOODY LOUD. That’s why we wear ear protection. This applies less in intense combat situations as (in my experience) tinnitus doesn't happen if you start shooting after your adrenaline starts pumping.

MAG-DUMPING. Not only is it very dangerous because of the recoil, it’s a stupid waste of ammo as the recoil buggers up your aim so you’re rarely hitting your target. Unless your character is in a panic and/or holding down the trigger out of rage, they’re not going to mag-dump because you’ll empty your entire magazine in only a few seconds (stupid in a combat situation) and rarely hit your target. Fully automatic weapons are fired in short bursts of 2-5 rounds at a time.

IT’S INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT TO HIT A MOVING TARGET. IT’S EVEN HARDER TO DO IT WHEN YOU’RE THE ONE MOVING. Rounds fired while moving are typically just suppression fire—basically shots fired to make your enemy take cover so that they have no time to shoot at you. You are not aiming at a specific target. It’s spray-and-pray.

HIPFIRING IS SPRAY-AND-PRAY. It’s EXTREMELY difficult to hit a target while hipfiring and hitting any intentional target while doing so requires EXTENSIVE practice. For this reason most hipfiring is spray-and-pray—spray, and pray you hit something.

SHOTGUNS ARE EFFECTIVE AT MUCH FURTHER THAN ONLY A YARD OR TWO. Most stay clustering within 50yds. That’s this distance. If you're firing a slug it can be accurate to up to TWICE THIS DISTANCE.

SHOTGUNS WILL NOT THROW THE VICTIM ACROSS A ROOM. They don’t have that much kinetic power, and even if they did, they’d throw the shooter across the room first because they’re taking the brunt of the kinetic energy in the form of recoil.

BULLETS WILL PEIRCE CARS. Car doors will not protect you from bullets, not even the door of a police cruiser. THE ONLY PART OF A CAR THAT WILL PROTECT YOU FROM BULLETS IS THE ENGINE BLOCK. The rest is just concealment cover and will not protect you.

MOST CRIMINALS IN THE USA WILL NOT HAVE FULLY AUTOMATIC WEAPONS. This is less applicable to scenes that occur before the 1980s when there were more full-auto weapons on the streets, but even then were INCREDIBLY expensive and even your most notorious gangster would be unlikely to have them. Unless your character is a top-of-the-line 1920s-1940s Chicago/NY mobster, they probably won’t have that Tommy gun unless they’re filthy rich or the weapon was given to them by someone else who's filthy rich.

YES, YOU CAN MAKE RUNAWAY GUNS (FULL-AUTO) OUT OF SEMI-AUTO FIREARMS. NO, I WILL NOT TELL YOU HOW TO MAKE THEM. The issue with runaway guns is that once you pull the trigger THEY WILL NOT STOP FIRING EVEN IF YOU TAKE YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER. THEY WILL KEEP FIRING UNTIL THE MAGAZINE IS EMPTY OR UNTIL THEY JAM. For this reason no one in their right mind is making a runaway gun.

STOP HOLDING YOUR HANDGUN SIDEWAYS. YOU DON'T LOOK COOL, YOU LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT AND THAT'S HOW YOU GET JAMS. Having a character do this is a great way to show they're all bluff and an idiot, though.

YOU CANNOT PUT A SUPPRESSOR ON A REVOLVER. Well, technically you can, but it won't work. There's a gap between the cylinder and the bore and in this space is something called the forcing cone. There's a gap between the forcing cone and the bore which allows gas (and sound) to escape from the cylinder, which renders the suppressor absolutely useless since the sound and gas just escapes anyway.

FOR VISUAL CREATORS SPECIFICALLY: REMEMBER EYE RELIEF. YOU NEED TO BE A CERTAIN DISTANCE FROM THE SCOPE TO GET A FULL PICTURE. IF YOUR CHARACTER HAS THEIR EYE TO THE SCOPE THEY ARE GOING TO GIVE THEMSELF A BLACK EYE WITH THE RECOIL. My personal eye relief when shooting my .30-06 is 10cm (~4in). Higher calibre means more kick, which means more eye relief.

As before, if I think of any more I'll add them later!

As always, if you have any questions feel free to send me an ask!

[comfort-clubhouse]

Comfort Characters (Waves 10-11)

Pocoyo

Timmy (Timmy Time)

Mittens (Timmy Time)

Otus (Timmy Time)

King (Owl House)

NormalCD

Yellow Hemka (Hanazuki)

Pink Hemka (Hanazuki)

Chowder (Chowder Series)

Mung Daal (Chowder Series)

Garfield

Captain N The Game Master

Simon Belmont (Captain N The Game Master)

Pocoyo

Mickey Mouse

Minnie Mouse

Jafar (Aladdin)

Hades (Hercules)

Sulley (Monsters Inc)

Bob Velseb (Spooky Month)

Yoshi (Mario DIC Cartoons)

Mario (Mario DIC Cartoons)

Luigi (Mario DIC Cartoons)

Emily Elephant (Peppa Pig)

Zuzu & Zaza (Peppa Pig)

Lammy (Happy Tree Friends)

Toga Himiko (MHA)

Mirio Togata (MHA)

Asriel (Undertale)

Sam & Max (Sam & Max: Freelance Police Series)

Iago (Aladdin)

Jack O Lantern (Grim Adventures Of Billy & Mandy)

Jessicake (Shopkins)

Milk Bud (Shopkins)

Jack Sparrow (Pirates Of The Caribbean)

Hector Barbossa (Pirates Of The Caribbean)

Fleagle (Banana Splits)

Drooper (Banana Splits)

Heisenberg (Resident Evil Village)

Jeff The Killer (Creepypasta)

Laughing Jack (Creepypasta)

Donatina (Shopkins)

Enid Sinclair (Wednesday)

Apple Blossom (Shopkins)

Solazar (FNF)

Nezuko (Demon Slayer)

Mike (Monsters Inc)

Moony (ENA)

Tails (Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog)

Starfire (Teen Titans)

Red Hood (Injustice 2)

Davy Jones (Pirates Of The Caribbean)

Freddy Krueger (Nightmare On Elm Street)

Bubbles (Powerpuff Girls)

Rainbow Dash (My Little Pony)

Fluttershy (My Little Pony)

Granny Smith (My Little Pony)

Discord (My Little Pony)

Princess Celestia (My Little Pony)

Pixie (Pixie & Brutus)

Nerris (Camp Camp)

Nikki (Camp Camp)

Marvin The Martian (Looney Tunes)

Kedamono (Popee The Perfomer)

Frankie Stein (Monster High)

Abbey Bominable (Monster High)

Dracalaura (Monster High)

Catty Noir (Monster High)

Madeline Hatter (Ever After High)

Kitty Cheshire (Ever After High)

Tricky (Madness Combat)

Hank J Wimbleton (Madness Combat)

Sanford (Madness Combat)

Deimos (Madness Combat)

Tessa (Skylanders)

Dr Krankcase (Skylanders)

Mags (Skylanders)

Mao Mao (Mao Mao: Heroes Of Pure Heart)

Adorabat (Mao Mao: Heroes Of Pure Heart)

Onion Cookie (Cookie Run: Kingdom)

Frost Queen Cookie (Cookie Run: Kingdom)

Clover Cookie (Cookie Run: Kingdom)

Screech (Doors)

Seek (Doors)

Agatha (Dark Deception)

Mr Stitchy (Piggy)

Orange (Rainbow Friends)

Fizzarolli (Helluva Boss)

Leonard Mudbeard (Angry Birds)

Courtney (Angry Birds)

Gary (Angry Birds)

Tankman (Tankmen Series)

Zoey (Total Drama)

Mike (Total Drama)

Penny (TAWOG)

Chuck (Angry Birds)

David Jones (Criminal Case)

Charles Dupont (Criminal Case)

Melody (Little Mermaid)

Bart Simpson (Simpsons)

Maggie Simpson (Simpsons)

June Bellamy (Simpsons)

Krusty The Clown (Simpsons)

Victor Creel (Stranger Things)

[pacdevil]

The Sonic Numbers REVamped

note: these numbers are separate from the full list because there would just be a HUGE sonic section in with all the other numbers. and since i am prone to adding more sonic numbers, i'm just gonna keep them in a separate post. XP

and yes, any new numbers will be put in here (sooner or later XD)!!!

enjoy >:3

----------

the misc numbers:

-> 193 (THE sonic number. (almost)every sonic post has this number)

-> 193.game (any gif sets, clips, information, voice clips, etc for the video games.)

-> 193.lore (story and character discussion, both canon and fanon.)

-> 193.characters (any official art or fanart that has more than five sonic numbers associated with them.

for example: a post with fanart of sonic, tails, knuckles, shadow and rouge will just have 193.characters, while another post with fanart of vector, charmy, espio, ray and mighty will have just the two numbers i have for them, 193.7 and 193.23 respectfully.

i pair up characters with a single number sometimes. :3 )

---

-> 193.videos (sonic related videos.)

-> 193.meme (sonic related memes that aren't videos.)

-> 193.mags (sonic magazines/game booklets hell YEEAAAAAHHH)

-> 193.fic (fics i like :3)

-> 193.other (misc sonic posts.)

-> 193.oc (ppls COOL sonic oc's!!!)

---

-> 193.hcmusic (music taste/tech headcannons for characters and sonic playlists either i or other ppl made.)

-> 193.playlists (just the sonic playlists separate from the headcannons.)

-> 193.shadowsalbums (music albums that give me strong Shadow the Hedgehog vibes. used to be daily, but now i do it whenever i want. :D)

---

-> 193.ova (sonic ova)

-> 193.sa (sonic adventure. just the first one, no shadow the hedgehog to be seen here i promise)

-> 193.cd (sonic CD)

-> 193.X (Sonic X-treme)

-> 193.R (Sonic R)

-> 193.FIGHT (Sonic the Fighters)

---

note: i don't post much about these au's cuz im still kindof working them out, and my brain needs them to be figured out before i post about them so yeah. XPPPP i like to be consistent

-> 193.Robin Hood SAU (my robin hood/SATBK/king arthur hybrid sonic au

-> 193.DJ AU (my rollerblade/DJ sonic au centered around Amy and Metal Sonic

-> 193.dadow coraline AU (dad shadow and son silver in the story of Coraline, just the movie i haven't read the book, yet)

---

note: my fave posts for character relationships/interactions. some of these posts are meant to be romantic, which i am aware of, but i read them as anything but romantic <2

also if ur looking for Team Dark stuff, just go to any one of their numbers and you'll find them >:)

-> S&M Fave (Shadow and Metal Sonic.)

-> S&A Fave (Shadow and Amy Rose.)

-> A&M Fave (Amy Rose and Metal Sonic.)

-> S.A.M.S. Fave (Amy, Metal Sonic and Shadow :) )

-> A&K Fave (Amy Rose and Knuckles.)

-> R.O.S. Fave (Team Dark babeyyyyyy)

----------

the main numbers:

-> 193.1 (sonic the hedgehog)

-> 193.2 (knuckles the echidna)

-> 193.3 (miles tails prower)

-> 193.4 (amy rose)

-> 193.5 (eggman/dr.robotnik/eggman nega)

193.assist (orbot and cubot, sage the ai, agent stone)

-> 193.6 (metal sonic/tails doll/metal knuckles)

---

-> 193.7 (team chaotix: vector, charmy, espio)

-> 193.8 (rouge the bat)

-> 193.9 (shadow the hedgehog)

193.shth (maria robotnik, gereald robotnik, black doom, the president, the commander)

-> 193.0 (e-123 omega)

---

-> 193.10 (babylon rouges: jet, wave, storm)

-> 193.11 (infinite the jackal)

-> 193.12 (silver the hedgehog)

-> 193.13 (blaze the cat, marine the raccoon)

---

-> 193.14 (chao, lumina flowlight/void, chip the light gaia, wisps, koco)

-> 193.15 (fleetway super sonic)

-> 193.16 (scourge the hedgehog, fiona the fox)

-> 193.17 (tikal the echidna, chaos)

---

-> 193.18 (eggman robots/badniks)

note: mk1, mk2, and mk3 also have the robots from the scrapped Sonic X-treme game, cuz i think they're cool

193.shard (shard the metal sonic from Archie)

193.chaos (chaos sonic from Prime)

193.mk1 (mecha sonic mark 1, from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 16bit)

193.mk2 (mecha sonic mark 2, from Sonic 3 & Knuckles and the Scrapnik Miniseries)

193.mk3 (mecha sonic mark 3, from Sonic Adventure)

193.gs (e-102 gamma, e-117 sigma)

193.rocket (rocket metal sonic, from Sonic the Fighters)

193.ss (silver mecha sonic, from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 8bit)

193.pr (poetry robot, from the sonic movies (2020))

193.johnny (johnny, from Sonic Rush Adventure)

193.sgc (Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts)

---

-> 193.19 (cream the rabbit, cheese the chao, vanilla the rabbit, ermel, gemerl)

-> 193.20 (whisper the wolf)

-> 193.21 (tangle the lemur)

-> 193.22 (big the cat, froggy)

---

-> 193.23 (mighty the armadillo, ray the flying squirrel)

-> 193.24 (surge the tenrec, kitsunami the fennec)

-> 193.25 (tekno the canary)

-> 193.26 (jewel the beetle)

-> 193.27 (mephiles the dark, princess elise)

---

-> 193.28 (belle the tinkerer)

-> 193.29 (lanolin the sheep)

-> 193.30 (Max the rabbit (AKA Feels or Mika), the sonic prototype)

-> 193.31 (dr. starline)

---

-> 193.32 (team hooligan: fang the sniper, bean the dynamite, bark the polar bear)

-> 193.33 (sticks the badger)

-> 193.34 (sally acorn)

-> 193.35 (honey the cat)

---

-> 193.36 (eclipse the darkling, black death)

-> 193.37 (sonia and manic the hedgehog)

-> 193.38 (Sonic X misc characters)

-> 193.39 (ebony the cat, pyjamas the sheepdog)

---

-> 193.40 (Sonic the Comic misc characters)

-> 193.41 (sonic movie (2020) misc characters)

-> 193.42 (gadget the wolf)

-> 193.43 (bunnie rabbot)

---

-> 193.44 (archie sonic misc characters)

-> 193.45 (ian jr)

-> 193.46 (Sonic OVA misc characters, mostly sara)

-> 193.47 (zonic the zone cop)

---

-> 193.48 (barry the quokka)

-> 193.49 (mimic the octopus)

-> 193.50 (Sonic Boom misc characters)

-> 193.51 (rough and tumble the skunk)

---

-> 193.52 (clutch the opossum idw)

-> 193.53 (SATBK/SATSR misc characters)

-> 193.54 (Tiara B. Sonic X-treme )

-> 193.55 (Trip Sonic Superstars)

---

-> 193.56 (Mina Mongoose)

----------

[spymeister]

» Headcanon / Fighting | Defense

FIGHTING

Cornering him is the worst thing you could do. Jazz knows how to fight "properly." He's sparred with Ironhide, with Optimus, with Elita, and various other professionals when it comes to certain fighting styles. However, backing him into a corner means you're going to have to fight his way. That means dealing the maximum amount of damage to you in ways that are decidedly not "fair."

Once he hit earth, he absolutely looked up the different ways humans defended themselves. Different styles of martial arts immediately garnered his attention, but the most fascinating to him was Capoeira. On a few of his missions down to South America- he happily looked up a few masters there willing to teach him and added it to his already deadly repertoire.

Jazz has retractable claws on his servos and pedes. Most of the time, these are utilized for climbing or prying (depending what the job is at the time.) However, when they're utilized for fighting- tensor cables in his hands and ankles braid themselves to make them harder to snap and tear. It means once he gets claws hooked in you, nothing short of removing your own plating is going to get rid of him. This is doubly so if he chooses to engage his mag-locks along with that.

He prefers to fight guerilla style, with dash-and-duck attacks that leave the enemy bleeding and weakened to allow him to get closer with minimal damage. A good animal analog would be something like a weasel or stoat. He can work/hunt in packs- but he's a loner most of the time when it comes to this.

His preferred weapons tend to be: his amplification system for sonic waves, his dual vibroblades, and of course his claws and dentae. He is versed in the use of plasma and acid firearms, but doesn't prefer them as he thinks others rely too heavily on said weaponry. His fighting style tends to be up-close-and-personal.

DEFENSE

Jazz is highly damn territorial. This doesn't mean just physical spaces, but also the people IN those spaces. If he has claimed something as his (in this case, the Autobot faction)- then any sort of attack on something of his is seen as personal and grounds for retaliation. He'll also defend said territory/items to the death if need be. While he doesn't have any inbuilt sense of loyalty programming, he DOES have a high kinship drive when it comes to that. It's why making friends with him is a damned good idea if you can.

Jazz can use the same series of weapons for both attack and defense, though defense allows him to steal other mechanism's tech and adapt it for his own use. The aforementioned sonic amplification system was a direct bit of thievery from Soundwave's sonic cannon and utilized and bolstered by his own frame to be stronger and more directed.

Jazz does not tease or taunt during defense. Instead, he's almost coldly quiet, utterly focused on keeping him and his safe. He's ruthless, with a tendency to plant a series of traps to stall invasion if he's able- and at that point, he really doesn't care if the enemy is injured or dead. Just as long as his people are safe.

Inbuilt social programming that is passed along from kindled mechanism to kindled mechanism allows him to make social/emotional ties easy. It also allows him to be severely traumatized if those ties are betrayed, and in turn- puts said betrayer into a rank of retribution/hate. It's nearly impossible to pull yourself from that determination once placed there. This programming also allows him to add people that are not cladekin or framekin. It's literally how he's added people like Optimus, Ratchet, the Twins, Bluestreak and the like to his "family" and "clade."

[sallyacornsmackdown]

Round One - Wave Three

Information about these Sallys: Princess Acorn is one of the most well-known of the prototype Sallys. It seemed they were quite close to committing to this version of her design, as several images featuring a very different version of SatAM and showing Princess Acorn were featured in the UK's Sonic the Poster Mag, as well as a few other drawing of her that have been found over the years. Little is known about this version of SatAM, but it looked to include very different versions of characters from both SatAM and Fleetway's Sonic the Comic Super Sally(???) is... probably not actually that, but I saw this image amongst the concept art of Sally and it looked so much like they'd given her a super form that it blew my mind and I had to include this. My guess would be that this is an idea for Sally being powered up by the Deep Power Stones, which was something that did happen in the final episode of SatAM, but this design wasn't used. If anyone knows more about this (or if I've just blanked and this did appear in SatAM somewwhere), please let me know

[number-one-shadisper-shipper]

Okay I watched the Hunger Games for the first time and.... um. OW. WHY. but also

Sonic Hunger Games AU

Like:

Katniss: Sonic

Prim: Tails

Peeta: Amy

Gale: Sally

Haymitch: Knuckles

Effie: Rouge

President Snow: Eggman

Rue: Charmy

Thresh: Vector

Cato: Jet

Clove: Wave

Finnick: Shadow

Mags: Maria

THIS HURTS MY SOUL anyways someone make this happen I want art and oneshots but I'm overwhelmed with other projects

[noloveforned]

okay, for real this time we're kicking off a new theme on tonight's show. tune into wlur at 8pm tonight to see what it'll be and then stick around for four hours of new music! if that doesn't work for you, you can always catch up with last week's show on mixcloud at your convenience, see below for tracklist.

finally a quick recap as we wrapped up our summer theme last week. for the past few months we've been starting the show off with music from the halifax, nova scotia scene of the 90s. we heard tracks from: sloan, jale, the super friendz, thrush hermit, plumtree, north of america, the hardship post, cool blue halo, the certain someones, les gluetones, and rebecca west.

no love for ned on wlur – august 4th, 2023 from 8-10pm

artist // track // album // label rebecca west // mystery bird // six more weeks of winter ep // cinnamon toast dippers // on the bend // clastic rock // goner honey radar // english costume (melting cricket) // english costume // (self-released) spirale parfait // j'care pas // (bandcamp mp3) // (unreleased) daddy's boy // family cat // great news! // drunken sailor pipe // backstroke // pipe // third uncle sheer mag // all lined up // playing favorites // third man charlie megira // fear and joy // charlie megira and the hefker girl // numero group current affairs // right time // off the tongue // tough love rocky // contents // rocky // lulus sonic disc club air miami // pucker // me. me. me. (deluxe edition) // 4ad lalitree darnielle // you are returning // (bandcamp mp3) // (unreleased) lia kohl // moon bean // too small to be a plain // florabelle self esteem // new york // new york digital single // fiction dawn richard and spencer zahn // sandstone // pigments // merge mali obomsawin // fractions // sweet tooth // out of your head asher gamedze // melancholia // turbulence and pulse // international anthem roman norfleet // cosmic forces // roman norfleet and be present art group // mississippi the art ensemble of chicago featuring moor mother // new coming // the sixth decade- from paris to paris (live at sons d’hiver) // rogueart yl and starker with dj skizz featuring adonis // sonny liston // smoke // tuff kong liv.e // reset! // girl in the half pearl // in real life travis scott featuring beyoncé // delresto (echoes) // utopia // epic dinner party featuring ant clemons // insane // enigmatic society // empire karin jones // last night in my dreams // under the influence of love // tidal waves maximum joy // stretch (7" version) // white and green place ep // lantern decisive pink // haffmilch holiday // ticket to fame // fire popular music // lifetime achievement // minor works // sanitarium sound the overcasts // community // aerie ep // mirror mūsica american grandma // hope loop // rare knives of light cassette // decade year

[samobservessonic]

Anyway, it’s time to wrap up this special with the second part of Doctor Sun and-

-Yikes! If I never have to look at that face again it’ll be too soon!

But it looks like Stripes doesn’t want to come back home, even knowing that his father sent Sonic & Tails to get him. It’s a bit baffling, since we still haven’t seen exactly why these mobians want to stay with Doctor Sun, but the next page goes on to explain that

We get this montage of the duo being shown around the place, which promises to be a safe haven in these troubling times of the Robotnik conquest. It’s probably not too surprising that a Sonic comic’s idea of a good time is reading comics and playing Sonic games, but I can’t say I disagree with them there

But don’t worry, once you’re fully ready to commit, you can pass through this door that I’m sure won’t result in you losing your free will and being turned into a robot. He might’ve gotten away with it too, if he hadn’t slipped up with that egg pun there

Who’d have guessed it? Doctor Sun is actually Doctor Robotnik!

We get a couple of pages of Sonic fighting Robotnik, before he makes his escape and the whole place goes up in flames, but not before Sonic manages to rescue everyone who was kidnapped. And that’s the end of that! Fittingly for his last appearance, Stripes the Badger is waving goodbye at the bottom there With that, the special has been wrapped up. I enjoyed it a lot! It’s the biggest comic that I’ve covered on this blog so far and it was great to see a lot of the supporting cast getting their own stories. I’d say that Doctor Sun was probably the weakest of those stories, so it’s a shame that one ended up being the two-parter, but both the Tails and Robotnik stories were great and I liked giving Knuckles a little prelude to the events of Sonic 3

This blog is technically still on hiatus while I wrap up another non-Sonic project (hopefully soon), but next time, we’ll be taking a look at the 5th Poster Mag, before returning to the regular issues. The poster mags are like the opposite of these specials, with only one single comic to cover, so it probably won’t take as long

[changeatthepenglide]

Fandom!

I first thought about fandom as a kid when I came across people in Sri Lanka who were among the first to join the K-Pop wave of the late 2000s and early 2010s. It was rather interesting as a child to see brown people become early adopters of something so foreign. In my youth, however, I cast it aside innocently as something "weird."

I, at the time, did not realize that I engaged in fandom as much as those K-Pop-loving Sri Lankans, having admired Western music my whole life. With my exposure to the internet, I would become consumed with what I loved and immersed myself in an EDM fandom. To define me as a fan would be right as I was obsessed, given a conventional definition. However, at the time, it was much more.

Social belonging and community were aspects of being a fan, I realized. Seeing what was popular on the charts, intently reviewing DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs lists, watching and analyzing live sets, becoming accustomed to every niche type of EDM, and being able to name it with ease based on sonics; these were things that consumed my free time and saw me interact with those online to discuss and debate matters surrounding electronic music. While I did not look for social belonging through this interest, it would find me as I befriended those around me with the same interests I had. However, not a form of conventional 'cultural production,' my love for music taught me how to mix music on a professional Pioneer deck. I was invested in various aspects.

Henry Jenkin's term 'textual poachers' is interesting because we are all guilty of doing just that, taking from external media and making something our own. There is beauty in that, and one can see it with Hip-Hop in the UK or K-Pop in South Korea, or on a smaller scale within the confines of lone albums or singles whereby an artist imitates a style or cadence, seen with Drake using a Jamaican and British accent at times or utilizing Afrobeats.

Compared with how I viewed them as a child, fandoms today have grown tremendously, both positively and negatively. With a pessimistic gaze, cancel culture and online policing have tarnished the freedom of the internet to a degree. Media taken out of context or a tweet or post from a different era are brought to light to dismember individuals publicly. Conversely, communities have used themselves to spread humor and awareness. I've personally seen this with the F1 fandom, who share humor and compassion.

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: His Name Is Alive

While Warren Defever’s name is perhaps less recognizable than that of his band His Name Is Alive, he’s also been connected with a seemingly endless array of other projects: Princess Dragon-Mom, Elvis Hitler, ESP Beetles, Control Panel, and far more. This doesn’t get into his recording and production credits for the likes of Michael Hurley, Iggy and the Stooges, and Mdou Moctar. Forever associated with Michigan’s weirdo-underground music scene, Defever has recently been issuing a series of long-buried recordings as His Name Is Alive. In February, the Disciples label released Hope Is a Candle, the third and final volume in the "Home Recordings" trilogy exploring Defever's teenage tape experimentation as well as A Silver Thread (Home Recordings 1979 - 1990), a four-volume collection of many of Defever’s solo home recordings prior to His Name Is Alive releasing their debut album Livonia on 4AD in 1990. In his review of A Silver Thread, Tim Clarke writes “For a collection of home recordings, what’s most striking about this music is how fully realized and carefully executed it sounds, comparable at times to contemporary artists such as Grouper, Benoît Pioulard and Tim Hecker. This is not the 1980s that I remember.”

Defever gives us his “What Else Is New” list, a set of personal snapshots, memories of a life spent in music, warning the reader that “the descriptions don’t always have an obvious correlation to the video, but welcome to my nightmare brain.”

In The Line of Fire

I started performing when I was five. My grandfather was a self-taught musician from Saskatchewan in Western Canada and he showed me and my brothers how to play banjo, guitar and fiddle. One of my earliest memories is having a full size 127 lb. accordion placed onto my lap and my grandmother voicing her disappointment when I refused to play. I did learn slide guitar from her later though. I have many, often terrible, memories of performing at square dances with his band and we would play old timey country music, folk songs, polkas and waltzes. There were also gigs at the trailer park, old folks homes and a convent. Although my grandfather believed that popular music died with Hank Williams in 1953, he still found room in his heart for Lawrence Welk and Slim Whitman.

Meet Me By The Water

By age ten I had a tape recorder and was using it to capture the sounds of nearby lakes, thunderstorms, and my older brothers LP collection played at the wrong speeds. I recently found the cassette, Echo Lake (1983) which features waves crashing onto the beach on the Canadian side of Lake St. Clair but it was recorded right after I got an echo pedal so it’s got a heavy dose of dreamy delay. Tape loops of the next door neighbor raking leaves and shoveling the driveway would be repurposed a few years later as rhythm tracks on the first His Name Is Alive LP, Livonia (4AD, 1990). Detroit in the late 70s and early 80s had totally insane radio and one of the highlights was Met-Ezzthetics, a late night show on WDET hosted by Faruq Z. Bey who also played saxophone in Griot Galaxy. Shortly before his death he played with His Name is Alive and we had a chance to formalize our student-teacher relationship.

Search For Higher Energies

In high school I was studying Bach Chorale harmonization and counterpoint during the day but recording and touring with the band Elvis Hitler at night. The other guys in band were older but at 16 I was a familiar sight at shitty Detroit punk clubs and Hamtramck dive bars, the nerdy teenager reading a book or doing homework sitting at the bar waiting ’til midnight or 1am for our slot to play our hellbilly hits, “It’s A Long Way From Berlin To Memphis,” and “Hot Rod To Hell.” I was still trying to make sense of the post 1953 music scene and when I met the guy with a giant afro and shiny super hero outfit complete with shiny cape I had no idea he was Rob Tyner of the MC5. We released three records before I was twenty one and played shows and toured with Devo, the Dwarves, the Dead Milkmen, Reverend Horton Heat, the Beat Farmers, Helios Creed, Babes In Toyland, the Cro-Mags, Corrosion of Conformity, the Frogs, the Gories, Pussy Galore, the Unsane and way more I can’t remember I was just a kid. It was some kind of education.

You Don’t Have To Go Home But You Can’t Stay Here

When I signed with 4AD I thought I was a composer and they let me write my own bio, so I called His Name Is Alive the work of a “fucked up, irresponsible teenage composer.” I had only been writing music for three years. When I heard “Tom Violence” by Sonic Youth I thought for the first time in my life, “I think I could do that.” In 1988 I made a mixtape with Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, Leadbelly and some of Big Star’s third album and I tried to arrange it like it was an album, then I made my own album in that same shape, it was called I Had Sex With God and I sent it to 4AD. Our first album contained three of the first five pieces of music I had ever written. Within a few years I was playing festivals for contemporary classical composers and new age artists who were thirty or forty years older than me. His Name Is Alive played the Musicas Visuales Festival in Mexico with Harold Budd, Paul Horn and Jorge Reyes. The mayor of the city presented me with a guitar but then dramatically walked out of the theater during our performance realizing he had made a terrible mistake. I remember the surreal moment when from across the room Harold Budd walked in and greeted me as “Mr. Defever.” He had a cold and was sniffling during his set, the audience thought he was crying. I recorded his show and when I got back home to Livonia I added my own guitar to some of his songs and then edited the tapes, looping my favorite parts and editing out the parts I didn’t like, also adding additional layers of reverb and echo. More recently I did a concert in a five hundred year old temple in Japan where the unamplified meditation music never rose above a whisper and the monk had to turn off the furnace because the heat molecules were too loud. The show was recorded and released under the name Mountain Ocean Sun and features Ian Masters and Hitoko Sakai.

Energy Dealer

Both my parents were born in Canada, my mother in Saskatchewan, my father in Ontario. I have dual citizenship as my father was American and my mother had Canadian citizenship. I spent summers, holidays and weekends in a tiny cottage on Lake St. Clair that did not have a telephone and had curtains instead of doors separating the two rooms. Myrt Fortin who lived next door would receive phone calls for my mom, walk over to our place and yell into the window, “Hey wake up your ma, your dad’s on the phone.” My mom took a lot of naps, so she was always asleep when something important was happening. I remember always getting cut on broken glass while swimming in the lake or getting stabbed by one of the neighbors and having to go wake up my mom to take me to the hospital.

Lord I Don’t Believe You Exist

When I was ten my parents sat me down and told me it was time that I got a summer job. There were only two businesses in town, a gas station and a hardware store so I walked up to the hardware store and asked the owner for a job and immediately fell to the ground crying. Completely fell apart. He asked me why I wanted to work in hardware. I didn’t know what to say, I was only ten but I knew not to tell the owner that his store was stupid and I didn’t think he could handle the truth. It turned out he also owned the gas station so that didn’t really work out. Later that summer, I began working for the Pickseed Corporation as corn de-tasseling season was just beginning. All the moms would drop off their kids in the church parking lot in Tecumseh, just outside of Windsor, around 4:30am where an unmarked windowless cargo van was waiting that had cinderblocks and 2'x4' boards instead of benches so they could squeeze in the maximum amount of children. There were three job requirements to work in a cornfield, the child (it was only children, no adults) needed to show up with a baseball hat, a thermos with water and a large black plastic garbage bag. I think this was before sunglasses were invented. Upon arriving at the cornfield, we were separated into pickers and checkers, younger kids each taking a row of corn (a row could extend a mile or more) and a slightly older kid would organize and manage several of the younger kids. In the morning we were instructed to poke two arm holes and a head hole into our garbage bags and put it on like a raincoat because the corn was covered in dew and kids wearing wet clothes would walk slower than dry kids. So almost every day there was a point, usually around 11am when the dew would dry and we would be roasted alive from the summer sun coming down on our ridiculous shiny black plastic outfits. We worked from sun up until sun down. I received three dollars and thirty five cents an hour. For all you city folks, corn is planted in alternating rows of types of corn so that when the top part of the plant is removed, or “de-tasseled,” it can seed or cross-pollinate easily. It’s a terrible job with a high turnover rate and every day I would hear the sound of kids in nearby rows that had given up hope, sat down in the middle of the field and crying for hours. The following year, at age 11, I was promoted from picker to checker, and was put in charge of a group of about ten sixteen year old’s.

Sleep It Off

Mostly I like to record – His Name is Alive has over a hundred releases and I’ve done another fifty records under various names, Control Panel, Warren Michael Defever, ESP BEETLES, ESP SUMMER, Forest People, Infinity People, Jeepers Creepers, Layla al-Akhyaliyya, Mirror Dream, Princess Dragon-Mom, the Dirt Eaters, the Fishcats, the Whales, plus way more I can’t remember probably because the names were so dumb. I’ve recorded about four hundred records for other bands at my house or other studios. I’ve worked on records with Danny Kroha, Ida, Fred Thomas, Elizabeth Mitchell, Wild Belle, Michael Hurley, and when I was a teenager I helped record the first Gories album which was especially unique as I was the junior assistant engineer who helped move their equipment into the dirt floor garage next to the studio where it was decided the acoustics would be way worse. Also, I helped collage about a hundred Destroy All Monsters tapes from the 70s for a couple of their releases which led to remastering a bunch of tapes from the John Sinclair White Panther Party archives. I’ve done remixes for Thurston Moore and Yoko Ono and when Iggy and The Stooges started touring again I got a phone call from Ron Asheton seeing if I would help them record demos for their reunion album with Mike Watt on bass. They wrote the songs together while they were recording in Niagara’s basement sort of simultaneously. Iggy didn’t have a notebook with all his lyric ideas, instead he just sang about whatever happened that day – one song was about the airline losing his luggage, one about ATM machines and another was about reading in a newspaper that Ray Davies of the Kinks had been shot in New Orleans. In the end they weren’t terribly excited by my suggested song titles including “No Shirt” (you know because it’s like “No Fun” plus you know Iggy never wears a shirt) and they didn’t seem to love the mixes that I did that sounded kind of like those crappy Raw Power bootlegs.

Cost Of Living

Two summers ago I recorded an incredible concert by Mdou Moctar live at Third Man Records in Detroit. They’re wild hypnotic Hendrix style jammers who live in the desert. The band didn’t speak much english but I think I was able to communicate to them how excited I was about their amazing fingerpicking and hot guitar solos after the show by screaming and replaying the best solos over and over again and then screaming the word fuzz and pointing at their fingers. It’s insane and having seen them a few times since then with a different drummer and the addition of a bass player, I’m convinced it’s their best album. It’s wild but it’s still not Tchin-tabaraden wedding wild.

Licked By Lions

Jonathan Richman walks into Ethan and Gretchen's studio and asks if I can remove all the rugs, take the acoustic treatments off the walls and strike the baffles which normally separate the instruments, drums and amps, so the room will have the most echo possible, he has also invited about ten friends including Johnny Bee Badanjek the drummer from Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and Mary Cobra from the Detroit Cobras to dance, sing and play percussion in the studio while he records. He has two vocal microphones set up at either end of the room and has brought his own microphones for the drums along with his own desired placement for them. He notices a tamboura near the control room and asks if I know how to play it or if I know how to tune it. Within seconds he’s tuned it and proceeds to sing Indian classical music accompanying himself on tamboura drone for about thirty five minutes. It’s beautiful and very surprising. He asks me if I recorded it, I lie and say no. Later he asks me not to play it for anyone. We record for hours. Some songs are quite long – ten and fifteen minutes, some are medleys of oldies or soft rock hits from the seventies segueing into new songs of his. It’s a confusing session as it’s not clear when songs are starting and ending and he often plays guitar and sings nowhere near a microphone. The distance between him and the microphone seems to have some meaning, there’s some formula to when he chooses to walk away in the middle of a verse but I am unable to determine the secret code. At the end of the session three or four songs are deemed usable, edited and mixed, although, sadly, an attempt at a completely insane and unexpected fuzz guitar solo is left unreleased. (The Harold Budd piece is at the opposite end of this spectrum.)

Calling All Believers

Shortly after Tecuciztecatl was released, I received an email from Dr. James Beacham at CERN inviting us to perform at a series of concerts that would combine experimental music with experimental science at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. He didn’t contact our booking agent, which would be how we generally receive offers for gigs, instead he sent an email to me, which would be how we generally receive crazy messages from our completely insane fans (murderous, delusional, poetic, threatening messages usually). I assumed the invitation was fake or a prank and replied that we would prefer to wait until they had successfully opened a pathway to interspatial dimensions and we’d play on the other side or that if that was unlikely to happen at a convenient time then perhaps we could set up our equipment right on the edge of a mini-black hole and perform as the Earth is being destroyed so we could release the concert film “Live At The End Of The World.” After a few messages back and forth, it was clear that he was legit and I apologized for being such a jerk. Soon I discovered poetry within the language of particle physics as well as a certain beauty in the idea that these scientists have devoted their lives to dreaming, searching and discovering basic principles that connect all things in existence. The song “Calling All Believers” refers to this devotion. “Energy Acceleration” compares the scientists to monastic life in medieval times and mystics trying to find and define the line between this world and the next and at the same time invoking the incredible amounts of energy needed to create the collisions experiments. The Patterns of Light LP was released in 2016 on London London Records and is about interpreting visions of light, trying to find universal truth with whatever tools available, it’s about the search for how everything works, why it works and how it got that way but also about being inspired on a basic level by the way a thing looks and how all your senses take in a thing. A thousand years ago Hildegard Von Bingen was writing about this same thing in letters, songs, medical texts, and had even developed her own language to use in her mystical writings, similar to Magma drummer Christian Vander using his own language for their concept albums or French black metalists Brenoritvrezorkre and Moëvöt.

The Light Inside You

We get a lot of letters from fans, mostly weirdos though. I think it started when we released Song of Schizophrenia, that sort of connected us to a certain demographic I suspect. Here’s a recent typical message we received. “Growing up in Panama City, Mouth By Mouth and Livonia were like passages to other realms. I drank a ton of cough syrup at the time but those albums helped make life more livable. I was about to go to art school for sculpture and graphic design and the textures I heard on those records had actual shapes to them. Most music I knew at that time was flat or linear. I got them on cassette via mail-order from an ad placed in a bmx magazine. Mouth By Mouth arrived just before going to work at the amusement park and I was able to listen to it twice on the way thanks to the never-ending beach traffic. As luck would have it, I worked on “The Abominable Snowman” ride, basically a tilt-a-whirl inside a dome with lots of fog machine action, blue lights, mirrors, and lots of air conditioning. It took about 10 listens that day before it wasn’t as weird as when I first put it on. Maybe it was my bubblegum flavor/robitussin combo slushie on top of no-doz that pulled it all together, but it was probably a weird ride for a lot of vacationing beach tourists and townies when all they really wanted to hear was “Naughty by Nature” by O.P.P. I had no business running those rides at the age of 17 but I really loved how disorienting that ride could be with all the mirrors, the fog, the cold and for the final 90 seconds the ride would go in reverse. I had a buddy named Kevin that did acid at work and would repeatedly run the mini-train off the tracks and all the riders had to walk back through the woods for about a half mile that summer.”

[rockrevoltmagazine]

A CRIME CALLED Release Official Music Video for "Drown"

 Italy based, alternative rock quartet A CRIME CALLED has released the official music video for “Drown,” off of their newly released album, A New Path.

“’Drown’ is the result of an intercontinental travel; tthe video is shot in a former asylum, and the images give a feeling of abandonment and claustrophobia, which works against the meaning of the song. The concept is to resist, to try not to drown, maybe finding someone who is a salvation and a hope for you.” – A CRIME CALLED

“Drown” was produced by Dan Korneff (Paramore, Pierce The Veil, Papa Roach) and Giuseppe “Dualized” Bassi (Fear Factory, Mnemic) and was mastered by Ted Jensen (Bring Me The Horizon, Green Day, Deftones) at Sterling Sound Studios.

“Life is an ocean current of situations, people, sensations. Navigation, solitary as it may be, has its difficult moments which lead us to give up and desist. The destination is often only a necessary excuse to keep on traveling, to not die inside. Living is the only means we were bestowed to avoid being drowned by the current”. – Andrea Verdi (front-man)

A New Path Track List: 1. “Hide The Feelings” 2. “Drown” 3. “New Injection” 4. “Over Again” 5. “Sonic Fear” 6. “Tidal Waves” 7. “Weekend Odyssey” 8. “Pop Could Kill” 9. “Drown” (Acoustic)

Click to Purchase / Stream A New Path Online: iTunes | Spotify | Amazon

“A New Path is an album which describes the courageous approach of the band, that have collaborated with different producers in each song to obtain a new result in terms of sound. “A New Path is our personal musical experience, with a travel around the World started some years ago in New York with the producer Dan Korneff. This album is a mix of genius and passion, with the contribution of many professionals of the music industry. We can’t wait to show you our new stuff!” – A CRIME CALLED

  Connect with A CRIMED CALLED: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

A CRIME CALLED Release Official Music Video for “Drown” was originally published on RockRevolt Mag

[landlordrecords]

Bassline (& 2020 in general): Re-e-wind

 What a strange year, as everyone, everywhere has said a million times… Writing-wise, I’d been doing Record Collector magazine since 2014, and uDiscover (the Universal Records online mag) for not much less, & that all just seemed to (understandably) stop dead with the onset of the pandemic. Since then, I’ve polished off my chapter on the work of Simon Morris and the Ceramic Hobs for Palgrave, & that’s about it, so you’re more likely to find me over on Twitter at Sniffy (@philblackpool) / Twitter these days, blurting out the odd sentence. I hence thought it might be time to revisit a very old piece…

Like many, I’ve been working from home for much of the year, and although I’ve occasionally wanted to pull out my own eyeballs, it has generally been very pleasant for a voracious music-lover. I started by catching up on the vast majority of my insane, years-deep second-hand vinyl buy piles, and then chomped through a load of ‘long listen’ stuff I’d had on the backburner forever (including, astonishingly, eventually getting through something like 40 hours of Pan Sonic live sets someone had dumped online). I graded hundreds of releases for sale on Discogs, and revisited umpteen musical thangs extensively, including 90s gabba, Sun Ra, music hall, Schoenberg, dancehall reggae, the acknowledged worst albums ever, happy hardcore, Italian house, bounce and makina (I’ve lost track of how much time I’ve spent checking out youtubes to try to identify a couple of most-wanted bounce and makina tunes), Britpop (!), cosmic disco, and Belgian popcorn. It’s been an extraordinary year, packed with cultural discovery and rediscovery. In amongst this, in no way ashamed of my abject love of Discogs, and already having used and edited it for many years, I read the entire guidelines and decided to go hard on sorting out stuff I care about on there. Seeing they’d finally added various more recent ‘styles’, I’ve spent the last month and a half doing a ridiculous amount of edits on a dozen or so niche genres of importance in recent times (footwork, Jersey Club, yadda yadda). My tweakings around Bassline and UK Funky eventually drew me to the attention of UK Garage legend Karl ‘Tuff Enuff’ Brown, a fellow Discogs obsessive not so keen on the editing side of the site, who wondered if I might give him a hand sorting out the mess of his own and his label’s (2Tuf 4U) discographies. His entertaining phonecalls were enough to convince me.

I dug out all my stuff related to Karl’s label to listen to along the way, and found myself noticing how much UKG has been back in the spotlight of late (key, and brilliant, article here: RA: Like A Battle: The Push For UK Garage's Future (residentadvisor.net) ). While by no means unaware of this (I’ve had some lovely promos from Kiwi and the like of late, plus some moodier bits from various El-B worshippers), my status as a confirmed middle-aged semi-retired raver had hidden much of this from me. This leads me onto one of my big philosophical points of recent years: I listened to dance music avidly before I ever went out dancing, and listen to it now in lockdown, and in semi-retirement. There is far too much an emphasis among ever-rejuvenating dance music correspondents on ‘the club’ as the only way to enjoy dance music, but we know that OG disco fans are 60+ and unlikely to be out every weekend these days – is their experience now worthless? Online fans talk up their love of dance music for exercise soundtracks, bedtime calming soundtracks, etc: this is reality. Dance music is as valid to all these people as rock is to people who haven’t been to a gig in 40 years.

The style I felt myself most drawn back to was bassline (largely via Karl’s low-key issue of some DJ Q material). My love of UK Garage and all its offshoots largely stems from how physically removed I have been from it from virtually its entire history. Only my 2000-03 stint in Essex perfectly matched the garage waveform, and that was the 2-step era, quite the opposite of bassline. Despite being largely a northern phenomenon, Blackpool is largely untouched by bassline, being all about punk and bounce to my mind. An instant love for me circa 2007, bassline feels like one of those genres with unfinished business, but remains one I’ve rarely danced to. Cut off in its prime, it is now back, enormously popular, and rightly so, but, due to the vagaries of the digital music world, some of its key material remains tough to access in any decent form.

I originally wrote the piece I have butchered for this one in March 2008, on Myspace (remember that), in reaction to the exciting waves of bassline and UK funky then reinvigorating the world of UKG. It looks a bit embarrassing now, with more writing experience, although I continue to applaud my own willingness to be open about my innocent appreciation of things I love but am not truly part of.

 The most notable misstep in my original piece was the presumption that bassline would become the latest enormous chart sensation. Like happy hardcore before it, the ball was, in reality, fumbled. Instead of hoped-for freaky innovation, the producers also opted, as many in years gone by, for smoothed-out commerciality (in unholy alliance with low-grade grime crossovers), although the main adversarial issues seem to have been police crackdowns and the London-centric ‘cool police’. Although I was long aware of such problems with Niche in Sheffield (the genre’s spiritual home), it appears that the police interference had a devastating effect across the board ( Banned From Sheffield: How Jamie Duggan fought for bassline… And won (ukf.com) ). This largely explains why many of the bassline producers gravitated towards the largely wack bass house/house & bass style so beloved of teenyboppers in recent years. Thank heavens that era is now largely over.

Niche reputedly specialised in an arguably unholy mixture of dated late 90s speed garage and ‘bassline house’ (think ‘Let Me Show You’ by Camisra, and MK’s ‘organ house’), way past their sell-by date (I still only really like a handful of Shaun Banger Scott bits in this style, one single 2009 Brummie CD EP, and one Virgo remix). Ultimately, though, this experiment unexpectedly created something magical. The crucial element here is the 4/4 beat. While undoubtedly skippy, the vast majority of the material favoured had a firm 4/4 beat, always favoured across all key scenes in the north of England from northern soul onwards. When they ran out of tunes to rinse, in time-honoured fashion, they made their own. Long, rumbling walls of bass, organs, and hoppy-skippy beats, with raggafied samples and gunshots over the top. Popular in Birmingham as well (pretty much the centre of a vinyl glut at the time, and now notable in the popularity of DJs such as Chris Lorenzo and Hannah Wants), B-side titles hinted of coke overload. Disenfranchised by London’s movement away from the holy 4/4 (despite a slight revival in the early noughties), and via messenger services and the like, northern producers began to exchange a new hybrid in the mid-00s which took these speed garage and bassline house influences and updated them with current R’n’B bootlegs, with influences from grime (regional grime producers were key here) and, most notably, with rococo basslines. Its most obvious comparison point was Sticky’s garage productions, concurrent with the early grime era. Southern producers such as Agent X, Delinquent (who featured Gemma Fox on their magical 2006 ‘Boxers’), and Dexplicit (Fox again, 2005’s ‘Might Be’) ran with that, and the north lapped it up. Key early pointers also included DJ Narrows’ superb 2001 4/4 tune ‘Saved Soul’, and early 00s DND work (Artwork, later part of dubstep supergroup Magnetic Man). A notable increase in output came in 2006, and 2007-9 were the genre’s original glory years. And the bulk of producers and up-&-comings delivering serious anthems to the scene came not from London and the south-east, but from Leeds (T2, Wittyboy, Nastee Boi), Bradford (TS7), Manchester (Murkz, Burgaboy, Subzero), Nottingham (Virgo, IllMana), Leicester (JTJ, H20, FB & Zibba), and Wolverhampton (EJ, TRC, Brett Maverick). EJ’s Ejucation mix series (all up on Soundcloud) is a good place to start, beginning as the bassline house began to be overtaken by the pure bassline numbers.

Distribution for serious UK garage music has often been woeful, with only high street compilations & the chart singles (‘Heartbroken’ by T2, ‘What’s It Gonna Be’ by H20, etc) making it all over the country, and this helped stymie the true development of bassline, although vinyl prices, dreadful video promos, and the leap to digital in some ways didn’t help. Years on, as an incorrigible vinyl fanatic, I still only have handful of bassline 12”s. Yes, you can now access this stuff the world over via Youtube etc, but decent, high-quality copies of full-length tunes (they are often hacked about to great effect, but in a way which obscures the original intentions, in the mix) are not always the easiest to come by, although the classic producers are increasingly putting out digital compilations of their original work. Material that would, for previous genres, be fiended after, is lost to being just more online links. At the time, I looked high and low for 12”s, succeeding only rarely, largely on the flip of UK Funky releases. The (mixtape) audience, going by comments online, were often extremely young, are probably now still only in their mid-twenties, and are seemingly happy enough with this chaotic model. Bassline originally, as all rave genres, largely ran off mixtape boxsets, and a 2007 ‘Pure Bass – Fantasy’ box from Stoke remains my key document of that era: seven bassline CDs, with many tracks repeated, but packed to the gills, with most tracks only lasting a minute or two in the mix. As with all rave mixes, it has taken me years to suss the majority of the track IDs. In the Resident Advisor piece linked above, DJ Q (from Huddersfield) talks about thousands of lost bassline tunes, the bad side of the digital revolution. My recent Discogs ferreting suggests more bassline tunes than one might imagine did make some sort of decent release, but too many only made white labels, promo CDs for commercial releases (before being snipped from the main release), mix CDRs, or Youtube’s grainy depths. Classics such as TS7 featuring Bianca’s ‘Seems Like’ appear to never have had any decent release whatsoever, despite TS7 going on to be a big name in bass-oriented house, and Bianca Gerald having kept at the vocal turns ever since.

T2 hit biggest, with ‘Heartbroken’, a gorgeous, smashed-vocal garage dub so popular that it even inspired a Jersey Club refix. His catalogue was immediately deep, although I get the impression he has stopped adding to it. One complaint about bassline, including some of the T2 work, regards the untutored vocals, which can sometimes be rather flat, and certainly lacking in dynamics compared to the dazzling US vocalists featured on some earlier UK garage pieces (I refer here, as always, to TJ Cases’ remarkable ‘Do It Again’). I kinda like that - it shows amateur enthusiasm not far removed from punk, and most obviously links to lover’s rock, as does the production at times: it gives a feeling of melancholy entirely suited to the vocals. Other bassline heroes include TS7, who briefly brought to the fore sassy female garage MC T Dot. His productions also include ‘Smile’, one of my very favourite bassline tracks, full of that Simon Reynolds-quoted 'weird energy’ possessed by DJ Hype & co in the early nineties. Male bassline vocalists such as Ideal also remain unfairly forgotten, although some of the female vocalists have gone on to work in related genres since bassline’s peak.

Paleface, an ex-member of London garage rap crew Stonecold GX, runs Northern Line Records (FB, TRC, Wittyboy, Nastee Boi), something of a quality mark for bassline productions, while also making highly successful UK Funky tunes as part of Crazy Cousinz, and later progressing into commercial house territory. He chronicled much of bassline’s high-water mark (including being married to Kyla, since sampled by Drake). Wolverhampton-based Northern Line signing TRC proved particularly adaptable, spewing out a legion of original tunes and remixes before retreating for a while to grime. Leeds’ Nastee Boi was a favourite of mine at the time, with his pitch-black gangsta bassline tunes, but pushed on towards a mixture of underwhelming R’n’B vocal cuts and nursery grime toons. Wittyboy started similarly punishingly but also went smoother, unbalancing the classic bassline rough and smooth combination.

Now that the dubiously poisonous rep of Niche has been dispatched, the key bassline acts have returned to their key battleground, and the genre seems in full throttle again. Much of the new material seems a little one-dimensional to me: producers invariably big up Bristol’s My Nu Leng as, I suppose, a bridge from bro-step to 4/4. Everything, as acknowledged by the DJs, is huge drops and nothing much else. It still sounds pretty hot though – not the updated lover’s rock of a decade ago, but worth supporting. Bassline is NOT finished!

[imagine-organization-xiii]

Since it’s crunch time, if the org HAD to go to a convention, who would they cosplay?

the discord group had way too much fun with this one LOL

Xemnas - Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII - depicted as Cloud Strife’s archenemy; seen as a symbol of Cloud’s troubled past that haunts him. He is a former renowned SOLDIER, who became twisted.  Before his fall from grace, Sephiroth was one of the most lauded success stories of the Shinra SOLDIER program. His successes in the field of battle during the conflicts surrounding Shinra’s bid for global domination led to his status as a celebrity war hero.

Xigbar - Dante from Devil May Cry - is the recurring protagonist of the franchise, and the main playable character for the majority of the games in the series. Dante is a paranormal mercenary, private investigator and vigilante Devil Hunter dedicated to exterminating evil demons and other malevolent supernatural forces; a mission he follows in pursuit of those that killed his mother and corrupted his brother.

Xaldin - Aquaman from DC Comics - Initially a backup feature in DC’s anthology titles, Aquaman later starred in several volumes of a solo comic book series. During the late 1950s and 1960s superhero-revival period known as the Silver Age, he was a founding member of the Justice League.

Vexen - Elsa, Frozen - Queen Elsa of Arendelle is a fictional character who appears in Walt Disney Animation Studios’ 53rd animated film Frozen and its sequel Frozen II. She is voiced primarily by Broadway actress and singer Idina Menzel.

Lexaeus - Fake Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender - The actor playing Toph was an enormous, muscular man. Unlike the others, Toph actually adored this portrayal of herself much, claiming “I wouldn’t have cast it any other way!” Actor Toph ‘saw’ by releasing a “sonic wave”, a loud shriek, from his mouth while the real Toph 'saw’ by feeling the vibrations in the earth.

Zexion - Light Yagami from Death Note - After discovering the Death Note, he decides to use it to rid the world of criminals. His killings are eventually labelled by people of Japan as the work of “Kira.”

Saix - Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez from Bleach - While appearing to be a laid-back individual, Grimmjow possesses a brutal, impulsive, and excessively violent personality alongside a lethally short temper. However, despite his aggression and obvious blood lust in battle, Grimmjow possesses a feral cunning and has a knack for quickly exploiting any opening his opponent reveals.

Axel - Reno from Final Fantasy VII - is a prominent member of the Turks in Final Fantasy. Often accompanied by fellow Turk, Rude, Reno wields an Electro-Mag Rod in battle, a nightstick with a taser on one end. Reno also has a penchant for gossiping and is a competent helicopter pilot.

Demyx - Intends to do Freddie Mercury but “accidentally” does Sailor Mercury Instead

Luxord - Gambit/Remy LeBeau from Marvel Comics - Gambit belongs to a subspecies of humans called mutants, who are born with superhuman abilities. He is also incredibly knowledgeable and skilled in card throwing, hand-to-hand combat, and the use of a bō staff. Gambit is known to charge playing cards and other objects with kinetic energy, using them as explosive projectiles.

Marluxia - Poison Ivy from DC Comics - She is a botanist who is obsessed with plants, ecological extinction, and environmentalism. Ivy typically wears a green one-piece outfit adorned with leaves and often has plant vines extending over her limbs. She uses plant toxins and mind-controlling pheromones for her criminal activities, which are usually aimed at protecting endangered species and the natural environment.

Larxene - Riza Hawkeye from FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - is an officer in the Amestrian State Military as well as the personal adjutant and bodyguard of Colonel Roy Mustang. A sharpshooter and firearms specialist, Lt. Hawkeye is an invaluable asset to the Colonel both in office and on the battlefield and serves as his closest and most supportive subordinate.

Roxas - cosplays as Sora because fuck everyone else who says he can’t

Xion - Agnes Gru from Despicable Me - Agnes, like her sisters, wished to be adopted by someone who cared about her. At first, Agnes is only one out of the three sisters to be excited to be adopted by Gru. She is the youngest child of the three sisters. She greatly adores unicorns, as shown on various occasions.

Bonus! Naminé, Xion, Roxas, Saix, Axel as the Scooby Gang! They fight over who gets to be Scooby.

[fire-toolz]

Infinity and “I”: An interview with Fire-Toolz

Sometimes you encounter music that opens your ears to new possibilities in such a way that your subconscious burns the moment of impact into your memory. For me, the most potent of these include an early adolescent exposure to the cyclic, minimalist bliss of Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way as in-between-set music at a neighborhood basement show, doubling over laughing with my sister on our drive to school at the vocal-sourced percussion of Björk’s “Where is the Line?”, and having my 19-year-old shit permanently rocked amid my (still) daily breakfast of eggs and oatmeal by the opening few tracks of Fire-Toolz’ Drip Mental.

At least to my ears at that time, the breakneck transitions between Mego-style avant-pop glitches, digitized metal skree, snapshots of vapor memories and scream-led dance pop offered up a vision of shape-shifting music that felt wholly new, almost sacred in its profane blend of styles and sound. “To me, that constantly shifting atmosphere and mood is the ebb and flow you perceive,” says Angel Marcloid, the face behind the Fire-Toolz moniker. “Lots of waves and conditions to pass through, but they all make sense to me … Ideas flow out of me with absolutely no effort made, my body records as many of them as it can and the song gets built in little bits at a time.” The idea of musical “sense” might seem at-odds with the free-wheeling, genre-agnostic sounds of a Fire-Toolz album, but sustained exposure breeds familiarity: By the time I rolled around to my third or fourth listen through Drip Mental, the chaos began to cohere into a logical world of its own.

If my ears grown more accustomed to the utter uniqueness of Marcloid’s art, so too does it seem that “Fire-Toolz” is becoming a musical language of its own. Every new release brings the euphoria of Marcloid’s music toward higher and more mind-bending plans, and nowhere is this more true than on Rainbow Bridge, Marcloid’s new album for Hausu Mountain. The music is distinctly Marcloid, taking the same hallmarks I found on Drip Mental and refining them into sharp gems. A monophonic hymn drives “⌈Mego⌉ ≜ Maitrī,” making for one of the most patient and profound Fire-Toolz composition to date. At the other end, “Rainbow ∞ Bridge” hurls in with synthesized black metal fervor before it combusts into a grooving, tuneful section of electronics. A soaring electronic guitar solo dominates the middle third, and the track eventually loops around on itself into the ear-splitting pulses and crashes of the opening. “It’s less stitching sounds together, and more like inventing gigantic puzzles made of both large and tiny pieces dancing around and overlapping each other, interacting with each other,” Marcloid says of this segmented composition process.

A standout sonic quality of Fire-Toolz’ music—on Rainbow Bridge and all its older siblings—is its embrace of the sounds, chord structures of new age, jazz fusion, prog and a host of other styles based around extreme musicianship, and exacting production. Born in 1984, Marcloid finds that many of these sounds are inseparable from the nostalgia of her childhood. “I wasn’t raised on jazz or electro-pop or adult contemporary or electronic music, but in the distance, there it all was—in waiting rooms, in the background of movies, at the mall, in TV shows, in educational films, in video games, in my friends’ parents’ vans,” she says. These musical encounters all share a sense of accidents. From muzak to soundtracks to chance encounters, Marcloid never supposed to take this stuff in.


Though that’s precisely the path she took, and Fire-Toolz takes a magnifying glass to these background sounds and exposes their inherent beauty and strangeness. “Because of the internet, and having the privilege of being able to access those sounds and use them creatively, I am living out my second childhood in a heartfelt, authentic way,” she says. This “second childhood” is an apt analogy for the giddiness that Fire-Toolz music exudes. These sounds and harmonies are familiar—some would argue overused and tired—but Marcloid approaches them with a renewed sense of optimism. At their core, these styles hunt for religious ecstasy and otherworldly piece, cosmic qualities that Marcloid’s art exudes with boundless glee.

These ideals of grandiosity that run rampant through Marcloid’s music also appear in the conceptual and philisophical framework surrounding the Fire-Toolz project. The track titles alone convey this sense of out-of-body msyticism. Through a combination of between cheeky, internet-based puns, dense transcendental philosophy and creative linguistic construction through the use of atypical spellings, punctuation and word structuring, Marcloid constructs a verbal world inside which her singular music lives. “Infinity and wholeness is a constant theme, but it is by default. It is a framework from which I operate,” she says. “I’m on a journey; steadily growing every day, until my body no longer works. I’m not even saying I’m getting better and better, but I’m always changing. I’m constantly falling, and there is no ground.”

Stand out examples of these constructions from the past include the warm, nostalgic hum of Skinless X-1‘s “In The Computer Room @ Dusk ☕” or the scattered sonic metamorphosis of “Fluids Come Together & The ‘I Am’ Appears.” On Rainbow Bridge, one of the most stunning realizations comes on “dEcRePiT φ PhOeNiX,” a track which Marcloid says  “is a direct reference to myself and evolution. A decrepit phoenix is kind of how I see my body-mind and personality. Always escaping from the ashes, sore and tired … But, a phoenix nonetheless.” With its wobbling chromatic synthesizer melodies and arena-ready drum slaps, the music presents a colorful foundation atop which Marcloid’s screamed vocals delve head first into this beautiful crisis of change: “Melted and melded and molding crashes / Illusion of self reduced to ashes,” she sings, highlighting the twin agents of destruction and rebirth that accompany any process of change.

While these ideas might traverse the breadth of Fire-Toolz’ discography, the new album places the themes in a more specific context. “For Rainbow Bridge, I felt like I had an enormous amount I needed to say and express; so many questions to ask, and expressions of energy I needed to release. I just make music with that in mind,” says Marcloid. Specifically, “the title references the pathway that our pets take when they leave us. My cat Breakfast, who passed away in December of 2018, is the talking point of the album. A lot of it is about her, or speaking to her.” Breakfast also appears on the album (as she has on a number of previous Fire-Toolz releases), creating a sort of living/lasting artistic tribute to the lost friend. In this light, the epic constructions feel even more special, as if the explosions of colorful sounds on Rainbow Bridge are paeans to Breakfast. The songs build towers that stretch toward the bridge in search of communication.


“Fire-Toolz has always been sincere,” Marcloid says. “Melodramatically sincere.” It’s this sincerity that’s kept me coming back time and time again after that fateful February morning encounter. Especially at its most bombastic and indulgent (see: the sing-along chorus of Rainbow Bridge‘s “It’s Now Safe to Turn Off Your Computer,” the neon, fusion-drenched guitar outro “Clear Light” off 2019’s Field Whispers (Into the Crystal Palace)), Marcloid’s music teethes with a sense of purpose and meaning. What might illicit chuckles of disbelief upon first encounter transforms into a beautiful sonic odyssey that offers more intruige and magic over time.

Like each and every Fire-Toolz album, Rainbow Bridge is a mind-bending excursion that blows up music into a cosmic, surreal land, and it’s only the tip of the iceberg: In the last year or so alone, Marcloid has put out equally incredible music through her Mindspring Memories, Angelwings Marmalade, Nonlocal Forecast and Path to Lobster Believers projects, as well as a number of mastering jobs (some personal favorites include The Car? and w i n t e r q u i l t 愛が止ま). A number of these projects (including Fire-Toolz) have future releases already in progress, and there’s a high chance I’ve even left of a name or two in this list. If this seems like this stretches the limits of what one entity can perform and produce, Marcloid suggests that there’s other energy at play: “Something tells me it’s not me doing it. ‘Me’ in the individuated sense,” she says. “It feels more like something I am a part of is doing it through me.” What form this ancillary force might take is unbeknownst to anyone save Marcloid, but let’s hope their fruitful collaborations continue for years into the future. We’ll always need more rapturous shock; we’ll always need more Fire-Toolz, ad infinitum.

-Audrey Lockie/Slug Mag

https://www.slugmag.com/music/interviews/music-interviews/infinity-and-i-an-interview-with-fire-toolz/

[slovenlyrecordings]

Tommy and the Commies new "Hurtin' 4 Certain" EP reviewed at Sonic Wave Magazine!

Grab the 7inch or DL B4 UB hurtin'!

TOMMY AND THE COMMIES "Hurtin' 4 Certain" EP by Tommy And The Commies

[rabbittstewcomics]

Episode 365

November 2022 Solicitations

Comic Reviews:

DC

Batman: One Bad Day – Riddler by Tom King, Mitch Gerads

Webtoons:

Red Hood and the Outlaws

Marvel

A.X.E.: Death to the Mutants 1 by Kieron Gillen, Guiu Villanova, Dijjo Lima

Avengers 1,000,000 BC by Jason Aaron, Kev Walker, Dean White

Edge of Spider-Verse 2 by Dan Slott, Mallory Rosenthal, Ramzee, Chris Giarrusso, Ig Guara, Paco Medina, Ruairi Coleman, Walden Wong, Brian Reber, Rico Renzi

Ultraman: Mystery of UltraSeven 1 by Kyle Higgins, Mat Groom, David Lopez, Gurihiru, Davide Tinto, Espen Grundetjern, H.J. Diaz

Infinity Comics

Marvel’s Voices: America Chavez

Strange Tales She-Hulk

Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal

Image

20th Century Men 1 by Deniz Camp, S. Morian

Last Shadowhawk (30th Anniversary Special) by Brian Haberlin, Philip Tan, Daniel Henriques, Todd McFarlane

Razorblades: Small Cuts Special by James Tynion IV, Fernando Blanco, Andy Belanger, Ricardo Lopez Ortiz, Martin Simmonds, Josh Hixson, Liana Kangas

Shirtless Bear Fighter! 2 1 by Jody LeHeup, Nil Vendrell

Silver Coin 13 by Johnnie Christmas, Michael Walsh

Dark Horse

Parasomnia: The Dreaming God 1 by Cullen Bunn, Andrea Mutti

IDW

Sonic the Hedgehog Annual 2022 by Ian Flynn, Daniel Barnes, India Swift, Ian Mutchler, Evan Stanley, Aaron Hammerstrom, Gigi Dutreix, Adam Bryce Thomas, Abigail Bulmer, Thomas Rothlisberger, Natalie Haines, Joana Lafuente, Priscilla Tramontano, Heather Breckel, Leonardo Ito, Valentina Pinto

Trve Kvlt 1 by Scott Bryan Wilson, Liana Kangas, Gab Contreras

Dynamite

Lady Hel 1 by Erik Burnham, Zhengis Tasbolatov

Vault

Barbaric: Axe to Grind 1 by Michael Moreci, Nathan Gooden

Heart Eyes 1 by Dennis Hopeless, Victor Ibanez, Addison Duke

Heavy Metal

Entropy 1 by Christopher Priest, Montos

Archie

Chilling Adventures Presents… Jinx’s Grim Fairy Tales 1 by Mags Visaggio, Joe Corallo, James III, Craig Cermak, Eva Cabrera, Evan Stanley, Matt Herms

AfterShock

Jimmy’s Little Bastards 1 by Garth Ennis, Russel Braun, John Kalisz

Scout

Life and Death of Brave Captain Suave 1 by Joseph Sieracki, Kelly Williams

A Wave Blue World

Crash and Troy 1 by Jarred Lujan, Kyler Clodfelter

99 Cent Theatre:

Smart Girl 1 by Fernando Dagnino

OGN

Beastlands: The Keepers of the Kingdom by Curtis Clow, Jo Mi-Gyeong

Into Radness by Kyle Strahm, Jake Smith

Ray’s OGN Corner: Stepping Stones and Apple Crush by Lucy Knisley

Additional Reviews: She-Hulk, surprise movie review (New Mutants)

News: Omni News, Doom Patrol and Teen Titans, Batman 2, RWBY/Justice League movie, animation news, Velma cancelled, Madame Web cast, Kung Fu Panda 4, Valiant reduces output, the return of Bob Phantom, new Jason Aaron creator-owned series from Boom, Ezra Miller, two new Cullen Bunn books, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad movie, Superman and Lois loses a main actor, Mad Cave acquisition, new FF creative team, new Black Label mini from Marc Silvestri, another spider confirmed for Spider-Verse 2, Young Justice cancelled, Frank Miller variants, HBO Max, WildStorm, three new DC books from Geoff Johns, LOTR rights have been sold, new Bendis from Dark Horse, new Iron Man creative team, Enola Holmes 2, Knives Out 2

Trailers: Wednesday Addams

Comics Countdown:

Batman: The Knight 8 by Chip Zdarsky, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Ivan Plascencia

Dark Spaces: Wildfire 2 by Scott Snyder, Hayden Sherman, Ronda Pattison

Do A Powerbomb 3 by Daniel Warren Johnson, Mike Spicer

Nightwing 95 by Tom Taylor, Bruno Redondo, Adriano Lucas

Batman/Superman: World’s Finest 6 by Mark Waid, Travis Moore, Tamra Bonvillain

Undiscovered Country 20 by Scott Snyder, Charles Soule, Leonardo Marcello Grassi, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Matt Wilson

Tales From Harrow County: Lost Ones 4 by Cullen Bunn, Emily Schnall

Daredevil 2 by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, Rafael de Latorre, Matt Wilson, Ann Nocenti, Chris Giarrusso, Klaus Janson, Chris Samnee, John Romita Jr, Alex Maleev, Paul Azaceta, Mike Hawthorne, Phil Noto

Usagi Yojimbo 30 by Stan Sakai, Hi-Fi

Shirtless Bear Fighter! 2 1 by Jody LeHeup, Nil Vendrell

Check out this episode!