#the two land lubbers have bubbles

[katkalis-the-fanartist]

Sorcerers I like!

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 7, Number 2

Bitchin’ Bajas

The whole country is snowed in and Texas is starting to look a lot like the Terrordome, and we can see how people might not be laser focused on music right now, especially if they’re cold or sick or out of food. But music continues to pour in, in great quantities and beguiling diversity, and a fair amount of it is very, very good. So, while we encourage you to take care of your brothers and sisters first (by donating to organizations like Austin Mutual Aid, Community Care — Mutual Aid Houston, Feed the People Dallas or the Austin Disaster Relief Network), we also present another collection of short, mostly positive reviews of new-ish records that have caught our attention. Writers this time around include Ray Garraty, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Justin Cober-Lake, Eric McDowell, Bryon Hayes, Jonathan Shaw, Tim Clarke and Mason Jones.  

Babyface Ray — Unfuckwitable (Wavy Gang)

On his new 7 song EP Unfuckwitable, thanks to his technical skills, Babyface Ray grinds through a great variety of trendy topics under a great variety of beats: from “not rap” rap to “bad bitch” rap to “we got it off the mud” rap. It’s all very professionally done, as you expect from a professional rapper, despite Ray’s claims that he’s not one. But midway through it, behind the misty fog of bouncy production and some lines catching the ear, you can clearly see at least two problems, with the EP and Babyface Ray. First, he doesn’t have anything to say (unlike some hip hop artists who ran out of things to say, he never had any in the first place). Second, he either doesn’t rhyme or goes for a lazy rhyming. The standout here is “Like Daisy Lane”, a catchy little song, with absolutely no substance behind it.

Ray Garraty

 Bananagun — The True Story of Bananagun (Full Time Hobby)

The True Story of Bananagun by Bananagun

Ooh look, it’s tropicalia from Australia! The five-piece Bananagun hails geographically from Melbourne, but metaphysically from 1960s Sao Paulo or swinging London. Their first album swaggers like a long-haired hipster in wide-flared hip huggers, fingers snapping, funk bass slapping, keyboards and flutes gamboling in hot melodic pursuit. Multiple band members got their start in similarly 1960s-aligned Frowning Clouds, so the psych garage freakbeat elements are, perhaps, to be expected. But Bananagun runs hotter, wilder and considerably less Anglo. “People Talk Too Much” rattles the foundations with scorching funk percussion, big flares of brass and a vintage Afro-beat call and response chorus. “Mushroom Bomb” likewise heats up psychedelic apocalyptica with seething syncopations of bass and drums. Most of these tracks are a bit overstuffed, with a pawn shop’s worth of instruments enlisted in happy, dippy, everyone-get-in-the-jam exuberance, but am I going to complain about too much joy? I am not. Bring on the Bananagun.

Jennifer Kelly 

 Andrew Barker / Jon Irabagon — Anemone (Radical Documents)

Anemone by Andrew Barker + Jon Irabagon Duo

Some names tell you exactly where you stand, and others raise questions. Take the name of this record, for example; did drummer Andrew Barker (Gold Sparkle Band, Little Huey Orchestra) and tenor saxophonist Jon Irabagon (Mostly Other People Do The Killing, I Don’t Hear Nothin’ But The Blues) have the aquatic or land-lubber variety in mind? To get specific, is this record a buttercup, or a bottom-dwelling, plant-lookalike life form that waits for other aquatic species to come close enough for it to lance them, paralyze them with venom and chow down on their still-living bodies?

“Learnings,” the first of the album’s four tracks, is true to its name, being a distillation of instrumental tones and free jazz attacks that might remind you of moments from various Coltrane and Pharoah records. It feels familiar, but invigorating. The title tune comes next, and it’s a slower, more laconic performance, attractive enough to be either the sea or land variety. Then comes “Book of Knots,” which suspends an intricate percussive construction over slow-bubbling pops and barks. The record closes with “Branded Contempt,” a juxtaposition of pathos-rich blowing and restless brushwork. One can listen most of the way through this record without guessing whether it owes allegiance to Poseidon or Persephone, but the coarse intensity of Irabagon’s playing in the last minutes is the tell; this record packs a sting.

Bill Meyer

BBsitters Club — BBsitters Club & Party (Hausu Mountain)

BBsitters Club & Party by BBsitters Club

Label Hausu Mountain specializes in weird experimental electronics. Its release of a rare rock record might raise a few eyebrows. BBsitters Club, with the label's founders making up half the quartet, pulls off a tricky feat in becoming an arch rock band. BBsitters Club & Party has enough old-fashioned blues and psych-based rock to suggest a group taking itself seriously. Naming the opening track “Crazy Horse” immediately calls attention to its meta status, even if the track sounds more like Pink Floyd than Neil Young's collaborators (and there's a touch of hair metal in there, too). No group with songs called “Joel,” “Joel Reprise,” and “Joel Reprise Reprise” can take itself too seriously, and that kind of playfulness runs throughout the disc. At the same time, BBsitters Club does take its musicianship seriously. They avoid conventional forms, working in complicated structures full of surprising twists. The group can get a little proggy, but then twist it toward an Allman Brothers-style jam. If it starts to settle into the Woodstock era (see the clear nods to Hendrix and Cream), it jumps to the 1980s with an unlikely easiness. The band goes wherever they feel like rocking, with everyone invited to the party.

Justin Cober-Lake 

 Bitchin Bajas — live ateliers claus (les albums claus)

Bitchin Bajas - live ateliers claus by Bitchin Bajas

If we can all agree the pandemic has dealt musicians some dizzying blows, that’s hardly to say they had it easy before. Squeezed between tech platforms and spurned by a hostile federal government (speaking for the US, anyway), even on tour they had to contend with iffy financials, physical neglect and — because why not say it louder for those in the back? — literal theft. So Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Dan Quinlivan found themselves over 4,000 miles from home in May 2018, playing Brussels’s les ateliers claus on borrowed equipment after having their gear stolen (twice) on a European tour in support of Bajas Fresh. “Um, we’re, ah, Bitchin Bajas, from Chicago ... Illinois,” one of the trio says over the set’s first tentative tones. “And thanks ... for coming. This is gonna be great, I think. Or, we’ll see.”

Perhaps it’s not a question of either/or but both/and, the cosmic “we’ll see” of COVID-19 only amplifying how truly great it is to receive this music in the unimaginable future of three years later. As ever with the Bitchin Bajas, there is pleasure in the subtleties, whether that’s an excited concert-goer whooping as “Jammu” picks up momentum or the way each turn of the musical kaleidoscope seems to bring out new hues. That the recording doesn’t represent any dramatic departure from what we hear on the studio album or during other sets on other tours is part of its appeal and part of its power as a balm. We don’t need any more startling revelations right now. In this sense, the whole live ateliers claus series is a reminder that this venue and these artists — from Michael Chapman (vol. 1) up through Will Guthrie (vol. 12) — are still here today. If we can help repay what’s been stolen from them, they’ll be here tomorrow, too.

Eric McDowell  

 Loren Connors & Oren Ambarchi — Leone (Family Vineyard) 

Leone by Loren Connors & Oren Ambarchi

This is the first time that Loren Connors and Oren Ambarchi have collaborated, despite the myriad ties that bind the two guitarists across the global exploratory music scene. Leone offers a trio of pieces arranged like overlapping globs of paint on a painter’s palette: the two artists each perform solo with a collaborative piece in between. “Lorn” is a side-long Connors piece with the guitarist in an experimental mood, hammering the reverb-drenched strings to create a glorious cacophony. Ambarchi’s “Nor” recasts the guitar first as a church organ and then as a subaquatic communications device. When the two pair up for “Ronnel,” it is a symbiotic meeting. Connors picks out notes around which Ambarchi weaves contrails of tone. It is a mesmerizing piece, and, we hope, just the first of many joint efforts from these two.    

Bryon Hayes

Buck Curran — WFMU 'The Frow Show' Live Session (Feat. Jodi Pedrali) (Obsolete Recordings)

Buck Curran: WFMU 'The Frow Show' Live Session (Feat. Jodi Pedrali) by Obsolete Recordings

When we last caught up with Buck Curran, he was hunkered down at then ground zero for the COVID epidemic, socially isolating in Bergamo, Italy while recording the lovely acoustic-guitar-and-voice album, No Love Is Sorrow. Half a year later, still deep in the grip of a worldwide pandemic, he made this record, a duet with Italian keyboard player Jodi Pederali, revisiting one song from the previous album and adding three others. The tracks with Pederali fuse Curran’s electric blues with the bright, meditative melodies of Pederali’s piano. The two players interact and overlap in intoxicating dialogue. “Deep in the Lovin’ Arms of My Babe,” reprises the finger-picked folk of Curran’s earlier album, adding a glittering sprinkle of piano to its mournful, wistful melody. The set was recorded for Jess Jarnow’s show on WFMU and released on Bandcamp, and while not as long or as weighty as No Love Is Sorrow, it’s well worth hearing.

Jennifer Kelly  

 Jürg Frey — l’air, l’instant - deux pianos (Elsewhere)

l'air, l'instant - deux pianos by Jürg Frey

When you put two pianos together, there must surely be a temptation to see how much sound you can get out of them.  Swiss composer Jürg Frey does the opposite on the two compositions that make up this CD. Each is so sparse that an inattentive listener might think they are hearing one patient pianist, when in fact they are hearing a pair of deeply skilled interpreters.  The task assigned to Reinier van Houdt and Dante Boon is to place their notes in such precise relation to each other that they can influence each other’s pitches without interfering with them. Each musician is, as the title “toucher l’air (deux pianos)” (2019) suggests, inducing a slight disturbance in the atmosphere, lightly pressing transitory shapes into the silence that absorbs each note. “Entre les deux l’instant” (2017/2018) allows the two pianists to decide how closely they will match paces as they trade the roles of melodist and accentuator. Immune to gauche temptation, Frey seems drawn instead to see how much attention and how little sound it takes to accentuate the beauty of silence.

Bill Meyer

 Chris Garneau — The Kind (The Orchard)

THE KIND by Chris Garneau

Chris Garneau’s lush, stunning art-pop swoops and whirls and flutters in wild arcs of drama. In this fifth album, the New York City songwriter works in a restrained palette of guitar, piano, electronics and drums, but colors way outside the box with his vibrant, emotional-laden voice, which flies up into a falsetto register with an ease not heard since Jeff Buckley passed. “I know you loved me truly, but we don’t love one way, do we?” he croons on the gorgeous “Telephone,” lofting up into whistle range without losing the purity or the trueness of his tone. Cuts like the title song and “Now On” are prayerfully simple, just framing piano chords and Garneau’s highly charged delivery. But others like “Not the Child” are more intricately constructed with a lattice of picked strings, an antic syncopated beat and staccato vocal counterpoints that dance around the main line. The Kind’s songs are deeply personal and rooted in Garneau’s experiences as gay man, but they’ll resonate with anyone who’s ever loved or longed or regretted.

Jennifer Kelly

Gaunt Emperor — Femur (Self-released)

Femur by Gaunt Emperor

Some would-be emperors may no longer have clothes (looking at you, Trump), but Gaunt Emperor is unabashed about wearing its influences on its sleeve. Femur is the first LP by this California project, and Sunn 0))) and the first few records released by Earth are large presences, looming hugely just behind the sounds Gaunt Emperor generates. If you’re familiar with those other bands, you get the essential idea: deep (really deep) notes and long (really long) sustain from loud (really loud) guitars, and not much else. That said, Gaunt Emperor has an aesthetic vision that seems to be attempting to survey its own territory. While compositions like “Slow Submersion” and “The Birth of Obsidian” work from the playbook established by O’Malley and Anderson, the textures of Gaunt Emperor’s guitar tone have their own sort-of-subtle qualities. They’re pretty good. “Conception,” the second track on Femur, expresses a similar inclination towards melody that Earth began to demonstrate on The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull (2008), but Gaunt Emperor retains an unrestrained relation to volume; you can feel the heat inexorably building in the overdriven amplifier stack. In any case, this is suitable music for pondering massive, ongoing phenomena, like the calving of icebergs off Antarctica’s coast or the steady disappearance of the Amazonian rainforest — not that Femur will make you feel any better about that stuff.

Jonathan Shaw

 Luka Kuplowsky — Stardust (Mama Bird)

Stardust by Luka Kuplowsky

Soft jazzy reveries coalesce around this Toronto songwriter’s offhand, semi-spoken melodies. Little accents of acoustic bass, slide guitar, hushed harmonies dart in and out of focus, but the songs themselves come up on you obliquely, filtering in from the vents in evocatively scented clouds. Rhythms sway in undulant, bossa nova syncopations, while chords slide into resolution from slightly off center. A half-remembered jazz flute lick lick lofts through the window. At the center of it all is Luka himself, posing, but not insisting on koan-like observations. “Perfection is a noose,” he confides amid the muted wreck and roll of massed jazz sounds in “City by the Window,” but he seems unbothered by it. Perfection is an accident, and if you look at it too hard, it disappears.

Jennifer Kelly

 José Lencastre / Hernâni Faustino / Vasco Furtado — Vento (Phonogram Unit)

Vento by José Lencastre / Hernâni Faustino / Vasco Furtado

Vento is the Portuguese word for wind, and the name conveys that combination of purposeful and chance operations that converged to make this record happen. The trio of alto saxophonist José Lencastre, double bassist Hernâni Faustino and drummer Vasco Furtado didn’t book a studio with the intent to record; they just wanted a place to play for a couple hours. But the engineers had just obtained some microphones and wanted to try out their new toys. Likewise, this improvisational trio did not bring an tunes to the session, but they play with a purposefulness born of shared aesthetic values. Whether are sailing a brisk clip, as on the title track, or gradually unwinding the music at low volume and velocity, as on “Ruínas,” they operate as a real time compositional cooperative, developing their music in linear fashion. While they share a direction, they also value contrast. For example, Lencastre’s breathy tone during the latter tune’s early moments balances Faustino’s pointed twang. Since remorseless microoganisms and anti-cultural politicians are each doing their best to keep live music down, records like this serve a necessary function in reminding us of the life force that motivates improvised music.

Bill Meyer

Lilys — A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns (Frontier)

A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns by Lilys

Kurt Heasley’s Lilys made some of the most ebullient and inventive guitar music of the 1990s. The best Lilys songs sound as though they’re flying apart and being put back together as they hurtle along, killer hooks tossed aside as quickly as they start to drag you in. Though they’re perhaps best known for their Kinks-indebted breakthrough Better Can’t Make Your Life Better, this was actually a sharp turn away from the dense shoegazey atmospherics of their first couple of records. Thus far, Frontier Records has reissued their first two albums, In the Presence of Nothing and Eccsame the Photon Band, both of which are superb. The A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns EP was originally released in 1994, a transitional period when Heasley was still exploring the textural joys of distorted guitars while starting to throw down pop hooks with aplomb. Opener “Ginger” hits similar pleasure centers as Weezer’s debut, released the same year, while on “Dandy,” Heasley’s vocal sounds uncannily like Stephen Malkmus. The previously unreleased “G. Cobalt Franklin” foregrounds searing guitar tones and bulbous bass, the bulk of the melodic layers sounding like they’re bleeding through from the next room, peppered with swirling flange and voice recordings. The second half of this expanded edition comprises songs originally demoed for Eccsame the Photon Band, and later released in 2000 on a split EP with Aspera Ad Astra. They’re decent enough, though feel like they’re missing the spark of the best Lilys creations. So, while this amounts to a far-from-essential Lilys release, it’s fascinating to hear Heasley in transition, working out how to reconcile his love for melody with his immersion in guitar noise.

Tim Clarke

 Fred Lonberg-Holm — Lisbon Solo (Notice)

Lisbon Solo by Fred Lonberg-Holm

As befits a guy who has also recorded a “solo” record in the company of a Florida swamp full of frogs, Fred Lonberg-Holm picks his recording locations strategically, and location has a lot to do with how this album turned out. It was done at an old and well-appointed studio in Lisbon, Portugal, where he could be sure that the microphones would catch every creak, groan and polyphonic wail he might draw out of his main instrument. But he also knew, from prior visits, that he would have access to some seriously over-the-hill pianos. While most of the album is devoted to savagely bowed attacks, the odd digressions into detuned, radiant chimes deliver just enough respite to keep you off balance and on the edge of your seat.

Bill Meyer 

 Dan Melchior — Odes (Cudighi Records)  

'Odes' by Dan Melchior

Dan Melchior is likely a recognizable name to Dusted readers; he has made quite a string of releases over the years. This cassette/digital release, recorded in 2016, is a subdued affair, nine songs for the most part following the same blueprint: a track of strummed or lightly picked acoustic guitar with a fuzzy electric lead layered on top. The foundational guitar tracks establish a calm, repetitive cycle, giving some of these songs an almost raga-like feel, in some cases through a hazy reverb: "Tybee" feels like you're sitting in the next room listening to him play through a closed door.  

Calling the overdubs "guitar leads" implies the wrong feel. While played through fuzz or distortion, the mood is a woozy one, more opiated than energetic, but in a drifting, pleasant way. There's an over-arching melancholy throughout these songs, one person alone playing to satisfy a need. Knowing Melchior was facing the recent loss of his wife Letha certainly colors it, but even a listener ignorant of that back-story would feel the emotional resonance.  

These nine ramshackle, loose instrumental pieces are personal, incomplete, and like having someone entrust you with private stories in song form.  

Mason Jones

Mint Field — Sentimiento Mundial (Felte)

Sentimiento Mundial by Mint Field

Mint Field, from Mexico City, filters the feedback and noise of shoegaze guitars through a pensive screen, finding an aura of nostalgia in between and among blinding walls of scree. Estrella del Sol Sánchez contributes two of the band’s signature sounds, the dreamy, delicate vocals and the swirling masses of altered guitar. She is supported by Sebastian Neyra on bass and Callum Brown on drums. The volume level varies song to song, but it’s all mesmerizing and good. “Delicadeza” breezes in on the tenderest sort of sigh, the softest, most lyrical strummed accompaniment, but “Contingencia” digs in and pounds, drums cranking, bass thudding and guitars winging out in wild arabesques of distorted sound. The easiest comparison might be the similarly hauntingly voiced Lush, but there’s something special here in the soft, keening soprano calm at the center of even the most agitated cuts.  

Jennifer Kelly

 Roy Montgomery — Island of Lost Souls (Grapefruit)

Roy Montgomery 40th Anniversary 2021 LP Series by Roy Montgomery

In 2021, guitarist Roy Montgomery celebrates 40 years of music-making with the release of four new LPs, beginning with Island of Lost Souls. Though 2018’s fantastic Suffuse included vocals from artists such as Haley Fohr (Circuit Des Yeux), Julianna Barwick and Liz Harris (Grouper), Island of Lost Souls is entirely instrumental, comprising four pieces, each dedicated to a late artist (actor Sam Shepard, and musicians Adrian Borland, Peter Principle and Florian Fricke). Though wordless, Montgomery’s guitar speaks volumes, flickering and flowing with the liquid grace of a player intimately familiar with both his fretboard and the effects pedals at his feet, sending waves of tone cascading with delay and reverb. Plus, on the side-long, climactic “The Electric Children of Hildegard von Bingen,” Montgomery pitch-shifts his guitar so it really ascends to the heavens, where it takes up residence for 22 minutes. Fans of Windy & Carl, Flying Saucer Attack and The Durutti Column, take note.

Tim Clarke

 Jon Mueller — Family Secret (American Dreams)

Family Secret by Jon Mueller

A family secret is usually a multigenerational skeleton in the closet that is either sorrowful or sinister. For percussionist and Volcano Choir member Jon Mueller, it is the former: a series of familial rifts that became the unlikely muse for this collection of reverberating drones. Mueller employs instruments that produce multiple resonant tones, such as singing bowls and gongs, to create rich pools of complex sound. Metallic hues brighten subterranean rumblings while enigmatic dapples of condensed steam coalesce into liquid shapes. The drummer conjures ghastly creatures through extending the vocabulary of his drum kit. Cymbal scrapes become banshee wails and scoured skins emanate uncanny whispers. With Family Secret, Mueller manifests his personal demons as phantom signals. He transmogrifies emotional strife into physical actions which then become ethereal. Ironically, the resulting sounds are actually soothing. Pain has never sounded so sweet.  

Bryon Hayes 

 Primitive Motion — Descendants of Air (Kindling)

Primitive Motion is the Brisbane-based duo of Sandra Selig and Leighton Craig, and Descendants of Air is their seventh album, previously only available as a CD given away at live shows. You can immediately imagine what the album sounds like based on the artist name and album title alone: rustic yet cosmic, full of space and open to spontaneity. Recorded on the banks of the Enoggera Reservoir, these eight meandering pieces prominently feature the sounds of wind and leaves, plus the calls of raucous Australian birds, while Selig and Craig insinuate suggestions of melodies and chords on nylon-string guitar, woodwinds, and battery-powered keyboards, and gently massage the air with percussive patters. Though part of the appeal of the recording is its deliberate vagueness, the most affecting piece, and the shortest, is “True Orbit,” where a strident theme built around melodica, keyboard and voice seems to emerge fully formed from the aether.

Tim Clarke

 Socioclast — S/T (Carbonized Records)

Socioclast by Socioclast

In heavy music’s current moment of endless genre-hopping and hybridization, it’s nice to hear a record that understands exactly what it wants to be. Socioclast is a grindcore record. Like Assück’s grindcore’s records. A lot like Assück’s grindcore records. You get all the high-velocity chugging crunch and guttural grunting — vocals so deep in the gullet that it’s pretty hard to pick up any lyrics. The song titles, however, suggest the ideological dispositions you might expect: “Surveillance, Normalization, Examination,” “Specter Signal,” “Psychodrone,” “Propaganda Algorithm.” There can be a fine line between paying tribute and being derivative, but Socioclast creates an homage rather than an outright imitation. This is 21st-century music. It sounds a lot clearer and slicker than anything Assück or the early Slap A Ham bands committed to vinyl. Like Slap A Ham, Socioclast is a California-based musical phenomenon, featuring dudes who have played in bands like Deadpressure and Mortuous; Colin Tarvin’s death-metal grooves are especially prominent on some of the record’s best tracks, including “Eden’s Tongue” and “Omega.” But this is assertively a grindcore record. Given that version of traditionalism (and yes, events have come to such a pass that grindcore has a tradition), it turns out that Socioclast isn’t all that socioclastic. So goes the strangeness of semantics. But the music is good.

Jonathan Shaw

 Space Quartet — Under the Sun (Noise Precision Library)

Under the Sun by Space Quartet

Space is a persistent and multi-faceted theme in the music of the Portuguese electronic musician, Rafael Toral. And while his name is not appended to the Space Quartet’s, make no mistake, this is his band, playing his music. But it is a music derived from ideas that can’t be realized without the right people. So, while Toral has delved repeatedly into the sounds that people imagine they might make and that they actually find in outer space, and he has explored empty and variously filled spaces as starting points for his music, the point of the Space Quartet is to find the right people, and give them enough space to realize a new kind of jazz. Under the Sun is the combo’s second recording, made with a substantially different line-up than the iteration that recorded the self-titled debut for Clean Feed Records. Toral has sacrificed the all-electronic front line and switched drummers, but in doing so he may have found the right crew to take him where he needs to go. Across the album’s two 21-minute-long tracks, there are usually several ongoing dialogues taking place between the players, which manifest intriguing degrees of mutual challenge and support. But the way that Toral’s elongated feedback lines and Nuno Torres’ stuttering alto saxophone phrases flow around Hugo Antunes’ stark, elastic double bass figures and percussionist Nuno Morão’s lightly deployed, carefully modulated streams of textures and beats that extends a lineage anchored in the language that Cecil Taylor’s trio first released into the air at the Café Montmartre back in 1962.

Bill Meyer 

 Stinkhole — Mold Encrusted Egg (Mangel Records)

MOLD ENCRUSTED EGG by STINKHOLE

The name sort of says it all, but to clarify anyways: Stinkhole languishes in a slimy musical ditch, bottoming out somewhere between the No Wave skronk of Mars and the transgressive caterwauling of Suckdog. As was the case with both of those acts, the dissonance and the gross-out antics can obscure some interesting ideas. Clawing your way through the dense layers of yuck (or, depending on how you’re wired, enjoying it) is integral to the challenge posed by the experience. All the gagging vocalizations, primitivist drumming and semi-tuned bass whomps on Mold Encrusted Egg occupy prominent positions on the surface of songs like “Orange Juice.” But listen to Mold Encrusted Egg a little more closely: there are some rabid grooves, feral guitar breaks and a lot of impenetrably weird environments of sampled sounds, tape manipulations and unidentifiable scree. Is it fun? Does it sound good? Fuck no. The band’s name is Stinkhole. They write songs with titles like “Slippin’ on Slug Slime” and “Emancipated by Hair.” They roll with the whacko punk and noise bands that have congregated around the Berlin-based Flennen digital music zine and its accompanying label. Dig the stink. Rock has rarely been so richly rotten.

Jonathan Shaw

 Styrofoam Winos — S-T (Sophomore Lounge)

STYROFOAM WINOS "S/T" by Styrofoam Winos

Stryofoam Winos brings together three old friends to swap songs in Nashville. You might recognize Lou Turner from her solo album, Songs for John Venn, a sly and subversion of the songwriter’s wholesome alt-country charm. Joe Kenkel is a kindred spirit, a folk rock singer with respect but not reverence for the certitudes of Southern life. Says Nashville Scene of his solo Dream Creator, “Kenkel, a sophisticated folk-rock songwriter, documents Music City’s idiosyncrasies on his debut LP, with acutely observant lyrics.”  And Trevor Nikrant completes this anonymous all-star line-up; his 2017 debut caught the ear of Aquarium Drunkard’s J. Steel who called it “Oddball baroque psychedelia broadcasted from a basement on the east side.” The three kicked things off with a lo-fi and charming debut, Winos at Home, in 2017, but this self-titled LP takes things up a notch with songs that balance craft with eccentricity. “Stuck in a Museum” jangles and rambles in an antic, neurotically intelligent way, as the narrator finds himself entrapped amid the exhibits, staring fixedly at a teapot from the Tang Dynasty. “Roy G. Biv” turns contemplative—and twangy—as Turner sings plaintively about rainbows and colors, the way things change and how hard it can be to keep up. “Maybe More” glints with mandolin, but remains pared back, as a down-trodden singer (one of the guys, not sure which) sings about a life stuck in neutral, same book, same coat, same jokes, but beautiful. The disc has the feel of a warm, casual gathering, with friends jumping in on harmonies or picking up the bass. The songs are sharp and lovely without a lot of fuss.

Jennifer Kelly

[angstalottle]

Looks Like Lightning

Part 2

After Keith had found out about his scars Lance found him hesitating in front of the mirror. Found himself questioning if he really needed to cover the marks that Keith had called beautiful. Then he would imagine the others reaction. The worry from Hunk. The endless questions from Pidge. And worst of all, the pity from Shiro. So Lance decided every morning that he would keep his scars hidden… Just for a little longer. ——————————– Allura announced a new kind of training in all terrains and that they would be starting with water. For a moment Lance had panicked until she explained they would still be wearing their armour as to get used to fighting completely submerged. So that’s how they found themselves in a flooded training room dodging attacks from the weird mermaid sparing robots that kept appearing every few minuets. Most of them found it difficult. Keith and Hunk especially struggled to avoid the small spears they carried. Pidge being small was doing a little better but still clumsily frog legged around the room. Even Shiro seemed to struggle. Not used to being both almost weightless and held back by the water resistance. He tried his best to fight the robots but found that all powering up his Galra hand did was release a large screen of bubbles giving the robot a chance to attack. It was only Lance that really thrived. He swam effortlessly taking out the robots with his gun, even using the bubbles the blast created as a distraction. All and all he truly was in his element.

“Hunk on your left!” Shiro called. “I got it!” Lance smirked as he shot the robot blasting it to pierces. “Keith behind-” Pidge was cut off by Lance also taking out that one. “Jeez Lance save some for the rest of us.” Keith rolled his eyes. He meant it in good fun and it was actually nice to see Lance so confident in himself for once. “No can do Mullet, if I left it up to you land lubbers then we would be swarming in these things.” “Oh I didn’t realise it was so easy.” Allura teased as she pressed a button “perhaps this will give you a challenge.” The floor slid open and Lance grinned ready for anything. Then he saw the bots coming out. He felt his chest go tight and the scars on his body burn. He could handle anything… but that. Swimming up to them were atleast 50 robot jelly fish with long tendrils flickering with electricity. “Please Lance has this right man?” Hunk asked looking at his best friend with a smile. However when Lance didn’t answer the others became worried. “Lance?” Shiro asked. Keith’s eyes widened in realisation. “Allura end the training sequence!” The first Jelly fish reach Lance and was inches was stinging him, but the blue paladin didn’t move, just stared at a far off place no one else’s could see. “What? Why?” She asked. “Just do it! Now!” He yelled jetting forwards to pull Lance away a little too late. Lance felt the shock. It felt just like the one that got his ankle. The hundreds that covered his body as he struggled to the surface, desperate for air and to be away from the pain. Lance began to scream. Long and loud like a feral animal being ripped apart. Allura didn’t know what had happened but she pressed the emergency button to drain the room and pull the jelly fish away back into the floor. However even once the water was gone and Lance was curled up on the floor in Keith’s arms he didn’t stop screaming. Allura and the others ran over to them. “What’s wrong! What happened?” Shiro asked as he pulled Lance’s helmet off only to gasp in shock. Lance’s eyes were wide with terror tears streaming down his cheeks. Shiro knew that look well. PTSD… But that wasn’t the only thing that caused the gasp. The tears had washed away the makeup revealing the long thin scars on his face. Keith looked up at him “it’s not my right to say…” “Wait you know?” Hunk asked surprised. Lance was his best friend and even he didn’t know he had so many scars. Keith nodded “yeah… we erm had a bonding moment.” From the way Keith blushed Shiro guessed there was more to it then he was letting on. But right now that wasn’t important. Lance was. “Ok let’s get Lance to the common room and wait for him to come out of… this.” Shiro bent down to try and scoop the blue paladin up but was beaten to it by Keith, who after struggling for a moment thanks to Lance’s lankiness was able to carry him. ——————————- Almost two hours later Lance was starting to blink awake. It felt like he had been sleeping for a long time but some reason felt exhursted. As he sat up and looked around he was surprised to see he was out of his armour lying on the couch with a blanket draped over him and the others watching him with worry clear on their faces. He was confused for a moment before it all came flooding back to him and he groaned. “How much do you know?” He asked glancing at Keith. “Nothing.” Hunk said with a note of disappointment to his tone. “I didn’t tell them anything. I said it was up to you.” Keith added looking at his feet. “And you don’t have to tell us anything. We saw the scars on your face and though we would like it if you felt like you could tell us.” Shiro crouched down so he was eye level with Lance. “We just want to know how to help you.” Lance nodded slowly, shivering at the memory of the jelly fish and brought the blanket tighter around him. However he found himself wanting a different kind of warmth. The kind from a certain red Paladins arms. “I do trust you guys…. it’s just that its hard to talk about.” Hunk frowned slightly as he looked at the marks “it was jelly fish… wasn’t it?” Lance didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to for Hunk to know he was right. “I… I fell into a school of them when I was a kid. I don’t really remember much but the pain.” He didn’t know the tears were falling until he felt arms around him. He looked up to see Keith was the one hugging him protectively, like he could make him forget the pain just by being there. And in a way he could. “I’m sorry Lance… I did not realise the attack bots would cause such a reaction.” Allura looked at her feet guiltily and Lance only smiled at her. “It’s ok princess you didn’t know… the only reason Keith did was because he hid my makeup and well… I kinda had a bit of a breakdown.” Pidge gasped “that was kinda my fault too… I was sick of you hogging the bathroom. I never imagined it was because of…” she trailed off gesturing to Lance but he shrugged. “It’s ok, in over it now… I guess wearing makeup around you guys is kinda stupid.” “Not if it makes you feel better.” Keith said sternly “makeup or not your decision isn’t stupid… and your beautiful either way.” Keith looked down as he blushed not seeing the large grin that spread across his face. “That’s Keith talk for I love you, just so you know.” Shiro laughed as Keith whipped his head round to glare at him. Lance chuckled as he kissed Keith on the cheek. “And that’s Lance talk for I love you too Mullet.” If possible Keith blushed even redder and was more embarrassed then he had ever been but also happier then ever. And so was Lance. Because he knew his team loved him and would feel worry about his scars, or ask endless questions, or even pity him for them. He was just Lance to them, and that was enough.

[comiconverse]

Game Review: Gravity Rush 2

Gravity Rush 2 is a gravity-defying adventure game out now for PlayStation 4. Alan Stock slips into his sexy nurse outfit and takes a break from the skies to bring you this review for ComiConverse.

Game Review: Gravity Rush 2

It’s been a while since I played a game with so many contrasts. In Gravity Rush 2, one minute you feel like a complete bad-ass in some wild anime movie, soaring through the sky, unleashing devastating attacks on your enemies and it all looks so damned good. And the next minute you’re flailing around in the air, smacking off things like a clumsy oaf, disorientated and confused, battling the camera and controls. It’s a game where one mission could see you fighting Gravity Shifters around floating islands in a swirling sky full of explosions, but in the next mission you could be waiting in a pancake stall line chatting to the customers, or taking a photo of an old lady and her son outside his new shop. These are the strange range of experiences that the world of Gravity Rush offers.

I didn’t play the first Gravity Rush, or really know anything about it, so I came into the sequel with no preconceptions. The first thing that struck me was the incredible graphics. Normally this is low on my list of priorities – but this game is simply gorgeous. In fact I’d even go so far as to say it’s one of the most beautiful games of all time – and that’s saying something. It’s not just the high fidelity visuals, with its subtly cel-shaded characters against detailed, lavish environments. It’s the overall quality of graphical design that seeps through every part of Gravity Rush 2.

Incredible environment design, lovely palettes from vibrant colours to muted pastels, amazing lighting, visual filters and impressive special effects combine to create a truly mind-blowing visual feast. Artistic polish extends to the most minor details, from the in-game menus to the attractive animated comic dialogue scenes. It looks great in screenshots but you have to see this game in motion to really appreciate it – the world comes alive with shifting clouds, twinkling motes of dust, swirling gravity storms, changing hues, the bustle of flying life and amazing character animation as you leap, bound and fly through the environment, arms flailing, hair billowing in the wind. It really looks at times as though you are watching an insanely expensive Japanese movie – and is set to some sweet jazz and orchestral tunes.

But enough gushing over the graphics. What do you do in Gravity Rush 2?  You play as Kat, a feisty girl with the power to control gravity itself – called Gravity Shifting. This lets you fly around the sky at will – simply point in a direction and hit a button and you will ‘fall’ in that direction. You can stop your movement and hover in midair by pressing the same button. Although initially, this control method seems restrictive compared to standard flight games, you soon get used to it, constantly readjusting your direction as you surge through the air – with an excellent sense of speed. You can adjust your aim once flying by tilting the joypad, but this never feels that intuitive and there’s so much going on it’s easy to forget- instead it’s easier to simply move the camera with the joystick. You explore and get around environments by taking to the skies, unless a mission restricts your use of Gravity Shifting. You have aerial charge attacks, a crappy dodge, and you can use a stasis bubble to pick up nearby objects – they’ll float around you until you fling them at a target. A gravity meter limits the amount of time that you can Gravity Shift for, but it drains slowly and refills after just a few seconds of falling or landing, meaning staying airborne is easy. Checkpoints are also numerous and generous throughout the game, death isn’t too punishing.

Back on ground, Kat’s abilities are your standard adventure game affair – run, jump, kick, dodge. But, if she lands on a wall or ceiling whilst Gravity Shifting she can also run along them – although you don’t need to use this much (thankfully – it’s really confusing). She can also use a Gravity Slide to surf along surfaces at speed. Although at the start of the game you are a land-lubber, you soon get access to Gravity Shifting and the freedom and speed of movement it provides is exhilarating. As you progress through the game you eventually unlock two other types of Gravity Style which provide variations on the gravity gameplay and combat, and they are fun too, although they don’t change flying much – which is what you spend most of your time doing. Switching Gravity Style is done instantly through a flick of the touchpad allowing you a bit of strategy in how to approach encounters.

There’s also lots of combat, usually against the boring amorphous black blobs baddies called the Navi, thugs, or military factions. Combat runs into problems and goes hand in hand with problems with flying. Although when they both work fine, it’s a joy to play, at other times you will be shouting abuse at your screen. The main culprits are the camera and the imprecise control you feel when moving around at speed. Most attacks rely on a loose targeting system, without any lock-on option. As you’re usually flying around at speed, overshooting or missing your target is very easy to do and you find yourself wheeling around for missed attacks. Judging distances and stopping at the correct spots is difficult too. Add to this a disorientation of moving fast around a 3D space where attacks and enemies move and attack from all directions and things can turn sour. It often feels like you’re not in control enough of what you’re doing, and it gets frustrating. The game also occasionally forces you into tight indoor spaces, where the camera and your speed of movement just can’t cope, making for some miserable sections that are annoying and disorienting.

But when it works, it works well – combo attacks are satisfying, as are landing mid-air charge kicks and various special attacks. Some boss battles feel and look like Manga duels that you’re taking part in. Chasing speeding opponents through the air as the world rushes past is brilliant when everything just clicks. The pure freedom. Like I said at the start, it’s a game of contrasts – where you can go from feeling empowered to frustrated in a heartbeat.

The price of power in Gravity Rush 2 is that at times it feels a bit too much. The game relies heavily on nav-points to get you from A to B, and the fact you can fly at will means you don’t often need to do much more than aim in the right direction and hold a button. Some missions and sidequests encourage exploration, and others limit your powers somewhat making you use the other movement abilities at Kat’s disposal, but these are the exceptions. The playgrounds it gives you in the amazing environments are wonderful, but ther’s little incentive to play around with the tools available because flying is so strong. But on the flipside, you won’t get much closer to a game where you feel like Superman all the time.

The world of Gravity Rush 2 is one of fantastical floating islands, providing a lovely landscape and a perfect playground for you to use your gravity-defying abilities. The environments are vast and mostly seamless with a great sense of scale – you can fly for many minutes before you’ll hit any kind of barrier. Free-fall can induce vertigo in the faint-hearted, as you plummet through clouds. Fortunately, Kat can soak up a ground smashing fall impact without a scratch, although of course, the pros like me will try to Gravity Switch at the last instant for a cool save.

Much of the game takes place in huge cities made up of separate floating districts or houseboats, often layered vertically, making full use of the sky. Flying cars and craft putter the airways although strangely, there’s a lack of birds in the sky, a bit of a shame given the subject matter. A colourful populace of all ages and races fill the streets and markets. Exploring and navigating these spaces is a joy – they’re very detailed and look fantastic, each area with its own distinct theme and look. There’s also other worlds and fantastical dimensions to experience which are gorgeous in their own right, natural or mystical – a welcome break from the tenements, towers and domes of the cities.

But although flying around these busy skies is a large part of the experience, Gravity Rush 2 has a big focus on people. Kat begins her adventure in a floating mining village made up of conjoined houseboats, and her interactions with her friends and its crew play a big part in the story. Quests are usually to help other characters with tasks both big and small, Kat being rather prone to be taken advantage of by some pretty unscrupulous characters. Major story events are told through lovely animated comics, as the village reaches the big city and events of more magnitude start to take course. The city teems with people all going about their daily life. This is no RPG though, chat is limited to key characters, or when a mission dictates you can interrogate the public for information (an often-annoying rigmarole). The populace of this world are a very forgiving bunch, and long-suffering – as you happily play around with gravity in their vicinity, destroying stalls, ruining houses, knocking people over, accidentally levitating them, usually followed by a fall into the great void below.

This isn’t really a serious game though – the lack of consequence for tomfoolery like this, and the general fun and charming attitude of the game overall is refreshing. Kat is a cheery and playful girl, and there’s plenty of wit and humour sprinkled throughout the story and missions. Gravity Rush 2 excels in the silly, especially through amusing side missions and has a likeable, colourful cast of characters. When the stakes are raised, it’s never for too long, and there’s always some pleasant distraction to break things up. Case in point: in one mission you infiltrate a military base to help a deadly revolution, but along the way you get mistaken for a performing troup’s singer and then end up warbling over a smooth jazz band for the base’s crew, changing of course into a little sexy red number!

When you aren’t flying around during missions, you’ll be doing all manner of random tasks, whether that’s in the main story or the many side-quests. There” a lot of filler here, fly from A to B, fetch quests, follow the slow-moving dude, escort missions, collect all the things, and so on. A number of ill-conceived stealth missions are present – which become infuriating thanks to poor visual communication and instant fails when spotted. Other tasks are better and provide interesting uses for your powers. Kat has a nasty habit of doing random errands for citizens and friends, ranging from the mundane and tedious to the brilliant.

One funny mission has you taking photos of pretty young ladies for a pervy old man who claims ill health – Kat falls for it hook line and sinker, so you have to go around asking girls in the street for photos. As you can imagine, the chap is pretty pleased when he gets them…. Credit: Sony

Kat gets given a camera when she arrives in the city, and some missions have her taking photos of places and people, or doing treasure hunts based on finding a location in a photo she’s been given. It’s a lot of fun. Although some missions are simply boring like the aforementioned filler, others have a lot of imagination and make you use a range of your abilities. Memorable encounters include a police training excercise, doing stunts for a movie shoot, and taking a boy on a treasure hunt around his hometown following photographic clues from his deceased grandfather. So, there’s plenty of diversion from simply flying around. Sadly, despite the imagination in some of the scenarios, the gameplay reality doesn’t always match – some tasks can be laborious, tedious, frustrating or unfair. Some story missions feature unimaginative linear environments featuring stone tablets which force your through uninspiring challenges which strip your powers or make you fight waves of spawning enemies. Although sometimes it’s fun to have your all-powerful abilities restricted just so you have to try some other skills like the fun Lunar jumps, it gets a bit old – one of gaming’s oldest and most annoying tricks of taking all your toys away.

Gravity Rush 2’s story is a mixed bag, there’s plenty of heart to it and side-missions flesh out Kat’s relationships with the many side-characters in the game. However especially as the main story goes on, it throws more and more big plot events and characters seemingly randomly at you – keeping the action going strong. But many of these events feel like they’ve come from nowhere, having little to no set-up, and consequential moments for the characters and the game world as a whole are skimmed over and not really explored in any depth. It’s not a huge deal as story isn’t the main driving factor behind the game – overall it makes a better effort than many games in this kind of genre, and the setting is great. Playing the first Gravity Rush game isn’ required to understand or enjoy what’s going on, but a lot of the cast re-appears eventually, and the story continues where the first left off. Be sure to play beyond the final credits, as there are a number of extra story chapters to play through to reach the true ending, which has lots of story tie-in to the first game and the world’s events.

I have to give special mention to the extra challenges and photo tools available. Time trials and combat challenges allow you to aim for high scores and challenge other players. The game has a really nice integration online – a news feed trickles in challenges available from other players and you encounter them on your explorations within the game world. The treasure hunt feature is the best though – similar to the single player versions, you get a photo from another player showing you a photo giving you a clue to a nearby treasure location. If you find the treasure, they also get a reward when they next log in. If you’re successful you then take a new photo clue for that treasure, continuing the chain for a future player. It’s a wonderful idea and there’s plenty of these to find. Continuing the photo fun, you can also share your in-game photos online, in the game world you’ll find spots where other players have taken photos – which you can view and rate to give them rewards. Your photos might also be found and rated by others. As you complete side missions and other content, you unlock more filters, costumes, poses and props which you can use in your photos.

Despite some rough edges in gameplay, tedium and inconsistency throughout Gravity Rush 2, you can always forgive it. Its so full of charm, a sense of joy and character – and nothing beats the pure fun of flying or falling around these amazing environments with such tear-inducingly gorgeous visuals. Its a real spectacle that I encourage everyone to experience, it might not be perfect; but in environment design, art style and freedom of movement it soars above many of its peers.

  The post Game Review: Gravity Rush 2 appeared first on ComiConverse.

[readbookywooks]

The Mermaid’s Lagoon

If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly moment; if there could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the mermaids singing.

 The children often spent long summer days on this lagoon, swimming or floating most of the time, playing the mermaid games in the water, and so forth. You must not think from this that the mermaids were on friendly terms with them: on the contrary, it was among Wendy's lasting regrets that all the time she was on the island she never had a civil word from one of them. When she stole softly to the edge of the lagoon she might see them by the score, especially on Marooners' Rock, where they loved to bask, combing out their hair in a lazy way that quite irritated her; or she might even swim, on tiptoe as it were, to within a yard of them, but then they saw her and dived, probably splashing her with their tails, not by accident, but intentionally.

 They treated all the boys in the same way, except of course Peter, who chatted with them on Marooners' Rock by the hour, and sat on their tails when they got cheeky. He gave Wendy one of their combs.

 The most haunting time at which to see them is at the turn of the moon, when they utter strange wailing cries; but the lagoon is dangerous for mortals then, and until the evening of which we have now to tell, Wendy had never seen the lagoon by moonlight, less from fear, for of course Peter would have accompanied her, than because she had strict rules about every one being in bed by seven. She was often at the lagoon, however, on sunny days after rain, when the mermaids come up in extraordinary numbers to play with their bubbles. The bubbles of many colours made in rainbow water they treat as balls, hitting them gaily from one to another with their tails, and trying to keep them in the rainbow till they burst. The goals are at each end of the rainbow, and the keepers only are allowed to use their hands. Sometimes a dozen of these games will be going on in the lagoon at a time, and it is quite a pretty sight.

 But the moment the children tried to join in they had to play by themselves, for the mermaids immediately disappeared. Nevertheless we have proof that they secretly watched the interlopers, and were not above taking an idea from them; for John introduced a new way of hitting the bubble, with the head instead of the hand, and the mermaids adopted it. This is the one mark that John has left on the Neverland.

 It must also have been rather pretty to see the children resting on a rock for half an hour after their mid-day meal. Wendy insisted on their doing this, and it had to be a real rest even though the meal was make-believe. So they lay there in the sun, and their bodies glistened in it, while she sat beside them and looked important.

 It was one such day, and they were all on Marooners' Rock. The rock was not much larger than their great bed, but of course they all knew how not to take up much room, and they were dozing, or at least lying with their eyes shut, and pinching occasionally when they thought Wendy was not looking. She was very busy, stitching.

 While she stitched a change came to the lagoon. Little shivers ran over it, and the sun went away and shadows stole across the water, turning it cold. Wendy could no longer see to thread her needle, and when she looked up, the lagoon that had always hitherto been such a laughing place seemed formidable and unfriendly.

 It was not, she knew, that night had come, but something as dark as night had come. No, worse than that. It had not come, but it had sent that shiver through the sea to say that it was coming. What was it?

 There crowded upon her all the stories she had been told of Marooners' Rock, so called because evil captains put sailors on it and leave them there to drown. They drown when the tide rises, for then it is submerged.

 Of course she should have roused the children at once; not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them, but because it was no longer good for them to sleep on a rock grown chilly. But she was a young mother and she did not know this; she thought you simply must stick to your rule about half an hour after the mid-day meal. So, though fear was upon her, and she longed to hear male voices, she would not waken them. Even when she heard the sound of muffled oars, though her heart was in her mouth, she did not waken them. She stood over them to let them have their sleep out. Was it not brave of Wendy?

 It was well for those boys then that there was one among them who could sniff danger even in his sleep. Peter sprang erect, as wide awake at once as a dog, and with one warning cry he roused the others.

 He stood motionless, one hand to his ear.

 "Pirates!" he cried. The others came closer to him. A strange smile was playing about his face, and Wendy saw it and shuddered. While that smile was on his face no one dared address him; all they could do was to stand ready to obey. The order came sharp and incisive.

 "Dive!"

 There was a gleam of legs, and instantly the lagoon seemed deserted. Marooners' Rock stood alone in the forbidding waters as if it were itself marooned.

 The boat drew nearer. It was the pirate dinghy, with three figures in her, Smee and Starkey, and the third a captive, no other than Tiger Lily. Her hands and ankles were tied, and she knew what was to be her fate. She was to be left on the rock to perish, an end to one of her race more terrible than death by fire or torture, for is it not written in the book of the tribe that there is no path through water to the happy hunting-ground? Yet her face was impassive; she was the daughter of a chief, she must die as a chief's daughter, it is enough.

 They had caught her boarding the pirate ship with a knife in her mouth. No watch was kept on the ship, it being Hook's boast that the wind of his name guarded the ship for a mile around. Now her fate would help to guard it also. One more wail would go the round in that wind by night.

 In the gloom that they brought with them the two pirates did not see the rock till they crashed into it.

 "Luff, you lubber," cried an Irish voice that was Smee's; "here's the rock. Now, then, what we have to do is to hoist the redskin on to it and leave her here to drown."

 It was the work of one brutal moment to land the beautiful girl on the rock; she was too proud to offer a vain resistance.

 Quite near the rock, but out of sight, two heads were bobbing up and down, Peter's and Wendy's. Wendy was crying, for it was the first tragedy she had seen. Peter had seen many tragedies, but he had forgotten them all. He was less sorry than Wendy for Tiger Lily: it was two against one that angered him, and he meant to save her. An easy way would have been to wait until the pirates had gone, but he was never one to choose the easy way.

 There was almost nothing he could not do, and he now imitated the voice of Hook.

 "Ahoy there, you lubbers!" he called. It was a marvellous imitation.

 "The captain!" said the pirates, staring at each other in surprise.

 "He must be swimming out to us," Starkey said, when they had looked for him in vain.

 "We are putting the redskin on the rock," Smee called out.

 "Set her free," came the astonishing answer.

 "Free!"

 "Yes, cut her bonds and let her go."

 "But, captain -- "

 "At once, d'ye hear," cried Peter, "or I'll plunge my hook in you."

 "This is queer!" Smee gasped.

 "Better do what the captain orders," said Starkey nervously.

 "Ay, ay." Smee said, and he cut Tiger Lily's cords. At once like an eel she slid between Starkey's legs into the water.

 Of course Wendy was very elated over Peter's cleverness; but she knew that he would be elated also and very likely crow and thus betray himself, so at once her hand went out to cover his mouth. But it was stayed even in the act, for "Boat ahoy!" rang over the lagoon in Hook's voice, and this time it was not Peter who had spoken.

 Peter may have been about to crow, but his face puckered in a whistle of surprise instead.

 "Boat ahoy!" again came the voice.

 Now Wendy understood. The real Hook was also in the water.

 He was swimming to the boat, and as his men showed a light to guide him he had soon reached them. In the light of the lantern Wendy saw his hook grip the boat's side; she saw his evil swarthy face as he rose dripping from the water, and, quaking, she would have liked to swim away, but Peter would not budge. He was tingling with life and also top-heavy with conceit. "Am I not a wonder, oh, I am a wonder!" he whispered to her, and though she thought so also, she was really glad for the sake of his reputation that no one heard him except herself.

 He signed to her to listen.

 The two pirates were very curious to know what had brought their captain to them, but he sat with his head on his hook in a position of profound melancholy.

 "Captain, is all well?" they asked timidly, but he answered with a hollow moan.

 "He sighs," said Smee.

 "He sighs again," said Starkey.

 "And yet a third time he sighs," said Smee.

 Then at last he spoke passionately.

 "The game's up," he cried, "those boys have found a mother."

 Affrighted though she was, Wendy swelled with pride.

 "O evil day!" cried Starkey.

 "What's a mother?" asked the ignorant Smee.

 Wendy was so shocked that she exclaimed. "He doesn't know!" and always after this she felt that if you could have a pet pirate Smee would be her one.

 Peter pulled her beneath the water, for Hook had started up, crying, "What was that?"

 "I heard nothing," said Starkey, raising the lantern over the waters, and as the pirates looked they saw a strange sight. It was the nest I have told you of, floating on the lagoon, and the Never bird was sitting on it.

 "See," said Hook in answer to Smee's question, "that is a mother. What a lesson! The nest must have fallen into the water, but would the mother desert her eggs? No."

 There was a break in his voice, as if for a moment he recalled innocent days when -- but he brushed away this weakness with his hook.

 Smee, much impressed, gazed at the bird as the nest was borne past, but the more suspicious Starkey said, "If she is a mother, perhaps she is hanging about here to help Peter."

 Hook winced. "Ay," he said, "that is the fear that haunts me."

 He was roused from this dejection by Smee's eager voice.

 "Captain," said Smee, "could we not kidnap these boys' mother and make her our mother?"

 "It is a princely scheme," cried Hook, and at once it took practical shape in his great brain. "We will seize the children and carry them to the boat: the boys we will make walk the plank, and Wendy shall be our mother.

 Again Wendy forgot herself.

 "Never!" she cried, and bobbed.

 "What was that?"

 But they could see nothing. They thought it must have been a leaf in the wind. "Do you agree, my bullies?" asked Hook.

 "There is my hand on it," they both said.

 "And there is my hook. Swear."

 They all swore. By this time they were on the rock, and suddenly Hook remembered Tiger Lily.

 "Where is the redskin?" he demanded abruptly.

 He had a playful humour at moments, and they thought this was one of the moments.

 "That is all right, captain," Smee answered complacently; "we let her go."

 "Let her go!" cried Hook.

 "'Twas your own orders," the bo'sun faltered.

 "You called over the water to us to let her go," said Starkey.

 "Brimstone and gall," thundered Hook, "what cozening [cheating] is going on here!" His face had gone black with rage, but he saw that they believed their words, and he was startled. "Lads," he said, shaking a little, "I gave no such order."

 "It is passing queer," Smee said, and they all fidgeted uncomfortably. Hook raised his voice, but there was a quiver in it.

 "Spirit that haunts this dark lagoon to-night," he cried, "dost hear me?"

 Of course Peter should have kept quiet, but of course he did not. He immediately answered in Hook's voice:

 "Odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, I hear you."

 In that supreme moment Hook did not blanch, even at the gills, but Smee and Starkey clung to each other in terror.

 "Who are you, stranger? Speak!" Hook demanded.

 "I am James Hook," replied the voice, "captain of the JOLLY ROGER."

 "You are not; you are not," Hook cried hoarsely.

 "Brimstone and gall," the voice retorted, "say that again, and I'll cast anchor in you."

 Hook tried a more ingratiating manner. "If you are Hook," he said almost humbly, "come tell me, who am I?"

 "A codfish," replied the voice, "only a codfish."

 "A codfish!" Hook echoed blankly, and it was then, but not till then, that his proud spirit broke. He saw his men draw back from him.

 "Have we been captained all this time by a codfish!" they muttered. "It is lowering to our pride."

 They were his dogs snapping at him, but, tragic figure though he had become, he scarcely heeded them. Against such fearful evidence it was not their belief in him that he needed, it was his own. He felt his ego slipping from him. "Don't desert me, bully," he whispered hoarsely to it.

 In his dark nature there was a touch of the feminine, as in all the great pirates, and it sometimes gave him intuitions. Suddenly he tried the guessing game.

 "Hook," he called, "have you another voice?"

 Now Peter could never resist a game, and he answered blithely in his own voice, "I have."

 "And another name?"

 "Ay, ay."

 "Vegetable?" asked Hook.

 "No."

 "Mineral?"

 "No."

 "Animal?"

 "Yes."

 "Man?"

 "No!" This answer rang out scornfully.

 "Boy?"

 "Yes."

 "Ordinary boy?"

 "No!"

 "Wonderful boy?"

 To Wendy's pain the answer that rang out this time was "Yes."

 "Are you in England?"

 "No."

 "Are you here?"

 "Yes."

 Hook was completely puzzled. "You ask him some questions," he said to the others, wiping his damp brow.

 Smee reflected. "I can't think of a thing," he said regretfully.

 "Can't guess, can't guess!" crowed Peter. "Do you give it up?"

 Of course in his pride he was carrying the game too far, and the miscreants [villains] saw their chance.

 "Yes, yes," they answered eagerly.

 "Well, then," he cried, "I am Peter Pan."

 Pan!

 In a moment Hook was himself again, and Smee and Starkey were his faithful henchmen.

 "Now we have him," Hook shouted. "Into the water, Smee. Starkey, mind the boat. Take him dead or alive!"

 He leaped as he spoke, and simultaneously came the gay voice of Peter.

 "Are you ready, boys?"

 "Ay, ay," from various parts of the lagoon.

 "Then lam into the pirates."

 The fight was short and sharp. First to draw blood was John, who gallantly climbed into the boat and held Starkey. There was fierce struggle, in which the cutlass was torn from the pirate's grasp. He wriggled overboard and John leapt after him. The dinghy drifted away.

 Here and there a head bobbed up in the water, and there was a flash of steel followed by a cry or a whoop. In the confusion some struck at their own side. The corkscrew of Smee got Tootles in the fourth rib, but he was himself pinked [nicked] in turn by Curly. Farther from the rock Starkey was pressing Slightly and the twins hard.

 Where all this time was Peter? He was seeking bigger game.

 The others were all brave boys, and they must not be blamed for backing from the pirate captain. His iron claw made a circle of dead water round him, from which they fled like affrighted fishes.

 But there was one who did not fear him: there was one prepared to enter that circle.

 Strangely, it was not in the water that they met. Hook rose to the rock to breathe, and at the same moment Peter scaled it on the opposite side. The rock was slippery as a ball, and they had to crawl rather than climb. Neither knew that the other was coming. Each feeling for a grip met the other's arm: in surprise they raised their heads; their faces were almost touching; so they met.

 Some of the greatest heroes have confessed that just before they fell to [began combat] they had a sinking [feeling in the stomach]. Had it been so with Peter at that moment I would admit it. After all, he was the only man that the Sea-Cook had feared. But Peter had no sinking, he had one feeling only, gladness; and he gnashed his pretty teeth with joy. Quick as thought he snatched a knife from Hook's belt and was about to drive it home, when he saw that he was higher up the rock that his foe. It would not have been fighting fair. He gave the pirate a hand to help him up.

 It was then that Hook bit him.

 Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter. It made him quite helpless. He could only stare, horrified. Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter. He often met it, but he always forgot it. I suppose that was the real difference between him and all the rest.

 So when he met it now it was like the first time; and he could just stare, helpless. Twice the iron hand clawed him.

 A few moments afterwards the other boys saw Hook in the water striking wildly for the ship; no elation on the pestilent face now, only white fear, for the crocodile was in dogged pursuit of him. On ordinary occasions the boys would have swum alongside cheering; but now they were uneasy, for they had lost both Peter and Wendy, and were scouring the lagoon for them, calling them by name. They found the dinghy and went home in it, shouting "Peter, Wendy" as they went, but no answer came save mocking laughter from the mermaids. "They must be swimming back or flying," the boys concluded. They were not very anxious, because they had such faith in Peter. They chuckled, boylike, because they would be late for bed; and it was all mother Wendy's fault!

 When their voices died away there came cold silence over the lagoon, and then a feeble cry.

 "Help, help!"

 Two small figures were beating against the rock; the girl had fainted and lay on the boy's arm. With a last effort Peter pulled her up the rock and then lay down beside her. Even as he also fainted he saw that the water was rising. He knew that they would soon be drowned, but he could do no more.

 As they lay side by side a mermaid caught Wendy by the feet, and began pulling her softly into the water. Peter, feeling her slip from him, woke with a start, and was just in time to draw her back. But he had to tell her the truth.

 "We are on the rock, Wendy," he said, "but it is growing smaller. Soon the water will be over it."

 She did not understand even now.

 "We must go," she said, almost brightly.

 "Yes," he answered faintly.

 "Shall we swim or fly, Peter?"

 He had to tell her.

 "Do you think you could swim or fly as far as the island, Wendy, without my help?"

 She had to admit that she was too tired.

 He moaned.

 "What is it?" she asked, anxious about him at once.

 "I can't help you, Wendy. Hook wounded me. I can neither fly nor swim."

 "Do you mean we shall both be drowned?"

 "Look how the water is rising."

 They put their hands over their eyes to shut out the sight. They thought they would soon be no more. As they sat thus something brushed against Peter as light as a kiss, and stayed there, as if saying timidly, "Can I be of any use?"

 It was the tail of a kite, which Michael had made some days before. It had torn itself out of his hand and floated away.

 "Michael's kite," Peter said without interest, but next moment he had seized the tail, and was pulling the kite toward him.

 "It lifted Michael off the ground," he cried; "why should it not carry you?"

 "Both of us!"

 "It can't lift two; Michael and Curly tried."

 "Let us draw lots," Wendy said bravely.

 "And you a lady; never." Already he had tied the tail round her. She clung to him; she refused to go without him; but with a "Good-bye, Wendy," he pushed her from the rock; and in a few minutes she was borne out of his sight. Peter was alone on the lagoon.

 The rock was very small now; soon it would be submerged. Pale rays of light tiptoed across the waters; and by and by there was to be heard a sound at once the most musical and the most melancholy in the world: the mermaids calling to the moon.

 Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremour ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, "To die will be an awfully big adventure."