#the youthful shapeshifting demoness

[hriobzagelthewanderer]

Beebz had to stand on her tip toes just to look up at Hriob. She's seen massive demons before but this guy was huge! Even compared to the others at the Spring Ball. "Whooooaa. Are you, like, a giant?" Beebz asked innocently.

"...In a manner of speaking, yes. I am a Fae first and foremost, though, much like you are a demon... but that is simply what we are, not who."

Looking down, a spark of recognition seems to wash over him, as the 'giant' smiles warmly at the young lady.

"You wouldn't happen to be a friend of Yugo's, would you? Or perhaps that brat Laharl, I hope he's mellowed out since I last saw him... but where are my manners, my name is Hriob, might I know who you are, Miss?"

[elitegymnastics]

Q: What is this?

A: It’s a flyer for a virtual fundraiser on June 4th that Elite Gymnastics is playing. You can access the show at quietyear.com

Q: Hasn’t Elite Gymnastics been inactive for like, ten years?

A: Yes. This is the first Elite Gymnastics performance of any kind since November 30th 2012, at the Horn Gallery at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. 

Q: Why did Elite Gymnastics stop playing shows?

A: Elite Gymnastics started out as me (Jaime) and a bunch of my friends agreeing to help me play my songs live back in 2009. I made a lot of weird demos in GarageBand and my friend Dominique Davis from the band Dearling Physique got tired of watching me sit on them. So, he booked me to play at a show he was curating as part of a small local music and arts festival called Clapperclaw. For several months that’s mainly what EG was. At some point the focus shifted to making recordings rather than playing shows, to participate in the emergent culture of new music distributed via MP3 file-sharing. The lineup winnowed to just me and Josh Clancy, who began creating digital EPs that we posted on this Tumblr page as ZIP files full of MP3s accompanied by a PDF of artwork. This is the incarnation of the group that most people are familiar with.

This was before Patreon existed. If Bandcamp was around, we’d never heard of it. Though MP3 file-sharing culture and file transfer sites like MediaFire and MegaUpload allowed anyone to distribute music freely across the world via the internet, it was still pretty difficult to get people to pay you for it. I think it was for this reason that a lot of internet music back then featured a lot of sampling. A lot of artists’ first forays into the world of DAWs and production took the form of mash-ups, bootleg remixes, and DJ mixes. Artists like Animal Collective, MIA, Kanye West, and Daft Punk for whom sampling was a pillar of their creative process were extremely influential. Elite Gymnastics was no exception - the first song of ours to gain traction online was “Is This On Me?” which made no attempt to hide the fact that it heavily sampled Faye Wong’s “Eyes On Me.” The fact that it was so difficult to make money off MP3s pushed people to make different creative decisions than they would have otherwise. It was sort of a free-for-all.

Eventually, all of this started to change. The major labels started getting a lot more aggressive about trying to destroy MP3 file-sharing culture. Platforms like MegaUpload were raided and taken offline. The replacements that sprung up to replace them were increasingly infested with ads and malware. Corporate platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud adopted Content ID filters to prevent the proliferation of copyrighted music there. Blogs and private torrent trackers being taken down meant thousands of hours of labor were wiped out in an instant. Some of the best archives of the history of recorded music ever created were destroyed without hesitation. Even the most devoted participants lost the will to keep repairing and re-making the stuff that cops and record companies kept obliterating.

Josh and I both dreamed of being able to make a living as musicians. We still do. Back then, we were willing to accept a lot of changes in order to make that possible, which seemed necessary. A lot of the stuff that we were great at just didn’t make any money. Once, we were asked to do a remix of a song called “Sa Sa Samoa” by the band Korallreven. I did the remix by myself, which was normal for us, and Josh was so inspired by it that he spent a week working non-stop to create a video for it. People loved it - the day the video dropped, Pitchfork designated the song as a “Best New Track” and New York Magazine wrote about it in their “Approval Matrix.” The video led to a ton of exposure, but from a financial perspective, it just did not make sense to put that much effort into promoting a remix of someone else’s song. The stuff we were personally excited by just seemed to have less and less to do with what actually makes money.

A lot of internet bands during this era began to palpably shapeshift in an effort to succeed in music as a career. Artists who’d first attracted notice for sample-based bangers they made on a laptop started posing with vintage hardware in their press photos and trading in their laptops for live bands and recording studios. It became harder to distribute DJ mixes or mash-ups that contained copyrighted music in them. Influential bloggers either closed up shop or were absorbed into the traditional music industry in some way. Feeds that once touted bizarre songs by laptop-toting weirdos with no industry connections started to become populated mostly by artists with labels and publicists. The bottom rungs of festival lineups started to consist mostly of new major label signings who have lots of money to spend on stage production but not much in the way of grassroots fan enthusiasm or media buzz. 

Internet music and what people tend to refer to as “indie music” split off into two separate streams. Today, there’s a pretty intense firewall between internet culture and whatever you want to call the culture of vinyl records, mid-sized indie labels with publicists, and positive reviews from the few remaining websites that still pay people to write about music. I call it “publicist indie,” “lifestyle techno,” or “prestige electronica” depending on whether or not the music features guitars and/or vocals. The recent online kerfuffle about NFTs really emphasized this split. The worlds of digital illustration and game development campaigned aggressively against mass adoption of cryptocurrency - if you saw any Medium posts explaining crypto’s environmental issues, chances are they were written by someone from those fields. Every new announcement by an artist that they had minted an NFT was met with a swift and vocal backlash from fans. Though I’ve never really been much of an Aphex Twin fan, it was still pretty startling to look at the replies under his NFT announcement tweet and see hundreds of furious people announcing that he was now dead to them. That’s an artist who has seemed more or less unimpeachable for most of my life up until this point! All of that seemed to change in an instant.

There is a massive disconnect between the insular world of the industry establishment and the cutting edge of online counterculture. We saw this again a couple of weeks ago with the online response to the crisis in Gaza. We saw passionate advocacy for Palestinians from games journalists and developers much more often than we saw it from musicians. This is a very serious problem for music! I do not believe it is possible to please both sides - that is to say, I do not believe it is possible to be part of internet counterculture and the industry establishment simultaneously. The music industry is too conservative, too compromised, too corrupt. If it weren’t for the ocean of valuable copyrights that labels are sitting on, most of them would be bankrupt within a year. If the industry was forced to live or die based on how they handle what’s happening right now in the present, it would most assuredly die. The only people who don’t realize this are those who are being paid to stay ignorant. 

Josh and I did not know this back then. From where we were standing, it looked like internet culture and established media industries were on track to converge. A career in the arts seemed genuinely, tantalizingly possible, right up until the moment that it no longer did. 

In my case, I had really been struggling up until that point. My life had been this ongoing sequence of evictions and hospitalizations, and it seemed to be getting worse, not better. I donated plasma twice a week to pay for groceries and while I was sitting there with a giant needle stuck in my left arm for an hour I would see my picture in The Fader or my songs being recommended by one of the Kings of Leon on Twitter or whatever. Music seemed like the only thing the world thought I was any good at. It felt like my only chance at a peaceful, happy life was somewhere out there in a world I could only perceive through a laptop screen. 

Gender, for me, was a big factor in all of this. The more invested in the craft of songwriting I became, the harder it was to repress or ignore my gender stuff. At that time I’m not sure I even knew what the word “transgender” meant - I just knew that when I showed up at a venue wearing a skirt, no one would talk to me or look me in the eye, and that reading about people like Anohni or Terre Thaemlitz or on the internet made me feel like if I could get out of Minneapolis maybe I could find a place where people would accept me. The internet was like, a pretty toxic place for someone in my position. When I tried to find people to talk to about what I was feeling, nobody tried to tell me to read Judith Butler or ask me what pronouns I preferred. The internet was just like, overrun with predators who just wanted to fetishize me and exploit me. Music seemed like the only way I’d ever have an actual life as myself. I was desperate for that. I was well and truly desperate.

Between all the big changes that were happening to us individually and the music industry moving farther and farther away of the anarchic free-for-all of MP3 file-sharing culture, the strain on us just got to be too much. We stopped trusting each other. We became the unstoppable force and the immovable object, crashing haphazardly against one another’s resolve in a dazzling display of youthful futility. Our partnership ended, and after finishing out the remaining live shows on the calendar by myself, I retired the name “Elite Gymnastics” and started making music on my own under other names. That was that.

Q: Why is Elite Gymnastics coming back now, then?

A: Over the years, Josh and I eventually started talking again. Though there was a lot we did agree on, and potential future projects were discussed, nothing truly felt right. We haven’t been in the same room since Summer 2012, and we’ve both changed a lot since then. We both have other projects and we’ve both developed other ways of working since we stopped working together. It’s a pretty big commitment to put all of that aside in order to join your fortunes together with someone you haven’t seen in a decade.

Recently, Josh decided to leave Elite Gymnastics. His reasons are his own, and I was very surprised by his decision, but after having had time to adjust, I’m really grateful to him. I had kept these songs at a distance for many years, because it seemed foolish to allow myself to get too attached to songs I didn’t feel like I was allowed to think of as mine, if that makes any sense. The songs felt like casualties of a conflict that I had to bury in the ground and try to forget about. Being able to embrace them again felt like re-growing a severed limb or having a loved one come back to life, almost. Feeling like it was safe to love these songs again made me feel whole in a way I didn’t expect to. I became really excited by the prospect of revisiting them, so that’s what I decided to do.

Q: Does this mean you’re going to put RUIN back on Spotify?

A: No. Taking the record off Spotify was the right thing to do. That record was only ever intended to exist during the era of MP3 piracy. I never envisioned a world where the music industry would be so aggressive about policing the way that copyrighted music is allowed to exist online. If we hadn’t opted to take the record down when we did, someone would inevitably have forced us to. If you want to hear those specific recordings again, you’re going to have to do it the way we originally intended: by downloading MP3 files from the internet. Try SoulSeek.

Q: What’s next for Elite Gymnastics, then?

A: Here’s the situation currently. There is no Elite Gymnastics music available to stream or purchase in an official capacity anywhere on the internet. It wouldn’t really be possible for me to put the old stuff on Spotify or Bandcamp now because of all the samples. Like I said before, it was a different time. Those records were created to thrive on a past version of the internet that no longer exists. They weren’t designed to be compatible with the 2021 internet.

Technically, Elite Gymnastics didn’t ever release a debut album. We had EPs, a compilation, and a remix collection. We didn’t make an album, a record that existed as the distillation of all that experimentation that contained all of the songs that fans of the EPs would want to hear, all in one place. It’s like we did Good Fridays but stopped before we made My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

So, I am currently working on the first Elite Gymnastics album. If you were following my stuff as Default Genders, you may have noticed me posting demos on my SoundCloud page from 2015-2018 that were all eventually reworked into the album Main Pop Girl 2019. The album I am making is taking that approach to all the old EG songs, including some unreleased stuff. I’m collaborating with others on some songs and I honestly feel like it has resulted in some of the best and most exciting music I have ever been involved with. It is a drastic reinvention, but iteration and reinvention have always been a big part of what I do. I want to make something that feels like the culmination of everything that came before, and so far, I think I’m succeeding.

Q: When will I be able to hear this new music?

At a virtual fundraiser on June 4th, 2021, where there is a suggested donation of $10. You can access it at quietyear.com

[cerberus-writes]

Hello! Just started playing Snakeroot (loving it so far) but I wanted to know the differences between the three races (minus humans)? I sorta understood Merperson and Shapeshifter, but wanted to know if you could give anymore info if you don't mind?

ahello hello !! definitely happy to give more info, & though heed some mild spoiler warnings under the cut! i’ve revised some species lore during the rewrite, and the descriptions below are not necessarily reflected yet in the cscript demo.

there’s going to be a more fleshed out codex in the updated twine version to talk more about species lore so you’ll be able to look forward to that! and hopefully i’m interpreting this question right bkjsfjdh feel free to clarify if not

more under the cut as usual :)

CHIMAERAS have undergone the most changes in the rewrite, so I’ll start there! They’re part-spirit and part-human, though it isn’t exclusive to bloodline, and chimaeras can emerge in childhood as a result of any prominent influence by spirits, elemental magic that has gained sentience and power. There are five possible origins -- four elemental spirits (fire, water, air, earth) and one unaligned spirit (aetheric). They are known to be more in-tune with magic than other species, allowing all chimaeras to possess some degree of magical power corresponding to their origin. They are also most easily distinguished by a set of horns and a tail, the appearance of which tends to reflect their origin. With the onset of the Rot, there’s a general acknowledgement that chimaeric hunters might’ve drawn the short end of the straw with their increased sensitivity to magic, though being able to sense the presence of a curse in the air before anyone else is also fairly handy.

MERFOLK are humanoids that exist both on land and on water. They are best known for their resilience, since the transition between land and water is not something that comes as seamlessly as shifters -- for them, it is very much a painful process. Notably, merfolk can be both born and reborn: occasionally, an individual who dies in the open sea, in areas of stronger and older magic, and/or oftentimes as a consequence of some sea monster or other, will re-awaken as a merfolk. There are some other factors at play as well, of course, but it is a popular belief among merfolk & sea-faring folk that as merciless as the old magic of the sea is, she has her moments of magnanimity. There are five known aquatic forms: fish, ray, shark, cephalopod, and eel. Merfolks that are born inherit their aquatic form from their parents, while merfolks that are reborn take on the characteristics of a base animal closest to whatever may have slain them. All merfolks are capable of some degree of hypnosis, though like any other skill, some display more of a natural aptitude than others. Those who have cultivated it to a notable level are known as SIRENS.

SHIFTERS are probably the most self-explanatory in terms of name and signature power. Where the magic of chimaeras calls upon an external power, be it the elements or the aether itself, the core of a shifter’s power is internal, drawing from the innate well of magic that is present in everyone. Some shifters catalogue shifting as almost a science, since moving between forms requires an accuracy and precision that will, eventually, become second nature with practice. It does mean that they have to be careful -- the greater the difference between animal form and human, the more room for error. There are six forms to choose between in the demo: canine, feline, ungulate, mustelid, ursine, & crocodilian. While they have some degree of control over appearance-wise, the base animal that they shift into is something they have to discover on their own in their youth. Unlike merfolk, shifting is a fairly painless process, though mildly uncomfortable the first few times. It isn’t often maintained for terribly long, and is exponentially more taxing for the longer one stays in it.

I hope this helps shed a little more light on the non-human species! This is mostly a species overview of sorts, and the updated codex is going to feature (optional) unlockable entries that will offer more in-depth insight into snippets of culture and magic related to each. Fun times ahead!

[hydralisk98]

Dump

(_DEFINE) CATEGORIES: Health, Relationships, Possessions, Skills, Identity, Powers, Lifestyle. [...] uncategorized generic LIST ITEMS: electronics, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, pronouns, family, friends, classmates, coworkers, books, games, movies, stationary supplies, school, work, memory, arts, music, wardrobe, languages, knowledge, country, ethnicity, appearance, body, metabolism, height, weight, names, age, birthplace, favs, handwriting, dislikes/pet peeves, pet(s), tech, hobbies, accessories, home, crush/boyfriend/girlfriend, best friend, authorities, grades, vocabulary, introspection, research skills, reading, writing skills, creative expression, freedom of expression, freedom of use, shapeshift, time travel, teleporation, omni-communication, leadership, organization, wealth, development skills, design skills, data, storage, source code access, information access, forgotten / lost goods, access to magical services, religion, beliefs, reputation, relations with supernatural entities, telekinesis, clairvoyance, retro-cognition, strenght, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, charisma, past lives' memories, scripting/coding skills, basic computing skills, mathematical skills, tribe, energy, laws, youth, lifespan, aesthetic style, side projects. [...]

(?) KLARA list items= Female, bisexual, cisgender, she/her, vintage electronics passion and expertise, somewhat middle-class Assyrian family in Quebec, a dozen of pretty close friends, best friend and boyfriend in her appartment, studying in Maisonneuve Cegep in Montreal in first year of Multimedia Integration Technique, working in a electronics' shop as a warehouse/factory worker and sometimes as a cashier, loves to write into zines and taking notes on paper, authorities are really respectful kind and tolerant with her, several non-fiction books and manuals in her bookcase, a couple of retro video games and a few simple tabletop games excluding her TTRPGs, between 12 and 24 different documentary and entertainment movies to watch on a quite average sized CRT television, several artistic and serious work supplies in her very own huge custom backpack which also has a few keychain collectibles and stickers on, photographic memory, great animation artist and blogger that she has just started up this month, classic metal and old patriotic songs music enthusiast, vaporwave plus vintage aesthetic wardrobe with a few minimalist and DIY clothes alongside the elegant ones, some traditional Assyrian dresses and accessories as well, speaks French English Neo-Aramaic and German fluently, curiosity drives her to research everyday so yes she knows hell of a lot about a handful of topics online, living in southern Lanaudiere in Canada, Assyrian-Canadian ancestry and heritage as Klara Ashur, jet black short hair olive green eyes tan skin mesomorph, 5'6", 130-140lb, 20 years old, August 1st 1998, somewhere around or within the Greater Montreal region, autistic and INTP personality, Leo astrology sign, moderately salty food, quite irreligious and kind-hearted parents, winter season, classical-style high quality handwriting, dislikes fear and dishonest people, "macro" the two years old black female shy but affectionate turkish angora cat born on May 20th 2016, geek and nerdy plushie collection, DSi, iPod Shuffle, iPhone 11, P52 laptop, really great i5 desktop computer, fancy drawing tablet, gamer girl headphones and ear buds, volunteering at local tech museum for restoring and maintaining old computer systems, quite active and reactive friendly tribe / group / fandom, earmuffs glasses scarf student-cap gauntlets gloves headphones?, really big low-cost high-quality service appartment shared with her boyfriend and her BFF, Constant is a quiet but dedicated boyfriend who take care of Klara's emotions and listens to her extensively but within reason, Arya is a charming woman friend who loves to iterate on ideas and do projects with Klara when she is somewhat free onto weekends, very rich vocabulary but especially in German and English, all authorities of Klara deeply respects her at the point of staying alongside her at most times, she always had quite great / awesome grades in all of her studies, she is a expert of research and dedicates some time everyday to both researching topics and doing some meditation & gratitude journaling, great writing skills that awaits clever use in her projects and further grades, she expresses her emotions into her art especially animations and indie game demo development, no censorship or restriction over her thoughts or any content from her that doesn't hurt directly anyone, Klara is free from all forms of controversy, she can shapeshift and astrally project herself into a Serperior Naga form or anything she wishes at any given moment, when she is time travelling her existence and mindset is always guaranteed to exist no matter what she does and where she does so in the timelines, she can teleport between dimensions and on every space position as well while still being safe from any evil elements from anything really, she can always manage to communicate with whatever she wants to communicate with, her guardian angel come to speak with her once every month so I feel good to confess and iterate calmly every little while, she is a excellent leader and ruler over people and is able to execute the best justice there is without any doubts, she is quite well organized, she can manifest as much money as she feels like she wants without any form of debt, she has unlimited bandwith on all devices as well as unlimited data storage, she owns much physical storage space where she usually keeps her unused technological systems, she always finds what she seeks and quickly even if it was lost or forgotten, she has access to all possible source code and primary source evidence information, Klara is extremely grateful of everything she has that is positive or constructive, she can access magic and magical services with ease, she heals from all forms of injury real quick, she has a lifespan of at least six hundred years and the whole universe is totally chill with that, several side projects and opportunities towards greatness, photogenic, vlog, shopping hauls, recording many major and minor history events, priviledge to speak with several historical figures, (vintage computer systems: PDP-15, PDP-12, PDP-11/60, PDP-8/E, Xerox Daybreak, PLATO V terminal, SDS Sigma 6, IBM /360 model 25, IBM 650, Commodore Amiga 3000, Commodore CBM-II, Commodore 128D, SEGA Genesis, SEGA Dreamcast, NeXTCUBE, VAXmate, DECmate III+, VT-180, Robotron K 1840, DCPU-16, HP-85B, HP-86B, Intellec 40, Teletypes, Typewriters, Peipherals, VT-300, Symbolics 3650 Lisp Machine, DEC Rainbow 100, Warsaw Pact "micro" computers, Micro-80 kit computer of 1983 Soviet Union, household mainframe computer of the future, Portal 2's vintage computer systems, Altair 8800B, S-100 computers, ), (games: Half-Life 1, Quake, Quake II, Half Life 2, Portal 2, Civilization 5 Complete, Europa Universalis IV, Baba is You, Crazy Taxi, and eleven games which are unique to my timeline at the very minimum), (movies: much fascinating documentaries and fiction movies tailored to my tastes and that most are unique to my timeline), (people: []), (Q&A Klara Ashur), (software with src code and legit key gens: Windows 3.1, NeXTSTEP, Linux Mint Cinnamon 19.2, CP/M, MP/M, Z-machine internals, magical operating system tailored to my exact needs across dimensions, OS/12, OS/8, RSX-11M, Inferno OS, Unix V5-V7, Wolfenstein TNO's Nazi Germany computer operating system, several weird OSes from many timelines, Hypno-OS from MerchantSoft, FreeBSD, Xerox Pilot OS, OS/8, OS/12, .);

[strangersihavedrawn]

170ish albums/EPs you should have bought in 2017.

This year has been a strange one. After a pretty desperate 2016, our bubbles remain burst, our political systems are still in shambles, the planet is slowly dying. It’s business as usual pretty much, except this time all of our heroes are sex pests (Cue a bit of guesswork as to which album has been redacted from this list). Fortunately, business as usual means there’s too much good music to even keep track of, but I’ve done my best. So, without further faff, here’s my annual list in chronological order, with my featured album from each month in a doodle, as I am want to do.

January

04/01 Pink Guy - Pink Season (Self-Released) 13/01 Code Orange - Forever (Roadrunner) 13/01 Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Roman Lips (ORL Projects / Ipecac) 13/01 The xx - I See You (Young Turks) 20/01 As It Is - okay. (Fearless) 20/01 When We Team Up - Shut Up and Fly (Self-Released) 20/01 WSTR - Red, Green Or Inbetween (No Sleep) 21/01 Palladino - Supersymmetry (Hembleciya) 27/01 Japandroids - Near To The Wild Heart Of Life (Anti-) 27/01 Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Zen Thrills (ORL Projects / Ipecac) 29/01 On a Hiding to Nothing - Formaldehyde (Umlaut) 31/01 Push Over - Demo EP (Esque)

February

03/02 Less Than Jake - Sound The Alarm (Pure Noise) 03/02 The Menzingers - After the Party (Epitaph) 03/02 Smile and Burn - Get Better Get Worse (Uncle M / Grand Hotel Van Cleef) 10/02 Homebound - The Mould You Build Yourself Around (Rude) 10/02 Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Chocolate Tumor Hormone Parade (ORL Projects / Ipecac) 13/02 Glowbug - Fantasma Del Tropico (Self-Released) 24/02 Broadbay - Five Year Plan (Hanger / Copper Top) 24/02 Crystal Fairy - Crystal Fairy (Ipecac) 24/02 Decade - Pleasantries (Rude) 24/02 Guillotine - Sapphire (Failure By Design) 24/02 Nightlife - Salt & Acid (Speaking Tongues) 24/02 Thundercat - Drunk (Brainfeeder)

March

03/03 Converge - Jane Live (Deathwish, Inc.) 03/03 Minus The Bear - Voids (Suicide Squeeze) 10/03 Can’t Swim - Fail You Again (Pure Noise) 10/03 Self Defense Family - Bastard Form b/w Maybe You Could Explain It To Me (Alternatives Label) 11/03 Atta Girl - Betty’s Begonia (Trrrash) 13/03 Traits - Limits (Self-Released) 17/03 Pulled Apart By Horses - The Haze (Caroline International) 17/03 Sorority Noise - You’re Not As ____ As You Think (Triple Crown / Big Scary Monsters) 17/03 Stolas - Stolas (Equal Vision) 17/03 Western Addiction - Tremulous (Fat Wreck) 24/03 Catch Fire - A Love That I Still Miss (Rude) 24/03 Coast To Coast - The Length of a Smile (Fox) 24/03 Creeper - Eternity, In Your Arms (Roadrunner) 24/03 Fucked Up - Year Of The Snake (Tankcrimes) 24/03 Great Cynics - POSI (Specialist Subject / GUERRILLA ASSO / Lame-O) 24/03 Lotus Eater - Lotus Eater EP (Self-Released) 31/01 Mastodon - Emperor of Sand (Reprise)

April

07/04 Blood Youth - Beyond Repair (Rude) 07/04 Father John Misty - Pure Comedy (Bella Union) 07/04 The Flatliners - Inviting Light (Dine Alone / Rise) 07/04 The Smith Street Band - More Scared Of You Than You Are Of Me (Specialist Subject / Pool House / Side One Dummy) 14/04 Loathe - The Cold Sun (Sharptone) 15/04 Lost Avenue - Best Friends (Rustys Rekords) 16/04 Kendrick Lamar - DAMN. (Aftermath / Interscope) 20/04 Eternity Forever - Eternity Forever (Esque) 21/04 Bear Trade - Silent Unspeakable (Everything Sucks / Dead Broke / Waterslide) 21/04 Have Mercy - Make The Best Of It (Hopeless) 21/04 Self Defense Family - BBC Session (Deathwish, Inc.) 21/04 what gives - feels good (Skeletal Lightning) 21/04 The Winter Passing - Double Exposure (Big Scary Monsters / 6131) 28/04 Gorillaz - Humanz (Parlophone / Warner Bros.) 28/04 He Is Legend - few (Spinefarm) 28/04 New Found Glory - Makes Me Sick (Hopeless) 28/04 Thurston Moore - Rock N Roll Consciousness (Ecstatic Peace!)

May

01/05 X-TV - EXIT (Self-Released) 05/05 At The Drive-In - in.ter a.li.a (Rise) 05/05 Gnarwolves - Outsiders (Big Scary Monsters / Tangled Talk) 05/05 Mac Demarco - This Old Dog (Captured Tracks) 09/05 Self Defense Family - Wounded Masculinity (Triple B) 12/05 Gun Shy - The Long Dance (Wrong Way Round) 15/05 Jordan Mackampa - Tales For The Broken (Self-Released) 19/05 Employed To Serve - The Warmth of a Dying Sun (Holy Roar) 19/05 Higher Power - Soul Structure (Venn / Flatspot) 19/05 Miss Vincent - Somewhere Else (Uncle M) 19/05 Tigers Jaw - Spin (Black Cement) 26/05 Create To Inspire - Sickness (Basick) 26/05 Frenzal Rhomb - Hi-Vis High Tea (Fat Wreck) 26/05 Pet Symmetry - Vision (Polyvinyl)

June

02/06 ‘68 - Two Parts Viper (Cooking Vinyl) 02/06 Dystopian Future Movies - Time (Oak Tree) 02/06 Grove Street Families - VOL 1.0 (Venn) 02/06 Mutoid Man - War Moans (Sargent House) 02/06 Rainfalls - Creep (Self-Released) 05/06 EAT DIRT. - I (Self-Released) 08/06 Bares - Salty Kiss / In Lieu (Self-Released) 09/06 BROCKHAMPTON - SATURATION (BROCKHAMPTON / EMPIRE Distribution) 09/06 Donnie Willow - Exhibition (Sunbird) 09/06 Kamikaze Girls - Seafoam (Big Scary Monsters) 16/06 Broadside - Paradise (Victory) 16/06 Chon - Homey (Sumerian) 16/06 Color Film - Living Arrangements (Epitaph) 16/06 Faux - Faux (Speaking Tongues) 16/06 Fleet Foxes - Crack-Up (Nonesuch) 16/06 Harbinger - Human Dust (Basick) 16/06 Portugal. The Man - Woodstock (Atlantic) 16/06 Single Mothers - Our Pleasure (Dine Alone / Big Scary Monsters) 23/06 Aviator - Loneliness Leaves The Light On For Me (No Sleep)  23/06 Rozwell Kid - Precious Art (SideOneDummy) 23/06 Slowlights - I Try So Hard (Killing Moon)

July

07/07 Melvins - A Walk With Love and Death (Ipecac) 07/07 Puppy - Vol. II (Spinefarm) 12/07 Baggage - The Good That Never Comes (Self-Released) 14/07 Bad Sign - Live & Learn (Basick) 14/07 Fights and Fires - Live Life Like a Tourist (Lockjaw) 14/07 The Gospel Youth - Always Lose (Rise) 19/07 Listener - Being Empty: Being Filled I (Truth Seeker / Black Bassett / Smiths Food Group DIY) 21/07 Energy - The Witching Hour (Self-Released) 21/07 Tyler, The Creator - Flower Boy (Columbia) 21/07 Wot Gorilla? - Angel Numbers (Self-REleased) 21/07 Young Hunger - Wear Me Down (Self-Released) 25/07 Converge - I Can Tell You About Pain (Epitaph / Deathwish, Inc.) 27/07 MC Lars - The Jeff Sessions (Horris Records) 28/07 Manchester Orchestra - A Black Mile to the Surface (Caroline International) 28/07 Milk Teeth - Be Nice (Roadrunner) 28/07 Oceans Ate Alaska - Hikari (Fearless)

August

04/08 Dale Crover - Fickle Finger Of Fate (Joyful Noise) 04/08 Dead Cross - Dead Cross (Ipecac) 11/08 The Cribs - 24-7 Rock Star Shit (Sonic Brew) 11/08 Mush - Protect Your Brand (Skeletal Lightning) 18/08 Everything Everything - A Fever Dream (Sony RCA) 18/08 Wallflower - Where It Fell Apart (Self-Released) 24/08 Fizzy Blood - Summer of Luv (Killing Moon / Ayla) 25/08 BROCKHAMPTON - SATURATION II (Question Everything, Inc. / EMPIRE Distribution) 25/08 Queens Of The Stone Age - Villains (Matador) 25/08 Turnover - Good Nature (Run For Cover)

September

08/09 Comeback Kid - Outsider (New Damage / Nuclear Blast) 08/09 Death From Above - Outrage! Is Now (Last Gang) 08/09 Stray From The Path - Only Death Is Real (Sumerian) 08/09 Such Gold - Deep in a Hole (Bird Attack) 08/09 Angelo Badlamenti - Twin Peaks: Limited Event Series Original Soundtrack (Rhino) 08/09 Various Artists - Twin Peaks: Music from the Limited Event Series (Rhino) 15/09 The Apology Tour - This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (Save Your Generation) 15/09 Arcane Roots - Melancholia Hymns (Easy Life / Red Essential) 15/09 Beaumont - Honestly (Reclaim Music) 15/09 Hot Water Music - Light It Up (Rise) 15/09 Seaway - Vacation (Dine Alone / Pure Noise) 22/09 The Bronx - V (Cooking Vinyl) 22/09 Caracara - Summer Megalith (Flower Girl) 22/09 Circa Survive - The Amulet (Hopeless) 22/09 Mastodon - Cold Dark Place (Reprise) 22/09 Metz - Strange Peace (Sub Pop) 22/09 Prawn - Run (Topshelf) 29/09 Primus - The Desaturating Seven (ATO) 29/09 Propagandhi - Victory Lap (Epitaph) 29/09 The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die - Always Foreign (Epitaph)

October

06/10 Citizen - As You Please (Run For Cover) 13/10 Beck - Colors (Capitol) 13/10 Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile - Lotta Sea Lice (Matador / Marathon / Milk!) 13/10 The Front Bottoms - Going Grey (Fueled By Ramen) 13/10 Iron Chic - You Can’t Stay Here (SideOneDummy) 13/10 Knuckle Puck - Shapeshifter (Rise) 13/10 Roam - Great Heights & Nosedives (Hopeless) 17/10 FUCK *(It’s Pronounced SHIT!)* - It’s Still Pronounced SHIT! (Self-Released) 20/10 Movements - Feel Something (Fearless) 20/10 Muskets - Chew (No Sleep) 21/10 Listener - Being Empty : Being Filled Vol. II (Black Basset) 27/10 Gold Key - Hello, Phantom (Venn) 27/10 Heavy Hearts - On a Chain (Failure By Design) 27/10 Jamie Lenman - Devolver (Big Scary Monsters) 27/10 Slaughter Beach, Dog - Birdie (Lame-O / Big Scary Monsters)

November

03/11 Converge - The Dusk In Us (Epitaph / Deathwish, Inc.) 03/11 Lifetight - Self-Tightled (Crooked Noise) 10/11 Listener - Being Empty : Being Filled Vol. III (Sounds of Subterrania) 10/11 Quicksand - Interiors (Epitaph) 10/11 Versus You - Birthday Boys (Noiseworks / G Chord) 17/11 Milk Teeth - Go Away (Roadrunner) 17/11 Onsind - We Wilt, We Bloom (Specialist Subject) 17/11 Valliers - Lost In Familiarity (Dream Atlantic) 24/11 At The Drive-In - Diamanté (Rise) 24/11 Björk - Utopia (One Little Indian) 24/11 Lightcliffe - For a While (Failure By Design) 24/11 Rain - Abstract Vision (Venn)

December

01/12 The Dear Hunter - All Is As All Should Be (Self-Released) 01/12 Glassjaw - Material Control (Century Media) 15/12 BROCKHAMPTON - SATURATION III (Question Everything, Inc. / EMPIRE Distribution) 15/12 Gun Shy / THE EAST / summerbruise / Superdose Gangway - BSR / OPR 4-Way Split (Beth Shalom / Old Press) 15/12 Lemuria - Recreational Hate (Turbo Worldwide / Asian Man / Big Scary Monsters) 15/12 N.E.R.D - No One Ever Really Dies (i am OTHER / Columbia) 21/12 Original Sharks - Hundred Grand to the Man (Self-Released) 26/12 Scum Couch - Ignorant Bore (Self-Released) Okay, that’s your lot. Now go away.