#this sketch is from summer 2017 holy shit

[k-ailisi]

Sada-chan warm-up

[douglashonorscollege]

Burn the House Down

essay by Olivia McDougall ⌂

IT WAS 2006 in the heart of New York City. The New York Knicks failed to make the play-offs for the third consecutive year. President George W. Bush’s approval rating had hit at an all-time low. Panic! at the Disco released “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” and Justin Timberlake performed “SexyBack” on the MTV Video Music Awards—hosted by Jack Black—at Radio City Music Hall. For the American people, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times… and three young kids were out pursuing their dream in the streets of Manhattan.

Adam, Ryan, and Jack Metzger were trying their hand at busking in Central Park and Washington Square. The youngest at nine years old, Jack led vocals while his older brothers backed him with instrumentals. The boys played covers of songs old and new, anything to get enough money for new instruments with which to experiment. The brothers spent many years on street corners serenading strangers, earning their 10,000 hours. In the following years, when YouTube started gaining traction, the boys put up videos of their covers: more and more inventive spins on pop songs. Jack and Ryan also started trying their hand at writing, directing, and acting in their own little sketches for video content. At that time, the boys had very few followers, but nonetheless continued to play, to save up, to buy more equipment, to make more music.

As they grew, the boys were exposed to their parents’ old records and the sounds of a very different generation influenced their style. The Beach Boys; the Beatles; Peter, Paul, and Mary among many others inspired them, but more contemporary artists like Kanye West also came into play. Later, while eldest brother Adam pursued his degree at Columbia University, the younger two brothers took note of sampling—the music trend of artists taking sound clips and reusing them in their songs. Jack mentioned to his brotherhow cool it would be if someone sampled Spongebob Squarepants on a track.

“Well, why don’t we do it?” was Ryan’s reply.

In spring of 2013, the brothers, naming themselves AJR after their own initials, released a video of their first single “I’m Ready.” The song sampled the popular Spongebob catchphrase, and became a classic, upbeat, dance-floor pop song. The brothers sent the link to their video to several celebrities over Twitter, until famous singer-songwriter Sia noticed them and passed it along to her manager. The song was then commercially released that summer and began to see regular radio play, and the band was labeled as the next up and comers in the music scene.

After “I’m Ready,” AJR released a five song EP of the same name. Their first song continued to grow, receiving millions of views on YouTube and going platinum in Canada and Australia. The brothers continued to create music (and go to school; the eldest was only in his early twenties at this time), releasing another single and EP titled Infinity in 2014. The majority of the band’s music was pop songs, easy to listen to with familiar rhythms and lyrics of love and youth. Remarkably, the boys chose to mix and record all their own music in their NYC apartment living room, instead of paying for studio time. Paying homage to their workspace and independence, the band released their first album Living Room in 2015. Except for some bouncier, odd-duck tracks like “Big Idea” and “Thirsty,” most of the songs fit the same earlier patterns of the pop genre. However, in 2016, the band experienced the shift that would change their music career forever.

Before the What Everyone’s Thinking EP came out, AJR had little recognition beyond their break-out hit. However, the tracks on the latest EP sounded entirely evolved from the brother’s previous style. The lyrics were brimmed with honesty, abandoning the emptiness of many other pop tunes. The boys sang about missing out on their friends while pursuing their dreams, about being unsure about what love means, about not trying so hard to be cool, about being human. Their style of composition had also matured. The band would release videos on how they made their songs, revealing that they took whatever strange sound they could make and mix it however they could to make it new and interesting. They had people who were not musicians or artists, such as their ever supportive father, come in and sing to add a new dimension to their songs. They used something they called “spokestep,” a technique of recording a someone singing, then cutting it up over a beat in editing. They continued to utilize sampling, taking bits of anything from Fountains of Wayne to yodeling competitions. The EP was well-received with hundreds of messages from fans who deeply related to the music. This was all the push the brothers needed to keep writing freely, and not what they thought would sell.

On June 9th, 2017, the three brothers dropped the album that would unknowingly launch their music career to a unimaginable level. Several songs on the album made it to regular radio play, giving the band more recognition and growing their dedicated fan base. The Click clearly communicated AJR’s desire to get real in their music, with songs about the detached feelings of growing up or distaste toward the typical party scene. One of their most successful songs, “Sober Up,” featured Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo and paved the way for more collaborations with artists such as Steve Aoki and Lil Yachty. The band had been on tours before, playing small venues where the opener drew more fans than they, but now they began to sell out everywhere. The kids who had been playing to no one on street corners now began to sing for thousands.

Shortly after their album The Click debuted, AJR announced that they had been asked to create the theme for Supersize Me 2: Holy Chicken, a documentary attempting to expose the fast food industry’s lax safety regulations. The band had been asked to write for other people before, but never for a movie. The theme song, “Burn the House Down,” would live to surpass its original purpose and become the honest encapsulation of the political attitudes of its time. “Burn the House Down” expresses the band’s indecision to either “keep things light” or to get involved in important issues. The song, with compelling lyrics such as “Or should I march with every stranger from Twitter to get shit done? / Used to hang my head low / Now I hear it loud / Every stranger from Twitter is gonna burn this down” further cemented the band’s dedication to revolution and their abandonment of passivity. The song called out deception plaguing the media cycle and public affairs, and the need to burn it all down in order to expose the truth.

*   *   *

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 acted as a catalyst for various protest movements around the country. Marches have occurred on the White House doorstep since the signing of the Constitution, but the Trump administration triggered a marked influx. Beyond Washington, protests like the Women’s March and National Pride March were seen nation-wide. People from all over rallied together to advocate for science and evidenced-based policies, for immigrant’s rights and racial justice, for transparency over Russian involvement in elections, and even for the publication of Trump’s tax returns. People, especially those liberal-leaning, felt that their voices weren’t being heard and that the President was not reflective of their values. Change in politics is gradual and incremental, but it felt like everyday a new injustice was being thrown at the American people. Families were being separated at the border, more evidence that Russia swayed the 2016 election came to light, allegations of sexual abuse from the President were revealed, racism, sexism, and hate seem to run rampant and unchecked, and overall many people felt disheartened and disgusted with the state of the nation. So, with the power of social media, users of popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter planned protests. The marches drew thousands of people together, uniting many for a common cause. Today’s youth, often labeled as lazy and entitled, came together in the March for Our Lives, an empowering result from one of many tragic school shootings. High-schoolers fed up with feeling unsafe on their campuses advocated for stricter gun control laws and led the biggest youth rally since the Vietnam War, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of people. Americans refused to take anything sitting down and demonstrated their needs loudly to those in charge.

The effectiveness of these protests is a tricky one to determine, as many perceived different goals for the marches. Some believe getting people out on the streets and building a community of like-minded people is a strong start, but others think success is nothing less than immediate change and tangible evidence that they have been heard. Further, some argue that current protests lack the solid political backing that are required to enact true change, and that the marches will never be as powerful as they mean to be without that factor. However, even though many of the things modern protests have demanded have yet to come to fruition, it does not necessarily mean the marches have been for naught. Many of the marches throughout history that today are viewed as world-shattering did not see the change they were fighting for immediately. Politics take time, and the justice and change in policies the people demand to see might still be a long time coming. However, it is necessary to take up the fight, for the people to demonstrate that enough is enough.

Protest songs in the past like “Fortunate Son” by Credence Clearwater Revival or “The Times They are A-Changin” by Bob Dylan rallied people for their cause, stoking the flames of change in hearts across the nation. Music was a way for artists to contribute to the fight, giving a voice to those silenced and reflecting the opinions of the oppressed or wronged. Protest songs today have the same effect, uniting thousands to sing in one voice and empowering movements. “Burn the House Down” provides a battlecry for a whole new generation of people. It is a warning of accountability for those in the corrupt establishment; the harbingers will burn it down.

Works Cited “Burn the House Down” Music Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnyLfqpyi94 AJR Zach Sang Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQnXGsKwaIU&t=1725 Recent Marches Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rallies_and_protest_marches_in_Washington,_D.C.#2018 Supersize Me 2 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me_2:_Holy_Chicken! Article on political protests, bustle.com: https://www.bustle.com/p/do-political-protests-actually-change-anything-29952 2006 NYC Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2006_in_New_York_City AJR Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJR_(band) One of AJR’s “How We Made THE CLICK” Vidoes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YWj3DAo6xM  ∎

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[because-its-important]

2017: a year of courage 🦄

If 2016 was a year of opening doors, 2017 was a year of walking through them. This year demanded a lot of courage.

First, the fun things!

Programming.

I’ve been talking about this quite a bit already, so I don’t want to linger too much. This was my first year working as a programmer (heyo) and I learned a whole lot very, very quickly. Building a data-heavy webapp for bar associations and their member lawyers from scratch is no joke! I’m also real proud to be capping the year off in the midst of a batch at Recurse Center. About a year ago I kept thinking about how good it would feel to be “ready” for something like RC, and it does, it feels good.

“what are u doing rn?” selfie circa mid May.

Zines and indie book sellers.

I encountered a lot of zines this year, exponentially more than all the years of my life prior. I went to a zine reading, multiple zine fairs (including one I volunteered at), I assembled a zine at the Bushwick Print Lab, I brought friends to Quimby’s. And, ofc, I bought a bunch too.

I purchased all the zines above at Pete’s Mini Zine Fest.  From top left to bottom right, they include: a parody science zine about “fracking”; a zine about a woman’s experiences riding the subway when she was pregnant; a zine about the history of animals that have been sent to space; a holographic bookmark that isn’t a zine but reminded me of a femme version of the robot in FLCL; a zine someone made about remembering her recently deceased father and how they’d go mushroom hunting; an art zine full of sketches of demons. I also asked every artist to sign the copy I bought, because I am a huge dork. 🤓

A beautiful zine I found in the library at the Recurse Center. Zines are everywhere! Keep an eye out. 👀

I also spent a lot of time browsing and buying books (often used, sometimes not) from independent bookstores and sellers. I picked up books from BookPeople in Austin, from the Oakland Book Festival, from a library sale in Syracuse, from Unnameable Books in Prospect Heights 1, from Autumn Leaves in Ithaca, from the Verso loft in DUMBO, from Borderlands in the Mission, from Powell’s in Portland. I even scored Invisible Cities and Frankenstein from a stack left outside my neighborhood coffee shop.

These were all purchased for like $3 from a library sale held in the garage of a old fire station in Syracuse, NY. Includes: a book about stream of consciousness novels; a book about how to make poisons written by this dude; a book of poetry about the devil. Must’ve been a real moody day.

Interference Archive and Church Night.

I visited a lot of new places in 2017, so I wanna talk about two places that I found myself coming back to again and again.

I first visited Interference Archive or went to events where they tabled roughly a dozen or so times this year. I remember spending snowy days in winter doing a bit of cataloging for a big archive they’d received of counter culture newspapers from the 70s. I participated in two reading groups hosted by IA, one on different social movements from the 60s to today and another on race and mass incarceration following The New Jim Crow2. Interference Archives annual block party was also killer, with free screen printing, radical button-making, a used book sale 😏, free tamales served out of a trash bag (they were so good!!), and a live Yiddish queer punk band.

I blew up and tied these balloons for IA’s block party all by myself! Very important work! 

One of the issues of The Berkeley Barb that I cataloged. I also cataloged about half of The Black Panther newspapers in their collection. You can check out Interference Archive’s catalog here.

I also went to church service four times! 😋 Church Night is a comedy show that features three standup sets, a burlesque show, and a 90s rock sing-a-long, all rolled up into a evangelical sketch. Each service is also topped off by a real-ass sermon, with positive messages that have made me cry multiple times. It is a really perverse good time and the folks who run it are extremely friendly and hardworking. They travel to Brooklyn every couple months or so and are based in Washington DC, so if you near live in either of those areas, I fucken implore you to check them out.

Another great service at Church Night!

Puppet shows and films.

I attended two puppet shows this year, which is two more than any year in adult memory and certainly two more than I could have expected! The first puppet show played after a few live bands on a rooftop in Bushwick on a hot summer night - I drank cold canned beer and graciously accepted when some generous stranger passed around a bowl.

The second puppet show was a performance at a banging housewarming party in a living room in Bed Stuy, and a friend was one of the central performers. At one point during the show an iMac in the living room fell four feet to the hardwood floor below and the audience - a room full of friends and friendly faces - gasped. THE SPECTRE OF FAILURE!3 I thought very loudly in my head while my face contorted into rapt, waiting concern. Of course the show Went On, the moment of danger transformed, transcended. Holy shit! This is real! This is real life! I thought over a swelling-swooning heart, and it set the tone for the best night of my year.

I managed to catch a bunch of rad shorts including the IFC’s showing of Academy Award-nominated animated shorts, Rooftop Films’ non-animated “uncanny” shorts as well as their animation block party, and a round of alternative horror shorts presented by the Bushwick Film Festival. Respectively, my favorite shorts from each of these collections were: Blind Vaysha, about a girl with an eye that sees the past and an eye that sees the future4, See A Dog, Hear A Dog which explores how we train non-humans (particularly 🐶 and 🤖) to respond to us as if they understand us, My Man (octopus) about the stickiness of a toxic relationship (or, from the same night, Pittari, about a v cute demon), and GREAT CHOICE, which is a hilarious horror short about being stuck in an infinitely looping Olive Garden commercial from the 90s.

If you enjoy films and live experiences generally, I can’t recommend Rooftop Films enough. They’re a long-running NYC nonprofit that supports diverse, independent filmmaking and their summer series is truly unique and wonderful; each screening is hosted in a dope outdoor location in NYC and is preceded by a musical act fit to the theme of the film. I saw films on the roof of the Old American Can Factory and backlit by the eponymous sunset of Sunset Park. The ticket-price also includes an open bar after each screening, and you can chat with the folks who worked on the films. These are the kind of events that make living in a city so special, so take a friend, take two, and go!

It was a chilly the night at the Old American Can Factory where we saw Rat Film, a documentary about Baltimore told through the measures taken to control the rat population. Eugene (left) is wearing a towel I bought in LA. Bailey (right) is wearing a NASA sweatshirt.

Big music, living room music, radio music, discos Good and Bad.

Unlike last year, I didn’t go to any music festivals, but I did hit up a couple biggish shows. I saw Chastity Belt at Williamsburg Hall of Music (what a great venue 💚) and Yaeji at Elsewhere.

In a surprise display of social aptitude and luck, I managed to pull together folks from no less than four disparate friend groups to go see Chastity Belt with me in June.

I’ve been getting good at identifying proper communal experiences and boy, AcouticQ really hits the nail on the head. It’s such a friendly, intimate setting that you can’t help but wonder, is this not the perfect what to share tunes about heartache and triumph? If that compelling to you and you’re a good person who enjoys folky music and supporting queer artists, starting following AcoustiQ and hit up one of their events! Bring snacks, bring booze, bring a cash donation. 💵

I saw Julia Weldon first at AcoustiQ in September…

…and then again in November at PIANOS. 😊🎸

I started listened to radio programs - I think perhaps when looking for tunes for my daily bike commute? Anyway, I found myself tuning in pretty regularly to Radio Free Brooklyn. Bushwick Garage is probably my most listened to station, and I haven’t really tried any of the more talk show stuff. I suspect there’s something for everyone, especially if you live in NYC. You can check out their schedule here, though I’ve been relying on their Mixcloud channel for the most part.

Continued to do a fair bit of dancing in 2017 and saw a few new-to-me venues. I’ve decided that I really hate most any dance club on a Friday or Saturday past midnight; the situation nearly always devolves into Basic Dance Beat while straights get sloppy all over the place. There is nothing more distracting and vibe-killing than pretending not to notice some baseball cap bro who keeps desperately dancing at you in a crowded space, especially when you know he’s “working up the courage” to say something that will inevitably be heinously stupid. Like, I did not come here to build empathy for mediocre dudes hoping to ~get lucky~ at the club, I came here to dance myself clean!!! 😤

So when I tell you that I’ve had nothing but positive, glowing experiences the last two times I’ve been to weekend events at Magick City, let me tell you, this is high praise! What a great DIY music venue. The first event I went to there was a record listening party, where a roomful of people laid on blanket on the floor and quietly listened to an album - had a break to talk about it, pee, get another beer - and then listened to another. The second event was a set by these folks in a thick fog with a great light show and yet room to dance and breathe! The drinks were cheap and there was a whole table of delicious free snacks that had been prepared onsite.

Look at this rad setup by Drippy Eye Projections!

A communal fifth of whiskey left in the bathroom at Magick City. Just in case you needed a lil, y’know? What a phenomenal discotheque!🕺✨

Biking.

Through 2017, biking has been my main form of commuting. I spent winter and spring using Citibike5 until finally buying my own in early June. Deciding to own a bike for the first time in the city, let alone picking what to buy, was a pretty challenging experience. I went with a lightweight matte-black hybrid with an internal hub for its 3 gears. 

My bb is decked out with cleated neon-chartreuse pedals, green and yellow spoke beads (not pictured), and a purple-teal bluetooth speaker. 💜💚

And a word, if we might, about my speaker: this speaker is tough as shit! I’ve dropped it off my bike multiple times, and once I looked back only to watch it get run over by a car, twice. It’s also survived rain, sailing, and being dumped roughly into airport bins.6

I have plenty more to say about biking, but to cut to the chase: biking is clearly a superior mode of urban transit if you are able-bodied, have the nerves to deal with cars, and don’t mind arriving at your destination kinda gross. In the last 18 months or so I’ve gone from someone who Never Goes Out to someone who Goes Out More Than Your Average Bear and I’m prepared to credit biking as a major enabler. If you want to learn more about your city, see your friends more often, and make new ones - start biking!

This is a video I shot while riding my bike home from a 4th of July party. I nearly got nailed with a Roman Candle, lol.

Traveling.

I also did a greater-than-expected bit of traveling again this year, again all within the United States. I went to Austin in April, visited Oakland and Berkeley for the first time in May, visited both Ithaca and Vermont for the first times in July, drove to Kentucky to see the TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE with my cousin in August, drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles for Indiecade in October, and capped off with a half-work half-play visit to Portland, OR in November. I suspect this isn’t a sustainable amount of traveling, but it’s incredibly hard to regret - especially when it allows you to see friends who live far away or experience unique bonding moments with friends who live nearby - so who knows what next year will look like.

One of the most special places I’ve been this year was Lothlorien, a student coop at Berkeley where a friend lived in undergrad. It was an inspiring intentional community - so much art on the walls, a tree house with a perfect view of the sunset, a dream library. So magical! 💖

The cabin trip in Vermont was also really special. We did so many appropriate summer camp activities, like sailing, tubing, visiting cows, taking walks under a sky full of stars, building a blanket fort, putting together puzzles, and playing with fire.

We made this at the beginning of the day and boy oh boy did it come in handy for organizing ourselves! And gee, look at how well hydrated we were. 💦🌈💦

Now, the less easy stuff.

Sex.

One of my goals this year was to “learn more about sex.”

me: when you said we were going to be learning about sex, i didn’t realize there’d be so much reading involved, i thought it might be less of a mental and more of a physical edu- also me: lol don’t front

When I first cracked open Bataille’s Erotism: Death and Sensuality, I remember being absolutely floored by how much it was not whatever I had expected it to be - and that that was a helpful starting place. Erotism is an examination of the function of taboos and their sites of transgression, how the act of transgressing is subject to its own social rules and tends to be ritualized7, and how as conscious mortal beings we’re compelled towards moments of transgression because they seem to imitate what we imagine the great continuity of death feels like without having to, y’know, die. I liked his analysis of de Sade’s writing and the irony of sadism - that the promise of transgression is greater self-awareness, but the violence it requires necessarily also erodes that same awareness. I both appreciate and am wary of how aggressively Bataille dislocates sex from a bodily endeavor to a psychological compulsion. He had also some real undercooked shit say about women and was clearly terrified of sex, so I’m kinda disinclined to treat his opinions as functionally valuable to lived experience.

The Persistent Desire, on the other hand, was easily the most personally important book I read this year. It’s an anthology of generations of lesbian femme-butch relationships, told through stories from women’s lives, interviews with queer scholars, and some extremely hot sex poems. My primary inner-dialogue with gender has been “ugh” and “this shit again” and “if I pitch my voice and play Nice Girl this unbearable interaction will be over faster.” I had never spent so much concentrated time thinking about the performance of gendered sexuality in queer relationships, and wow, I have been missing out on some much better thoughts!

Like, Q: Does gender performance ever feel sexy to me, not just hostile? Under what circumstances? A: Yes, but generally only so long as a) the performance is fluid, eg. you’re the boy, I’m the girl, now you’re the girl, now we’re both boys, and b) power, however gendered, doesn’t rest in one place for too long. Gender is fun to play with as long as it feels like playing, where the heteronormative script is really only referenced insofar as it’s being subverted, shredded up by contact with a reality that unequivocally de-legitimizes it.

Like, Q: how much better would my life be if I approached sexual relationships from a place of radical honesty and expected the same from my partners? A: PROBABLY A LOT.

Like, Q: how do I make space in my life to form romantic-sexual relationships with people who aren’t cishet dudes? A: idk bitch, but you’re apparently a pro at lifestyle changes! Keep going to queer events, keep reading, keep processing. I believe in you.

This is a cute fire safety map at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which I visited for the first time on a very wet snowy day in November. The archives had been mentioned frequently in The Persistent Desire and I was so excited to find that they were still around (44 years!), located in Brooklyn, and having an annual book sale.

Depression, denial, and death.

At one point this year I remember having an entirely normal hang out with my sister and partner in our Bed-Stuy apartment. I turned to the both of them and said, “You know, I think I might be real sad. I think I might depressed.” I wasn’t worried when I said it, though I do remember the words feeling strange. My sister and my partner of 7 years looked at each other, something like ‘Uh, do you want to take this one?’ or ‘Does she really not know?’ and eventually someone said, “Yeah, Nicole, that sounds right.”

If you had told me last year that I’d be spending so much time with Freud and Camus I would have rolled my eyes very, very exaggeratedly.

The most frightening thing about mental unwellness, imo, is that a good personal quality which is otherwise healthy and worth cherishing can become catastrophically distorted. So, say, an extremely deep capacity for enduring pain and discomfort, especially in service of others, becomes proving your worth by how much you’re willing to suffer, how much energy you’re willing to give away without expecting reciprocation. Worse still, let’s say, is being trapped in a cycle of denial about your own nature.

Denial takes lazy, irrational, harmful patterns of thought and elevates them to Gospel. You can’t be a generous and giving person because you can so clearly recall all the moments when you could have given more. You can’t be getting taken advantage of because you obviously would not abide exploitation in your presence. A friend wouldn’t repeatedly use you, to your loss and their gain, so that’s impossible by definition. If what you’re doing was really that painful and exhausting, you would have stopped already. _If you were depressed, you’d know it._8

I took this photo in Austin on a night when I was feeling decidedly not good at all. In fact, I was feeling so not good and so ashamed of not feeling good that I went out and bought The Myth of Sisyphus.

Last month the opiate epidemic rose up and swallowed my estranged uncle. Though we weren’t personally close, I’d spent my childhood within a ten minute walk from his house and had lots of memories of him. Death leaves a vacuum, always. It’s also an effective invitation to re-examine your life and the people in it. My uncle was provided with endless love and support from his family - and yet. Self-delusion sure is captivating.9

This was a year where I decided that I valued truth over self-delusion, and more importantly, a year where I affirmed that decision with concerted effort. It is extraordinarily challenging to reckon with the blind-spots in your perception of reality, especially whenever those blind-spots were constructed By You to cope with past pain and avoid it again in the future. Maybe everyone doesn’t need to do this? Maybe most people live comfortably with the given state of their ego? But internal delusions are a barrier to conscious clarity, and to the extent that living consciously feels the most like Actually Living and not Waiting To Die, I am determined to clean that shit up.

Lessons, imperatives!

So it’s late afternoon on Dec 31st and if this is going to be a 2017 recap, I’m really coming down to the wire. Here are the most important lessons I learned this year.

I luv this demon, because they sure got the right idea. ❤️🖤 

AESTHETICS MATTER.

I’ve often caught myself feeling bad for identifying with a community or culture that I didn’t feel like I’d “earned” my place at yet. This happened with biking, it happened with programming, it happened in queer spaces. imo, the best way to handle impostor syndrome is to kill it where it sleeps. I sure am! I am a devious impostor! Let’s see how far I can get before someone reveals me, exiles me! Turns out you can get all the way to Being The Thing, especially if your intentions are true. Your attraction to the thing is the first signal of your belonging, so get busy belonging!

LOVE THYSELF, AND GET GOOD AT IT.

Most of the psychological friction I’ve come up against in my search for The Truth Please has been caused by a very stubborn refusal to see and accurately assess my own self-worth. Very classic, very boring. I have only just begun to internalize what it might mean to love myself, to care for myself with even a little of the generosity and kindness and specificity that I happily devote to other people. The psychic backbending I’ve had to do to accomplish this goes something like, what if we loved ourselves the way we wished someone else would, like, idk, as a joke or something? Wouldn’t that be funny, at least? 🙃

That worked pretty well, but when it didn’t, I used brute willpower: hating yourself is a coward’s game, and whatever I may be able to lie to myself about, I will not pretend that I’m a coward.

Ultimately, though, the best way to learn how to love yourself is to watch how your friends do it and to actively resist the urge to interrupt them.

SPEAK, BITCH 🗯

Earlier this year I was walking with a friend, and I was very ashamed of myself when I told her I was thinking about writing something. I immediately walked it back, waffled, recoiled from myself. She was bewildered. “You should! I feel like you have things to say!” My reaction to this was sharp, panicked fear.

Because she was right. Because self-articulation and knowledge-sharing are fundamental human endeavors and if I think I’m somehow exempt from that, that I somehow uniquely Haven’t Got Anything Worth Saying, then that is delusion. Because if the real thing holding me back is a fear that my skill won’t measure up to the things I want to express, then the brave and honest thing to do is to try anyway.

So when I went to Recurse Center, I started this blog. I named it Because Its Important just so that every time I started doubting myself and asking “Why oh why am I doing this?” I would have the answer right there. 🐙

👋 Thank you for reading! Here is a silly-glasses bathroom selfie.

I read Donna Haraway’s CYBORG MANIFESTO for an outdoor discussion group at Unnameable books this summer. It is so amazing. I could only barely keep pace with it and I can’t wait to read it again after some time. ↩︎

I consistently arrived late, but bearing coffee by way of apology. ☕️🙏 ↩︎

I read Theatre of the Unimpressed, a book recommended to me by a friend after we saw an indie play earlier this year. The book talks a lot about what makes theater captivating, about the necessity of the possibility of failure, about the tendency for people to see see one boring-ass play and decide that they Just Aren’t Into Theater. The play we saw together wasn’t memorable, save for the fact that it was performed in a loft that hosts semi-regular makeout parties, which I’ve attended on half a dozen occasions. They are largely terrible. ↩︎

In one of the scenes Vaysha is courted by suitors, but they appear as child in one eye and an old man in the other. Fucking chilling. ↩︎

I remember a conversation earlier this year where a guy said that he “couldn’t imagine what it takes” to ride a heavy Citibike over a bridge in NYC. “Willpower, mostly” I replied. He ignored me, repeated himself: “Gee, but I just don’t get it!” If someone doesn’t want to understand, they don’t want to understand. ↩︎

You can buy one here. ↩︎

In fact, a taboo ain’t even a taboo if it can’t be transgressed! ↩︎

A possibly less upsetting example of a denial! In September I was walking to brunch with my sister and her boyfriend the morning after a party at my bff's apartment. "Nicole, you really brought the party!" He said to me. My immediate emotional response was anger at how 100% wrong he was. The night before I had brought glowsticks, mini shark toys, and a Gingerhead House kit to the party. I was going to a party that night for which I'd purchased a tank of helium and large tropical balloons. But my desire to argue, my certainty that He Had Erred was complete. I've very rarely experienced moments where my subjective experience is so strongly misaligned with objective reality, but now that I'm in the business of noticing this crap, it happens pretty regularly whenever anyone says anything nice about me, to me. ↩︎

Drugs, too. ↩︎

[expertlessopinion]

Back to the Future (Best of 2016)

As a much belated list and a final farewell to this most neglected corner of the internet, I have decided to post my favorite 100 albums of 2016 (or something close to that number) as a segue to my new writing project with the talented Dave P over at heardofthem.com where I will be writing (much more consistently) current reviews of new music, features on the history of pop music and society, interviews, reviews of live shows, and everything in between. For explanation of method: I used aggregated new release websites to update monthly new albums, combined them into a single playlist and play on random. When I heard a track I liked or thought deserved more attention I created a second list. From there I listened to whole albums and made cursory reviews and eventually whittled down this into my list. It’s music I like. You might hate it. It might even be objectively bad, but it’s music I listened to more than once. It will be more or less the same process I use for 2017. I listened to approximately 900 albums, around which 200 made my second list. It’s not perfect, but it’ll work for now. I had originally intended to write reviews for the top ten, but 2017 is fast upon us and I need to focus on that. I will definitely write reviews for the top ten in 2017. Thanks.

For the record, those marked with an asterisk are for noteworthy, surprising, first time albums that shined, something I had a personal affection for, and then the flat out weird. In other words: special.

In short order:

Highly Suspect - The Boy Who Died Wolf

Clams Casino - 32 Levels

Guts Club - Shit Bug

Lisa Hannigan - At Swim

Minor Victories - Minor Victories

Lewis and Leigh - Ghost

The Turtles - All the Singles (Re-issue)

The Radio Dept. - Running Out of Love

The Olympians - The Olympians

 O Terno - O Terno

Nick Ellis - Daylight Ghosts

The Still - The Still

Grace - FMA

Hinds - Leave Me Alone

Courtney Marie Andrews - Honest Life

Young Magic - Still Life

Black Atlass - Haunted Paradise Remixes LP

Rolling Blackouts - Talk Tight

CFCF - On Vacation

Polica - United Crushers

Black Mountain - IV

Marissa Nadler- Strangers

Bibio - A Mineral Love

Solange - A Seat at the Table

Kweku Collins - Nat Love

Maria Usbeck - Amparo

Hoops - Hoops EP

Snowblink - Returning Current

Mexican Institute of Sound - Vibras Tenebrosas

Leonore Boulanger - Feigen Feigen

Laura Mvula - The Dreaming Room

Brendan Canning - Home Wrecking Years

Seculos Apaixonados - O Ministerio de Colocacaou

Gonjasufi - Callus

Lando Chill - For Mark, Your Son

Allah-Lahs - Calico Review

Metronymy- Summer 08′

Bat for Lashes - The Wife

Studio OST- Scenes 2012-2015*

Morly - Something More Holy (EP)

Big Star - Complete Third (Re-issue)

Fat White Family - Songs for Our Mothers

Esperanza Spalding - Emily’s D+ Evolution

Casey Mecija - Psychic Materials

Vomitface - Hooray for Me

Chairlift - Moth

Case/Lang/Veirs - Case/Lang/Veirs

Let’s Eat Grandma - I, Gemini

The She-Devils - She-Devils (EP)

Anohni - Hopelessness

The Body - No One Deserves Happiness

Arc Iris - Moon Saloon*

Arabot - The Gospel

Anna Meredith - Varmint

Beyonce - Lemonade

Serpentwithfeet - Blisters (EP)*

Goat - Requiem

Trembling Bells - The Bonnie Bells of Oxford*

Topaz Jones - Arcade

Wye Oak - Tween

Yumi Zoumi - Yoncalla

Carrie Rodriguez - Lola

Kanye - Life of Pablo

Ian William Craig - Centres

The Avalanches - Wildflower

NAO - For All We Know

Sun Ra - Singles (Reissue)

Dolly Parton - Pure and Simple

Chance the Rapper - Coloring Book

William Tyler - Modern Country

Still Corners - Dead Blue

Luther Dickinson - Blues and Ballads

Wild Beasts - Boy King

NxWorries - Yes Lawd!

Mark Barrot - Sketches from an Island 2*

Jenny Hval - Blood Bitch

M83 - Junk

Terry Allen - Lubbock (On Everything)

Martha - Blisters in the Pit of My Heart

Bahwee - Flavors

Royal Canoe - Something Got Lost Between Here and the Ocean

Racing Glaciers - Caught in the Strange

Nicholar Jaar - Sirens

Highwater - Crush*

Big Thief - Masterpiece

Wire - Utility

Susanna - Triangle

Kevin Morby - Singing Saw

Blood Orange - Freetown Sound

Mica Levi - Remain Calm*

Oranssi Pazuzu - Varahtelija

Anderson .Paak - Malibu

Quilt - Plaza

Kero Kero Bonito - Bonito Generation

John Luther Adams - The Colorado

Khadja Bonet - The Visitor

Billie Marten - Writing of Blues and Yelows

Andy Shauf - The Party

Barro - Miocardio

Nissennenmondai - #N/A

Abi Reimold - Wriggling

Michael Kiwankuka - Love and Hate*

Savages - Adore

J. Cole - 4 Your Eyez Only

Kelsey Lu - Church

Y La Bamba - Ojos Del Sol

Katrynada - 99.9%

Yak - Alas Salvation*

Frank Ocean - Blond

Elza Soares - Mulher do Fin do Mundo

Angel Olsen - My Woman

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - Ears

Flock of Dimes - If You See Me, Say Yes*

Margaret Glaspy - Emotions and Math*

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Nonagon Infinity

Madeline Kenney - Singals* (EP)

Thao and the get Down - A Man Alive*

Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition

Kendrick Lamar - Untitled Unmastered

Japanese Breakfast - Psychopomp*

Bon Iver - 22, A Million

Blonde Redhead - Masculin Feminin*

Lydia Loveless- Real*

Noname - Telefone*

Jessy Lanza - Oh No*

[tinymixtapes]

Music Review: Jlin - Black Origami

Jlin Black Origami [Planet Mu; 2017] Rating: 4/5 There is a commonplace understanding that the true test of artificial intelligence lies in the 70-ish-year-old Turing Test, wherein a human is either able or unable to identify an agent of artificial intelligence as such. There exists another vein of criticism, however, which posits that perhaps artificial intelligence is of itself a form of perception that has only very little to do with the human perspective, and that the latter should not necessarily be litmus for the efficacy of the former. This is the perspective capable of acknowledging the Anthropocene and of conceiving of machine intelligence as something other than merely an oppressive, late-capitalist burden. I saw Jlin perform twice at Montreal’s MUTEK festival last June: once in a field, once inside a museum gallery (respectively, a DJ set and a live set). In the field, Jlin spun footwork and juke to a crowd of eurotrash-chic teens and grayscale-clad art world adults alike, setting aside their differences to mutually lose their shit. Classic battle dance and hard-house tracks from Chicago greats — DJ Rashad, RP Boo, DJ Deeon — abutting Jlin’s own Dark Energy cuts prompted a palpable imperative movement within the Sunday-evening crowd, impacting and spreading out through groupings of bodies in observable waves. Jlin smiled through the whole performance. Inside the Musée d’art contemporain the night previous, awareness instead squared to the atmospheric pressure of a crowd that arrived expecting to dance, bodies hanging at the midpoint between seizure and restraint, drawn close at each rhythmic turn to something uncannily distinct from the auto-propulsive stutter of footwork. Footwork music typically compels people (who don’t know how to footwork) to bop their heads around in double-time casually, like they’re vibing to a club-friendly hip-hop track. Jlin’s austere performance did not offer that channel for corporal processing: it was something unforgivingly locked-in, brash in its circumvention of the same old two-step mindset. Gone was any trace of lighthearted juke bounce, in its place a cascade of nervous percussive ornates, at once brutally monolithic in how their crescendos landed unfailingly on the whole note yet iteratively complex on the syntactic level, never quite repeating the same phrase twice. Jlin articulated the massive mood of the rhythmic swells at the head of the room with zealous fist-pumps accentuating the whole notes. As the live performance developed, sounds more typically connoting footwork (rimshots, 808 bass and snare, that “whoosh” sound, vocals chopped beyond identification) slipped unnoticeable into the lexicon on a granular level, but they’d been redeployed into patterns allowing no refuge from its kinetic grip. Although I assume most of the material has been altered dramatically from the inchoate strains audible in Jlin’s performance last summer, this same reorientation and reanimation of the footwork lexicon from within is what distinguishes Black Origami as a distinct stroke in the oeuvre of Jlin, Chicago (though the artist hails specifically from Gary, Ohio), and dance music lineage in general. If footwork self-consciously deconstructed the established grammar of group movement and straightforward momentum that ghetto house and juke sought to unify, traumatically hollowing out the dance circle and exposing its center to a Promethean chain of iterations, Black Origami abstracts the discourse once again, moving from a semiotic matrix into a topographical one. The long-fermented grammar of life articulated in footwork reincarnates on Jlin’s latest record as pure, intelligent substance, imbibed and outwardly projected to cultivate a deep nod of xenolalia: the divine, unaccountable performance of a language that the speaker has never formally acquired. The press materials for Black Origami cite a deliberate turn on the part of Jlin toward the pure core of creation, as well as an attempt to draw influence from collaboration with Indian dancer Avril Stormy Unger. There is an antagonism seeded within this construction of artistic intention that characterizes a prominent tension on the record: there are more tongues, more symbols, more strokes, more metrics, more compositional strategies (via Jlin’s collaborators, among them the infamous minimalist William Basinski, cyborg vocalist Holly Herndon, and neo-futurist producer Fawkes) here than ever before (even for a record in a sample-based lineage), yet the micro-breakdowns inherent in its proud heteroglossia sketch at the shadow-outline of a deep, unitary substance — that same dark energy, distilled and machine-learning its own genus of ornates. The title track kicks off this unfunky, machinic skittering, orchestrated with a polyphony of oblique, inward-folding voices that glide over and under one another. In conjunction with biomorphic vocal sounds, “Black Origami” invokes a sense of deep reverence, underpinned with cyborgian anxiety and the suggestion of internal collapse. Timbrel strikes of tonal Indian drums function in much the same way an 808 tom conveys a pitch and frequency that, upon repetition, casts a chordal wash over even tracks bereft of conventional melody or dance music structures. Bird’s-eye surveillance topography of rhythmic structure is indeed the departure that enables compositions like these to emerge, one that tends inward towards the singularity of Jlin’s vision as much as it pulls from the scope of her influences. “Enigma” and “Kyanite” follow in the same vein, accordingly accelerating the physical denial of simple resolution and calibrating to the neo-baroque sense of rupture and awe at the indistinct precipice of intuition and algorithmic sequence — the compositional palette parallels this, juxtaposing the spirit-exulting harshness of devotional reed instruments, breathless vocals (as on William Basinski-featuring [!!] “Holy Child”) with an evasive low end of mutating bass and tom patterns. Elsewhere, as on “Hatsepshut” and gripping album closer “Challenge (To Be Continued),” the same rhythmic pattern absorbs a militaristic drum-and-fife band rattle, landing somewhere between the playful ritualism of college drumline and an autopoetic war machine. This ambivalence, too, seems central to Jlin’s work, brutality never truly resolving against almost humorous moments of absurdity. Themes of energy mining, chemical process, and energetic substance come to the fore on Black Origami both nominally (with track titles like “Kyanite,” “Calcination,” “Carbon 7 (161),” and “Never Created, Never Destroyed”) and in the manner that Jlin’s indelible rhythmic imprint mutates a lexicon of irresolvable heterogenous symbols and sounds. Take “1%,” whose sample bank deploys gestural, functional sound designs from across different genres of media and communication: the ascending whine sound that introduces the lead up to a chorus in drill music abuts the dead line sample from American landline phones (“We’re sorry, your call has not gone through…”) and the death warning of the Red Queen from Resident Evil. This type of pan-cultural sampling is nothing new in the footwork lineage, but within the context of Black Origami’s intensifying last gasps, the gesture forcefully conveys a deep disjuncture, a vast traumatic gulch belying the convergence of multifarious semiotics that converges in machine intelligence, which anxiously surveils the dwindling energetic substances anchoring planetary biology and the ever-widening imprint of its own activities. The onus of Black Origami is neither to tame nor slay this chimera, but to trace its motions and pay exulted tribute. What emerges is a baroque topography of movement and energy, culled from the explosion of an ultra-specific cultural context outwards, and then back into the dusk. http://j.mp/2qOVVAZ

[zenscientist-blog]

Albums of my undergrad

A compilation of albums I have listened to over the past 5 years. Many of these bring back close memories that I will never get back. These albums are really important to me and I feel like they shaped my life in one way or another.  1A (Sept 2012)

1. Channel Orange - Frank Ocean Channel Orange is a good start to this list. The first time I listened to this album was when my first boyfriend (who wasn’t my boyfriend at the time) notified me that the album had leaked sometime in July (?) of 2012. I remember vaguely laying on my bed messaging him on Facebook when I decided to download it. At this point in my life I was exploring my sexuality for the first time (legitimately); ultimately it showed in the way I treated him during first semester in university when he decided to switch from socio-econ to my current program and when I kept him my dirty little secret for about half a year. It was a learning experience, and I think it was because of him and Channel Orange that I decided to finally come out in 1B through a note I left under my pillow when I went home to visit during Christmas break. There was something very brave about Franks choice to out himself publicly on tumblr through this sentimental note about his first love - it really resonated with me at the time, and still does to this day. Of which turned out to be this fuckboy in Ottawa I still had residual feelings for from some stupid online infatuation that I eventually pursued in semester 3A. That’s an aside. This album also had significance to this duality and persona of mystery that my life had become. Duality as in my identity, mystery as in my inability to really open up to my close friends and family. It felt pure, to be reborn like that. It really felt like a new beginning, which is suitable cause the next four to five years definitely brought big change. 

2. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Wilco YHF is an eclectic album to say the least -- this one tops a lot of P4K and other music blog lists.. and for a good reason. In 1A I annoyed my roommates to death by putting this album on loop, covering several songs on the guitar and eventually playing “Heavy Metal Drummer” at a coffee house with a group of my close friends. I still remember the printed out lyrics with a whimsical sketch of a woman’s figure on my wall. I also remember changing my cover photo at the time to the album artwork (cause I’m a total dork). At that time, a random architecture student decided to troll me by imitating my Facebook page - down to the article of clothing and backdrop of my profile pictures and my cover photo.. that happened to by YHF at the time. It became a joke in my program and I ended up meeting their entire group in residence in 1B.  The album was met with high praise with my half asian friend I met through my next door neighbour in first year. In Calgary my colleague told me his really intelligent aunt bought him the album in high school but never got around to listening to it until university.  The Idler wheel.. - Fiona Apple The Moon and Antartica - Modest Mouse The Blue Album - Weezer OK Computer, Kid A, In Rainbows, The Bends - Radiohead Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted

1B (January 2013)

Emergency & I - The Dismemberment Plan Good Kid M.A.A.D City - Kendrick Lamar Hurry Up I’m Dreaming - M83 Young Team - Mogwai Self-titled - My Bloody Valentine Person Pitch - Panda Bear Merriweather Post-Pavillion - AC Strawberry Jam - AC Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Summerbreak London (May 2013)

The Soft Bulletin - The Flaming Lips Acid Rap - Chance the Rapper Dummy - Portishead Doolittle - The Pixies Set Yourself on Fire - Stars Last Splash - The Breeders MCII - Mikal Cronin

2A (September 2013)

The Money Store - Death Grips Obsidian - Baths  Cerulean - Baths

This album was recommended to me by my co-worker in London when I worked back at the slab after noticing I had obsidian on my phone. I remember listening to this as I closed shop, everything I did there felt so efficient. My career right now feels very iterative and methodological, I wish I could just go back and serve someone ice cream. 

The album also reminds me of biking to theory every morning in the Fall and was the start of my inspiration to learn about DAWs in 2B; along with Cosmogramma and the Money Store of course.. I love the stark contrast between Obsidian and Cerulean, dark and light. Eventually I saw him live in Calgary that Summer.

‘if you still want me to be there, i'd be there in a minute to say: "i love you enough to drive an hour from wherever i am to be with you" and it is always the simplest shit that means the most’

Cosmogramma - Flying Lotus Flying Colours - Shad Narrow - Soap&Skin Six Feet Beneath the Moon - King Krule 2 - Mac Demarco 

2B (January 2014) Loud City Song - Julia Holter Weird Sisters - Joanna Gruesome Nick Drake - Pink Moon Fetch - Melt-Banana Clara Schumann Benji - Sun Kil Moon Sea Change - Beck Immunity - Jon Hopkins I’m Wide Awake and It’s Morning - Bright Eyes

Calgary (May 2014) Michigan - Sufjan Stevens Illinois - Sufjan Stevens Mezzanine - Massive Attack  Keep It Like a Secret - Built to Spill Is This It - The Strokes They want my soul - Spoon Ocean Death - Baths Sound Dust - Stereolab

3A (September 2014) Neon Golden - Notwist Kill the Moonlight - Spoon Either / Or - Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith will always have a place in my heart. There is something about listening to Elliott’s music that is sad yet hopeful. He does a great job of depicting complex emotions and it’s something I look for in art. It’s strange how we do a downward comparison; it’s relieving to know someone else is having a shitty day.  I don’t really remember listening to Elliott Smith for the first time. I do remember the period I did fall in love with Either/Or, which was at the end of a rocky relationship. I’d say it was a devastating time in my life (not to sound too dramatic). I was coming back to school from Alberta and I had been in a long-distance relationship with someone that went to school an hour away by train. The end of this relationship dragged on for months. I was holding onto someone that did not see me the same way. That’s ok. He never had this intention that I would move across the country for him on a whim. I wish he would have figured that out before it were too late. Unless he realized this in Calgary. Either way, I don’t regret it. I loved him a lot. Unfortunately I was a mess. I don’t think I have ever been more depressed in my life when that one ended. At the time my mom was also going through some tough shit with her separation. I needed to be strong for my mom. It’s amazing how things have really pulled through for her. Too many tears were shed that October. All my friends were there for me. The last track on Either/Or is about Elliott’s ex-girlfriend. Its the only song in his discography that I can pinpoint and say “holy shit. Elliott was really in love with this girl, and she broke his heart”  Say yes!!  This list is turning into a personal diary.. but I see it as a way for me to remember my past as it was. I kind of like this. Turn on the Bright Lights - Interpol Endless Fantasy - Anamanaguchi

Without You I’m Nothing - Placebo Leaves Turn Inside You, Repetition - Unwound Juju - Siouxsie and the Banshees Music Has the Right to Children - Boards of Canada Geogaddi - Boards of Canada Ottawa (January 2015) Halcyon Digest - Deerhunter Whirr - Distressor LP1 - FKA Twigs Homogenic - Björk French Exit - TV Girl Black Messiah - D’Angelo Rumours - Fleetwood Mac Otis Blue - Otis I See a Darkness - Bonnie Prince Billy Chutes too Narrow - The Shins I Love You Honey Bear - Father John Misty Nocturne - Wild Nothing 3B (May 2015) To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar Celebrity Skin - Hole Self-titled - Garbage  Sometimes I Just Sit and Think - Courtney Barnett Whirlpool - Chapterhouse Self-titled - American Football Richard D James Album - Aphex Twin Drukqs - Aphex Twin Gentlemen - The Afghan Whigs  Self-Titled - Third Eye Blind

Kitchener (September 2015)

Heaven or Las Vegas - Cocteau Twins Sun Coming Down - Ought Life of Pause - Wild Nothing Colour Trip - Ringo Deathstarr  Fading Frontier - Deerhunter So the Flies Don’t Come - Milo Soul Mining - The The Moon Safari - Air Depression Cherry - Beach House Have you in my Wilderness - Julia Holter 4A (January 2016) Blood Visions - Jay Reatard Young Americans - David Bowie Black Star - David Bowie Meliora - Ghost Nowhere - Ride SVIIB - School of Seven Bells  Emergency on Planet Earth - Jamiroquai Parklife - Blur Wellness - Last Dinosaurs Kaputt - Destroyer The Campfire Headphase - Boards of Canada Oxford (April - May 2016) A Moon Shaped Pool - Radiohead Bottomless Pit - Death Grips Ottawa (June - August 2016) Fantasma - Cornelius  Communique - Dire Straits Tarot Sport - Fuck Buttons 69 Love Songs - The Magnetic Fields Eye Contact - Gang Gang Dance Strangers - Marissa Nadler Tired of Tomorrow - Nothing Malibu - Anderson Paak LP2 - Metz  Telephone - Noname Ottawa (September 2016) Endless - Frank Ocean  Blond(e) - Frank Ocean 22, A Million - Bon Iver Entertainment! - Gang of Four Self-Titled - Elliott Smith Screamadelica - Primal Scream Autolux - Future Perfect Teens of Denial - Car Seat Headrest Guilty of Everything - Nothing

4B (January 2017 - Present) From a Basement on the Hill - Elliott Smith The Downward Spiral - Nine Inch Nails Mic City Sons - Heatmiser Gala - Lush Self-titled - Blur 13 - Blur ...