#this was during jazzys stream

[puppyrelp]

drop the lightbrush milk and cereal drawing here

since you asked So politely

[earth-64]

Wake Up Call - Nintendo Alarmo

All through Summer 2024 the Nintendo fandom had been in a fervor. The Nintendo Switch’s reign had eclipsed its seven year apex: the time had come for a new flagship piece of hardware to take its place. The stage seemed to be set: the game releases were thinning, the Nintendo Directs sparse, and the major game releases clearly smaller, outsourced, and not the main focus of development. Nintendo had already acknowledged the new machine’s existence with an assurance of it being announced within the fiscal year, followed by a continuous promise below each and every announcement stream that there “will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during [...] these presentations.”

As the dog days passed by, during the fleeting few weeks of Fall that still existed between the ever widening record-high Summers and devastating Winter storms, it seemed undeniable that the stage was being set. Nintendo filed new patents for motion sensor technology. Word got out that they were filming a commercial for a new piece of hardware. They flew out content creators to demo something kept under wraps. And on October 9th, 2024, fans awoke to a flurry of notifications, an early morning unheralded announcement shaking the very foundations of what was thought possible for the gaming giant: 

Alarmo.

Nintendo’s smart alarm clock. A touchscreen device with a sleek interface, loaded with 35 themes inspired by 5 games (and more to come), and a $100 price tag. Their patented motion sensing technology made for a hands-free experience. Set the alarm once and from then on, each and every morning, your eyes would flutter open to a jazzy Mario tune, and your triumphant rise from bed would be rewarded with a victory jingle, a “Lets-A-Go!”, and a shot of nostalgic dopamine. 

But is nostalgic the right word? The motion sensor only works with a very specific set-up: most notably being limited to one person, a small bed, and a room that will remain otherwise empty through the night. No spouses, no pets, no roommates. It was clear this was intended for a child’s room. So no, it wasn’t nostalgic. At least not yet. It was designed to create new nostalgia.

Nintendo Alarmo, along with the similarly aimed Pokemon Sleep, are part of Nintendo’s long-running obsession with intentionally forming habits and responses. From the scheduled broadcasts of the Satellaview to the daily-task centric Animal Crossing series, and especially the predatory practices of their mobile game releases, Nintendo had a penchant for designing parasites that attached themselves to your waking (and non-waking) cycle. 

Today I’ll be sharing excerpts from interviews with people who received Alarmos as children, and uncover the shocking effects of waking each morning to a pavlovian coin-get jingle. But first, speaking of coin-getting, a word from today’s sponsor: LoanFast. Is payday just a—

God what a waste of time. Shit’s always so negative these days. These nostalgia-grab video essays used to be pleasant. Here’s an old-school animated movie you haven’t seen since the DVD bargain bin! Top ten cartoons of the 2010s! The misunderstood genius of the Wii U! But nah, now time has crept past the optimistic millennials. We’re struggling to find the diamonds in the rough patch that was the 2020s, to salvage anything from that fucking trash heap of a decade. God, no wait. Now I sound like them. I grew up with that age of media. I love that age of media. It’s just so easy to let the zeitgeist of doomerism– Okay stop. It’s way too easy to let these things override my brain. I had to mentally backspace the phrase “easily impressionable” right there too. I watch these videos with their big words and their gloomy ways of lookin at life and I feel it all start to seep into me. 

Millennials will convince you that the 00s were the peak of human creation. That the 10s were the last big push of creativity. But that's just not true! My cartoons were way better! Our video games are just objectively cooler and bigger! Adults get stuck on trying to make fun of my generation for the same few bullshit things, if I hear one more Skibidi Rizz I’m gonna– Shouldn’t think like that. I’m 24 now. That’s an adult. I’m an adult. I keep saying that and it doesn’t sound any more true. It happened so fast. It took so much time but it happened so fast. I was just a kid, playing Super Mario Odyssey on an old LCD, and then I was a teenager and a lot happened, so much happened, and now I’m an adult playing Super Mario Odyssey on an old LCD and nothing happens, nothing ever happens. I am an adult and it is Christmas Eve and I am alone.

It was Christmas Eve then too. Back when Christmas felt like Christmas. I was 12 years old when I got the Nintendo Alarmo. December 24th, 2024 when I tore open my first present of the year. It was tradition to get one present the night before, usually something to pass the time until I was more tired than I was excited for the next morning. You wouldn’t think a clock would keep me busy but I spent the whole evening fiddling with the options, looking at every theme, resetting the time to hear the top-of-the-hour jingles for each game. I remember dad helping me put in the wi-fi password, I remember mom’s hurried trip to whatever convenience store was still open on the holiday because the damned thing didn’t come with an AC adapter. She brought back a package of Reese’s and one of those juice drinks with a plastic toy on it. It was… a Spongebob one? Yeah, and I set it on the shelf and it fell off during all the unwrapping the next day and it rolled underneath the shelf and it was down there for months and I’m remembering every single time I was sitting on the floor playing Mario and Luigi Brothership after getting it the next day and every single time I could see the Spongebob juice topper below the tv smiling at me and I never thought to get it I never put any thought into it being there it was just there until a day my mom must have swept and it wasn’t there and I didn’t think about it not being there. Until right now. 

Why didn’t that thing come with an AC adapter, god that’s so stupid.

I think about all that and I don’t think about everything that happened afterwards. I’m 12 years old and it’s Christmas Eve 2024 and I’m getting the Nintendo Alarmo and now I’m 24 years old and it’s Christmas Eve 2036 and I look over at the window sill next to my bed and the Nintendo Alarmo is still there, still ticking. The AC adapter has been replaced a couple times and it’s a bit dinged up but it’s still ticking. So much happened all the while that clock kept ticking. I’m still ticking. I’ve gotten so worked up over this fucking video and I’ve been scrolling my home page this whole time. I try to actually read the titles my eyes are glossing over: “The Untold Story of Minecraft’s 1.50 Disaster”, “What Went Wrong With Forza 2030”, “Does Sony Regret Dropping Out of Consoles?” and I almost click the last one to see which retired executive guy they’re interviewing and personifying the whole company onto this time and I stop myself. It just takes one god damn clickbait title to manufacture curiosity like that and I’ll be watching another two hour video about job layoffs and feeling like shit again. I’m so sick of feeling like shit. It’s getting harder and harder to find content that makes me feel good. 

I decide to just turn the damn thing off. I sit there in the dark for a minute, as a dim light comes from across the room: it's 11:00pm and my Nintendo Alarmo is displaying a top-of-the-hour animation. Mario runs into view, bumps a block 11 times. I hear the little coin-collection jingle 11 times, and then the screen defaults back to its calmer darker state. 

I google for a day calculator on my phone and punch in that Christmas Eve and this one. 

4,383 days. If you take into the fact that after the Animal Crossing theme releases I swapped to that for Halloween and Christmas mornings, that’s 22 Animal Crossing mornings, and 4,360 Super Mario mornings, and 1 Mario Kart morning that I hated. Who the fuck wants to wake up to tires screeching? And the “FIRST PLACE VICTORY!” out-of-bed message was a bit patronizing even for me. But yeah, 4,360 Super Mario wake up calls. 4,360 times I have heard the Super Mario Bros. theme song as the very first sound of the day. Through thick and thin, from one side of the country to the other, through every school morning from 2024 onward and every single day of every job I’ve worked, it's remained constant. A morning without that jingle is just not conceivable to me, it's as natural a part of life as anything else. As sure as I’ll eat food and as sure as I’ll take a crap and as sure as I’ll turn my computer on and as sure as I’ll sleep again the next night is as sure as I will hear that jingle. Speaking of, sleep.

I brush my teeth with Scooby Doo bubblegum toothpaste and a toothbrush that I avoid looking too closely at because its got Spongebob on it and I’m too tired to let myself start back down that path of thinking about the things I took for granted. I can feel on my teeth that the brush is awfully frayed. I’ve been putting off buying a new one for months. I don’t know why. I could just grab one at the store and swap it out and it would make me feel so much better and be so much better for me, but I just don’t do it, I just never think to get it while I’m there and that just happens everyday and I blink and it's been months and my toothbrush is still frayed. 4,360 times. 4,360 times. 

I catch my brain multi-track drifting and decide I can’t sleep without a distraction. I open Youtube on my phone and start scrolling for something to play while I sleep. I crawl into bed and I just barely remember it's Christmas tomorrow. I grab the Nintendo Alarmo and thumb through the settings, swiping through menus. 

When I wake up tomorrow I’ll think that maybe I was just too tired, maybe I just got other shit on my mind, and that maybe these old LCD touchscreens are just over-sensitive pieces of shit or that maybe just maybe I am. But tomorrow my eyes will open at the time they’re used to opening anyway and I’ll be ready to hear the special Animal Crossing Toy Day Jingle that I was so certain I set it to, and I’ll hear the horrible screeching of tires on pavement and something will snap in me and I’ll hear the “FIRST PLACE VICTORY” and think about the empty platitudes and the 12 years I can barely remember and the four thousand wake-up calls that accompanied me as I kept sleep-walking through them and I’ll wake up and something will shatter and I’ll spend Christmas morning cleaning up the shards. 

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Ben Appel

Published: Jan 20, 2025

In March 2024, the Community Education Council for District 2—the largest school district in Manhattan—passed a resolution to review the NYC Department of Education’s 2019 Gender Guidelines, which had replaced the category of sex with “gender identity” in all areas, including school restrooms, locker rooms, and athletics.

“Resolution #248” authorized a review committee to “propose amendments, changes and additions” to the guidelines once “an inclusive, evidence-based process” had determined their impact on female athletes. The resolution specified that the review committee must include those who were excluded from the process in 2019, such as female athletes, parents, coaches, relevant medical professionals, and evolutionary biology experts.

On the day of the vote, eight voted in favor of the resolution and three voted against it. One member was absent.

After the resolution passed, backlash was swift. Trans activists and their allies began showing up in droves at school board meetings to protest. They shouted down council members, screamed obscenities, and, if anyone dared to speak favorably about the resolution, stood up, turned their backs to the council, and hummed loudly in unison. In May, eighteen New York Democrats, including Rep. Jerry Nadler, called on the council to rescind the “hateful, discriminatory, and actively harmful” resolution, alleging in their public letter that it could lead to an increase in suicide attempts among transgender youth.

And all of this because a school committee council had voted to merely conduct a review of the existing guidelines.

Maud Maron, one of the four council members who sponsored the legislation (and who is now challenging Alvin Bragg in the 2025 Manhattan District Attorney race), contacted me in December, inviting me to speak on a panel about this topic at an official council meeting. The other panelists would be my friends (and Informed Dissent cohosts), Cori Cohn (who also cohosts the Heterodorx podcast) and the journalist Lisa Selin Davis. We set the date for Monday, January 13.

In the days leading up to the event, Maud texted the three of us with details. She said that the audience might be hostile, adding that some parents had emailed the superintendent, demanding that the meeting be shut down for promoting “hate speech.”

Maud also alerted us to a list of instructions trans activists had posted online for fellow protesters. The list, titled “This Week’s Jazzy Tactics,” advised comrades to enter the room “with pizzazz,” “wear white and/or keffiyeh,” and, “during transphobic testimony,” “take care of ourselves and one another” with things like “headphones, fidgets, coloring books, bubbles, snacks, treats.”

Oh, and “Macarena.”

The meeting, live streamed on YouTube, was held in a school auditorium on the Lower East Side. In the end, only about 20 people showed up. I assume this is because the activists knew they’d be confronted with logic and reason, and, as we all know, even the slightest bit of scrutiny causes their entire house of cards to tumble down. Thus, I only got a small taste of the hostility that Maud, her fellow council members, and other people who care about women and girls and the wellbeing of gender-nonconforming kids have had to endure over the last year.

When Maud opened the meeting around 6:45, she asked each of the panelists to share a little bit about ourselves and why we agreed to come here.

Cori suggested that, before we begin, we should probably clarify what we mean by “gender ideology,” since it’s become such a loaded term. He proposed a definition. “I would say that gender ideology is the idea that we can self-identify our sex based on our internal insights instead of relying on material indicators of sex, like what gametes your body produces or what your genital configuration is. So, it’s the idea that you can substitute gender identity for sex.”

No one objected, so Cori continued with his story.

In the eighties, as a young kid, Cori was relentlessly bullied for being different. He prayed to be a girl, thinking that would solve a lot of his troubles. When he was 15, his parents took him to a psychologist, who suggested he was transexual. At 18, Cori socially transitioned and started cross-sex hormones, and at 19, he underwent vaginoplasty. The surgery left him sexually dysfunctional.

Around 2010, the radical trans movement really began to kick off. Whereas previously, a male had to medicalize with cross-sex hormones and undergo castration surgery to enter female spaces, now activists were demanding that any male, no matter his medical history or appearance, be able to claim a female identity. Even worse, policymakers and legislators were obliging them. This, Cori noticed, was seriously compromising women’s rights and privileges.

After a lot of reflection, Cori eventually concluded that, if we think there’s a need for sex-segregated spaces—and Cori believes there are many reasons why we need them, particularly for women and girls—then that separation must be based solely on sex. Further, by demanding that one take hormones, have surgery, and become infertile in order to access a space, the state is creating a mandate for people to surgically and medically modify themselves.

“That’s not fair,” he said. “So, the conclusion is that, one, these spaces have to be sex-segregated, and two, they have to be safe for all users. Boys who want to present in a feminine way, have long hair, take a feminine name—they have to be safe in male spaces. There cannot be any tolerance at all for any abuse of somebody based on their gender presentation. That has to be protected. But you cannot substitute gender identity for sex and at the same time have safe, single-sex spaces.”

Cori then passed the mic to Lisa.

Lisa’s kids attend District 2 schools. One of those kids is a masculine daughter. When her daughter was little, Lisa noticed people responding very oddly to her daughter’s gender-nonconformity. They would ask what her pronouns were, and if she was a “trans boy.” Lisa was mystified. Since when did it become unacceptable for girls to be tomboys? Why were people (liberal people) suggesting her daughter needed to identify as male in order to be herself?

In 2017, Lisa wrote an op-ed about this issue for The New York Times. Soon came the vitriol. People threatened to kidnap her daughter for not “affirming” her as trans. Before long, most of the news outlets to which Lisa had contributed for years deplatformed her.

Since then, not much has changed about Lisa’s perspective, other than that she’s collected a heck of a lot more information (she’s currently working on a book about what she’s learned). For her, the desistance literature was particularly enlightening. This consists of a series of studies on gender dysphoric young children, which all came to the same conclusion: if not socially transitioned, the bulk of the children desisted in their distress and grew up to be gay.

Lisa accepts that some people have a belief system she doesn’t share, and she recognizes their right to live according to that belief system. But she objects to the idea that we all must accept the idea of gender identity as fact, and she worries about the imposition of this idea on gender-nonconforming children.

“Education can’t be, ‘There is one way to think about this and if you don’t think this way, you’re a bad person,’” said Lisa. “It has to be, ‘There are a lot of ways to think about this, and let’s try to create an environment in which multiple viewpoints and understandings can be heard.”

In a normal world, a statement like that might draw at least a smattering of applause from an audience of supposedly liberal New Yorkers. But no one made a sound.

Then the mic came to me.

I started by speaking about my own gender-nonconformity in childhood—the lessons I was taught by my religious teachers about homosexuality, and being relentlessly bullied by my peers. I told the audience about how I coped, which was to “defeminize” myself in order to become what a boy is “supposed to be.” I spoke about my battles with anxiety, depression, drugs and alcohol, my eventual recovery, and my foray into activism.

“This was very grandiose of me,” I said, “but I wanted to create a world where there’s more space for gender-nonconforming boys and girls. Where little boys and little girls who are really different—yes, they might not be the norm, and the majority of young kids might act like your typical boys and girls—but there are going to be gender-nonconforming kids that are inherently that way. And rather than saying, ‘There’s something wrong with you,’ we protect them from the bullies. We safeguard them. We tell them, “Yes, you are different, and that’s perfectly OK.”

That vision, I found, was not very popular in the world of “LGBTQ” activism. Gender-nonconforming kids were not natural variations of their own sex. Instead, they were “trans” and therefore “born in the wrong bodies.” Thus, in order for feminine boys to behave the way they wanted—in order for them to openly like pink and wear dresses and grow their hair long—they needed to identify out of their sex category, and then medically and surgically modify their bodies to fit properly into society.

Soon, like Lisa, I became really hungry for knowledge about this issue. After I learned that youth transition began not so long ago, with the medicalization of a small cohort of young people, nearly all of whom were homosexual, I became really concerned. And then I started meeting gay people who had been harmed by these treatment protocols.

Maud asked me if, at age 12, I may have thought transition was an option if I had been exposed to the idea that I was perhaps born in the wrong body and actually a girl.

I said, “If the adults I trusted—the guidance counselors, teachers, whoever—had intervened and stopped the bullying and then told me, ‘This is not a spiritual malady. This is not something evil about you. This is a medical defect that can be fixed.’ My god, would I have thought, ‘Hallelujah, I’m saved. Sign me up.’ I would have finally fit in. I would have been allowed to express myself in the way that I wanted to—to be gender-nonconforming, so long as I identified as a girl. But that would mean that there would also be folks saying, ‘There’s a medical protocol that you follow.’”

So, there you have it. There’s our “hate speech.” Our “transphobic” screeds.

Pretty reasonable, right?

Apparently not. After that, things got spicy. Maud asked each of us to speculate about how we had gotten to a place where the only way to “protect kids”—something we all want—is to silence whoever disagrees with you.

Lisa took this one. She explained how our understanding of the concepts of “harm” and “safety” have changed over time. When anti-bullying measures were first developed in the 90s, they were a response to the extreme violence that gender-nonconforming kids endured. “How did we get from that to, ‘If you don’t use the pronoun I want, I’m in danger of suicide’?” Lisa said.

Which was a great segue into a very important point.

“The bottom line is,” continued Lisa, “as Chase Strangio admitted to the Supreme Court, the suicide statistics you’re hearing are not true. There are not increased suicides among unaffirmed trans youth. There is nothing in the history of this research that suggests that we need to only treat people in a specific way or they are in imminent risk of harm.”

A woman sitting near the back of the audience interjected. “Why would you not treat someone the way they want to be treated?!” she yelled. “It doesn’t make sense!”

“Well, we can talk about compelled speech,” said Lisa. “We did try to explain that there is a belief system around gender identity that we do not share. And I respect your right to believe in it, but I don’t. The curriculum requires us to bow to a belief system we don’t share, and it includes lessons that we have concerns about, as former gender-nonconforming children and as a parent of a gender-nonconforming child.”

“What curriculum are you referring to?” yelled an audience member.

“We’re gonna take questions,” Maud reminded the audience. In the meantime, she asked them not to shout out questions.

A woman in the audience became irate. “This was publicized as a parent-led discussion, and this is not….!”

Maud put her foot down, saying she would close the meeting down if people don’t follow the rules.

The woman continued yelling. “This was falsely advertised!”

“I’ve raised four kids and I know how to shut down temper tantrums,” said Maud. “You guys have five more seconds to stop interrupting me and then the meetings over.”

“Heads down! Heads down!” a man in the audience shouted. He put his head in his arms and leaned against the chair in front of him. This, apparently, is one of the “jazzy tactics” the activists use to signal their collective disapproval of whatever is being said. This time, though, none of the other audience members put their heads down.

By now, my heart was about to pound out of my chest. I just don’t fare all that well when adults are yelling at each other. Not to mention that Cori, Lisa, and I had just shared some really vulnerable stuff with a bunch of strangers, so to quickly be met with hostility was disorienting, to say the least.

“There are people in the audience who have been really respectful, and I want to acknowledge you,” said Maud. “Also, I’ve had 10 months of rude protesters at our general calendar meetings, so my fuse is a little shorter than it usually is.”

Two audience members yelled something I didn’t make out.

Soon after that, the question-and-answer portion officially began. The first person to speak was named August. She appeared to be a female who had masculinized with testosterone. August introduced herself as a trans person, a Trevor Project representative, a crisis counselor, and “someone whose life was saved by my community.” She said she was saddened that we would come there and “smear” kids “who were so vulnerable and so sad.” She accused Lisa of misquoting Chase Strangio (Lisa did not misquote Strangio), then said, “There are so many people who are dead. Who are dead!”

Finally, August got to her question. She asked Cori to define what a woman is.

“Can we talk about female, or do you want woman?” Cori said.

“You were like, ‘There needs to be women’s spaces,’” said August.

“I think I said ‘sex-segregated,’” Cori responded. “What do I mean by sex-segregated? It’s your biological plan. So, if your body was developed to produce eggs, you’re female.”

August proceeded to interject with an activist talking point so clichéd, any of us could have predicted it.

“So, it’s just if you have eggs,” August gibed. “So, people who are infertile…”

“No,” Cori said. Clearly, he too was expecting this exact response. “If your body’s development plan is to produce eggs, you’re female. If your body’s development plan is to produce sperm, you’re male.”

August called this “hypothetical.”

“It’s not hypothetical,” said Cori. “It’s observable. If you believe in science, then you know that there’s instruments that can be used to determine which body plan…” He paused, frustrated that he needed to explain the birds and the bees to an adult. Or maybe I was just projecting. “Even in the extremely odd case where the chromosomes are XY, that female development pattern is still female. So, we have these really weird corner cases…”

“Those people are intersex, they’re not really weird,” sniped August.

“I'm gonna ignore you for a minute,” said Cori, “because that's really rude to twist…”

“Well, you said ‘really weird.’”

“I didn't say individuals were weird.”

“Can you have a seat?” Maud asked August.

“I thought this was a dialogue,” August said.

So, Cori dialogued. “It's sort of dirty to say that a difference of sexual development is unusual or weird, and then for somebody to say you're saying the people are weird. No, it's an unusual condition. So, you are a woman if you are an adult and your body follows the female development, and you're a man, like I am, like some other people in the audience are. Some people are male but look more feminine, some people are female but look more masculine. But you're a man if you're an adult human male and you're a woman if you're an adult human female. There's nothing wrong with that, there's nothing shameful about that. And if you're like me, and you've done something unusual with your body so that you've modified your sex traits, your sex characteristics, you may have some of the outward appearances of the opposite sex, but that doesn't make me not a man and it wouldn't make somebody like Buck Angel not a woman.”

August returned to his seat.

Maud asked Lisa if she wanted to add anything to that. “Sure,” she said, adding how distracting it is to have to argue that a woman is an adult human female. She then spoke briefly about two very rare intersex conditions, which, when it came to sex-segregated spaces, would probably be the edge cases we need to consider.

“How does this show up in the curriculum?” came a question from the audience.

Lisa said, “On the first day of fourth grade, my daughter was asked to create an identity web and put whether she was cisgender, transgender, or nonbinary on it. So, there are lessons about gender identity, and they are, again, taught as fact. You can look up the New York City DoE regulations, they say exactly what you have to do. There’s a lot of compelled speech. I don’t know how that works with the First Amendment…”

“It doesn’t,” said Maud.

A man sitting in the front row spoke up. He introduced himself as a D2 parent and a father of two daughters, “one trans and one not.” He asked how he could keep his trans kid safe from experiencing gender dysphoria if everything is sex-segregated.

Cori thanked the man for coming and for sharing his story with us. He said he can imagine that, over the years, a lot of “good-hearted people” have given him “the worst possible advice at the worst possible time.” He told the father that a lot of doctors and therapists are not telling parents the real risks of these treatments. The surgeries aren’t great, and if his child was on puberty blockers, there’s a good chance he won’t be able to have a normal sex life. Earlier, Cori recounted for the audience an op-ed he had written for The Washington Post in 2022, in which he admitted that, as a result of his vaginoplasty at 19, he has never been able to orgasm with a partner.

“That’s crushing, actually,” said Cori. “Because in order to partner with people, a healthy sex life is really important.”

“I have made post-op girls cum, just for the record,” August shouted. “It’s not…”

“We’re gonna let them answer, please,” said Maud.

Cori continued. He advised the father to think about his child in the future, and that he will have to live for many years with the decisions that his parents made for him.

“I promise you they will come for answers,” said Cori. “They’ll say, ‘What was I really like? Was there anything else that I could have done, were there any other treatments?’ And you’ll be able to say, ‘No, the doctors didn’t give me any other options,’ because institutionally talk therapies and [cognitive-behavioral therapy] have been recategorized as conversion therapy.”

At some point, as Cori spoke, August stood up from his seat and walked to the front row. He had the father stand up so that he could give him a hug in front of everyone.

Next, it was a mother of a nonbinary child who has chronic health conditions. The mother is a volunteer facilitator for PFLAG. She called Cori arrogant for projecting his own experience onto everyone else’s. She said we’re facing “a tsunami of anti-LGBTQ policy coming our way.” She asked him if he supports Trump’s proposal of eliminating X gender makers for adults who identify as nonbinary.

“You’re so articulate, I appreciate the question,” Cori said. “PFLAG no longer stands for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, right?”

The woman said no, it’s just the acronym.

Cori proceeded to answer her question. “If there’s a marker that’s supposed to list your sex, it should be male or female, and there’s no need at all for your gender marker to reflect your gender identity.”

Next came a question for me. A woman sitting in the back asked why I think there’s not a space for gender-nonconforming kids right now. She said she’s not understanding the debate.

I reiterated that I object to the reductive way that gender expression is talked about in schools, which I fear will lead gender-nonconforming children to think they might’ve been born in the wrong body simply because they behave more like the opposite sex. If, as a child, I had been asked which sex I “feel” like, I certainly would have said I “felt” like a girl. While I can acknowledge there are some people whose gender dysphoria will persist into adulthood, and that those adults might make decisions to modify their bodies in order to appear more like the opposite sex, I believe that every kid has a right to grow up with their bodies intact and healthy.

Lisa spoke next. She thanked the woman for her question and said she had one of her own. “Why are so many people here so hostile to incorporating our ideas?” She added that most of the questions have assumed that gender identity is a fact, while we see it as a kind of religious belief. She doesn’t believe that everyone has a separate gendered soul that can be “excavated and revealed.”

“It’s fine if you believe that,” she said. “What we are asking for people to consider is that some people don’t, and it doesn’t make them bigots.”

Lisa then mentioned a book often seen in schools, I Am Jazz, in which the protagonist says he has a girl’s brain in a boy’s body because he likes pink and mermaids, and that makes him transgender.

“Therefore, what many children learn, if they’re a boy who likes pink and mermaids, is that they’re in the wrong body,” said Lisa. “And it needs to be OK for us to raise our concerns about that.”

After that came a question from a woman wearing a mask, who identified herself as a “cis queer woman” with some kind of LGBTQ certificate from NYU. She said she’s gender-nonconforming because she has short hair and sometimes wears pants. She told Lisa that, actually yes, Lisa does have a gender identity.

When it appeared she was just going to keep rambling, Maud asked if she had a question.

“MAUD!” shouted the irate woman. “Can you actually show some respect for the people asking questions?!”

Maud gave the masked woman a few more chances. She continued to ramble, but never got to a question. Finally, she passed the mic to a very tall man wearing a blue cardigan. It was the same man who had ordered everyone to put their heads down.

The man stood up. Along with the blue cardigan, he wore a dress. His question was for Cori. “I’m a trans mom, I’m a transwoman,” he said. “I’ve got two kids, and I’m at the airport, and I’ve got ‘F’ on my passport. And I think, in the universe that you’re creating, that would not fly—excuse the pun. Then what happens? Like, what would happen to me and my family?”

“Well, depending on how you were presenting yourself…” Cori began to answer.

“I’m in a dress. I’m wearing a fucking dress.”

Maud asked him not to curse, since it was a school committee meeting.

“Oh, I can’t say ‘fuck?’ Fucking fuck fuck fuck,” he said.

Cori went on. “I use men’s spaces, and it’s OK. It’s a little uncomfortable. But you know what? Men just wanna pee.”

“What does that mean?” the man said.

“It means, if you use the men’s room, they’re not interested in what you’re doing, they’re just there to pee.”

“Are you calling her a man?” said August.

“I’m saying that, if you use the facility that accords to your sex, you don’t have to worry about the men that are in there mistreating you, because they’re just there to pee.”

“I think you are suggesting that I have to go to the men’s room,” the man said.

Cori replied, “You should use the sex space that’s accorded for your sex.”

Shortly thereafter, the man in the blue cardigan gathered his things and stomped out of the room. The mother of the nonbinary child with chronic health conditions followed him.

Finally, we made it to the last question. A person in the audience asked what kinds of policies we would propose to replace the existing ones.

Cori answered, “Sex should be treated as sex, and what we consider ‘gender’ should be protected as gender expression. Boys should be able to wear female-coded clothes, females should be able to wear masculine clothes, they should be able to adopt nicknames, they should be safe in school always and not targeted for violence or bullying because of their gender expression. If all of the energy that went into gender identity instead went into just how we express ourselves, I think that would be the best way to help these kids.”

I concurred. I said that there are males and females and rare intersex cases, and that people can express themselves however they want. I said that the way gender is currently being talked about in schools might actually be priming gender-nonconforming children to become gender dysphoric as they grow up. If a young boy says he “feels like a girl,” and all of the adults in his life affirm him as one, then, as his body matures, reality will betray what everyone has been telling him. He’ll become dysphoric, and medicalizing will seem like the most viable option.

After me, Lisa made a plug for viewpoint diversity when it comes to creating policy. She said we need to hear people who have been helped by existing policies, but we also need to hear from people who have been harmed.

“We cannot make good policy if we do not acknowledge the cost,” she said.

And with that, the meeting was adjourned.

Later that night, Maud realized she left behind some of the recording equipment. She emailed the school principal about it, and also thanked him for allowing us to use the space for our meeting. He responded by saying that his mother, who once represented the KKK when she worked for the ACLU, taught him that “suppressing hate speech is counterproductive, making martyrs of bigots.” He hadn’t watched the program, but he thinks he would have vehemently disagreed with a lot of it.

Maud responded, “You would likely learn a lot from, be impressed by, and find yourself agreeing with the panelists last night. Defending the 1st A and viewpoint diversity, as your mom did, is at its most robust when you do more than just begrudgingly allow speech but when you actually listen to other points of views. And here those points of view included multiple D2 parents.”

She pasted a link to the live stream and thanked him again.

To the principle’s credit, he followed up with Maud after he watched the video. He thanked her for suggesting he watch it and was glad he did. He said he still disagreed with a lot of what was said, particularly the underlying assumption that schools are pushing a particular ideology. He wondered whether the “fear mongering and scapegoating of trans people during the election made people pay attention and think there is a crisis.”

Isn’t that always the way?

These people are bigots.

OK, they’re not necessarily bigots, but they’re overreacting. This stuff isn’t happening. Besides, it’s probably all because of Trump.

Eventually, down the road:

OK, this stuff is happening.

And finally:

It’s good that it’s happening…. Bigot!

As of now, Resolution #248 is dead in its tracks. The former schools chancellor, David Banks, who retired in December after having his house raided as part of the federal corruption investigation into Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, said last year, “We will not be entertaining changes to that [2019 gender] guidance.” To my knowledge, the new chancellor, Melissa Aviles-Ramos, has not commented on the resolution.

Regardless, it’s now very clear how deeply gender identity ideology has embedded itself within our schools and communities. As a result, we no longer speak the same language. Maud, Lisa, Cori, and I acknowledge the material reality of sex. We’re run-of-the-mill liberals who believe in things like free speech and viewpoint diversity. But not these folks.

In his final email to Maud, the principal did mention that he doesn’t see a lot of this occurring in his school. And that very well might be true, since his school has a lot of low-income and immigrant students, which are not the primary demographics in which gender ideology metastasizes. I only hope it stays true.

But what we all must realize is that this is occurring in schools. Widely occurring. Right now, in the most advanced nation in the world, kids are being taught that sex isn’t real. They’re being taught that they can choose their sex, and that that choice rests upon the most regressive ideas of what it means to be a boy and what it means to be a girl. Girls are being taught to simply accept the presence of boys in their sports and private spaces. They’re being told that it’s their problem and that they might be in trouble if they object to a boy who claims to be a girl coming into their locker room.

Right now, in America.

Perhaps that’s okay for some people. But I’m worried about the consequences of an entire generation being taught a pseudoscience. And I don’t think it’s wise for kids to be told to disregard their personal boundaries.

And I know I’m not alone. A New York Times poll has revealed that the majority of Americans disapprove of trans-identified males in women’s sports and do not believe that gender-distressed minors should have access to puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.

The majority of Republicans and Democrats.

We must end it now.

--

Full video:

==

As always...

[therandomtapes]

Last week, in the middle of a pretty trash week in general we learned that Sakurai Atsushi, lead singer of legendary Japanese rock band Buck-Tick passed away on Saturday October 16th.

I'm not sure how much I've spoken about them on here.

I found them in late 1998. When I got that X/1999 fansub in Brooklyn where I first heard X-Japan, it sent me down a rabbit hole. I would find out the fandom and the country were reeling from the passing of X's guitarist hide earlier that year, in Spring, and I would find a stream of a tribute album. Hide tribute spirits.

This is where I first heard Buck-Tick. Their cover of "doubt" left me wanting more.

I would then learn that they had been around since 1983 (i was 3).

(this is from 87)

They evolved through many eras, from new wave to goth (?) to cyberpunk to rock'n'roll to a combination of all eras. Their influence can be felt even in modern visual kei. They are probably the band that made everyone in that scene wanna have at least one jazzy swing type song on their albums. Hell, Acchan's the reason Kyo is Kyo. Sakurai's look inspired many anime character designs (and I'm pretty sure Benimaru Nikaido from King of Fighters is based on 80s Buck-Tick....yes...they ALL had that hair).

In fact, a lot of their music was in anime (especially if said anime was about vampires. It always amused me that during the era where Acchan looked like a vampire, B-T were the band you called if you needed a theme song for your vampire anime.) Nightwalker, XXXHolic, Trinity Blood, and the very best one, the one that is actually scary, SHIKI!!

If you're not up on vis kei, you probably still have heard of him since he and Imai were in SCHWEIN with Raymond Watts from Pig and Sacha Konietzko from KMFDM.

He also had a band called The Mortal which did a pretty amazing Siouxsie cover.

I recommend Buck-Tick and the Mortal's entire catalog, most of which is on streaming now. I should make a bloody playlist.

I will add the playlist to this post later.

R.I.P. Sakurai Atsushi

one of the greatest vocalists ever, and condolences to the band.

I cannot stress enough how awful I feel for those guys.

This band was together for THREE FUCKING DECADES. No lineup changes.

Atsushi and Imai had the kind of vocal interplay you only get if you're basically best friends.

It's a terrible loss.

. . . and, . . . . no.

I can't end the post like this.

It's too sad.

This band brought too much joy to end the post like this.

I am leaving you with the saga of the paper mache head people.

in the 80s, for the album Seventh Heaven (an album I might actually like better than Sexual XXXX, I can't decide), B-T did videos for quite a few songs (they did PVs for pretty much every song on Sexual XXXX), and 3 of them feature Atsushi having nightmares about/seeing people with large fake paper mache heads. Then in the video for In Heaven they are playing a show for them.

They had something I think is crucial to every band now and forever: WEIRD ASS MUSIC VIDEOS.

You think it was jus the 80s?

no no no

check out UTA

Just your average performance video? No. They dressed up like rock icons, with ridiculous wigs.

This is what I'm talking about. Joy, kids.

Atsushi and Buck-Tick brought JOY, dammit.

enjoy.

I'll post a playlist later, I guess.

Atsushi Sakurai, rest in power you legend!

[spiritmander13]

This is a cry for help.

Someone called me out during the Jazzy Oliver stream. And I don't mean in a friendly way. LITERALLY THEY STATED THE CONTENT OF THE FIC WITH NO FILTER. IN HER CHAT.

This has been my worst fear. Already, the fandom knows about my fucking joke. I don't want the staff to find out. Yet someone had no filter. At least don't mention the fucking MPREG.

Hi, I'm a creator of the Silver Spoon Pregnancy joke and lemme tell you: THIS IS NOT OKAY. Only I really have the power to tell people that I made that joke a reality. Please, this is asshole behavior. I never stated the contents of that fic in front of any staff because I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable. Once again, really only I and my friends have the automatic consent to tell people that I wrote that fic. Just because you found it, doesn't mean I give you my fucking consent to expose me.

Posting this in the main tags because pretty sure y'all on Tumblr know what I mean because of June 9th, and also once again, this IS a call for help and comfort.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Eiko Ishibashi's Mournful Meditations

Eiko Ishibashi; photo by Shuhei Kojima

BY JORDAN MAINZER

When composing for film, singer-songwriter and musician Eiko Ishibashi knows how to both pull you in and shock you out of what you expect. Her latest fruitful collaborations have come with director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Ishibashi first composing the score for Hamaguchi's 2021 film Drive My Car. Her musical cues tie into the narrative to the point where they're inexorably linked. I saw Drive My Car once when it came out, and every time I listen to its Original Soundtrack, I'm taken back to exactly the points in the film associated with each track.

Ishibashi and Hamaguchi's second collaboration, however, is a bit more complicated in terms of relationship between picture and sound. Hamaguchi was set to follow up Drive My Car with a 30-minute short silent film specifically designed to be screened with Ishibashi's live score. As he shot it, it grew into a full-length feature with dialogue, Evil Does Not Exist, with an accompanying score and soundtrack (out now via Drag City) from Ishibashi. Yet, Hamaguchi didn't totally scrap his original idea. Instead, he made a shortened, silent version of Evil Does Not Exist to go along with a live Ishibashi performance, entitled Gift. While it has a similar, if abridged plot to Evil Does Not Exist, viewing Gift is a different experience because it serves to emphasize the narrative power of Ishibashi's music.

Ishibashi; photo by Shuhei Kojima

When I saw a screening of Gift, accompanied by an Ishibashi performance, back in May at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts (presented by The Renaissance Society), I had not yet seen Evil Does Not Exist or heard the standalone soundtrack. I was familiar with the basic plot of both films: A development company wishes to build a glamping site in a rural village, much to the chagrin of its residents. Watching Ishibashi perform, I marveled at her ability to tell a story with a mix of sampled elements and live synths and woodwinds. Both films begin with skittering, jazzy cymbals and guitars (played by Ishibashi's partner Jim O'Rourke) before being cut off by the main swelling, dramatic string theme, sound-tracking a long, continuous skyward shot of forest trees in winter. Live, Ishibashi manipulated the sound of the orchestration, cutting it in and out, disorienting you when you got too used to the hypnosis of the shot. Likewise, in Evil Does Not Exist, the sound of footsteps slowly mixes in with the strings until they suddenly stop; at that point, you realize the camera is from the vantage point of a young girl, Hana (Ryo Nishikawa), walking through the woods, and the film goes on.

In both Gift and Evil Does Not Exist, we see characters on screen deep in their routines. It's almost therapeutic watching widower Takumi (Hitoshi Omika)--Hana's father--repeatedly chop wood, fill jugs with water from the stream, and pause for a cigarette. It's even more jarring, then, when these characters are taken out of their routines or beyond their comfort zones, like when Takumi suddenly stops his work because he realizes he's late to pick up Hana. Occasionally, we hear the sound of a distant gunshot as the villagers hunt for deer. During Gift, the booms were not far off from Ishibashi's bass thuds, but they certainly contrasted the light clicking of her pedals during quieter moments, just as they resemble a far cry from more "natural" sounds in Evil Does Not Exist, like the crunching of leaves and rushing water.

But more than challenging the repetitiveness of manual labor, in both films, the sound of a gunshot grows to symbolize the difference between rural and urban experiences. To pitch the glamping site to the villagers, the development company hires two talent agency representatives, Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani), the latter of whom admits that the ringing blast was the first time she had ever heard a gun before. The two actors are, as we learn, clueless about the villagers' way of life, asking whether wild deer would be a threat to potential glampers (as opposed to the glamping site being an existential threat to the deer themselves). In one of the film's most tense scenes, Takahashi and Mayuzumi are put through the wringer when confronted by villagers' concerns about the effect of the glamping site's waste on the safety of their water supply. In Evil Does Not Exist, this scene is sound-tracked only by the stock music of the presentation before the characters start talking, suddenly cutting off. Gift, meanwhile, uses the scene to showcase the power of Ishibashi's compositions: We can feel the tension of the conversation by just hearing her score accompanied by only occasional words on screen.

As Takahashi and Mayuzumi shadow Takumi and help as much as possible with chopping wood, carrying water canisters, and so on, they become slightly more accustomed to the villagers' way of life and empathetic to their perspectives. They bluntly communicate the villagers' concerns to the project heads, who would rather rush through the project so as to keep their time-limited COVID subsidies. What happens from here, I will not spoil, though it's clear Hamaguchi's asking moral questions about the lengths people go to protect their loved ones and their surroundings, and whether or not the fight against capitalism is all-or-nothing. But during the scenes where the talent agency representatives are helping out, Ishibashi layers syncopated strings on top of the natural sounds, as if to blur the lines between humankind and the natural world, throwing even more wrenches into Hamaguchi's central queries.

Because Hamaguchi and Ishibashi render so complex the relationship between picture and sound via Gift and Evil Does Not Exist, the latter's soundtrack doesn't necessarily provide a new way to experience the projects' themes. Like that of Drive My Car, though, the soundtrack places you back in each scene. What's more, it exudes the films' distinctive moods. Of course, the opening and pseudo title track "Evil Does Not Exist v.2" consists of pattering drums and scraggly guitars giving way to the aforementioned solemn main string theme, squarely placing the film's beginning forest shot in your mind. The spacey synthesizer blips of "Hana V.2" make you picture the consistent wandering of its namesake character, the sound of thumping bass and footsteps making the listener feel an almost parental instinct when thinking about a child alone. And "Smoke" juxtaposes tactile and malleable instrumentation, a collection of cymbals, kick drum, woodwinds, and buzzing drones, the sonic manifestation of Hamaguchi's musings on the extent to which we can bend the world to suit our whims. Are we extensions of our surroundings, or have they become subservient to us? Does evil actually exist? Take in Hamaguchi and Ishibashi's multi-media world, and you'll have no answers, but certainly more to chew on while you, too, go about your every day.

[moreclaypigeons]

crying at the tags on the playlist names post oml. anyway what're your top 5 mountain goats sounds for someone who loves no children and has not heard any other of their songs

OOOOOOOOOOOHHHH

Well here is the tmg essentials playlist that I have crafted, which is an hour and a half long (also is the reason my pfp is John Green mountain goats And was mentioned in the playlist tags :])

And as for the top five? Hhh okay.. I want to get a good mix of times and feelings in there as well as try to cover the essential albums uhhh

1. This year | The Sunset Tree | 2005

This is an absolute classic and is great to scream in your head. It's about getting through this year if it kills you!! It's one of my most played songs of all time at this rate (I've streamed it 500+ times apparently??)

2. Get Famous | Getting Into Knives | 2020

I love this one, it's more jazzy than most of their songs and is just very fun. It's not what a lot of their music sounds like but it's a good time.

3. The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton | All Hail West Texas | 2002

I love this album in general, it is very acoustic and every song has its own narrative. This song is the first on the tracklist, and it's a good representative for a lot of their music especially in that time period.

4. Deuteronomy 2:10 | The Life of the World to Come | 2009

Be warned this song will make you fucking cry. Content warning for extinction and animal death. That's all I will say. This song changed my life... I've never been able to listen to this album all the way through cause it's one of their more emotionally heavy ones. By god are some of the songs profoundly sad. Good but devastating.

5. Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1 | Transcendental Youth | 2012

If you like No Children, I must recommend something near it in catharsis. And of course that's Spent Gladiator. This song is like if This Year had an older sister. It's about going through rough shit and thinking you're not gonna make it but you find every way you can to keep going.

Bonus:

Here's the ska cover of no children. Because I love it.

You Were Cool is one of my favorites that they only perform live and haven't released a recording of. You can find videos of it on YouTube! I used one of the lines from it on my graduation cap.

If you do like these songs and want to get more into the mountain goats, I would recommend listening to either:

A Jordan lake sessions album, which are live session recordings they especially did during the height of the pandemic. The whole thing tracks over and has a lot of talking between songs and many of them have a different or more raw take on some of their more popular or personal favorites.

Any of their albums all the way through in order. My top recommendations for this are Tallahassee (which no children is on!), The sunset tree, all hail West Texas, bleed out, heretic pride, and transcendental youth. I do love many of the other albums but these ones are my favorites as a unit.

I know listening to the mountain goats at first can be really intimidating cause their discography is SO BIG (like more than 24 hrs worth of music big) but if you do then you end up with a lot of room to explore! I don't think I've even listened to every song they've made and I've been a fan for a good few years. Like mountain goats fans are super cool about that kind of thing (I know other music fan communities can be the opposite) cause they just love to share even a little love! And if you (or anyone else!!) have any questions or want more playlist suggestions (I have several hyperspecific tmg playlists saved and or made) my inbox is always open :] I love talking about tmg

[luci-j]

Headcannon Time! Blackjack O'Hare

Since our lovely laogomorph is now in the middle of his backstory, figured I could do some headcannons/facts about him!

- I knew early-on I didn't want him to be from Halfworld. I wanted Rocket to have that loneliness of being the only one like him from High Evolutionary's lab. So I settled on him being a creation of Tony Stark's. This also continues with the theme of Blackjack being a good person who was made worse by bad people who were on their way to becoming better. Stark was an arms dealer, and I feel like that got lost in the shuffle sometimes. I also wanted to highlight that cruelty, and the same kinds of it, are a universal in the galaxy.

- He has a lot of parallels to Peter! While Peter grew up with an 80s experience, and is sort of frozen in time there, he grew up with a 90s one.

- He's named after a character in a violent 90s cartoon, of which there were plenty of. As someone who grew up during that time, there were a lot of cartoons from R-Rated properties that should NOT exist lol.

- Why DOES he sound British? This is actually an homage to Rocket’s first appearance in the comics, when he had a British accent. I also liked the idea of having a running gag of where it's addressed that half of space sounds like this. And it plays into a lot of 90s kids having TVs for babysitters, and nature documentaries being a go-to thing in the days before streaming when you couldn't afford the GOOD cable.

- He's a voracious reader and loves reading literally anything. In a regular month, he can get through about 30 books easily. This is a weird callback to the Pizza Hut "book it" challenge from the 90s that a lot of kids did. A lot of 80s and 90s kids in the U.S. owe their literacy to how much they desired a personal pan pizza.

- He knows Braille and also BASL -- Black American sign language. He also knows some sign language from other pockets of the galaxy. BASL is a lot like ASL, but tends to use two hands instead of one.

- He's intensely pansexual, and has instant crushes on Mantis and Kevin, among others. Over the course of his life, though, he has two great loves. Readers have met them both currently.

- His favorite music is rap and hip hop. This, again, is something where he's very attached to something like Peter is, but in a very different manor. The Guardians soundtracks were based a lot in classic rock, and I wanted each new character I introduced to be like adding a new genre to the playlist-- Sort of like a new instrument getting introduced in an orchestra, so it all comes together to make one big, beautiful symphony.

- He's not very handy. He's been alone a lot of his life, and had to figure things out by himself a lot, just by nature of not trusting overs.

- He has intense anxiety, and abuses anti-anxiety medications as a result. He's got the heart of a prey creature, and has to live in a world where he has to be on guard literally every second.

- He's fully blind, and he has Braille stickers and other aids to help around his ship.

- His ship is named the Jazzy Belle, which is a nod to an Outkast song. It's very old and he doesn't know how to make a lot of the repairs. He doesn't like parting with it because he isn't a very big fan of change or instability.

- He's also a foil to Rocket and Meti in some respects. He is a version of them that never got a support system like he needed. Rocket eventually got the Guardians, and Meti his family. They represent found family. Rook represents BAD found family in her introduction. Blackjack represents what happens when that help just never comes.

- A lot of his mechanics have bits and pieces of household items and toys. The red of his eyes emotes, which is based on one of these:

- The family he lived with on Earth is religious. He followed in this path, even if he doesn't feel particularly worthy of it these days with some of the underhanded things he's done as a bounty hunter.

- He can use both guns and blades, although he opts for a lightsaber-type blade. Why? I thought it looked cool as hell in my mind.

[kickmag]

The Legacy Of J. Dilla Streaming On FX & Unheard Music Released Via Kano

The Legacy of J. Dilla is making its debut on the FX network tonight. The New York Times documentary about the late hip-hop producer explores Dilla's ingenuity as a beatmaker, the history of his Conant Gardens neighborhood and the various conflicts over his estate. Dilla died in 2006 at age 32 after battling a rare blood disease. At the time he was a budding underground legend having worked with Erykah Badu, Busta Rhymes, The Roots, D'Angelo and Common. He also founded his own group Slum Village and used his beats to elevate several local rappers from Detroit including Phat Kat, Frank-N-Dank and others.  The producer's career took a different turn after R&B veteran Amp Fiddler introduced him to Q-Tip after a fated interaction during a Lollapalooza tour. Since his passing, he's been talked about heavily among rap connoisseurs, beat junkies and producers. The general public is still unaware of his contributions and the documentary is a way to commemorate his work and introduce him to those who still don't connect the sounds to his name. DJ Jazzy Jeff is in the film deconstructing Dilla's methodology that still mystifies the most initiated beatsmiths to this day. 

The James Yancy estate has made a deal with Kano, the company responsible for the STEM player to release unheard music from Dilla over the next 10 years. The 20 songs are being released alongside the film. Fans can listen to the music on the STEM player which allows the songs to be remixed and the mixes can be shared online. The STEM player costs $200 and a monthly subscription is $1.94. The Legacy of J. Dilla will debut on FX and can be watched later on Hulu. 

[krispyweiss]

Rewind: Huffamoose - Huffamoose (1993)

If there was any justice in the music universe, Huffamoose’s 1993 self-titled debut would’ve been picked up by a major and become, if not a huge hit, a beloved cult favorite.

Instead, it just languished.

Released on 7 Records in 1993 and not made available for streaming until sometime during the pandemic, Huffamoose is nevertheless as revelatory - and relevant - in 2023 as it was 30 years ago.

It was hard to find even then, and Sound Bites bought every copy he ever saw - four in all - to allay fears his CD would fail or it’d get left behind at a party. And the blog took Huffamoose everywhere, turning on everyone he knew to the sounds of one of the ’90s’ greatest, unique, releases. Even Huffamoose didn’t sound like Huffamoose when the band’s major-label debut, We’ve Been Had Again, arrived in ’97 with inferior remakes of “James” and “I Wanna Buy You a Ring.”

Sound Bites can still remember the moment he first heard Kevin Hanson’s guitar and the thwack of Erik Johnson’s drums as the opening track “Everybody Else” first crossed his ears.*

Nobody takes me for granted/nobody gets one over on me/I’m a new man and my new problem/is everybody else, songwriter Craig Elkins sings in a laconic manner sweetened by Hanson’s harmonies.

So it goes for nearly an hour as Elkins spills his cynicism and sorrow over Hanson’s jazzy runs and the taut rhythm section of Johnson and bassist Jim Stager, whose work continues to reveal itself as a jazz-rock master class hundreds of listens down the line.

I need to stop the cycle now before it’s too late and my children catch it, too/I need to let her go and move on with my life/but I can’t/forget/her face/in the mirror, Elkins sings on “Mary,” one of a handful of heartbreakers set among more playful fare like the stream-of-consciousness dream that is “Song about Nothing” and the celebratory swing of “I Can’t Turn Around.”

Throughout it all, the band cooks as Elkins’ acoustic guitar provides intros and rhythmic padding for his bandmates’ more-aggressive playing.

It ends - save for a reprise-laden hidden track - with the elegiac majesty of “Sacred Ground,” a latently powerful song suitable for funerals and weddings (seems incongruous, I know) that finds Elkins singing:

This is what we are all here for/we are all here for/we are standing on sacred ground/there is nothing greater/there is nothing more/than this/is what/we/are/all/here/for

Its a mystical ending to a magical album that somehow, and unjustly, cast its spell on only a relative few. It’s not too late to change that - and with streaming, it’s now possible and highly recommended.

*Sound Bites was honored to tell Hanson this very thing when he and Mrs. Sound Bites traveled to Philadelphia in 2018 for the album release party for … and that’s when the golf ball hit me in the head, which immediately became - and remains - the blog’s second-favorite Huffamoose LP.

Grade card: Huffamoose - Huffamoose - A

9/17/23

[rabbitechoes]

there were a lot of good tracks this month! judging by some of the new singles, early 2024 is shaping up to be a cool time for new releases. another note, i'm not sure if i'll do a favorite songs of december because i might just do a favorite songs of the year thing instead. i wanted to do one or the other because doing both would be a lot of work and i wanna enjoy my winter break tbh!!!!

as always feel free to follow me on rate your music and twitter (i’m not calling it X)

"Mother Nature" - MGMT

◇ featured on Loss of Life - MGMT (not yet released) ◇ genres: neo-psychedelia, indie rock

This February we’re finally getting the follow-up to MGMT’s incredible 2018 album Little Dark Age! The lead single to this new record has the band exploring fresh, new sounds to great effect. MGMT are no stranger to psychedelia, but this track has them taking a considerably less electronic approach to it. The songwriting is some of their strongest to date. Very excited about this new album.

"I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a 'Rap' Album but This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time" - André 3000

◇ featured on New Blue Sun - André 3000 ◇ genres: new age, ambient

This month we finally received the first full-length solo project from hip hop legend André 3000. As the title of this song suggests, this is a much different direction than his work in OutKast over 16 years ago. On this album, André explores ambient or occasionally jazzy soundscapes driven by the flute (his recent instrument of choice). This track is gorgeous with André’s flute passages taking center stage. This whole project is definitely worth a listen.

"Now And Then" - The Beatles

◇ featured on The Beatles 1967-1970 (2023 Edition) [The Blue Album] - The Beatles ◇ genres: piano rock, baroque pop

The jokes have been played out by this point about “these Beatles guys are good, they’re going places!”, but it is still bizarre to have a brand new Beatles song in 2023. I highly recommend watching the documentary about the history of this song and how it came to be. Admittedly, that documentary played a big role in my enjoyment of this song. It feels like a fitting send-off for one of the greatest bands of all time. Is it overproduced? Yeah lol, but this project is clearly driven by Paul McCartney who, as everyone should know, is no stranger to overblown schmaltz. We love him for it! Will this ever be lauded as one of band’s best songs? No, but it’s still very good.

"Celibate" - Danny Brown

◇ featured on Quaranta - Danny Brown ◇ genre: abstract hip hop

This new Danny Brown album lived up to most of my expectations while also subverting them. Brown takes a more introspective approach which really sets this project apart from his previous work. This track has been in constant rotation for me since it dropped. Danny's more subdued delivery works very well with the feature from MIKE (who just dropped a strong contender for rap album of the year). Really enjoyed this track and also the entire project.

‧₊˚✧ BEST SONG OF THE MONTH ✧˚₊‧ "Oral" - Björk & Rosalía

◇ genres: art pop, electronic

I thought this track would be good, but this is like unbelievably good. Björk wrote this track during her "classic period", but it never saw the light of day until this reworked version with Rosalía. These two work so well together. Björk's trademark ethereal sound shines through hear and the occasional reggaeton percussion underneath is a very nice touch. The chorus is a highlight in both of their careers and thats coming from someone who holds both of these artists in very high regard (admittedly mostly Björk, although MOTOMAMI ranked very high for me last year). Please give this a listen! Not only is this a great track, but its for a good cause!!! All streaming proceeds go to protecting Icelandic fish from harmful fish farms.

"Wall of Eyes" - The Smile

◇ featured on Wall of Eyes - The Smile (not yet released) ◇ genres: art rock, psychedelic folk, post-rock

The Smile are returning with a new record out in January and this track is very good! A few months ago they dropped "Bending Hectic" which, if you're keeping up, was my favorite track back in June. That track is making it on the album so even if this song wasn't good, I would be stoked. Luckily, this track is really good. I love the bossa nova inspired guitar throughout the song, the hazy psychedelic sound, and the small string flourishes. Really beautiful stuff. I can't wait to hear the rest of the record!

"Red Flags" - Brittany Howard

◇ featured on What Now - Brittany Howard (not yet released) ◇ genres: psychedelic soul, neo-psychedelia

Look, I don't know why so many banger psychedelic songs dropped this month, but I'm not complaining. I was a big fan of Brittany Howard's last record and the announcement of her new album flew completely under my radar until I was made aware of this single. This is an interesting new sound for Howard, but she pulls it off really well. If the whole record is stuff like this, we're in for a treat.

[khiita]

Hello hello! Development and Wild card from the Infamous ask game for whoever you'd like please, if you want! ~whowhatifs

[ infamous mc ask game ]

hiiii thank u sm + sorry for the late reply !! 👴💕

development: how did you come up with your character? is their design still evolving? how do you think they might develop through the story?

haha so i've talked a little about it here before but my main mc for the game, fred, is an oc i've had for a looooong ass time. the first iteration of him was a sim in the sims 2 LMFAO and his design has ( of course ) changed a lot since then ! the only things that've remained the same are his hair color, eye color, his love for striped black+white t-shirts and the fact that he has tattoos ! :-)

and from then on the variations his current design has seen in different verses are hairstyle / facial hair / amount of tattoos 🤡 his "normal" or original self has 37 of them ! in infamous he has 39 😭

and i have no thots + head empty about any changes he might go through during the story, i'm very excited to see where it goes ! :-)

wild card: tell us something about your mc!

hmm ! i've mentioned this in another ask so i'll expand on it a little! all of the songs fred writes are love songs, its always been what comes most naturally to him and he struggles trying to write about other topics 😭 + love encompasses romantic songs, as well as cheerful and fun ones, and of course heartbreak ones. he's written a lot of songs for seven ( before, during, and after they dated ) + he's also written four songs about rowan + two for jazzy + one for iris and devyn. no songs about orion yet 😌 but he's written songs for most of his closest friends because he loves them and their support is what keeps him going :-)

he never tells anyone when a song is about / for them ( + nobody is allowed to look at his notebook ), but most times there's enough clues for them to figure it out ! also, when a song is about a band member, he likes looking at / going up to them while singing it during concerts ! he's not shy about serenading people + it also serves as fanservice lmfao. however he's also admitted that he writes songs inspired by fictional characters or by fictional relationships that he loves ! so now whenever his band puts out a new song, fans have whole reddit threads discussing whether the lyrics are about seven or like. the latest game he's played on t/witch 😭

🧍‍♂️ ( the rare ocassions where the songs aren't about love are the ones where he improvises something during streams / when joking around with friends 💀 one of the main reasons he ( and by extension his band ) really hit it off online is that he likes to sing pop songs either normally or with really stupid lyrics that he comes up with on the spot in team voice chat while gaming )

[charissenicolette]

“Harry’s House” by Harry Styles — an album review

During the pandemic, a lot of things came to a halt, including concerts. A lot of people turned to music (streaming and physical copies such as vinyl, CD, and cassette) and other forms of entertainment for leisure at home. Meanwhile, a lot of musicians started working on new music. At the time, they’d be thinking, "What would a ‘pandemic album’ sound like?" It depends on the artist, of course. To celebrate one year since the release of Harry's House, here is my review (I became a fan one month after this album's release).

The pandemic definitely made people reflect on a lot of things, especially their own lives. According to Harry, "It is definitely the most personal record that I think I’ve made... I think it’s also the most free I’ve ever felt making music..." "[The album] is named after Hosono; he had an album in the 70’s called Hosono House, and I spent that chunk in Japan; I heard that record and I was like, ‘I love that. It’d be really fun to make a record called Harry’s House.’"

Synth pop and Harry experimenting with the texture of his vocals take center stage. The album is full of pop bops that are sure to be on loop. Most of the songs are about relationships. Amusing lyrics like "Green eyes, fried rice, I could cook an egg on you/Late night, game time, coffee on the stove, yeah/You’re sweet ice cream, but you could use a flake or two" match the (mostly) cheerful atmosphere of the album. The album is full of standard pop songwriting paired with simple yet delightful melodies. "In this world, it’s just us/You know it’s not the same as it was" are the most relatable lyrics of the album as they describe the effects of the pandemic.

The slow, introspective songs in the middle of the album, Little Freak and Matilda, also shine, as the melodies suit the delicate subjects of these songs. He is sincere as he recalls a previous relationship then a person who has gone through something tough. "You showed me a power that is strong enough to bring sun to the darkest days/It’s none of my business, but it’s just been on my mind" shows off Harry’s potential as a good songwriter. After the ballads come the smooth, jazzy songs Cinema and Daydreaming, which continue to depict the attraction previously mentioned in the songs of the first half of the album. The last four songs of the album are interesting as they switch between paces and topics.

The only skip on this album is the track Boyfriends which was originally supposed to be on his sophomore album Fine Line. This ballad sounds like a lullaby; however, its pacing and Harry's crooning on this track aren't captivating or memorable enough. Maybe this track would have sounded better if it were middle- or fast-paced, or if he had sung in a different way. It's quite strange that this track is second to last instead of following or in between Little Freak and Matilda.

Harry’s House is introspective yet riveting. The album is one of the best recent mainstream pop albums I’ve ever heard. Despite the heavy synth on this one, it isn’t tiring to listen to. The hype is legitimate. In my opinion, there’s only one skip on this album (try guessing which song it is — hint: it’s on the latter half). This album is really fun and full of earworms.

Verdict: Good, fun

[concerthopperblog]

‘24 - ‘25 U.S. Tour: the Jesus Lizard Live at Variety Playhouse!

(Stylized as) the Jesus Lizard is a legendary, four-piece noise rock/post-hardcore/alternative rock band from Austin, Texas that has been active during 1987-1999, 2006-2010, and 2017-present day. The band consists of three founding members David Yow (vocals– 1987-1999, 2006-2010, & 2017-present), Duane Denison (guitar– 1987-1999, 2006-2010, & 2017-present), and David William Sims (bass – 1987-1999, 2006-2010, & 2017-present) plus longtime member Mac McNeilly (drums– 1989-1996, 2006-2010, & 2017-present). Since 1989, the Jesus Lizard has released seven (7) LPs, three (3) EPs, two (2) live albums, two (2) compilations, ten (10) singles, two (2) DVDs, and four (4) official videos in their historic career. Their latest studio release, Rack, was released September 13, 2024, on Mike Patton and Greg Wreckman’s label, Ipecac Recordings. Fun fact: David Yow is also an accomplished actor, director, composer, and producer according to his IMDb page.

On October 9th, the Jesus Lizard posted to their Instagram plans for a ’24-’25 US Tour and the opening support bands for each date of this tour. The tour started at Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas, Texas with Mean Motor Scooter on October 31st, 2024, however, it will end at the Neptune Theatre with Anthers in Seattle, Washington on May 11, 2025. The ’24-’25 US Tour has a break between December 19th and May 2nd, 2025, this allows the Jesus Lizard to travel the UK for several dates during January 2025 (see below). Lucky for me, the last date of 2024 would be at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta, Georgia, I thought ending my 2024 with this show would be fitting. Opening for the Jesus Lizard would be Atlanta’s very own The Compartmentalizationalists. I must admit that this was my first time getting the Jesus Lizard to perform. Still, I have had the pleasure of seeing Duane Denison riff it up a few times with the band Tomahawk (another Ipecac Recordings artist featuring label co-founder Mike Patton) after the release of their self-titled album (2001). I recommend checking out the band Tomahawk if you are a fan of alternative metal bands stacked with talent. But I digress, when I saw this tour announcement via the band’s socials, I knew the Jesus Lizard would be the perfect end to a busy and productive 2024.

The Compartmentalizationalists is an indie/surf rock/instrumental/classical/experimental jazz/soundtrack group that has been active since 2010 and as mentioned previously, the band hails from Atlanta. The Compartmentalizationalists consist of Nico Giarrano (drums), Claire Lodge (guitar), Jeffrey Butzer (guitar), and William J. Brisby (bass). According to Discogs.com, The Compartmentalizationalists released one (1) LP, Sutures, on Ant Baby Records in 2015. Take a listen to Sutures via Jeffrey’s Bandcamp page today. Kicking off the night, The Compartmentalizationalists took the stage with a jazzy surf rock vibe that kept weaving in and out throughout a remarkable and eclectic opening set that warmed up the crowd on a cold December night in Atlanta. This would also be my first time seeing The Compartmentalizationalists perform live, and they did not disappoint. I hope to see The Compartmentalizationalists perform again soon.

You can view The Compartmentalizationalists’ genre-bending setlist from the evening below:

·         “Blurry Eyes”

·         “Fiesta Bianca”

·         “Having an Average Weekend”

·         “Trespanning”

·         “Katherine”

·         “Golden Youth”

·         “Hang a Lantern”

·         “Dead Man”

·         “Old Testament Astronaut”

·         “Born Without a Neck”

 You can stream Jeffrey Butzer, Claire Lodge, and The Compartmentalizationalists’ discography on their Bandcamp page today.

Since this would be my first time getting to see the Jesus Lizard perform live, I was building up excitement leading up to this evening reading all of the songs that were making the ’24 – ’25 US Tour’s setlist like “Gladiator”, “Nub”, “Seasick”, “Mouth Breather”, “Monkey Trick”, “Fly on the Wall”, “Thumper”, and “Bloody Mary”. Plus, it was wonderful also knowing that some of the new tracks from their latest release, Rack, making the cut as well like “Hide & Seek”, “Alexis Feels Sick”, “What If?”, and “Armistice Day”. When the Jesus Lizard took the stage, the sold-out crowd of faithful fans let out a loud cheer letting the band know it was time to rock! Knowing that everyone in this sold-out venue was just as excited as I was, you could feel the anticipation as the band set up for their performance.

Kicking off the evening with “Boilermaker” from their third album produced by the late and great Steve Albini, Liar, was a real treat for me since this is my favorite album from the Jesus Lizard. David Yow and company seamlessly performed songs from their back catalog, and quite a few new songs from their latest release, Rack, making their debut in Atlanta as a special treat for the sold-out crowd.

Check out this career-spanning setlist from the Jesus Lizard from this performance at Variety Playhouse (12/18/2024) in Atlanta, GA:

·         “Boilermaker”

·         “Glamorous”

·         “Puss”

·         “Seasick”

·         “Mouth Breather”

·         “Thumbscrews”

·         “My Own Urine”

·         “Grind”

·         “Nub”

·         “Hide & Seek”

·         “What If?”

·         “Chrome” (Chrome cover)

·         “Alexis Feels Sick”

·         “Gladiator”

·         “Then Comes Dudley”

Encore:

·         “Lord Godiva”

·         “Thumper”

·         “Fly on the Wall”

·         “Moto(R)”

·         “Monkey Trick”

Encore 2:

·         “Dunning Kruger”

·         “Armistice Day”

·         “Falling Down”

Show the Jesus Lizard some support and follow them on Bandcamp today! You can also support the Jesus Lizard by heading to their official Linktree to listen to the new album, Rack, buy some merch, or check out their other social media platforms.

You can check out the upcoming European dates and the remainder of the ’24-’25 US Tour dates already announced by the Jesus Lizard below:

Jan. 7, 2025

Glasgow, UK

QMU

 Jan. 8, 2025

Manchester, UK

Academy 2

 Jan. 9, 2025

Leeds, UK

Brudenell Social Club

 Jan. 10, 2025

Bristol, UK

The Fleece

 Jan. 11, 2025

London, UK

Electric Ballroom

 Jan. 12, 2025

Brighton, UK

Concorde 2

 Jan. 14, 2025

Belfast, UK

The Limelight

 Jan. 15, 2025

Dublin, IE

Button Factory

 Jan. 16, 2025

Dublin, IE

Button Factory

 May. 2, 2025

Solana Beach, CA

Belly Up

 May. 3, 2025

Los Angeles, CA

Fonda Theatre

 May. 5, 2025

San Francisco, CA

The Fillmore

 May. 8, 2025

Portland, OR

Revolution Hall

 May. 9, 2025

Portland, OR

Revolution Hall

 May. 10, 2025

Seattle, WA

Neptune Theatre

 May. 11, 2025

Seattle, WA

Neptune Theatre

 May. 17, 2025

Paris, FR

Elysée Montmartre

 May. 18, 2025

Brussels, BE

Les Nuits Botaniques

 May. 20, 2025

Amsterdam, NL

Melkweg

 May. 22, 2025

Copenhagen, DK

Den Graa Hal

 May. 23, 2025

Oslo, NO

John Dee

 May. 24, 2025

Stockholm, SE

Debaser

 May. 27, 2025

Berlin, DE

SO36

 May. 28, 2025

Köln, DE

Gebäude 9

 May. 30, 2025

Lausanne, CH

Les Docks

 May. 31, 2025

Bologna, IT

Link

 Jun. 1, 2025

Rome, IT

Monk

 Jun. 2, 2025

Milan, IT

Magnolia

 Jun. 4, 2025

Lyon, FR

L'Épicerie Moderne

 Jun. 6, 2025

Barcelona, ES

Primavera Festival

 Jun. 12, 2025

Porto, PT

Primavera Festival Porto

 Curious about Concerthopper? You can find more music-related articles, interviews, various photo galleries, indie music reviews, our ‘Bars & Bites’ section, our exclusive “She Said, She Said” column, or become a Concerthopper at www.concerthopper.com. Sign up for our monthly newsletter by following this link: The Setlist! Please ‘Like’ our page on Facebook and follow us on Instagram to stay up to date in 2023, on all music-related events/festivals such as Underoath “They’re Only Chasing Safety” 20th Anniversary Tour: Live at Buffalo Riverworks, Real Friends Live at Town Ballroom, 25 Years of Noise: Silverstein Live at Buffalo Riverworks, The Plot in You: Live at Buffalo Riverworks, Heaven Let Them Die Tour: Counterparts Live at Town Ballroom, the Jesus Lizard Live at Variety Playhouse (Atlanta), The Big Show Tour: They Might Be Giants Live at The Eastern, Lore 10th Anniversary 2025: Elder Live at The Earl, Joe Russo’s Almost Dead: Live at The Eastern (Night 2), String Cheese Incident: Live at Tabernacle (Night 3), Killswitch Engage Live at Buffalo Riverworks, The Sickness 25th Anniversary Tour: Disturbed Live at KeyBank Center (Buffalo), and The Cursed Tour: Paleface Swiss Live at Empire Live (Albany) by following us on all social media formats: Concerthopper on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  You can also follow my concert hopping on Facebook and Instagram.

[spiritmander13]

Y'all, have you ever realized something about yourself while watching someone else's content and really want to thank them because technically they were the reason behind you finding out something new?

Specific question, I know, but this happened to me last week. No I will never shut up about this story.

I was watching a livestream from this voice actor named Jazzy Oliver (very nice person, VAs a canonically non-binary character and is a transfem non-binary lesbian). She was playing Life is Strange: Before the Storm and I was noticing how Rachel and Chloe were like me and my QPP @mxmc13. And that was pretty much the tipping point into me realizing that I was a lesbian and I was feeling very euphoric throughout the rest of the stream.

I feel obligated to thank them because specifically HER stream was why I found out I was a lesbian and the stream comforted me during the overwhelming euphoria I was having from the realization. Of course, I don't HAVE to thank her, but I feel like I should. And this isn't the first time I was comforted by her; back in late July (I think), I was scared of telling my family that I was Pangender, so I turned to her.

I was wondering if others had felt like they should do the same, so that's why I'm asking this question.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Anna B Savage Interview: Curated Vulnerability

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Over a Zoom call with Anna B Savage in March, I tell her that “Say My Name”, an acoustic, whispered, creaking highlight from her sophomore album in|FLUX (City Slang), reminds me of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”. Like that song, “Say My Name”, pattering drums and free saxophone nonetheless, is essentially a song-long crescendo. The first time Savage recorded the song, she burst into tears when finished. I tell her the story of how Thom Yorke did the same, a night after seeing Jeff Buckley and laying “Street Spirit” down to tape, but that I could be wrong. “No way! I’ll choose to believe the legend,” Savage said. Immediately after our conversation, I realize I did get it wrong--not the crying part, but the specific song. (Purportedly, the Buckley-to-recording-to-weeping pipeline happened with “Fake Plastic Trees”.) In a way, my error felt fitting when talking about in|FLUX, an album that saw Savage learning to not worry about, and ultimately embrace, uncertainty and imperfection.

While the themes of in|FLUX jive with Savage’s previous material, there’s a newfound openness to her approach. The dissolved relationship blues of Savage’s debut A Common Turn and subsequent ups and downs of her These Dreams EP presented a stunning new artistic voice, one unafraid to share her deepest insecurities, buoyed by details at once hilarious and cringeworthy. in|FLUX is more all-encompassing. She still explicitly refers to sex and sexuality, on tracks like the “Touch Me”, “Pavlov’s Dog”, and the title track, but she ranges from desire to self-sufficiency. She revels in the foreplay on “Touch Me”. “Just call me Pavlov’s Dog / I’m here, I’m waiting, I’m salivating,” she sings on the jazzy “Pavlov’s Dog”, literally panting in the background. On the title track, she recalls, “Last night I dreamt we were one / We had sex / I didn’t come,” a blunt, straightforward contrast to erotic songwriting. Beginning with voice and woodwinds, stop-starts of silence, the song transforms into a dance track with Moog synthesizer filling the spaces in between. “I want to be alone,” Savage sings, dancing on her own. It’s one of many aesthetic about-faces on in|FLUX.

in|FLUX was co-produced with tunng’s Mike Lindsay, introduced to Savage through City Slang, and the album was built up methodically, flushed out in the studio on a week by week basis. Though Lindsay certainly got to know Savage and encouraged her therapeutic songwriting, her ability to push herself made the record what it is. During the pandemic, she pursued a Master’s in Music and requested her mentor to force her to write a song on a Digital Audio Workstation, which ended up being the title track. The saxophone and clarinet that pepper the album were played by Savage herself, choosing to throw caution to the wind and pick up instruments she hadn’t played since her teenage years. She sung final track “The Orange” in the wrong key but ended up keeping it, turning a mistake into an artistic choice. “It’s a small miracle to finally enjoy being me,” she sings, “And if this is all that there is / I think I’m gonna be fine.” in|FLUX seems to be a touchpoint for Savage’s musical career, one where she’s less concerned about defining herself than being herself.

Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: At what point did you realize the writing process for in|FLUX needed to be more stream-of-consciousness?

Anna B Savage: I don’t really see it as a stream-of-consciousness thing. It was definitely easier than [A Common Turn], which makes it feel like it could have been stream-of-consciousness, but annoyingly, I probably made it a bit harder than I needed to on myself, going in and reworking it at times, wanting the right things to come to the foreground. I wanted it to be looser, and I didn’t want it to take me as long. Some of the songs on A Common Turn took me 2-3 years of rehashing and reiterating. I wanted this to be a speedier process. But they’re--and me and my therapist joke about this--curated, but vulnerable. I get to choose what people see and hear.

SILY: You hadn’t necessarily finished writing the songs before going into the studio with Mike, though, right?

ABS: That’s correct. It was a quick process, but I’d go in for a week, and go away for a week, working on all the songs myself before going back in with Mike. So it was definitely not an easy process, but much easier than the first one.

SILY: At what point did you pull out the clarinet and saxophone you hadn’t touched in forever?

ABS: [laughs] Mike and I, when we talked about doing the record--we hadn’t even tried working together yet--he asked, “What kind of things do you think you want [on the record]?” and I tossed out I wanted some clarinet and saxophone. He said, “We’ll try and find some players,” and I said, “No, I can play that.” He said, “Okay, you should bring them next week.” That was quite entertaining as well. I was like, “Oh, fuck, now I have to make noise out of these things.” The ideas were far-reaching and fanciful. I really should have practiced before I went there, but I made it work.

SILY: When did you first start playing those instruments?

ABS: When I was really little. I was maybe 10. I stopped when I was about 16.

SILY: What else can you play?

ABS: There are other instruments I’ve learned, but whether I can play them is a different matter. The violin, soprano recorder, treble recorder, piano, guitar, voice, clarinet, and sax.

SILY: Your playing is definitely expressive. Some reviews I read describe the saxophone as “purring,” like a big cat.

ABS: That’s so nice! I don’t read reviews ever, because they make my mind melt, but that makes me very happy. That’s lovely. Thank you for telling me that.

SILY: When were you first aware of Mike, and how did you come to work with him?

ABS: I was aware of Mike when I was a teenager at school. I listened to tunng. That was when music was completely inaccessible and this alien planet I had no idea how to get close to or facing towards. Simon [Morley], from my label, lives quite close to Mike, and suggested him [to me] after the first one because he thought I’d enjoy working with him. I’d listened to the LUMP records but hadn’t realized it was him. I didn’t know he was the same guy from tunng, so I had to go back and do my homework piecing together it was the same guy I listened to when I was little. It was a straightforward process, though. We met, we tested each other out for a couple days, and said, “Okay, let’s do it!” 

SILY: Overall, the record has such a varied instrumental palate. Sometimes, in a good way, the songs can’t decide what they’re trying to be. Similarly, the themes of the record are all about you embracing uncertainty and indecisiveness. Was that an intentional mirror?

ABS: I have zero qualms with that kind of label or idea being thrown around, that I’m a bit indecisive and I like all the things. I’m greedy! [laughs] I want all of these things. I’d be doing a disservice to not follow all of the things I like. I’ve always aspired to be a curated minimalist, but I actually like loads of different things from loads of different places, and I want to put them next to each other.

SILY: You use spoken word on “The Ghost” and “Crown Shyness”. How did you decide to include spoken word, especially at the start of the album?

ABS: The bridges of both of those songs were quite interesting. I knew the framework of the songs before I finished them. In both songs, there was this moment where I wanted something to happen. I wanted it to change to a different atmosphere, but I didn’t quite know how to do it. In both instances, [spoken word] ended up being what I wanted to bring into it. I didn’t want to crowbar in another verse or bridge when it didn’t feel natural. For some reason, for those songs, it didn’t feel natural. But I wrote the lyrics, especially in “Crown Shyness”, and they felt like the crux of the song. I needed to express it in the most straightforward, simplistic way possible. The spoken word at the beginning of “The Ghost” is actually a voice note from my phone of a dream I had. It was me, immediately after waking up, recording the dream for myself. I have a tendency to record my dreams quite a lot. When I was younger, I wanted to teach myself how to lucid dream, and that’s the number one way to get to that point. I think it’s interesting as a therapeutic tool, too, but I used to not think I had an imagination, and then I’d have these completely fucking wild elaborate dreams, which made me think I had some imagination in there.

SILY: Were you ever successful in lucid dreaming?

ABS: Yes. I knew I was successful because I looked at my hands, and they looked mad, so I decided I was gonna fly, and I lifted up off the floor for maybe two seconds, and then I woke up. I think it’s a win, but I don’t think it’s the most exciting win of all time in terms of lucid dreaming.

SILY: We’ll count it.

ABS: Thank you.

SILY: There are a few places on here, whether you’re talking about relationships or sex, where you’re placing the listener exactly where you are. When I hear, “Dissolving in the car with you on the A1 Southbound,” I can look up where that is. How important is it for you to have these moments on a record, where you hone in on something so specific?

ABS: For me, that’s where things start to really come alive. I’ve read a fair bit of poetry, and all of my favorite poems have moments like that where you’re suddenly dropped into a very specific scenario. I always found those the most affecting, which leads me to believe they’re the most universal even though they’re the most specific. I really love adding that color and flavor to it. You can locate it geographically or in a specific time or season. It’s the kind of lyricism or songwriting or poetry or writing I always find really exciting. I’m basically trying to emulate what I like and respond to. Maybe that’s what I like and respond to at the moment, and in four years I'll think it’s so passé and I should be theoretical and nonsensical.

SILY: These documents of times or moments in your life are truly the most honest, and ironically have the bigger change to become long-lasting.

ABS: It makes me think of Joni Mitchell, when I think of incredible specificity. “A Case of You” is an example of that. “I met a woman. She had a mouth like yours.” What the fuck?!?

SILY: Who thinks that, right?

ABS: I’ve thought that. My friend brought home a new girlfriend who had the same mouth as one of my old friends. I was like, “What is going on?” I think it’s wild when something like that happens in songs.

SILY: Did you say anything?

ABS: Not until years later. It was quite funny.

SILY: The title song was the first track you wrote on a DAW. What were the circumstances behind that?

ABS: It was my homework. I was doing a music Master’s program during the pandemic. I was on this course, and one of the modules was the tech side of music, which has always terrified me. I’m not sure whether I’ve internalized all the bullshit chauvinist, misogynist stuff about women not being able to be as good as men at the technical side. I’d been physically responsive in my fear; I was at such a disadvantage, I’d need to be the best in the world or I wouldn’t touch it.

My tutor, who I love so much, ended up marginally having to coach me for three weeks. We became friends, and he said, “What do you need from me?” and I said, “I need you to be really rigid with me and say, ‘You need to write a fucking song on a DAW by Thursday at 9 PM next week.’ And I need you to enforce that and keep enforcing that.” This was the first one I wrote, which pales in comparison to [the final version that appears on in|FLUX]. It was a little confusing. When I brought it to Mike, he said, “I’m gonna need to get more in touch with the way you write before we can tackle this song.” It was one of the last ones we did. I really thought it had something in it, so I kept bringing it to Mike, and he said, “I don’t think we’re quite there yet,” and one day he said, “Fuck it, let’s try it.” I don’t quite know how to express how it came out. I was just playing around.

SILY: I think it’s fitting that specific song is where you sing, “I’m happy on my own,” and you have a strength in individuality. When you sing that, your vocals are layered, and it’s like you are multitudes.

ABS: Exactly. I’m all of the different things all at the same time.

SILY: You reference John Luther Adams in “Hungry”. Are you a fan of or influenced by naturalist classical music in your work?

ABS: Yeah. I only really got to know it through my friend I met at Banff. He put me onto his stuff and so much different stuff. I definitely am very influenced by it even if not in any way knowledgeable about it. I love [The Wind in High Places], and I love the podcast Meet The Composer. I listened to the ones about John Luther Adams which are around The Wind In High Places. Anything that weaves in the landscape in non-lyrical audio is quite a feat.

SILY: Is there another hilarious story behind this album’s cover art?

ABS: Not really. When I spoke to Katie [Silvester], the photographer, and Sophie [Louise Hurley-Walker], the Art Director and Designer, I had all these different things I collected over the years that had a sense of flux in them anyway. The duality in the cover image was very important to me. We did it by playing with a mirror. The photograph is upside-down, which was important to me, because it feels slightly uncanny. The figure on the back, the creature outfit, you can’t even see an inch of skin. On the front cover, I might as well be naked. There’s a duality across the whole record for me, that feels so good and so cohesive and expressed in such a better way I could do on my own. There is a bum in my pictures, but it’s not on the front cover this time.

SILY: How are you playing these songs live?

ABS: Either with a band or solo, with a guitar. Some don’t work because they were never played on a guitar, like “in|FLUX”, which wasn’t written on a guitar.

SILY: Do you find it a seamless process to build up the songs from the guitar to a full band?

ABS: Yes? No? It’s a lot easier than if it was on the clarinet or the flugelhorn or something. You have the basic structure, the rhythm or main instrument. But a lot of the stuff did just have bass and drums on it, and the rest of the stuff is synths and analog machines. It gets to a point where it’s about paring down stuff and testing stuff out in the rehearsal room and seeing what works. I don’t feel entirely weathered to making stuff sound like it does on the record, even though I used to hate that when I was a teenager going to gigs. It’s not the same anymore. We have so many tools at our fingertips, it’s not the most feasible thing to make it sound exactly like it does on record, and it’s not the most interesting, either.

SILY: I used to be the same way, and these days, when I hear a band where it sounds just like the record, I think, “Why did I even come?” It’s like they just pressed play.

ABS: Exactly. And I want my band to have fun. I don’t want it to sound like they’re just pressing buttons, I want them to properly play their instruments. 

SILY: Are you the type of songwriter who is always writing? Anything in the short or long-term coming up?

ABS: I am absolutely the opposite of a songwriter who’s always writing. I write for the equivalent of two months of the year. I used to feel ashamed about that and thought I was really lazy, but now I realize I’m not not writing in those 10 months, I’m just collating. It helps the process of writing go really fast, because I have everything squared away.

I have a skeleton idea for the next album, which I had before I started recording in|FLUX. I really should have worked more on that. It’s gonna be completely different again. I’ll make it completely hard to play live. 

SILY: It’s always cool to hear the evolution from debut album to EP to second album, artists that grow without moving away from what makes them, them. Do you think about that at all when deciding what to do next?

ABS: I wouldn’t say I do. I definitely felt quite nervous putting in|FLUX out. People who had been real champions of [my previous work,] I thought, “They’re gonna fucking hate it.” It’s the same thing as being a content creator or being on social media. I’m not interested in rehashing the same thing over and over again. It doesn’t bring me any joy. I like learning and expanding and testing myself. Even when I think I’m being lazy, I’m constantly testing myself. For me, I want to be able to express the ideas I have for these albums audibly. I don’t feel like the personality of in|FLUX, which I knew before I even started recording, lended itself to the same stuff A Common Turn did, and my next one, I already know doesn’t have the same aural personality as the others do. It’s quite exciting.

SILY: Any plans to come to the U.S. for a tour?

ABS: I wish. I really, really want to. Fingers crossed.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately?

ABS: The Madison Cunningham record absolutely fucks me up. I went to see her last night, and she exploded my brain into tiny pieces. I’m so inspired and amazed by her. She’s absolutely unbelievable.

I’ve basically just been watching RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars since I finished Schitt’s Creek.

Reading-wise, I just finished Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. I read Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I love winter for the hibernation and the reading and watching TV. It’s a good time to ask me this question.