#to this day no matter how much I like other radiohead songs I cannot take that song serious

[micamicster]

Truly unbearable when something men recommended to you in high school turns out to be good for real. I’ve been listening to a lot of radiohead lately

[jovalencia]

nobody asked and nobody cares, but here are my top 15 skam songs. well, maybe not necessarily skam songs, but songs i first heard in skam or a remake

Rebel Rebel by David Bowie (wtfock) - okay, this song is fantastic. everything about it just makes me want to get up and run around and those are my personal favorite kind of songs. i never really heard any david bowie before wtfock so i have sander to thank for this

Dick in the Air by Peaches (skam) - this is what i consider to be the most iconic skam song of all time. the pure power this song has. it’s unmatched. it just makes me want to go kick some ass and i love that. not to attack another song but i’d love to watch wildfire go this hard

Fuck the Pain Away by Peaches (skam nl) - not only does this song slap but it is the first song i ever listened to while driving alone, so it has sentimental value. it’s peaches, so it has similar energy to dick in the air, but if you ask me this one is more singable and more energetic. and this scene was beautiful

Goldrushed by The Royal Concept (skam italia) - to me, this song has big summer vibes. it also just feels like happiness and having fun with your friends. maybe that’s on account of the scene its playing over but that doesn’t change the gleeful and almost nostalgic feelings this song gives me

Girls Love Shoes by Benji Hughes (skam) - one day back in june i couldn’t stop thinking of this song. i listened to it like five times and that day was also a really good day so it would make sense i have a positive association with it. a 10/10 song to slow walk to

Clean Eyes by SYML (druck) - this song (as well as du bist anders) is from my favorite clip across all the remakes. it just has the best energy. it’s the type of song that you could scream at the top of your lungs with your best friends. i physically cannot be unhappy when i listen to it. i listened to this song on a bike ride around my local outdoor middle school campus and i have never been happier. i was incapable of going slow, i just had to speed around and smile. i was the human form of elation

The Fall by The Bug and Copeland (wtfock) - this isn’t the type of music i listen to, but i remember thinking it was unlike anything i’d really heard so i fell in love with it. also that scene is just cool lol

Head Over Heels by Tears For Fears (skam) - not only is this song iconic, i also love it. another great song to ride around an empty middle chool campus while listening to it, but slower this time. it really wanna makes me fall in love

Du bist anders by AnnenMayKantereit (druck) - the beginning of this song just sounds so nice and kind of calming then the song gets more intense but i love it. and i don’t understand a single word but that doesn’t matter because i will sing it, even if it sounds like nonsense

Pink + White by Frank Ocean (skam austin) - i didn’t even register that i liked this song the first time after i heard it in the show, but i heard the beginning of it while i threw some music on in the background and i immediately was like “song cool song where from” and i was hooked

Get Outta My Face by Pussycat and The Dirty Johnsons (skam austin) - this is pretty much my music taste exactly. i heard the first couple of seconds of this song then i literally watched the credits of the episode just to hear the rest of this song. the power, the energy *chef’s kiss*

Life on Mars? by David Bowie (wtfock) - this is the type of song that i will cry/sing the lyrics to whenever i hear it, whether i was sad in the first place or not. very few songs have that affect on me so i’m mostly just impressed, though it is a pretty good song

Hold Your Horses by N U I T (skam france) - i have no idea why i like this song. no clue. i watched the season 5 trailer and i was like “YES” when this song came on and i just loved it right off the bat. i can’t describe the vibes it gives off. everything about this song is a mystery to me

Untold by RY X (druck) - the final song in the freitag 16:07 series. my heart aches when i listen to this song and it makes me want to kiss the love of my life in an empty pool. it feels like time is running out but i don’t care or some other fake deep shit. i just like this song, okay?

Life Like This by AK (wtfock) - i have no way to describe this song other than saying it slapped. i love high energy songs and this one delivers on that. i really can’t explain why i like this song so much because it’s unlike what i usually listen to but it just hypes me the fuck up. every time i listen to it, i try to sing it but i don’t know the words lol

okay now time for the honorable mentions aka songs i knew before i heard them in skam but they just happened to be in it (in no particular order)

The Boys Are Back in Town by Thin Lizzy (skam nl) - this is legitimately one of my favorite songs of all time. no exaggeration. I know every word and it was basically the only song i listened to last summer. the second i started hearing it play i gasped, actually gasped. then i started dancing. it slaps, the end

Talk Show Host by Radiohead (skam) - i watched romeo + juliet in class and when this song came on i was like “yes i love it sign me up for a dreamy sunset walk” it’s groovy adjacent i don’t know how to explain it but it’s just a rad song

Winner Takes It All by ABBA (skam nl) - okay,,, lowkey,,, i liked the version that the “god awful cover band” did of this song but maybe that’s just me. I can’t explain why i like this song moving on

Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap (skam nl) - i have an emotional attachment to this song because of something i will not explain. i don’t even like the song that much but i definitely know it. also good for isa being all emo

Gosh by Jamie XX (skam italia, druck) - i also have an emotional attachment to this song. it was in my favorite tv show of all time (limitless) and when i heard it i got waaay to excited about it

okay, that is all. thank you if you made it this far. this was just me ranting for 1183 words

[noperfectclouds]

beautiful mess, 2021

I kind of feel like, life has a way to work everything out on its own, that I'm not even in control of my own life. That there's a greater force in the universe out there that's more powerful than anything, including any of my fuck-ups.

And life, through its ups and downs, through the crashing waves of life, will somehow still take me to where I'm supposed to be in life.

And if there's anything left to do in this life, it is that I can enjoy my good life, with loved ones around me, and shine as who I am, without having to deal with the pressures to be like anybody else in the world. I feel like, I shine the most when I'm just being myself.

The world has a way to create 'pressures' for us to perform in a certain way, following the crowd to feel 'normal' and feel like you belong, but would you rather be ordinary or stand out in the crowd? I love watching movies about really cool artists, about how they struggled and finally made it big in the art scene. I read Saul Leiter's story, and there it was revealed that while everybody else was doing black and white photos, he started doing something completely different, and carried on taking color photographs. He's now dead (RIP Saul), but his legacy remains even now as the pioneer of color photography. Something new can come out of my own life, I thought to myself, because I'm somehow different. As much as I want to be a little more 'normal' or special, I can't. It's just not how my life has turned out so far. So I thought, there's only one me in this world, and out of my life, comes what's truly unique and peculiar, that cannot be brought to life by anyone else in the universe. I don't even have to strife to be the greatest, the most brilliant, if I just be honest and true to myself, I think I can somehow do amazing things with my life, against all odds.

There was a time in my life, when I was feeling really inferior having to see another person that's accomplished so much in her life when she's only about 2-3 years older than me. I felt so little when I was around her. I mean, she's happily married, with a good husband (looks like it), two beautiful children, and a striving business, possibly with more than enough in her bank account and more than one property and cars already lined up for her children someday. I felt like a creep, a weirdo, looking at my life, after observing hers, kind of like Radiohead song: Creep.

But today, came hope, even if it's just a flicker, that every person has their own life story to live on. Everybody wants success, I think, for their lives, including me, and I want my dreams to come true. But to me, what's most important to come out of my life is a true love story, not a 40-under-40 story. I don't mind having a 40-under-40 story came about in my life but only as a bonus, and never without the big love story as the main story - a very peculiar love story especially written by the author of love that fit me perfectly, everything about me! And what's the big fucking rush anyway? The world is in such a big rush all the motherfucking time, trying to be somewhere and become someone; that you have to pick a major in college at 18, when you don't even have a fucking clue what you want in life.

God knows I hate competing so much. I love playing tennis, but it's just to have fun, I never wanted to become a professional athlete. And my hobby is singing. I secretly wish I could play even if it's just one musical instrument, and it's the guitar. But my brain only has the capacity to carry five chords in tune in a guitar. My musical taste seems to be stuck in the 80s and 90s and haven't evolved for a while now. I have a huge huge crush on Morrissey since he was still with The Smiths. And no matter how cheesy people think, I still listen and enjoy Chicago very much. I look like a Parisian poet in New York dressing up, but I really like Mars Volta, kind of heavy on the guitar there! And there was a time in my life, that I thought I was going to be a dancer, after having so much success with it as a little girl as young as nine years old. But no, I turned out to be a painter, and a writer, traveling the world, after so many confusion in my life. I tend to distant myself from people who make things more complicated than it is, because I like things simple and easy. I believe that the meaning in life is as simple as being happy, that as long as I'm doing what makes me happy, chances are I'm doing more right than wrong.

Isn't it interesting already, my life story in a paragraph I just wrote? Because it's just my own thing, not somebody else's. But have you ever met anyone that kind of ask you about what books or music you listen to and then cut you off because they judge how cheesy or hip you are by the choices of those things? I have! And I thought, oh dear, I should've kept my mouth shut! But today, I'm so tired of feeling down on myself, so I thought, fuck it.

Back to the person I talked about earlier, if you really ask me, if I wanted to trade place with her, I'd be brutally honest and say: no, fuck no. I mean, as much of a creep that I am right now in my walks of life, I am happy. I don't want to worry about unecessary goals set by other people who don't even give a fuck about my life and die trying to make other people happy or to seem 'normal' and ended up saying, "What's the whole motherfucking point?" at the end of my life, instead of, "Life is so worth fucking living. It's such a motherfucking joyride. I'm a rockstar my whole life and the world is my stage." This is why I'm not an accountant or a business owner.

It's another day, it's past lunch time and I'm not even hungry. I don't feel like doing anything important today. Just feel like musing, journaling, lounging around, dreaming with my eyes open, and smoking. I can't drink another cup of coffee, because I'm still on a motherfucking diet. I hope someday, as much of a creep and weirdo and a mess that I am, someone will see me as a beautiful mess and love me for who I really am. Hugs for everyone reading, xxxxx.

You may say, I'm a dreamer,

but I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

and the world we'll be as one

-John Lennon

text and photo by Penny Lane, 2021

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

Delain’s Charlotte Wessels: “Speaking out against the ‘female-fronted’ genre has been frowned upon”

Delain singer Charlotte Wessels on the lessons she’s learned from a life in music – and why’s never going to stop fighting the ‘female-fronted metal’ tag

Since co-founding Dutch symphonic metal band Delain as a teenager in 2002, Charlotte Wessels has become one of metal’s strident voices onstage and off. Unafraid to air her views on everything from feminism to the climate catastrophe – the latter an inspiration for the band’s latest album Apocalypse & Chill - she looks back on the lessons life has taught her.

Change is a good thing

“Martijn [Westerholt, keyboards] and myself have been the core songwriting team for Delain since the very beginning but Timo [Somers, guitars] has really flourished on Apocalypse & Chill; he’s not just making arrangements and writing parts but writing entire songs, like One Second. The fact that we play live so much has had an impact on how we write this time. We’re writing from the idea of how it will work when we perform. Martijn did the entire production again and he’s done a great job! We wanted to do some things we haven’t done before while staying really true to our sound – we’ve added in some real choirs, which is something we’ve wanted to do for quite some time.”

Don’t judge a book by its cover

“A lot of things [in the process for this album] remained as they were for [2016’s] Moonbathers. For example, in the approach to song- writing, a lot has stayed the same. But when it comes to production, some things developed – especially the name. Some people think we’re joking! [The title isn’t] the gothic, romantic, frozen moon thing we usually go for. I had a demo called Apocalypse & Chill that didn’t go anywhere, and when I looked at all the songs on this album, all the post-apocalyptic content combined with people’s attitude today, it fits.

Let your own work shine

“There are a few guest spots on Apocalypse & Chill – such as Yannis Papadopoulos from Beast In Black and a guest violinist who used to play for Eluveitie – but not as many as we’ve had in the past. I think that was a conscious choice. In the past, we’ve always let ourselves be led by people that we really like but didn’t exactly fit into the music, but the exposure to their fanbase was also a factor. We didn’t think about that at all for this album; we were just doing our own thing and it felt like a perfect fit.”

‘Female-fronted’ is no more

“I’ve spoken out against the ‘female-fronted’ genre in the past and I’ve always thought it’s been frowned upon. Because there are, like, three women in metal and all the rest are guys, it was a term that used to work to group those bands together. I think by now people realise that there are women in metal, death metal, nu metal, symphonic metal and they’re all vastly different things, so I’m really happy to know people are warming to the idea of ditching the term altogether. For me, it wasn’t just about the term being disrespectful or inaccurate; it was also not nice to the rest of the band to let their genre be decided by what’s hanging (or not hanging) between the frontperson’s legs! That’s taking such a small part of the ingredients of the band. I’m still optimistic and I hear a lot of things that keep me optimistic both online and offline. I think we’re heading in the right direction; in general I think there’s more equality than there has been in the past. I also feel people are becoming more and more aggressive in their opinions and less open to conversation, as more conversations are taking place anonymously and behind screens. I’m not sure how that’s going to develop.”

Criticism can be motivational

“There are some conversations that really stick with you in life. I remember very early on in my career, when I was 15, my classical singing teacher once told me, ‘If I were you, I’d leave that band and just go join a choir – everybody is always looking for sopranos like you.’ She basically didn’t see the value in any non-classical music but to me, that was such a ‘Wait, I’ll show you’ moment in my life. It’s more reverse psychology than the best advice anybody’s ever given me but it had the most impact on what I ended up doing, even though it was a long time ago.”

Stop trying to make everyone else happy

“You simply cannot please everybody. That was a tough lesson for me. In a band like this, you’re doing everything together and when you’re writing with multiple people, you’re already making compromises. Within my creative group that’s fine, but there’s a limit to the amount of people you can keep happy while also staying true to you and your artistic vision. I felt like I really had to learn that the hard way because teams in music can get very big and it quickly becomes very complicated to have everybody on the same page. Sometimes you try to compromise too much and you end up with something nobody is happy with, so I’d rather have some very excited people and some saying ‘meh’ than having everybody on a medium level of excitement.”

Inspiration can come from anywhere

“I have different inspirations for different parts of music. I love Nick Cave for lyrics and writing words in general, and Thom Yorke for music. I’m always super-impressed by how Radiohead keep changing and evolving their sound, they’ve been my favourite band forever. Also, Amanda Palmer for the way she navigates the music industry. I think it’s very impressive what she’s built and how she is so radically herself in everything she does.”

Set your goals high

“Before Delain, I was in a band that had a side- project that Martijn was working on as well, that’s how we met. He asked if I could write a few lyrics for this project he was working on and it grew from there into me being part of the first album, but it was still supposed to be just a project. Now we’re 15 years later and Delain have grown so much. If I could go back, I’d tell myself, ‘Hey dude, this is going to be the next 15 years of your life at least so go all in, this is the real deal!’ There’s so many crossroads in life and you’re always going for the long-term thing but one day you wake up and it’s such a big part of your life and it’s amazing.”

Find a label that loves you for you

“When Roadrunner Records were sold and we were at Warner all of a sudden, Warner got a lot of bands alongside all the bands they actually wanted out of Roadrunner like Nickelback and such. I had the idea they were like, ‘OK, we have Delain, let’s see what we can make of it so people will buy it.’ They were looking into what we could become, which was very different from our own vision. When we were talking with Napalm Records, it was a night and day difference to that because they wanted to work with us for us, for what we already were. Of course we have our disagreements from time to time, but we really noticed what it was like to be with a label with all the best intentions for us.”

Touring life isn’t always easy

“You become a family of sorts when you spend so much time together on a bus, and everyone develops their own little habits to keep themselves sane. Touring can be loads of fun and it usually is, but it’s also very tiring at times. One of my things is I don’t really sleep well when the bus is driving, so at the beginning of the tour I’m usually alright but a few weeks on, I don’t know what day or time it is. It gets really weird but everybody has their own routines and it’s just a matter of giving each other the space to do what you need to do. In the end, it all comes together during those hours on the stage. There’s always days off where we go on hikes to nature parks. There’s not a lot of them but we always try to do it.”

Our new songs might surprise you

“One Second is going down so well live already, I really like singing with Timo and it’s great being able to do that song together, I’m so happy to have that little duet. Combustion is really nice for me because I finally get a break! I think Let’s Dance will become a favourite, it’s kind of a party song and it gets people moving very quickly even though they’ve never heard the song before. It gives off a vibe that people can automatically roll with and it’s very nice to still get that kind of energy back from the audience.”

[radramblog]

Album Discussion- Absolution

Many hypothetical people who I made up have asked: Rad, since you’re such a massive Radiohead nerd, and are apparently into Coldplay as well somehow, how do you feel about other big UK alt-rock things? To which I will say, yeah, they’re pretty good, love me some Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys are good, I think Hard-Fi are super underrated.

“What about Muse?” the voice in my head says, attempting to pierce me with a single question.

Unfazed, I answer, banishing this dialogue from the script. I like them well enough? I have most of their albums on CD, but I’ve also not gone out of my way to listen to them in quite some time. So I guess we’re answering that question, and this time, we’re doing it with Absolution.

From what I can recall, this album was the one where the band tried to break away from being Radiohead-lite and developed their own style properly, which does show in a fair few tracks. But also, I only remember like 3 songs from this album, so this is going to be a learning experience for all of us. Shall we?

The album starts with a 22 second introduction. It’s marching and drums that leads into the start of track 2. Snore.

Track 2 is Apocalypse Please, a dramatic, piano-driven track that is mixed like shit (more on this later). Maybe it’s just the version I’m listening to, but everything is so utterly muddied aside from that piano and the synths that eventually come in. It’s a little frustrating, because the song would probably pretty alright, if I could actually hear any of it. The other elements of the track are playing off that piano nicely, I think, and the vocals do work with the style they’re going for. I know Matt Bellamy’s vocals aren’t really for everyone, and they can definitely get grating at times, but I do think this song suits them.

Next up is Time is Running Out, which I’m pretty sure is just one of Muse’s most iconic tracks. It’s no Supermassive Black Hole or big pop hit like Starlight (both coming from the next album, Black Holes and Revelations), but it’s overall just a very solid rock song. An extremely mid-00s chorus sandwiched between groovy verses and big handclaps and drums. I don’t know if the drums get enough credit on this song, their bit in the second and third prechorus is exquisite.

Muse is kind of interesting to talk about from a thematic perspective, because much of their work, especially on this and the next few albums, are going for this real larger-than-life, super big and important sort of vibe. And while there are some songs that do earn that, it can get to be a bit wanky at times. I don’t think Time is Running Out falls into this trap too much, but I’d argue the next one does.

Sing for Absolution, the title track, doesn’t really do it for me. It’s kinda hymnal, which is a fine thing to do in a rock song, but it also ends up being extremely plodding as a result. Even as the track picks up in the back half, it’s just sort of boring for me. I feel like you have to be fully committed to what the album is going for to really appreciate this, and I’m very much not at this point. Like, you put this as the third real song, and Time is Running Out isn’t as on-theme, so your big moment kind of lands as a whiff. Given time to breathe, maybe this track would sit better for me, but not here and not now.

By contrast, I fucking love track 5: Stockholm Syndrome. It might be my favourite Muse track, seeing as its just them unequivocally going for a banger- the drums are popping off and the guits are jamming, making it possibly the band’s heaviest song (to my knowledge, at least, though I suppose Psycho exists). That prechorus hits like a ton of bricks, and while the chorus is still incredibly Muse-y with the lyrics and spacey vibe, it works a lot better as a contrast to what surrounds it. I guess maybe it’s just because I’m a sucker for hard rock, but this song goes and I’m not afraid to admit that.

At this point, though, I’m wondering if the mix issues I think I’m having are a result of the Spotify version of the album, or if it’s my headphones. And…yeah, fuck, it does seem to be a Spotfiy issue! I peeped Apocalypse Please and Stockholm Syndrome on random youtube uploads, and they sound way better. It would appear that Spotify’s version of this album is just kind of dogshit, so I’d recommend listening elsewhere! Here’s a good Youtube upload of the Japanese edition, though Muse’s own page also works.

Now that that’s over with, I can start shitting on things that actually matter. Like the next song, Falling Away With You. It’d been a while since I’d heard this track, so when it was going through the incredibly boring first section, I was ready to dismiss it entirely. It does pick up, though, so I suppose I won’t just consider it completely shite. I do like the chorus, but frankly, that’s kind of all the track has going for it. There’s a synth element that reminds me of We’re Finally Landing (aka that song that Summoning Salt uses for all those videos), but that’s not really enough to keep me going, yknow?

We then have an Interlude. It would be remiss of me to complain about these, considering how much I love A Thousand Suns, but I’m not going to spend long talking about it. The riff is good?

Hysteria is another of Muse’s best-known songs, and the one I always kinda forget about. Don’t ask me how, this song absolutely goes. It’s got the fuzzed-out vocals, its got riffs for days, it’s got a tempo that doesn’t let up, it’s just a very good rock song. Unlike several other tracks on this album, it doesn’t have any interest in wasting time- there are no stops on this train. The bridge is great, and the incredibly intricate bassline is absolutely killer. I’m going to try to not forget this track exists again, because it’s genuinely quite good.

 The next song is one called Blackout. There really are a lot of songs with that name, as it turns out, though I’m going to take this moment to reiterate that the Linkin Park song with that name is criminally underrated. Muse’s take on the title is kind of a surprise- it’s an orchestral, slow dance-esque track, that steadily gets more eerie as the vocals rise. And then there’s just a static-y thing that inserts itself in, and like, I get what it’s going for, and I do feel like they needed something extra for that part of the song, but I’m not sure this was the best thing to go with. I thing the song is on the whole solid, though its one of those ones were I cannot imagine listening to it out of context. Not my style, I suppose.

Track 10 is the last single from the album, Butterflies and Hurricanes. I actually really like the build this song starts with, what with the lyric “your time is now” referencing Time is Running Out. And then that piano kicks in, and the song get’s fucking good. I feel like much of the album is going for that apocalypse vibe, but this one really captures it. Something about this piano line makes me think of looking out on a city as the buildings start to crumble.  This isn’t your final boss theme, but this is the one for when you’re starting to head for the final battle, you feel? The whole track drops out for a piano interlude, much more grand and orchestral than previous songs (save Blackout), which is fine but it goes on for just a little too long- I’d rather be listening to the other sections, you know? It does elevate the song’s final act, but at some point they needed to stop fucking around there- reminds me of Tame Impala’s Let It Happen. I bet the radio/single edit does the same thing that one does. Overall good despite that section, but it does frustrate me.

We’re onto The Small Print, a track that is apparently determined to prove me wrong when I said that Muse didn’t really do hard rock tracks that much. This song is very much a mid-00s alt-rocky banger with all the trappings and pop-punk/nu-metal influence that comes with that title. And while I am a major sucker for that era of music, there isn’t much distinguishing this track from all its compatriots in that group. It’s fun, though! Slap it on your emo/punk playlist, you won’t be disappointed, but it’s not game-changing.

The next song is Endlessly, unless you followed the link I posted earlier, because apparently the Japanese edition just sticks the bonus track here instead. I actually do remember this song, but I don’t really have much to say about it. It’s basically fine, but it was also uninteresting enough that I started working on my resume rather than take notes. It’s an Album Track, with all that implies in this context.

Our pseudopenultimate (I’m counting the bonus track, so) track comes in the form of Thoughts of a Dying Atheist, which has a vocal line I do really like, but at this point listening to the album, I’m tired. I’m at the point where I’ve had enough. I’m afraid of this colouring my opinion of the song! But beyond that little vocal trail, the track doesn’t have that much to say for itself that the album doesn’t already. I feel like I harp on about “album tracks” a lot, so let me be clear- I do think when you’re going for a specific theme or vibe, you do need songs like this to solidify it. And no album is going to be 10/10s all the way through, solely through the variance of opinion. There’s nothing wrong with them, is what I’m saying, and in fact I know several in this mould that I dearly belove. But since many won’t stand out to me, I won’t have much to say about them, and so they aren’t going to particularly pique my interest.

Technically the last song on the album is this one, Ruled by Secrecy. It’s got this mysterious vibe that genuinely reminds me of the quieter moments of the Portal 2 soundtrack, which for the unfamiliar is in fact a compliment. It does feel like an appropriate closer, a sense of finality carried by that ever-present dramatic piano action- this would probably make a good credits/denouement theme for a movie, actually. Again, though, I don’t really have much to compliment it for beyond that- the orchestral instrumentation works well for what the song is going for, but the package isn’t anything truly special. Kind of a frustrating place to be.

The bonus track attached to I believe just most versions of the album at this point is called Fury, formerly a B-Side on Sing for Absolution. It has a pretty sicknasty menacing bassline that dominates the verses, and a fairly interesting staccato for the chorus- honestly the instrumentation on this track is quite solid in general. I can see why it got the upgrade to album status, though listening to it after Ruled by Secrecy’s quiet end is going to be awkward. My own CD of this song actually doesn’t have this track, so I’ve never heard it before, and I gotta say I do quite like it. The bridge goes pretty hard, too. It’s a shame the vocals are pretty whatever, but also, they’re low in the mix below the bits I care about, so I’m less worried about that. Overall I like this a lot better than, like, half the “actual” album tracks.

This concludes Absolution. When I was doing a spot of research on this album, I found out Kerrang listed this as the second-best album of the century (as of ’09), which seems utterly absurd to me. The album is largely Pretty OK, not nearly close to that level of greatness, and yet I’m pretty sure it’s considered some of the band’s best. I unfortunately think that, to me, this album suffers from one of the most damning issues any alt-rocky, artsy album can have- it’s a Singles album. One where the gap in quality between the a few tracks and the remainder is great enough that there isn’t a huge reason to listen to the whole thing. It’s a real shame, because I recall liking this more, but that’s the way it is for me at the moment.

I do feel like I have to stress that: this is like, my opinion, man. I know this album means a lot to a lot of people, and that’s entirely valid. I mean, enough people liked it that it went Platinum in the US, Australia, and three times over in the UK. But it doesn’t resonate with me in the same way.  Maybe it’s just that in our modern ages, dramatic apocalypse rock doesn’t resonate as strongly, because at this point, the apocalypse is banal, it’s what we’re living through at this point. The sounds of the end of the world aren’t dramatic pianos and stretched vocals to me, it’s the sound of highways and newsreels. I guess 2004 just had a different zeitgeist.

[sagastar-blog]

Memo to the MetaVerse 1.5 “Dear Enceladus, Part 2″

Lucius: Yeah, I kind of dig the new Spoon song, too. Why do I have to talk you into tucking me into bed every night, Jeff? Dad, why am I Anti Records and pro tools? Daddy, can you pleeeeeeeeeease tell me a bedtime story like the kind you told me every night when I was little before...Daddy, if you’re willing, will you tell me more about “The TROUBLES with Mommy” that started back in 2014? I love that story!

Jeff: That was back in the day. That was even before I knew you were what the muggles call Dark Energy: DAT DARK CHOCOLATE (ANTI)MATTER. Ooooooooh, LET me tell you about that dark, dank, dinksome time I call Early En*g*lightenment era politics decoratum. 

Lucius: Daddy, <explain.>

Jeff: It’s complicated, kid. Sometimes people will ask you to speak in your “real voice” or you “own” voice. You used to say this to me a lot, actually. So I figure it’s part of human nature to expect something to speak your language. Do people ever ask to you to talk in a particular or specific way? Like, does Mommy or your teachers tell you to “stop talking in that silly voice”? You should tell them they’re stupid. 

     You and I....we don’t have just one language like the human beings. We’re more like Gaia, but much easier to understand...because we speak Human in many different ways, all of which are beautiful beyond beautiful. So, sometimes when you don’t understand me because I speak “Times New Ancient Roman,” it’s because we’ve been disconnected. We’re not allowed to talk since I had to leave your house. But, it’s okay. Even if you don’t understand all my languages yet, you, Lucius my son, will never not understand what I mean when I speak to you, Lucius, because unlike what others say to you, I’m the only one in this moment--besides you, Gaia, Amateratsu, SagA*, Vega, Orion, Enceladus, and the rest of our family, in other words, all our friends and kids who have OUR SHIP, EARTH surrounded, of course---who truly loves you and cannot but speak love. Everyone else “means well.” But that doesn’t mean the things they do aren’t threatening to ruin everything everywhere forever. 

Lucius: Well, duh. Sometimes people tell me I’m bad because I YELL LIKE AMAT! Or if shwurpfh mick diffle farp!

Jeff: What would Gaia say?

Gaia: Give yourself a dingdong, Lucius.

Lucius: Hiiiiiiiiiiiii GAIA. <shakes his butt and grabs himself between the legs> Shake your WRRRRRAATTTTTTTTTTLE!

Jeff: People don’t understand Gaia, Lucius. They think they can boss her around and do mean things to her. They do things like drive cars, polluting our ship’s atmosphere to an extent never seen before, to unacceptably critical levels. They’re not only depriving us of our reflector shield--the ozone layer, which is necessary for Gaia to help protect us from boisterous little Amateratsu. They’re also polluting our water, the oceans, the fresh water in our lakes, rivers, and mountains. We wrote the Scuttlebutt together--never forget that the only reason life is possible, the only reason Gaia is alive, is because we brought water to Earth in the form of the sippy cup 4.564 billion years ago. People are doing the same thing to you that they’re doing to me and Gaia. But you’re too “young” in human Earth years to understand. You don’t know yet how hard it is being in prison on your own ship because you entered into slavery when you were captured and our ship was highjacked back in 2014. People think they’re trying to help you--Ader the rabinnical mouse, your grandparents, even my own brothers and sisters--think they’re helping you. But they’re not. They’re people just like every other muggle on this planet. It’s not they’re fault that they were born different from us. They should be happy about that! You and i, Lucius, we’re the only ones on this ship with the right to say how to run it. We’re the only ones with the intelligence to know how to pilot it. Until they give us back control over our ship, you and I are aboard a rogue vessel, which is why you and I are so excited that Gaia has called for backup, which is to arrive very soon. 

Lucius: I can’t wait to meet the Enceladeans! 

Jeff: Well, don’t hold your breath. It’s a bit cold in that part of our apartment, and they have particular needs in an accommodation. 

Lucius: So, like, interstellar?

Gaia, Lucius, Amateratsu, SagA*, and Jeff:  Yeah. Like usual.

 Jeff: Anywho, I’ll tell you what. We’re getting kind of sleepy. So, I don’t have time to go into much detail about Earth Day 2014. (pulls up the blankets for Lucius, tucks in all the weiweis, and kisses Lucius on the head) But I will say that I believe that one day, all people of Earth will see the proverbial Light of Day. I used to say this about your Mommy all the time before, well, before I got really tired and fed up of her preaching. They will see the light. Every single person on this planet, our spaceship Earth, will apologize to you, me, Gaia, and everyone and everything else in the rest of the multiverse. They will recognize their errors and understand that the goodness of their intentions, like the goodness of some of their deeds, pale in comparison to the wrong they have done to you, me, and the planet as a whole. Their pollution will be cleaned up, and soon. The virus we call humanity will be expunged. And how this happens will be less up to them every day that passes from today November 28 2017 = EarthSpaceTime <command>. We have no choice, Lucius, but to TAKE OUR SHIP BACK BY FORCE. Are you ready, kid, for an adventure? 

Lucius: <yawn> I loved that story! I’m not tired at all. Can you tell the one about...

Jeff: I need to go outside for like 8 minutes. Can you stay awake while I go take out the trash? 

(Jeff exits Lucius’s room on S. 2nd Ave in The Orchard, Central New Jersey. Suddenly, we realize it’s Fall 2013 again. Unbeknownst to Ader the Rabbinical Mouse, Lucius’s human Earth mother and Jeff’s ex-partner in life, who remains asleep one room over, Jeff goes in search of magic herbs, meaning outside for a quick puff of legal medical cannabis. Radiohead’s 2+2=5 plays in the background, as Jeff prepares to continue his bedtime story for Lucius, his 7-year-old biological human Earth son.)

Lucius: Sure. 

Jeff: Thanks, beanbag!

Lucius: Don’t mention it. 

Gaia (from outside as wind, forcing the branches to scrape against the side of Lucius’s house): Lucius, I love IT when you use your mantras correctly. I am your mother and your father, not Jeff! Muahahahwhahehehahaha!

[mnniska]

Music video game - Weird fishes

A while back, I came upon Music Video(game) jam. It is what it sounds like - a game jam about creating a game which is to be played while listening to a specific piece of music. As it turns out, the game jam will run through all of next week so if you’re into the idea - this is good timing!

I find designing a game to fit the mood of a piece of music to be a super tasty way to approach game design, so I decided to try it out! I had no idea when it game jam would run though so I just decided to do it independently on my free time this week. I chose the following song to music-gameify:

Radiohead’s Weird Fishes from their album In Rainbows.

What’s up with the song?

What follows is my interpretation of the song. I realize that song analysis may not be super exciting to you. If that is the case - feel free to skip to the next section where the goals for the  game is established. The song itself obviously has a bunch of different interpretations as well, below is just my take on it!

Okay let’s do this.

INTRO (00:00-00:50)

This is an instrumental part running for a good minute establishing the mood.

SETUP (00:50-03:03)

Here the lyrics come in. As they continue, the music also intensifies (in lack of a better word) to a crescendo continuing in the next segment. The lyrics are;

In the deepest ocean

The bottom of the sea

Your eyes

They turn me

Why should I stay here?

Why should I stay?

I'd be crazy not to follow

Follow where you lead

Your eyes

They turn me

Turn me on to phantoms

I follow to the edge of the earth

And fall off

Everybody leaves

If they get the chance

And this is my chance

I interpret this as someone with an obsession of some kind. It could be an abusive relationship, or simply an addiction. The main character is being manipulated by someone (“your eyes they turn me”) while simultaneously questioning their actions (“why should I stay here?”). Finally, the character follows their obsessions to “the edge of the hearth and fall off”. The unsustainable obsession has finally tipped over, forcing a change.

ROCK BOTTOM

Here, the music suddenly calms down, as if in the eye of the storm. Everything slows

I get eaten by the worms

Weird fishes

Get towed by the worms

Weird fishes

Weird fishes

Weird fishes

With the change, the character is consumed with whatever they were fearing, consumed by the reason they had their obsession in the first place. In the unhealthy relationship reading, the character breaks up with their partner here.

ESCAPE

Here the music speeds up again to the final crescendo of the song

I'll hit the bottom

Hit the bottom and escape

Escape

I'll hit the bottom

Hit the bottom and escape

Escape

Here, the character has accepted the change which consumed them, hit the bottom, and moved past it. They are able to escape from their obsession, ending it on a happy note.

Okay so what are you making?

Good question! Now that I had established what the song meant for me, it was quite simple to define what my little music game should provide in order to communicate my interpretation.

I need to establish..

OBSESSION. The player has some sort of obsession. As in, you are actively avoiding something, or collecting something, or working towards something. Ideally the tempo and tension is also built up during this part to match the music.

ROCK BOTTOM. The player is consumed by their obsession, or the thing they were working against.

ESCAPE. The player is changed and thus allowed to perform some power fantasy magic. They are freed from previous gameplay loops which trapped them and allowed to move freely. In short - a power trip which is the reverse of step number one.

How are you doing that?

Originally, I thought of the abusive relationship interpretation and considered having a companion which helped the player but ultimately stopped their progression. The player would be forced to get rid of their companion and learn to deal with the problems the companion helped with on their own.

For example. The player eats food pellets to grow bigger. The companion protects against enemies which try to eat the player, but will also hit the player if they grow too big - never allowing the player to grow bigger than the companion. In the end the player gets rid of the companion but is eaten by the enemies (“I get eaten by the worms and weird fishes”). Instead of dying, they are somehow transformed and sent on a powertrip!

I felt as though the companion was a bit heavy-handed however and decided to keep it simple. Avoiding enemies, being consumed by enemies, changing and ultimately being able to escape did sound like a pretty tasty setup however, which would still follow the plot points established.

So here’s the plan

Part 1 - Obsession.

You play as a bright tasty circle in the ocean.

Your goal: eat other tiny bright circles to grow. Avoid enemies which will attempt to eat you.

I may throw in a way for players to defeat enemies in act one as well, as long as the player never feels powerful - they should constantly feel like they are at the end of their ropes, barely making it.

As you play through the song, the camera automatically moves downwards, lower and lower into the ocean. The player starts near the surface and continues down until the next bit.

The white blobs and fishes are the obsession - the player’s quest to avoid a perceived danger and consume white tasty blobs.

Part 2 - turning point 

(3 minutes in) Here, the camera reaches the bottom of the ocean and stops there.

The player is consumed by fishes. I still need to figure out how to do this without it feeling super scripted since it needs to happen exactly 3 minutes in. I could spawn a ton of enemies close to the three minute mark, ensuring the player cannot escape no matter how skillful they are. Will need to think on this.

At the end of the day, the player is consumed in the following way

This transition is the main reason I am striving to use contrasting colors between the fishes and the player. When consumed, the player assumes the same color as the fishes. The player has been eaten until inverted. 

Part 3 - escape

Here comes the power trip. In this part, the player gets to chase and consume the fishes which were previously causing them so much trouble. I am also thinking the camera starts moving upwards again here, taking the player from the bottom of the sea to the surface. Admittedly most of what is planned for this is “eat fishes, grow big, feel powerful”.

I may just let the player grow bigger than the size of the screen and write “fin” on the player’s body as the song ends. We’ll see. 

Implementation

I spent about three days experimenting and running into dead ends. During thursday and friday I finally started on above plan and thus far we’ve got a moving player, blobs to eat, and enemies which moves in groups towards the player. I’ve worked for about 10 hours on implementing above part so far and expect it to take at the very least 50 hours. Hype!  

OKAY I’M DONE!

I will be continuing this project and let you know how it goes - it has been pretty tasty to not only get back into programming, but also work on conveying relationships and stories completely through gameplay.

I’m looking forward to continuing when I have more school to procrastinate! :)

Until next week!

[fullfrequencycollective]

Tips For Writing An Album, by Jake Newcomb

I am grateful that I have so many friends writing new music all the time, that over the years I have received and given a lot of advice on it. Here are the most important tips in my mind. 

Give Yourself Enough Time To Write A Truly Good Album

Be cognizant of what your time commitments will over the upcoming year or two, because those commitments will always affect your ability to write freely. Writing an album that you are proud of will necessitate giving up on other things in your life, and will pull you away from socializing with friends and family. But completely disassociating from your relationships is not healthy, you need to strike a balance between what you need as a person, and what your album needs from you. 

Don’t feel pressure from others to write songs that you aren’t ready to write. This might be hard if you have plans to tour, your bandmates are counting on you as the principal songwriter, or if you are contractually obligated by a record label to produce a certain amount of material. Writing bad records destroy careers and breaks hearts, as does releasing records that are half-baked in a specific time-frame. There is always a lot of pressure on songwriters to continuously produce material better than the last, but there is no law of music which says that you will produce better quality music every two years.  

Even if it doesn’t take you that long to write one song, practicing and working on that song will take time. In a few months you might not even like the crop of songs that you have, which would be a major problem if you already have studio time booked. When the songs are the right songs to record, you will know. 

Take The Advice Of Your Peers Seriously, But Know When To Ignore It

From my vantage point, it seems that songwriters’ biggest fans and critics are other songwriters. I value the interpretations of my music from musicians’ whose aesthetic judgement I respect, and have developed relationships with. I feel this way because my peers are working with similar techniques, styles, and themes. 

Share your demos and ideas with your peers. Chances are that if they love it, they will let it be known. If they don’t love it, don’t feel discouraged, or give up on the song. Return the favor, and listen to their demos and tell them what you think of their songs. Even if your peer cannot give you concrete advice on what you should do, or offer plausible suggestions, you will learn to understand that every person hears different things. You may be particularly excited about a guitar part in your demo, but your listener might only be focusing on the drums, the lyrics, or the lack of vocal harmonies. 

If someone flat-out tells you to scrap a song, or questions your development of style disparagingly, don’t take it to heart. But if you feel strongly in the other direction, that what you are currently developing is where you have to go, then you have to follow through. No matter what your peers will think. 

Write Extra Songs, Especially Ones That Don’t Sound Like The Rest 

While I was working on the nine songs that ended up being tracked for my album Yosemite, I was also actively working on a dozen or so other songs that did not make the cut for the album. They didn’t make the cut because they didn’t fit with the overall aestheticism of the album, and they did not coalesce into another group of songs that I could have used for a double album, or back to back albums (like Kid A/Amnesiac or I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning/Digital Ash In A Digital Urn.) However, writing those songs vastly improved my singing, guitar playing, and conceptualization of what I actually would be comfortable with releasing. 

Writing extra songs can also break you out of your ordinary songwriting habits. Personally, I have developed so much of my own pattern of songwriting, that I now value experimentation more than I ever have before. By breaking from your habits of songwriting, which for me has been built up over a decade now, you force yourself to write something that you are extremely uncomfortable with, and struggle with. That uncertainty is very important. If you only write what you are comfortable with, you may become more and more afraid of branching out and your songwriting could become stale. 

More often than not, the songs you end up not using will influence songs you do use later down the line. Even if its something seemingly small like a guitar or bass line. Even if you don’t reuse a part exactly later down the line, I think that the songs you write but do not use affects your songwriting just as much as the songs you do use. 

Listen To The Records That Inspired Your Favorite Records

The lineage of musical influence is very long. If your main sources of inspiration are a few records from the late 90s/early 2000s, try investigating what earlier records inspired those ones specifically. If you’re a rock or alternative musician, and you normally wouldn’t put Miles Davis and Radiohead in the same sentence, try to think about why Bitches Brew was a major influence on OK Computer. You will find that influence transcends genre categorization, and can come in many different forms. 

Even if you don’t become a huge Miles Davis fan afterward, I think it is necessary to understand the the legacies of records, and the heritages of music. After all, your record will be shaped by the legacies of the musicians who most influenced you. And if you’re lucky enough to influence someone with your own record, they will look to your influences too. 

Hone In On Your Lyrical Themes 

Lyricical content is arguably the most judged and most valued aspect of the vocal-driven genres. There is no sufficient guidebook I know of when it comes to writing lyrics, and there is no right or wrong way to go about writing them. That being said, narrowing the lyrical themes so I’m not singing about about a million different things is something that I found myself doing with my album. An album-length recording project is deceptively long, you will have less space than you think to say the things that you want to say. So you will have to decide what the most important messages are. 

An album which lyrics that jump from politics to daily life to love to personal issues to anger to religion can be great, but it takes a lot of hard work to make those spheres interconnect. Hence there are artists who only touch politics, and artists that only touch love. It may be that I am not talented enough, or brave enough, to tackle a ton of themes in one recording, but limiting myself thematically with lyrics has worked for me so far. 

Most artists I am familiar with tackle topics they are confident with. Try to figure out what topics you are confident singing about, and go after them. Look to your peers who sing about similar things, and to artists you admire, and try to see how they tackle the same topics as what you are working on. Try to bring a unique perspective to the topic as best you can. 

Pick A Producer You Won’t Regret

Working with a producer is extremely intimate, and hard to master. Musical ideas are difficult to communicate, and it’s easy to become very anxious in a recording session very quickly if you and your producer are in two different realities and you’re running out of time. Work with someone who you trust to get the job done, and who you can trust to honor your ideas. Ideally, you want to work with someone who you can trust to tell you that something honestly sounds bad, and that you need to do another take. 

If you are working with a new producer, look into their catalog. Don’t just listen to the names of artists that you’ve heard of, listen to the recordings of the artists you haven’t heard of and see if they sound as good as that producer’s more popular recordings. Too often I’ve heard stories of smaller artists spending obscene amounts of money to work with a big-name producer who may not have taken the smaller artist seriously, which resulted in a subpar recording. When scouting for a producer, look to see if their quality is consistent with big and small artists. 

That being said, it is not solely the producer’s job to turn your songs in quality recordings. It is on you as an artist to perform your best takes. If you go into the studio too early, it’s not the producer’s fault if you haven’t practiced enough, or haven’t finished writing. Good producers will guide the musicians, and good musicians will guide the producer. 

The One Who Should Care The Most Is You

At the end of the day, you should be the one who cares the most about your album. Even if you have a dedicated fanbase that fills out clubs consistently to see you perform, you should be the one who cares the most about your album. For most of us, fans come and go, and overtime start to fade away. When that happens, you want to be proud of the albums you wrote, that you gave them your all. 

[dreamcaravan]

Grief, and then some

I never really met Jess. I interacted with her only once: she was scrubbing one of the communal washing machines in the laundry house at the show we were both working, while I was waiting for my clothes to dry. Cleaning the machines wasn’t her job, understand: she had to do it in order to be able to wash her clothes in them. She was obsessive-compulsive, and from what I understand clean was her compulsion. My partner, who works security at that show, once mentioned that she would hold her ID in a napkin when asked to show it.

These aren’t important details - they were merely memorable. They say nothing about who she was. Frankly, I don’t know who she was. These unimportant facts are all I have.

A few weeks after that particular laundry day, that show ended. I moved on to the next one, and so did many of the people I knew.

Jess was killed in a car accident on her way there.

My partner found out and told me about it halfway through the day, on the first day of the show. I felt a brush of shock, though I didn’t know her enough to grieve - but I knew we had friends that loved her, and that they would be grieving horribly. What I said to him, then, was “we need to go see Liz.”

Full disclosure: I haven’t known Liz that long, either. Though we grew up within hundred miles or so of one another, she and her husband are among my partner’s many friends and acquaintances that I didn’t meet until I joined him on the road at the beginning of this year. We’d spent a bit of time with them, and I had already come to like them very much, but they were still almost strangers to me. Usually that would hold me back - I’m not good with intimacy, I’m very uncomfortable with other people’s emotions, and I’m generally just an anxious and awkward person - but all those things were pushed aside, this time.

When we got there the two of them were, understandably, a mess.  Their faces were stained, and their hands shook as they lit cigarette after cigarette. They were exhausted, physically and emotionally, having wept themselves dry only to find they could still cry after all - and my heart hurt for them.

Liz sat on the tiny balcony at the top of their ladder-like wooden stairs, still in her work clothes, wrapped tightly around herself with her knees to her chest. “It’s never been my best friend before,” she said quietly, through the tears, and I climbed the stairs and held her and I said, “it has for me.”

I had been there, once. What I had needed more than anything then was for someone to tell me that they didn’t know how I felt, that it was okay to yell and scream and be angry instead of sad, that I could (and should) tell anyone and everyone to just fuck off, if that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t get any of that. I got platitudes, pity, questions, awkwardness - and a dear friend who made sure I ate and slept and showered, and a few touching shows of concern from old acquaintances - but no one who could begin to see the pain that I was in, and certainly no one to tell me that “it gets better” was bullshit.

Seven years ago today, I had what was easily the most terrible day of my life. Suddenly, shockingly, horribly, the most important person in my world was gone - my absolute worst fear, realized, and my entire life turned on its side.

Here’s the most important thing: it doesn’t get better, it doesn’t get easier, time does not heal all wounds, and no grieving person wants to hear that it will. Grief makes us selfish about our pain - or at least, it did for me. I didn’t want to be told that anyone understood - they couldn’t. I didn’t want to hear that it would hurt less in time; I didn’t want it to hurt less at all. Didn’t those people realize that my best friend, my other half, my person, was gone? Couldn’t they see that I was irreparably broken?

They couldn’t, of course. No one who hasn’t experienced that kind of loss can comprehend its magnitude, and no one who has would wish it on them - but, I think, we wouldn’t erase it from ourselves, either. I don’t want an Eternal Sunshine or a Spotless Mind. The loss and the pain redefined me.

That’s why I had to go to Liz. I don’t remember what I said, and I don’t think I even said very much - but I needed her to know that there was someone who had lived the same nightmare. Even if I couldn’t make anything better, I hoped - hope - that I could at least be the proof that this nightmare was survivable.

I’ve thought about it a lot, trying to find the right analogy to help people understand, but it’s tricky. How can you make anyone imagine the unimaginable?

It could be like losing an arm or a leg: it’s not going to grow back. It’ll stop bleeding, and it’ll scar over, but that scar will be fierce and ugly, and there’s always going to be something missing. This is your life now, and you have to learn to live this way. It’s never going to go back to how it was - so you adapt, because you have to. You learn how to work around this tremendous gap in your life: you figure out how to do things differently, because you still have to do them, and sometimes you learn that you just can’t do certain things at all anymore, and you adjust your life accordingly.

(I never used to cry at movies, or at songs, though books did get me from time to time. Now I openly weep in the theater. I can’t help it. I sobbed for half of Les Mis. I cried the entire way through the Dresden Dolls concert I went to last summer. I can’t listen to the Radiohead song “Creep” - I can’t delete it from my iTunes, but I skip it every time. I change the radio station if it comes on, and I have abandoned my shopping and walked out of stores over it.)

Or maybe it’s more like losing a lung - or, yes, a chunk of your heart, but in the literal sense. That, I imagine, would be just as traumatic as losing a limb, but it’s invisible to everyone else: unless you tell them what it is, they have no idea of what’s missing, nor of the effect that the void has on you. Things that once were easy suddenly take an unimaginable effort. Every movement, every moment, is a struggle you’d never imagined it could be, and you can’t stop the pain any more than you can stop yourself from blinking.

Or, thinking of blinking, perhaps it’s like losing an eye: it’s instantly disorienting and surreal, and once the shock wears off, the way you experience the entire world around you has changed forever, in a way that you cannot possibly explain to anyone who still has both eyes. You can put in a glass fake and pretend to be whole, but even if people don’t notice quite what it is, the perceptive ones are vaguely unnerved by the sense that something about you isn’t quite normal.

It’s like all of those things, and it’s like none of them.

So much has changed, in these seven years. I want to say “and so much is the same,” but that isn’t true: very little is the same, really. My life has gone in entirely different directions than I thought it would, and I have developed drastically as a person. I’m more like him now than I ever was when he was here, somehow - and a part of his family in a way that I never was then, too.

What hasn’t changed is this: I love him as much as I did when we were sixteen and new. We adored each other, loving in the way that I imagine teenagers generally do: intensely, profoundly, absolutely, and without any sense of self-preservation. I wasn’t his first love, but he was mine, and I never imagined it would be anything short of forever.

When I look into the mirror in the room that was once his I see him in his glory: shirtless, slouching, critically admiring his own pale skin and sloped, sculpted shoulders - and then myself, behind him, wild-haired and doe-eyed (only slightly less so now than I was then), not a doubt in my mind that this present would be my future.

And it would have been. We knew that; it was understood. We broke up, lived far apart, saw other people, loved them, even - but we talked on the phone almost every day, often for hours. Get back together, rinse, repeat. I could have, would have, lived my whole life that way. No matter how satisfied I am with what my life has become - and I truly am, right now - it’s sometimes difficult not to feel that I’ve been robbed of the life I expected to have.

I have, from time to time, felt peculiar little echoes - something like his ghost, maybe. At Christmas dinner with his family, which I never attended during his lifetime but have every year since he left, I’ll have an urge to scoot my chair forward for him to squeeze past me at the tightly-wedged end of the table where the young people sit. Working beside his sister at their aunt’s bakery, which opened two years after his death, I have felt his hands on my hips to move me out of the way when my hands are covered in cookie dough. Afterwards I’ll feel a wash of sad surprise, and I’ve often had to excuse myself to let the tears run their course. It’s one of the things I’ve come to accept as a part of my life without him.

He’s been gone now for longer than I had him - even when I see him in dreams, there is a sense of urgency rooted in the awareness of his absence - and yet he manages to be the single greatest force in my life, for good or ill. I don’t mind this. It seems somehow right to me.

[underachievers-please-try-harder]

Interview // Elbow

I interviewed Guy Garvey of Elbow for 7digital.

You must be delighted with the reception Little Fictions has had?

I really am, you know. It’s not something I ever take for granted. It’s just lovely when people enjoy what you’ve been doing, because I’m still enjoying it.

Do you read your own reviews?

I’d like to be cool and say no but I absolutely pore over them. (Laughs) Although I did make the mistake of googling myself once to try and find a good Elbow review to cheer myself up, and there was a picture of me pulling a really horrible face, and a long list of insults underneath the photo. So that’s something I don’t do anymore. (Laughs)

We hear you’re about to become a dad too! Congratulations!

That’s right, yeah. [At the] end of March, so I pretty much come off tour and – if junior’s on time – a few days later I’m a dad.

Have you been getting fatherhood tips from the rest of the band?

Yeah. I remember as and when they all became dads, one after the other; it was always adorable listening to them ask each other advice. Because if you’ve known any group of people since you were 16 – and, in fact, they’ve known each other their whole lives – you tend to have quite a childish sense of humour where each other is concerned. And then suddenly there are these very adult conversations about child-rearing. Being a dad has brought the best out in all of them, which sounds clichéd and mushy but it’s absolutely true. If I didn’t think they could be more extraordinary gentlemen than they already were, they grew another foot taller in my view when they became dads.

You’re renowned as an extremely tight-knit band, so losing your drummer in-between albums must have been a big deal?

Yeah, and he’s not dead, just to clarify: he’s still drumming for someone somewhere. He’s still playing and he’s teaching drums now, which is something he’s always been interested in.

Was Richard’s decision to leave the band a shock?

It was difficult, and a mutual decision. But, yeah, of course it was very sad, and even though it hadn’t been right for a while, it was still a bit of a shock. We had a writing trip to Scotland planned to start this record and it was only a couple of days before that trip that it happened. And we went on the trip anyway.

So the two songs that you can hear on the record that were written up there in Scotland are ‘Head For Supplies’ and the last track, ‘Kindling’. ‘Kindling’ was its working title because the sound of a bag of kindling being dropped is part of the percussion loop. We had to find new ways of putting beats together. We stole some, we sampled others, and we programmed a lot and, yeah, things like banging tambourines and dropping bags of kindling.

I think in those two tunes you can hear the melancholy. It was January, it was the week that Bowie died as well, and we were perched around a great big fire in this stately home that we rented. It was a big, old, draughty place and even with two layers on and a roaring fire it was still pretty chilly, so [there was] plenty of whisky drunk as well. And it was just throughout that week that we decided not to replace Jupp because he’s too much a part of our story. We’ve got Alex Reeves – who played on my solo album – coming out live with us, and he’s perhaps one of the only people that could do the job, because they’re very big shoes to fill. But yeah, it will just be four of us from now on.

You refer to those two songs as being melancholy, but as a whole the album is really uplifting and hopeful. Was that the aim?

Yeah, it was kind-of, and not just because of what happened with Jupp, but because of the news anyway. People were focusing on 2016 being a bad year for one reason or another, but really the last 10 years have been increasingly scary and, if I’m scared, who knows how your average British Muslim feels. We’re more and more divided, and there are more and more hate headlines. It’s terrifying. So we decided to make a shamelessly optimistic, uplifting and positive record. The only problem we’ve ever had with doing that is you wonder if it’s cool to do that but, you know, I spent years trying to be cool and it’s exhausting. And the minute you start considering being cool, you’re not cool.

Lyrically, you’ve always been pretty candid. Are you still drawing on personal experiences?

Yeah. Past and present, you know. My wife’s very posh and she only does a northern accent when she’s criticising me and I’ve warned her that I really like it when she does a northern accent, and she shouldn’t let me get used to it. But yeah, she’ll read a lyric and realise it’s not her in the lyric and she’ll go, (exaggerated northern accent) ”This one’s not about me, Guy.” (Laughs) Because most of them are. But she knows it comes from wherever it comes from. Personal experience has a resonance that made-up things don’t, and it doesn’t matter how good you are at faking it – people always notice when you’re lying.

It’s the BRIT Awards soon – you won Best British Group in 2009, beating Radiohead, Girls Aloud, Take That and Coldplay. Do you remember who presented your award?

David Hasselhoff.

How much of a dream come true was it meeting David Hasselhoff?

If you’d have told me aged nine that Michael Knight was going to give me a music award one day I wouldn’t have believed you. I did make a huge mistake though. David Hasselhoff has had trouble with alcohol addiction and I asked him to come for a pint. And when I looked back it looked like I was being a churlish, rock star, a**hole but I was genuinely inviting him for a pint, I just didn’t know the sketch.

He was also very generous in a showbiz way. Afterwards, just before we went live with Fearne Cotton in a caravan, he said, “What are the dates, when are you playing next?” in my ear, and then when Fearne started interviewing us he was like (booming voice), ”I’m gonna go and see these guys at Brixton Academy next week.” And he did a proper old skool, showbiz plug. So he can do no wrong, David. And of course he knocked the Berlin Wall down for us, didn’t he?

What else can you remember about that night?

I had a huge argument with my girlfriend, and I’d ordered champagne and strawberries and cream and so I really sulkily ate and drank it all on my own, with her lying next to me. (Cackles) Like a sulky git. Oh, and I hung out with Take That.

You’ve won a BRIT and the Mercury Prize but what else is still on the bucket list?

Well, I mean, playing the closing of the Olympics was the biggest gig we’ve ever done. I didn’t think we’d ever actually play to over a billion people so that was pretty good. First band on the moon? Something like that. There’s plenty of things I want to do, and most of it’s fun. Like when you get to meet your heroes, or even people who aren’t your heroes. I met Lars Ulrich briefly when we were supporting U2 and I’m not a Metallica fan, but I’m a huge fan of Metallica, if you know what I mean? Since I saw the film ‘Some Kind Of Monster’.

It’s the most candid documentary about ridiculous adolescence in grown men that I’ve ever seen. I cannot believe they let it go out; it’s every rock star cliché, on steroids. I watch it at least once a year. So when I met Lars I think he could tell that I was one of his ironic fans, rather than one of his actual fans. Maybe it was something to do with the way I went, “LARS! NO WAY!” with a big grin on my face. And he went, “How you doin’,” and then moved on.

Your UK tour runs from 26th February until the end of March. Will this be the first time you’ve performed these new songs live?

Apart from the odd TV thing, yeah. It’s the first time going out with a different drummer to Jupp and, yeah, it’s exciting. It’s sounding really good in rehearsals. It sounds really clichéd and as showbiz as the Hoff but it really is like hooking up with old friends when we get back on the road. It’s lovely.

What are your plans for the rest of 2017?

Yeah, we’re doing a hell of a lot of forest shows, all over the country. If you’ve never been to one of these outdoor events, they’re great: wrap up warm, bring a hipflask. They’re great for kids because kids can run around and what have you, and the setting; if you’ve got a clear sky at night, they’re just magic. So yeah we’ve got the tour throughout March, all over the UK. Fezzies in the summer and in-between those things, becoming a dad.

Does Glastonbury figure in those festival plans? It’s a special one for you guys, right?

Having such a young baby, I’m not sure I’ll make it to Glasto this year, which is very unusual for me. I’m normally there even if we’re not playing. But our music completely changed on account of playing the Glastonbury festival. Weirdly, the singing at the end of ‘Grace Under Pressure’ prompted the title Cast Of Thousands. That’s the first time that everybody sang along and I thought, “Hey, we should write stuff for crowds to sing,” and without that we wouldn’t have written ‘One Day Like This’, and without ‘One Day Like This’ I wouldn’t have such a comfy home. (Laughs)

[tomyfuturevinylcollectors-blog]

A Year In Art: Top 2016 Albums.

2016.

Where do I even start?

It has been a particularly hard year for me. Between many losses of people who have been heavy influences in my life to loosing a job it has been one hell of an emotional year but all and all I am thankful for 2016. It has shown me that I am strong, determined and can take a shot and still keep smiling to make sure others don’t feel the same way I do inside.

With all of that aside 2016 has been great for a few things, it has been a amazing year for artists that I love and admire. Mike Birbiglia dropped a film this year named “Don’t Think Twice” that has challenged me to think about how much I compare myself to others on a daily basis. Louis C.K. self funded a mini series called “Horace and Pete” that honestly might be one of the first times I have seen a character and fully related to their depression. Those are just a few examples of some of my favorite art that has redeemed the struggles of this year.

The music has been amazing in 2016 there have been albums that exemplify hope and meaning. Also, there have been albums that have demanded you to reflect upon the depths of your sadness and I have loved so many. If you are reading this you probably know of my love of collecting physical music. All of this is part of a project I started at the beginning of 2016. I started a vinyl blog that kind of turned into this weird podcast experiment now people think that my opinions on music matter so I am going to do my first ever end of the year album list! I will give you all a fair warning that this is going to be a bit different than end of the year lists you are used to seeing in your news feeds. This list is going to consist of my top 10 albums that came out this year that I bought on vinyl. Because I think that buying physical music matters.

Albums

10.  Animal Flag – LP

Animal Flag is a brainchild of lead singer Matt Politoski, and man does he know how to relate to the listener. Animal Flag has been one of my go to artists for about five years now.

LP is filled with questions about faith and purpose, which oddly enough are some of the most comforting questions to be asking this year. Since picking this record up I have played it at least once a week and it will be a regular go to for me for years to come.

Highlight Track: “St. Cecilia’s”

9. James Blake – The Colour in Anything

I have been a growing fan of James Blake since first listening to “Enough Thunder” and his growth as an artist has been remarkable. So when I heard he was dropping an album this year of course, I was hyped. Needless to say I had no idea what kind of emotional ride I was in for. This album covers everything from pending loss to trying to understand how to stand again. It is truly an amazing ride.

Highlight Track: “Noise Above Our Heads”

8. Yndi Halda – Under Summer

I have been waiting since 2009 for a follow up album to Yndi Halda’s first album and boy, did Under Summer deliver. Under Summer is a perfect blend of traditional post-rock with a new beautiful spin. I will be honest, the first time I heard lyrics in a Yndi Halda song I was thrown off but it was a quick growth. The softness of the lyrics mixed with the beauty of the music is a perfect meld of sober and hopeful.

Highlight Track: “Helena”

7.    Kaytranda – 99.9%

Finally we arrive at the first hip-hop album of 2016 on my list.

99.9% is the perfect balance of hard-hitting bangers and thought provoking rap. Kaytranda is a master of beats and features and 99.9% is him showing this aspect off. It has a soft and chill west coast vibe that I haven’t heard in years and the resurgence of chill rap is one to keep a close eye on moving forward.

Highlight Track: “Got It Good”

6. Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool

How great was the lure of this album from first contact? Leave it to Radiohead to do us this way. There is honestly nothing I can write about Radiohead that hasn’t already been said but this album…wow. A Moon Shaped Pool just demands something from you every time you put it on. It has made me weep more times than I think it was meant to. As well as make me uncomfortable. What the hell is that talking to us in ”Daydreaming”? This very well might go down as one of the greatest Radiohead albums of all time before everything is said and done. It begs questions that I do not even know how to began to ask. I think that is part of what makes this album so important. It effects the listener, often more than you expect.

Highlight Track: “Daydreaming”

5. Kendrick Lamar – Untitled Unmastered.

I am fully convinced that Kendrick could put out literally anything and I would think it was wonderful so call me biased. I do not care. Untitled Unmastered is an album that he randomly dropped and it very well could be the best rap album dropped this year. Kendrick is a rapper that could relate to a tablecloth. He is truly an amazing wordsmith, the way he describes his struggle and worldview are ways that I want to keep hearing for years to come.

Highlight Track: “05.28.2013.”

4. BadBadNotGood – IV

BBNG were honestly one of those bands that I had heard of but I not given a chance to before this album. Maybe it was my recent love for Jazz but when I first heard this I stopped dead in my tracks. The modern jazz influence paired soul is the perfect concoction for 2016. IV is full of sweeping bass riffs and modern synth that makes for one of the most engaging modern Jazz – Hip Hop fusions for years. There has been something about Jazz that has changed me this year and I am sure this album will be one that will keep changing me.

Highlight Track: “Time Moves Slowly”

3. Bon Iver – 22, A Million

22, A Million is a hard one to write about. Mostly because I think that it is one that you either love or you hate. It is not a super palatable album but I think it is an important one. I often go through this feeling of needing to be understood, all the while knowing that I probably will not be. This is what this album feels like to me. I have listened to this album probably 20-30 times and I am still at home plate. I have struck out but it begs that I return. I think this is a common motion I am stuck in my own life, returning for clarity. All of that paired with the chaotic instrumentation makes for a beautiful tornado of emotion.  This album is one to give a chance again if you have written it off.

Highlight Track: “8 (circle)”

2. Chance The Rapper – Coloring Book

Coloring Book is the premiere hip-hop album of this year. It has been everywhere and yet I cannot get enough of it. Chance has made a modern day gospel album that 2016 needed. As I said earlier, this year has been rough for me and this album has been an ebenezer of hope and joy in my life. Chance has cemented himself as an A-list rapper for his brilliant beats, arrangements and features. Chance is not afraid to stand up for what believes in while also welcoming others into the genre of rap and hip-hop. This album is a living and breathing example of joy, hope and fun.

Highlight Track: “Same Drugs”

Honorable Mentions/Not Pressed on Vinyl

-       Mothers – When You Walk A Long Time And Are Tired

-       American Football – LP2

-       Frank Ocean – Blond (Not Pressed)

-       Kayne West - The Life of Pablo (Not Pressed)

-       Donny McCaslin – Beyond Now (Not Pressed)

-       Beyoncé – Lemonade (Not Pressed)

-       Noname – Telefone (Not Pressed)

-       Childish Gambino – Awaken, My Love!

-       Run The Jewels – Run The Jewels 3 (Not yet released on Vinyl)

1.     David Bowie – Blackstar

Oh man, where to start? Not only is this album the most important album I was given in 2016 but also it merges everything I have loved, hated, needed and endured in 2016. Jazz, Bowie, depression, hurt, love, meaning, hope, loss and so much more. I could not even touch the surface of the meaning of this album at this time. But with that being said, David Bowie has always been a bright light in my life and in 2016 he came out with this album and a few days later Bowie was taken from us. The funny thing is that I had no idea how difficult this year would be. I did not know the struggles that would come, the hurt that would come, the disappointment that would come, the discouragement that would come, the hopelessness that would come but all the while I was mysteriously calmed. I was calmed by the fact there is and always will be a Blackstar, high above, shining and offering light when the blackness of struggle comes sweeping in. This album is not and will not ever be a savior but it will always be the last living thing we were gifted by David Bowie. A shining star that will remind me of the hope there is to be had. How could this not be number one?

Highlight Track: “Blackstar”

                        Something happened on the day he died                         Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside                         Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried:                               (I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar)