#viola's vignettes

[lymericslimerick]

I've been devoting myself to You, Monday to Monday and Friday to Friday | 𝖶𝗋𝗂𝗈𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗌𝗅𝖾𝗒 𝗑 𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗋

"Have you heard? The Duke has been way more vicious lately."

warnings .ᐟ smut(?), grinding, humping, biting, blood, fighting, wrio is described as wolfish a lot, continuation of this fic, vaguely vampiric reader, mild torture, begging to be 'eaten', yandere

2.7k words | she/her pronouns

The smell of blood was thick in the air.

Shouting, cheering, bet wagering filled the air as the inhabitants of the Fortress of Meropide surround the makeshift boxing ring laid in the center of a room hidden by a maze of pipes. The warm lighting of the arena was undercut by the endless sea that shone through the gaps in cold metal, shining onto the opponents in the arena like a frigid spotlight. Criminals, horrible and benign alike surrounded the two stars of the show, hungry eyes glued to the cowering figure of their fellow inmate stuck to the corner of the ring. His shaking form is contrasted by the hulking figure of Their Grace stalking towards him, bringing with him the promise of something sinister.

The inmate was bloodied and beat up, face slowly turning red as blood gushes out of his mouth and nose. His swollen eyes unable to see the panicked looks on the guards, who glance between themselves and whisper, “Isn’t this too much?”. He struggles to sit up on his arms, but cold metal meets his hair and slams him onto the floor. He hears the whirring and hissing of the components holding the Duke’s Cryo energy at bay, cold to the touch. He had only heard this noise once before, reverberating through the walls of the fortress as he ran away from The Duke’s office that fateful night.

He supposes this was a long time coming, he thinks as his head is slammed back onto the floor. The inmate always felt The Duke’s eyes on him, stalking him. He was high priority prey for a rabid wolf intent on protecting what's his.

Another slam to the floor. He thinks his nose is broken. The inmate’s mind wanders back to what got him in this mess in the first place, that figure he saw in The Duke’s office looking down at him. He had been summoned in there by The Duke himself, who told him with an easygoing smile that he “had a job for him.” That job turned out to be disposing of a garbage bag full of things he recognises as Fontainian research tools, all coated in something he hopes isn’t blood. As he lugs it over his shoulder, grumbling about how unfair all of this is, he hears a noise. The inmate looks up and he sees a shadow retreat from its place above the stairs, deep into the office. He gulps. He’s heard stories of the Meropide being haunted by vengeful ghosts eager to take revenge on the upper management whispered by some particularly looney prisoners, but he had paid them no mind. Ghosts? Oceanids were more likely.

Though, he knows ghosts don’t have footsteps and Oceanids don’t even have feet. So, if one plus one was two, this was…

“Hello?” The inmate’s voice reverbs through the walls of the room, echoing. He hears something bristle, like whoever was up there paused what they were doing to listen to him. He takes this as a sign. “Are you a guest of the Duke’s?”

Silence. Not even any rustling.

He doesn’t know why, but he drops the bag on the ground and walks towards the stairs. The inmate feels like he’s being lured, snared like a fish on a hook being reeled to its doom. His footsteps are slow and careful, like he was scared to even move. He approaches the steps and starts climbing up them, heart beating fast with such pressure his ribcage felt like an actual cage. Anticipation grows, his heart beats faster.

The inmate opens his mouth. “Don’t be sca-“

The door opens, and the atmosphere becomes frigid cold instantly. The inmate can feel the temperature drop to freezing as The Duke’s gaze threatens to sear the skin off his neck. A beat. Silence. Maybe he isn’t dead mea-

Whirring, hissing, and a sharp clang of The Duke’s gauntlets clamping onto his bare hands, Cryo storming around his clenched fist with as much intensity as a snowstorm on Dragonspine. He feels his heart drop into his stomach completely as The Duke utters with barely concealed white hot rage, “Start running. Now. I catch you, you’re fucking dead.”

He had never ran harder in his life.

The inmate is brought out of his daydream by the impact of The Duke’s gauntlet-clad right hand slamming onto his stomach. He faintly registers blinding pain coming from the side of his stomach. Hah, he punctured him like a balloon. Behind him, he could hear the very real screams and gasps from the usually performative audience. They were used to being entertained by the fights that happened, watching it like they would court hearings up in the overworld. Safe, but real displays of human drama and savagery.

But this? This was a real bonafide hunt. This was a certain and slow death being played out right in front of them.

He hears the Duke whisper something into his ear, but all he sees is a wolf snapping at him and snarling a promise of death. The Duke’s eyes look terrifying, cold and animalistic as he smiles a toothy grin, fangs shining like steel. He’s eyeing his neck like a hawk, The inmate saying a prayer as he realises.

The Duke opens his mouth and bites.

The screams turn to shrieks, and the guards swarm up behind the Duke pleading and screaming at him to stop. The inmate’s body falls with a thud as he closes his eyes, feeling the blood from the open wound on his neck trickle down his skin like hot lava as he feels himself drift into unconsciousness, the sound of panic increasing in his wake.

__

This haunt feels more like an assault on the senses than the Palais Mermonia, what with the merging of the warm, almost old lights of the lamps patterning around the table, and the cold, with the unforgiving cold of light streaming down onto the center of the office like it was waiting to reclaim the office into the abyss of the ocean.

It certainly felt like the ocean wanted to reclaim this place, the dripping of water from the window above a constant rhythm in your ear. It was a cloying presence, much like a low tide trying to consume the beach it rose up upon. Meek, scared it was going to cause the beach to up and leave, but unabashedly desperate to get to her by any means necessary.

You look up at the window in contemplation, that sounds familiar.

A water droplet almost falls on you but you avoid it, turning to look at the papers on the desk. All reports of inmates benign and monstrous alike, but none of the inmate you’re most curious about. You sift through the reports, eyes darting about for a title familiar to anyone and everyone who dares call themself a warrior. A presence that makes itself known wherever and whenever any huge fight happens, eager to throw his hat in the ring at a moments notice.

Childe, Tartaglia. Whatever he calls himself, the 11th harbinger.

The mess he had made in Fontaine, from his brief stint in the Meropide to the fall of his monstrous form at the hands of the great whale (described in The Steambird with great enthusiasm by miss Charlotte), made national news. You, ever eager to find any and all people who had some sort of connection with the primordial, naturally decided to seek him out after getting what you wanted from the Chief Iudex. Maybe taking what you wanted from him would burden your heart less than it would you taking from the draconic man, the storm that followed your leaving weighing heavy on your mind.

Getting to him was easy enough. You just had to make your way to his case files and use them to track where he is now, since the fortress had a mandatory 4 week surveillance on all prisoners in which they had to report their status and current place of residence at the end of every week. Mighty convenient. The only caveat was that you had to get close enough to the top to even begin to see his files for yourself, and well..

The sound of the heavy metal door scraping against the floor making a hideous noise that scrunches your noise in irritation. He’s back.

You prepare yourself for his return from another hunt, positioning yourself on his table like you had just sat down and pushing the case files back into his drawer. Well, not like he wouldn’t let you read them but appearances are everything. His shadow starts huge at the end of the stairs and dims with every step he takes, finally emerging at the top of the stairs with bloodied gauntlets and an even bloodier mouth, red staining his lips down to his roughish jaw. The perfect image of a wolf on the hunt skulking back to its den with signs of victory, eager to display it to the rest of his pack.

In this case, You raise your hands and clap in mock praise. It lands all the same with Wriothesley who practically buckles under the weight of your perceived approval. His mouth pulls into a gleeful, toothy grin and his teeth are bloody too, but you guess he’s grown to want it this way. His gauntlets come off in a hiss, deconstructing and falling at his sides to reveal black bandage wrapped hands and rough fingers shaking in anticipation. He had gotten better at controlling himself over the week, trying to stop himself from acting like an overexcited puppy in your presence, but something must have gotten him really excited today.

You say as much, and his smile turns sweet and almost bashful. He walks towards you, still not saying a word until he stops in front of you with his chest rising and falling with a vigour. He looks down on you with blown out eyes, smile still on his face but shaky and barely contained. You blink at him, “You have anything to say to me?”

Immediately, “I got him.”

You raise an eyebrow as he drops to his knees in front of you, grabbing onto the sides of your thighs like a vice as he nuzzles his head into your thigh. This was an impressive amount of restraint for The Duke. “What do you mean?”

“Him,” He says into you. “The it you’ve had on your mind lately,” He pushes his face harder into your thigh and you feel his teeth talk against your skin. “The thing that’s keeping you away from me.”

You say nothing. What imaginary beast has this man conjured up yet again? He senses your thoughts and looks up at you, looking more pitiful wolf cub than the terrifying Duke of Meropide he was supposed to be. “Him! Th- The man.. That man who you… That pest who..” He was tripping over his words, slurring them together as if the thought of even uttering them terrified him to his core. Like if he spoke it to you, this man would once again claim his place in your head. You take his head in your hands and he keens, cheek nuzzling against them. Your eyes give him an order, and he takes a deep shuddering breath before finally saying. “That inmate who intruded you, Us, a few days back. I handled him, My Love.”

You sigh. This again. Since that poor soul had made the mistake of being curious, Wriothesley had been acting more wolfish than usual. Skulking around the main level of the Fortress, eyes blown in anger as he tried to sniff him out and ordering all high level guards (At least, those who were unfailingly loyal to him) to organise some sort of grand fight with the inmates, with him and the fool who had tried to steal you away at the center of it all.

Of course, you wouldn’t know head nor tail of this plan had he not confessed all of it to you like a prayer after a particularly steamy embrace. You still remember the weight of him on top of you, muscly chest pressing into yours in desperation as he whispered it in your ear. His hands were clamped on your waist, somehow still cold against the warmth of your revitalised skin.

“Darling, Baby, I promise you a hunt like no other.” He whispered as you felt him push against you, his still clothed bottom half rubbing against yours, which was barely clothed. Not quite enough to make you excited but more than enough for him, his hips stuttering in anticipation for something that isn’t going to come anytime soon. “I’ll bring you proof, a sign of my devotion, very soon. You’ll never have to doubt me ever again.”

Your silence must have been enough for him, as he buried his head into your neck and continued warming your bed.

In the now, you remember what to say. “This was the hunt you told me about?” His nod elicits a contemplative hum from you as you make a decision on where to bring this next. His heart was in your hands and you had the choice between crushing it under your grasp or making it beat faster in your palm, both options gladly welcomed by this beast in your lap. You look at him for a split second, taking in his especially tousled hair that took the form of two wolfish ears on his head, and you’re reminded that the version of him you know has turned more beast than man. And what more do beasts need than simple pleasure?

You bring your hand to tousle his hair and pat his head as he eggs you on with a deep groan, hands gripping the sides of your thigh even harder. “Impressive, Wriothesley.” He nods eagerly into your lap, goading you to continue. “The true extent of your strength always amazes me, leaves me positively speechless.” He whines this time, and you feel a familiar rubbing against your leg. You close your eyes to stifle your laughter at how typical he is. “I might even say that you’re the best I’ve ever seen.”

His movements grow more intense as he looks up at you, face flushed red and eyes wild as he desperately stares into your (e/c) eyes. His voice is a whisper, “Am I?”

You smile, and he reaches his own conclusion. His yell isn’t the most elegant, a guttural, feral thing that gives way to his climax at your feet. His hands slide of your waist ever so slightly and come to grip your hips, no doubt pantomiming what would’ve happened had you not been the person you were. His head comes to rest between your two legs which formed a cage around his face, guarding him from a treasure he’s had his eyes on for a while. He keens and you ‘tsk’, shaking your head like he was a misbehaving dog. He should know better by now.

He does, instead asking you, “Why won’t you feast on me?”

You still, and he hurriedly says his next words. He knows he’s gone behind your back, looked behind the curtain, but he can’t help it. He wants to know you, know all of you. How better would he know to rip and tear all that’s in your way if he doesn’t even know what you’re looking for? “I.. I know of your ailment, Love. I want yo- No, I need you, to relieve yourself with me. Please, let me be of service to you, drain me dry.”

You heave a sigh. Oh, this poor little wolf. He doesn’t know the extent of your ailment, the truth of your depraved actions that leave you regretful and secretive. If he knew only divine, no, ancient blood was the only way to soothe the burn in your veins, he’d be as devastated as you. A mere human couldn’t even dream of quelling the ache in your veins, but maybe, just maybe-

Your gaze drifts to the side, eyeing the case files on the wardrobe. It’s like one of them shines in your line of sight, a gleam of letters that finally surprise you.

Ajax. 11th Fatui Harbinger.

Beneath you, Wriothesley whimpers at your silence with a cowered head. You shake your head as if you were in thought and you gently brush your fingers against the skin of his cheek, some blood making way on your skin.

“Oh Wriothesley, you shouldn’t ask that of yourself. That’s a hunt you can’t hope of winning.”

[thestarfishface]

He means everything to me, your honor

Normal things to say to your friends

[aparticularbandit]

what i really like about the short rarepair vignettes is that like. i don't feel the need to write a bunch of set up. i'm just throwing these two into a short little situation. (or i feel the need and just, like. don't do it.)

however.

i've found that if i'm gonna spend a longer time with a character, it's nice to have given myself a little bit of time to get to know them so to speak, and that's usually an independent one-shot. not always.

but junko needed that one-shot. tsumugi needed the exploratory (i may have posted it as a snippet for wip wednesday a while back; it is not her birthday fic). viola did (bly manor). often my first chapter/prologue of things run on vibes and function in that way (we were never friends with darkness; finding family). the haruhi/junko dynamic also has an exploratory...file - the description for the series is there, as is a snippet that will probably be changed before it gets posted. when/if i get there.

the yuisa fic also needed the establishing shot for me to ground myself, but i'm struggling with connecting it to the fic proper maybe because the fic proper doesn't need it. (and i think the miurumi one did, too.)

not sure if either of those will keep them, though, in the finished/posted fic. (the miurumi one probably will. they probably will. idk.)

[autolesionistra]

Non so se avete presente quelle situazioni tipo quando sei in ferie da qualche parte e c'è un evento improbabile nei pressi, roba a cui non saresti mai andato ma non hai una mazza da fare (parlo di tempi in cui non avevo una mazza da fare) e decidi di farci un salto. Ecco, anni fa finii così a vedere in una chiesa montana un concerto di musica barocca per viola e clavicembalo.

Pur avendo mietuto qualche vittima fra gli astanti (fra le panche della chiesa si vedevano almeno un paio di teste reclinate in postura più da riposo che da ascolto) personalmente mi acchiappò parecchio, soprattutto quel pezzaccio di  “Folies d’Espagne” di Marin Marais. Avevano pure un CD che si auto-vendevano e lo andai a pigliare; anche se la cosa più vicina alla musica barocca che conoscevo erano le vignette di Sardelli, mi sentii in dovere di fare qualche apprezzamento al violista dicendo che il suo strumento aveva un gran suono, o qualcosa del genere. A quel punto intervenne la mogliera del violista a dire che forse pure suo marito aveva qualche merito nel gran suono e io diventai un poco bordeaux tentando di spiegare che volevo poi dire che mi era piaciuto molto come suonava e di riflesso si imbarazzò pure lui dicendo che, sì, aveva capito l’apprezzamento e ad entrambi credo si rafforzarono alcuni stereotipi di genere sulle mogliere.

Ora, io nella mia vita ho vissuto tanti momenti significativi il cui ricordo si è fortemente appannato quando non scomparso del tutto, ma questi momenti di grande inutilità e piccoli disagi tendo a ricordarmeli come se fossero successi ieri e in momenti casuali, tipo oggi. Pazienza.

Grazie alla magia delle interwebs ho recuperato analogo concerto più recente dello stesso duo (Andrea Maini e Marco Vincenzi) che pur con tutti i limiti di un audio registrato apparentemente con la cornetta di un Siemens S62 regala un certo numero di emozioni, in particolare nella già citata Folies d’Espagne: https://youtu.be/rH3WeBIWf2M?t=961

[boonesfarmsangria]

In March 2022, Ben Howard was sat in his garden when he found himself unable to think clearly, form sentences or speak for almost an hour. A month later, after the same thing happened again, the Ivor Novello Award-winning singer-songwriter learned he’d suffered two TIAs (transient ischemic attacks - known as mini-strokes). “It was out of the blue,” says the 35 year-old. “It was a confusing time.”

That June, after a month of inconclusive hospital tests Howard and his band returned to Le Manoir de Léon recording studio in south-west France, where they’d previously worked on his acclaimed third album ‘Noonday Dream’.

“We went in and put down ten songs in ten days, then spent the rest of the year tinkering with them”. The record was produced by Bullion, known for his work on Westerman’s ‘Your Hero Is Not Dead’ and Orlando Weeks ‘Hop Up’. Howard says, “We worked through the heatwave, the air conditioning broke, after what had happened I was so tired in the afternoons that I slept a lot. We just played solidly and slept, they was no time for retrospection”.

The result is ‘Is It’, a lush, sonically splintered album which captures Howard working through those moments of seismic shift. “I found it impossible not to dwell on the absurdity of it, that with one tiny clot, one can lose all faculties. It really ate into the writing of the record”.

The songs range from the peaceful quotidian Days of Lantana, to cut up samples and driven beats of Walking Backwards, the formers’ pitched and warped Linda Thompson chorus reminiscent of Malcolm Mclaren´s ‘Madame Butterfly’.

Moonraker, a song about climbing in the Guadarrama mountains touches on the meditational, while in the cyclical Richmond Avenue Howard talks of shared childhood moments with his father.

There are colourful, left-field production choices throughout- a staple of Bullion - but with a twist

“We really bonded over records in the studio” he says. “Nathan has an incredible ear and catalogue of sampled beats and rhythms which quickly became the bedrock…There were contributing factors also. Our mainstay drummer Kyle lives in Seattle and as we made the record on the fly we just leaned into drum-machine world, and really left almost all of that side of things up to Nathan.”

“We also did a session at Real World Studios and put most of the record through an echoplex”.

That session featured additional instrumentation from Raven Bush (violin, viola) and Mick Mcgoldrick (flute, Eileen pipes) as well as Howards mainstay band of Mickey Smith (Bass, guitars, percussion) R.D. Thomas (synths, keys, harmonium) and Nat Wason (guitars).

“It’s actually mostly a guitar record, but there are some nice additions. We bought an old harmonium at the beginning of the trip which made its way onto most tracks. I was very much stuck in stuttered delay and synth led guitar patterns. Mick McGoldrick came in to play on Richmond Ave and straight away played Liam O´Flynn lines from the Mark Knopfler record ‘Cal’ which is a long favourite of mine and a big connection to my Dad who had it on tape. That was a beautiful moment, perhaps one of my favourites moments in the studio ever.”

“It was a refreshing way to record, unweighted by the past”

The change is evident on ‘Is It’ - an album which represents a further creative evolution from an artist known for never repeating himself throughout his already-storied career.

¨I was so aware of the overwhelming information coming from everything, almost like my brain couldn’t filter what was happening and had to start again. So we just pushed forward, lyrically it seems obvious to me in parts, It’s about sitting there wondering what the hell is going on.”

Yet with each listen it feels like more than that. A characteristically onion-layered record which rankles like a series of questions, or a series of vignettes throughout Howard´s life, perhaps best distilled in the whirling chorus on ´Spirit´.

‘What’s mine anyway?

My feelings seem to be arranged.

What´s mine anyway?

Spirit? Is it?´

‘Is It’ stands quite starkly on it’s own, buoyed by the circumstances of its creation. “Just to be playing music in the studio felt like a real privilege and a luxury,” says Howard. “It was probably the best studio session we’ve ever had.

[assim-eu-sou]

The World of The Planets, Op. 32

What’s all that music stuff about?

The Planets

First, let’s start with the story’s namesake: The Planets. The setup of the concert Ludmi and Naty attend is inspired by a concert I played in during my first year of college, from the lighting to the visuals. Why did I choose Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age for the Chapter 5 title? Aside from it fitting the theme, Saturn had a very frightening bass oboe solo that I had to play, so I have some bad blood with it. In the clip, you can see and hear vignettes from Saturn, Mars, Mercury, Uranus, and Neptune, respectively.

Setting the Stage

A little bit about the setup of an orchestra:

This is where you can imagine everyone sitting on the stage during rehearsals and concerts.

By contrast, this is the organization of a string quartet. You can see why Ludmila wishes she was still in Vilu’s seat.

Solo Works:

Havanaise - Saint-Saëns: the soundtrack to Ludmila’s destruction and one of my favorite pieces to perform on violin. Listen to a professional performance with orchestra here or some snapshots from my jury performance of it last fall here.

Concerto No. 2 for Violin - Wieniawski: Ludmila’s first jury performance. Listen to a professional performance with orchestra here or my tragically unaccompanied but happily memorized jury performance of it last fall here.

Concerto No. 3 for Violin - Saint-Saëns: I chose this piece for Ludmila to struggle with because it was in preparation for a jury performance of that specific piece that I finally had to take some more drastic steps when it came to dealing with my performance anxiety. Listen to a professional orchestral performance here!

Chamber Works:

String Quartet No. 8 - Shostakovich: I chose this for the quartet because the second movement is so aggressive. I can see the girls battling it out so clearly. Listen along with the music here.

Wind Quintet No. 3 - Maslanka: This is what the crazy kids were dancing to backstage. My quintet is learning this to play for the gala concert in a few weeks, and it is genuinely so fun to listen to and play. If you skip past the slow chorale at the beginning and take a listen, I’m sure you’ll agree. Here’s a recording.

Violin vs Viola

Finally, I wanted to include a reference for the size difference between a viola and a violin, respectively. I think Naty’s viola would probably even be bigger than mine, because she can handle it.

[merzelifestyle]

Hydrangea’s and Edible Flowers - I Share Some of My Design Secrets When Entertaining

I can’t say if hydrangeas are my favorite seasonal flower or if it is peonies. Maybe they are tied for first.

One thing is for sure, hydrangea’s have a long-lasting bloom that goes throughout the summer….and I love that! They supply me with endless amounts of beautiful flower arrangements all summer long.

This year, we had an extremely hard rain and many of my hydrangea blooms were broken from the weight of the water on the flowers. I had clipped the ones that broke before they were fully bloomed. The colors of a hydrangea become brighter as the days go by. Once fully bloomed, they are gorgeous with deep hues of colors.

To learn more about the hydrangea’s I would recommend the book, Hydrangeas written by Naomi Slade and photographed by Georgianna Lane. The book has an amazing amount of information about all kinds of hydrangeas, how to care for them and so much more. It is both informative and the photos are just gorgeous. I have mine sitting on my coffee table.

Click on the picture to bring you to Georgianna’s website.

""There are few things as naturally beautiful as a handful of fresh flowers from the garden, simply arranged with a single leaf to lift one's soul." "  -- —Tricia Guild, Out of the Blue

Here are all the hydrangeas that were broken. I collected them and brought them inside to create a pretty arrangement.

I gathered all different flowers from my garden and put them in standing water so that they wouldn’t wilt. I made sure to picked off the stems. I filled ice trays with water and then submerged a few violas in the water.

I honestly find design rather interesting. it really is the little things that create a complete design. often, guests won’t realize it is the little flowers and the pops of colors that have made your presentation so remarkable…but they know there is something different that is captivating. It is the total design that is enchanting. I never neglect the details. It’s all the simple little additions that ultimately make a big splash with a presentation.

I’ve put the link here for the ice cube trays. They add such a lovely little addition to your beverage especially when entertaining. You don’t have to add the flowers…just the shape and size of the ice cube is enough to add interest. They make for a lovely presentation.

I created a little vignette using beautiful flowers. I decorated my beverage with lavender, the frozen viola ice cubes and a few more pansies. To my tray, I added some more flowers from my garden like hydrangeas and daisies for a pop of color and to visually enjoy the presentation.

Note: Hydrangeas are NOT edible. In fact, they are poisonous. To learn about which flowers are safe to eat, go so Southern Living by following this link.

Later in the evening, I created a simple cheese plate for us to enjoy. We had this along with a botanical gin and tonic decorated with the same flowers used earlier in the day.

For the cheese tray, I just gathered what I had in my house. I added several different cheeses, a variety of nuts with honey poured on top, fruit, meat, chocolate, and crackers. I must say, pairing the deep rich dark chocolate with a bit of honey tastes amazing. Give it a try.

"flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the mind."  -- Luther Burbank

The thing is….using flowers to decorate a plate, dessert or beverage just makes your presentation so much more beautiful. Simple pansies, violas and lavender really have such gorgeous pops of color in a variety of different hues. In a time when we are social distancing, we need to create space in our lives that make us feel centered and happy. This is one of the ways for which I bring calm into my day.

As with everything I post on my blogs, please feel free to comment or if you have any questions, please email me through my contact page. I welcome it anytime!

Design with your heart™️

Happy entertaining my friends and have a beautiful day!

Mary

"May your home be a place where friends meet, family gathers, and love grows. "  -- Anonymous

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 6, Number 1

A new year means new music. At least eventually, it does, though January is notoriously slow for album releases. Meanwhile, there’s plenty we missed from late (and mid and even early) 2019, so let’s dig into that for one last big Dust. Here we cover subcontinental LGBTQ gangsta rap, industrial clangor, string quartets, Welsh agitpunk, electronics, free jazz, blackened death metal and an odd, charming collaboration between Cate Le Bon and Bradford Cox (see photo). Writers include Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Ian Mathers, Tobias Carroll, Andrew Forell, Ray Garraty, Jason Gioncontere, Ethan Militsky and Jonathan Shaw.

Jeb Bishop / Alex Ward / Weasel Walter — Flayed (Ugexplode)

Flayed by Jeb Bishop / Alex Ward / Weasel Walter

You know a party is good if it carries on even though the organizer can’t show up. Bassist Damon Smith planned this encounter, which involved his long-term partner in intensity and chaos, drummer Weasel Walter; New England improvisational fellow traveler (at least until Smith moved to St. Louis a few months after this March, 2019 session) Jeb Bishop on trombone and electronics; and Alex Ward, a veteran of work with Derek Bailey and This Is Not This Heat, on guitar and clarinet. Since Walter has played with both of the other guys in and outside of the Flying Luttenbachers, when Smith had to drop out for scheduling reasons, he was confident that the trio could make something of both the opportunity to play and the space made available by the absent bass. He was right. Both the title and prevailing assumptions about Walter might set you up to expect a one-dimensional blowout, but there’s loads of listening and thoughtful, instant reacting taking place on each of the album’s eight, mostly pithy tracks. This music plays out like a combination of jujitsu and shuttle diplomacy, with players shifting between support and challenge, density and space, rapidity and reserve from second to second.

Bill Meyer  

 Cartel Madras — Age of the Goonda (Sub Pop)

Cartel Madras turns gangsta rap’s hyper-male, African-American-oriented bravado on its side, filtering the guns and blunts ethos through a female, queer, multicultural lens without diluting its violence in the least. Sisters Priya and Bhagya Ramesh, known as Contra and Eboshi, have lived in Calgary since childhood, but they immigrated from Chennai, India, once part of Madras, hence the name, hence the tricky scales and intricate, not-quite-Western rhythms of their rhymes. Age of the Goonda works in a spare, menacing way, dense, referential wordplay atop an undulating threat of sub-bass and the occasional spray of bullets.

“Goonda Gold,” celebrates cartoonish dominance, though with a South Asian twist. Little bits of Hindi harmonics decorate the bare architecture of synth bass sounds and cracking, stabbing percussion (augmented here by gunfire); the Cartel’s chant of “Gold on my neck I’m a Goonda/got guns in the air like a junta” puts a subcontinental spin on ghetto law. The clever-est word sprays come in “The Legend of Jalopeno Boiz,” where the duo references everything from Frost/Nixon to incel stereotypes, but the single “Lil Pump Type Beat,” is all hedonism, devious syncopation and sexual predation. Though wildly intersectional, these tracks make no concessions to soft, liberal ideas about how women/minorities/LGBTQ people wield power; they do it just like the men do, with guns. “Take off your top boy/somebody bring me my gun/that bag in the back of the jeep/you just a bitch on the run,” asserts one or the other sister in “Jumpscare.” What was that you were saying about women and nurture?

Jennifer Kelly

 CIA Debutante — The Landlord (Siltbreeze)

CIA Debutante-The Landlord by CIA Debutante

A new Siltbreeze record is a rare blessing nowadays. The label’s first release since 2018 comes from Paris duo CIA Debutante. The Landlord fits in nicely with the label’s storied '90s output, particularly the Shadow Ring. The electronics aren’t quite glitchy—they sound more like the batteries in a cheap toy dying. Still, CIA Debutante are savvy enough to avoid getting too clever with their sputtering, plodding, and whizzing, and they don’t go the easy route when layering incongruous sounds. There’s never the fatiguing sense that they rely on the same few tricks. It helps that their murky, paranoid vignettes are fully engrossing. CIA Debutante tap into something truly nightmarish on The Landlord, which is a rare accomplishment. Sure, plenty of music shoots for tense and creepy, but CIA Debutante have an exceptional gift for the uncanny, the kind of stuff that haunts you long after you’ve woken up and can no longer hope to grasp it. Ethan Milititsky

Decoherence — Ekpyrosis (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Ekpyrosis by Decoherence

Decoherence is a pretty good name for a band that locates itself in the liminal space between industrial music’s stomp and clangor and black metal’s astringent tumult. The band’s new LP (and first full length release) Ekpyrosis is at its best when its waves of distorted hiss, dissonant riffing and distant shrieks and growls threaten to rend the record to shreds. One imagines that if you found yourself in an aluminum ladder factory, amid the massive drills and extruding machines and metal presses and then removed your ear protectors, you’d hear something akin to this — especially if the place was possessed by demons of ill intent. It’s a well-crafted, ritualized chaos. The band is so insistent on a specific set of sounds and forms that the record’s long tracks tend to blur into one another. Which may be the point. Decoherence, indeed.

Jonathan Shaw

 Bertrand Denzler / CoÔ — Arc (Potlatch)

Arc is a two-part, album-length work by Bertrand Denzler, a Swiss-born, Paris-based saxophonist and composer. It is performed by CoÔ, a string septet led by double bassist Félicie Bazelaire. The ensemble’s composition is a sort of funhouse reflection of a string quartet, distorted towards breadth; it comprises one violin, two violas, one cello and three double basses. But there’s nothing comic about this music, which is quite beautiful in the same way as a slow winter sunset. Denzler’s method here involves the use of continuous sounds, but don’t call it drone. The players use both conventional and extended techniques to create a continually changing sequence of striated sounds. Naked scrapes and cavernous groans arc in formation, changing fairly frequently over the course of each piece. The result is immersive enough to let you get lost, but keep your ears and eyes open; you wouldn’t want to miss one moment of gradual transition. A note about circumstances — Potlatch, the label that released this CD, has slowed its production in recent years, and this is the only record it released in 2018. Apparently, the label isn’t wasting its time with unnecessary effort; Arc clears the necessity bar.

Bill Meyer

 Fujiya & Miyagi — Flashback (Impossible Objects of Desire)

One of the interesting things about Fujiya & Miyagi’s songwriting is that as the UK post-motorik outfit’s music becomes ever more focused and sleekly propulsive, frontman David Best has zeroed in on any number of little aspects of life disturb and upset the kind of cool pulse the band specializes in. Here it’s everything from violations of your “Personal Space,” the “Fear of Missing Out,” and nagging thoughts in the title track to the more political concerns of the closing lengthy workout of “Gammon” (which eventually, in one of the little touches that makes F&M’s music so addictive, settles on the “pure evil vibrating” of a dial-up modem). That doesn’t mean the band can no longer bust a groove just for the pure joy of it, as “Dying Swan Act” proves, but it’s the combination of those chops and the perceptive if increasingly jaundiced eye they turn on life that makes them such a unique and compelling act.

Ian Mathers

 Cate Le Bon & Bradford Cox — Myths 400 (Mexican Summer)

Myths 004 by Cate Le Bon & Bradford Cox

Intricate fancies turn just out of true in this pop-up collaboration between Cate Le Bon and Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, the fourth in a series of joint EPs recorded under the auspices of Mexican Summer’s annual Marfa Myths festival (hence Myths 400). The two artists work in a skewed, peripheral vision take on artful pop, building interlocking boxes of percussion and whimsey in which fleeting glimpses of loveliness flit by. The song-i-est bit of Myths 400 is undoubtedly “Secretary,” a Weimar-decadent bit of mournful song hedged in clanks and clicks, strings and clarinets, and the odd combination of Le Bon’s pure art-song shiver and Cox’s less pristine, more grounded voice. Yet the rhythm-centered oddities are just as rewarding; resist the slap-bang fanciful-ness of growly-voiced, Cox-led “Fireman,” with Le Bon trilling off center arias in the margins at your own peril. “What Is She Wearing” bangs out disconsonant guitar tones in slightly off center patterns and tunings; it’s a wind-up toy’s existential crisis. Le Bon chants in a Middle European cadence, as the cut falls somewhere between early Michachu and a Kurt Weil song. It’s about the last thing you’d expect to emerge from the desert, eccentric, abstracted, playful and utterly urbane.

Jennifer Kelly

  Urs Leimgruber / Andreas Willers / Alvin Curran / Fabrizio Sperra—Rome-ing (Leo)

Urs Leimgruber has covered a lot of musical ground in a performing and recording career that spans over 45 years. The three musicians who join the Swiss saxophonist on this freely improvised encounter, which was recorded in Rome late in 2018, are well chosen to access aspects of that history and shape it into sound configurations that are quite present-focused. Quick, light-fingered, and restless, drummer Fabrizio Sperra keeps things in constant motion. Swiss guitarist Andreas Willers stirs chunks of almost rock-ish noise and sprinkles stinging, pure-toned notes into the mix that give the music heft without slowing it down. Alvin Curran, an American keyboardist and composer (and member of MEV), draws on classical more than jazz elements in his piano playing; there are moments where he stubbornly erects a structure that the other musicians must either inhabit or work around. But his sampler also enables him to inject the sounds of other places. Shifting between tenor and saxophones, Leimgruber drives quickly spiraling phrases through the open spaces and uses astringent, distressed tone-shards to suggest where there needs to be more space.

Bill Meyer

 The Master Musicians of Dyffryn Moor — Music for the National Health Service (Amgueddfa Llwch)

Music for the National Health Service by The Master Musicians of Dyffryn Moor

When I was a younger punk, I would sometimes take in the phenomenon of bands’ whose lyrical explanations would take longer to deliver than the playing of the actual songs. And while I haven’t seen this crop up much recently, I feel like that aesthetic is alive and well when I visit the Bandcamp page of The Master Musicians of Dyffryn Moor, which includes a terse essay about the dangers facing the NHS under the current British government. This new EP follows two excellent full-lengths, Cerddoriaeth Ddefodol Gogledd Sir Benfro (Ritual Music of North Pembrokeshire) and Contemporary Protest Music, which blend the “instrumental music can be politically charged” feel of Godspeed You! Black Emperor with the intricacy of Steve Reich’s Drumming. These two songs continue in that tradition — furiously played percussion with a heated political subtext — but add a few tweaks to the sound the group has already established. Specifically, there’s a stronger electronic element here: you could probably get a dancefloor moving if you cued up “A spell to protect the NHS from those who seek to destroy it.” Its opposite number, “A hex on those who seek to destroy the NHS,” is built around a steady pulse. You probably can’t dance as well to that, but given the potential psychic damage incurred by dancing to a hex, would you actually want to?

Tobias Carroll 

 Overground Collective — Super Mario (Babel Label)

SUPER MARIO by OverGround Collective

The Overground Collective is a pan-European big band that is based in London and led by Paulo Duarte, a Portuguese guitarist/composer currently based in Scandinavia. If that sounds like a bit to get your head around, you probably need only wait a while to see what Boris’s Britain does to the freedoms of movement and thought necessary for such an endeavor to get off the ground. For the rest of us, it’s a nice illustration of why such fluidity is part of a better way. Duarte spent some time in England studying the ways of various improvisers, and recruited 17 to join him in realizing a set of compositions designed expressly for them. Certain of the participants come from free jazz (Julie Kjaer, Rachel Musson) or cross-genre experimentation (Yazz Ahmed), and you can hear the influence of such approaches in a few moments of freefall and adventurously conceived solos. But these elements fit into a structure that fits squarely in the tradition. Duarte sets tunes you could hum on grooves that’ll make you tap your feet, albeit quickly enough to annoy your neighbor if the floorboards happen to transmit your amateur approximation of his beats, and dresses them up in arrangements that could speak to a person who thinks that jazz’s lineage is a straight line from Duke Ellington to Maria Schneider. Music like this is a reproach to those who think that differences can’t be complimentary parts of a whole.

Bill Meyer

  Pictish Trail — Thumb World (Fire)

Thumb World by Pictish Trail

Folktronica from the tiny island of Eigg in the Hebrides, this latest album by Pictish Trail (Johnny Lynch) demonstrates the aesthetic value of both isolation and connection. Per isolation: Lynch lives on a windblown island with fewer than 100 other people. But as for connection, he is intimately involved in a northerly folk scene through King Creosote’s Fence Records and surrounded by local musicians. There aren’t that many folks on Eigg, but almost everybody plays an instrument. That kind of environment allows space for eccentricity and practice, which shows up on these expansive, dance-inflected, folk-shadowed cuts. Pictish Trail enlarges his subtle, personal songs with enveloping arrangements of rock sounds and club electronics; Kim Moore contributes some string arrangements and Alex Thomas of Squarepusher sits in on drums. “Double Sided” has the lilt and ramble of Three EPs Beta Band (Lynch has been out touring with Steve Mason lately), while gorgeous, glistening “Slow Memories” has the glitch, glow and aura of early Tunng. Thumb World demonstrates that music can be solitary without being lonely, introspective without self-absorbation. “You’re my solitude/I’m never so alone by myself,” sings Lynch, on the surprisingly rock-guitared “Bad Algebra,” underlining the fact that too many people (or the wrong people) can be isolating, and a few can provide the space for originality and experiment.

Jennifer Kelly

Pinkish Black — Concept Unification (Relapse)

Texas psych sludge prog metal duo Pinkish Black has been quiet for a little while; their last record, 2015’s Bottom of the Morning, was such a compact and potent summation of the miasmic bad vibes that Daron Beck (synthesizers, voice) and Jon Teague (drums) can summon up seemingly at will. No more than a minute into the opening title track of their fourth record you get a strong reminder of just that atmosphere; you might as well be in a haunted castle during the full moon. The closing, lengthy “Next Solution” also offers a reminder of what you might call classic Pinkish Black, but it’s the four songs in between that show Beck and Teague working to make sure there is always room to expand their dark palette. Whether it’s the relatively straightforward, thrashy “Until” or the prettily drifting “Inanimatronic” the results are always interesting. Bottom of the Morning remains the best introduction for now to this duo’s indelible sound, but once you’re a fan Concept Unification makes for a strong and promising follow-up.  

Ian Mathers

  Alexa Rose—Medicine for Living (Big Legal Mess)

“How I wish I were kinder, how I wish I were patient, I could learn all the songs on the gospel station,” trills Alexa Rose in a water pure soprano touched with shivery vibrato as she navigates the twists and corners of the title track from her lovely debut album. The Virginia-born, Memphis-based songwriter has a native’s familiarity with gospel, country and folk blues, but a fresh, sparkling delivery that makes these well-worn forms sound like she just thought of them. A lilting, effortless voice elicits spare melancholy sparked with hope and a crack band of Americana pros in tow – Will Sexton on guitar, George Sluppick playing drums and Mark Edgard Stuart on bass — fill out the songs without a bit of bloat. “Tried and True” enlists a cajun squeeze box and skittering banjo into Rose’s smart, unsentimental songcraft; country teems with strong women disappointed by love, but Alexa Rose is clear-eyed and strong enough to kick its ass without breaking meter. Gorgeous and empowered stuff.

Jennifer Kelly

Sartegos — O Sangue da Noite (I, Voidhanger)

O Sangue da Noite by SARTEGOS

This new release by Sartegos isn’t so much blackened death metal as it is a death metal record that morphs its shape and sound into black metal. The buzzy crunch and acrobatic soloing of opener “Sangue e Noite” gradually give way to leaner, meaner riffs, and by the midpoint of fourth track “Solpor dos Mistérios,” the record has fully taken on the properties of merciless, muscular continental black metal. The record may engage with various metal subgenres, but O Sangue da Noite is held together by Sartegos’s focus on Galician nationalist themes and celebrations of its landscape. The band is named for a miniscule rural hamlet in Galicia, and we are told that all lyrics are delivered in the region’s native dialect. Black metal and ardent nationalism don’t always make for the happiest of combinations. For those of us lacking fluency in the language, it’s tough to know what ideological charge the lyrics carry. And Galician regional politics feature a panoply of leftist and right wing factions, all with their own fiery arguments for the region’s autonomy. What sort of blood? Who sings in the night? Hard to say. But the music’s pretty good.

Jonathan Shaw

 Seablite – Grass Stains and Novocaine (Emotional Response)

Bay Area quartet Seablite’s debut album navigates the fuzzy end of indie pop with aplomb. Vocalists Lauren Matsui (guitar) and Galine Tumasyan (bass) are joined by drummer Andy Pastalaniec and ex-Wax Idol Jen Mundy on lead guitar for 11 tracks of chipper, summery shoegaze that sit easily alongside their most obvious influences Lush, Curve and Stereolab. Seablite’s songs are elevated by the interplay of twin vocals, clean guitar lines and bouncy bass lines supported by cymbal heavy motorik drums. There’s steel beneath the gauze as Mundy brings a little of the Idols’ shade to proceedings and Pastalaniec drives songs like “Pillbox” and “Polygraph” hard and fast down a euphoric freeway of top-down thrumming thrills. Yes, it sounds like a lot of bands you’ve heard and maybe loved but Grass Stains and Novocaine is so well put together and convincingly played it’s hard to resist.

Andrew Forell

 Seiðr — Intethedens Afsky (Nattetale)

Seiðr is a one-man band from Denmark. For just one man, he was awfully busy in the past year, having put out three records. Intethedens Afsky can boast of 10 tracks of dirty, primitive sound with bursts of melody buried immediately under a wall of noise. The inspiration for Seiðr’s music can be found in early 1990s Norwegian black metal, and Claus H. (that’s his name) cannot be blamed for being too much of a good student. Why shouldn’t he have learnt from his elders? The first two tracks here have samples from “nature,” and this gives us a hint to how Seiðr’s music can be interpreted: it’s ruptures in Nature’s hellish landscape. No one will be saved.

Ray Garraty   

 Spider Bags — A Celebration of Hunger (Sophomore Lounge)

SPIDER BAGS "A Celebration of Hunger" by Spider Bags

Spider Bags are still around, making a record every three or four years for Merge. But listening to this debut, it’s hard to imagine how they did it. If subject matter reflects life style, then the motto of these guys back in 2008 was, “We do the hard stuff so there won’t be any left for you. Say, can you loan me a couple of twenties?” But there’s a self-observing intelligence at work in these songs that suggests that self-awareness wasn’t totally obliterated, and a loose, rumbling energy to these roots-tinged garage-rock songs that confirms that the Bags spent at least part of everyday upright. Add to that engineer Brian Paulson’s knack for getting sound under challenging circumstances, which renders the live-sounding performances with sufficient but not distracting clarity, and you have a good soundtrack for the next time you want to drink yourself off the barstool in the privacy of your own home.

Bill Meyer

 Luke Spook — Small Town (Third Eye Stimuli)

Australian multi-instrumentalist Luke Spook steps away from the garage-punk of his Pinheads to conjure up lysergic specters from bygone times on Small Town. There are a fair number of freaked out boil-overs in the offing but the general tone is one of reserved simplicity. Whether sipping tea with the subject of “The Owl” or gathering around the fire with some fellow townsfolk on the title track, Luke channels Syd Barrett to the point of becoming nearly indistinguishable. But what makes Small Town more than just a covers album is Luke’s ability to vary the intimacy of his arrangements when needed. “All the King’s Horses” features a harmonica solo backed up with an (accidental?) chorus of distant, wailing hounds. Those types of moments lurk beneath the surface and inject a pastoral quality that feels authentic. More quirky utopian village than small town, the world Spook creates is a place to live rather than to pass through.

Jason Gioncontere  

 Nick Storring — Qualms (Never Anything)

Qualms by Nick Storring

Nick Storring’s latest recording started life as the score for a dance performance, and it is easy to imagine how it might function in that role. The composition, which spans both sides of a cassette, is episodic. Each moment feels unique unto itself, creating an environment in which things — maybe movements, or maybe something in your own imagination — have the space to happen. If you caught him onstage with the group Picastro, you would probably see Storring play cello, but for Qualms he plays a couple dozen keyboard, stringed, percussive and woodwind instruments. This allows similar themes and actions to appear and reappear in different garb. One stalking theme, for example, manifests once as a psychedelically dense string melody, and again played by gamelan percussion. Elsewhere passages of meter-less sound temporarily halt the progress. Moments of Steve Reich-like repetition surface, but instead of locking in like they might in a Reich piece, they quickly morph into something else. The same pattern of change that probably made this a handy program for a dance performance makes it an engaging pure listening experience.

Bill Meyer

 Sun City Girls — Dawn of the Devi (Abduction)

Dawn of the Devi by Sun City Girls

Dawn of the Devi holds an important place in the Sun City Girls’ discography. Released in 1991, it was the follow up to the much-celebrated Torch of the Mystics, which remains one of the more tuneful and easily-relatable records that Charles Gocher and brothers Alan and Richard Bishop ever did. As such, it had a job to do, and it did it well. That was to throw the followers who sandals instead of sturdy shows off the track. They did this by serving up a song-free album of jagged, totally improvised jams. While it did the job at the time, and in doing so established a pattern of giving the people something other than what they want, in retrospect, you can appreciate it for another reason. Dawn of the Devi makes a pretty strong case for the trio as a rock-derived improvisational ensemble. They sound like they’re listening and responding to each other, and their transitions from acidic splatter to swooning hesitation or heavy ambush make intuitive sense. It wasn’t always that way.

Bill Meyer

 These New Puritans — Inside the Rose (BMG)

Essex experimentalists These New Puritans return with a lush yet disquieting take on English pastoralism. On Inside the Rose multi-instrumentalist twin brothers Jack and George Barnett create an often lovely, occasionally portentous, romantic paean to nature and love. As the Barnetts move further beyond the fractured post-punk of their debut Beat Pyramid, this, their fourth album, elaborates the use of contemporary classical and choral orchestration into arrangements that channel Talk Talk. Jack Barnett’s voice is high in the mix and evokes David Sylvian at his most emotive. Beneath the sheen and swooning strings George’s drumming shifts and slides between Reichian repetition and fierce Taiko inspired rhythms. Inside the Rose is a meticulously produced but never fussy collection, welcoming the listener but refusing either to compromise or patronize. A serious but accessible work full of carefully considered details, some gorgeous melodies and an almost Pre-Raphaelite sensibility expressed in a thoroughly contemporary manner.

Andrew Forell

 Various Artists — No Other Love (Tompkins Square)

No Other Love : Midwest Gospel (1965-1978) by Various Artists

No Other Love is, like the several albums that Mike McGonigal has compiled for different labels, a sequence of gospel records drawn from one collection. In this case it is the collection of Ramona Stout. She culled the 45s that make up this set from her husband Kevin’s trawls of records that had spent years in Chicagoan basements. A graduate student who had spent much of her life outside the USA, she saw with clear eyes the grime of American urban poverty, and found herself deeply compelled by the discovery that hopeful music could grow in such decay. There are no big stars amongst these recordings. Even at the time they were recorded they would have sounded rough and behind the times production-wise — just electric guitars, drum kits, whatever piano or organ was sitting in the church where they were recorded, and congregants’ voices. But the fervor of yearning and the joy of release makes every track a transporting listen.

Bill Meyer

 WOW — Come La Notte (Maple Death Records)

Come La Notte by wow

Underground Roman duo China Now (vocals, drums) and Leo Non (guitars) recent album as WOW, Come La Notte (Like the Night), is seven tracks of 1960s influenced Italian noir cabaret high on atmosphere and drama. Now’s almost operatic vocals are at the forefront over skeletal brushed drums, minimal bass and restrained guitar. The band lulls then surprises with a spectral sax and bursts of crashing cymbals and feedback on “Niente Di Speciale” (“Nothing Special”), a keening gypsy violin on “Vieni Un Po’ Qui” (“Come Over Here”), middle eastern organ on “Occhi Di Serpente” (“Snake Eyes”). Fatalism drips from every note bringing to mind a low ceilinged club in the catacombs where refugees from the sun fill the air with smoke and their guts with grappa and cheap vino rosso as Pasolini scouts for rough trade and fingers grip switchblades concealed in socks. Come La Notte is a slow grower that draws you in even while it picks your pocket. Put it on and live a little vicarious danger in your own private La Dolce Vita.  

Andrew Forell  

[lymericslimerick]

The Night, She calls Me | 𝖭𝖾𝗎𝗏𝗂𝗅𝗅𝖾𝗍𝗍𝖾 𝗑 𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗋

The Iudex of Fontaine had never been known to stoop to lowly "human" desires, up until now.

warnings .ᐟ smut(?), making out, Neuvillette gets stabbed, blood drinking, descriptions of a knife being pushed out of a wound, Neuvillette's very much insane, reader is vaguely vampiric, yandere-esque

1.4k words | she/her pronouns

The moonlight shone through the radius window looming over the alcove, shining a spotlight on the two bodies intertwined under its glow. Clothes were scattered on the floor, a mechanic’s jacket and dress shirt haphazardly thrown to the wayside and a coat, adorned with elegantly drapes pieces of fabric befitting of only the highest authority thrown across the room like it was shot out of someone’s hand in a flurry. Two pairs of hair clips, ornate and sharp thrown at the foot of the nook as one body pulled the other impossibly closer, arms wrapped around the other in a vice grip.

They’re kissing, one side restrained and fragile as she halfheartedly matched the crazed, animalistic need of the other who’s all fangs and tongue, kissing like he wants to consume after years of starvation. Two vibrant blue antennae glow and stand on their own on his head, almost covered by the waterfall of formerly proper long hair, now an unkempt mess of spiky pieces and interrupted cascades.

A dance of the tongue for a beat, and the more human other speaks. “Chief Justice.”

Immediately, “Dearest, sweetest, please call me by my name.”

She ignores it, pulling him closer by his cravat. He makes a noise of childish excitement, bordering on a whimper as eyes older than the soil of the earth stare at her with an intensity that could rip the skin of the bones of any other being. “Monsieur.” His lips tremble as he captures her in another kiss, hands coming up to clasp the sides of her face as if to goad her into melting like he was, urge her to fall like he has.

Her hands go up and touch the sides of his neck and Oh, he is on fire. The skin she touched is singed and burnt with her, a drop of hell on the pristine landscape of heaven as he struggles to gasp and pant at the feeling. O’ light, O’ void, the feeling. The feeling was consuming, numbing his brain further as she kept her hands there, fingers kneading and prodding like she wanted to feel the raw flesh and blood and power of his person on her hands. He can’t help it, he bares his fangs and tries to bite into her kiss, consume her like she consumes him.

She pulls her hands away and he fully whines, antennae rigid as it sticks close to his head much like an angry animal. She brings her hands to clasp over his own and he feels like they have mangled them, tainted them so only her touch would form them back to what they once were. He lets out a shaky exhale, “My joy, My beloved, My life’s queen…” He wants to wail and thrash as his lips chase the feeling of hers. She is cruel, depraved.

“Quiet,” She mumbles into mouth and he keens, ducking his head into her shoulder. “Be still, let me do this.” He takes a laboured breath into her as he feels her hand separate from his, feels as it reaches into the pocket of her pants. He can’t bring himself to care as she opens her mouth wider, giving him an anchor to latch onto, an outlet to express his carnal desire. He eats and eats at her mouth like he’s a man shackled by earthly desires, like he isn’t the Iudex of Fontaine, the supreme authority of all waters but a weak, puny little thing single minded in his pleasure.

So good. So good. Sogoodsogoodsogoodsogoodsogoodsogoodsogoodso goodsogoodsogoodsogoodsogoodso-

He feels the blade’s presence before he sees it, and he sees the blade before he feels it. He stills while he feels the blade around archaic flesh, feels his entire being bloom and settle around the blade held in the hands of his beloved. He lets his mouth open around hers in surprise as she looks at him with a beautifully deep gaze, beautifully cold eyes, and the most beautiful smile he’s ever seen in his entire life. A small, lithe little thing that didn’t even look like it was wholly directed at him, instead directed at the blue blood coursing down the wound in his chest. But Oh, the joy of seeing her like this. The joy that she’s smiling at him.

She’s looking at him, she’s looking at him, she’s smiling, she’s happy. He feels himself smile, shaky and full of fangs. “H-hah.. Hah..” He throws his head back onto the alcove with wide eyes, draconic pupils crazed and shaking. He feels himself be consumed by her fire, the need coursing through his veins bringing him to a higher plane. “…Hah..!”

“I hope you don’t mind this too much, Monsieur.” He feels her voice in his veins, and she feasts. Her tongue licks at the dripping blood from his wound, trailing up to the source. His mouth opens and a silent scream escapes him, not from pain or from fear, from a primal instinct he hadn’t felt in all of his rebirth. This instinct feels like he’s been returned home, returned to a place where he’s one of everyone, a single drop in a vast ocean instead of a tsunami approaching a small sea settlement. His eyes roll up into his head as he feels his dearly beloved lap up more of him with the fervor of someone dying, someone starved. Might this mean he and his beloved were feeling the same things? He shudders at the thought. How wonderful it was that he was brought to heaven by being defiled and his beloved by consuming the water that coursed through his veins.

Regrettably, he feels himself running dry. His primordially sculpted body wasn’t as keen on becoming a feast for his other as he was, skin stitching together and muscles flexing to reject the blade lodged in his chest as it slowly pulls out of him. The squelching noises coming from his chest made him whine, biting his lip so hard he draws more blue blood. He desperately wants his love to drink from the would he’s currently chewing deeper into. He hears her ‘tsk’.

“I should’ve known you wouldn’t bleed as much as I wanted you to,” She mutters. “Your body isn’t like others, is it .. Neuvillette?”

The door rattles with the might of Neuvillette’s scream. His eyes roll back into his head , his antennae glowing blue and vibrant as he comes untouched in his pants. Faintly, He hears the pipes in the bathroom burst and the faint yell of a guard, followed by exclamations of confusion and fear both outside and inside the Palais Mermonia. In his peripheral view he sees lights switch on around the buildings surrounded the Palais, his divine hearing flooding with exclamations of “The pipes burst!” “Get the food off the table! it’s flooding!”. Above him, his beloved chuckles. “How cute.”

Neuvillette feels himself laugh alongside her, euphoric and trite. So unbecoming. The knife is completely removed from his chest and safely pocketed into her pants, the tight imprint of them against her thigh almost making Neuvillette come again. She brings a hand up to her own mouth to wipe the blue ichor off her lip, licking the residue off it. He faintly registers how she looks more full of life, formerly lifeless (s/c) skin looking more vibrant and warm and her (e/c) eyes looking bright.

Neuvillette can’t bring himself to care at all, instead marvelling at her beauty against the moonlight. His life, his love, full of him. He shudders as he feels the waters temper, murmurs of citizens grateful that their water had stopped flowing with such fervour ringing in his head. Little did they know, they needed to thank his beloved for it, thank her for every divine thing that happened tonight. She extracts gloves from her pocket and sheathes her hands, muttering under her breath about “Feeling bad” or “regretting she had to get relief like this” and “This should be enough.. I swear I won’t bother you again, Monsieur.”

What?..

He feels dread creep into him as she continues on, reclothing herself with a sense of urgency she does not need. Doesn’t she know this Palais belongs to her now? Doesn’t she know He belongs to Her now? He feels himself sputter and babble while she looks back at him, the worst sort of look in her eyes. The look of leaving.

“Thank you so much for letting me get some relief, Monsieur. Have a good evening.”

On her way back, the storm that had formed almost instantaneously threatened to flood Fontaine once more. The roads of Fontaine filled with water cloying at her ankles as if it were alive, as if it was begging her to come with them. She paid them no mind.

[lindavater]

🍃💜🍃 Do you remember the bark vases I made over the holidays (go to my link in bio for the how-to) and I told you that they would be equally as beautiful in the spring? Well I think I like them even better now, styled with violas and pansies, moss, Iris reticulata, and baby bulbs. A nice little vignette by my front door. Do you agree? . . . #garden_styles #purpleflowers #gardenideas #containergardening #cottageliving #springiscoming #instagarden #topiary #cosycottage #cottagedecor #countrycottage #lvgardendesignschool #gardenlife #gardendesign #gardenlife #lindavater #cottages #countryhousestyle #cottagechic #cottagegarden #gardens #gardenofinstagram #gardenphotography #cottagestyle #englishcountryhouse #jardin (at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9hlWFXF_uN/?igshid=12pmff2upzfrp

[marcos123socram]

Ritorno delle vignette Abruzzesi!!!! Qui la notizia,riportata in tutto od in parte, di un cervo(pardon: palco. 👍) affamato. Gnam yum "Avrà gradito?!" "Saranno Frisc i frutti?""avremo risposte?" Notizia in breve 👇👇👇👇👇 Luigi è un vecchio venditore ambulante. La pelle cotta dal freddo, cappello di lana in testa e una posa disinvolta, osserva un enorme cervo maschio, che sta mangiando dalle cassette delle frutta. Siamo a Villetta Barrea, borgo nel cuore del parco nazionale d’Abruzzo, in provincia dell’Aquila, dove - sempre più spesso - capita di vedere qualche cervo a passeggio per le strade del paese. I 650 abitanti sono abituati a vederli sbucare da un giardino o da un parcheggio, e il rispetto è assoluto, nessuno si sogna di cacciarli via o di disturbarli. Si convive, è la normalità.      “Qui fanno dieci mesi di frid e due di frisc”, sorride Pierluigi Viola, ristoratore e autore della foto. Ovvero: dieci mesi di freddo e due di fresco. Insomma, caldo da queste parti non fa quasi mai. E di certo l’inverno non è tenero. Le temperature scendono quasi sempre sotto lo zero e gli animali sono affamati. E a volte capita che vadano a cercare cibo negli orti.  Questa volta, però, questo grande cervo dalle corna maestose (si chiamano “palchi”, in realtà, sottolineano gli esperti del posto), si è spinto oltre: e “ruba” mele e pere sotto gli occhi del padrone del banco.  #abruzzocartoon #vignettedimarcofiorenza #vignetteabruzzesi #abruzzese #abruzzo #palchi #abruzzen #abruzzolovers #abruzzodellemeraviglie #notizie #notiziecalde #marcofiorenzaart #vignette #fumetti #fumettiabruzzesi #fiorenzaemaipiusenza #lartedimarcofiorenza #news #cervoabruzzese (presso Villetta Barrea) https://www.instagram.com/p/CYYkgqNItcV/?utm_medium=tumblr

[forestcollective]

Enter a moonlit world where fragments of Arnold Schönberg’s #PierrotLunaire universe crash with digital creations, in a brazen encounter between dance, sound, poetry, video and design. Reimagined as a cascading digital experience, Pierrot takes vignettes from the seminal song cycle and transforms them into a unique multidisciplinary digital world, culminating in a new sonic reimagining by DJ @pixlpixiii For 🎟 link in our bio 📲 💀💀💀 Arnold Schönberg composer Albert Giraud original text Pixlpixi composer, DJ Daniel Szesiong Todd translation, writing @_toddoftoddhall_ Evan J Lawson director @evanjlawson Ashley Dougan choreographer, dancer @goforash Jane Noonan costume, room design @janetnoonan Underground Media, Chris Bennett video documentation, editing Jasmin Bardel design, visual art @jazzy_mc_jazz_pants Aleise Bright voice Kim Tan flutes @pliedpiper Helen Bower violin, viola @piecesofhelen Danaë Killian piano Rosanne Hunt cello Ryan Lynch clarinets @epiccsaxguy Tim Hannah assistant conductor @fromankiwi Old Skool Audio, Dave Wilkinson audio recording engineer Kate Baker photography @katejbaker Presented with @abbotsfordconvent #ForestCollective is supported by @creative_vic & @yarracityarts 💀💀💀 (at Abbotsford Convent) https://www.instagram.com/p/CVbcT9Bh6na/?utm_medium=tumblr

[michaelpatrickhicks]

Review: Doorbells at Dusk: Halloween Stories, edited by Evans Light

My rating: 4 of 5 stars Nothing says Halloween quite so much as a new horror anthology devoted to carved pumpkins, witches, ghouls, and murder as we turn toward the darker half of the year. Doorbells at Dusk is a solid entry into the annals of such anthologies, gathering fourteen short stories from a range of the horror genre's talents like Josh Malerman, Amber Fallon, Chad Lutzke, and more. Doorbells at Dusk showcases a broad range of Halloween horror themes, as well. There are some truly fun and occasionally depraved and psychotic stories (my favorite kind, personally), as well as gentler, spookier slice of life riffs. I always find anthologies to be a mixed bag, and this latest from Corpus Press proves to be no exception. While there a few stories I didn't care for, I still found plenty of others that impressed and delivered exactly what I was looking for in terms of haunting effectiveness and unbridled mayhem. Most of these latter were from authors whose works I've enjoyed in the past, and I found them delivering the best of the bunch here. Adam Light's "Trick 'Em All" was easily my favorite of this antho. As I said, I like my Halloween stories depraved and bloody, and Light delivers with his story of a psychotic teen receiving messages from his newly carved pumpkin to kill his family. This is a brutal, crazy gorefest and I'll be damned if it wasn't straight up my alley. Jason Parent serves up a fun little treat as a group of thieves break into the wrong house in "Keeping Up Appearances." Gregor Xane's "Mr. Impossible" is a fun bit of science gone wonky as a neighorhood is drugged and costumers believe they actually are whatever they are dressed as. "Rusty Husky," from Dusk's editor Evans Light, delivers on its premise of revenge on a serial killer in a nastily inventive way that's all about its tricks and treats. Amber Fallon's "The Day of the Dead" puts a cool little The Twilight Zone spin on Día de los Muertos, one that will definitely make you want to dress up for Halloween this year. Chad Lutzke's "Vigil" goes in an entirely different direction and stands proudly as a bit of the odd man out here. Eschewing the paranormal entirely, Lutzke focuses on a different sort of monstrosity altogether as a stunned and shaken neighborhood gathers to watch the police discover and exhume a score of bodies from an abandoned house. There's no shocks or scares, but Lutzke writes so well, and so honestly, that this small town vignette captivates the whole through. Sean Eads and Joshua Viola present a historical slow-burn work of Halloween horror that good and truly sticks the landing once the full scope of "Many Carvings" atrocities are fully revealed. Doorbells at Dusk is a welcome addition to the pantheon of Halloween horrors. Not that this is much of a shock, mind you. Evans Light knows how to deliver a great Halloween antho; you don't need to look past any of the three Bad Apples books he co-created to find proof of that, and Doorbells at Dusk serves as further evidence to this claim. Doorbells at Dusk, in fact, is a natural outgrowth from those earlier anthologies, and this one is larger and more diverse in both its stories, their premises, and contributors. Unlike Bad Apples, though, it also seems rather deliberately aimed at a wider, more general audience of horror readers, forgoing the occasionally vulgar, gruesome, splatterpunk sensibilities of its harder-edged, dare to offend cousins. This isn't a bad thing, certainly, but I still found myself wanting Doorbells at Dusk to get a bit meaner and dirtier than its raison d'être permitted. It's safe to say, though, that Light has deftly generated a small library of Halloween attractions to satisfy any number of tastes. Doorbells at Dusk presents a fine sampling of tricks and treats for readers jonesing for some good and proper seasonal reads as the leaves turn color, a chill sets in, the world turns a little bit darker, and it arrives just in time as the membrane separating this world from another grows thinner and thinner day by day. [Note: I received an advanced reading copy of this title from the publisher, Corpus Press.] View all my reviews

[oosteven-universe]

Archie’s Girls Betty & Veronica #234

Archie’s Girls Betty & Veronica #234 Archie Comics 1975 By Various    Betty & Veronica star in their first comic book series! Take a trip back to the earliest days of Archie Comics as Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge show the town of Riverdale who's really in charge! Prepare to experience the original Betty and Veronica with stories like "Bats Over Cats", "The Cut Up" and more!    I don’t know about you all but I’m a huge fan of Archie Comics and I have been for most of my life.  I wish I still had those Archie Dolls I gave out as a Channukah gift but alas, so if anyone feels like finding those dolls from 1987 well I’m here.  Now this I wanted to read and review because it is from 46 years ago and I always find it interesting to see what life was like then and how it was portrayed in the comics of the time and nothing was ever as relevant as the Archies were from decade to decade.  Also it doesn’t hurt that regardless of the kind of day you are having there’s nothing that an Archie book won’t do to make it that much better, a good day or a bad one, sunny or rainy it doesn’t matter Archie makes the world a better place.    Now I absolutely love the way that this is being told.  The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well.  That we see each of these vignettes being a complete tale in such a short amount of space is absolutely phenomenal.  The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction and how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does wonders bringing us their personalities.  The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story the more we find ourselves lost in this world.      How we see this being structured and how the layers within the story open up avenues to complete the tale is a masterclass in storytelling.  You just don’t see this level & quality of storytelling on such a regular scale outside of Archie they basically mastered the anthology series format.  Also it’s great to see a Hostess ad and a Li’l Jinx story within these pages as well.  How everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward are impeccably achieved.    Another fact throughout the entire run, from its inception until now, is that the interiors remain pretty much uniformly the same.  The style is easily aped and it takes some true master visual storytellers to be able to make it feel like there’s no transition between artists.  The way we see the linework and how the varying weights are being utilised to create the detailed work is sublime to see.  The colour work we see is fabulous.  To see the various hues and tones within the colours being packed in like a tattoo is rendered exceptionally well.  The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show some remarkably talented eyes for storytelling.  The way we see backgrounds judiciously utilised is fantastic and we see them a lot more than often times today. ​    This just brightened up my night.  The final panel of the issue with an exchange between Betty and Archie sums up Veronica’s life to a “T” and it couldn’t be any more apropos if you ask me.  I love that even though this was written in the 70’s it is still so relevant today is just a testament to how the Archie books have been written over the years.  Just update the fashions, though even those would be considered retro and wearable today, and viola you’ve got yourself a modern comic.  

[mimosaeyes]

Summary: Twice in her life, Lyra Silvertongue leaves part of herself in another world. Post-canon speculation. For their annual rendezvous on Midsummer’s Day, which falls on 24 June this year.

Word count: 3944

A note: Yeah, months of radio silence on the fic front, and now this. Sorry if you were holding your breath for something else. It’s part of my annual tradition (only since 2016, though) of revisiting book series I read growing up, and writing oneshots about them. These pieces are deeply personal, not just because of the nostalgia factor but because I think they serve as snapshots of my writing style and worldviews.

More behind-the-scenes considerations under the cut!

I didn’t want Will to die that way, but I thought the universe wouldn’t be so kind as to let both of them go in their sleep like Lyra did.

I included Mrs. Cooper’s death (where I didn’t include Ma Costa’s, even though she must have passed away before Lyra) solely for this hidden contrast: Lyra feels a movement in the Dust when Mrs. Cooper passes because Will grieves her passing. She doesn’t sense that Will has died because Will doesn’t regret it. It was important to me that I give them both ‘good’ deaths, which reflected the way they lived.

Lyra bustles about, wanting to say goodbye to her old friends, but quickly realises she has outlived most of them. But the story I tell is indeed her farewell tour, and therefore must (and does) take place non-chronologically. Conversely, the coda after “And so they begin” was added (late in my revision stage) to suggest that the stories of Will and Lyra are truly in the worlds they leave behind, the people whose lives they touched.

‘Lyra’ comes from lyre, an ancient musical instrument like a harp, so I named Will’s daughter after another string instrument: a viola. I don’t think he would’ve picked something too phonetically similar, like Laura. Too haunting, and a bit weird. Also, The Incredibles 2 is out this month (I enjoyed it immensely), and Viola Parry sounds like Violet Parr, to whom I really related because of her shyness and her snark. Both His Dark Materials and The Incredibles were an important part of my childhood, and this whole collection of mine is about revisiting series that influenced me, growing up.

The Shape of Water has a sequence about the heroine’s daily routine where she masturbates in the bathtub. Watching that on the big screen, I was surprised. But I think Guillermo del Toro is right in saying that’s one aspect of female sexuality we don’t see represented, and it was relevant for Lyra because of the time period in which she lived. My association of Lyra’s masturbation, as a healthy, acceptable habit, with water and the gyptians’ boat is at least a subconscious allusion to The Shape of Water. Also: I put that in the same vignette as Lyra’s fever-dream about Will, to leave ambiguous what she needs Will for. Immediately after that comes the part where Will feels like he needs Lyra for her ability to find the right words, to comfort a child like Viola. What does Lyra need Will for? Water, however you may choose to read that.

Elaine Parry’s needing to count things is a plausible sign of dementia, but her mental health issues are not canonically certain. I confess I took liberties. My grandfather had dementia, but by the time he could no longer recognise me and my sister, we were mostly grown up. We weren’t close, though.

Finally: I didn’t give both Lyra and Will a conventional nuclear family, because I think there’s more than one kinship system/structure that can give someone fulfillment. And so I haven’t given Lyra another love interest, like Will has — and I hope that’s not because of some internalised misogyny thing, where the woman has to be faithful to the man in order to be sympathetically received. My reasoning is that Lyra’s parents weren’t ever around, and her concept of family mostly involves the gyptians, her academic community, and now the witches and the armoured bears. She doesn’t get a biological family, but she’s never needed one, to feel loved.

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 5, Number 3

Photo by Rene Block, Courtesy of the John Cage Trust

In like a lion, that’s how we’ll do March at Dusted, which is to say in a gigantic leap, with blood and innards trailing from a toothy predator’s mouth. Well, that’s the hope, but actually, we’ll probably just listen to some music and write some reviews. Case in point: this edition’s Dust candidates, which include sci-fi techno, a blissed out dub version of “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” a Portuguese guitar duel, some churning stomach fluids and a percussive interpretation of koan-like John Cage. This time, the team was limited—just Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Jonathan Shaw and Peter Taber—but mostly enthusiastic. We hope you’ll find something to like, too.

CMD — Obscure Worlds (Several Reasons)

Obscure Worlds by CMD

On the face of it, CMD’s Obscure Worlds is a sci fi-themed techno album, which doesn’t do much to separate it from the broader genre. Scratch the surface, and you find an album of detailed techno vignettes that refuse to stand still. In less than three minutes, “Uneven Landing” layers crushed static onto knocking digital debris, with a rapid-fire kick added to the mix two minutes in. On “Obscure Manifestation” a foundation of pulsing static sets the stage for otherworldly peals of feedback. “Death of a Galaxy” reaches toward the undulating bass engineering of an Yves de Mey track. “Through the Wormhole” hints at industrial fuzz a la AnD while maintaining a bit more restraint, with a switch-up in the kick pattern four minutes in that isn’t exactly characteristic for techno. Given the density of musical ideas, many of the tracks could have been extended, but they last long enough to satisfy. If the album’s concept was intended to prompt a creative, concise set of techno variations, it did the trick. Obscure Worlds feels like getting a glimpse into a techno sound-design obsessive’s sketchbook, in the best possible way.

Peter Taber

 Julien Desprez / Luís Lopes—Boa Tarde (Shhpuma)

The title translates from Portuguese as Good Afternoon, and from the sound of this record it was. Both Julien Desprez and Luís Lopes are known for bringing the electricity to jazz ensembles, but when you put a couple of guitarists together it’s possible that they will connect around the instrument, not any particular genre. So it is here, but just what instrument are we talking about? The electric guitar? The amplifier? The pedals? Or all of the above? Let’s go with the latter, because this music is more about the interplay of timbres, textures, contours and sound waves than melodies, harmonies or beats. Imagine the jousting of train sounds issuing from converging valleys, the shudder of twin flexing suspension bridges or maybe just the shared sweet spots of a couple guys who probably wore out more than one CD player spinning Thurston Moore and Nels Cline’s Pillow Wand. Or don’t imagine at all, just listen to this artifact of one good afternoon in Lisbon.

Bill Meyer

  Carol Genetti / Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson — Chyme (Suppedeneum)

Carol Genetti’s vocals operate beyond the boundaries of language. On Chyme, which is named after that gurgling stuff that sloshes around in your stomach after you eat, she electronically manipulates and juxtaposes sounds that humans have been making since before they thought up the first words. You might get disoriented trying to make sense of her pre-lingual exhalations and utterances, so visual artist Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson has prepared a listening score for each of the CD’s four tracks. Each score is a vibrantly colored, circuitously shaped paper cutout, the handling of which will put you (back?) in touch with the experience of pre-GPS, map-based navigation. Anderson’s combination of vibrant colors and text cues prod you out of passive listening and into a vocal / visual interaction with the sounds, which are by turns eerily beautiful and absolutely hackle raising. You will not encounter another record like Chyme.

Bill Meyer  

 Golden Daze—Simpatico (Autumn Tone)

Simpatico by Golden Daze

Hold up, you don’t need musical difficulty all of the time. No, there are hours and days and (occasionally) weeks when you don’t want propulsion or tension or contradictory impulses in your tunes. Life itself is full of that shit. You want something easy. You want something like Golden Daze’s Simpatico, an edgeless, frictionless, limpid pool of baroque pop, with soft whispery vocals and sumptuous clouds of guitar flurries and bright bars of electronic keyboards, unending prettiness, unconflicted lemon-y wistfulness.  “Blue Bell,” the single, is like the Clientele with the bones picked out, an enveloping haze of pastel colored sound. There’s a bit of drumming in a song called “Drift,” but it only seems to heightened the disembodied floating-ness of the song’s breathy sway. “Simpatico,” at the end, emerges out of haze and fog, with warm, brushes of guitar and soft, dreaming verses, then slips out of sight. Golden Daze indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

 Golia, Kaiser, Moses, Smith, Walter — Astral Plane Crash (Balance Point Acoustics)

BPA 18 Astral Plane Crash by Golia / Kaiser / Moses / Smith / Walter

p>Henry Kaiser, Damon Smith and Weasel Walter are Plane Crash, a guitar-bass-drums trio tough enough that it doesn’t have to act tough. The musicians’ common bonds are an appreciation for the atomized activity of vintage English free improvisation and a shared determination to communicate intensity through intent and focus, not bluster. Things get cosmic when you bring in West coast woodwind veteran Vinny Golia and drummer Ra Kalam Bob Moses, who played with Rahsaan Roland Kirk at an age when most kids are first trying to cadge their parents’ car keys. Moses and Golia had never played together, but they roomed in the 1960s, and their presence complicates Astral Plane Crash’s prevailing MO of quick micro-interaction in interesting ways. The flutes and saxophones run thick and slow under APC’s dust devil swirl. And Moses and Walter sound like their having a blast making like converging storm clouds, each pelting hail stones from a different direction so there’s no way you won’t get a chill down your neck. At two tracks and a hair under 80 minutes, this is all-in stuff, but when the changes come as quick and compelling as they do here that’s a feature, not a bug.

Bill Meyer

Matt Hannafin / John Cage—Four Realizations For Solo Percussion (Notice Recordings)

Four Realizations for Solo Percussion by John Cage & Matt Hannafin

In a life of ideas that spans 79 years, a guy might change his mind. John Cage famously expressed disregard for jazz, the most notable American manifestation of musical improvisation in the 20th century. But his problem was more with corrosive expressions of the self and human prejudice than it was with improvisation per se, thus his preference for chance operations. You can’t impose your personal bullshit when you submit to the random. Near the end of his life he dropped his opposition enough to write compositions that invited improvisation, which was distinct from chance operations. If that sounds like a convoluted process, consider the name of this tape’s first piece. “c Ȼomposed Improvisation for One-Sided Drums with or without Jangles” reads like a koan, which makes some sense given Cage’s engagement with Buddhist teachings. That’s just one of the four pieces that Oregonian percussionist Matt Hannafin recorded for this tape (or download, which is probably a more Buddhist format than a tape). In his hands, Cage’s music becomes a vehicle for feeling both the presence of a healthy blow and the unoccupied presence of the variably proportioned spaces where Hannafin isn’t hitting anything.

Bill Meyer

 Gerrit Hatcher — Parables for the Tenor (Astral Spirits)

Parables For The Tenor by Gerrit Hatcher

One listener’s marvelously wigged-out sound is another’s torture. An audience member’s transformative listening experience might be in response to a sound producer’s moment of hollow display. You might hate a person’s most sincere expression or be deeply moved by something they do with their fingers and lungs while they try to remember where they left their bottle opener. Chicago-based tenor saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher had these existential quandaries in mind as he recorded the six solo tracks on this tape, and who’s to say if that’s why this music has such bite? Maybe it’s better to note that he makes sounds that feel linked to the work of certain Sun Ra associates and Archie Shepp into statements that don’t sound irrelevant at the tail end of the second decade of the 21st century. Hang with him while he blows and you might be changed, either because he’s ripping transformative shapes in the air or because that’s already where you’re taking yourself. Either way, what do you have to lose?

Bill Meyer

  Hübsch Martel Zoubek — Otherwise (Insub)

Otherwise by Hübsch, Martel, Zoubek

There’s a world of improvised music that never crosses that precious Yankee border, and this is group is part of that world. Take one German tuba player, one Canadian viola da gamba player and another German on piano, throw in some pitch pipes and a synthesizer and what do you have? You have the raw material for a session of highly refined interaction. On the spectrum from process-oriented to outcome-oriented improvisation, these musicians tend more to the latter pole. The piano has been prepared to render gamelan-in-a-box sonorities, the tuba’s tones consistently gravitate towards ground-liquifying depths and the strings buzz in splintered contrast. The music unfolds patiently, never lapsing into clutter or confusion, and yet it never telegraphs the next move.   

Bill Meyer

  Jäh Division—Dub Will Tear Us Apart…Again (Ernest Jenning)

Dub Will Tear Us Apart...Again by Jäh Division

A jokey side hustle with an aughts all-star psychedelic pedigree, Jäh Division grooved hard, if obscurely, joining a love of dub, a reverence for Joy Division and a clutch of old keyboard gear. The line-up well exceeded solid with Brad Truax on booming, reverb drenched dub bass, Barry London manning a garage sales’ worth of vintage electronics (Roland RS-09, Realistic Concertmate MG-1, a Moog) and Kid Millions busting up organic and synthetic drums. This disc collects songs from a 2004 12-inch, plus bonus material including covers of Desmond Dekker’s “Fu Manchu” and Jackie Mittoo’s “Champion of the Arena.” These two are trippily wonderful, but the heart of this goofy fever dream is a nodding, pulsing, synth wreathed version of “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” It’s a jam that could go on for days or last only a second (technically it goes ong a bit over four minutes), as it distills post-punk and reggae and experimental art rock into an unending now.

Jennifer Kelly

 Miscarriage — Imminent Horror (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Imminent Horror by Miscarriage

Much alike Stormy Daniels’ description of the Chief Executive’s fungoid phallic member, the world didn’t really need this tape from international doom metal crew Miscarriage (who hail from Sweden and the United States) — but now that Imminent Horror is here, it’s sort of hard to ignore. And once you’ve heard it, you’ll have a hard time removing it from your memory, much as you might like to. Lots of metal bands like to talk about how “disgusting” and “putrid” their music is. Miscarriage do more than talk. The noises they make sound and feel like a huge bubble of noxious gas painfully working its way through a diseased intestinal track. It’s slow. It’s gross. It doesn’t create any sort of pleasure. It’s only minimally more coherent than listening to the aforementioned Chief Executive attempt to speak in complete sentences. In all those ways, Miscarriage have made music for our times. Good luck to us all.  

Jonathan Shaw  

 Shady Bug—Lemon Lime (Exploding in Sound)

Lemon Lime by Shady Bug

Shady Bug, out of St. Louis, makes a mathy pop so stretchy and bendable that you expect a bo-oi-oi-ing when its wandering melodies snap back into place. Under the guidance of classically trained Hannah Rainey, the band sets up intricate, jerry-rigged machinations that work by their own logic. Yet though complicated, these tunes have a vulnerable sweetness to them, mainly due to Raines’ hiccupy sincere delivery, which tips and lists as the wind blows. “Make It Up,” the single floods the sonic plane with power-washing blasts of amplified guitar, then cuts to a jittery next-to-nothing of angling, cross-cutting guitar lines. It’ll remind you of Pavement and, more recently, Speedy Ortiz, except in a fetching, kid-sibling-ish way that tugs at your sleeve and your heart.

Jennifer Kelly