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alanlicht · 4 years ago

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Alan Licht’s Minimal Top Ten List #4

A few weeks ago, near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, my friend Mats Gustafsson sent out a mass email encouraging people to send him record lists to post on the “Discaholics” section of his website--top tens, favorite covers, anything. I immediately thought of the first 3 Minimal Top Ten lists I did (now found online here) back in 1995, 1997, and 2007 respectively, for the fanzine Halana (the first two) and Volcanic Tongue’s website (the third), and sent them to him. Those articles have sort of taken on a life of their own, and I still see them referenced as the albums get reissued and so on. Occasionally people ask me if I’d ever do another one, and looking at all three again made me think now is the hour. I started writing this in the midst of the lockdown, and the drastic reductions in people’s way of life—the restriction of any activity outside the home to the bare essentials, the relative stasis of life in quarantine, even the visual stasis of a Zoom meeting—make revisiting Minimal music, with its aesthetic of working within limitations and hallmarks of repetition and drones, somehow timely as well.

The original lists were never meant to represent “the best” Minimal albums: they were ones that were rare and in some cases surpass, in my opinion, more widely available releases by the same artist and/or better known examples of the genre. Some were records that hadn’t been classified as Minimalist but warranted consideration through that lens. Likewise, the lists aren’t meant to be ranked within themselves, or in comparison to each other; the first record on any of the lists isn’t necessarily vastly preferable to the last, and this fourth list is not the bottom of the barrel, by any stretch. In some cases the present list has records I’ve discovered since 2007; others are records I’ve known for quite a while but haven’t included before for one reason or another. I’ve also made an addendum to selected entries on the first three lists, which have become fairly dated in terms of what is currently available by many of the artists, and to account for some of the significant archival releases in the 25 years since I first compiled them.

Unlike the mid-90s, most if not all of these records can be heard and/or purchased online, whether they’re up on YouTube or available for sale on Discogs. So finding them will be easier than before (although I haven’t included links to any of the titles as a small tribute to the legwork involved in tracking records down in olden tymes), but hopefully the spirit of sharing knowledge and passions that drove my previous efforts, forged in the pre-internet fanzine world, hasn’t been rendered totally redundant by the 24/7 onslaught of virtual note-comparing in social media.

1. Simeon ten Holt Canto Ostinato (various recordings): This was the most significant discovery for me in the last decade, a piece with over one hundred modules to be played on any instrument but mostly realized over the years with two to four pianos. I first encountered a YouTube live video of four pianists tackling it over the course of 90 minutes or so, then bought a double CD on Brilliant Classics from 2005, also for four pianos, that runs about 2 and half hours. The original 3LP recording on Donemus, from 1984, lasts close to 3 hours. It’s addictively listenable, very hypnotic in that pulsed, Steve Reich “Piano Phase”/”Six Pianos” kind of way, with lots of recurring themes (which differentiates it from Terry Riley’s “In C,” its most obvious structural antecedent). Composed over the span of the 70s, as with Roberto Cacciapaglia’s Sei Note in Logica, it’s an example of someone contemporaneously taking the ball from Reich or Riley and running with it. Every recording I’ve heard has been enjoyable, I’ve yet to pick a favorite.

2. David Borden Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments (Red Music, 1981) 3. Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co. Like a Duck to Water (Earthquack, 1976): These were some of my most cherished Minimal recordings when I was a teenager in the mid-80s, and are still not particularly well-known; they’re probably the biggest omission in the previous lists (at least from my perspective). Borden formed Mother Mallard, supposedly the first all-synthesizer ensemble, as a trio in the late 60s, although there’s electric piano on the records too. He went on to do music under his own name that hinged on the multi-keyboard Minimalism-meets-Renaissance classical concept he first explored with Mother Mallard, as exemplified by his 12-part series “The Continuing Story of Counterpoint” (a title inspired by both Philip Glass’ “Music in Twelve Parts” and the Beatles’ “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”). I first heard Parts 6 & 9 of “Continuing Story” (from Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments) on Tim Page’s 1980s afternoon radio show on WNYC, and bought the Mother Mallard LPs (Like A Duck is the second, the first is self-titled) from New Music Distribution Service soon after. I mail-ordered the Borden album from Wayside Music, which had cut-out copies, maybe a year later (c. 1986). I wasn’t much of a synth guy, but I loved the propulsive, rapid-fire counterpoint and fast-changing, lyrical melodies found on these records. “C-A-G-E Part 2,” which occupies side 2 of the Mother Mallard album and utilizes only those pitches, has to be a pinnacle of the Minimal genre. Interestingly, Borden claims to not really be able to “hear” harmony and composes each part of these (generally) three-part inventions individually, all the way through. The two-piano “Continuing Story of Counterpoint Part Two” on the 1985 album Anatidae is also beloved by me, and there was an archival Mother Mallard CD called Music by David Borden (Arbiter, 2003) that’s worth hearing.

4. Charles Curtis/Charles Curtis Trio: Ultra White Violet Light/Sleep (Beau Rivage, 1997): Full disclosure: Charles is a long-time friend, but this record seems forgotten and deserves another look, especially in light of the long-overdue 3CD survey of his performances of other composers’ material that Saltern released last year. This was a double album of four side-long tracks, conceived with the intent that two sides could be played simultaneously, in several different configurations; two of them are Charles solo on cello and sine tones, the others are with a trio and have spoken vocals and rock instrumentation, with cello and the sine tones also thrown into the mix. (I’ve never heard any of the sides combined, although now it would probably be easily achieved with digital mixing software.) The instrumental stuff is the closest you can come to hearing Charles’ beautiful arrangement of Terry Jennings’ legendary “Piece for Cello and Saxophone,” at least until his own recording of it sees the light of day; the same deeply felt cello playing against a sine tone drone. And it would be interesting to see what Slint fans thought of the trio material. Originally packaged in a nifty all-white uni-pak sleeve with a photo print pasted into the gatefold, it was reissued with a different cover on the now-defunct Squealer label on LP and CD but has disappeared since then. Stellar.

5. Arthur Russell Instrumentals 1974 Vol. 2 (Another Side/Crepuscule, 1984) 6. Peter Zummo Zummo with an X (Loris, 1985): Arthur Russell has posthumously developed a somewhat surprising indie rock audience, mostly for his unique songs and singing as well as his outré disco tracks. But he was also a modern classical composer, with serious Minimal cred—he’s on Jon Gibson’s Songs & Melodies 1973-1977 (see addendum), and played with Henry Flynt and Christer Hennix at one point; his indelible album of vocal and cello sparseness, World of Echo, was partially recorded at Phill Niblock’s loft and of course his Tower of Meaning LP was released on Glass’s Chatham Square label. He’s the one guy in the 70s and 80s (or after, for that matter) who connected the dots between Ali Akbar Khan, the Modern Lovers, Minimalism, and disco as different forms of trance music (taken together, both sides of his disco 12” “In the Light of the Miracle,” which total nearly a half-hour, could arguably be considered one of his Minimalist compositions). Recorded in 1977 & 1978, Instrumentals is an important signpost of the incipient Pop Minimalism impulse, and the first track is a pre-punk precursor to Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca’s appropriations of the rock band format to pursue Minimal pathways (Chatham is one of the performers in that first piece). The rest, culled from a concert at the Kitchen, features long held tones from horns and strings and is quite graceful, if slightly undercut by Arthur’s own slightly jarring, apparently random edits. [Audika’s 2006 reissue, as part of the double CD First Thought Best Thought, includes a 1975 concert that was slated to be Instrumentals Vol. 1, which shows an even more specific pop/rock/Minimal intersection]. Zummo was a long-term collaborator of Russell’s and his album, which Arthur plays on, is a must for Russell aficionados. The first side is made up of short, plain pieces that repeat various simple intervals and are fairly hard-core Minimalism, but “Song IV,” which occupies all of side two, is like an extended, jammy take on Russell’s disco 12” “Treehouse” and has Bill Ruyle on bongos, who also played on Instrumentals as well as with Steve Reich and Jon Gibson. A recently unearthed concert at Roulette from 1985 is a further, and especially intriguing, example of Russell’s blending of Minimalism and song form. (That same year Arthur played on Elodie Lauten’s The Death of Don Juan--another record I first encountered via Tim Page’s radio show--which I included on Top Ten #3; Lauten as well as Zummo played on the Russell Roulette concert, as their website alleges).

7. Horacio Vaggione La Maquina de Cantar (Cramps, 1978): Another one-off from the late 70s, and yet more evidence of how Minimalism had really caught on as a trend among European composers of the time. Vaggione had a previous duo album with Eduardo Polonio under the name It called Viaje that was noisier electronics, and he went on to do computer music that was likewise more traditionally abstract. But on this sole effort for the Italian label Cramps, as part of their legendary Nova Musicha series, he went for full-on tonality. The title track is like the synth part of “Who Are You” extended for more than fifteen minutes and made a bit squishier; but side 2, “Ending”--already mentioned in the entry on David Rosenboom’s Brainwave Music in Top Ten #3--is my favorite. Kind of a bridge between Minimalism and prog, and a little reminiscent of David Borden’s multiple-synth counterpoint pieces, for the first ten minutes he lingers on one vaguely foreboding arpeggiated chord, then introduces a fanfare melody that repeats and builds in harmonies and countermelodies for the remainder of the piece. Great stuff, as Johnny Carson used to say.

8. Costin Miereanu Derives (Poly-Art, 1984): Miereanu is French composer coming out of musique concrete. Unlike some of the albums on these lists, both sides/pieces on Derives are superb, comprised of long drones with flurries of skittering electronic activity popping up here and there. Also notable is the presence of engineers Philip Besomes and Jean-Louis Rizet, responsible for Pôle, the great mid-70s prog double album that formed the basis of Graham Lambkin’s meta-meisterwork Amateur Doubles. I discovered this record via the old Continuo blog; Miereanu has lots of albums out, most of which I haven’t heard, but his 1975 debut Luna Cinese, another Cramps Nova Musicha item, is also estimable, although less Minimal.

9. Mikel Rouse Broken Consort Jade Tiger (Les Disques du Crepuscule, 1984): Rouse was a major New Music name in the 80s, as was Microscopic Septet saxist Philip Johnston, who plays here. Dominated by Reichian repeated fills that accentuate the odd time signatures as opposed to an underlying pulse, this will sound very familiar to anyone acquainted with Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin albums on ECM, which use the same general idea but brand it “zen funk” and cater more to the progressive jazz crowd rather than New Music fans, if we can be that anachronistic in our terminology. Jade Tiger also contrasts nicely with Wim Mertens’ more neo-Romantic contemporaneous excursions on Crepuscule. Rouse later performed the admirable (and daunting) task of cataloging Arthur Russell’s extensive tape archive for the preparation of Another Thought (Point Music, 1994)

10. Michael Nyman Decay Music (Obscure, 1976): Known for his soundtracks to Peter Greenaway films, and his still-peerless 1974 book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (where I, Jim O’Rourke, and doubtless many other intrepid teenage library goers learned of the Minimalists, Fluxus, AMM, and lots of other eternal avant heroes), Nyman is sometimes credited with coining the term “Minimal music” as well, in an early 70s article in The Spectator. Decay Music was produced by Brian Eno for his short-lived but wonderful Obscure label. The first side, “1-100,” was also composed for a Greenaway film, and has one hundred chords played one after another on piano, each advancing to the next once the sound has decayed from the previous chord (hence the album title). For all its delicacy and silences, you’re actually hearing three renditions superimposed on one another, which occasionally makes for some charming chordal collisions (reminiscent of the cheerfully clumsy, subversive “variations” of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D major” on Eno’s own Discreet Music, the most celebrated Obscure release). This is process music at its most fragile and incandescent. In hindsight it may have also been an unconscious influence on the structure of my piece “A New York Minute,” which lines up a month’s worth of weather reports from news radio, edited so that one day’s forecast follows its prediction from the previous day. I’ve never found the album’s other piece, “Bell Set No. 1,” to be quite as compelling, and Nyman’s other soundtrack work doesn’t hold much interest for me, but I’ve often returned to this album.

11. J Dilla Donuts (Stones Throw, 2006): One more for the road. Rightfully acclaimed as a masterpiece of instrumental hip hop, I have to confess I only discovered Donuts while reading Questlove’s 2013 book Mo’ Meta Blues, where he compared it to Terry Riley. The brevity of the tracks (31of ‘em in 44 minutes) and the lack of single-mindedness make categorizing Donuts as a Minimal album a bit of a stretch, but Questlove’s namecheck makes a whole lot of sense if you play “Don’t Cry” back to back with Riley’s proto-Plunderphonic “You’re Nogood,” and “Glazed” is the only hip hop track to ever remind me of Philip Glass. Plus the infinite-loop sequencing of the opening “Outro” and concluding “Intro” make this a statement of Eternal Music that outstrips La Monte Young and leaves any locked groove release in the proverbial dust. There isn’t the space here to really explore how extended mixes, all night disco DJ sets, etc. could be encountered in alignment with Minimalism, although I would steer the curious towards Pete Rock’s Petestrumentals (BBE, 2001), Larry Levan’s Live at the Paradise Garage (Strut, 2000), and, at the risk of being immodest, my own “The Old Victrola” from Plays Well (Crank Automotive, 2001). On a (somewhat) related note I’d also point out Rupie Edwards’ Ire Feelings Chapter and Version (Trojan, 1990) which collects 16 of the producer/performer’s 70s dub reggae tracks, all built from the exact same same rhythm track--mesmerizing, even by dub’s trippy standards.

Addendum:

Tony Conrad: “Maybe someday Tony’s blistering late 80s piece ‘Early Minimalism’ will be released, or his fabulous harmonium soundtrack to Piero Heliczer’s early 60s film The New Jerusalem.” That was the last line of my entry on Tony’s Outside the Dream Syndicate in the first Top Ten list in 1995, and sure enough, Table of the Elements issued “Early Minimalism” as a monumental CD box set in 1997 and released that soundtrack as Joan of Arc in 2006 (it’s the same film; I saw it screened c. 1990 under the name The New Jerusalem but it’s more commonly known as Joan of Arc). Tony releases proliferated in the last twenty years of his life, which was heartening to see; I’d particularly single out Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain (Superior Viaduct, 2017), which rescues a 1972 live recording of what is essentially a prototype for Outside played by Tony, Rhys Chatham, and Laurie Spiegel (Rhys has mentioned his initial disgruntlement upon hearing Outside, as it was the same piece that he had played with Tony, i.e. “Ten Years Alive,” but he found himself and Laurie replaced by Faust!) and an obscure compilation track, “DAGADAG for La Monte” (on Avanto 2006, Avanto, 2006), where he plays the pitches d, a, and g on violin, loops them over and over , and continually re-harmonizes them electronically--really one of his best pieces.

Terry Riley: The archival Riley CDs that Cortical Foundation issued in the 90s and early 00s don’t seem to be in print, but I feel they eclipse Reed Streams (reissued by Cortical as part of that series) and are crucial for fans of his early work, especially the live Poppy Nogood’s Phantom Band All Night Flight Vol. 1, an important variant on the studio take, and You’re Nogood (see Dilla entry above). These days I would also recommend Descending Moonshine Dervishes (Kuckuck, 1982/recorded 1975) over Persian Surgery Dervishes (Shandar, 1975), which I mentioned in the original entry on Reed Streams in the first Top Ten; a lot of the harmonic material in Descending can also be heard in Terry’s dream-team 1975 meeting with Don Cherry in Köln, which has been bootlegged several times in the last few years. Finally, Steffen Schleiermacher recorded the elusive “Keyboard Study #1” (as well as “#2,” which had already seen release in a version by Germ on the BYG label and as “Untitled Organ” on Reed Streams), albeit on a programmed electronic keyboard, on the CD Keyboard Studies (MDG, 2002). As you might expect it’s a little synthetic-sounding, but it also has a weird kinetic edge (imagine the “Baba O’Riley” intro being played on a Conlon Nancarrow player piano) that’s lacking in later acoustic piano renditions recorded by Gregor Schwellenbach and Fabrizio Ottaviucci. But any of these versions is rewarding for those interested in Riley’s early output.

Henry Flynt, Charlemagne Palestine: A few of the artists on that first Top Ten list went from being sorely under-documented to having a plethora of material on the market, and Henry and Charlemagne are at the top of the heap. I stand by You Are My Everlovin, finally reissued on CD by Recorded in 2001, as Henry’s peak achievement, but I’m also partial to “Glissando,” a tense, feverish raga drone from 1979 that Recorded put out on the Glissando No. 1 CD in 2011. Charlemagne’s Four Manifestations On Six Elements double album still holds up well, as does an album of material initially recorded for it, Arpeggiated Bösendorfer and Falsetto Voice (Algha Marghen, 2017). The Strumming Music LP on Shandar is a definitive performance, and best heard as an unbroken piece on the New Tone CD reissue from 1995. Godbear (CD on Barooni, vinyl on Black Truffle), originally recorded for Glenn Branca’s Neutral label (which had also scheduled a Phill Niblock release before going belly-up), has 1987 takes of “Strumming Music” and two other massive pieces that date from the late 70s, “Timbral Assault” and “The Lower Depths”; Algha Marghen released a vintage full-length concert of the latter as a triple CD.

Steve Reich: Not a particularly rare record, but his “Variations on Winds, Strings and Keyboards,” a 1979 piece for orchestra on a 1984 LP issued by Phillips (paired with an orchestral arrangement of John Adams’ “Shaker Loops”), is often overlooked among the works from his “golden era” and I’d frankly rate it as his best orchestral piece.

Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue: As with Henry and Charlemagne, after a slow start as “recording artists” loads of CDs by these two have appeared over the last twenty years. Phill and Eliane’s music was never best served by the vinyl format anyway—you won’t find a lackluster release by either composer, go to it.

Jon Gibson: I called “Cycles,” from Gibson’s Two Solo Pieces, “one of the ultimate organ drones on record” in the first Top Ten list, and it remains so, but Phill Niblock’s”Unmounted/Muted Noun” from 2019′s Music for Organ ought to sit right beside it. Meanwhile, Superior Viaduct’s recent Gibson double album Songs & Melodies 1973-1977 collects some great pieces from the same era as Two Solo Pieces, with players including Arthur Russell, Peter Zummo, Barbara Benary, and Julius Eastman.

John Stevens: In Top Ten #2 I mentioned John Stevens’ presence on the first side of John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Life With the Lions; the Stevens-led Spontaneous Music Orchestra’s For You To Share (1973) documents his performance pieces “Sustained Piece” and “If You Want to See A Vision,” where musicians and vocalists sustain tones until they run out of breath and then begin again, which result in a highly meditative and organic drone/sound environment. In my early 00′s Digger Choir performances at Issue Project Room we did “Sustained Piece,” and Stevens’ work was a big influence on conceptualizing those concerts, where the only performers were the audience themselves. The CD reissue on Emanem from 1998 added “Peace Music,” an unreleased studio half-hour studio cut with a similar Gagaku--meets--free/modal jazz vibe. I also mentioned “Sustained Piece” in my liner notes to Natural Information Society’s Mandatory Reality too, if that helps as a point of reference.

Anthony Moore: Back in ’97 I wondered “How and why Polydor was convinced to release these albums [Pieces from the Cloudland Ballroom and Scenes from the Blue Bag] is beyond me (anyone know the story)?” That mystery was ultimately solved by Benjamin Piekut in his fascinating-even-if-you-never-listen-to-these-guys book Henry Cow: The World is A Problem (Duke University Press, 2019)—it turns out it was all Deutsche Gramophone’s idea!

Terry Jennings, Maryanne Amacher, Julius Eastman--“Three Great Minimalists With No Commercially Available Recordings” (sidebar from Minimal Top Ten list #2): Happily this no longer applies to these three, although Terry and Maryanne are still under-represented. One archival recording of Jennings and Charlotte Moorman playing a short version of “Piece for Cello and Saxophone” appeared on Moorman’s 2006 Cello Anthology CD box set on Alga Marghen, and he’s on “Terry’s Cha Cha” on that 2004 John Cale New York in the 60s Table of the Elements box too. John Tilbury recorded five of his piano pieces on Lost Daylight (Another Timbre, 2010) and Charles Curtis’ version of “Song” appears on the aforementioned Performances and Recordings 1998-2018 triple CD.

Whether or not Maryanne should really be considered a Minimalist (or a sound artist, for that matter) is, I guess, debatable, but I primarily see her as the unqualified genius of the generation of composers who emerged in the post-Cage era, and the classifications ultimately don’t matter—remember she was on those Swarm of Drones/ Throne of Drones/ Storm of Drones ambient techno comps in the 90s, and I’d call her music Gothic Industrial if it would get more people to check it out (and that might be fun to try, come to think of it). She made a belated debut with the release of the Sound Characters CD on Tzadik in 1998, an event I found significant enough to warrant pitching an interview with her to the WIRE, who agreed—it was my first piece for them. Her music was/is best experienced live (the Amacher concert I saw at the Performing Garage in 1993 is still, almost three decades later, the greatest concert I’ve ever witnessed) but that Tzadik CD is reasonably representative, and there was a sequel CD on Tzadik in 2008. More recently Blank Forms issued a live recording of her two-piano piece “Petra” (a concert I also attended, realizing when I got there that it was in the same Chelsea church where Connie Burg, Melissa Weaver and I recorded with Keiji Haino for the Gerry Miles with Keiji Haino CD). While it’s somewhat anomalous in Amacher’s canon, making a piece for acoustic instruments available for home consumption would doubtless have been more palatable to the composer herself, who rightly felt that CDs and LPs didn’t do justice to the extraordinary psychoacoustic phenomena intrinsic to her electronic music. “Petra” is more reminiscent of Morton Feldman than anything else, with a few passages that could be deemed “minimal.” Some joker posted a 26-minute, ancient lo-fi “bootleg” (their term) recording of her “Living Sound, Patent Pending” piece from her Music for Sound-Joined Rooms installation/performance series on SoundCloud, which is a little like looking at a Xerox of a Xerox of a photo of the Taj Mahal; but you can still visit the Taj Mahal more easily than hearing this or any of Maryanne’s work in concert or in situ, so sadly, it’s better than nothing (and longer than the 7 minute edit of the piece on the Ohm: Early Gurus of Electronic Music CD from 2000).

A few years after Top Ten #2 I was on the phone with an acquaintance at New World Records, who told me he was listening to a Julius Eastman tape that they were releasing as part of a 3CD set. Say what?!?!? Unjust Malaise appeared shortly thereafter and was a revelation. Arnold Dreyblatt had sent me a live tape some time before then of an Eastman piece labeled “Gangrila”—that turned out to be “Gay Guerrilla,” and is surely one of my five favorite pieces of music in existence (the tape Arnold sent was from the 1980 Kitchen European tour and I consider it to be a more moving performance than the Chicago concert that appears on the CD, although it’s an inferior recording). The other multiple piano pieces on Unjust Malaise more than lived up to the descriptions of Eastman performances that I’d read. The somewhat berserk piano concert I mentioned in that entry seems similar to another live tape issued as The Zurich Concert (New World, 2017), and “Femenine,” a piece performed by the S.E.M. Ensemble, came out on Frozen Reeds in 2016. Eastman’s rediscovery is among the most vital and gratifying developments of recent music history--kudos must be given to Mary Jane Leach, herself a Minimalist composer, for diligently and doggedly tracking down Eastman’s recordings and archival materials and bringing them to the light of day.

The Lost Jockey—I was unaware of any releases by this group besides their Crepuscule LP until I stumbled onto a self-titled cassette from 1983 on YouTube. Like the album, the highlight is a piece by Orlando Gaugh--an all-time great Philip Glass rip-off, “Buzz Buzz Buzz Went the Honeybee,” which has the amusing added bonus of having the singers intoning the rather bizarre title phrase as opposed to Glassian solfège. Also like the album, he rest of the cassette is so-so Pop Minimalism.

Earth: Dylan Carlson keeps on keepin’ on, and while I can’t say I’ve kept up with him every step of the way, usually when I check in I’m glad I did. However I’d like to take this opportunity to humbly disavow the snarky comments about Sunn 0))) I made in this entry in Top Ten list #3. Those were a reflection of my general aversion to hype, which was surrounding them at the time, and of seeing two shows that in retrospect were unrepresentative (I was thunderstruck by a later show I saw in Mexico City in 2009). Stephen O’Malley has proven to be as genuinely curious, dedicated and passionate about drone and other experimental music as they come, and the reissue of the mind-blowing Sacred Flute Music from New Guinea on his Ideologic Organ label is a good reminder of how rooted Minimalism is in ethnic music, and how almost interchangeable certain examples of both can be.

And while we’re in revisionist mode, let’s go full circle all the way back to the very first sentence of the introduction to the first Minimal Top Ten: “I know what you’re thinking: ECM Records, New Age, Eno ambients, NPR, Tangerine Dream. Well forget all that shit.” Hey, that stuff’s not so bad! I was probably directing that more at the experimental-phobic indie rock folks I encountered at the time, and expressing a lingering resentment towards the genre-confusion of the 80s (i.e. having dig through a bunch of Kitaro records in the New Age bins in hopes of finding Reich, Riley, or Glass; even Loren Mazzacane got tagged New Age once in a while back then, believe it or not), which probably hindered my own discovery of Minimalism. What can I say, I’m over it!

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cataract12 · 4 years ago

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Everything You Require to Know About Cataracts

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If you notice any of these signs, or if you are age sixty or older, request your eye physician to check your eyes for cataracts, as effectively as for age-relevant macular degeneration, glaucoma, or any other vision issues during your next eye test, which must be quickly. If you do have a cataract, and it is interfering with your typical, everyday pursuits, these kinds of as driving, reading, or watching Television, your cloudy lens can be eliminated in medical procedures and changed with a very clear, artificial lens. If you need to have cataract surgical procedure in the two eyes, normally the medical professional will do each eye a thirty day period or two apart. However, medical procedures should be prevented except if it's totally needed for your eyesight, or if a cataract interferes with getting yet another eye problem handled, this sort of as age-associated macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy. Nevertheless, cataract elimination is one particular of the most widespread operations carried out in the United States, and about 90 p.c of folks who have cataracts taken out have enhanced vision. Now if you do not have cataracts and you want to forestall obtaining them, there are some precautions you can take, according to study done by staffers of the Mayo Clinic. Get normal eye examinations, at least when every two many years, or far more often if you discover changes in your eyesight. Stop cigarette smoking and consuming alcoholic beverages. We like this previous joke, "If I'd recognized I was likely to live this prolonged, I might have taken much better care of myself." But in fact, most smokers and drinkers is not going to dwell to 100. he study discovered that the risk of acquiring cataracts was finest for higher meat eaters (those who ate a lot more than 3.5 ounces of meat each working day). It reduced from every single nutritional group to the next, in this get: average meat eaters, low meat eaters, fish eaters (individuals who eat fish but no other meat), vegetarians, and vegans. In simple fact, the risk for vegans was approximately forty per cent decrease than for the substantial meat eaters. Darkish environmentally friendly leafy veggies these kinds of as spinach and kale, each of which contain the antioxidant-carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin, are connected with drastically decrease hazards of cataracts. So, give up smoking, reduce or get rid of drinking liquor, lower or eradicate ingesting meat, enhance consuming fruits and veggies, and you might stay lengthy sufficient to have your initial cataract as a 95th birthday existing - among other goodies! Several individuals who need cataract surgical procedure will get a short-term pair of eyeglasses to use that corrects the eyesight of equally eyes, the eye that has the cataract and the eye that does not. Then when they have had the cataract medical procedures in the two eyes, they get a new pair of glasses. To get large-quality, affordable eyeglasses that you can use among cataract surgical procedures, or glasses that will appropriate your cataract-impeded vision and your cataract-free of charge vision, go to Zenni Optical's web site. Business Name: Eye Care Center of Northern Colorado Address: 3000 Center Green Dr Suite 250, Boulder, CO 80301, United States Phone Number: +13037723300

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dailykhaleej · 4 years ago

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Did WHO fail the world on COVID-19?

Picture Credit score: DailyKhaleej / File

DUBAI: In April 2004, the SARS-CoV virus escaped not as soon as, however twice, from a Chinese language lab. Again then, the WHO unabashedly criticised the lab’s safeguards, or the lack of it.

It was reported {that a} 26-year-old feminine postgraduate pupil and a 31-year-old post-doctoral male, who each labored for the Chinese language Institute of Virology (CIV) in Beijing, a part of China’s Middle for Illness Management, had been contaminated on separate events, WHO spokesman Bob Dietz in Beijing informed The Scientist.

The WHO made the twin incidents public virtually instantly, unconcerned about Chinese language official response. At a information convention on April 25, 2004, WHO Western Pacific Regional Director Shigeru Omi brazenly criticised the lab’s security procedures.

When WHO criticised China, and received full entry

Laboratory security “is a serious issue that has to be addressed,” Omi confused then. “We have to remain very vigilant…it’s a question of procedures and equipment. Frankly, we are going to go in now a take a very close look,” he stated.

In 2004, instantly following the reported leak, the WHO’s panel of worldwide specialists got full entry to the lab in query.

“We’ve been told we’ll have full access, be able to test all the surfaces, interview people who worked there, and look at documentation to find out what was being done,” Dietz was quoted as saying.

Following the 2004 leak, the lab was shut down. Then 200 employees had been positioned in isolation in a lodge close to one other lab in Cham Ping, about 20 kilometers North of Beijing.

Coronavirus: 16 years later

Quick ahead 16 years later: In January 2020, at the starting of the novel coronavirus outbreak, the WHO took China’s narrative that the virus jumped from a seafood market, with out bothering to examine.

On January 14, 2020, the WHO despatched out a tweet stating: “Preliminary investigations performed by the Chinese language authorities have discovered no clear proof of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) recognized in #Wuhan, #China”

This, regardless of the incontrovertible fact that by mid-January, Chinese language medical doctors knew that COVID-19 was already spreading between people. On January 23, 2020, the WHO “welcomed” efforts by China to “investigate and contain the current outbreak”, although no WHO specialists had been on the floor to validate any investigation being performed.

On January 24, a examine on 41 sufferers printed in The Lancet by Chinese language clinicians disproved the Huanan-Seafood-Wholesale-Market-was-the-origin-of-SARS-CoV-2 narrative.

It took just a few extra days, on January 28, 2020, when WHO’s worldwide specialists got entry to the nation, throughout the go to of Director-Basic Tedros Adhanom to Chinese language President Xi Jinping.

Picture Credit score: DailyKhaleej

On January 30, a bigger clinical study, done on 99 confirmed coronavirus patients in another hospital in Wuhan, was printed, reinforcing the earlier one, and additional confirming “evidence of human-to-human transmission.”

That very same day the first case of human transmission was confirmed on US mainland. The following day, January 31, 2020, US President Donald Trump shut US borders to China.

The WHO additionally assailed Trump’s transfer. The company’s officers heaped praises upon China’s cooperation and transparency.

It has emerged, according to AP, that whereas WHO officers profusely thanked the Chinese language authorities for sharing the genetic map of the virus “immediately” (the Shanghai lab that shared the coronavirus DNA sequence on a global virology server on January 11, 2020 was shut the next day), there is a flipside to the story — certainly one of important delays by China and appreciable frustration amongst WHO officers.

Publicly, the WHO had been singing praises. Privately, officers reportedly expressed frustration, even exasperation, over not getting the info they wanted to struggle the unfold of the lethal virus, according to the AP report.

They’re conscious of great penalties: On December 30, 2019, Chinese language physician Li Wenliang warned colleagues about the outbreak of an sickness resembling SARS, which kicked off a pandemic in 2003.

As a substitute of heeding the name, Li and colleagues had been arrested and warned that anybody spreading “rumors” on social media can be punished.

The hope was that, by praising as a substitute of criticizing, the WHO would obtain well timed details about the new outbreak from China, the place the outbreak began. The buttering up was delicate, coated in niceties.

Niceties over science

For WHO, a change of tune was a calculated tact, one by which lodging took priority over good science — with devastating outcomes: over 7 million instances, together with 682,800 in the Center East and 403,000 deaths as of Monday (June 8, 2020).

The occasions moved like a slow-motion horror flick. For instance, on January 22, when WHO reported that human-to-human transmission was already occurring and a preliminary “R0 estimate of 1.4-2.5”, nevertheless it declined to declare the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern”.

On January 31, 2020, a day after the first case of human-to-human transmission was reported in the US mainland, Trump banned journey from China by overseas nationals, alongside declaration by US Secretary of Heath and Human Companies Alex Azar of “public health emergency” over the virus outbreak.

It was then, on January 31, 2020 itself, that the WHO declared the coronavirus “a worldwide well being emergency”.

The US journey ban didn’t sit properly with the WHO management.

Once more, WHO sang praises for China, and unleashed a tongue-lashing on different nations. “The main reason for this declaration is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated then.

When WHO attacked border closures

On February 2, 2020, as the virus clocked in 361 deaths in China, the WHO assailed the US transfer, saying the world doesn’t need to take drastic steps resembling border closures.

The explanation he gave: shutting down air journey is “unnecessary”.

In the phrases of WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a travel ban would “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade”.

By February 28, 2020, all the world’s passenger planes had been grounded — with air site visitors down by 95 per cent.

This time, given the shutdown of total nations, no one listened to the WHO.

On April 14, 2020, US President Donald Trump introduced a transfer to withdraw all American funding to the WHO.

What went flawed?

What the company thought was a helpful, efficient tact, blew up in the face of tens of hundreds of deaths and tens of millions of job destroyed, as each the world’s well being world economic system took devastating hits.

The SARS disaster in 2003-2004 triggered 774 deaths and an estimated US$40 billion hit to the world economic system. At the moment, world well being governance mechanisms had been deemed insufficient given the speedy world unfold of the virus.

Following the SARS pandemic, the Worldwide Well being Laws (IHRs) had been revised in 2005 underneath the WHO. These had been the adjustments launched:

The WHO is authorised to problem journey warnings with out first receiving approval from the related authorities.

The WHO was additionally allowed to hunt info from non-official sources to reinforce its illness surveillance capacities.

It formalised the WHO’s impartial illness surveillance capacities

The WHO was authorised to problem Public Well being Emergency of Worldwide Concern alerts, primarily based on each official and non-official info.

The IHRs additionally mandated remodeling home well being programs and networking them throughout borders in the struggle in opposition to infectious illness.

To hold out the new IHR, the WHO was given an essential position — issuing “best practice” tips to nationwide and subnational authorities, and monitoring nationwide well being programs’ pandemic preparedness.

Areas the place WHO failed

Critics of the WHO level to key weaknesses in the world well being governance system which led to its subsequent failure throughout the COVID-19 outbreak:

1. Subservience to main funding states.

Trumps transfer to defund the WHO will not be the first. In the 1970s, the WHO largely defunded by its fundamental funders, the US and Western European nations, after communist member-states pushed via a declaration calling for a “health for all agenda”, demanding well being as a human proper, drawing consideration to deep well being inequalities between wealthy and poor nations.

Picture Credit score: Statista

By the 2000s, donors immediately managed round 80 per cent of the WHO’s price range. Right this moment, the WHO’s whole annual price range is round $5.6 billion (in comparison with the Australian federal well being price range for 2019–20 at $120 billion).

With restricted price range and capability, the WHO management is compelled to be extremely conscious of its fundamental funding states, thus jeopardising its independence, stated specialists.

2. Sick-fitted for its central position in illness surveillance and response coordination.

WHO specialists additionally assumed that infectious illnesses are more likely to emerge in growing nations — as a consequence of their poor sanitation and governance capacities — then unfold round the globe. Growing nations, given restricted resourced to assist construct up their home well being programs, had been subjected to ongoing surveillance by the WHO and developed nations.

Developed nations solely moved in with funding to guard their very own inhabitants. When an outbreak of infectious illness happens, developed nations supplied funding and intervened quickly to handle the speedy downside.

When the outbreak is introduced underneath management, the funding dies up. Such intermittent interventions — in the case of Ebola, SARS MERS and Zika — did little to assist construct up main well being capability of their recipient states, and nations had been largely supposed to make use of their very own sources in the direction of pandemic preparedness.

These components mixed to create an epic fail of world well being governance uncovered by COVID-19. However fairly aside from earlier assumptions, the pandemic didn’t emerge in a growing nation, however in China.

The remainder is historical past. However the numbers left by COVID-19 shall be felt by tne tire world for some time.

WHO

The WHO was established on April 7, 1948, and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The WHO is a member of the United Nations Improvement Group.

The WHO is a specialised company of the United Nations accountable for worldwide public well being. The WHO Structure, which establishes the company’s governing construction and rules, states its fundamental goal as “the attainment by all peoples of the highest attainable degree of well being.”

Price of COVID-19

Early estimates level to $3.5 trillion in financial output misplaced to pandemic, in line with Statista. By the finish of February, the pandemic had already worn out $6 trillion off world shares.

The UN’s mid-year report, in the meantime, stated the novel coronavirus is anticipated to slash world financial output by almost $8.5 trillion over the subsequent two years, wiping out almost all good points of the final 4 years.

By comparability, the SARS disaster in 2003-2004 triggered 774 deaths and an estimated $40 billion hit to the world economic system. On the different hand, the Gulf Struggle had a $76 billion worth tage; the Vietnam Struggle, $500 billion; the Korean Struggle, $336 billion; and World Struggle II, virtually $Three trillion, in line with an estimate made by Chris Hedges, in his ebook What Each Individual Ought to Know About Struggle.

In April, the US Federal authorities was reportedly on its technique to spending almost $four trillion greater than income in 2020, and that as much as 20% of American could possibly be rendered jobless.

It has been six months since the first SARS-CoV-2 infections had been reported. The world, gingerly ready for a vaccine, is simply popping out of lockdowns. And most of the people are not sure about what is going on to occur subsequent.

As for the WHO, it could have to maneuver a mountain to fix its credibility.

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wildcardwriting · 7 years ago

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Prompt [BNHA]

[Boku no Hero Academia Fanfiction]

To Reject Fate’s Design

While I did read the manga when it first came out, my feelings on the Bnha are lukewarm, and the story and plot has lost me. I’m writing this to mostly work out my frustration with it. Be warned this may or may not be continued, or added on. Anyone may adopt it at any time. Just let me know if you do, I’m interested to see what direction other people go.

Overview Summary: When Izuku’s family discovered his lack of a quirk, a decision was made and a family heirloom was passed down. Izuku receives a set of hairpins and everything changes. Or the fanfiction where Izuku has Orihime Inoue’s hairpins and becomes able to use the powers of rejection and things change drastically. NOT a Bleach crossover.

Izuku’s has more family just his mother and his absent father.

When he’s quirk doesn’t manifest like all the other kids, his mother turns to the rest of her family, and she gets a rather long ear full. Especially when they make her explain his situation in depth.

They remained her rather painfully how quirks didn’t use to exist, and it was normal, rather that quirks are like their name--quirks that pop up.

Izuku and his mother move back home, and Izuku is given the support and freedom to be the best he can be.

He gains skills in multiple forms of defensive, and his ability to analysis quirks is encouraged to the point that even his grandfather is shocked (and his family members will speculate that maybe the doctors are wrong and he does have a quirk).

He gains the Shun Shun Rika hairpins at some point and soon masters using them.

Izuku studies hard, and enters another hero school, graduating early, but finds himself disillusioned with the hero system. He’s 14 years old, and at a crossroads.

Heroes are famous but most end up in debt, and there’s so much damage to public property that the people saved often spiral into poverty trying to recover their livelihood, even though heroes are supposed to pay them back.

80% of people who become heroes are from rich backgrounds, while 70 to 80% of villains are people who lived in poverty, and/or crime-field neighborhoods. People that society has forgotten, or doesn’t care about. But the most damning fact that 30% percent of villains are the direct result of hero intervention.

Thus, Izuku comes to a number of realizations. Most heroes even after they graduate, still don’t fully understand their quirks, and don’t the fine control needed to protect the public, and still, end up hurting people.

Thus, when Izuku returns to his old hometown, he moves into one of the most troubled neighborhoods, and tucks his hero license into a safe deposit box in the back of his closet and starts working. He goes out into the neighborhood and starts helping where he can--fixing old buildings, setting up shelters, setting up soup kitchens, teaching kids to control their quirks, helping children with their homework. He uses his hairpins to heal injuries and becomes a central pillar in the neighborhood, stopping fights and even getting the two yakuza groups in the area to get along.

He becomes so famous, that everyone knows ‘Deku’.

He does so much that the area that once was so dangerous, is changing into a safe place to walk at night, that even rich neighborhood can’t say they are.

But he also starts hearing troubling things. Starts hearing about the League of Villains, and refuses to let such a dangerous group of people destroy the peace.

So, he takes the problem into his own hands. He makes a visit to U.A. Academy. He is not impressed. At all. The students' freak out and the teachers start attacking him before he can even explain anything. Because they assume he is a villain. He is not. Apparently, no one reads the U.A. School Rules or they would know that the U.A. Barrier allows Students, Special Entry, AND all registered Heroes entry. (For the record though even Nedzu doesn’t know think about it because the U.A. Barrier Rules are like three hundred pages long.)

‘Deku’ instantly becomes a famous villain, and he is not happy. He gets a call from his mom (still in the middle of a messy divorce with her husband, worried and he has to explain everything, “I didn’t break into U.A. I walked into U.A. with my hero license on me. I am a registered hero. The U.A. Rules allows registered heroes access.”)

Still, he is so done, so he goes home and wakes up the next morning ready to get this nonsense fixed only to discover that everyone in his area is beyond happy for him. Because obviously being a villain is the only valid job for people like them. Even if ‘Deku’ is the strangest villain they’ve ever met.

“I always thought you were the coolest person ever!” Says yet another kid as he passes by. “Even if you nag me to eat my greens.”

Suffice to say, Izuku is very much not happy, so the next days he returns to U.A. only to get caught in an actual attack on U.A and he ends up having to save all the idiot kids and their teacher. He holds off the villains long enough for all the other heroes to appears, and while they do the fighting he heals Eraserhead.

After the villains finally retreat, about with some pointed threats, they turn their attention on ‘Deku’ and of course try to capture him, thinking he’s hurt Aizawa.

Izuku is annoyed and lectures all of them while he dodges attacks before he leaves.

‘Deku’ becomes even more famous and suddenly there are people talking about him in the highest levels of the hero world when Recovery Girl discovers that not has Aizawa been healed, he’s better than before. Healing Quirks are incredibly rare less than 0.05% have them, and the fact that he is so much more powerful than Recovery Girl’s is dangerous and incredibly useful.

Plans are made and a secret agreement is made by the Japanese Government, the highest levels of the Hero Community to only capture and not kill ‘Deku’ no matter what, because his quirk could be the only thing to restore All Might.

Becomes the most hunted person in Japan almost literally overnight. Sightings of him are now sent to the police and U.A. as they try to capture him and fail. (Because Izuku may not be as experience in fighting as them, he is very resourceful. Sewers, vents, parkour, and when that doesn’t work, flying on his barrier, Izuku knows the terrain and used it to his advantage.)

Both the police and the U.A. are so confused by ‘Deku’, and can’t understand him at all, but they don’t have time to focus on him because the Villian League are getting bolder.

It becomes a habit. The police and the heroes chase Izuku, Izuku runs, but one day it seems like they capture him, and then things get weird when it's discovered not to be Deku, but some morphing villain and eventually it gets solved but not before some pointed questions get asked.

Kacchan remembers Izuku and does some research (but he’s bad at it and thinks his former loser friend becomes a villain) and suddenly the cops go beating down the door of Inko’s house and start demanding answers about whether her son is a villain. She firmly denies this and proceeds to prove her point with pictures from his hero graduation with thoroughly confuses the police because their one lead is wrong. (No one considers the fact that they are the same person because Izuku is in his hero outfit in all the pictures at about the same height, while ‘Deku’s’ hair is more unkempt and he’s not wearing his mask.

It eventually all comes to head in that the villains attempt a massive recruitment and Izuku stops them but not before getting hurt and ends up in the hospital were the U.A. staff and police start interrogating him when another unrelated villains attacks and things get confusing.

Izuku does solve the problem by restoring the hospital and healing the heroes before he runs off because he needs to get groceries.

He returns the next day, and finally, FINALLY explains the problem and shows proof, and All Might is healed.

More Ideas

Yea, there's a lot of thoughts I had for this particular universe but I wasn't quite sure how to add them all in/was to lazy to. Izuku does a good majority of the work by himself, I'd like to think, but I think he has a team of sidekick he might let intern with during the school year from his old school, and eventually it becomes something that the school mandates because it shows a different side of the hero industry that just isn't present or even obvious.

Also, in this universe, I might even go the route and say that maybe Izuku has a super-supportive family that backs him up like 150%, especially when they see how many good Izuku is doing, and the people he's affecting. Maybe local businesses donate food or funds and there's like a ton of charity work going on and so on and so forth. I think maybe somewhere down the line (I can't decide where I think it would be better for this to happen) Izuku's quirk is listed and even though it can heal its not immediately obvious for a couple of reasons.

Reason One: Izuku read up on the rules about Quirk Registration and even though he needs to register his quirk, it can be named anything and in any language. So he names it "Apversti Dalla" in a little obscure language (Lithuanian: reverse fate) and of course, that's vague as fuck but no one can complain because what he did is not illegal and he lists it as being to make barriers, even though it can do so much more. But then again laws don't require he write a comprehensive report on his quirk just that he writes something 'correct' down. Izuku does both, technically and because he knows quirk information is part of open records for both the heroes and the public he know that he's made a good decision.

Reason Two: Unlike U.A. which is all showy and has a televised sports festival, his school is smaller and not as rich. So anything that happens at his school is...not really an open secret and it's not like the people are going to shout about his power from the rooftops so, nothing really comes of it. Maybe word of him will get out but meh. It's all rumors, and everyone is much more interested in the newest kids at U.A.Maybe instead of a different country, Izuku simply goes to the Internation School on the American Military Base and get his certification through them, and receives his American/Japanese duo license and registers the paperwork. I don't know the ideas are endless.

I'll have to think more on this later.

#bnha #izuku midoriya #bamf izuku #prompt

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killscreencinema · 7 years ago

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Splatterhouse 3 (Sega Genesis)

Of all the Splatterhouse games, this one sticks out as the game I most remember. For one thing, I had the opportunity to play it a lot more on my cousin’s Sega Genesis; secondly, the photo-realistic cut scenes are hauntingly memorable. I mean just watch how kick ass this opening is:

youtube

An intro like that leaves an indelible impression the mind of a 12-year-old. The music excellent and perfectly captures the dark, horror tone of the game. I also love the design for the Terror Mask, which helps to further deviate it from the Jason hockey mask that it shamelessly ripped off in the first place.

Splatterhouse 3, released by Namco in 1993, picks up where the second game left off only five years later. Our hero Rick has since married Jennifer, a natural next step in any relationship after one has saved their significant other from the bowels of Hell, and the two have a son named David. Rick uses his experiences battling evil demons to succeed in a nightmare world more devoid of morality and compassion than Hell itself - Wall Street. Rick is living happily with his family in a gigantic mansion when his home is invaded by demonic forces that have once again been summoned by a mysterious, evil force. Rick must don the Terror Mask for what he hopes is the final time to save his family and paint his mansion walls with demon guts!

While the first two Splatterhouse games are pretty similar in gameplay, Splatterhouse 3 takes the series into a more brawler direction, allowing Rick to move across different planes as opposed to being stuck in one 2D plane, ala Bad Dudes. Rick’s move set has changed, with him now being able to link together punching combos; headbutt the enemy into submission; toss the enemy across the room; or, if you perform the button combo correctly, Rick can do a “devastating roundhouse kick maneuver” (as Vince McMahon would call it). There are also a variety of weapons Rick can use along the way, but good luck holding onto them, because the minute you’re even touched by a bad guy, the weapon falls to the ground and is promptly scooped away by a ghost head. Finally, another new addition to the game is Rick’s ability to “power up” after collecting enough orbs scattered about the house. Once activated, Rick bulks up and goes all Amagon on some demon asses, though I must confess, it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference defensively or offensively. One of my biggest complaints about this game is the uselessness of the “power up” feature. You get constantly knocked on your ass just as easily in roid rage form as you do in regular form! Also, why does Rick’s suit grow back when he returns to regular form?

Cause video games I guess.

One of features that best separates Splatterhouse 3 from its predecessors is the ability to choose your own path through the level. Whenever you clear a room of monsters, creepy music plays and you can press start to bring up a map with which you can plot your path to the boss. However, sometimes the most direct route isn’t a straight line, as there are secret shortcuts throughout that can lead you to helpful power-ups or get you to the boss faster. By the way, speed is essential if you want Rick to save his family as each level has a counter ticking down to their doom. It’s actually quite challenging to save them in time, especially as the game goes on and the bad guys get cheaper.. er, I mean harder. In my playthrough for this review, I saved no one - not a single family member. I’m sure with repeated playthroughs I’d eventually discover the most optimal path in each map to reach them in time, but the frustration simply isn’t worth it.

Which brings me to the insane difficulty. I’ve said this before in this blog and I’ll say it again - I don’t mind a challenge. I’d just prefer a fair one. There are only six levels, so the game designers drastically increase the difficulty curb after the first level. Enemies can take a sizeable chunk of your life away, really quickly, before you can do anything about it. Also, as mentioned before, Rick’s ass becomes really well acquainted with the ground throughout the game, whether he’s in roid rage mode or not. So you’re pretty underpowered - thanks a lot Terror Mask. The roundhouse kick can level the playing field pretty quickly, but good luck getting it to work consistently enough to be helpful, as the controls, while responsive, seem to have trouble reading the simple “right, left, attack” commands needed to do the roundhouse... or maybe I just sucked at doing it. That’s entirely possible. Either way, the difficulty got so frustrating I found myself getting bored and annoyed by the game really quickly.

Flaws aside, I still overall recommend the whole Splatterhouse trilogy to fans of horror games and beat ‘em ups alike. They definitely have a distinct style that perfectly captures the gruesome schlock of 80s horror movies while being a pretty fun gaming experience. That being said, now that I’m done covering all of the 16-bit Splatterhouse games, I suppose it’ll be time for me to check out the updated current gen (well, last gen) reboot soon...

#splatterhouse #splatterhouse 3 #Namco #Sega Genesis #16 bit #brawler #retro gaming #review #killscreen #cinema #horror #Terror Mask

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howtomakeagingersnap-blog · 6 years ago

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Ready Player One, Earnest Cline

Ready Player One, published in 2011 by Ernest Cline, depicts a decaying dystopian world destroyed by pollution, lack of sustainable energy options, mass extinction events as a result of climate change, war, poverty, starvation, mass urbanization, and other man-made catastrophes, set in the year 2044. As available real estate rapidly shrinks (and prices increase) due to more and more people emigrating to cities, working class families are forced out of small towns and towards massive metropolises. To maximize the use of ground space, trailers began being stacked on top of one another. The majority of major cities are now surrounded by massive networks of stacks, sometimes lacking accessibility to clean water or sewage systems. Energy is generated with old solar panels tacked to roofs, and the stacks are connected by old pipes, support beams, and other recycled materials, with footbridges added to assist mobility. These stacks can range from fifteen to over twenty trailers high, resulting in massive structural instability that can cause collapse, sometimes even bringing down as many as five neighboring stacks as well, displacing up to 100 households at a time. With the increasing wealth inequality and caste-like nature of people’s economic status, people were desperate for an escape. In this world, humanity has turned to fully immersive virtual reality for almost any function. Aside from food, sleep, medical attention, and procreation, the majority of human behaviors occur on this virtual reality platform.

The platform is called the OASIS, and with sensory input targeting users hearing, sight, touch, and even smell, users are able to fully immerse themselves within virtual reality seamlessly. Parents turn to the OASIS to raise their children for them, employing virtual interactive education programs free for public use to teach basic motor, socialization, and academic skills. As children get older, they turn to virtual schools to receive their free public education, entertainment, and socialization. The school provides equipment necessary for accessibility, giving students the bare minimum technology required for class; an OASIS console, haptic gloves that translate hand movements to VR and can transmit physical sensations, and a visor. Eventually, many of these children go on to join the virtual work force in the OASIS. The OASIS has only a small fraction of it’s content available for free, and many individuals work multiple jobs for various independent companies within the OASIS in order to survive. The OASIS has a virtual currency known simply as credit; a currency worth more and more stable than the majority of actual currencies in reality. This currency, and the internal economy developed in the OASIS as a result, are key to the commercialization of virtual reality in Ready Player One.

Developed by retro-aficionado James Halliday, the OASIS evolved far beyond Halliday’s expectations and goals. Before his death, he pre-programed a script to be run that would supposedly allow users to attend the funeral he staged for himself for this specific purpose. Users soon found out that Halliday was offering the deal of a lifetime- one dedicated gamer that finds the 3 keys hidden amongst various Easter Eggs (subtle references inserted by the creator) and uses them to unlock the 3 gates, also hidden amongst Easter Eggs, will receive full ownership of the OASIS. The Easter Eggs, keys, and gates were presented in ways that, once discovered, users would immediately know what they had found. Naturally, such an opportunity sparked millions of players to get involved in this hunt. Easter Egg hunters would eventually be simply called “gunters”, and as time goes on, their numbers begin to die down. Five years after the challenge was issued, we meet our protagonist, Wade Watts; one of the few remaining dedicated gunters.

Wade is antisocial, has few friends both in the OASIS and in reality, and comes from a difficult upbringing. His mother passed away when he was at a young age due to drug overdose, causing him to be sent to live with his aunt in the stacks. His Aunt Alice is generally too busy working her day job as an OASIS telemarketer, her night job as an escort in an online brothel, and dealing with her bum boyfriend to be any sort of positive influence on Wade. She struggles to support her family and her drug use, at one point forcibly taking Wade’s laptop to pawn it, claiming that the money is to pay rent. Wade owns the barest minimum number of possessions, at one point describing his entire winter wardrobe as a single outfit consisting of “warn corduroys, baggy sweater, and oversize coat.” (Cline, 29) Wade doesn’t get along with his family whatsoever, and seeks solitude in his hideaway- a broken down van hidden in a pile of half-crushed cars and trucks no longer in use. Here, within the pitch-black, empty-of-seats, interior, Wade is able to be undisturbed while logged into OASIS. Wade has stored two extra laptops and hooked up a power strip and desk lamp to ensure that he’s never without OASIS access.

Parzival, Wade’s avatar, is a sort of upgraded version of Wade. As Wade himself says, “I’d designed my avatar’s face and body to look, more of less, like my own. My avatar had a slightly smaller nose than me, and he was taller. And thinner. And more muscular. And he didn’t have any teenage acne. But aside from those minor details, we looked more or less identical.” (Cline, 41) Wade’s description of the changes he made to his avatar were drastic; he’d changed his facial bone structure, weight, fitness level, and appearance of hygiene. These differences are the sort of traits that magazines frequently get criticized for photoshopping onto women specifically because of how unrealistic the final image is. He himself views these changes as inconsequential, which speaks towards his ego. Wade’s ego is prominent throughout every challenge he faces, especially in regards to the sheer amount of (outside of Halliday’s challenge, useless) information that he knows about the 80′s.

For the sake of avoiding spoilers, a more in depth analysis of the book with more complete plot details and examples will be posted later in the form of an analytic essay. Anyone hoping to avoid spoilers should not read this essay, although that should have been evident by my previous statement. In this essay, I’ll be examining the elements of interactive fiction within the OASIS as a whole and within Halliday’s Egg Challenge specifically. I’ll also be analyzing the problematic nature of Cline’s approach to gender through his depictions of Wade and Art3mis, and discussing the implications of these problems in the world of gaming and VR as a whole. Highlights will include a step by step examination of Wade and Art3mis’s initial reaction by discussing the sheer number of red flags that Wade displayed that would have been disturbing to any normal woman. Spoiler alert- there are TOO MANY.

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businessonlinemarket · 6 years ago

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konigstiger1944 · 4 years ago

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12 Health Benefits Of Coffee If You Drink It The Right Way

Coffee is probably one of the most popular beverages in the world. It’s a symbol of social interactions, leisure time, and mornings. Besides this cultural significance, coffee can have many health benefits and make your life more fulfilling. So, let’s find out more about this wonderful drink and learn about all the ways it can make you healthier.

The Story Of Coffee

Coffee has been part of human life for so long that no one knows how exactly it was discovered. There’s an Ethiopian legend saying that goats were responsible for its discovery. A shepherd named Kaldi noticed one day that his goats had more energy after eating berries from a nearby tree. Soon enough he shared this find with the local monastery and curious monks used these berries to concoct a drink from them. The new-made beverage kept them awake all night and quickly enough the word about coffee spread to the Arabian peninsula where its cultivation and trade began.

Europe started drinking coffee sometime in the 17th century. Although it was controversial in the beginning, soon it became favored in big cities where people drank beer and wine for breakfast. Although it arrived in the New World at the same time, tea was the drink of choice until the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Plantations started to grow all over the world because missionaries and colonists carried the seeds with them. Today, it's unimaginable to have a life without coffee and it even found a way in cosmetic products and food.

How To Make Your Coffee Drinking Healthier

There is a belief that if you take certain things in moderation, they can be good for you. The same applies to coffee. To start with healthier coffee drinking, choose varieties from organic plantations that don’t use pesticides or other harmful chemicals. Also, avoid adding sugar and replace it with healthier sweeteners, like stevia or just add cream.

Since coffee contains caffeine which can keep you awake, don’t drink it before sleep or later in the afternoon. If you have cravings for a cup nonetheless, go with decaf since it has no caffeine but has all the flavors. Just listen to your body and observe its reaction to coffee to know how many cups are your daily limit.

It Can Help With Weight Loss

You probably noticed that fat-burning supplements contain caffeine. This is nothing unconventional or misleading since caffeine can boost metabolism by 3–11%. Excess weight is one of the most serious issues today, especially in the modern world. Based on the World Health Organization data, almost two billion adults were overweight and over half a million were obese in 2016.

These numbers have tripled in the last 40 years because the way of life has drastically changed. Today, people spend a lot of time in a sedentary position, don't have time for physical activity, and eat unhealthily. While you have to improve your lifestyle all together, coffee can help you with your weight loss plan and increase fat elimination.

It May Keep Your Liver Healthy

The liver has one of the most important functions in your body — detoxification. Everything you ingest and absorb through your digestive tract goes into the blood that then enters the liver for filtering before reaching the rest of your body. One of the most dangerous conditions of the liver is cirrhosis which can even lead to devastating consequences like its failure.

However, this is where coffee can help. A study has shown that drinking four or more cups of coffee per day can lower the risk of cirrhosis up to 80%. Of course, you still need to eat and behave in a healthy way to avoid diseases that can lead to cirrhosis.

It Can Lower The Risk Of Diabetes

Diabetes is a disease caused by insulin resistance or the inability of your body to produce enough insulin. Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas which is responsible for helping cells to use glucose for energy. If you don't have enough insulin or your body can't use it properly, you can experience a rise in blood sugar and develop diabetes.

Coffee can reduce the risk of diabetes for as much as 50%, sometimes even more. One coffee per day can cause a decrease in the risk of type 2 diabetes by 7%, based on the study from Australia. It reviewed 18 studies on coffee consumption which included over 450 million participants. Paired with proper diet and physical exercise, coffee may increase your quality of life and prevent you from developing diabetes.

It May Lower The Risk Of Neurodegenerative Disease

Neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, are deteriorating conditions that greatly affect a person's mental and physical health. There is no cure, but you can do some things to lower the risks and prevent these diseases from occurring.

Diet and exercise are crucial, but coffee may also play a beneficial part in your efforts to ward off these degenerative conditions. People who drink coffee with caffeine regularly have more than 60% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.

It Can Improve Your Mental Health

Depression is a mood disorder that can affect how you think, feel, and behave. It's usually characterized by feelings of sadness and disinterest in everyday things, like showering, sleeping, and working. More than 250 million people around the world suffer from depression regardless of age and gender, though the female population is the most affected.

The good news is that coffee can lower the risk of developing depression by 20% in women if you drink four or more cups every day. It may also decrease the suicide risk considerably by 53% in all those suffering from depression. It’s important to note that coffee shouldn’t replace the talk therapy and medications you may be taking or plan to take.

It May Actually Lower The Risk Of Cardiovascular Disease

You probably heard that coffee can cause high blood pressure. Maybe that's the reason why you avoid drinking coffee or drink it only in the morning. It will indeed raise your blood pressure, but the overall effect is small, only 3–4 mm/Hg, and it may disappear during regular coffee intake.

A lot of studies don’t support theories that coffee can increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases. If anything, they show that people who drink coffee can have lower risks. It can even reduce the risks of stroke by 20%, as one study on the Japanese population showed in 2013. If you have a chronic heart problem, inherited high blood pressure, or incidence of stroke in the family, drink coffee in moderation but don't stop completely.

It Is A Great Source Of Antioxidants

Coffee is full of antioxidants. These substances fight off free radicals which damage cells inside your body. Interestingly, you get more antioxidants from coffee than from your diet, even fruits, and vegetables. This makes it one of the most beneficial drinks you can have, along with others, like kombucha and green tea.

Antioxidants are vital to keep you healthy and protect you from serious diseases, like cancer. They can also delay aging, but none of these beneficial effects is possible if you don't change your lifestyle. Quit smoking, sleep well and adopt healthier behaviors to help coffee eliminate free radicals from your body.

It Brings Up Your Energy Levels

The most famous benefit of coffee is that it helps you stay awake. Many people drink for this reason, especially when they have a big day ahead of them or have to stay up late. Finding a professional coffee machine at the workplace is not uncommon anymore since employers recognize the benefits of this beverage on productivity.

One cup of coffee in the morning with breakfast can increase your focus and sharpen your brain so you can concentrate on finishing your tasks within deadlines. Having coffee is also a nice way to meet new colleagues and feel like part of the team which can boost your enthusiasm to work. Since you will be able to connect to others socially, you can improve your self-esteem and feel accepted by others. This is crucial in a work environment as well as for relationships in your private life since everyday interactions with people can positively affect your mental health.

It’s Full Of Important Nutrients

The body depends on vitamins and minerals to function properly. These nutrients make sure that all your organs are in good condition and have everything they need to be healthy. Coffee contains many of the nutrients that you need daily, even though their content is low.

For example, one cup of coffee can have 3% of the daily recommended intake (RDI) of magnesium and potassium. The same amount of coffee can provide 11% of the RDI of Vitamin B2 and 2$ of the RDI of B3. This may not seem like much, but considering that people don’t pay much attention to what they eat or take dietary supplements, it’s a welcoming addition.

It Can Prepare You For Physical Exertion

Besides making you energized and productive, coffee can also boost your physical performance. Because it increases the epinephrine levels in your blood, you can feel more prepared for physical exertion. Epinephrine or adrenaline is a flight-or-flight hormone produced by the adrenal glands and some neurons. Increased levels of this hormone can speed-up your heart rate, bring more blood to the muscles, and keep you more alert.

Because caffeine can raise adrenaline in your body, you can experience improvement in your physical performance by 12%. So, it’s okay and even recommended to have a cup of coffee before your workout or any other physical activity to boost your endurance.

It May Protect You Against Cancer

In 2018, over 18 million patients were suffering from cancer globally based on estimates by The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). There are many causes for the onset of cancer and numerous successful treatments if the disease is caught early.

Coffee may be helpful against two types of cancer: colorectal and liver cancer. The latter is number three on the list of cancer-caused deaths. According to a study from Sweden, consumption of two cups of coffee per day can decrease the risk of liver cancer by 43%. When it comes to colorectal cancer, a study on almost half a million people concluded that having 4–5 cups of coffee daily can lower the risks of onset by 15%.

It May Prolong Your Life

Until humankind finds a fountain of youth, there are things you can do to live longer. One of those is coffee drinking since it can prolong your life by keeping at bay many diseases, conditions, and harmful processes in the body. Paired with responsible behavior, like healthy living and stress control, coffee may be the elixir of life.

Studies showed that people who drink coffee have a lower risk of death. Researchers observed men and women of adult age for 18 and 24 years, respectively. Men experienced a 20% lower risk of death, while women resulted in a slightly higher find of 26%. People who suffer from type 2 diabetes particularly expressed this health benefit. Diabetics observed for 20 years who regularly drank coffee showed a 30% reduced risk of death, according to study from Finland.

Final thoughts

As you see, coffee drinking can have many health benefits and even prevent some serious conditions from happening. If drunk the right way, coffee can give you energy, prevent stroke, lower the risk of cancer, and help with weight loss. It is also a good way to protect yourself against Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, type 2 diabetes, and live longer.

Today, even those who don’t like the taste of coffee can find a version of this beverage to their liking. How many cups you can have during the day is up to you and the way you tolerate caffeine. So, always listen to your body to not over caffeinate yourself and ruin all the benefits with one sip too many.

The post 12 Health Benefits Of Coffee If You Drink It The Right Way appeared first on RespectYourHealth.eu.

source https://respectyourhealth.eu/12-health-benefits-of-coffee-if-you-drink-it-the-right-way/

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scienceblogtumbler · 5 years ago

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Studying animal coronavirus defences is opening route to human treatments

A team that has spent the last five years developing a pipeline of technologies that can churn out a remedy for almost any newly emerging virus may have treatments ready for safety trials on Covid-19 patients by the end of the year.

The 20-strong private-public collaboration has been pooling and connecting a series of diverse technologies to build a fast pipeline where the genetic code of a new virus can be plugged in at one end – and thousands of vaccines or antibodies can emerge at the other just a few months later.

The pipeline is not ready yet, but the scientists have realised it has already generated antibodies active against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

This work has now received further funding from the European Commission under an emergency call for Covid-19-related research proposals released in late January.

Hundreds of thousands of viruses lurk in the wild, particularly in mammals, with the potential to jump to species such as humans or livestock. Over 20 pathogens have made the leap to humans in the last 30 years, including the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.

‘You cannot really predict what will come,’ said Dr Jean-Christophe Audonnet, senior director of vaccines R&D at drug company Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health, Germany, and project coordinator for the Zoonoses Anticipation and Preparedness Initiative (ZAPI). ‘Scientists have tried to do that for dozens of years now, especially for flu (but to no avail).

‘But maybe we can react much faster when something starts.’

The team built the pipline to respond to three test viruses: Rift Valley Fever, which affects humans and livestock; Schmallenberg, which affects livestock; and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which first broke out in humans in 2012. They want to develop vaccines for domesticated animals, partially to combat the economic devastation when livestock fall prey to viral diseases and partially as a barrier against diseases jumping from livestock to humans. They also want to produce antibodies with which to treat humans directly.

‘Initially we were lacking the actual tools but very soon after the start of the project we came across different ideas and technologies which we incorporated,’ said Dr Audonnet.

Genetic code

The pipeline is triggered when the viral genetic code has been deciphered – which typically takes a few days after the first infection is discovered. Scientists then need to find a fragment of the virus that can trigger an immune response and can be used to build a vaccine.

ZAPI has tried to speed this up by using computer algorithms which predict, based on banks of information, the smallest stretch of any particular virus’s outer shell that will still trigger a strong immune response. The team found that this approach, combined with its pooled knowledge, means it can swiftly identify the best subunit of virus for the next stage.

For the next step in the pipeline, they then needed to find a vehicle that could ferry any such subunit into the body.

‘The idea is that we have a common scaffold (for delivery) which will always be the same one, and we can store, and at the time of a crisis you just add the specific part corresponding to the new virus,’ said Dr Audonnet.

Making a strong bond between the immune-triggering fragment and its delivery vehicle has long been a problem. The solution lay in a protein ‘superglue’ discovered by scientists from the University of Oxford, UK, in 2012, which allows any viral subunit to click, Lego-like, onto the scaffold.

The superglued structure forms the basis of a good vaccine but the team also wanted to make rapid-response antibodies to treat patients.

After trial and error, they discovered that the fastest approach was to administer their own new vaccine to animals. Antibodies from the resulting immune response could be harvested and copied.

They did this using technology invented by one project partner – the Dutch biotechnology firm Harbour Antibodies – which has developed mice genetically engineered to have the repertoire of genes needed to make human antibodies. When dosed with a ZAPI candidate MERS vaccine they produced antibodies which can be cloned and mass-produced swiftly using a new method developed by the Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, another collaborator.

‘You cannot really predict what will come … but maybe we can react much faster when something starts.’

Dr Jean-Christophe Audonnet, senior director of vaccines R&D, Boehringer Ingelheim

Fungus

The team is also exploring the potential of a prolific fungus, developed by another project partner, Dyadic, that can churn out vaccine and antibodies in unprecedented amounts and could further accelerate the manufacturing process.

Dr Audonnet believes ZAPI’s pipeline can massively reduce the time to have animal vaccines, and antibodies for humans, ready.

However, that doesn’t mean such treatments and vaccines could be deployed in such a short timeframe, he says.

‘We are also at the same time having dialogue with the regulatory authorities. If you follow the (current) rules, developing a vaccine or introducing new therapeutic antibodies will take years – to demonstrate safety, efficacy and so on.

‘So we are discussing about having new rules to be implemented (to drastically reduce this timeframe) but we have not changed that yet. We have just shown that, for manufacturing, you can go from (the current) 18 months – 2 years to 2-3 months to deliver large batches of vaccines – 10 million for animals, and thousands of neutralising antibody treatments for human patients.’

The ZAPI pipeline has produced antibodies for all three diseases and is designed to spring into action whenever a new virus emerges. It is designed to be able to respond to about 90% of possible emerging viruses.

‘We are not looking for the best vaccine in the world or the most fancy one. The objective is to deploy the vaccines (for animals) and antibodies (for humans) to a maximum number of people or animals. Even if your vaccine only protects 80% of the population you will stop the outbreak,’ said Dr Audonnet.

In the meantime, however some of the antibodies they have produced that work against MERS turn out also to be active against other beta coronaviruses – a family that includes the current pandemic virus. It is these that are being fast-tracked to see if they could be used, perhaps if there is a second wave of Covid-19 next year. Partners hope to have them ready for human trials by the end of the year.

Researchers have found powerful defence mechanisms in certain bat, camel, monkey and mice species to a range of coronaviruses. This could inform new therapies. Image credit – Paul Asman and Jill Lenoble/wikimedia commons, licenced under CC BY 2.0

Broad spectrum

Looking further ahead, it also raises the prospect of having broad-spectrum antibodies ready for the next epidemic – if it comes from the same family.

‘We think we can really generate antibodies that cross-protect against different human beta coronaviruses so you don’t need to look for a new antibody for the next one, you can have the antibody ready to go,’ said Dr Audonnet.

‘What we see now with the new coronavirus is, I would say, very exceptional,’ said Professor Volker Thiel, virologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. ‘Usually a virus is not well-adapted to a new host.’

He heads a project called COV RESTRIC, which has been probing how animal species differ in their response to attack by a variety of coronaviruses.

To the team’s surprise they have uncovered a powerful defence mechanism common across all the animals they studied – bats, camels, rhesus macaques and mice. It is a potential avenue for new therapies, says Prof. Thiel.

Two-stage

When a pathogen attacks, your immune system mounts a two-stage response: an instant, generic one and a slower one tailored to the specific pathogen.

In the first response, cells release interferon – an alert to tissues around the body to produce up to 350 different proteins in the hope that they will halt the virus.

The scientists took advantage of a library of genes built up by American scientists, each of which encodes one of these 350 proteins. When a coronavirus was administered to cells, each of which contained one of these genes, they found that one molecule, LY6E, stood out as far more effective than the others at counteracting it.

They found the same for a number of coronaviruses they tested, including those that cause MERS, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and some that cause the common cold.

‘I was very surprised to see such a strong effect,’ said Dr Stephanie Pfänder, now at Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany, who worked on the project.

What surprised them more was that, in a mouse model, the coronaviruses specially targeted the cells involved in the body’s second, tailored immune response. If these immune cells don’t swiftly produce LY6E, the coronavirus wipes them out, destroying the body’s chance of launching the second wave of sustained defences against the disease.

‘This is a very important molecule,’ said Prof. Thiel.

‘If anybody in our population has a defect in that gene (which codes for it), they might be very vulnerable to infectious diseases.’

However, it could also be a potential route to new therapies against SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses, including the common cold.

‘The other implication is that if you could stimulate the expression of this gene you might be better protected.’

The research in this article is funded by the EU and the Innovative Medicines Initiative. If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media.

source https://horizon.scienceblog.com/1230/studying-animal-coronavirus-defences-is-opening-route-to-human-treatments/

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viralnewstime · 5 years ago

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Harvey Cantwell has been setting the foundations for a very promising career over the past couple of years. Through the release of his debut EP’s ‘Holiday’ and ‘Talk To Ya’, he joined artists like Little Mix, The Vamps, Lawson and Jessie J on tour in the UK and started building a passionate local fanbase.

Through the power of social media, his fan base started expanding and the 21-year-old singer-songwriter was able to embark on his first world tour in 2018 which included a sold-out run of dates in Australia.

Following the conclusion of the tour, he jumped back in the studio feeling even more inspired by what he wanted his sound and vision to be, and started working on his debut album. The first taste of this new directional shift in his artistry was the infectiously penned ‘Million Ways’ and ‘ME BECAUSE OF YOU’.

HRVY was supposed to be returning to Australia in May for shows in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, but Australian Government restrictions on large events due to the coronavirus pandemic means these shows are now being rescheduled.

When they do happen though, HRVY has assured this live show will be even bigger than before with new choreography and the inclusion of a live band.

Pre postponement, we had a chat to HRVY about the world tour and the improvements he’s focused on to deliver a bigger show, as well as the creative process behind his new single ‘ME BECAUSE OF YOU’ and why he loves the art of collaboration.

Music Feeds: What have you been working on to make this tour bigger and bolder creatively?

HRVY: I’ve been working on my dancing and constantly striving to improve myself, so I feel like that aspect is a lot better this time around. And I’ve got a live band, so that’s going to be even bigger as I usually perform with track, and still do, but it’s really cool to add live players to that dynamic.

MF: So how long do rehearsals for a tour like this usually go for? And how intense are they because with the incorporation of dancing and a live band they sound like they can be pretty crazy?

H: We normally do a week and a half of solid rehearsals for dancing, just so everyone confidently knows the direction for each song. Then we spend about 2-3 days with the musicians and pull all the tracks together and make sure everyone knows how to play the songs and that it collectively sounds good.

To be fair, I’ve been doing a lot of shows in the UK so we feel pretty comfortable with most of the set, but like I said I love changing things up and making things more interesting. So yeah usually around 2 weeks.

MF: After going on your first world tour in 2018, what was the biggest thing you learnt about yourself as a live performer and what you wanted to personally work on?

H: For my last tour I discovered that sleep was a really important thing. Because I was a little bit younger, I was really excited to be travelling and I wanted to stay up and explore each city which was fair enough. But when you combine that with jet lag, it would end up ruining me before shows.

I would be so tired, and luckily once I got out onto the stage the adrenaline would kick in and I would be fine, but this tour I need to get a lot more sleep so I’m more prepared for the shows.

These upcoming shows are also a lot longer than our previous ones as I’ve got more songs out and a bigger catalogue to perform, so I’ve just gotta make sure that I’ve got the stamina to make the whole show to look and sound great.

MF: Reflecting on that Australian leg of the tour, what was one of your favourite memories from your time down under?

H: One thing that stands out to me the most is something that initially sounds like a bad thing, but now that I look back on it I think it’s quite funny.

I had such bad jet lag that at the Sydney show I sat backstage and I literally couldn’t keep my eyes open. So I fell asleep and I got woken up about five minutes before I had to go on stage. I’m not a crier but I just started crying because I was so exhausted and I had never felt this feeling before in my life. I didn’t want to go out on stage in the state I was in but I knew I had to.

As soon as I got out onto the stage and started playing the first song, the atmosphere from the fans just made me switch completely. The Australian fans are just mental and the energy they bring to every show is magical. They are so passionate and thinking about that moment makes me so happy and has become a highlight in hindsight even though it could be looked upon as a negative moment.

MF: You’ve toured with some huge names including Little Mix, The Vamps, Jessie J and Lawson. So has there been a piece of advice or a mantra that one of these artists have given you while out on the road that you’ve really held onto?

H: There have definitely been a few! Brad from The Vamps told me about this straw that helps warm my voice up. It sounds really weird but I was struggling warming up before shows while I was on tour with them and he was like “bro, try this straw, just trust me”. I was a bit reluctant at first but basically, it’s a rubber straw that you put it in a bottle and blow into it, and you warm up doing that so you don’t damage your voice. And he basically just gave me some really good advice about warming up which really helped me.

I also did a show a couple of years ago and I met Shawn Mendes, so I asked him about warming up and he was like, “bro, every time you warm-up, do it in the shower’.

So every time I speak to another male vocalist I just pick their brain about how they warm-up. I always want to improve and these people do it for a living too, and have amazing vocals so I think it’s important to all help each other.

It may sound really boring, but it’s just stuff I needed to know as I wanted to sound and feel better on stage. And there’s no one better to ask than Shawn Mendes, so if he tells you to warm up in a shower then you warm up in a shower *laughs*.

MF: Your new single ‘ME BECAUSE OF YOU’ is a slick pulsating synth bop. So how did this song come together in the studio because it’s quite groovy?

H: It’s a cute little story because I saw a comment on Instagram from a fan that said, “I’m only me because of you” and I immediately loved that line so I went into the studio with the concept to write a song around it.

The producer brought up a beat and it had that 80’s drums with the pulsating feeling during the chorus, which I immediately loved. But I decided to switch it up and start the song acoustically to show that contrast before rolling into that full-blown sound.

We wrote the song and I loved it, so I went back to say thank you to the person who wrote the comment but couldn’t find them.

MF: A bit of a Cinderella moment, isn’t it?

H: *Laughs* it literally was! I actually jumped on my Instagram story and asked people whoever commented that to please message me and I obviously got quite a lot of people saying it was them, so I didn’t know who to believe.

MF: There is a beautiful gospel version of the track on YouTube. So how long did that version take to come together because it seemed so seamless?

H: Thank you bro! It’s always been a big dream of mine to have a choir in one of my songs but it’s never really fit into the actual singles I’ve put it out. With ‘ME BECAUSE OF YOU’ I was approached to do an acoustic version and I was so excited to do that because the song is so drum-driven that I knew it could turn out quite cool and drastically different stripped back.

After we had talks about the direction of the arrangement I got approved to have a choir involved which was so exciting as it meant I got to finally have my dream come true. The choir were insane, and brought the track into a whole new world and made it sound completely different.

When they came into the session they had a listen to the song and came up with their own choral arrangement and showed it to me and I died. They made it their own song and I was blown away.

Like, I love my song and I’m so proud of the original track, but this version is definitely my favourite and it’s also my mum’s [favourite].

MF: I think the most exciting thing about this version of the song was that is showed a completely different side of your artistry to what listeners have heard so far.

H: One hundred per cent! And that was another thing I wanted to do, I wanted to show people another side to me. It’s always great to give fans that sort of content, but it’s great to also show the older audiences that while I may be a young pop kid, I can do something more mature sounding.

MF: You started off as a really young artist who was continually growing and evolving while finding his feet in the industry. So looking back on your first two EPs and where you are at now with your music, do you get self-critical when you listen to those songs back?

H: Bro, I could release a song yesterday and I would be critical about it today *laughs*. I’m always changing my mind about things and always will be. But looking back at those songs, I see them as stepping stones as without those songs I wouldn’t be where I am today, and without releasing that music I wouldn’t be able to improve and get better.

Don’t get me wrong though, I do listen back to some of those songs and think that they are proper cringey but I was also 15/16 years old at the time. I do love the music I have put it out as it made sense at the time and the fans love it and still do, which is why it’s still apart of the live show.

MF: You’ve done a lot of collaboration with artists like Jonas Blue, NOTD, Sigala, NCT Dream and Red Foo. So what is your favourite thing about collaborating with other artists?

H: I just love hearing other people’s thoughts during the creative process as you could be both on different wavelengths, but you end up coming together in such a cool way. It’s also just great to have another brain in the room as creating music can be a little lonely sometimes.

I collaborated with NCT Dream and they are from South Korea and it was just an amazing experience as I got to go out there and experience their culture and meet their fans and make new fans at the same time.

I just love collaborating really. It’s also the way forward I think, definitely with streaming and social media as the more people on the track equals the wider it spreads.

Music has become the universal language. Like the fact you can have multiple languages in one song is crazy and exciting. I never thought I would have a song with a Korean speaking band, but it’s happened and it’s amazing.

MF: Previously in interviews and social media you’ve said that you’re not going to start working on an album until you’ve really found your sound and are fully comfortable with your vision. So through the release of these recent singles would you say that you’re closer to finding that?

H: Yeah, I feel like I have now. I’ve actually been working on an album and it’s going to be released really soon.

But a little while ago I would say that I hadn’t found my sound yet, and I just wanted to focus on experimenting and discovering what that sound was. Whereas now I feel like I’ve discovered who I am as an artist, and found music that I love and feel confident with.

The post HRVY On Lessons From Touring & How A Fan Comment On Instagram Helped Write His Latest Single appeared first on Music Feeds.

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juniorformulamotorsport · 5 years ago

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January/February 2020 – The Great British Chefs Cookbook Club

As if I don’t have enough to do, I’ve recently allowed myself to be sucked into a rather fun group on Facebook (I know, I know…), the Great British Chefs Cookbook Club. The idea of this is that every month a cookbook by a British chef is chosen as the book of the month, then everyone who wants to buys/borrows a copy and sets about cooking whatever takes their fancy from the book, before posting about the recipe, usually with photos.

There have now (not including March 2020) been 24 books, but I only started to join in in January this year, so I have no opinions on 22 of them as yet. There is a throwback Thursday where you can cook from/post about previous books, but I’m not going to buy them just for that, and I may well not buy every book on the grounds that a) I have more than enough cookbooks, and b) I’m not a baker! The books so far that I have not even touched on are:

Hong Kong Diner – Jeremy Pang

New Classics – Marcus Wareing

Planted – Chantelle Nicholson

Little Viet Kitchen – Pham Thuy Diem

Eating Well Everyday – Peter Gordon

Happy Food – Bettina Campolucci Bordi

Great British Chefs Cookbook

Simple – Yotam Ottolenghi

80 Cakes From Around the World – Claire Clark

Scandinavian Baking – Trine Hahnemann

Andina – Martin Morales

Asma’s Indian Kitchen – Asma Khan

Crumb – Richard Bertinet

Casablanca – Nargisse Benkabbou

Bazaar – Sabrina Ghayour

Moorish – Ben Tish

Island Kitchen – Selina Periampillai

Charred – Genevieve Taylor

Mandalay – MiMi Aye

Salt & Time – Alissa Timoshkina

The Book of St John – Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver

Adventures with Chocolate – Paul A Young

The two I have used are Wok On by Ching-He Huang, and Fire Islands by Eleanor Ford. So how did that go? Well, it was a somewhat mixed bag, it’s fair to say.

I’ll take “Wok On” first. It was a winner for the UK in the World Gourmand Cookbook Awards 2020 in the Easy Recipes category and does what it says on the tin. And what it says on the tin is: “Perfect for sautéing, braising, frying and steaming, cooking with a wok is a way of life all over Asia. In Wok On, bestselling author Ching-He Huang celebrates the huge versatility of this magical 2,000-year-old cooking pot with a modern collection of recipes that are simple enough for every day as well as every cook.

Featuring dishes from across Asia, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Macau, almost every recipe can be made in 30 minutes or less and has been created with nutrition, taste and affordability in mind. Many are suitable for those with gluten and dairy allergies, and because Asian food typically includes lots of vegetables, many are also vegetarian or vegan too.”

So what did I make of it? On the plus side, it has some incredibly easy recipes that can be flung together in double quick time with minimal prep and one pan, usually a wok, but on the negative side, you may need to make quite drastic cuts to the amount of soy sauce used, unless that is you want to only be able to taste salt. It’s an award winning book and there are certainly some very appealing recipes in there that I have still to try, but I will be cautious about the seasoning after my initial experiences.

I discovered this issue with the first thing I tried to cook, which was Macanese Rice (with Portuguese Chouriço, Baby Scallops and Coriander). I went for that because, as some of you will know, I have a history with Macau going back to 2001, and the idea of this dish was too much to resist. I couldn’t get the correct chourico and had to settle for a Spanish chorizo instead, which I find to be slightly less intense and definitely less meaty than the Portuguese variety, but beggars can’t be choosers and out here in the sticks you sometime have to settle for what you can get. With the correct seasoning, it would have been very tasty indeed, but instead it left us in need of water, lots of water… I suggest reducing the amount of soy sauce used by half.

Another dish that suffered from too much soy was the Boozy Drunken Prawns, and again, it would probably have been fine with less soy.

By the third dish I’d decided the fault was either with the book or the brand of soy sauce I was using and not with me! As a result, the Chunky Black Pepper Honey Beef (which became venison because that was what I had to hand) was fabulous, because I only used half the soy sauce that the recipe suggested. The result had just the right amount of saltiness but you could also taste the other ingredients!

Chunky Black Pepper Honey Beef

Serves: 4 Time: 15 minutes preparation. 5 minutes cooking

Ingredients:

500g sirloin steak, cut into 5mm thick cubes

Pinch of salt

Pinch of cracked black pepper

1 tablespoon tamari or low sodium soy sauce (I recommend the low sodium variety use half the quantity)

Small handful of coriander leaves for garnish

For the stir fry:

1 tablespoon rapeseed oil

1 garlic clove, whole, peeled and crushed

2 large white onions, cut into 5mm chunks

1 tablespoon Shaoshing rice wine (or dry sherry)

2 red peppers, deseeded and cut into 5mm chunks

For the sauce:

100 mls cold chicken stock

1 tablespoon oyster sauce

1 tablespoon tamari or low sodium light soy sauce

1 teaspoon dark soy sauce

4 tablespoons runny honey

1/2 teaspoon cracked black pepper

1 tablespoon cornflour

Method:

Put the beef in a bowl with the salt, black pepper and soy sauce and mix well.

Put all the ingredients for the sauce into a small jug or bowl and mix well.

Heat your wok over a high heat until smoking then add the rapeseed oil and swirl it around. Add the garlic and cook for a few seconds, then add the onions and stir fry them until they are translucent.

Add the beef and sear on one side for 20 seconds, then turn them over and cook to your liking (medium is probably best). Season with the rice wine or sherry.

Add the red peppers and toss for 30 seconds or until slightly softened.

Remove the beef, onions and peppers from the wok and set aside on a plate.

Add the sauce to the wok and cook it until it reduces and becomes sticky.

Return the beef, peppers and onions to the wok and toss it with the sauce.

Garnish with coriander and serve it with jasmine rice and Garlic Wok Tossed Baby Pak Choi.

Far more successful was the fabulous “Fire Islands”, which has a catch-all description of “recipes from Indonesia”, and which became an even better experience when it became clear that the author, Eleanor Ford, was happy to get involved and comment on what people had done, and how it had gone. She even agreed to a live Q&A session on Facebook where she proved most engaging. As a result I intend to lay hands on her other book, “Samarkand”, as well, especially as there is a plov recipe in it! As for “Fire Islands”, it’s already won two Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in 2020 (in the categories International and Spices), plus it won in its category (Food and Travel) in the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for 2020 as I type this. I think those awards are thoroughly well deserved.

But first, the blurb: “Steep verdant rice terraces, ancient rainforest and fire-breathing volcanoes create the landscape of the world’s largest archipelago. Indonesia is a travellers’ paradise, with cuisine as vibrant and thrilling as its scenery. For these are the original spice islands, whose fertile volcanic soil grows ingredients that once changed the flavour of food across the world. On today’s noisy streets, chilli-spiked sambals are served with rich noodle broths, and salty peanut sauce sweetens chargrilled sate sticks. In homes, shared feasts of creamy coconut curries, stir-fries and spiced rice are fragrant with ginger, tamarind, lemongrass and lime. The air hangs with the tang of chilli and burnt sugar, citrus and spice. Eleanor Ford gives a personal, intimate portrait of a country and its cooking, the recipes exotic yet achievable, and the food brought to life by stunning photography.”

This time I got started early in the month, when I’d planned a few of the dishes for Sunday dinner (and the leftovers to be used up during the following week). An unexpected visitor meant it turned into a late-ish lunch instead. I had realised that I had all sorts of things that were suitable for use with these recipes, and thus we ended up with a veritable feast.

There was an excellent, tangy Sweet and Spicy Mushroom Tongseng, the luxuriously creamy Potato Tuturuga, a melting Sumatran Lamb Korma, with Golden Lace Pancakes, and portions of Spice Rice to mop it all up with. Our guest went back in for seconds of everything so I’m taking that as a vote of confidence! There certainly weren’t as many leftovers as I’d been counting on once we all slumped on the sofas to nurse our food babies. The only thing I didn’t succeed with were the pancakes, and that was because people were getting very hungry so I didn’t have time to mess about making them thin and lacy. I just needed to get food in front of them as soon as possible.

Sweet & Spicy Mushroom Tongseng

Serves: 4 Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

2 lime leaves

1 lemongrass stick, trimmed and bruised

2 cm galangal, skin scrubbed, bruised

1 tablespoon oil

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) oyster mushrooms

3 tablespoons thick coconut milk

1 1/2 teaspoons dark palm sugar (gula jawa), shaved

2 teaspoons kecap manis

1 1/2 large red chillies, seeded and sliced

1 ripe tomato, cut in wedges

For the Bumbu spice paste:

1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds

4 peppercorns

1 small red Asian shallot, roughly chopped

2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

1 candlenut or 2 blanched almonds

1 cm ginger, peeled

1 cm turmeric, peeled, or 1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric

Method:

Start by making the bumbu spice paste. For this small quantity I find this easiest to do with a pestle and mortar. Start with the coriander seeds and peppercorns, then add all the other ingredients and grind to a paste.

Put the bumbu in a large frying pan with the lime leaves, lemongrass and galangal. Drizzle in the oil and stir-fry until fragrant. Loosen the paste with a ladleful of water.

Add the mushrooms and turn to coat in the spices. Add the coconut milk, palm sugar and a good pinch of salt. Cook for 5–10 minutes. The mushrooms will release liquid as they fry. Towards the end of cooking, stir through the kecap manis, sliced chillies and tomato. Taste for seasoning.

Another night saw me tackle the equally delicious Javanese Sea Bream and Spinach, which became Monkfish, Water Chestnuts and Spinach because there was stuff which needed using up before I could even consider shopping for new ingredients. The Sweetcorn Rice went with it brilliantly and my version of Vegetable Urap with Dessicated Coconut was good too with all sorts of things (sausages, steak) as well as the fabulous fish dish. Again, I made changes to the recipe, and used yellow peppers and leeks in place of the edible fern tips or seasonal greens, the fine green beans and the beansprouts because that’s what I had to hand.

Vegetable Urap with Fresh Spiced Coconut

Serves: 2-4

Time: Varies according to your choice of vegetables!

Ingredients:

140 g (5 oz) edible fern tips or seasonal greens, roughly chopped

100 g (3. oz) fine green beans, cut in thirds

100 g (3. oz) beansprouts

1 tablespoon coconut oil

6 small red Asian shallots, sliced

4 garlic cloves, sliced

1 large red chilli, seeded and sliced

100 g (3. oz) grated fresh coconut or 80 g (1 cup) desiccated coconut

100 g (3. oz) cooked black-eyed beans (optional)

juice of a kaffir lime or lime

1 tablespoon crisp-fried shallots

Method:

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and add the fern tips and green beans. Cook for 2 minutes or until just tender. Add the beansprouts for the last 20 seconds of cooking. Drain and leave to cool. If you have used greens that retain a lot of water, gently squeeze them dry.

Set a wok or frying pan over a medium heat and add the coconut oil followed by the shallot and garlic. Cook, stirring frequently, until pale golden, then add the chilli and cook to just softened. Lower the heat and add the coconut along with a good pinch of salt. If using desiccated coconut, also add a splash of water to soften and help the flavours meld. Cook just for a minute, then remove from the heat and leave to cool.

Toss the vegetables and black-eyed beans (if using) with the spiced coconut and lime juice and taste for seasoning. Scatter over the crisp-fried shallots.

Food 2020 – The Great British Chefs Cookbook Club January/February 2020 - The Great British Chefs Cookbook Club As if I don't have enough to do, I've recently allowed myself to be sucked into a rather fun group on Facebook (I know, I know...), …

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