#would love to hear this without the chorals and/or a real backing choir

[putschki1969]

YKL vol.#20～Japanese Seal 20th Special～ Kanagawa Performance Broadcast

2024.06.09 Kanagawa・Kenmin Hall The second concert of this year's Yuki Kajiura live tour was broadcast last night on TBS Channel 1. The tour is titled “Special Japanese Seal” referring to the fact that no Japanese songs are performed. This exclusion does not apply to the encore section. User 蓝原延珠_ on Bilibili kindly provided their recording of the broadcast, you can watch it HERE. I was only able to download a 720p version (~1GB) of it but for the time being, it will do. I am eager to watch it and write a little report. Hopefully an HQ version will pop up in a few days. Without further ado, let's get going〈(•ˇ‿ˇ•)-→

overture〜アンチヒーロー〜Main Theme〜: Right off the bat, I'm noticing that the audio is quite dull and maybe even slightly tinny? Might be the specific recording but it's probably more a matter of the TV broadcasts generally having bad audio. That was clearly noticeable when you compared the Kaji Fes TV broadcast to the BD release. Anyway, we are off to a great start. Glad to see rito and Lino on stage from the get-go and not just for a couple of songs here and there. It always feels a bit awkward for them to have the status of "regular" members but only appearing on stage sporadically. I haven't listened to any songs from the Antihero soundtrack so this is all new to me. Classic YK, the type of song I will always gravitate towards. Beautiful harmonies. Enjoying the slight whine in Eri's voice, so emotional. Love when the epic part starts and you can hear an entire chorus in the background (maybe a bit too much studio magic going on here but I don't mind for grand sections like that). Must have been a real goosebumps moment at the live.

the four rings: Wow, this one is so good. Don't think I've heard it before. Not too familiar with the Heaven’s Feel OST tbh. Really getting goosebumps now. Although I will say that here, the post-editing is a bit overbearing, it seems to almost drown out the vocals of our songstresses. Don't get me wrong, it still sounds amazing and I am enjoying the hell out of it but I wonder how it was like at the venue (with presumably less studio magic). With six singers on stage, they can certainly achieve some powerful choral work but of course it would still pale in comparison to a larger choir. Nonetheless, this is an instant favourite. Hope they will perform it during the Asia tour leg. Although I kinda doubt it since they said that the setlist would be very different. But who knows, it's Fate/stay night so it's probably among the more-likely pieces to be performed among Yuki's huge repertoire. My guess is that they will stick to the most popular anime stuff because they know that will get the audience excited.

absolute configuration: Perfect transition. Never getting tired of this song. And I'm glad we are back to a more natural sound with less studio magic. Solid performance as always.

E.G.O: Have they ever performed this live for a home video release? I don't think so. It was included in one of the live complication albums (Fictionjunction 2010-2013) but I don't recall ever watching a live performance. I have to admit that I haven't even listened to the live audio track, must have dismissed it when I first got the album. I can understand why because it's not really my type of song. It's not bad but not my favourite either. Very old-school YK so that's fun. And there are a couple of nice Keiko parts, that's always a treat.

キッチン革命〜Main Theme〜: A completely new track from one of Yuki's most recent works. Definitely a perfect fit for a show called "Kitchen Revolution" XD Especially the percussion at the beginning. The harmony between Yuriko, Lino and rito works really well, they sound good together. Other than that, it probably won't become one of my favourite songs. Generally not a huge fan of Yuriko as main vocalist. No one does those gorgeous operatic higher harmonies like her but when the spotlight is on her, it's typically not my cup of tea.

voyagers: As far as I know, we only have the studio version and live audio from the compilation album as reference. No official live footage. The song has never really stuck out to me, it is okay but it's a bit too derivative of much better tracks from Yuki. Will keep it short so I don't trigger anyone. But it's definitely one of those songs where I prefer the version with Wakana. Joelle's vocals don't do anything for me here. But since I am not super invested in the song anyway, I can't say I care much.

Historia: opening theme: Beautiful rendition. Love that they brought all six vocalists back on stage for this. Naturally, I'm quite fond of Wakana's version once again (not least of all because this song will always have a connection to Kalafina) but Yuriko does a fanstatic job of singing her parts, admittedly, she has much better control so her voice sounds very crisp and lovely. Joelle provides great support here and their voices blend well together.

forest: Never been a fan. I didn’t like it when Wakana sang it and I don’t like it now that Joelle sings it. It’s not a bad song at all and Joelle sounds fine to me but it’s just not my cup of tea. Next.

My long forgotten cloistered sleep: Now THIS on the other hand I have always loved. I still remember everyone hating Wakana's live version during YKL Vol.#9 but I enjoy it quite a lot. It's true that it's probably not the best she has ever sounded but her vocals here certainly don't warrant all the nasty comments she has received throughout the years for that performance. Of course, I am also obsessed with that WaKei combo!! And you know me, I have a weakness for "lalala"s so this has definitely always been among my favourite YKL songs. As for this performance, I think both Wakana and Joelle are trying are little too hard to emulate Emily Bindiger's timbre. I personally don't think Emily Bindiger has a particularly nice voice so if anyone tries to sound like her, it's always a slight downgrade in my opinion. I'll just say this, if you are one of the people who say that Wakana sounds like a chipmunk in her version, you'll have to say the same thing about Joelle(¬_¬) Long story short, I don't mind this version with Joelle and Keiko. Still very enjoyable. Will definitely be listening to it on repeat.

I swear: Probably one of my least favourite Keiko songs but this is a decent performance. I might even like this more than some of the previous live rendition since it's a bit more delicate(?) I think.

fiction: Another song I could live without…The chorus is solid but it's not one of those songs I'd ever actively listen to.

I reach for the sun: Forever sad that they made Joelle the lead of this song. Keiko does a better job in my opinion and I like the song quite a bit more than "I swear". Overall, the English section has probably been the weakest so far, at least for me. I actually ended up fast-forwarding through most of it.

MC: This MC is quite interesting since Yuki asks her singers to share a story of something they are taking a break from right now. To explain the background of this question, it's a reference to the title of this year's tour: Nihongo Fuin = Japanese Seal ("fuin" basically means to seal up something. You are excluding it/taking a break from it/quitting it/etc). Lino says that despite being a huge lover of the sea, she has been taking a break from going to the beach and swimming in the sea during this summer because it might affect her voice negatively. Yuki has a funny response to that because she says that most of her songs have never really had a summer vibe and actually don't work very well in a summer atmosphere but for some reason, they have ended up always holding their annual tour during the summer time. Keiko has stopped drinking her beloved lattes for the past three months to prioritise her water intake. Gladly, she has overcome the worst parts of quitting already and is getting used to water. Yuki admired her stoic nature. Yuriko would typically refrain from certain things in preparation for a live tour but this year she has completely forgotten about that. About two weeks ago, she decided to quit ice-cream but she only did it half-hardheartedly because it was so hot that she ended up eating it anyway. So yeah, this is a big fail and it's really a "story of NOT taking a break from something" XD Joelle has stopped waking up early. Usually, she is the type to rise together with the sun but in order to increase her sleeping hours, she will wake up later when she is on tour. A restful sleep will help her body heal up and improve her voice. rito has quit chewing gum (and stopped eating certain chewy foods such as squid) because it's bad for your jaw and facial muscles. Kaori has taken a break from watching the drama "Anithero" (for which YK is composing music, the main theme having been performed as the intro of this live). Seems like the song is haunting her a bit too much and the story is getting to her. So once the tour is over and she is no longer singing the song, she will have an easier time watching the episodes. Yuki agrees that the main theme is quite haunting. Especially when she hears one of the singers rehearsing in the dressing-room right before a performance. Eri doesn't really have anything to tell the audience but she and Yuki briefly talk about the difficulties of learning so many songs with coined words.

Gaia: Wow, what a lovely song. Instant like. Really adore Eri here!! Such gorgeous high notes.

Credens justitiam: What a great team-up with Keiko, Eri, Yuriko and Joelle. Eri sounds great together here with Keiko. Does Yuriko sound a bit off here? I don't know. Not 100% into some of her parts.

hepatica: First time actively listening to this song. Very beautiful and tender. I feel like some of Yuki's KnK work might have been inspired by this song. Some parts immediately made me think of "Seventh Heaven".

godsibb: Waaah! Yes!! Always a joy to listen to this song. Glad everyone is on stage for a powerful finale.

Alone: I knew I would love this Pandora Hearts medley. I always do and this one is no exception. Flawless start.

Bloody rabbit: Some squeaky parts at the beginning but overall, solid.

Contractor: OBSESSED. One word. Perfection. There's a reason this is the performance I'm using for this post. I'm forever a slave to Keiko's solo part XD. Also, Eri is such a queen here! So cool!

zodiacal sign: This is the song where you can really tell that they are taking great care of Kaori's condition. No strenuous movements at all. How funny is it to see Rie joining the girls in their little dance?! Cute!! Super fun performance as always.

open your heart: Ughh, I do not like this song at all. They did "Sweet Song"/"paradise regained" for most of the other performances. Would have killed to get either of those two instead of "open your heart". Obviously, "Sweet Song" would have been perfect. From what I heard, the final concert with Kaori in July had an amazing and heart-warming performance of "Sweet Song".

En.Prologue〜このとほかやわらかい: Wish I could grow to love this song. It deserves my love, I know it. But I just can't get into it. But hey, it's a cool performance, I can't deny that. During her solos, Kaori sounds a bit nasal in my opinion. Nothing that takes away from the performance but it's certainly noticeable (throughout the live to be honest - at least during the few songs where she has a substantial solo part. I think you can also hear it during the main MC. Either she had a minor cold that day or it's just a symptom of her pregnancy. Lowered nasal resonance is actually a very common thing for pregnant women.)

En.Parade: Beautiful. No notes.

En.蒼穹のファンファーレ: Solid. Not a huge fan of the song though.

[iturbide]

United in Song

okay so this has been in my drafts for I don’t even know how long and I’m tired of it sitting there collecting dust, so please enjoy this fluffy 3H platonic one-shot.

/////

If there was one thing Dorothea missed about the opera, it was the audience.  There was a certain kind of thrill that came with standing on the stage, staring out into the darkened crowd while the music swelled beneath her voice and feeling their tension, knowing that they held their collective breaths in anticipation, in wonder of her song…there was nothing else quite like it, in her experience.  And while she didn’t really want to go back to that life of endless practices and performances, of cutthroat rivalries and patrons as dangerous as they were wealthy, she felt a little pang standing in the Garreg Mach cathedral, singing her heart out for absolutely no one.

Well, no, that wasn’t quite true.  The monastery choir had finally gotten a few more members, and as the nun in charge dismissed them for the day, Annette and Hilda hurried over before she could wander off.  “Wow, Dorothea!  You were really amazing!!” the little redhead gushed.

“Aw, thanks, Annie,” Dorothea giggled, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.  “You were both great, too!”

“You’re so sweet,” Hilda smiled.  “But we couldn’t hold a candle to you!  Your voice was so beautiful -- and I swear, it filled the whole cathedral.”

Well, that might explain all the sharp looks and decrescendo gestures she’d been getting from the director.

“It’s really a shame nobody else was around to hear,” Annette sighed. 

“I know exactly what you mean.”  Dorothea scanned the rows of empty pews as they walked toward the doors, feeling again that ache of longing.  Even when they did get to stand before an audience, something told her they would just be the choral lead to a devotional hymn for some religious service or another.  “Sometimes I really wish we could just…go out and perform, you know?  Show off a little, hear the applause…”

“…well, why couldn’t we?”

Dorothea paused at the top of the steps, reeling her mind back from another stage dream to focus on Hilda.  “I didn’t think they did that here.”

“Not that I’ve seen.  Or heard about,” Annette agreed.

“So why not do something about it?” Hilda asked.  “Put on a musical performance!  There’s lots of places that would work, like the lawn outside the classrooms, or the walk along the dormitories…”

“Would that really bring in an audience, though?” Annette pointed out.  “Back in Fhirdiad you’d see performers doing shows on street corners, but they never really drew crowds or anything.”

“And wouldn’t it be nice to have a real stage, and a real audience?” Dorothea sighed.  It was a quiet walk across the bridge to the monastery…and the whole way, she just kept turning Hilda’s suggestion over and over.  It really would be nice to have an opportunity to perform…maybe she could ask Professor Manuela about it--

“This is it!!”

Dorothea jumped at Annette’s excited squeak, whirling just in time to see her grab something off the Bulletin Board.  “What is?” she asked, taking the parchment and smoothing it out. 

“A flier for the Weapons Tourney?” Hilda read over her shoulder.  Apparently this month’s challenge was for axe-wielders, and while the pink-haired noble might excel, something told Dorothea that she wouldn’t go anywhere near it without proper incentive from the Professor.

“No!  …well, I mean, yes, that’s what it is, but I mean -- this is the answer!  We have a music tournament!”

“…a music tournament?” Dorothea repeated.

“Yeah!” Annette giggled.  “We could have sign-ups, and people could bring their instruments or sing, and it could have brackets just like they do in the training grounds, only they’d be competing with their music!  And the audience response could be how the winner’s picked!”

Dorothea felt a smile dawn across her face.  “…Annie, that’s brilliant!  We could get a sponsor to help judge ties, and offer a grand prize for the winner…”

“We could make fliers the way they do for the training ground matches, too!” Hilda added.

“I bet if we ask around the monastery, we could get tons of sign-ups -- and I’m sure lots of people would want to see it!” Annette insisted.  “Ooh, this is so exciting!!”

“It’s a wonderful idea,” Dorothea agreed.  “And I’m sure if we join forces, we can make it into a dazzling show.”

As they put their heads together to plan, for the first time in ages, she felt a thrill of excitement for what lay ahead.  Garreg Mach might not have much appreciation for music now -- but if they got their way, Dorothea would make sure that changed.

-----

“A music show?  Oh, you mean like they’ve got at the fair?  Hey, count me in!  Are you gonna have snacks?”

“No, Raph,” Dorothea sighed. 

“You sure?  Everybody likes good food -- I bet you’d get a ton of people to come if they could eat while they watched.”

She shook her head, fighting back a smile.  It was hard to be frustrated with him when he was so enthusiastic, but she did wish he’d think about more than food.  “Do they have snacks for the weapon tournaments at the training grounds?”

“Heck yeah they do!” he laughed.  “I never miss a tourney, they’ve always got something for the people in the stands…”

“…huh.”  She hadn’t known that.  Maybe they could ask about refreshments: after all, everything else had been going splendidly so far.  Professor Manuela had been over the moon when they approached her with the idea, and had swiftly appointed herself as their ‘impartial’ judge (said with a wink that made Dorothea certain she was far more partial than she’d ever admit to being); while the former diva took to planning and preparations, including venue selection and construction, she left the three students in charge of gauging interest and getting early sign-ups so they could start preparing their brackets.  Hilda, rather expectedly, had complained of feeling poorly, so Dorothea had agreed to help out in canvasing the Golden Deer…which had led her, rather unexpectedly, to Raphael and his surprisingly helpful suggestion.

“Alright,” she agreed, making a note for later.  “I’ll see what we can do about snacks, then.”

“All right!!” he cheered.  “You’re the best, Dorothea!”

“Aw, thank you,” she smiled.  “But would you want to take part?  You know, be up on the stage in front of the audience?  We’re looking for any kind of musical talent, whether you sing or play an instrument…”

His face scrunched up for a minute in deep, somewhat painful-looking thought.  “Hmmm…I’m mostly good for muscle,” he shrugged.  “Don’t get me wrong, I love music!  I’m just not much good at makin’ it -- oh, hey, have you asked Bernadetta yet?”

“Bernie?”

“Yeah!  Oh, man, she’s got this little brass thingy she plays -- she was playin’ it in the greenhouse one day, an’ I heard it from all the way in the training grounds!  It was the best thing I’d ever heard!”

“Interesting,” Dorothea mused, scribbling another little note down.

“You didn’t know?”

“Bernie’s pretty shy about her talents,” Dorothea confided.  “Seems she’s got all kinds of hidden ones…”

“Uh…if you go ask her, can you maybe…not tell her I told you?” he asked nervously.  “See, uh…she got pretty upset when I found out, and made me promise not to tell anybody, but then you came talking about music an’ stuff and I just got real excited about maybe seein’ her up there an’ hearin’ it again, so…”

“Oh, Raph, you’re a sweetheart, aren’t you?” she giggled.  “Don’t worry.  I won’t say a word.”

“Thanks, Dorothea,” he beamed.  “You really are the best.”

-----

“M-music show?  Me?  Perform!?  How did you find out?  Did Raphael tell you!?” Bernadetta demanded through the tiny crack between the doors of her room.

“Raphael?  I haven’t talked to him,” Dorothea lied.  “Hilda’s asking around with the Golden Deer, since they’re her classmates, just like Annette’s asking the Blue Lions and I’m asking all my fellow Eagles.  We’re trying to get a list together of students who want to take part.  Do you have any musical talents, Bernie?”

“N-n-no!” she stammered.  “Nope, not me, Bernie’s just good for staying out of the way, yes indeed…”

“I think you’re good for a lot more than that,” Dorothea insisted.  “I know you’ve got so much talent, and it’s such a shame to hide it all away.  Maybe you sing in here, or play an oboe when we’re all away from the dorms…”

“Trumpet,” the archer mumbled.  “B-but I could never get up in front of so many people!”

“Oh, but from on stage, under the lights, you can’t even see most of the audience -- and wouldn’t it be great to share all that talent with the whole academy?”

“Maybe for you!” the archer squeaked.  “All those people out there in the dark, staring at me, and no place to hide?  That s-sounds terrifying!”

…Dorothea actually hadn’t thought about that.  She was so used to basking in the attention…but that would be scary for someone as shy as Bernadetta.  “That’s okay,” she smiled.  “You don’t have to.  But…would you maybe come to watch?  Ferdie and I have already signed up to take part, and we could always use someone to cheer for us.”

“…m-maybe,” came the muffled reply.

“And if you do change your mind about being on stage, you know we’ll both be cheering you on, right?” she coaxed.  “Annette even told me that Felix promised to come watch the performances, and you know how he feels about everything that isn’t training.  We’d all really love it if you joined in.”

Silence from the other side of the doors.  Had she pushed too hard…?

“I’ll…I-I’ll think about it.”

Beaming, Dorothea made a note on her sign-up sheet.  “That’s all we’d ask for.  Just let me know, okay?”

And maybe it was her imagination, but she thought she heard the smallest sound of agreement before the doors clicked firmly shut between them. 

-----

Even in her fantasies, Dorothea never could have dreamed things would go this well.  Not only did they get enough sign-ups to make a full five-round bracket, the whole monastery was buzzing with anticipation days before the event.  It reminded her a little of Enbarr the week before a Mittelfrank production, where every group she passed on the street seemed to be talking about the upcoming show -- whether it was about their excitement to see the spectacle or despair over not getting one of the endlessly coveted (and frightfully limited) tickets.  Here, thankfully, seating was hardly an issue, since Professor Manuela had managed to secure the Reception Hall for the event: the whole student body could fit there with standing room to spare, even with the stage taking up the front quarter.

Come the morning of the show, posters listing the contestants appeared on every bulletin board, and Dorothea scanned the starting matches before the thought of breakfast even occurred to her.  She recognized more than a few names: Ferdinand of course, and herself (naturally), as well as Lorenz (unfortunately), Hilda, Annette, and even Bernie.

It was all so exciting, she could hardly bear it.

Time crawled by while she waited for the tournament to begin.  Before noon she’d warmed up, improvised a few little tunes as practice, and rehearsed a few of her favorite songs in preparation.  By the time the Reception Hall opened to the competitors, she’d chosen her starting and ending arrangements and decided on the pieces she would use if she faced any real competition.  And once the doors opened and the audience began to crowd into the available seats, she felt her heart begin to race in anticipation of what was soon to come. 

She didn’t even mind that she had to wait.  The first match, to her delight, featured Annette and Bernie: blushing fiercely, the little red-head made her way cheerfully through an obviously original tune, while Dorothea’s fellow Eagle stuck to a familiar Imperial melody, squeezing her eyes shut tight and playing her trumpet at the stage rather than the audience.  In spite of that, it was a remarkable performance, and Bernie might have won just by virtue of Raphael’s enthusiastic applause -- but his thunderous cheer startled the poor recluse and sent her bolting from the stage before the match could be officially declared, forfeiting her chance to proceed.  But that might have been for the best, she supposed: Bernie clearly wasn’t big on the spotlight. 

The rest of the first round and all of the second went smoothly enough.  Though she didn’t bother watching every pair, she saw both Ferdinand and Annette proceed on to the quarterfinals, while Hilda lost to Lorenz in her second bout (though the noblewoman hardly seemed bothered by the loss).  Dorothea’s own matches barely required any effort on her part to win: she’d spent so long practicing her favorite songs from her favorite operas in the days leading up to this competition, but a few simple melodies were all it took to ensure that she made it through the preliminaries.  Even against her third opponent, all it took was the chorus from an Adrestian folksong to seal her victory...though Annette lost her own bout against Ferdinand in the same round.  Dorothea congratulated her all the same, and promised to win for Annie’s sake -- perhaps a bold promise from anyone else, but one that the former Mittelfrank diva felt assured she could keep.

And sure enough, in the semifinals she not only faced her fellow Eagle but beat him handily with one of the arias she’d so carefully prepared.  He lost quite gracefully, too, applauding her as enthusiastically as the audience itself and conceding even before Profesor Manuela could announce the final judgment.  And with the round done, Dorothea made her way back behind the stage, humming to herself as she waited for the intermission to end and the finals to begin…

“Congratulations on sweeping the competition, Dorothea.”

She paused, turning to see the leader of the Golden Deer House grinning at her from a few feet away.  Mustering up a pleasant enough smile, she offered a nod in greeting.  “Why, thank you, Claude.  Are you here to wish Lorenz well before I crush him?”

The nobleman blinked.  “Why would I do that?  Lorenz got knocked out in the last round.” 

Dorothea stared at him for a long, silent moment.  “To who?” she demanded, hunting about for a bracket that might give her an answer--

“...me, actually.”

Slowly, carefully, she turned again to face the leader of the Golden Deer.  “Guess you weren’t watching the match,” he chuckled, hefting an odd lute-like instrument.  “Lorenz was...less than thrilled with the outcome, if it helps.”

Actually, it just made her regret all the more that she hadn’t paid attention: she’d been looking forward to seeing his face when he finally lost.  “Well, I suppose congratulations are in order for you, too, then,” she said, turning away from him again.  “May the best musician win.”

“Oh, uh...about that.”

She glanced at him over her shoulder, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear as he drummed his fingertips along the neck of his instrument.  “I was...well.  I was wondering how you’d feel about calling it a draw.”

A thin smile carved its way across her face.  “Are you that confident you can beat me, Claude?”

“Hardly,” he scoffed.  “I have no doubt that you’d mop the floor with me.”  She felt sure he was flattering her -- but she waited all the same, watching his grin soften almost shyly, though it still didn’t quite touch his eyes.  “I was just...hoping I could perform with you, instead of having to compete against you.  Y’know, everything here at the monastery is about pitting us against each other: the weapon tourneys, the fishing competition, and now this...I feel like we could put on a better show working together than we could separately trying to one-up each other.  You can have the prize, too, if you want,” he added.  “Pretty sure you’d win it anyway, but...what do you say?”

Beyond the curtain, she heard Professor Manuela take the stage again and announce the final round to the audience.  Claude only watched Dorothea, though, seeming content to be patient and wait for her even as their names rang out over the wild cheering of the crowd.

And at last she smiled, lifting a hand to cup her cheek.  “How are you at improvising with that lute of yours?”

“If you can sing a few bars, I can probably make something work,” he grinned. 

“Why don’t we put that to the test?”

“With pleasure,” he agreed, bowing playfully before offering his arm to her.  Returning the gesture with a teasing curtsy of her own, Dorothea accepted -- and they walked out onto the stage together, applause washing over them in waves of wondrous sound.  They parted smoothly, Claude taking up his instrument and strumming a few notes to ensure it was properly in tune before looking expectantly to her, waiting for her lead; Dorothea turned her own attention to the darkness, savoring the anticipation of the shadowed audience before her...and finally beginning to sing, the somber melody echoing throughout the crowded reception hall. 

“Reach for my hand, I’ll soar away, Into the dawn, oh I wish I could stay…”

A soft chord joined in, the notes as sweet and clear as her own...and yet it did not overpower her voice: instead it seemed to carry the words higher, elevating the music in ways she had not heard since she left the Mittelfrank Opera House.  She did not falter, though: instead she continued, allowing a smile to creep into her voice as she sang.

“Here in cherished halls, in peaceful days I fear the edge of dawn, knowing time betrays…”

“Is this really gonna be the last song we do?” Claude asked, his voice carrying out into the dark and startling her back to reality.  “Come on, Dorothea, we’ve gotta liven it up a little!”

Even as he spoke, his fingers flew over the strings, keeping the key but tumbling into a bright, rousing accompaniment.  He winked at her when she turned to stare at him, repeating the same refrain in invitation...and though she’d only ever heard the piece as a wandering lament before, she could not deny his compelling harmony. 

Their music rang through the reception hall, her voice rising into the rafters on the strum of lute strings...and for the first time since she’d come to the Officer’s Academy, Dorothea felt that familiar, wonderful thrill again as the enraptured crowd watched them perform their duet on the stage.  

-----

In the fortnight following the tourney, Dorothea had become the most popular girl in Garreg Mach.  It seemed like every young man, noble birth or otherwise, wanted a moment of her time, a scrap of her attention...and, of course, a chance to hear her sing again.  

While they’d agreed to a draw before ever taking the stage, Claude had gracefully conceded when Professor Manuela declared Dorothea the winner.  It had bothered her when it happened -- all the more for how she couldn’t correct the matter over the riotous applause -- and try as she might over the intervening days, she’d still been unable to set the record straight with anyone she spoke with (aside from Hilda, who didn’t seem the least bit surprised to hear it).  But strangest of all was the fact, despite now having an audience eager to hear her perform again...she couldn’t find that thrill anymore.  It had been there while she was on stage with Claude, but in every performance since -- no matter how many people she had hanging on her every note -- she just felt the same hollow sort of yearning she had in the cathedral before all of this began. 

Dorothea sighed as she made her way out of the dining hall, taking the stairs down to the fishing pond and wandering toward the dormitories.  All the attention did get tiring after a while; luckily the grounds seemed deserted this afternoon, and she stretched her arms high as she tipped her head back, breathing in the crisp autumn air while the sun warmed her face and the soft sound of music drifted by…

She stopped, scanning the lawn and the path along the row of dorms.  No one was there that she could see, but she could hear the strum of lute strings; she hurried on, listening to the music grow louder and louder until she felt certain she was close -- but the sound was too clear to be coming from behind the closed doors, and there was still no one around that she could see.  “Claude?” she called, raising her voice as much as she dared. 

The music stopped.  “Dorothea?” the nobleman’s voice replied -- not from beside or behind her, but from above.  

Tilting her head back and shading her eyes, she stared at the young man peering at her over the eaves of the dormitory roof.  “What are you doing up there?” she asked. 

“Playing,” he said. 

“How did you even get up there?  And why are you playing on the roof, for that matter?”

“It’s complicated,” he shrugged.  “...well, alright, it’s not that complicated, but...should I come down so we can talk?”

Dorothea opened her mouth to agree...and paused.  “...I could always come up,” she offered.  

A grin twitched across his face.  “I’ll meet you at my room, then,” he laughed, waving before disappearing from view.  Hurrying back down to the greenhouses, she turned into the stairwell leading to the second floor of dorms where most of the noble students stayed; at the top of the steps, she saw Claude poke his head out into the hall, beaming at the sight of her.  Smiling despite herself, Dorothea hurried over and ducked past him without even thinking...and as he closed the doors, she stifled a giggle at the sight of his room.  

She had seen cluttered her share of dorms before -- Linhardt’s came immediately to mind -- but she’d never seen anything quite like this, with books taking up half the bed, papers spilling off the desk and onto the floor, and shelves cluttered with a mix of plants, vials, and strange brass instruments she couldn’t identify.  Claude seemed briefly puzzled by her reaction...though, after another moment, he rather sheepishly began gathering up the parchment piled on his chair to give her a place to sit.  “So what can I do for you?” 

“Well, first of all I’d like to know how you got onto the roof,” she replied.  “And off it so fast, for that matter.”

He quirked one eyebrow in apparent surprise.  “What, that?  It’s easy.”  Dropping the papers in a haphazard pile on the desk, he stepped up onto the wide ledge beneath the open window, leaning out into empty space and stretching one arm up...

Claude jumped. 

Dorothea lunged for him, knowing already it was too late -- but he did not fall.  She stumbled into the sill, gaping as he effortlessly pulled himself up out of sight; crawling up onto the ledge, she cautiously poked her head out the window...and saw him lean out over the eave, grinning down at her from his perch.  “That doesn’t look easy to me,” Dorothea pointed out. 

“It just takes some practice,” he laughed.  “Want to come up?  The view’s great,” he added, reaching a hand down to her. 

The sensible, logical, rational part of her brain insisted that she’d rather not break her neck trying to get a nice view of the monastery...even as she extended her own arm, gripping his wrist and feeling him hold fast.  She heard the instructions he gave her -- she was more than certain of that, since she never would have done this on her own -- but whatever he’d said escaped her the moment she stepped off the ledge into empty air, clutching tight to Claude’s wrist even as his pleasant laughter rang in her ears.  In the end he did most of the work pulling her up beside him...but once she caught her breath and her heart stopped feeling like a bird trying to escape its cage, she had to admit that he was right: the campus was lovely from so high up. 

“You doing okay?” he asked, patting her shoulder gently. 

“Better, I think,” she agreed, scooting further back from the edge.  “So, that explains how you got up here -- now why are we here?”

“Well, in my case it’s because it’s a nice day, I don’t have anything going on, and I’m tired of dealing with Lorenz, so I figured I’d come up here and play a bit.  He can yell all he wants from down there, but I’m not stopping unless he gets on this roof to make me.”  As he spoke, he removed the lute strapped to his back, strumming a few notes and idly beginning to tune it again.  “But what brings you up here?”

“Well...actually, I was looking for you,” she admitted, tucking a few strands of hair behind her ear.  “I haven’t seen much of you since the music tourney.”

“You’ve been busy,” he winked. 

Dorothea rolled her eyes, leaning back against the slightly pitched roof.  “Don’t remind me,  I needed to get away from it for a while.”

“Really?  I thought you’d be happy about all the attention.”

“I was at first,” she sighed, “and it’s been wonderful to have more chances to sing, but…”

She trailed off, watching a few wispy clouds wandering across the pale blue sky.  After a moment, the quiet strum of lute strings fell silent; glancing over at the nobleman, she found him watching her with interest, his head canting slightly to one side as he gestured for her to continue.  “It...doesn’t feel like I thought it would.  Back in the opera, it was always so grand and emotional, singing to an audience -- I loved that feeling, and it’s one of the things I’ve missed most since I left.  I’d hoped the competition would bring it back, and singing with you I found it again, but...I haven’t felt it since.  I’ve been feeling guilty about the way it ended up, and…”

“Hey, I said from the start that you’d mop the floor with me in a competition,” he laughed.  “I don’t mind.  I’m glad I got the chance to perform with you -- that was my prize.”  

“Be serious,” she huffed.  “I’m trying to apologize!”

“And I’m saying you don’t have to -- it’s not like you had a say in Professor Manuela deciding on a winner.”

“But if I don’t get it sorted out, how am I supposed to enjoy singing like I used to?”

“Are you sure guilt is what’s keeping you from it?”

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she stared at him.  “What do you mean?”

“You said that you haven’t felt that thrill since you left the opera.  You didn’t get it again until the finals, right?”  She nodded in agreement.  “And then after the finals it was gone again?”  Again, she nodded in agreement.  “So what was different about the finals, compared to everything before and after?”

“The drama of the grand finale?” she offered. 

“Well, that, too,” he chuckled, “but you weren’t performing alone, either: your melody had a harmony.”

Dorothea scoffed at the notion.  “That seems…”

She trailed off as Claude leaned forward, propping his chin on his hands.  She hadn’t thought of it like that before, but...her fondest memories from the opera were of performances with accompaniment: grand arias carried by a full orchestra, soft odes lilting over quavering strings.  “...possible,” she conceded. 

“So maybe what you were really looking for was a chance to sing with somebody, instead of going it alone or singing over them.”

“I’m flattered you think I’m so selfless,” she giggled.  “Really, I just wanted an audience.”  But even so, that final performance with him, building on one another’s leads and creating something far grander and more beautiful than Dorothea could have done alone...it had brought with it a familiar, delightful frisson. 

“Well, I know I had more fun playing with you than I did taking Lorenz down a peg -- and I really enjoyed that,” Claude laughed, strumming his lute again, “and I, for one, would be honored to reprise the performance -- though, fair warning, I can’t promise a crowd this time around.”

“You know, I am free this afternoon,” she grinned.  He beamed back at her, picking a cheerful tune on his lute strings -- an Adrestian folksong she recognized instantly; as she started in on the first verse and their duet drifted out over the quiet campus, she felt the thrill lift her heart again...and maybe it was just her imagination, but she swore Claude’s smile finally reached his eyes.

[nitewrighter]

OP of the daphne post! for the 50th scooby doo year, i beseech you to write a thing, please

Well it is October, and I do like being beseeched, and I have been reading “Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You” and watching Dario Argento movies…

Obviously this means it’s Hex Girl time.

—-

The five of them were bunched up in the back of the Mystery machine. Daphne was touching up her makeup (and Shaggy’s) in Fred’s rearview mirror. She had given herself a combination of runny mascara and fake blood running down from her eyes, while Shaggy had a “slashed open” cheekbone and exposed teeth prosthetic on his cheek.

“Like… it’s totally cool if you want to bail,” said Shaggy. 

“No judgment,” said Daphne.

“I’ll even drive you home,” said Fred, wearing a Led Zeppelin shirt (Why was it always Dad bands with him?).

Scooby slumped his weight against Velma in solidarity.

“Guys, I’m not made of glass–and the more you keep saying that, the more psyched out I get,” said Velma.

“I know, but it’s baby’s first rock concert!” said Daphne.

“What did we establish, D?” said Velma.

“…That we would stop calling it ‘baby’s first rock concert,’” said Daphne.

“But the way you and Shaggy talk about it, it sounds like a religious experience,” said Velma.

“It is,” Daphne and Shaggy said at the same time with a near sigh in their voices.

“Like, it’s a religious experience for the church of Kensington Gore,” said Shaggy.

“Cheesy horror movie stuff?” said Velma.

“Cheesy horror movie stuff,” said Shaggy.

“So I want to see it,” said Velma, sitting up with some determination, “If I can handle that skunk ape case last week, I can handle crowds.” 

“Ugh,” Daphne shuddered, “Don’t remind me of the skunk ape case. I can still almost smell it sometimes.”

“Like, glad to hear it though,” said Shaggy, holding out an open palm to her. Velma glanced down to see two foam earplugs in his hand, “Trust me. You’re gonna need them.”

Velma kept the earplugs balled up in her fist as they all clambered out of the back of the Mystery Machine and locked it behind them. It was a brisk first-cold-snap-of-Fall evening in Colesville’s derelict metropolitan district. There was a robust shopping center with a decent-enough couple of apartment buildings, and some “We’re totally not gentrifying your town” boutiques and gastropubs,  but for blocks out from there was a smattering of half-aborted real estate developments and boarded up buildings. The gang headed toward the theater and Velma stuck to the interior of the group as punks and goths, leathermen, horror geeks, and even a handful of steampunkers trickled across the streets toward the theater.

“Abandoned theater…” said Velma, “No huge fire or collapse risk there.”

“The Hex Girls are upcyclers,” said Daphne with a shrug.

“And Thorn is a hardcore stickler about how her gigs turn out–makes sure the building is totally safe for all of her lighting, makes sure the exits are clearly marked with a well-organized evac plan, has top-of-the-line bouncers, and all the available refreshments are exclusively vegan.”

“The little fried tofu brains are really good,” said Shaggy, “Did you know the human brain has the same consistency as tofu?”

“Silken or firm?” said Velma.

“…I don’t know,” said Shaggy.

“But don’t worry, the Hex Girls know what they’re about,” said Daphne as they showed their tickets at the door. The doors opened and the gang stuck close to each other as they entered a buzzing, throbbing crowd of fans that collectively referred to themselves as “The Hexed.” 

The bar area was fenced off from concert-goers below 21, and was so densely packed Velma hardly understood the appeal anyway, and the gang took their place in the crowd a ways from the stage. The theater itself was ornate–pretty well cleaned-up for the concert with a garish peacock green and magenta geometric color scheme decorating the walls that was probably considered very glamorous back in 1978. It was dimly lit and all the seats had been taken out to accommodate the more rough-and-tumble concert venue. The velvet curtain was down, moth-eaten as it was and Velma watched as Shaggy fit some mutt muffs on Scooby before resuming his hold on Scooby’s harness. Scooby sat on his haunches, his tail thumping on the floor. if they weren’t covered by the muffs, Velma would have guessed his ears were pricked. 

“He’s been to these too?” said Velma.

“Oh he loves them,” said Shaggy, scratching Scooby under the chin.

“The dog’s been to more concerts than me,” muttered Velma, not really audible over the murmurs of the crowd. The lights at the front of the stage dimmed and sent the theater into complete blackness and a sudden silence swept over everyone almost unsettlingly. There were a few nervous giggles and a handful of scattered “Whoo’s” from around the theater but mostly an almost electric silence. Then the speakers hummed and Velma put in her ear plugs in anticipation. The curtain lifted to a black stage, then the backlights lit up red reveal a group of about twelve girls, only a little older than they were, dressed in red shift dresses standing on bleachers behind a mass of black-cloaked mannequins still in shadow. The girls’ heads were bowed. There was a brief ripple of applause but the silence from the stage prompted more silence from the crowd. For a moment Velma thought the twelve girls on the bleachers were blindfolded, but they slowly raised their heads and opened their eyes. A thick horizontal stripe of black was painted across all of their eyes.

“Are those the Hex girls?” Velma whispered.

Daphne said, “Ssh!” on instinct then caught herself, looked at Velma and whispered “no” before jerking her head back toward the stage, terrified of missing anything. Then the twelve girls started singing, completely unaccompanied by any instruments or beat. It was high and choral and perfectly harmonized, fit for a cathedral.

“Mater Suspiriorum, Tenebrarum, Lacrimarum

 Dominae, Dominae Dominarum–”

The choir was apparently micd up so that Sopranos, mezzo sopranos, and altos were coming form different speakers. The result was the music folding around them like water sloshing around the room.

“Oh classic,” said Shaggy

“Am I missing something?” said Velma, “Are the Hex girls… catholic?”

Shaggy snorted. “Nah. Nah, they’re not.”

“Ignis,” the chorus kept singing, “Vestis, Amissio Amictia—”

“For the record, I know Latin and none of this makes any sens–”  Velma started.

“Vacuus VACUUUS!” The choir’s volume suddenly peaked and there came a thunderous drum beat that hit Velma like a kick in the ribs. 

“DUSK!” One audience member hollered, “DUUUUUUSK!  The crowd swelled with cheers as a white spotlight stabbed through the dense red light shining on the chorus to reveal a cloaked drummer hidden amidst the mass of mannequins on the stage. The drummer kicked off a heavy beat that throbbed through the whole crowd. 

“Hex girl?” said Velma but Daphne was already bouncing up and down, pounding her shoes into the cement floor with the beat as she headbanged with the beat. Velma took that as yes. 

The chorus kept up their latin nonsense as the drumming picked up even more and suddenly a ripple of stained-glass-shattering organ cut through and the crowd went wild as a second white spotlight shined down on a keyboardist in a cloak among the mannequins. A wail went up from the crowd and suddenly the bodies around Velma started shifting and dancing as Dusk intensified her drumbeat to match the manic organ music of the keyboardist.

“I LOVE YOU, LUNA!” one girl shrieked from the wings and the keyboardist made a quick finger gun out to the crowd, without missing a single key as she played, prompting even more screams. The keyboardist and drummer hammered away, their sounds crashing against each other as the choir kept up its vocalizing, then with another thunderous drumbeat the sound suddenly cut, and the crowd stilled, a few cheers and yells rising up in anticipation as a deep, rippling woman’s voice came over the speakers.

“You think this is magic?” Her voice seemed to engulf the room like smoke and Velma looked to Shaggy who mouthed along with the voice’s words of, “I am not a magician.”

The choir let out a single long note of vocalization, an “Ahhhhh” of ecstasy that climbed in volume as all the mannequins on the stage were lifted off by thin, near-invisible cables like puppets or corpses on gallows, now hoisted out of sight and revealing one cloaked woman at the center of the stage, holding an electric guitar. The choir fell silent then, leaving Velma feeling as if she was leaning over a cliff, suspended back from falling like the mannequins now swaying out of sight and not knowing what would make her fall over the edge.

“Thorn! Thorn! Thorn! Thorn! Thorn!” the word pulsed up from the crowd like a terrified heartbeat.

“We have three names, but you know us by one,” said woman with the guitar.

“Hex! Girls! Hex! Girls! Hex! Girls!” the chant was half manic, half call-and-response rippling around the theater. Velma looked to Fred, who she assumed was just as clueless as her in this manner and he just gave her a smile.

A white spotlight shined down on her. The woman cast back the hood of her cloak and flipped her hair out, long and black, and grinned. Velma wasn’t sure if it was the spotlight that bleached her or if she was wearing makeup or if she just woke up looking like a beautiful moon-white victorian woman that was probably dying of consumption, but she didn’t care. 

“THOOOOOORN!” a wail came up from another section of the crowd.

“How’s everyone doing tonight?” she murmured dreamily into the microphone.

The crowd went absolutely apeshit as the choir exited the stage and Thorn just grinned.

“Let’s give another hand to the Colesville Choir, they’re going to hell for this,” said Thorn with a smile. A ripple of laughs and applause rose up from the audience.

“Oh, I like this group, don’t you like this group, Luna?” said Thorn, looking to the keyboardist.

“I like this group,” said Luna, still playing.

“Dusk?” said Thorn.

The drummer looked up to give a sly grin. “On the fence,” said Dusk, still hammering away at her drumset. Another ripple of chuckles went though the audience again.

“I think we should give them something nice, what do you think, Hex Girls?” said Thorn, casting off her cloak to reveal a dress that was halfway between Elvira and Stevie Nicks, slinging her guitar over herself.

“I guess,” said Dusk, pausing to take off her own cloak for a more punkish outfit. Luna shrugged off her own cloak to reveal a gauzy number and prompt another shriek of “LUNA, I LOVE YOU!” from that same girl up in the wings. Dusk clacked her drumsticks together three times before changing the beat.

The crowd cheered and Thorn struck down on her guitar as the next song kicked off and Velma felt the world get blasted away from around her. Thorn started singing and Velma’s legs turned to jelly beneath her. It was a deep, buoyant voice that creaked and pitched in all the right places. There were a few brief flailing seconds where Velma tried to rationalize the effect of the music–faster music was known to increase heart rates and breathing, so the buzz in her head was normal. Totally normal.

The crowd shifted then, faster than Velma could really anticipate, and suddenly an area had cleared out slightly to accommodate bodies now flying at each other as the beat picked up, catching and flinging each other against the walls of the crowd, and clotheslining each other. Velma looked desperately around for Shaggy, Fred, even Scooby, but couldn’t make them out from the crowd that now walled her in to the mosh pit. Thorn was singing, and even with the plugs in her ears dampening the sound Velma could feel her voice snaking around her insides–she could feel Dusk’s drumbeat rattling her bones–or maybe that was the skinny punk who just slammed into her before continuing on his reeling way.

“GUYS?!” Velma shouted. Another body slammed into her and her glasses got knocked off.

“My glasses!” Velma shouted on reflex and nearly moved to bend and feel around for them before she was slammed again, stumbling.

Thorn was now rendered from a beautiful vampy songstress to a sexy black and white blur, not that Velma could appreciate it now caught between thrashing bodies.

“Velm!” before Velma was really sure what was going on, Daphne’s arm was hooked in hers (She was about 60% sure it was Daphne–again, it was dark and now blurry—it smelled like Daphne, at least.) Velma was yanked down briefly, than yanked back upright, then pulled into what she could only assume was a dizzing spin around the mosh pit, still hooked in Daphne’s arm, before being flung into the wall of the crowd and caught by several strong arms. She thrashed instinctively before she heard Shaggy say, “Velm! Velm! It’s us!” She looked up, saw Shaggy’s face half bloodied and shrieked before Daphne put her hands on her shoulders.

“It’s okay! It’s okay!” said Daphne.

“My glasses!” said Velma, “I need my–” 

Daphne put Velma’s glasses back on her face. Velma blinked a few times.

“I saved them, don’t worry,” said Daphne.

Velma furrowed her brow at the large crack running through one of the lenses.

“Mostly saved them,” said Daphne.

“You okay?” said Fred.

“Yeah–yeah just a little—Shaggy! Your face!” she looked over at Shaggy.

“Prosthetic,” said Shaggy, peeling the bloody bit off his face, “Remember?”

“Shaggy!” said Daphne.

“I’ll put it back on in the bathroom,” said Shaggy, shrugging, “We really did try to grab you before the pit broke out. We were calling for you but…”

“Earplugs,” said Velma.

“You survived baby’s first mosh pit!” said Daphne, clapping and hugging Velma.

“Daph!” said Velma, half muffled into Daphne’s Hex Girls tee.

“Sorry! First mosh pit!!” said Daphne, holding Velma at arm’s length again. She looked worried for a second, “It’s–It’s totally fine if you don’t want to stay for the whole concert now. You don’t have to force yourself to–”

“No!” said Velma a bit too suddenly, looking back at Thorn, now dropped to her knees for a guitar solo, arching her back and craning her neck upward as the mosh pit continued thrashing. Velma cleared her throat, “I mean–The music’s really good.”

“Right?!” said Daphne, excited.

Velma looked at the mosh pit, “And I’ve tasted blood,” she said, adjusting her cracked glasses, “I’m staying.”

That slightly manic smile split across Daphne’s face and it prompted a nervous giggle out of Velma that wove itself neatly into the buzz of adrenaline now running through her body.

“Oh Dinkley,” said Daphne, ruffling Velma’s hair, “We’re in for a night.”

Scooby howled with the next wail of guitar.

[efrmellifer]

Pining

sort of an AU of how things went down for Aymeric and Etien, very loosely based on the concept of hanahaki adapted for my comfort

When it had first started happening, no one noticed. They were out in the coniferous forests of Coerthas all day, Etien was known to land hard and pick up debris, when she dusted herself off, there were bound to be some needles that came off her clothing.

But when she had spent days within the city’s walls, it was a little peculiar.

Every time she had come from the Congregation, it was hard to ignore, a light dusting of needles followed her feet, collected around her when she stood still.

Never enough to raise any real concern, to be horrifyingly noticeable, just enough of them to make her friends, her hosts, wonder what exactly had happened to her to get her so dirty, so full of the trees.

When Etien combed her hair, sighing high as the carved wood drifted between titian locks, the needles fell in her lap, dark green pooling in her skirt.

No matter where she went, they followed.

In Ul’dah, a sprinkling of evergreen spines. On a trip to Limsa Lominsa, the sea breezes lifted the needles off the ground and away before they could be counted. A short journey to Gridania leading to a torrent of the things piling around her feet.

And then back to Ishgard, and the stream of needles from Etien’s hair and clothing had grown constant, a nervous scratch as she talked with a certain Lord Commander brushing a near tonze of the things away from her, soaring off on the chill wind, clear as day to anyone.

It was then that the more scientific-minded of them put it all together.

Pine needles.

Every time she looked at him, she pulled pine needles from her hair; she came in talking about him and scraping them from her boots.

She watched him look at other women—no more than casually— and she reeked of pine instead of her usual gentle lavender fragrance.

What an unfortunate (and pointed) affliction.

The treatment, Etien was assured by the most intimate of her friends, was simple—stop the pining, stop the pine. She could let nature take its course and recover on her own as the feelings went away… or she could earn the affection she so desperately desired and there would be no reason to shed the needles any longer.

She preferred the latter, but if the former ended up being the only way… she would live.

She tried to ingratiate herself with him a little more, more flirtatious (without being pushy), slightly (incredibly) more selfless without being a floor mat, more adorable without begging to be adored.

Maybe it was working. But all that exposure was turning into the sickliest pine tree in Ishgard, dropping needles with her every breath.

Even Aymeric had noticed at this point, asking after her wellness.

She answered, commented on what a curse it was, but not its cause. Another thousand needles descended as she did so.

The shame of it was she already knew how her heart and mind were a resounding choir, their chorale a round of all she desired from him—a smile, a kiss, the rest of his tomorrows joined with hers. She knew that. And now everyone else knew, too, if they had any knowledge of the condition.

But blessing of blessings, the deluge was brought to an abrupt stop when in a moment where their shared fear was ebbing away, Aymeric and Etien clung to each other.

The descent of needles picked up, practically an assault of their own, until Aymeric murmured, so low he wasn’t sure whether he was saying it, “Fury be praised, I was so scared I was about to lose you, but here you are, hale and whole.”

“You were?” She mumbled, afraid to break the moment, and unsure she could hear anything over the brush of pine needles hitting the stone below her.

“Yes. You, who are so important to me? I would hate to lose you, whether to time, to illness, to injury. To have you slip away from me at all.”

The shushing of the needles stopped, and Etien felt something slithering on Aymeric’s wrists where they were crossed on her shoulder.

“What… was that?” she asked, wriggling from the slight discomfort of the sensation.

“I… hesitate to confess it.”

“To me, who’s so important to you?” she asked, entirely non-serious.

However, it gave him the strength to speak. “I had these thorned vines that… tightened around my wrists every time I came near you. One had wrapped around my chest of late, as well, near to suffocating me when I refused to tell you the truth.”

“Which is?”

She could tell from his tone that he was looking off into the clouds now. “...my feelings.”

Oh, this could break her heart if she wasn’t careful. “Oh?”

“I have come to care for you as more than simply a friend, Etien.” He admitted.

All the air went out of her, a lightheaded sensation coming in its place.

“But I would understand if those feelings were not returned.”

“Gods,” she sighed, praying now that she didn’t pass out before she got a chance to explain (though, there were worse places to do so than in Aymeric’s arms. In fact, it was probably the best place). “If I’d had to try much harder to show you they were, I might have started coughing up the pine needles.”

“The… what?”

She reluctantly removed herself from his embrace to pick up a fistful of the needles. “I was pining for you so obviously I started dropping needles!”

“I thought those were from a curse.”

“The curse of unrequited love,” she scoffed.

He didn’t say anything to that, simply cupping her cheeks in his hands (warm, calloused, and free of thorned vine bindings) and kissed her.

A stiff wind goaded them closer together, and swept away all the dead foliage around them. Just as well, it was better to leave the needle-dropping to the trees. Etien had better things to do now.

[dippedanddripped]

In October 1958, a teenage boy walked into a music shop in San Fernando. He bought a sleek Gibson ES-225 electric guitar.

Tourists sometimes look incredulously at shop owner Ed Intagliata when he reveals the Pacoima teenager’s name. But then he just shows them the receipt, signed by Ritchie Valens’ mother.

Founded in 1948 by Albert Cassell, the music shop is a San Fernando Valley institution. Originally housed in a shopping center on San Fernando Road, it relocated in the mid-’80s to the corner of Maclay Avenue and Lucas Street. Since being featured in the movie “Wayne’s World,” it has drawn tourists from every inch of the planet, becoming a local museum as much as a place of business.

Through a partnership with local schools, Intagliata helps parents who struggle to afford a musical instrument for their children. The Play-It-Forward program lets some of them pay only $1.

“It’s not a giveaway charity thing. The kids don’t know a dollar from a hundred dollars,” Intagliata said. “All they know is: My dad bought me a guitar. I’m going to learn it.”

The program, he said, would not be possible without the generosity of customers. He cited one former student who had paid for 10 lessons before having to move away. Instead of asking for a refund, she donated the lessons to students in the program.

“People wanna help. They really do,” said Intagliata. “I’m not looking to be the biggest, baddest music store around. We do a good business. I make a living for myself and my family, and we pay our bills. And I’m happy with that.”

Intagliata came to California from Connecticut as a child and grew up in affluent Palos Verdes. He was appointed to run the shop by his father, a now retired aerospace engineer. His father purchased Cassell’s Music in 1978, after seeing an ad for it in the Los Angeles Times. His hope, said Intagliata, was to provide his eight children with a place to work during their college years.

At the time, Intagliata was working in the customer service department at Sears, where clients habitually returned worn shoes and dried-up cans of paint. He had a degree in music from Cal State Fullerton.

His father, said Intagliata, “had to put up some heavy collateral to buy the store. I didn’t find that out till later, that he was putting his future on my shoulders.” Intagliata was 24 — the second oldest of the Intagliata children. His employees were his siblings, which could cause a little tension.

“One of my brothers thought he could do his homework on the counter here,” he said. “And I told him: ‘No, man, no. You do that at home.’”

Nowadays, Intagliata, 64, welcomes everyone who comes through his glass doors and greets the mailman with a fist bump. To better serve some of his Latino customers, he made it a point to learn Spanish — using the language to communicate in a suburban San Fernando Valley city where, in the 1940s, people of Mexican descent had to sit in the balconies of movie theaters.

Intagliata enjoys peppering visitors with trivia questions. “Did you know,” he asks, “that Ritchie Valens’ real name was Richard Valenzuela; that he was buried at the San Fernando Mission Cemetery ; that ‘La Bamba’ was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress?”

A scene in “Wayne’s World” filmed at the shop in the ‘90s helped put Cassell’s Music on the map. In the movie, the protagonist, played by Mike Myers, makes repeated visits to the shop just to gaze longingly at a white 1964 Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. Nearly three decades later, Intagliata still has wide-eyed tourists pop into his shop every summer. Sometimes they try to re-enact the scene in which Wayne finally takes the instrument in his arms. On Facebook, Intagliata has posted photos of smiling tourists from Florida, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Australia, Argentina and El Salvador.

In addition to a framed photo autographed by the actors in “Wayne’s World,” the walls of Cassell’s Music are covered with mementos showcasing Intagliata’s customers. Thank-you cards from recipients of the Play-It-Forward program adorn one area. On another, he keeps a framed article that recounts a visit from The Master’s Kids, a pre-kindergarten program at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley.

The visit, documented by Music & Sound Retailer, highlights Hannah Carmichael, who went on a field trip to Cassell’s Music when she was 4 years old. Years later, she returned to the shop as a chaperone with her daughter’s class. That day, she brought a photo with her, taken by her mother at the shop in 1993. In the article, Intagliata proudly notes: “Mrs. Carmichael told me that, out of all the field trips her preschool had taken, the visit to the music store was the only one she remembered.”

Julie Chung of Granada Hills has accompanied three of her five children on field trips to Cassell’s Music. Normally, she said, parents of 4-year-olds make for anxious chaperones. Their main goal is to ensure that the little ones do not touch — and break — anything.

But that fear dissipates at Cassell’s Music, she said. During the field trips, the children and their parents get the store to themselves, and Intagliata starts off by playing the same tune using woodwinds, strings, percussion and brass.

“So that the children can hear the difference,” said Chung. Following the presentation, he leads the handsy children to a table full of instruments. “Go on,” he says. “Give it a try.”

None of Chung’s children have taken up music classes. Still, she said, “I know many kids who’ve been inspired by Ed. And I’m talking about entire families, generations.”

Esteban Andrade, a freshman at Cal State Northridge who began taking violin classes at Cassell’s Music in kindergarten, is one of them. Back then, said Intagliata, “we just called him ‘Stevie.’ Now, he’s this accomplished musician, and he’s got all these mariachi groups trying to recruit him. Makes me real proud.”

Andrade is one of three brothers, all of whom have taken classes at Cassell’s Music. Their father, Francisco Andrade, described Intagliata and his store as “indispensable.”

“Whether it’s support with acquiring new instruments or teaching us how to make small repairs, there’s always this generosity,” he said. “Without Ed, we would’ve had to go out of our community to provide for our boys.”

Intaglatia has begun flirting with retirement. He’d like to travel, he said.

“I want to see your Vienna, your German towns and Italy, all the places where classical music flourished. I want to go to the Holy Land, all the biblical sites,” he said. “Maybe go to the South Pacific and get one of those bungalows over the ocean — God, that looks great.”

But he can’t pinpoint when that will all take place. “I just don’t know,” he said. “I’m having so much fun right now.”

Outside of Cassell’s Music, Intaglatia keeps busy with more music. He plays bass on his church’s worship team, directs “a small choir” and sings with the Santa Clarita Master Chorale. He also brushes up on the seven instruments he knows how to play, including the accordion — his “first love.”

“It’s a good conversation piece,” Intagliata said. “People always ask, ‘What’s your favorite instrument?’ And I tell them, ‘Well, you gotta guess.’”

He laughed. “They never guess.”

As cars whizzed past the intersection where he’s worked for decades, Intagliata pulled up two images on his computer.

“You gotta see this,” he said.

On the left side of the screen, he had a picture of Sophia, a local student and the first recipient of the Play-It-Forward program. With a shy smile, she holds her first guitar with both arms. On the right, Sophia, now in middle school, juggles two instruments: her first and a blue electric guitar.

“She outgrew the first one,” Intaglatia explained. “Wants to play electric now, which is great. And you know what she did? She says, ‘Here. Give my old guitar to someone who needs it.’” Intagliata said, his face beaming. “Can you believe that?”

[trainthief]

Hey I was wondering if you'd ever consider doing like a top 20 fav classical music albums or composers list or something. Obviously if that just sounds stressful disregard this but I know you are like, into classical music & I grew up with my parents playing it & recently got, like, into the classical station but aside from like 3 artists I like I don't know where to start & I like your blog and would be interested in hearing about like, your taste

Sorry for responding to this so late, I’ve had a real week and I wanted to make sure I had time to put some thought into answering this ask. I’d definitely love to help, I always like recc’ing classical stuff to people! The idea of 20 absolute all time favorites is a difficult one for me because I love so much stuff and it’s really difficult to compare like… Caroline Shaw’s modern experimental chorale stuff to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. Anyway, instead I will give you some full length pieces in different styles that I think are great for new listeners, and explain a little about what each one is doing and what I love about it, and some more pieces I recommend if you enjoy what you’re hearing. Hopefully that will help! 

In no particular order: 

Appalachian Spring by Copland: Let’s just get this one out of the way up front. If you’ve been following me for any amount of time at all, you know I’m deeply in love with Copland. He essentially invented the American compositional style by adding jazz elements to the established practices, which caused an absolute uproar at the beginning of his career as people then considered it an unholy mix of high and low culture. He doubled down on this concept when he wrote “Fanfare For The Common Man” which essentially stands as a celebration of the working class and those who couldn’t afford to see the symphony anyway. He was, I should also note, both gay and Jewish. A real icon. Anyhow, although I love so much of his work and could go on forever, I consider listening to Appalachian Spring in its entirety a spiritual experience, no exaggeration. Take it on a hike, listen to it while you look at the trees and think about whatever crosses your mind, and by the time the Coda hits you… well I personally can’t tell you what experience to have, but I feel for a second like I can see and be seen. Anyway, aside from that, just good music, very pretty. If you’d like similar music that incorporated jazz effectively into classical work, I’d of course recommend another favorite of mine: Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin. 

Russian Easter Festival by Rimsky-Korsakov: As a general rule of thumb, Russian composers are ALWAYS good for some drama. This piece in particular is great because it’s not only fanfare and excitement, there’s a touch of pastoral calmness that I really love (more on that as a concept later) at the beginning, but we still get plenty of wildness. There’s a frantic octave part the violins play around minute 5 that always makes me want to scream. If you like this, I’d also recommend checking out Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol. The man knows how to write sexy. 

Romance in D by Berkey: I recommend this partially because it’s a lesser known and very beautiful piece, and also because it’s a good lead-in to a whole subset of classical called Furniture Music. Essentially called that - originally by the composer Satie - because it’s nice to put on in the background. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still fun to listen to, and from a compositional and performance standpoint it can still be very impressive. But it’s just good and calming and you could certainly sip tea to it in the restaurant area of a ritzy 1920’s hotel while you read a novel and ignore your rich husband asking if you’d like any marmalade. A good example of the same effect is the soundtrack to Phantom Thread. It’s also good for studying. If you like that conceptually, I’ve got a whole playlist here. 

Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky: A really excellent intro to classical and one of my favorite works, AND like the last one, also a lead-in to an informal format. Pictures was written with the idea that each song was a separate painting that the listener could imagine they were looking at in a museum. For that reason, each one has a different style and personality, and feels very descriptive and exciting. A collection of small related pieces is called a suite, but I haven’t yet been able to find a technical name for that specific kind of storytelling structure within a suite. It’s not uncommon though, and in that same vein I’d also recommend The Planets by Holst (about the planets, as you might assume), and Carnival of the Animals by Saint Saens (about… yeah you get it). 

Spem in Alium by Tallis: We’re taking a wild left turn now and veering into the Christian choral tradition dating back to the 1500s. Like anyone else who isn’t even a Christian, there’s a few things about Catholicism that I’m obsessed with. Namely the hymns and the stained glass. Focusing only on the hymns, Tallis is one of the best examples of polyphonic hymnal work. Polyphonic, essentially, means that the different voices in the piece are moving around each other and will frequently change their notes in a way that will compliment - but is not necessarily in line with - the direction of the piece as a whole. It makes more sense if you just listen. The style, however, was developed in an attempt to capture the idea of the stars and planets circling each other in their own independent orbits, because at the time people had just started to turn their gaze to the sky for answers about their own lives. Aside from that very cool background, I just find the really human side of the choir format in particular paired with the elevation of music being this untouchable but powerful thing paired with the holiness of the concept paired with how awesome the acoustics of a chapel can be…. It’s just a lot. If you like this I’d also recommend Miserere Mei by Allegri, Ave Maris Stella by Dufay, and O Magnum Mysterium by Lauridsen 

Peter Grimes by Britten: Classical music is so rooted in every musical tradition, and visa versa, that it’s almost impossible to separate it conceptually from a lot of genres. Technically, “classical” refers to a period of time more than it does a genre anyway, but let’s not get pretentious about it. While we’re pushing the boundaries of what can and can’t be included in this list, let’s talk Opera, and specifically Peter Grimes. When asked to describe it, Britten said it was “a subject very close to my heart—the struggle of the individual against the masses. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual.” More specifically the struggle was an allegory for gay oppression, and ironically Britten wrote the lead role with his lifelong partner Peter Pears - an opera singer - in mind. To give a taste without giving too much away, the Prologue establishes that Grimes, a fisherman, is being questioned over the death of his apprentice. The townspeople are all convinced before the questioning even begins that he must have done it, but the coroner decides the death was accidental. Grimes is let free and advised not to get another apprentice, but he of course ignores this…. If the vocal side of opera doesn’t do it for you, there are 4 Sea Interludes from this work that are really great independently. If you want even more opera with even more drama, I’d recommend looking at Tosca or Turandot both by Pucccini. If you think classic opera is too high brow and you want something a little sillier, try Mozart’s Magic Flute. If you want something more new age and weird, try listening to Two Boys by Muhly or selections from Einstein on the Beach by Glass (but probably not all 5 hours, Knee Play 5 and Spaceship would be my top 2). 

Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral” by Beethoven: I mentioned earlier when describing the Russian Easter Festival that I love a piece with pastoral calmness. Getting back to that point, I haven’t ever seen one word that’s commonly used to describe this particular sense in a piece, but I personally call it a Pastoral after Beethoven’s 6th. In general, the symphony is one of my favorites as a composer and listener, especially given that it’s really just about taking a walk in nature which is one of only 3 themes music should have anyway in my opinion. A good amount of my music is written with this feeling in mind. Aside from all that context, the first movement in particular is very nice, passionate but not sensational, and is just about being excited to be outside. Nothing wrong with that. This subset of music is probably the most informal of all the ones I’ve listed so far, but if you’d like more “Pastorals,” or pieces that have a nice calm passion to them, I’d also highly recommend Enigma Variations: Nimrod by Elgar, Fantasia on a Theme of Tallis by Vaughan Williams, Once Upon A Time In America by Morricone, Musica Celestis by Kernis, and of course again Appalachian Spring by Copland. (I would also be legally sent to jail if I didn’t mention that while we’re on the subject of Beethoven, his 9th Symphony is generally considered one of the greatest achievements in classical music). 

Rite of Spring by Stravinsky: A lot of these pieces have been good jumping off points into different musical concepts, but with this one I’m sticking my description to the initial piece itself. I got the chance to email with a composer I admire and he at one point described composition not in the sense of writing something “smart”, but in writing something “detailed”. The Rite of Spring is a really great example of detailed composition. It’s extremely experimental with its time changes - essentially the way that you should be counting your notes as a musician constantly changes and always into a pattern that’s difficult to keep track of - and also with its chord structure. The music itself can be jarring and odd to listen to but the composition wasn’t random and when studied shows an obsessive elbows-deep involvement in the work that I really admire. It might not surprise you to hear, however, that at the initial performance the audience was so furious that the lighting technician had to continually flash the lights to confuse them, out of fear of a riot. If you’d like something a bit more fun to listen to by the same composer, however, Firebird is a good one. And if you’d like another great piece that was completely booed off the stage at its premier, I’d recommend Grand Pianola by Adams. 

Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev: While we’re in the general vicinity of ballet, I should get into that deeper. Ballets can have some of the most fun music to listen to because the timing is required to be so much more specific. Romeo and Juliet is a lot of fun, particularly the “Montagues and Capulets” and “Masks” sections. Another great ballet is, of course, The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky. I’d also recommend Don Quixote by Minkus, and Rodeo by Copland…. I know I know 

Violin Concerto in D by Tchaikovsky: I said Russians bring the drama, and it’s doubly so when it’s a gay Russian. This piece is a classic example of the solo concerto format, which is a staple of classical as a whole. The setup is a single player on whatever instrument the piece is written for accompanied by an orchestra, and is usually a showcase of technical skill by the soloist. This one in particular is basically THE turning point in a violinist’s studies and just about every violinist learns it as soon as they’re capable of taking it on. Personally I still vividly remember when my teacher finally gave it to me, it’s a very specific sense of accomplishment. Similar examples of the solo concerto format on different instruments would be Piano Concerto in F by Rachmaninoff, and Oboe Concerto in C by Mozart, both of which I absolutely love. 

The Revd Mustard His Installation Prelude by Muhly: I’ve gone on forever so I’m trying to be quick. Nico Muhly is one of my favorite modern composers and Revd Mustard combines his classic ecstatic and constantly moving style with an organ, which I’m a sucker for. Contemporary classical in his style can be difficult to listen to because it’s gotten very experimental and as a result, very complicated. But if you don’t go into it with the expectation that you’re going to hear a structured and logical Mozart-like piece and you instead surrender your opinion until the whole thing has come together for you, it can be really interesting at the very least. As a side note, Nico has collaborated with Sufjan, Bjork, Jonsi, Teitur…. lots of people. You’ve certainly heard him before even if you didn’t know it. For more classical from the last few decades I’d recommend Partita for 8 Singers by Shaw, Tissue No. 7 by Glass, Different Trains by Reich, the Red Violin Concerto by Corigliano (especially because I just saw it live a few days ago and am still reeling), Perpetuum Mobile by Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten by Part. Each of which is vastly different, stylistically speaking, but all of which I really love. And for more organ listen to one of my favorite pieces of all time, Symphony 3 by Saint Saens. 

Ok, you know what? I’m cutting myself off because I’ve gone on forever. If you haven’t been put off of asking me questions entirely by now, please feel free if you want even more recommendations in a specific style, or want to know more about something you enjoy. Clearly I love talking about this. Hope that helped!

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/music-black-culture-appropriation.html

I'd encourage all of you to read -- actually read -- the reported essays in the #1619project. If these ideas or facts are new to you, if they upset you or make you uncomfortable, if they challenge your idea of America, ask yourself: why?

For centuries, black music, forged in bondage, has been the sound of complete artistic freedom. No wonder everybody is always stealing it.

By Wesley Morris | August 14, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 18, 2019 7:52 PM ET |

I’ve got a friend who’s an incurable Pandora guy, and one Saturday while we were making dinner, he found a station called Yacht Rock. “A tongue-in-cheek name for the breezy sounds of late ’70s/early ’80s soft rock” is Pandora’s definition, accompanied by an exhortation to “put on your Dockers, pull up a deck chair and relax.” With a single exception, the passengers aboard the yacht were all dudes. With two exceptions, they were all white. But as the hours passed and dozens of songs accrued, the sound gravitated toward a familiar quality that I couldn’t give language to but could practically taste: an earnest Christian yearning that would reach, for a moment, into Baptist rawness, into a known warmth. I had to laugh — not because as a category Yacht Rock is absurd, but because what I tasted in that absurdity was black.

I started putting each track under investigation. Which artists would saunter up to the racial border? And which could do their sauntering without violating it? I could hear degrees of blackness in the choir-loft certitude of Doobie Brothers-era Michael McDonald on “What a Fool Believes”; in the rubber-band soul of Steely Dan’s “Do It Again”; in the malt-liquor misery of Ace’s “How Long” and the toy-boat wistfulness of Little River Band’s “Reminiscing.”

Then Kenny Loggins’s “This Is It”arrived and took things far beyond the line. “This Is It” was a hit in 1979 and has the requisite smoothness to keep the yacht rocking. But Loggins delivers the lyrics in a desperate stage whisper, like someone determined to make the kind of love that doesn’t wake the baby. What bowls you over is the intensity of his yearning — teary in the verses, snarling during the chorus. He sounds as if he’s baring it all yet begging to wring himself out even more.

Playing black-music detective that day, I laughed out of bafflement and embarrassment and exhilaration. It’s the conflation of pride and chagrin I’ve always felt anytime a white person inhabits blackness with gusto. It’s: You have to hand it to her. It’s: Go, white boy. Go, white boy. Go. But it’s also: Here we go again. The problem is rich. If blackness can draw all of this ornate literariness out of Steely Dan and all this psychotic origami out of Eminem; if it can make Teena Marie sing everything — “Square Biz,” “Revolution,”“Portuguese Love,” “Lovergirl” — like she knows her way around a pack of Newports; if it can turn the chorus of Carly Simon’s “You Belong to Me” into a gospel hymn; if it can animate the swagger in the sardonic vulnerabilities of Amy Winehouse; if it can surface as unexpectedly as it does in the angelic angst of a singer as seemingly green as Ben Platt; if it’s the reason Nu Shooz’s “I Can’t Wait”remains the whitest jam at the blackest parties, then it’s proof of how deeply it matters to the music of being alive in America, alive to America.

It’s proof, too, that American music has been fated to thrive in an elaborate tangle almost from the beginning. Americans have made a political investment in a myth of racial separateness, the idea that art forms can be either “white” or “black” in character when aspects of many are at least both. The purity that separation struggles to maintain? This country’s music is an advertisement for 400 years of the opposite: centuries of “amalgamation” and “miscegenation” as they long ago called it, of all manner of interracial collaboration conducted with dismaying ranges of consent.

“White,” “Western,” “classical” music is the overarching basis for lots of American pop songs. Chromatic-chord harmony, clean timbre of voice and instrument: These are the ingredients for some of the hugely singable harmonies of the Beatles, the Eagles, Simon and Fleetwood Mac, something choral, “pure,” largely ungrained. Black music is a completely different story. It brims with call and response, layers of syncopation and this rougher element called “noise,” unique sounds that arise from the particular hue and timbre of an instrument — Little Richard’s woos and knuckled keyboard zooms. The dusky heat of Miles Davis’s trumpeting. Patti LaBelle’s emotional police siren. DMX’s scorched-earth bark. The visceral stank of Etta James, Aretha Franklin, live-in-concert Whitney Houston and Prince on electric guitar.

But there’s something even more fundamental, too. My friend Delvyn Case, a musician who teaches at Wheaton College, explained in an email that improvisation is one of the most crucial elements in what we think of as black music: “The raising of individual creativity/expression to the highest place within the aesthetic world of a song.” Without improvisation, a listener is seduced into the composition of the song itself and not the distorting or deviating elements that noise creates. Particular to black American music is the architecture to create a means by which singers and musicians can be completely free, free in the only way that would have been possible on a plantation: through art, through music — music no one “composed” (because enslaved people were denied literacy), music born of feeling, of play, of exhaustion, of hope.

What you’re hearing in black music is a miracle of sound, an experience that can really happen only once — not just melisma, glissandi, the rasp of a sax, breakbeats or sampling but the mood or inspiration from which those moments arise. The attempt to rerecord it seems, if you think about it, like a fool’s errand. You’re not capturing the arrangement of notes, per se. You’re catching the spirit.

And the spirit travels from host to host, racially indiscriminate about where it settles, selective only about who can withstand being possessed by it. The rockin’ backwoods blues so bewitched Elvis Presley that he believed he’d been called by blackness. Chuck Berry sculpted rock ’n’ roll with uproarious guitar riffs and lascivious winks at whiteness. Mick Jagger and Robert Plant and Steve Winwood and Janis Joplin and the Beatles jumped, jived and wailed the black blues. Tina Turner wrested it all back, tripling the octane in some of their songs. Since the 1830s, the historian Ann Douglas writes in “Terrible Honesty,” her history of popular culture in the 1920s, “American entertainment, whatever the state of American society, has always been integrated, if only by theft and parody.” What we’ve been dealing with ever since is more than a catchall word like “appropriation” can approximate. The truth is more bounteous and more spiritual than that, more confused. That confusion is the DNA of the American sound.

It’s in the wink-wink costume funk of Beck’s “Midnite Vultures” from 1999, an album whose kicky nonsense deprecations circle back to the popular culture of 150 years earlier. It’s in the dead-serious, nostalgic dance-floor schmaltz of Bruno Mars. It’s in what we once called “blue-eyed soul,” a term I’ve never known what to do with, because its most convincing practitioners — the Bee-Gees, Michael McDonald, Hall & Oates, Simply Red, George Michael, Taylor Dayne, Lisa Stansfield, Adele — never winked at black people, so black people rarely batted an eyelash. Flaws and all, these are homeowners as opposed to renters. No matter what, though, a kind of gentrification tends to set in, underscoring that black people have often been rendered unnecessary to attempt blackness. Take Billboard’s Top 10 songs of 2013: It’s mostly nonblack artists strongly identified with black music, for real and for kicks: Robin Thicke, Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, the dude who made “The Harlem Shake.”

Sometimes all the inexorable mixing leaves me longing for something with roots that no one can rip all the way out. This is to say that when we’re talking about black music, we’re talking about horns, drums, keyboards and guitars doing the unthinkable together. We’re also talking about what the borrowers and collaborators don’t want to or can’t lift — centuries of weight, of atrocity we’ve never sufficiently worked through, the blackness you know is beyond theft because it’s too real, too rich, too heavy to steal.

Blackness was on the move before my ancestors were legally free to be. It was on the move before my ancestors even knew what they had. It was on the move because white people were moving it. And the white person most frequently identified as its prime mover is Thomas Dartmouth Rice, a New Yorker who performed as T.D. Rice and, in acclaim, was lusted after as “Daddy” Rice, “the negro par excellence.” Rice was a minstrel, which by the 1830s, when his stardom was at its most refulgent, meant he painted his face with burned cork to approximate those of the enslaved black people he was imitating.

In 1830, Rice was a nobody actor in his early 20s, touring with a theater company in Cincinnati (or Louisville; historians don’t know for sure), when, the story goes, he saw a decrepit, possibly disfigured old black man singing while grooming a horse on the property of a white man whose last name was Crow. On went the light bulb. Rice took in the tune and the movements but failed, it seems, to take down the old man’s name. So in his song based on the horse groomer, he renamed him: “Weel about and turn about jus so/Ebery time I weel about, I jump Jim Crow.” And just like that, Rice had invented the fellow who would become the mascot for two centuries of legalized racism.

That night, Rice made himself up to look like the old black man — or something like him, because Rice’s get-up most likely concocted skin blacker than any actual black person’s and a gibberish dialect meant to imply black speech. Rice had turned the old man’s melody and hobbled movements into a song-and-dance routine that no white audience had ever experienced before. What they saw caused a permanent sensation. He reportedly won 20 encores.

Rice repeated the act again, night after night, for audiences so profoundly rocked that he was frequently mobbed duringperformances. Across the Ohio River, not an arduous distance from all that adulation, was Boone County, Ky., whose population would have been largely enslaved Africans. As they were being worked, sometimes to death, white people, desperate with anticipation, were paying to see them depicted at play.

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Other performers came and conquered, particularly the Virginia Minstrels, who exploded in 1843, burned brightly then burned out after only months. In their wake, P.T. Barnum made a habit of booking other troupes for his American Museum; when he was short on performers, he blacked up himself. By the 1840s, minstrel acts were taking over concert halls, doing wildly clamored-for residencies in Boston, New York and Philadelphia.

A blackface minstrel would sing, dance, play music, give speeches and cut up for white audiences, almost exclusively in the North, at least initially. Blackface was used for mock operas and political monologues (they called them stump speeches), skits, gender parodies and dances. Before the minstrel show gave it a reliable home, blackface was the entertainment between acts of conventional plays. Its stars were the Elvis, the Beatles, the ’NSync of the 19th century. The performers were beloved and so, especially, were their songs.

During minstrelsy’s heyday, white songwriters like Stephen Foster wrote the tunes that minstrels sang, tunes we continue to sing. Edwin Pearce Christy’s group the Christy Minstrels formed a band — banjo, fiddle, bone castanets, tambourine — that would lay the groundwork for American popular music, from bluegrass to Motown. Some of these instruments had come from Africa; on a plantation, the banjo’s body would have been a desiccated gourd. In “Doo-Dah!” his book on Foster’s work and life, Ken Emerson writes that the fiddle and banjo were paired for the melody, while the bones “chattered” and the tambourine “thumped and jingled a beat that is still heard ’round the world.”

But the sounds made with these instruments could be only imagined as black, because the first wave of minstrels were Northerners who’d never been meaningfully South. They played Irish melodies and used Western choral harmonies, not the proto-gospel call-and-response music that would make life on a plantation that much more bearable. Black artists were on the scene, like the pioneer bandleader Frank Johnsonand the borderline-mythical Old Corn Meal, who started as a street vendor and wound up the first black man to perform, as himself, on a white New Orleans stage. His stuff was copied by George Nichols, who took up blackface after a start in plain-old clowning. Yet as often as not, blackface minstrelsy tethered black people and black life to white musical structures, like the polka, which was having a moment in 1848. The mixing was already well underway: Europe plus slavery plus the circus, times harmony, comedy and drama, equals Americana.

And the muses for so many of the songs were enslaved Americans, people the songwriters had never met, whose enslavement they rarely opposed and instead sentimentalized. Foster’s minstrel-show staple “Old Uncle Ned,” for instance, warmly if disrespectfully eulogizes the enslaved the way you might a salaried worker or an uncle:

Den lay down de shubble and de hoe,

Hang up de fiddle and de bow:

No more hard work for poor Old Ned —

He’s gone whar de good Niggas go,

No more hard work for poor Old Ned —

He’s gone whar de good Niggas go.

Such an affectionate showcase for poor old (enslaved, soon-to-be-dead) Uncle Ned was as essential as “air,” in the white critic Bayard Taylor’s 1850 assessment; songs like this were the “true expressions of the more popular side of the national character,” a force that follows “the American in all its emigrations, colonizations and conquests, as certainly as the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving Day.” He’s not wrong. Minstrelsy’s peak stretched from the 1840s to the 1870s, years when the country was as its most violently and legislatively ambivalent about slavery and Negroes; years that included the Civil War and Reconstruction, the ferocious rhetorical ascent of Frederick Douglass, John Brown’s botched instigation of a black insurrection at Harpers Ferry and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Minstrelsy’s ascent also coincided with the publication, in 1852, of “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” a polarizing landmark that minstrels adapted for the stage, arguing for and, in simply remaining faithful to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, against slavery. These adaptations, known as U.T.C.s, took over the art form until the end of the Civil War. Perhaps minstrelsy’s popularity could be (generously) read as the urge to escape a reckoning. But a good time predicated upon the presentation of other humans as stupid, docile, dangerous with lust and enamored of their bondage? It was an escape into slavery’s fun house.

What blackface minstrelsy gave the country during this period was an entertainment of skill, ribaldry and polemics. But it also lent racism a stage upon which existential fear could become jubilation, contempt could become fantasy. Paradoxically, its dehumanizing bent let white audiences feel more human. They could experience loathing as desire, contempt as adoration, repulsion as lust. They could weep for overworked Uncle Ned as surely as they could ignore his lashed back or his body as it swung from a tree.

But where did this leave a black performer? If blackface was the country’s cultural juggernaut, who would pay Negroes money to perform as themselves? When they were hired, it was only in a pinch. Once, P.T. Barnum needed a replacement for John Diamond, his star white minstrel. In a New York City dance hall, Barnum found a boy, who, it was reported at the time, could outdo Diamond (and Diamond was good). The boy, of course, was genuinely black. And his being actually black would have rendered him an outrageous blight on a white consumer’s narrow presumptions. As Thomas Low Nichols would write in his 1864 compendium, “Forty Years of American Life,” “There was not an audience in America that would not have resented, in a very energetic fashion, the insult of being asked to look at the dancing of a real negro.” So Barnum “greased the little ‘nigger’s’ face and rubbed it over with a new blacking of burned cork, painted his thick lips vermilion, put on a woolly wig over his tight curled locks and brought him out as ‘the champion nigger-dancer of the world.’ ” This child might have been William Henry Lane, whose stage name was Juba. And, as Juba, Lane was persuasive enough that Barnum could pass him off as a white person in blackface. He ceased being a real black boy in order to become Barnum’s minstrel Pinocchio.

After the Civil War, black performers had taken up minstrelsy, too, corking themselves, for both white and black audiences — with a straight face or a wink, depending on who was looking. Black troupes invented important new dances with blue-ribbon names (the buck-and-wing, the Virginia essence, the stop-time). But these were unhappy innovations. Custom obligated black performers to fulfill an audience’s expectations, expectations that white performers had established. A black minstrel was impersonating the impersonation of himself. Think, for a moment, about the talent required to pull that off. According to Henry T. Sampson’s book, “Blacks in Blackface,” there were no sets or effects, so the black blackface minstrel show was “a developer of ability because the artist was placed on his own.” How’s that for being twice as good? Yet that no-frills excellence could curdle into an entirely other, utterly degrading double consciousness, one that predates, predicts and probably informs W.E.B. DuBois’s more self-consciously dignified rendering.

American popular culture was doomed to cycles not only of questioned ownership, challenged authenticity, dubious propriety and legitimate cultural self-preservation but also to the prison of black respectability, which, with brutal irony, could itself entail a kind of appropriation. It meant comportment in a manner that seemed less black and more white. It meant the appearance of refinement and polish. It meant the cognitive dissonance of, say, Nat King Cole’s being very black and sounding — to white America, anyway, with his frictionless baritone and diction as crisp as a hospital corner — suitably white. He was perfect for radio, yet when he got a TV show of his own, it was abruptly canceled, his brown skin being too much for even the black and white of a 1955 television set. There was, perhaps, not a white audience in America, particularly in the South, that would not have resented, in a very energetic fashion, the insult of being asked to look at the majestic singing of a real Negro.

The modern conundrum of the black performer’s seeming respectable, among black people, began, in part, as a problem of white blackface minstrels’ disrespectful blackness. Frederick Douglass wrote that they were “the filthy scum of white society.” It’s that scum that’s given us pause over everybody from Bert Williams and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson to Flavor Flav and Kanye West. Is their blackness an act? Is the act under white control? Just this year, Harold E. Doley Jr., an affluent black Republican in his 70s, was quoted in The Times lamenting West and his alignment with Donald Trump as a “bad and embarrassing minstrel show” that “served to only drive black people away from the G.O.P.”

But it’s from that scum that a robust, post-minstrel black American theater sprung as a new, black audience hungered for actual, uncorked black people. Without that scum, I’m not sure we get an event as shatteringly epochal as the reign of Motown Records. Motown was a full-scale integration of Western, classical orchestral ideas (strings, horns, woodwinds) with the instincts of both the black church (rhythm sections, gospel harmonies, hand claps) and juke joint Saturday nights (rhythm sections, guitars, vigor). Pure yet “noisy.” Black men in Armani. Black women in ball gowns. Stables of black writers, producers and musicians. Backup singers solving social equations with geometric choreography. And just in time for the hegemony of the American teenager.

Even now it feels like an assault on the music made a hundred years before it. Motown specialized in love songs. But its stars, those songs and their performance of them were declarations of war on the insults of the past and present. The scratchy piccolo at the start of a Four Tops hitwas, in its way, a raised fist. Respectability wasn’t a problem with Motown; respectability was its point. How radically optimistic a feat of antiminstrelsy, for it’s as glamorous a blackness as this country has ever mass-produced and devoured.

The proliferation of black music across the planet — the proliferation, in so many senses, of being black — constitutes a magnificent joke on American racism. It also confirms the attraction that someone like Rice had to that black man grooming the horse. But something about that desire warps and perverts its source, lampoons and cheapens it even in adoration. Loving black culture has never meant loving black people, too. Loving black culture risks loving the life out of it.

And yet doesn’t that attraction make sense? This is the music of a people who have survived, who not only won't stop but also can’t be stopped. Music by a people whose major innovations — jazz, funk, hip-hop — have been about progress, about the future, about getting as far away from nostalgia as time will allow, music that’s thought deeply about the allure of outer space and robotics, music whose promise and possibility, whose rawness, humor and carnality call out to everybody — to other black people, to kids in working class England and middle-class Indonesia. If freedom's ringing, who on Earth wouldn't also want to rock the bell?

In 1845, J.K. Kennard, a critic for the newspaper The Knickerbocker, hyperventilated about the blackening of America. Except he was talking about blackface minstrels doing the blackening. Nonetheless, Kennard could see things for what they were:

“Who are our true rulers? The negro poets, to be sure! Do they not set the fashion, and give laws to the public taste? Let one of them, in the swamps of Carolina, compose a new song, and it no sooner reaches the ear of a white amateur, than it is written down, amended, (that is, almost spoilt,) printed, and then put upon a course of rapid dissemination, to cease only with the utmost bounds of Anglo-Saxondom, perhaps of the world.”

What a panicked clairvoyant! The fear of black culture — or “black culture” — was more than a fear of black people themselves. It was an anxiety over white obsolescence. Kennard’s anxiety over black influence sounds as ambivalent as Lorde’s, when, all the way from her native New Zealand, she tsk-ed rap culture’s extravagance on “Royals,”her hit from 2013, while recognizing, both in the song’s hip-hop production and its appetite for a particular sort of blackness, that maybe she’s too far gone:

Every song’s like gold teeth, Grey Goose, trippin’ in the bathroom

Bloodstains, ball gowns, trashin’ the hotel room

We don’t care, we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams

But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece

Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash

We don’t care, we aren’t caught up in your love affair

Beneath Kennard’s warnings must have lurked an awareness that his white brethren had already fallen under this spell of blackness, that nothing would stop its spread to teenage girls in 21st-century Auckland, that the men who “infest our promenades and our concert halls like a colony of beetles” (as a contemporary of Kennard’s put it) weren’t black people at all but white people just like him — beetles and, eventually, Beatles. Our first most original art form arose from our original sin, and some white people have always been worried that the primacy of black music would be a kind of karmic punishment for that sin. The work has been to free this country from paranoia’s bondage, to truly embrace the amplitude of integration. I don’t know how we’re doing.

Last spring, “Old Town Road,” a silly, drowsy ditty by the Atlanta songwriter Lil Nas X, was essentially banished from country radio. Lil Nas sounds black, as does the trap beat he’s droning over. But there’s definitely a twang to him that goes with the opening bars of faint banjo and Lil Nas’s lil’ cowboy fantasy. The song snowballed into a phenomenon. All kinds of people — cops, soldiers, dozens of dapper black promgoers — posted dances to it on YouTube and TikTok. Then a crazy thing happened. It charted — not just on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart, either. In April, it showed up on both its Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and its Hot Country Songs chart. A first. And, for now at least, a last.

The gatekeepers of country radio  refused to play the song; they didn’t explain why. Then, Billboard determined that the song failed to “embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version.” This doesn’t warrant translation, but let’s be thorough, anyway: The song is too black for certain white people.

But by that point it had already captured the nation’s imagination and tapped into the confused thrill of integrated culture. A black kid hadn’t really merged white music with black, he’d just taken up the American birthright of cultural synthesis. The mixing feels historical. Here, for instance, in the song’s sample of a Nine Inch Nails track is a banjo, the musical spine of the minstrel era. Perhaps Lil Nas was too American. Other country artists of the genre seemed to sense this. White singers recorded pretty tributes in support, and one, Billy Ray Cyrus, performed his on a remix with Lil Nas X himself.

The newer version lays Cyrus’s casual grit alongside Lil Nas’s lackadaisical wonder. It’s been No.1 on Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100 singles chart since April, setting a record. And the bottomless glee over the whole thing makes me laugh, too — not in a surprised, yacht-rock way but as proof of what a fine mess this place is. One person's sign of progress remains another’s symbol of encroachment.  Screw the history. Get off my land.

Four hundred years ago, more than 20 kidnapped Africans arrived in Virginia. They were put to work and put through hell. Twenty became millions, and some of those people found — somehow — deliverance in the power of music. Lil Nas X has descended from those millions and appears to be a believer in deliverance. The verses of his song flirt with Western kitsch, what young black internetters branded, with adorable idiosyncrasy and a deep sense of history, the “yee-haw agenda.” But once the song reaches its chorus (“I’m gonna take my horse to the Old Town Road, and ride til I can’t no more”), I don’t hear a kid in an outfit. I hear a cry of ancestry. He’s a westward-bound refugee; he’s an Exoduster. And Cyrus is down for the ride. Musically, they both know: This land is their land.

Wesley Morris is a staff writer for the magazine, a critic at large for The New York Times and a co-host of the podcast “Still Processing.” He was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

Source photograph of Beyoncé: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images; Holiday: Paul Hoeffler/Redferns, via Getty Images; Turner: Gai Terrell/Redferns, via Getty Images; Richards: Chris Walter/WireImage, via Getty Images; Lamar: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images

[darkvalkyria]

refia i gotta ask... what's your top 5 fav tracks off the arc v soundtrack??

askin all the important questions thank you sai

edit: i am so sorry for this i never meant for it to be so long i am just a wordy hoe

soundtracks for visual media are always important to me because i’m a longtime musician myself, and while arc v isn’t my favorite yugioh ost it still has a lot of gems and tracks that i’ve bookmarked and listen to regularly.

for anyone that hasn’t listened to the soundtrack i’ll tell you that it greatly enhances the arc v experience because the show is lazy in its musical execution and draws from very little of the soundtrack Nakagawa scored for the series. don’t let his work go to waste! it provides great entertainment.

all of the following are from the Japanese OST composed by Kotaro Nakagawa. for links to the audio click the numerals/titles!

also i’m not including any of the op/ends (because all of them are gorgeous within their own right and have their own rankings).

i’ll include sound duel 4 tracks using their unofficial titles because a certain multinational corporation hasn’t released it yet 👀 #marvelouslyhackkonami

also i’m including hella honorable mentions that no one asked for because upon re-listening to the soundtrack it turns out i appreciate a lot more tracks than i originally thought.

so buckle up and get your headphones,

5. “Sakaki Yuusho - Unreleased OST” (SD4)

listen, i have a lot of feelings and at the same time no feelings for sakaki yusho but i consider him solid husband material after hearing this. the energy from this is uplifting and hopeful af and it’s so refreshing from the otherwise suspenseful, hell-ridden season 4 tracks. the first seconds of this track (and then the reprise at 2:03) are my favorite. the crescendo perfectly captures the spirit, soul, and confidence of entertainment dueling and it’s HAWT. the execution of this track is brilliant, yusho and yuri’s duel was so memorable and exciting to me and it’s also one of my favorite tracks to hear in yuya’s last couple redemption duels which are just a sight to witness on their own.

4. Something to Protect (SD3 - Track 16)

the part that puts this track above many others similar to it is the choral line starting at 1:05. the arc v soundtrack, unlike any of the other yugioh ost’s, does a great job of using choral solos and themes melodically (that seem to be primarily celtic in nature). the voices are always tempered and drawn out, they have amazing melody and resolution, and when those solos hit those upper registers it’s soulful far beyond the extent of the show. the theme that leads into the choral uptake starting at (0:27) captures the sentiment of protecting someone, or preparing for an upcoming battle. the theme is repeated with a great accelerando at 1:40 with added string syncopation in the background that makes the situation more urgent. i can’t remember where in the show this is used but for some reason i feel like it was at a yuto/ruri moment? that just makes it all the more real, dude

3. The Duelist’s Determination (SD3 - Track 12)

*insert good shit meme* THIS TRACK RIGHT HERE! this is some LEGIT FANTASY SHIT™

i was pleasantly surprised when i heard this in the ost, probably because i never remember hearing this at all in the anime? this melody is one of my favorites in the ost, and is one that is unique to this track only. the orchestration of this track is fantastic to me. this is one of the few really full, properly orchestral, compositions that Nakagawa has included in the arc v soundtrack that are beyond the scope of anime and could be included in a fantasy rpg or something. from the solid intro featuring the trombones to a full orchestral climax and then stripped back to trumpets, piano, and strings… then there’s syncopation from the percussion and a key change, it’s just so good. i can only dream of how much more epic this would sound rerecorded with a real orchestra rather than synth.

2. The Light of Hope Doesn’t Arrive (SD2 - Track 20) & “Crimson Soul - Unreleased OST” (SD4) & “Lancers Final Gambit - Unreleased OST” (SD4)

okay this is 100% cheating but you can not make me choose between these three so i’m sorry

“The Light of Hope Doesn’t Arrive” is my preferred pick of the three because it conveys a different mood than the other two (also it’s actually has an hd release *cough*). this is another one of those few tracks on the ost that Nakagawa went ham on in terms of a full, well-rounded composition, and with a title like “The Light of Hope Doesn’t Arrive,” how could you not? one thing i love about the arc v soundtrack is that it utilizes slower tempos throughout to convey completely different moods. for an intentionally heavy track like this one it just does wonders. the intro to this track makes you think it’s going to be a lot faster than it is, and then it strips back into the marcato strings and then a slow af, really paced and dignified piano… and then a harp that pulls along a lagging melody… bitch?! are you trying to kill me? and then i LOVE the short piano outro. this track is used in the first season for some baby!yuya flashbacks, left out in the later seasons, and brought back during yuya’s therapeutic zarc flashback during his last duel with reiji soooooo whoever controls music placement is definitely playing with my life.

as far as “Crimson Soul” goes, just listen to this thing! why does jack get all the good themes fam… his 5ds theme is stunning as well. this theme plays during yuto’s turn while he duels ruri and serena, YUTO’S FLASHBACKS OF RURI, and of course while jack duels zarc, and probably during a lot of other epic moments as well. this track has such good energy and confidence within the melody and orchestration. it also has strings and a great percussion line AND THEN THERE’S TWO KEY CHANGES the last of which has choral backing- this was written for me. when you listen to this, you can feel yuto’s determination to save ruri and you can feel jack’s determination to defeat zarc and reach yuya and you can feel the RISK that both are taking.

cause of death: “Lancers Final Gambit”                                                       LISTEN Y’ALL. WHEN YOU HEAR THIS THEME SOME DRAMATIC DEFINITELY SCARY SHIT IS GOING ON. the intro of this track never fails to get my heart pounding. and then the string melody with the brass support murders me. it’s hard to hear in this extracted version but there’s also slight choral backing which is the icing on the cake. this track is played when yuto takes his turn vs. ruri and serena and WHEN YUYA KILLS YURI AKSJDHLWAUHLDKSJHLIUEAS ENOUGH SAID

1. Baby Reira’s Laughter Yuto’s Passionate Soul (SD3 - Track 18)

yeah that’s right. you all saw this coming. this shit right here = some good ost shit. this is the track that caused me to look up the arc v soundtrack because to me it’s the most emotionally powerful song on the record. i would go as far as to say this song serves as the bulk of yuto’s characterization on the show by adding to his character a whole world of depth that we as viewers are supposed to feel rather than see or interpret. i think it really does genuinely speak to yuto’s soul, and what a passionate one it is indeed.

i think Nakagawa tried his hardest to put a lot of strife and resistance into all the XYZ-centered themes and this is no exception. this track just has the added vocal that is completely INSANE in terms of triumphant reprises. (some people argue that this theme should be yugo’s because it’s used more often when clear wing is summoned, even in yuya’s last duel with reiji, but i think this was a grave execution error on part of whoever places the music in the episodes because thematically this is clearly supposed to be associated with the xyz themes. in the case of summoning odd eyes wing dragon you could see it as yugo and yuto coming together however.) when used in the show they play around with which version they use (sometimes without one of the choral lines) and i have to say my favorite version, and unfortunately the one we’ll never get, is the choral only version that plays during yuto’s death scene. the use of this version was more emotional than yuto’s death to me and i think it was the best use of an ost throughout arc v, and therefore one of arc v’s most powerful moments overall.

Honorable Mentions;

The Gears of Fate Begin To Turn (SD3 - Track 20)

the track that sounds exactly like what the title says. everyone get out your duel disks and kiss your cards because war is upon us. at 2:00 the string ensemble is magnificent, suspenseful, and the chord progression is orgasmic. this song makes me pray for the safety of my bbys.

Take a Step Forward! (SD1 - Track 18)

the first arc v track i liked. some confident, sexy shit. great intro and ending. made me respect band.

The Start of Action Duels (SD1 - Track 7)

listen to the drum line at 0:27 and tell me this isn’t the most hype thing on this soundtrack. the melody at 0:42 is what i consider THE arc v theme, and what a gorgeous, uplifting one it is. i’ve severely neglected SD1 on this list but it actually has more tracks i like than any of the other sound duel volumes. sound duel 1 was also extremely underused in the anime so all of you have to listen to it right now because it’s brilliant.

A Promise With Dad (SD1 - Track 19)

the track that made me believe in yuya. the track that made me believe everything works out okay in the end. promises are worth it. life is blooming. love is real.

A Heart Made of Glass (SD1 - Track 12)

a heart made of glass? whose? *listens to downbeat* oh that’s right, mine. the first track that hinted to yuya’s inner turmoil. another one of the tracks Nakagawa really orchestrated fully. the only track other than “the light of hope doesn’t arrive” that can be called acoustic on this soundtrack. dat piano tho. oboes are lyfe. take away this melody it’s sad.

C’mon Let’s Duel! (SD2 - Track 3)

let’s duel? more like let’s pray to get out of this alive. i believe in male voices again. yugioh doesn’t use choir often but when it does it has great melody.

DDD (SD1 - Track 11)

the theme i don’t have to provide a link to because it’s that iconic. synth choir is okay this one time. the only theme other than the “main” theme that has several rearrangements (SD2 - Track 7 & “Reiji - Unreleased OST” that are also as good so listen to them). what a great theme for reiji and his three dicks.

Cheer Up (SD3 - Track 21)

“where tf was this track in the anime” pt. 2394812. yuya definitely needed a lot of cheering up and this song wasn’t there and should have been. im here for the pure melody that starts at 1:26. the last track on an official arc v sound duel i liked, and therefore the theme for what would have been many fans’ ideal arc v ending.

The Fun and Cheery Entertainment Duel! (SD1 - Track 4)

funkiest track on the arc v ost. 0:15 is life. arc v needs more latin beats. 1:40 is such a nice theme and mood change ill never be tired of it. the only time this soundtrack has used a guitar?

[ricardosousalemos]

Fleetwood Mac: Tango in the Night: Deluxe Edition

It started with “Sara.” The first two Fleetwood Mac albums to feature Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks—the self-titled album and Rumours—featured production typical of the pop-rock generated in Los Angeles in the ’70s. They were professional and pristine, exhibiting an instrumental and emotional warmth that was, in terms of the actual recording technique and the cerebral atmosphere of the people making the records, a product of isolation. On their next record, Tusk, Buckingham shifted the balance of Fleetwood Mac’s studio pop. He deliberately produced his songs so that they sounded trebly and makeshift—as if they were translated from brain to tape as quickly as possible—and produced Nicks’ and Christine McVie’s songs with a lush and carefully-sculpted dimensionality. “Sara,” a song Nicks wrote to a daughter she never had, is so gently shaped that every instrumental and vocal materializes in the song like vapor in the atmosphere. At the Blockbuster Music Awards in 2001, Nicks said that when she writes songs, she tries to “make little worlds” for the listener. Whether intentional or not, this sensibility invaded Buckingham’s production of the song; “Sara,” as it appears on Tusk, is its own world, a complete environment, a beach house built out of sighs.

The follow-up to Tusk, 1982’s Mirage, was a kind reflexive scaling back; both Warner Bros. and Buckingham wanted to regenerate the success and the coherent atmosphere of Rumours. It didn’t take. The band members had already drifted too far from each other: Nicks sang country-western and synth-pop songs; Buckingham quoted Pachelbel’s Canon; McVie’s formal romanticism began to take on a crystalline quality; the production flowed in the direction of their individual fascinations. After a brief tour, the band went on hiatus. Nicks released two successful solo albums; McVie and Buckingham put out one each. In 1985, Buckingham had begun work on an additional solo album, when Mick Fleetwood suggested Buckingham fold his new songs into the more monolithic, more lucrative idea of a Fleetwood Mac record.

The resulting album, Tango in the Night, is exactly that: a monolithic, lucrative idea of a Fleetwood Mac record. It was recorded over eighteen months between 1986 and 1987, mostly at Buckingham’s home studio in L.A. Buckingham devoted himself to the record, laboring intensely over its songs, its sounds, and the integrity of its design. Recording technology had advanced substantially since the early ’80s, and Buckingham found the methods by which he could determine the shape and temperature of a Fleetwood Mac song had expanded.

“Most of the vocal parts were recorded track by track,” he told the New York Times in 1987. “The voices used in the textured vocal choirs were mostly mine. I used a Fairlight machine that samples real sounds and blends them orchestrally.” Buckingham fed guitars and ukuleles and vocals into synthesizers and then triggered the individual notes until they began to pulse in symphonic patterns. Out of these newly available materials, he could practically build an entire band, which was useful at the time. Mick Fleetwood was almost entirely consumed by his cocaine habit, and the band had been experiencing an internal drift for years. “Constructing such elaborate layering is a lot like painting a canvas and is best done in solitude,” Buckingham added.

The album’s artwork, “Homage a Henri Rousseau” by Brett-Livingstone Strong, is so lush and romantic that it walks a fine line between formal elegance and kitsch, blending the terrestrial with the celestial. It’s an accurate illustration of Tango in the Night’s sound design, of the glitterings and humid shimmers that Buckingham placed in the songs. He made each track on Tango just as he produced “Sara”: less an arrangement of bass, guitar, drums, and vocals than a complete world, a living panorama. There’s a phenomenal wholeness to the recordings on Tango that seems like a superficial compensation for how deeply fragmented the band was at the time.

After Nicks resurfaced from her cocaine addiction at the Betty Ford Clinic, she visited Buckingham’s studio for several weeks. Three of her recordings figure into the finished Tango, only two of which were written by her. Her voice, invariably hoarse after years of cocaine abuse, often warps or fails the already incomplete material. She howls her way through “Seven Wonders,” a song written mostly by Sandy Stewart. (Nicks receives credit because she misheard “All the way down you held the line” as “All the way down to Emmiline”; for Nicks—and I don’t disagree—sometimes accident and authorship are indistinguishable.) For all of its bluster, the song is not only enhanced by the incidents of its arrangement but is the incidents of its arrangement; try to imagine the song without its synth hook and hear the rest of it evaporate. On “When I See You Again,” Nicks’ voice almost crumbles and shatters into atoms. “Stevie was the worst she’s ever been,” Buckingham told Uncut in 2013. “I didn’t recognize her...I had to pull performances out of words and lines and make parts that sounded like her that weren’t her.” Fittingly, each verse and chorus that Nicks sings sounds generated by a different uncanny assemblage of Stevie, among them one who sings in a kind of mutilated whisper. After the bridge, Nicks completely disappears. Buckingham finishes the song.

Buckingham’s songs on Tango are less knotted than they were on Tusk and Mirage, newly permissive of space. The first single, Buckingham’s “Big Love,” is a song that inadvertently simulates the essential failure of the album. It is devoted to a totally abstracted and imaginary form of love, while Tango in the Night is devoted to a totally abstracted and imaginary form of Fleetwood Mac (neither of which could be assembled in reality). The song’s arrangement feels austere and detached, a byproduct of the narrator’s alienation, but it’s also decorated with overlapping, pointillist guitar phrases. Even the empty spaces on Tango feel like deliberately-wrought emptinesses—for instance, the airy synths that hover over the verses of McVie’s “Everywhere,” or Buckingham’s title track, which through its sense of space imparts the feeling of rowing through fog and mystery.

Still, it’s McVie whose work is most realized by Buckingham’s impressionism. Her “Everywhere” is the best song on the record. Like “Big Love” it too is about encountering an idea too big to contain within oneself (love, again). But where “Big Love” apprehends it with icy suspicion, “Everywhere” responds with warmth, empathy, and buoyancy, describing a kind of devotion so deeply felt that it produces weightlessness in a person. Its incandescent texture is felt in almost any music that could be reasonably described as balearic. Elsewhere, “Isn’t It Midnight,” McVie’s co-write with Buckingham and her then-husband Eddy Quintela, seems an inversion of the values of “Everywhere,” a severe ’80s guitar rock song that gets consumed by a greater, more unnerving force by its chorus, as if it’s succumbing to a conspiratorial dread. “Do you remember the face of a pretty girl?” McVie sings, and Buckingham echoes her in an unfeeling monotone (“the face of a pretty girl”) while behind him synths chime in a moving constellation, UFOs pulsing in the dark.

This is the essence of Tango in the Night: something falling apart but held together by an unearthly glow. More of a mirage than Mirage, it is an immaculate study in denial (its most enduring hit revolves around McVie asking someone to tell her “sweet little lies”). It’s a form of dreaming where you could touch the petals of a flower and feel something softer than the idea of softness. In this way, Tango seems to emerge less from Buckingham’s pure will and imagination than from a question that haunts art in general: How can one make the unreal real, and the real unreal?

The remaster of Tango in the Night isn’t as topographically startling as last year’s Mirage, where new details seemed to rise out of the mix as if in a relief sculpture; it sounded good on CD in 1987. The reissue does sound warmer and brighter, and the instruments feel less digitally combined, which lifts background elements to the surface, like the seasick drift of the bass notes in “Caroline” and the coordinated staccato harmonies in the title track. The reissue also includes two discs of b-sides, demos, and extended remixes, several of which were previously unreleased. “Special Kind of Love” is described as a demo but sounds like a completely developed Buckingham song, gentle and simple, with every edge expressively filigreed; it could’ve been a potential second sequel to “You and I.” “Seven Wonders” appears in an earlier, more relaxed arrangement, with Lindsey’s guitar warmly swanning between the notes that would eventually be reconstructed in perfect digital isolation by a synthesizer.

The demos also reveal the ways in which the songs could fold into and out of each other. On the “Tango in the Night” demo you can hear Buckingham, at the edge of every chorus, begin to invent the trembling choral part that opens “Caroline.” Nicks’ eventual solo track “Juliet” is present in two of its primordial forms—as the instrumental “Book of Miracles” (credited to both Buckingham and Nicks) and as a five-minute “run-through.” The run-through is especially curious, reducing “Book of Miracles” to a formulaic blues-rock over which Nicks’ voice produces a just-barely musical static, full of wobbles and distortions and exclamations. After the take she says, ecstatically, “I thought that was wonderful! I didn’t play! I did not play because I am so smart!”

Nicks exhibits a strange, dissonant giddiness in this moment that isn’t present in any of the band member’s memories of the recording process. At the time, in his interview with the Times, Buckingham imaginatively described Tango in the Night as a restorative process. “This album is as much about healing our relationships as Rumours was about dissension and pain within the group,” he said. “The songs look back over a period of time that in retrospect seems almost dreamlike.” Twenty-six years later, Buckingham summarized the experience to Uncut in more severe terms: “When I was done with the record, I said, ‘Oh my God. That was the worst recording experience of my life.”

The jealousy and resentment he felt toward Nicks for the success she experienced in her solo career, and the prevailing feeling that his architectural work on the band’s records went unnoticed and unappreciated, had built to a flashpoint. Later in 1987, the band met up in anticipation of the promotional tour for Tango, for which they had already secured dates and signed contracts. At the meeting, Buckingham announced he was quitting the band. “I flew off of the couch and across the room to seriously attack him,” Nicks told Classic Rock in 2013. “...I’m not real scary but I grabbed him which almost got me killed.” They spilled out of McVie’s house and into the street. Buckingham ran after Nicks and threw her up against a car. She “screamed horrible obscenities” at him, and he walked away, from the moment and the band. What’s left, after these harsh fragments of reality are swept away, is Tango in the Night: a remarkably complete album, a lavish garden growing out of negative space. Just a dream.

[missimbalance]

The Proust Questionnaire

Tagged by @rakija 

Tagging: @cyathigerum, @crossparallel, @lunamxdness, @scarlet-rainy-dreams, @toplubdifo, @tragic-romantic

The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness? Sense of safety. Without it everything else loses its taste.

2. What is your greatest fear? Heights. Aliens. Failure. Drawing too much attention.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Never feeling prepared enough.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Closed mind.

5. Which living person do you most admire? There is a simple answer to that. Instead i’ll say: everyone who knows what is their main direction in life.

6. What is your greatest extravagance? My music taste.

7. What is your current state of mind? This year’s gonna suck. I already know that. I can only control how hard I bite back.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Finer tastes.

9. On what occasion do you lie? Whenever I talk about my personal life.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance? My height.

11. Which living person do you most despise? Behaviors rather than people: hurting animals for fun; being judgemental without good reason; refusing to learn.

12. What is the quality you most like in a man? Good voice, better brain.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman? Pretty voice, intelligence, imagination, alluring eyes.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? “for fuck’s sake”, “everything” (seriously, whenever I go through my writing, there’s at least one “everything” per paragraph), “w sensie…”

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life? The World itself. Which my girlfriend is the most significant part of.

16. When and where were you happiest? The morning that caught me hanging a blanket over the window, so no one could see the inside, was pretty damn close.

17. Which talent would you most like to have? Being able to ride a bike would be useful. I’m seriously unable to learn. Apart from that - something connected to sculpting or clothing design. I like touching things, or using my hands to interact with my surrounding in general, but lack imagination, or creativity, or whatever it is that puts ready designs in your head.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Where do I begin? No, okay, just subtract few centimeters from my stomach area and add them to my heignt.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement? Fauré’s Requiem. I know a choral part between 4 choirs brought together for the melody to be heard from behind the orchestra isn’t that big. I know alto meant something only in two parts. I’ve actually worked in bigger projects before that. But still - ever since I heard it, I wanted to sing it. And it happened.

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? A stone. Preferably a piece of flint.

21. Where would you most like to live? I like my city. But the lack of oxygen…

22. What is your most treasured possession? Probably something from our music collection. Other than that, I tend to give away every nice thing I get, so no one can take it by force.

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Not even caring about not caring anymore.

24. What is your favorite occupation? Sleeping? Anything to do with music. RPG, as exhausting as it is for me.

25. What is your most marked characteristic? My intelligence? That’s what I always hear. Even if I don’t believe.

26. What do you most value in your friends? Patience.

27. Who are your favorite writers? Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Agatha Christie, Haruki Murakami, Joseph Sheridan le Fanu.

28. Who is your hero of fiction? I guess I don’t care about characters enough xD The last one I remember inspiring me… in our universe his name would be Howell Jenkins. I wanted to do exactly what he did, so yeah, kind of my hero.

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with? Thomas Aquinas. Just let me sit in my corner and overthink, using whatever comes by as a fuel for my brain.

30. Who are your heroes in real life? …it’s bad that I can’t name anyone, isn’t it?

31. What are your favorite names? Alexander, I guess - and every variation of it, including some female forms.

32. What is it that you most dislike? Meaningless effort.

33. What is your greatest regret? Settling for less. The list of times I did this grows every month. Still can’t change.

34. How would you like to die? I just get up and start walking. Without food,without water, but it doesn’t matter, I just keep walking. Exhaustion doesn’t stop me, neither does the pain in my muscles. I’ll probably fall down at one point and this will be the end. Alternatively: in fire.

35. What is your motto? I don’t have one. Only pieces of song lyrics stuck in my head for long enough to affect my life.

Oh look, I actually finished!

[harryandmeghan0-blog]

Gospel Lessons from a Royal wedding by Juliet Fletcher

New Post has been published on http://harryandmeghan.xyz/gospel-lessons-from-a-royal-wedding-by-juliet-fletcher/

Gospel Lessons from a Royal wedding by Juliet Fletcher

Well, we have spent the past fifteen to twenty years telling young gospel artists what it was like to have lived during the 1980s, when a select number of choirs, groups and soloists were signed to mainstream secular record labels. And now they have witnessed this for themselves, with the recent signing of Karen Gibson & Kingdom Choir to the UK arm of Sony Music, following the Royal Wedding. What lessons can we learn from this widely acclaimed achievement?

LESSON NO.1 – EXCELLENCE PROPELS YOU

In real, harsh business terms, it was a no-brainer decision for Sony. The song, ‘Stand By Me’, had reached the Number 1 slot on the US Billboard Singles Chart, following 10 million YouTube views, and 2 billion people had zoned in to watching the Royal couple say “I do” and to hear a choir, made up of African Caribbean or African British people singing ‘So fine, so sweet’. It must have been as startling to the US viewers, to see the British audience listening to Bishop Michael Curry, the Black presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church – the American equivalent of the Church of England.

With that perspective in mind, it’s the realisation of how the choir sang, combined with who they were singing for and how the public responded that has given us the resultant recording deal that makes this so special – especially since there are a number of British choir directors with choirs who have been performing to mass audiences and royal dignitaries for many years.

My first experience of Karen and her ability to hone a group of voices occurred while I worked at the BBC, producing The Gospel Train. From circa 1993 to 1996, The Gospel Train became the first regularly broadcasted programme on BBC Radio 2, which toured Pentecostal and Charismatic churches and recorded a live evening of music with special guest artists; a host choir and band, and an individual from the local audience, who would give a evidentially proven testimony of what the LORD had done for them. Some of the local choirs were not up to scratch and, after consulting Noel Robinson, who introduced me to Karen, I began to see her incredible skills put to great effect.

I remember a particular choir that was just unbroadcastable (if there is such a word). They wanted to sing a classic gospel song, and it didn’t matter how much they rehearsed, they sounded no better. In comes Karen and, in less than a month – and I think it was two-three rehearsals – they were relatively brilliant. So much so, that when we had a team production meeting to choose songs for a compilation album of the series, that song was the first choice of the Senior Producer! Wow! What a turnaround that was.

When I recommended Karen to other BBC producers, I had no qualms or nervousness. She delivered time and time again. Delivering quality at every level in every way. This is an extremely important attribute. None of us are exempt from it – no matter how long we’ve been doing what we do!

There is no doubt about it, it is a wonderful personal opportunity for Karen Gibson to bring her specific style of choir directing, her way of delivering the choral sound of British Gospel, to new and wider audiences. I’m excited for Karen and the singers, because they are properly and perfectly dedicated to what they do – with a right motive. Of course, they must receive payment for what they are doing; they have mortgages and rent to pay, and families to dress and feed… For some, it may be part time, others full time, but we know ALL THE TIME PRAISING AND HONOURING THE LORD – regardless of the situation they’re in. Let’s not get it twisted: working in the music and entertainment industry – because that is where they are – is not a complete bed of roses, and even if it were – roses have thorns! What we certainly need to do is pray for them, as they spread the message of hope, love, faith and peace to people.

LESSON NO.2 – THE RIGHT SONG IDENTIFIES YOU

I recall once, while I worked with the superstar vocalist, Deniece Williams, producing her BBC Radio 2 show, we went to the home of the late singer-songwriter and guitarist, Bobby Womack. He told us a few stories of his personal experiences, one of which was about the song, Stand By Me. Womack was a contemporary and friend of Ben E King, and he described King telling him how he needed one more song for his debut album, and this was the only one he had to hand that was mainly written as a gospel song. He sang it to the producers Leiber & Stoller, and they decided to change up the lyrics and arrange it to its current lyrical form. Bobby Womack told us that story, because he says that artists who had come out of gospel in those days, to follow the success of Sam Cooke, to become known as a soul stars, had written songs that were originally for gospel. Somehow, I feel Karen & Kingdom Choir have reclaimed Stand By Me and brought it back home to its original genre.

What was very important about the song Stand By Me was the actual skilled arrangement of this golden classic. This was all down to the excellent vocal coach, arranger, choir leader and producer, Mark De Lisser. I visited Mark’s website – and you should too! – at www.markdelisser.com, where there is the treasury of an exceptional workhorse of a musical master. His website is an AMAZING record of who he is and what he offers. Mark has done a lot of TV and radio work, but he has also established various choirs, including ACM Choir (founded as part of his work at the Academy of Contemporary Music).

We do have excellent anointed, appointed, skill-trained professionals – individuals who have taken the time to learn the art academically, but have also deeply embedded the craft of their roots and spirituality into all they do. I think it’s essential that individuals like Mark are highlighted, celebrated and encouraged within our scene and beyond it.

We need to encourage more compositions – both arrangements and originals – from our writers. We need a collective attitude about great songs, and making and matching songs with the RIGHT artists who can emotively, spiritually and physically deliver through performance. It’s a very sad but unfortunate fact that we have not been successful in profiling, sharing and re-recording songs of our British peers and contemporaries. Where are our nationally known British classic gospel songs? The answer must change in this generation.

As much as this is Ben E King’s composition, the Kingdom Choir/Mark De Lisser arrangement will always be identified, and probably choirs and other chorale groups will learn to sing that version. And we will be able to tell the back story to its powerful place in our timeline.

LESSON NO.3 – THE POWER OF THE FRUITS

This may be an odd philosophical lesson to some who will read this, but I believe there is a valid point somewhere in my text. I read a quote recently. It was someone else quoting the famed Christian apologist, Ravi Zacharias, who said: “The more we enjoy legitimate pure pleasure, the closer we are to the heart of God.” Now, this is a big BIG statement to me. And I compare this question with the many stories I have read in books and watched in films about people who are unbelievers, some atheists, who have a NDE – Near Death Experience.

It always amazes me that many and most of those people return to give their lives to JESUS, or at least become very committed to believing there is life beyond physical death. Most times, the first ‘good’ experience is being surrounded by LIGHT and atmosphere of pure LOVE, or to be filled with PEACE or some other intangible goodness. Often following those experiences, people become aware they are experiencing GOD or JESUS, without being told that is who they are experiencing. Now, bear with me, for here is my point…

I’ve had a look at Kingdom Choir’s website, and there are three big words: LOVE, MUSIC, POWER. When you are surrounded by PURE LOVE, PURE MUSIC or PURE POWER or, as is sometimes the case, all three elements, you can only but look up and probably discover, as many have, that this is GOD, and GOD IS LOVE. GOD IS SPIRIT. And this is where the FRUIT of the SPIRIT, listed in Galatians 5, lets us know that by these fruits we will know who He is.

Sometimes our religiosity can tie us down or limit a presentation in a formulaic manner. Be LOVE. BE LIGHT. God will make His Person known.

In closing, I pay tribute to a much-loved Choir Director and Pastor, Andrea Robinson, who preceded Karen Gibson, from the late 70s onwards, as one of our first widely known directors with a skill to hone and shape voices, regardless of where they came from or the level of their ability. Andrea went to be with the LORD earlier this year. Karen and other choir directors, who attended her Homegoing & Celebration of Life event, realise they are part of a select rare breed of persons with exceptional skills and ability, who carry something very special. Prayer and public support are needed for all our various Ministers of Music, as they engage in these great opportunities handed to them. Yet we need more constructive ways to empower each other, so that more of these opportunities are forthcoming and the influence of our music can increase.

Let’s keep learning the lessons.

Source: https://www.keepthefaith.co.uk/2018/09/06/gospel-lessons-from-a-royal-wedding-by-juliet-fletcher/