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nonokoko13 · 4 months

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SPOILERS SXF CHAPTER 93 ❗❗❗

So, chapter 93. Starting with Anya scores...

THAT'S MY GIRL!!!! CONGRATULATIONS BABY!!! 🎉🎊🥳

(Let's take a moment to appreciate what a good and supportive friend Becky is too 💖)

As I expected Anya passed classical language (with a huge improvement!) but in the large, tedious walk on Hell that is school not everyone can get exceptional grades in every subject unless you're a Desmond apparently and Anya, as many people who preceded her and will come after her, failed math.

I have seen many people make theories about how certain older student who we shall discuss next could be her tutor. However, my theory is that she will receive help from Bill in the future

It makes more sense: both already know each other, Anya has more chances of Bill accepting or suggesting to help her than the-one-I-shall-name-later and overall Bill seems more communicative and better at socialising and explaining himself. Let's not forget he received a stella in math after all. So for me Bill seems like the most plausible option (maybe we will get jealous Damian with this friendship?)

Back at the Forgers residence the Authens pay a visit to congratulate Anya as well. When I read Sigmund's sentence about how rewarding is to have a payment for your hard work my mind automatically thought "But sometimes no matter how hard you try you don't get a reward. Sometimes the result is just not worth the effort" (I think many people has a canon event that reveals them that, specially when you're in highschool, middle school or college)

And right after thinking that he agreed with me lol. My mind really anticipates things before finishing a panel

Speaking of hard work and grades, I'm taking this chance to give my opinion: a system based on giving stars to those who have the highest grades while those who fail face the possibility of being expelled is awful. Not getting a star and comparing yourself to your peers already make horrors to your self esteem, imagine a child getting expelled for repeatedly fail a exam that may not be adapted to their needs (or getting many tonitrus for things your teachers disapprove of you but you didn't know it was wrong or for something about yourself you cannot control. For example a kid with ADHD unintentionally interrupting someone, disconnecting in the middle of a conversation or making noise with their leg when they stay still for too long. No need to go as far as talking about neurodivergent kids, look at that chapter where Anya got a tonitrus for not having a handkerchief. Who the fuck is punished for that when you're an adult anyway)

Enough of that, back to the chapter. Let's talk about what hyped me the most: Demetrius finally appearing on screen!

We already had crumbs of him before. Given Damian inferiority complex when comparing himself to him when he had talked about school and Twilight noticing his exams barely had any mistakes back in the chapter where Daybreak was welcomed to this world, him being a exceptional student when it comes to academics isn't surprising in the least.

Many say he's ugly and exactly like his father but I disagree. Donovan looks like a goddamn Frankenstein if Frankenstein was ugly, Demetrius take after his dead eyes look but he's pretty like Melinda. Not conventionally pretty like Damian or Melinda but kinda pretty. Like a zombie with sleep deprivation but in an endearing way. It's not his fault he's built like a Tim Burton or Don't Starve Together character... anyway I'm sure his appearance can grow up on you, hopefully (;´ ▾ `)

About the theories regarding this panel

It may be true something's going on, maybe he was really experimented on... But I can't stop thinking he was in that very moment "No thoughts, head empty" mode

I mean, he looks like a walking corpse in dire need of a proper nap, can you blame him if his thoughts are mainly focused on studies when Donovan probably spent time with him only for the sake of producing a good grades, not independent thinking machine as his heir? "He watch him study all the time."

I don't think it was necessary for a tragic incident to change Donovan and made him distant from his family. I suspect he has always been like that, perhaps even before having Demetrius, so it was less a traumatic big event and more the exhausting everyday life Demetrius has been having as far as he remembers of being supervised by his father in order to be the best at school and everything that turned him into the probably burnt out teenager he is.

Same with Melinda, being married to somebody you might not have even loved when you first got together, a man who doesn't try to understand others or seem capable of caring for anyone, a man who is not precisely publicly known for his kindness (remember Millie and Yor's boss when Donovan was brought up?)... Being married to that kind of person for years and then having kids with that person and have to keep being related to them for at least until your kids graduate sound like a miserable life indeed

The Desmond have a common theme going around that is understanding the world around them, or rather the lack of it. I can say for sure that Demetrius feeling overwhelmed simply with a bunch of kids and thinking he can't understand people have its roots in Donovan

• For Donovan is his narrow minded belief that nobody can't understand — therefore neither trust — each other because people is different; and as long as that phrase of "two people can't think the same" lives to the reality it finds itself in reaching a common ground is impossible.

• Donovan influenced Demetrius. Perhaps Demetrius doesn't share his father belief and that's not why he can't understand others, maybe it is because he was possibly deprived of a normal childhood where he could socialise with others of his age without his father expectations onto him.

Many academic gifted children reach a part of their lives where their habit is to think inside the box of "Good grades is all I'm good at or all I should care about; good grades = doing fine; it's all about what you can prove to those who expect something from you, not what you can prove to yourself to make you feel satisfied and happy".

When people who raised you condition you to act, live and think the way they wanted you to do is difficult to break and separate yourself from that. Plus he's going through the middle school phase, from personal experience that makes you x10 times angsty and complicated to understand yourself, much less everyone else.

• With Damian it is less discussed and pointed out because he's been able to have a relatively normal —if anything very neglected — childhood up to this point. He has friends, he acts like a kid of his age, his life doesn't revolve around his grades all the time... But that's the bare minimum of what a good childhood should be like.

It may be because of his age, but he doesn't see the bigger picture of his family. He can't see what is wrong with them (yet) because in his eyes nothing is wrong. Sure, he feels lonely and works hard for his dad to notice him, but that happens in many families right? He's not even in denial, he doesn't phantom the idea that what his family is, how they behave towards each other or towards him, isn't normal.

Don't make me start with how his future plans is following Donovan's footsteps in politics because he's trying that hard to approach him. He works hard at school because in his mind being like Demetrius or how he believes Donovan wants him to be would bring them closer, receive an understanding relationship from his dad when we know there might not be genuine affection between them from Donovan's side to start with.

He's teaching himself that love is conditioned by your "worth" or by whether you get to the expectations your loved ones have. That reminds me of what Sigmund told Anya because it sounds like a foretelling of Damian's life: [...] And one day you'll experience the frustration of realizing that hard work is not always rewarded. He doesn't many things and his age may explain it but it doesn't justify, if he continues thinking like that he'll have his hopes crushed and may turn out like Demetrius.

• As for Melinda, is difficult to talk about the point she stands in the understanding theme. Unlike her family she does seem able to understand people, perhaps because she wasn't raised like her kids have been. She's aware that her husband party made a lot of damage to their country, she seems aware and attentive to what surrounds her.

I don't think she cannot be understanding or perceptive, I think it's the other way around: the people she's surrounded by cannot understand her. Neither Yor, Anya, Damian, surely Demetrius and Donovan neither, her "friends" of the association she's in... Not even us can't understand the reason why she's so conflictive about Damian yet.

In just one appearance Donovan made his belief clear, thus giving us an idea of what type of feelings he has towards Damian. We can get so much of his character as a person with one chapter, but Melinda has appeared more than him and her true self is unknown. Donovan is reserved in a physical way, he isolates himself by not going outside and socialising, but he's not against the idea of explaining a stranger his stance in life. Melinda surrounds herself of people and listens to them but she keeps to herself.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to see more of Demetrius and the Desmonds. Hope we get more screen time of them, unless Endo has decided to drop such episode only to give us a one-shot chapter next and not elaborate further before introducing a complete different arc 💦

Although with what we have I'm already bought and entertained enough. Our favorite family is great but hooray for secondary characters being given depth and spotlight in this manga 🥳

See you next chapter reaction! If I made another one after other 25 full moons. I'm probably forgetting to talk about something...Oh well

#spy x family #sxf #manga spoilers #sxf chapter 93 #sxf spoilers #spy x family spoilers #chapter analysis #anya forger #bill watkins #donovan desmond #demetrius desmond #damian desmond #melinda desmond #becky blackbell #emile elman #ewen egeburg #GOD YOU DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS EMO KID TO ARRIVE #my speculation of his looks was completely wrong and I'm glad it was. He looks prettier with not having a ikemen face #maybe it's just me and my liking for unconventional faces or faces different from the normal face an artist give to their ocs tho #idk. he looks neat to me #reminds me of owls and lemurs ✨#Maybe that's not the compliment I think it is given I also like George face because he gives me Frankenstein vibes #(not the same as Donovan's Frankenstein vibes btw)#♡ — shut up noko #Dementrius does sound like he would listen to MCR if there was MCR equivalent in sxf world. Look what parent issues and 0 naps do to a mf #Donovan let your family have a life without physical or spiritual presence or the consequences of it leaving a mark on them challenge #(impossible)#sigmund authen #almost forgot to tag Einstein looking grandpa #demetrius probably have 0 friends too. poor guy

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thelaziestmotherfucker · 1 year

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After a pair of amateur criminals break into a suburban home, they stumble upon a dark secret that two sadistic homeowners will do anything to keep from getting out.

Villains (2019) dir. Dan Berk & Robert Olsen

#villains #villainsedit #villains 2019 #horroredit #dailyhorroredits #userhorroredits #dailyhorrorfilms #dailyhorrorgifs #maika monroe #bill skarsgård #jeffrey donovan #thelaziestmotherfucker #do not repost

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sy-on-boy · 9 months

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More Spy x Family exhibition photos!

This is one of my fav exhibits: a model of best boy Bond! He’s so fluffy and baby :D

Clothes of the 3 mains! I think they’re pretty good. Yor’s dress is 😳, Twilight has his pistol, and Anya’s hair accessories are pretty cute.

Henderson is always watching. Just a slightly ominous old man with elegance.

Becky’s last name is once again Blackwell. I genuinely thought it was Blackbell? While Damian and Becky have their character introductions, Emile and Ewen don’t. Their only appearance is besides Becky. (Not even next to Damian, rip. Damian is situated on the other side of Becky.)

Surprisingly, Bill has a character introduction. I suspect it’s because 1) he’s a memorable fan favourite who was prominent in the dodgeball arc which was iconic by itself 2) he has recent relevance in the hijacking arc. Maybe this suggests Bill might have further importance later on. Rip E&E though, considering they appear whenever Damian does.

Redacted’s bit makes me so sad. His part is in the gallery about the conflict between East and West, and it gives off the impression that he was just a child caught up in the war 🥺

Donovan and Melinda giving off heavy final bosses vibes when put next to each other. Evil power couple perhaps? I was excited to see Melinda because she’s a relatively recent addition to the cast. Maybe the book might give more information/ hints 👀

Final photo of this post: the iconic Twiyor proposal!! :D couldn’t leave the exhibit without a picture of it :D

Might post more photos later :D I’ll be linking these series of posts in my pinned post on my blog.

#spy x family #spy x family exhibition #anya forger #loid forger #yor forger #becky blackbell #bill watkins #donovan desmond #melinda desmond #bond forger

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milksockets · 5 months

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a/w 1977 shot by terence donovan in bill gibb: fashion + fantasy - iain r. webb (2008)

#my scan #bill gibb #terence donovan

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jordyporgie · 9 months

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modernized a shot from the Poweranimator era

added original image in bottom for comparison.

#south park #wendy testaburger #bill allen #pip pirrup #clyde donovan #kevin stoley #sp wendy #sp bill #sp pip pirrup #sp clyde #sp kevin #fan edit #edit #they eepy #sleeptime

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shiro-s2e2-erukinzu · 1 year

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Anime only watchers and people who aren't caught up with the Manga, BEWARE... Cuz I'm about to discuss Spy X Family Mission 75... You have been warned...! 👌

[SPOILERS AHEAD FROM THIS POINT ON]

[Breathes in............. 😤]

(This gif perfectly describes how I feel after reading this chapter... So let's talk about it...!)

The chapter begins with Anya, Becky, Bill, and Damian each getting a Stella Star (as they should...! 😤):

And at first, I was like: "Is Endo really just gonna skip the direct aftermath of the hijacking...?" 🤔 But then, a few pages later, we get exactly that!! 😄

One by one, everyone's parents came to pick them up (we even got a small glimpse at Ewen's mom and Emile's dad...! 😁) And then, it was just Damian and Anya...

Which honestly hurt my heart a little seeing Anya looking into the distance like that... 😢

Then, we get one of (in my opinion) the most sweetest / wholesome moments between Anya and Damian...!! 💗😊💗

DAMIAN EVEN CALLED ANYA HIS FRIEND...!!! 💗😆💗😆💗(Which he retracted soon after...!! 😁)

But then, Damian says this...:

💔MY FREAKING HEART...!!!💔

WHY DO YOU THIS TO HIM ENDO!!? 😫

(I swear...!! If the Forgers don't take Damian in, me and rest of the fandom will gladly adopt this boy...!!! 😤)

After that, Yor finally showed up to get Anya, which led to THIS:

💔MY BABY GIRL!!!💔

She really tried to play it off like she wasn't scared... 😢 Oh, Anya...! 💔😭💔

Then, we got the first big surprise of the chapter...:

TWILIGHT ACTUALLY SHOWED UP...!!! 😲 (And I'm happy about it!! 😊)

But that wasn't the only surprise...:

Melinda Desmond actually showed up!! 👀

And because of Anya, we finally got to see her inner thoughts...:

OH MY GOD!! 😱 WHAT AN ENDING...!!! AND WHAT IS HER DEAL?!!

And that was Mission 75, and it blew me out of the water...!!! 😵 I've said it a bunch before, and I'll say it again... Endo can always find a way to surprise me and keep me guessing...!! 😊 AND I LOVE THAT!!! 😁👍

As for where things will go from hear, I couldn't tell ya...! 😅 But what I do know is that Anya knows something's not right with Melinda now, and I wonder what she's gonna do with that information...? 🤔 Only time will tell...!! (Also, I wonder if Twilight was informed about the situation or if he heard about it a different way... 🤔)

Anyway, I had a great time with chapter, and I hope that y'all did too...!! 😊 So until next time, I see you all in the next Mission...!! Take care everyone...!! 👋😁

#spy x family #sxf #spyxfamily #spy x family manga #sxf manga #spyxfamily manga #anya forger #damian desmond #becky blackbell #bill watkins #yor forger #loid forger #melinda desmond #Mission 75 #THAT CHAPTER WAS AMAZING!!#I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE ELSE SAYS...!!#PROTECT DAMIAN AT ALL COST!! 😫#SOMEONE PLEASE ADOPT HIM FROM HIS HORRIBLE FAMILY!! 😔#I hate the way Donovan and Melinda treat Damian sooo much...! 😡

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kramlabs · 9 months

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Mohawk Trading Corporation:

The DIRECT ACTION unit of Sullivan and Cromwell and the COI

“Three weeks after Roosevelt created the Coordinator of Information, an innocuous notice appeared in the Federal Register announcing it. The COI, it said, would “collect and analyze all information and data which may bear upon the national security,” send it to the president and “such departments and officials as the president may determine,” and carry out “such supplementary activities as may facilitate the securing of information important for national security, not now available to the Government.”

With that, the United States established its first full-fledged intelligence agency by presidential decree.

When Japanese bombers attacked the American base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Americans instantly ceased to debate whether their country should enter the war. Whatever sense of security they felt had been shattered. In Washington, shock over the attack quickly gave way to a realization that it had been the result of a profound intelligence failure. Congress and the executive branch rushed to give the COI whatever support it needed.

Part of what it needed was the skill and experience of Allen Dulles. A few weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Donovan approached him through a mutual friend, David Bruce. It was the call for which Allen had been waiting. Bruce told him that Donovan needed a man for a job. He said nothing about the job, only that it required “absolute discretion, sobriety, devotion to duty, languages, and wide experience.” Allen accepted instantly.

Like many stories about Allen during these years, this one has come into question. By some accounts he was already working for Donovan at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. What is clear is that by early 1942, he had closed his Sullivan & Cromwell cases and taken over as chief of the COI station in New York. He leased a large suite of offices on the thirty-sixth floor of the International Building at Rockefeller Center and brought dozens, scores, and then hundreds of men and women to work there: lawyers, financiers, former diplomats, businessmen, and professors. Officially they were financial consultants. To friends they were allowed to say that they worked for a “research unit” related to the war effort, while stressing its “dull, statistical” nature.

New York was the logical first place, and Dulles was the logical guy because of his contacts,” one of Donovan’s aides later recalled. “He started bringing people in right away.”

Allen had two principal assignments. First was to lay the groundwork for an intelligence network that could penetrate Germany and the German-held regions of Europe, which meant finding and interviewing immigrants, Americans who had lived in those regions, and others who might have valuable memories or contacts. Second was an even wider-ranging effort to debrief everyone in New York, especially merchant seamen and newly arrived immigrants, who could give information—the more precise, the better—about European cities, ports, roads, rail lines, airports, factories, and military bases. Allen’s agents also swarmed over docks, sailors’ registry offices, and holding pens for “enemy aliens,” offering money for objects that immigrants might have considered worthless but that could be valuable to infiltrators. They bought old suits, neckties, overcoats, and shoes that could help agents blend in, and also identity cards, ration books, and other documents for forgers to use as models.

All manner of European exiles and refugees poured into the Rockefeller Center office; one, Heinrich Brüning, had been chancellor of Germany until 1932. The office swelled to fill four floors. When that proved insufficient, Allen rented eight more offices around the city, including one at 42 Broadway, near the docks. He quickly became fascinated with the possibilities for “direct action” operations in Europe, and established a front called the Mohawk Trading Corporation, through which he assembled an arsenal of sniper rifles, silencers, poison pills, and other tools of the black arts.

Allen had chosen his suite at Rockefeller Center in part because it adjoined one where another secret operation was under way, run by the legendary Sir William Stephenson, later revealed to be the spymaster Churchill called “Intrepid” and supposedly a model for Commander Fleming’s fictional agent 007. Churchill had sent Stephenson to New York in 1940 to gather intelligence and try to push the United States toward entering the war. He established himself in Suite 3603 of the International Building, where the sign on the door said “British Passport Control Office.” Britain was known as setting the gold standard in intelligence work, and Allen found in Stephenson a role model, inspiration, and guru.

“He had much to teach me,” Allen said later. “I picked his brains.”

On June 13, 1942, with the United States engaged in global war, Roosevelt signed an order transforming the Coordinator of Information from an intelligence-gathering agency into one authorized to conduct covert and paramilitary operations. There was no change in leadership, but a new name: the Office of Strategic Services. The OSS was authorized to do everything its predecessor had done and one thing more: “Plan and operate such services as may be directed by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

“With this, Donovan’s blueprint for the coordination of strategic intelligence collection with secret operations was realized,” Allen wrote later. “An intelligence agency had been created for the first time in the United States which brought together under one roof the work of intelligence collection and counterespionage, with the support of underground resistance activities, sabotage, and almost anything else in aid of our national effort that regular armed forces were not equipped to do.”

The OSS opened secret training camps for agents in Maryland and Virginia, and quickly ballooned to a staff of more than six hundred, most based in New York or Washington. Allen hired many of them. He described them as “military men and civilian leaders, teachers, bankers, lawyers, businessmen, librarians, writers, publishers, ballplayers, missionaries, reformed safe-crackers, bartenders, tugboat operators.… A bartender was hired not because he knew how to mix drinks but because he spoke perfect Italian and was at home in the mountain passes of the Apennines; a missionary because he knew the tribes and native dialects of Burma; an expert in engraving because his agents would need the most expert documentation to pass through enemy lines.”

That was a romanticized description of the men and women who joined the OSS. There were mud-on-the-shoes types, of course, but Allen and other recruiters for the OSS looked mostly to people like themselves, people they knew from prep school, college, the practice of corporate law or investment banking, clubs, vacation resorts, or the Council on Foreign Relations. The upper reaches of the OSS comprised what Drew Pearson called “one of the fanciest groups of dilettante diplomats, Wall Street bankers, and amateur detectives ever seen in Washington.” Many from this group would go on to help shape the United States in the second half of the twentieth century: Richard Helms, William Colby, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Walt Rostow, Stewart Alsop, C. Douglas Dillon, Arthur Goldberg, William Casey, Ralph Bunche, and a parade of unlikelier figures ranging from Sterling Hayden to Julia Child.

http://www.ossreborn.com/files/Donovan%20and%20the%20CIA.pdf

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#Mohawk trading corporation #Sullivan and cromwell #direct action #executive action #Allen dulles #bill donovan #oss #cia #fdr #ground branch #COI

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javeeh · 1 year

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Other doodles i did that were on the same canvas as Terrance's one!!

#south park #sp #bill allen #fosse mcdonald #bridon gueermo #thad jarvis #clyde donovan #ike broflovski

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dustedmagazine · 7 months

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Dust Volume Nine, Number 10

Older, but not a bit wiser, the Hives return

Fall comes with its smell of maple in the leaves, its intimations of mortality and, this year, its share of unsettling events—war in the middle east, AI in everything and the murder of our beloved Bandcamp by capitalist privateers. (We are not equating these things by any means.) Like always, we turn to music, the annihilating blare of metal, the agile interplay of improvisation, the well-shaped contours of pop, depending on our individual tastes. We hope you’ll find something to ease your own personal burden in all this as well. Contributors include Bryon Hayes, Bill Meyer, Andrew Forell, Tim Clarke, Jonathan Shaw, Ian Mathers, Alex Johnson, Jennifer Kelly and Ray Garraty.

Due to technical issues we're posting this in two parts, so don't miss the second one.

Ad Hoc — Corpse (Shame File Music / Albert’s Basement)

Ad Hoc was a Melbourne-based improvising unit, an experimental outfit that should have higher prominence. It only took 40-plus years, but Shame File Music and Albert’s Basement are finally spearheading a reissue initiative. Last year saw the arrival of the trio’s sole release, the hypnotic Distance cassette. It disappeared the moment it became available. Corpse documents an unconventional live performance from the group. They prepared their instruments (guitars, an EMS Synthi AKS synth and tape loops) for performance prior to the arrival of the audience and then shut off their amps. When all were seated, the trio turned on the amplifiers and unfurled an aleatoric blast of sound. The resulting music is far removed from the ambient tone clusters of Distance. The first piece shimmers in a way that calls to mind Matthew Bower’s Sunroof project, while the latter piece bathes in guitar noise so thick that it may have influenced The Dead C’s The Operation of the Sonne EP. Ad Hoc have today’s noisemakers beat: Corpse presents itself with a freshness that belies its 1980 provenance.

Bryon Hayes

Axolotl — Abrasive (Souffle Continu)

The French trio Axolotl existed for a few years in the early 1980s, and it reflects the aesthetic concerns of its time. Guitarist Marc Dufourd’s playing betrays some acquaintance with the work of Derek Bailey and Henry Kaiser, and the fibrous tones and agile exchanges between reeds players Jacques Oger and Etienne Brunet recall Evan Parker. All three double on electronics, hand percussion and utterances. These accessories, in combination with the concentration of the album’s 12 tracks, give the music a truculent attitude and just-the-facts brevity that brings to mind punk and post-punk. This may be free improvisation, but it is improvised from a point of view, and it’s that informed attitude that makes the album worth visiting nearly 40 years after its original release.

Bill Meyer

Will Butler + Sister Squares — Self-Titled (Merge)

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Will Butler joins with Sister Squares — multi-instrumentalists Jenny (Butler’s wife) and Julie Shore, Sara Dobbs and drummer/producer Miles Francis — for their debut album. Bouncy, heartland rock garlanded with that 1980s Fairlight and Linn drum sound mixes with touches of art rock as Butler emotes wholehearted. The influence of the 20 years Butler spent with Arcade Fire is inescapable, but it feels like the quintet have also been listening to Billy MacKenzie (“Long Grass”) and Russell Mael (“Arrow of Time”) as well as Springsteen, Mellencamp and company. “Hee Loop” sounds like a mash of Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel. The themes and emotions can be big in that Arcade Fire way that’s equal parts exhilarating and exhausting, but the album works best when the band dial down the melodramatic flourishes as on “Car Crash” and “The Window,” where Butler is right in your ear, tired, disillusioned, real. This is a record I wanted to like both more and less. For every heartfelt moment and interesting musical choice, there’s a cringe-inducing gestural overreach that makes you wince. A bit like his former band but with enough promise to persevere with.

Andrew Forell

Claire Deak — Sotto Voce (Lost Tribe Sound)

Melbourne-based composer Claire Deak’s last release on Lost Tribe Sound was 2020’s The Old Capital, a fantastic collaboration with Tony Dupé. In my Dusted review I said, “There’s so much wonderful stuff going on across these seven songs that it’s a delight to revisit.” As its title suggests, Deak’s solo debut, Sotto Voce, very much sits at the opposite end of the musical spectrum. This is subtle, minimal music that softly arises out of silence and speaks an elusive language. The background to the album’s creation is Deak’s exploration of the work of two women composers from the early baroque era, Francesca Caccini (1587–c.1645) and Barbara Strozzi (1619–1677). The dominant musical elements are strings, harp and voice, with other instruments coloring the edges of these understated, starkly beautiful compositions. Across the album’s 42 minutes the music feels, at times, to be battling the entropy of erasure, struggling to be heard amid the cacophony of these overstimulated times. For that reason alone, it’s necessary to invest your attention and listen closely. The experience is eerie and transportive.

Tim Clarke

Mike Donovan — Meets the Mighty Flashlight (Drag City)

On a musical Venn diagram showing the intersecting circles of garage rock, lo-fi, and psych, Mike Donovan has set up his sandbox. With Sic Alps he veered more noisy and lo-fi; with Peacers he favored a straight-ahead garage-rock sound. On this new record with Mike Fellows, AKA The Mighty Flashlight, Donovan steers in the direction of shambolic psychedelic-pop in the vein of the Olivia Tremor Control. (To anyone who knows and loves OTC, this is obviously a very good thing.) The splashy drums and percussion tracks feel like a gestural afterthought rather than a rhythmic backbone the songs are built around, and Donovan and Fellows steer these songs into some choppy, unexpected waters. Opener “Planet Metley” is the clearest and most successful distillation of their aesthetic, offering up a staggering range of ideas in under four minutes, stopping and starting erratically, the bass roving all over the fretboard. At the other end of the spectrum, “Laurel Lotus Dub” is the kind of experiment that sounds like it was more fun to create that it is to listen back to. Between these two extremes there’s the junkshop boogie of “A Capital Pitch,” which features the hilarious line, “Hanging out on the ramparts with some dickheads in black,” the concise drum-machine and organ instrumental “Amalgam Wagon,” and the plaintive, country-flavored “Whistledown.” Wherever Donovan roams it’s usually worth following, and Meets the Mighty Flashlight is a winning collaboration that fizzes with fun.

Tim Clarke

Everything Falls Apart — Everything Falls Apart (Totalism)

“Somn” means sleep, or more poetically death. It’s the title of six of the seven tracks from Everything Falls Apart, the self-titled album from the duo of Belgian bassist Otto Lindholm (born Cyrille de Haes) and English producer Ross Tones. Those titles (numbered six to 11) and the coda “Wonderfully Desolate” tell you only part of the story of the music the pair produce. Their conversation focuses on the nuance of the Lindholm’s double bass which Tones swathes in electronic effects, stretching notes and motifs into near drones in timbres that rise from the murk like lugubrious sentinels. This is seriously heavy music but the dynamism of the duo’s understanding and interplay distinguishes Everything Falls Apart. Whilst many of the pieces focus on stasis and decay, “Somn 9” is a desert storm with clicking percussion, almost didgeridoo like growls from the bass and screeching electronic noise. On “Somn 11”, deep bowed notes support Lindholm’s move through the registers as if shaking from fitful dreams into the morning light. “Wonderfully Desolate” is comparatively unadorned, a string quartet playing against the end times, shimmers of light through the cracks.

Andrew Forell

False Fed — Let Them Eat Fake (Neurot Recordings)

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Is it accurate to call a band including members of legendary underground acts Amebix (Stig Miller), Nausea (Roy Mayorga) and Broken Bones (Jeff Janiak) a “supergroup”? It might help to note that Janiak has sung for Discharge since 2014, and Mayorga has done a couple stints as drummer for Ministry. All names to conjure with (though a few of us first encountered Mayorga as a teenager back in the 1980s Lehigh Valley hardcore scene, when he drummed for Youthquake; West Catty Playground Building forever, man). In any case, the players have pooled their talents to create this death-rocking, sorta goth, sorta post-punk record, and it’s a lot of grim, grimy fun. Most of the music is mid-tempo, grand and romantic in its gestures, but shot through with a crusty growl in the guitars and production tone. The best songs speed things up a bit; both “The Tyrant Dies” and “The Big Sleep” have compelling momentum, complementing the stakes of songs’ ideas. It's Armagideon Time, people. Here’s your soundtrack, from dudes that know.

Jonathan Shaw

Hauschka— Philanthropy (City Slang)

German composer Volker Bertelmann’s 15th album of prepared piano pieces under the name Hauschka is noticeably warmer than some of his previous works. Joined by Samuli Kosminen on percussion and electronics and cellist Laura Wiek, Hauschka continues his exploration of the rhythmic and timbral possibilities of his instrument. At times almost jaunty, there are echoes of Bertelmann’s previous experiments with melancholic atmospherics but the general tone here is welcoming and optimistic. Kosminen adds subtle effects which frame rather than obscure the piano. There’s a touch of Satie in Hauschka’s playful iconoclastic approach to the piano and his deceptively simple melodies, especially on “Loved Ones” where Wiek’s plangent cello lines sustain and decay over an allusive harmony that speaks both of innocence and experience. At the other end of the spectrum, the closing piece “Noise” builds abstract ambience from repeated piano notes, smears of cello and a quiet wash of effects as if the players are enveloped in a thick damp fog. A lovely album for both fans and newcomers.

Andrew Forell

The Hives — The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons (Disques Hives)

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There are usually going to be some questions when a band comes back with a new record after over a decade, maybe especially so with an act like Swedish garage/punk flamboyants the Hives; can they match the energy of their youth? Are they still willing and able to give us the old thrills? Or have they (and this is usually asked with a small, tasteful shudder of disgust) matured? It doesn’t take very long into first single/first track “Bogus Operandi” for the concerned listener to have reason for a sigh of relief. Anyone who used to (or still does?) blast “Main Offender” or “Hate to Say I Told You So” or “Walk Idiot Walk” should feel the galvanizing charge of a true, Frankensteinian resurrection once the riff hits. And across these not-quite-32 minutes (the brevity is also a promising sign) Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist and the boys kick up exactly the kind of racket you’d want from them, with tracks like “Trapdoor Solution” and “The Bomb” savoring the kind of gleefully dumb fun they’ve always provided (with a nice sideline in some of Almqvist’s deliberately, over-the-top awful narrators on “Two Kinds of Trouble” and “What Did I Ever Do to You?”). They even continue to throw out small, satisfying variations on the classic Hives sound like the brassy swagger of “Stick Up” and the surprisingly heartfelt thrash of “Smoke & Mirrors”. They may have killed off their “sixth member,” but the Hives are otherwise in rude health.

Ian Mathers

Islet — Soft Fascination (Fire)

The Welsh psych-electronic oddballs in Islet are on their fourth full-length now but show no signs of settling down. Soft Fascination is a bonkers mash up of dance pop, art song, hip hop, noise and folk. “Euphoria” floats a feather-light daze, a la Avey Tare, then punctures it the rat-at-tat of snare, the rifle shot rap repartee of Emma Daman Thomas. Gossamer textures of synth weave in and around the main action, snapping tight at intervals, like sails catching a hard wind. The whole thing is butterfly ephemeral with strong wires holding it up, a combination of daydream and architecture. “River Body,” if anything, tips even crazier, with its infectious sing-song, skip-rope vocals, its tootling toy keyboards, its blasts of noise and friction. And what can you make of “Sherry” which bucks and heaves and shouts out “Ay, ay, ay, ay,” like a lost Matias Aguayar cut? “Ay, ay, ay, ay,” indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

Jute Gyte — Unus Mundus Patet (Self-released)

Unus Mundus Patet is not the most dissonant or challenging record Adam Kalmbach has released during his 20-plus-year run under the Jute Gyte moniker. But neither is this black metal for the kvlt trve believers or for the hipster-adjacent sets, be they transcendental or ecstatic or blackgazy. The songs twist and turn in on themselves, always clear in their expressions of complex musical ideas, and also — somehow, someway — listenable and enjoyable. Avant-garde? Sure thing, and likely a much more authentic iteration of that phrase’s meaning than the music many other metal bands churn out under cover of high-minded beard stroking. See the by-turns undulating and fragmenting “Killing a Sword” or the trudging, vertiginous and then utterly thrilling “Philoctetes.” Jute Gyte doesn’t make music for the background, but if you can give these songs your full attention, you’ll be rewarded. Turn it up and open the portal into somewhere much weirder and more marvelous.

Jonathan Shaw

Danny Kamins / Chris Alford / Charles Pagano — The Secret Stop (Musical Eschatology)

Free improvisation may be a little sparser on the ground in the southern USA than it is in Chicago or New York, but The Secret Stop affirms the vigor of those who participate. Guitarist Chris Alford and drummer Charles Pagano play in New Orleans, and Danny Kamins is a saxophonist from Texas; this encounter took place in the Crescent City. As even players in places like the aforementioned northern cities or London will affirm, travel comes with this territory. Their interactions display a capacity to sustain balance when the energy is high and to back off when doing so will transform the music’s tension. Kamins intersperses long, coarse tones with emphatic pops, and Alford evidences a fluent stutter that suggests he’s spent a lot of time studying James “Blood” Ulmer’s sound grammar. Pagano’s cymbal sizzle and mutating not-quite-patterns provide both forward momentum and a framework within which the action occurs.

Bill Meyer

MIKE \ Wiki \ The Alchemist — Faith Is a Rock (ALC)

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The long awaited collaboration between The Alchemist and MIKE took a sudden turn when they took on board another New York rapper Wiki who steals the show here. Both Wiki and MIKE were outcasts recording music in the vein of Earl Sweatshirt, even though MIKE was always a better version of Earl with only possibly a tenth of his fame. Knowing no rest, The Alchemist (that is his fourth collab this year) takes both MCs way out of their comfort zone, refusing to pander to the needs. MIKE and Wiki have to deal with The Alchemist’s fast and thick layered production, and it works for all of them. “Mayors A Cop” is a standout here, and Faith Is a Rock is one strong contender for the tape of the year.

Ray Garraty

Camila Nebbia — Una Ofrenda A La Ausencía (Relative Pitch)

The title translates as An Offering To Absence, which of course raises the question, what’s missing? Camila Nebbia is a multidisciplinary artist who grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but has seems to have spent a fair chunk of time moving around Europe in recent years, and is currently based in Berlin. She has a sizable discography, but this correspondent has not heard most of it, so let’s just focus on the album at hand. Its 16 tracks present three facets of her work — acoustic tenor saxophone, electronically adjusted saxophone and poetry — with the first method best represented. The unaccompanied saxophone performances reveal her mastery of both weight-bearing muscularity and adroit tap-dancing on the far side of the fences that confine conventional tonality. But when she layers long tones and feedback, Nebbia becomes a one-woman orchestra transmitting heavy Penderecki vibes. The one poem included, “Dejo que me lieve” (“I let it lie”), is recited in Spanish, and no translation is offered; perhaps home is what’s not there, so she needs to manifest it creatively?

Bill Meyer

[Continued in Part 2, because Tumblr decided we only get 10 audio links.]

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