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firstelevens · 3 months

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hi zainab!!!! 2, 3, 6, and 29 for the fic writer ask???

Hi Mak! Thank you for sending these in!

2. Do you read/reread your own fics?

Yes, because I am absolutely my own biggest fan!

On a much more practical note, sometimes I reread because it's part of a series and I'm checking a canonical detail (although if it's in the Bake Off AU I'm better off just asking @sesamestreep, who is the official lorekeeper and knows that universe's canon better than I do.) Other times, there's a fic where I just really like what I did with a character's voice or the general tone of a scene and I'll go back just to get a feel for what I did the last time.

3. What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

I mean, the Bake Off AU has my whole heart and there's so much of me in it that it will always be special to me BUT!!! I really love the Thunderbolts-era epistolary fic counted days, counted miles because I think it's an exercise in me managing to show writerly restraint, which is a skill I'm still working on. (And also I got to come up with so many fun spy tricks for hiding letters; it was great.)

6. Are there any fics from others you reread all the time?

How fortuitous that you picked this question when I have reread wish that i could wind (like a spiral stair through time) FIVE TIMES in the past month. That fic is a work of art. I am also never far from rereading and never ever watch the ten o'clock news, which is Emma's phenomenal Psych AU of Rogue One which is just so wonderful and funny and it continues to hold up. Oh also! There's don't read the last page, which is a Brooklyn Nine-Nine fic that is short and sweet and just so warm and cozy and I go back to that one a lot just for the mood of it.

29. Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic.

Okay so this question reminded me that there's a 1200 word scene from the Formula 1 AU that was originally going to be the epilogue but got canned which SUBSEQUENTLY reminded me that there's a whole scene that I wrote for the Bake Off AU that got cut from Chapter 6 because things ended up going another way!

The beginning will looks familiar if you remember anything from that chapter, but then there's a sharp left turn that involves the lost plot point of Becca Barnes creeping on Joaquín's thirst trap and restaurant review filled Instagram in order to figure out where Bucky could go for dinner. I was sad to lose it tbh but the restaurant still made it into the fic as the place where Sam and Bucky go out on their definitely-not-a-date in Chapter 10.

A peek at the alternate timeline under the cut!

Bucky is starfished on his bed, trying to muster the energy to get up when his phone rings. His eyes are squeezed shut, but he opens one to peer at the screen. He only answers because it’s Becca, but he’s too tired to do more than grunt into the phone when he picks up.

“Good day, huh?” she asks, laughing when he just groans in response.

“Hope yours was better than mine,” Bucky says, when he finally manages to talk. “How’s day shift treating you?”

“I’m discovering that there’s this thing in the sky called the sun, and it provides light? And makes people happy? Do you think other people know about it? Should I be telling them?”

He laughs tiredly. “You can use all this newfound energy to make a TikTok about it.”

“I’ll get on that,” Becca says. “What about you? You okay?”

“Yeah,” says Bucky, bringing his hand up to his face. “I just need to lie down for a while.”

Not that lying down for the past half hour has helped, but he’s got high hopes for that sixty minute mark.

“No, what you need to do is eat something,” Becca says, sounding remarkably like their mother. “Tell me your head isn’t hurting right now.”

Bucky freezes, his fingers still pressed into his temples. “It’s creepy when you do that, you know.”

She laughs. “I know. Hey, why don’t you go to that place that you and Steve went to all the time, the one with the waffles?”

The last time Bucky had been there, four years ago, he’d spent the entire evening bickering companionably with Sam while Steve dealt with a work emergency. It had felt remarkably like flirting, and he’d even thought about asking Sam to get a drink sometime—and then Bucky had been eliminated after the next day’s Showstopper, and that put an end to that.

He shakes his head to clear it. “I’m tired, Bec, and they pick us up at like, six AM. I think I might just grab something from the convenience store.”

“Buck, I spend half my time listening to newborn babies cry and that is still the most pitiful thing I’ve heard this week. You are not eating yogurt for dinner alone in your hotel room.”

Bucky huffs. “Well, I’d grab a random stranger off the street to join me, but I’m not looking to get murdered today, Rebecca.”

He can hear the sound of Becca typing, doing the thing where she studiously ignores his asshole behavior until he comes around and starts acting a more like a person. It’s annoying how well it works.

After a minute or two of typing and what he assumes is scrolling, she lets out a, “Huh.”

When he waits for her to elaborate and she doesn’t, Bucky sighs. “What is it?”

“Do you know a Joaquín Torres?”

It’s far from the question he was expecting but Bucky answers in the affirmative. “He’s a baking consultant on the show.”

More typing. “Does he have good taste?”

There’s a tiny, childish part of Bucky that wants to say no, because Torres is chirpy and bright-eyed and his unfailing enthusiasm is exhausting at times, but that would be a lie. “Yeah, he knows his stuff. Why?”

“He lives in Atlanta; he posts about a lot of local hidden gems. There’s a Tunisian restaurant a couple blocks from your hotel, apparently? Kind of looks like a hole in the wall but he says the food is amazing.”

“I don’t know, Bec. It’s late and eating out alone is depressing.” His limbs feel heavy, and his shoulder is starting to hurt from having the prosthetic on for so long, and he knows that food would make his headache go away, but he just can’t drag himself off the bed.

Like Becca knows what track his mind is on—and honestly, she probably does—, she chooses this moment to go for the knockout. “Come on, Buck; it’s my job to look out for you, and you’re too far away for me to drag you out to dinner and make sure you eat. Throw a girl a bone here.”

She’s too powerful for her own good.

Bucky drags a hand down his face, sighing again. “You know, I hear some people don’t let their baby sisters tell them what to do all the time.”

“Poor them,” says Becca.

“Poor them,” echoes Bucky, and asks her to text him the address.

When she does, he looks it up and realizes that it really is only two blocks away: completely walkable, even in Atlanta’s late spring heat, and only a little further than the convenience store where he’d planned to grab his apparently pathetic dinner.

It’s only when he gets to the door of the restaurant that he remembers it’s a Saturday night and he probably should have thought to make a reservation. The place only has a handful of tables to begin with, and they’ve all got people at them. The host already has an apologetic look on his face as Bucky walks in, but they both turn in surprise when they hear someone inside the restaurant call out to him.

“Bucky!” says Joaquín, as brightly as ever. “Come sit with us.”

Because the universe has a sense of humor, ‘us’ is of course Joaquín and Sam, who are having dinner together. Alone. On a Saturday night.

It can’t be a date, Bucky reasons. No one would invite a random acquaintance to third-wheel their date, right?

He realizes that he still hasn’t responded when the host assures him that of course they’ll be able to add another place setting to the table, and before he knows it, Bucky is being whisked over to their table.

Whatever mood had settled over Sam after the signature today seems to have dissipated, and he turns to Bucky with a grin on his face. “I hope you trust Torres over here, because he ordered way too much food for us and didn’t let me see the menu.”

Joaquín shrugs. “I come here a lot,” he says. “Not enough people know about it, but it’s amazing.”

“Which is why he’s on a mission to be their one-man marketing team,” says Sam. “We got here half an hour ago and he’s already posted on Instagram like, ten times.”

Bucky thinks of the sound of Becca on her computer as she’d talked to him earlier, how she’d pivoted from suggesting the diner he’d probably have ended up at to this specific restaurant, and suddenly, this coincidence feels markedly less like a coincidence.

He’d probably feel more annoyed about it if he didn’t spend the meal close enough to Sam for their shoulders to constantly be brushing. Torres is right; the food is great, but if anyone asks, Bucky’s pretty sure the only thing he’d be able to recount is how many times Sam touched his arm to ask him to pass things, or dished some more food onto his plate, or gently nudged him while telling Joaquín stories of their time filming season two.

When the check comes, Bucky insists on paying, to make up for crashing Sam and Joaquín’s dinner, and as they stand on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, Joaquín offers to drop them off at the hotel on his way home. He’s about to accept when Sam waves it off.

“I think we’ll just walk back,” says Sam. “It’s so nice out, and the hotel’s probably closer than your car is.”

There’s a moment where all three of them silently commiserate over the trials of city parking, and then Joaquín says he’ll see them tomorrow and heads off.

Bucky glances sidelong at Sam, whose eyebrows are knitted together as he looks down the street towards their hotel. He can see the entrance from where they’re standing, but Sam gently touches his elbow and nods down the street to their left—the long way, Bucky realizes, a moment too late.

#bisamwilson #zainab does ask meme things #thank you for these Mak!#I had COMPLETELY forgotten that I had this little bit of the Bake Off AU lying around; I hope it's an entertaining what if

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elesheva · 20 days

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we saw suffs on broadway last night and i wept in the dark with my hands covering my face, as suddenly as if i'd been punctured. it rained all day, leaving times square slick white bright, its own reflection running down seventh avenue under my boots, and i walked back to the train feeling displaced in time. i always feel a little bit like that in april, when the sky gets closer and laundry-scented steam leaks from the bottom of heavy apartment buildings in brooklyn, the way it did when i moved here nine springs ago, when i walked the blooming streets for the first time and then walked right into the rest of my life, faster than anyone could have expected. what have i done with all of this time? lately therapy has been less like progress and more like unfurling my ribcage and walking around like that for the rest of the week. so it felt good to weep in the theatre. it felt more acceptable than saying that things are hard, that there is so much out of my control, that i want to be alone in iowa city in the summer of 2014 for just a few hours but can't because that's impossible and also because i have to move my winter coat into the storage unit and review some fundraising emails and buy orzo for dinner. because i no longer travel light. because these are the duties i've taken on in exchange for kneeling down and accepting my son's hug each morning at drop off before he steps through the gate, his small mittens still tucked into my pocket.

#having a weird one!!!!

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feeisamarshmallow · 4 months

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✨ 2023 Writing Year In Review ✨

Dug up this format from last year because I love doing this every year.

1. Number of stories posted to AO3: 7 new fics, 1 updated fic, 1 playlist, and 1 updated collection of meta.

2. Word count posted for the year: 50,705, but that’s including the word count for my entire meta collection, which was actually written over almost 10 years. So more accurately it’s around 30,000.

3. Fandoms I wrote for: Brooklyn Nine Nine, Veronica Mars, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

4. Pairings: Most of the stuff I wrote is very genfic, but my b99 fic everything’s changed explore Jake Peralta’s relationships with the whole squad and focuses particularly on his relationship with his daughter, my OC Willa Peralta. I also wrote fics focusing on Charlie Kelly & Mac McDonald, Charlie Kelly & Dennis Reynolds, and a little bit of Charlie Kelly & Dee Reynolds. Oh and I wrote some Mac McDonald/Dennis Reynolds in my boyband episode fic!

5. Story with the most:

Kudos: into your lungs (the things you don’t trust) (B99) – 73 Kudos

Bookmarks: everything’s changed (but I feel the same inside) (B99) – 20 bookmarks

Comments: everything’s changed (but I feel the same inside) (B99) – 11 comment threads

6. Work I’m most proud of (and why):

I’m most proud of everything’s changed (but I feel the same inside). It’s the longest fic I wrote this year, but it’s also by far the broadest in scope. I’m proud of the way I handled the growth of Jake throughout the years. The structure of telling a story through vignettes over a long period of time is one I’ve used lots when writing b99 fic, and I feel like this fic is really the culmination of me honing this style. Although I may go back and write more b99 fic, this fic also feels like a farewell in many ways. It deals with Jake (and tangentially all the characters) moving on from the 99, and I’m really proud of the story I constructed for them all.

7. Work I’m least proud of (and why):

Out of My Depth (at a Public Beach). I like this fic, but I don’t love it. I feel like I didn’t totally get at what I wanted to about Dennis’ character. I like, but don’t love, the ‘waves’ metaphor. I wish I had more of a through-line of plot woven throughout the character study. But I still stand by all the character analysis in this piece, and it does have my favourite title from this year.

8. Share or describe a favorite review you received:

I got a lot of really lovely reviews on everything’s changed. I especially cherished the ones who told me they related to my fic in some way. A few people told me they saw their own experiences of having ADHD in my portrayal of Jake’s experiences. Those are about the most gratifying comments you can get. (I also always have to shout-out @impossiblyizzy, who always leaves really lovely comments).

I also got a comment from @musiclover2732 on Not Worth It, after he had listened to a song I said reminded me of the fic (Song in E by Julien Baker, particularly the line I wish you’d hurt me / it’s the mercy I can’t take). I was just so touched that not only did he go listen to the song I recommended, but also then read my fic AND commented about all of it. The best <3

9. A time when writing was really, really hard:

I’m so much busier nowadays! It’s much harder to find time to write in general. It just means that fics come a bit slower than they used to. And I’m not sure when I’ll write my next longfic. I do want to tackle something longer, but maybe not next year either.

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you:

I didn’t know I was going to get into Always Sunny this year, so writing my four IASIP fics was a surprise! Although I did know that I was gonna write angsty fanfic once I started watching the show. It just has all the things I love (sitcom that is funny on the surface but super angsty if you take it seriously). And then my first Always Sunny fic has some CharDee subtext to it, which was even more surprising because that’s not one of the ships I tend to be drawn to (although I am super multi-ship about this show).

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

From everything’s changed (but I feel the same inside). Spoiler warning this is the end scene:

"I've read your books, you know. I'll be excited to be able to own them in hard copy." It takes him a minute to properly process her words. Janine isn't here to see Willa. She's here for him. "You….I…I don't know what to say." "You don't have to say anything." "You're the reason…when you were so kind to Willa in second grade and then so kind to me when I came in for the parent teacher conference…you stopped me to talk after…I had quit the NYPD and I didn't know what I was doing and I…that was kinda the beginning of my writing…and I do have ADHD. And a MFA. Lots of letters now! But what I'm trying to say—" "Jake, you don't have to explain it all to me." She cuts off his rambling. "Let's just go in. Willa said there would be cake." Usually, it would drive Jake crazy not to be able to explain himself to someone. But Janine Baker seems to have a knack for just understanding. So instead he just holds the door open and follows her down the hall of the centre towards the multipurpose room. The community centre floor has been painted to look like a garden pathway, so that as they walk down the hall, they follow a painted cobblestone path with colourful flowers sprouting along the edges. It all reminds Jake of something that he thought years ago, back when the kids were young, before he was a writer, when he was first researching about ADHD. He had thought that maybe there was another path. At the time, it was a hypothetical thought, an imagining of a future that could have been, but wasn't. It wasn't hypothetical anymore. There were no maybes. There was a new path. And it had led him to publishing a novel, to finishing his college degree, to getting an ADHD diagnosis. It had led him to spinning legendary stories for Mac and Willa that they still reminisced about today, as adults. It had led him to discovering a love of the library. It had led him to learning more about himself. And this path was only one of many. If Jake Peralta, ex-cop and college dropout, could become Jake Peralta, MFA and published author, what other iterations of himself did he contain, all wrapped up in one another, waiting to be discovered?

From I’m Just Like You (A Little Messed Up and Blue). TW: brief mentions of childhood sexual assault:

“Well maybe…” Mac starts and then trails off. Maybe you’re all messed up because you were molested as a child seems too mean to say. “Maybe it’s because of like my childhood or whatever?” “Yeah,” Mac says softly. “Maybe,” Charlie says. He’s sounded near tears this whole conversation, but now they start flowing down his cheeks. Every one of Mac’s instincts is telling him to find something to get Charlie to stop crying. Charlie crying is one step away from Charlie flying out of control. Charlie crying means it’s easier for the schoolyard bullies to shove him into a locker or steal his prized new comic book or kick him in the stomach. He wishes he could reach out and hug Charlie. Tell him it’s okay and he’ll find the perfect girl one day. But those are words and gestures for normal people, not for the two of them. Not for two forty-year old men with a failing bar and not a single successful relationship between the two of them. Instead he says, “Maybe it’s just the way you are.” He hopes it sounds comforting, and not like he thinks there’s something wrong with Charlie. Because, honestly, there are a lot of things wrong with Charlie. And not just the molestation. Or the alcoholism. Charlie’s…not like most people. Charlie sniffs and wipes his face. “Yeah,” he says. But he sounds a bit calmer. Mac feels the tension in his chest lessen a bit too. “There’s nothing wrong with being who you are, you know,” he says again. The words feel wooden in his mouth. Like he doesn’t really believe them, and maybe he doesn’t. Like maybe, even though God’s love is unconditional and He doesn’t make mistakes, He made a mistake when He made Mac gay. “I’m glad you’re gay now,” Charlie says all of a sudden, completely sincerely. It catches Mac off-guard. Charlie is so oblivious most of the time, but right now it’s like he’s seeing right through Mac’s bulging muscles and black cut-off tee and right into his soul.

12. How did you grow as a writer this year:

Last year I felt like I grew a lot. This year I feel like my growth was less noticeable, but still there. I think I continued to work on how to tackle themes in a fic with subtlety. How to write around an idea. How to take a theme and just leave it there for the reader to find instead of leading them right to it. I’m still working on it. I can be a bit on-the-nose as a writer (and part of that is just my style!), but I’m going to continue on working to refine my writing.

13. How do you hope to grow next year:

I still want to work on editing more. I still haven’t really done that. I hope I can tackle something a bit longer for Always Sunny next year. Otherwise, I want to just keep writing and reading and letting the experience of doing it help me grow as it always does.

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

@impossiblyizzy as always, my sometimes-beta and always-friend <3

Also everyone I’ve met through Always Sunny in the latter half of this year who have commented on my fics or interacted with me here on tumblr, you all know who you are <3

15. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year:

Always. I can’t not write myself into my fics. I wrote about asexuality for the first time (shocking it’s taken this long) in Hey I’m Just Like You, because I have such a strong conviction in my ace!Charlie headcanon. There’s a lot of me in that fic.

Also, and this might be a little too revealing, but there’s a fair bit of me in the two Dennis fics I wrote. (Always a humbling experience to see yourself in Dennis Reynolds).

Finally, I think I was so drawn to writing everything’s changed because the themes of growing up and moving on and finding new routines and hobbies and interests. I think I was (and am) in a place of moving onto the next ‘stage’ of life, so-to-speak, and so even though I am much younger than Jake in that fic, the themes resonated a lot. (I’ve also spent a fair bit of this year reflecting on how my own brain works and how that impacts me, and that’s also a big theme in this fic with Jake figuring out he has ADHD and reflecting on his experiences).

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers:

Above all, writing should be fun! This is a hobby for us, and it should bring you joy! Write the same tropes over and over (just look at how many hurt/comfort elements are in the fics I wrote this year). Write short fics. Write obscure fics. Write non-shippy fics. Write whatever you want. The audience will find it, and even if they don’t, you’ll enjoy the process of creating it.

Also, don’t get sucked into any fandom drama. (And yes commenting as an outsider on said fandom drama is part of getting sucked in). It’s never worth it in my books.

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year:

I’ve been tossing around the idea of an Always Sunny fic I’ve been called The Gang Gets Better, which would be a look at what it would take for each of the characters to grow, learn, and/or heal. I think I would maybe do a different (hypothetical?) scenario for each character. But it’ll be a lot of work, I think, to do it justice. So we’ll see if I get to it. I may have to take many liberties with how social services and systems work in Pennsylvania if I don’t want to end up down a months-long research rabbit hole.

I’d also love to get around to writing another chapter of Under a Blood Red Sky this coming year.

And I still have a 1D hockey AU kicking around (and now plotted!), so maybe that will see some light this year?

Or who knows? I always tend to surprise myself with what I end up writing!

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read.

Tagging anyone who would like to do this!

(@quelsentiment you tagged me in this last year, do you wanna do it again this year?)

#writing year in review #my writing

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asrisgratitudejournal · 6 months

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Update setelah beberapa hari calming myself down: kemarin full seharian di rumah istirahat aja yang banyak. Malam juga berusaha untuk tidur cepat karena ternyata masih pusing-pusing dan hidung tersumbat betul-betul sepertinya akan kena flu sih ini (padahal udah vaksin flu?).

Barusan akhirnya keluar rumah karena diajakin Hanif buat makan siang dan makanlah kami (aku, Hanif, dan Bang Reybi) di Nando’s George St. SANGAT ENAK, DAN SANGAT KENYANG HHH ALHAMDULILLAH YAALLAH. Sekarang ini di Radcam karena tadi keluar rumah nggak bawa laptop samsek (karena berat). Gatau juga goalnya apa ini kerja hari ini. Jujur masih belum bisa pick myself up banget sejak email rejection itu… Ku udah ngemail co-authors juga dan ngirim reviews-nya ke mereka dan setting up meeting Rabu pagi jam 10 sih… Udah booking konseling uni juga Selasa sore. Terus udah… Apa lagi yang harus dikerjain gatau… Dari besok postdocku bakal away sampe 20-an Nov(?) (lama juga ye dia pergi). Spvku malah baru balik besok. Hhhh emang ga jodoh aja schedule semua orang. Ku cukup yakin nanti Rabu yang dateng cuma 2 kolaborator dan postdocku, karena kedua spv-ku sudah bilang “gausah tungguin gw yah”, baiklah. Gapapa tapi udah ada yang bisa aja udah bagus.

Ku masih mayan upset tapi ga separah Minggu dan Senin kemarin sih. Terus ku dapat message sangat baik dari Mba Mita HUHU (cc @peminumteh) yang membuatku sadar bahwa ku udah bisa ngeluarin ke jurnal aja tuh untuk anak PhD tahun ke-3 (kemarin pertama kali submit Nov 2022 --- WOW SUDAH SETAHUN YANG LALU???) udah keren banget. Dan beneran sih, kadang suka ngerasa ga enak gitu kalau share lagi sedih kena reject gini ke teman-teman se-office gitu misalnya. Ada yang setahun di atasku masih berkutat dengan mikroskop lagi ngejar submit dan belum dapet cc buat submit ke luar, ada juga yang seangkatan-ku dan baru mau di-acc chapter 1-nya (BARU MAU dibaca). And here I am yang chapter 1 ini udah dibaca ber-RATUS-RATUS kali oleh >5 orang (including reviewers dan editors ada 10 orang kali), terus menangis karena dibilang tulisannya kureng. Betul-betul untitled kid.

BERSUKUR NONNNNN. Tapi ya valid juga kan ngerasa sedih walaupun at the same time juga bersyukur?? Apakah keduanya ekstrim polar opposite? Apakah kalau kita sedih dapet 98 instead of 100 artinya kita ga bersukur sama si 98 itu? Kan nggak juga??? Jujur sekarang w adalah Jimin. HAHA RANDOM tapi kalau kalian nonton documentary-nya BTS di Burn The Stage, Jimin MENANGIS after going off-key YANG MANA GAADA ORANG YANG NYADAR YA TOLONG. Ku pas nonton itu kaya upset banget kaya ??? BRO SEHAT??? Terus yaudah sekarang I’m just Jimin?? Kayak… NON SEHAT???

Ainna kemarin juga ngasih komen sangat baik di postingan sebelumnya (HUHU terima kasih Ainna *emoji peluk*). Terus banyak deh replies dari teman-teman lain di insta setelah ku-post skrinsot-an post terakhir tumblr juga di insta.

Udah sih. Plannya weekend ini cuma kelas aja Sabtu-Minggu jam 8-10, terus mengundang Aji dkk mau masak opor di rumah di hari Minggu… Oh iya, dari kemarin juga lagi ngabisin Brooklyn Nine-Nine lagi setelah sekian lama dan emang kadang ada episode yang bobrok banget aja lucu banget sampai ku ingin menangis (fav-ku masih interaksi kebodoran antara Jake dan Captain Holt). Belum lama juga abis ngabisin Lupin. Lagi pengen nonton yang drama-drama sampah gitu deh padahal, modelan PLL atau Revenge. Ada seri apa lagi sih, recommend me tvshow dong anyone.

Udah itu dulu aj for now. Wishing you all good rest of the week!

Radcam 15:47 02/11/2023

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ninja-muse · 10 months

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So, June was a month! Felt like several, but apparently still just the one. Usually I measure the length of a month in books read—more books equals a “faster” month, fewer books equals a “slower” one—but that doesn’t work this time. I read nine books, so about my average. I think the number of “this was fine” books skewed things, as did The Hands of the Emperor which was excellent, but also very long.

And yes, I’ve finally read The Hands of the Emperor! It was everything I expected it to be and more, and just lovely and charming and cozy and all of things. I am bummed that my library doesn’t have the sequel, not that I’d be launching into it right off anyway. It’s the principle of the thing. The only reason it didn’t get my Review of the Month is because it’s hard to take photos of ebook covers….

On the opposite end of the spectrum, my TBR shelf book this month was a last-minute scramble and I opted for something short as a result. (And a classic, because I hadn’t read one of those in a while.) Tortilla Flat really hasn’t aged well, folks. Let’s all hope my next classic is better.

The other last-minute addition to this post is DIGGER IS HERE! I got the notice that it shipped late last week but didn’t think it would be coming to my door quite so soon. It has bookmarks, plural, you guys! I would be jumping into it next except that I’ve barely finished Shubeik Lubeik and I need to put space between excellent graphic novels.

Next up, though? One of the ARCs I hauled this month is The Frugal Wizard’s Guide to Surviving Medieval England. I’m going to be starting it today.

(Episode Thirteen is my other hauled book this month. I’d forgotten I’d requested a copy from a book rep.)

Other life events? I finally saw The Importance of Being Earnest performed! Another last-minute thing, that. I heard about it near the end of May and dithered about getting a ticket because the theatre was a bit of a trek, and then went, well, when else am I going to see it… Worth it, and that’s one thing off my bucket list.

Hopefully July has a lot of good books to make up for the kind of average reading month I’ve just had. Wish me luck!

And now without further ado, in order of enjoyment…

The Hands of the Emperor - Victoria Goddard Cliopher, Secretary to His Radiancy, the Last Emperor of Astandalas, invites his lord on a beach vacation. He has no idea how this will change the world—or his life.

8.5/10

Pacific Islander-coded protagonist, cast contains a range of ethnicities and skin tones, 🇨🇦

Shubeik Lubeik - Deena Mohamed A Cairo kiosk owner tries to sell off three wishes. It doesn’t quite go as planned.

9/10

Egyptian cast, largely Muslim cast, Egyptian author, #ownvoices for Egyptian

warning: depression, suicidal ideation, death of a child

Shadowlands - Matthew Green Short histories of lost settlements from across the UK.

7/10

The Golem of Brooklyn - Adam Mansbach Len creates a golem while stoned. This is only his first poor decision of the week. Road trip, anyone? Out in September

7/10

largely Jewish cast, 🏳️‍🌈 (lesbian) secondary character, Jewish author, #ownvoices for Jewishness

warning: anti-Semites, white supremacists, homophobes

The Helios Syndrome - Vivian Shaw A freelance necromancer must help determine why an airplane crashed, while being haunted by a pilot.

7.5/10

🏳️‍🌈 (gay) protagonist, 🏳️‍🌈 (gay/bi) secondary character, 🏳️‍🌈 author

The Dress Diary of Mrs. Anne Sykes - Kate Strasdin A history of Victorian fashion through the lens of a fabric scrapbook.

7/10

The Gifts - Liz Hyder In 1840s England, a woman grows wings, a storyteller comes to London, a wife grows unsatisfied, and a doctor gets ambitious.

7/10

Black British POV character, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (gay)

warning: racism, misogyny, animal death, medical content

The Road to Roswell - Connie Willis Francie travels to Roswell to save her college roommate from a misguided marriage, and promptly finds herself on an involuntary road trip with an alien.

6.5/10

Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck A group of friends ramble around old-time Monterey.

3.5/10

multiracial protagonists, largely BIPOC cast

warning: racism, misogyny, alcohol, racial slurs

The Gay Best Friend - Nicolas DiDomizio Dom’s best friends are getting married! Which is great, except he’s having to keep secrets for both of them and maybe he needs to think a bit about expectations and authenticity.

5/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (gay), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (gay), 🏳️‍🌈 author, #ownvoices

Currently reading:

Nothing! I start July with a clean slate.

Stats

Monthly total: 10 Yearly total: 62/140 Queer books: 2 Authors of colour: 1 Books by women: 6 Authors outside the binary: 0 Canadian authors: 1 Off the TBR shelves: 1 Books hauled: 2 ARCs acquired: 5 ARCs unhauled: 4 DNFs: 0

January February March April May

#books #booklr #bookblr #adult booklr #book covers #book photography #my photos #reading wrap-ups #read in 2023 #book recommendations #rec lists #who queue?

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dustedmagazine · 10 months

Text

Dust Volume 9, Number 6

Vulture Feather

Perhaps because we left it until the very end of the month, we ended up with a truly massive collection of short reviews this time. Bill Meyer got especially busy with nine entries this time, but lots of writers did more than two, and a few who rarely participate made an exception for June. It’s a diverse collection of musical artists, jazz, metal, folk, pop and indie, something for everyone. Have at it, and enjoy. Contributors include Bill Meyer, Patrick Masterson, Jennifer Kelly, Jonathan Shaw, Ray Garraty, Ian Mathers, Bryon Hayes, Jim Marks, Christian Carey and Tim Clarke.

Tim Berne / Hank Roberts / Aurora Nealand — Oceans And (Intakt)

Oceans And by TIM BERNE - HANK ROBERTS - AURORA NEALAND

Forty-four years separate the release of Tim Berne’s first LP, The Five Year Plan, and this uncategorizable trio recording. The alto saxophonist has never been shy about mixing classical sounds and shapes into elbows-out jazz pieces of often-epic link, but he’s never done anything quite like Oceans And. One distinguishing factor is the ensemble’s line-up, which includes Hank Roberts on cello and Aurora Nealand on clarinet, accordion and generally wordless voice. These are players who can both inhabit genres and shuttle between them; they also do honor to the specifically scripted progress and illusorily orchestral arrangements of Berne’s elongated, reflective compositions. In particular, Nealand’s squeezebox delivers both the immensity and complexity of a full string section.

Bill Meyer

Blondshell — “Charm You” (Grand Jury)

Charm You (Blondshell Version) by Blondshell

Samia’s big year on the back of January’s bedroom indie staple Honey is about to get a second wind as she’s coaxed artists to cover her songs again, this time for a follow-up singles series called, imaginatively, Honey Reimagined. Maya Hawke, Hovvdy and Ruston Kelly are among the first names due up, but perhaps the biggest of them is another 2023 breakthrough artist: Sabrina Teitelbaum, aka, Blondshell. Teitelbaum’s touch here is pretty light as far as the source material goes, though she sounds a lot less vulnerable than Samia’s original — not just because of her delivery and the subtle addition of backing vocals in spots, but also because she’s plugged the six-string in and has heavier-hitting floor toms. Samia’s raw honesty and unadorned accompaniment is a big reason for her appeal, but even fans of the original will find something to love in a cover that does just enough to merit note.

Patrick Masterson

Devon Church — Strange Strangers (felte)

Strange Strangers by Devon Church

“Slouching Towards Bethlehem” nestles in your ear like a paranoiac whisper, soft but surreal, minimalist but also swelling with strings and gospel choirs. Devon Church murmurs baroque poetry about the end of world, matter of fact, mostly, but with a tinge of wonder. “Surely stranger things have happened,” he confides in the song’s understated chorus, as if he’s trying to make sense of it all on the fly. Strange Strangers is the second solo album from this Brooklyn based songwriter, a hollow-voiced devotee of Leonard Cohen who once made up half of ExitMusic. His songs are beautifully made, pillowy with artful arrangements, but even so very pure and simple. The wordplay is, similarly, plain spoken but twisted. “Jesus was a genius,” croons Church slyly, “but I prefer his early stuff,” and sure, don’t we all? And his voice is exceptional, with the haunted, gothy depths that would make even a laundry list sound apocalyptic. Fans of Mark Lanegan, Duke Garwood and (of course) Leonard Cohen, take note.

Jennifer Kelly

Cut Trio — Pelletron / Dynamitron (Edition Friforma / Inexhaustible Editions)

Pelletron / Dynamitron by CUT Trio: Tanja Feichtmair / Cene Resnik / Urban Kušar

I believe it’s Evan Parker who acknowledged that while free improvisation didn’t exactly change the world, a network has emerged and endured of people who practice it where none existed before. If this album is representative of what happens in Slovenia, the Balkans are doing quite all right in that regard. This trio, which comprises drummer Urban Kušar and saxophonists Tanja Fechtmair and Cene Resnik, doesn’t propose a new concept, but it does what it does exceedingly well. The horns prod and challenge, ceaselessly pressing forward but forever ready to feint and jab; they’re immaculately light on their feet, but heavy enough to make it all feel real. Kušar is an emphatic ornamenter, and a source of focused but never overwhelming energy. While the chances are slight that either they or I will be in each other’s towns anytime soon, if it happened, I’d be there.

Bill Meyer

Erik Friedlander, Ava Mendoza, Stomu Takeishi and Diego Espinosa—She Sees (Skipstone)

Jazz cellist Erik Friedlander meets up with his Sentinel ensemble—guitarist Ava Mendoza, percussionist Diego Espinosa and the bass player Stomu Takeishi—for a genre-blurring romp. Chin-strokers keep out. These 10 compositions are pure fun, whether you start with the swaggering roots-blues of “Baskets, Biscuits, Rain,” the rock-propulsive “Blink” or the simmering groove of “Heatwave.” The cello is, naturally, front and center, leading melodically with clear, vibrant tones, but all other instruments get their spot. Newly added bass player Takeishi sounds particularly fine interlacing plucked lines with Friedlander in the meditative spaces of “Summit,” while Mendoza lances rambling “Ache, Air,” with shocked jolts of guitar rock dissonance. The drums are also very fine, though not in-your-face; these songs swing with easy rhythm. I like gypsy reeling “Sliding,” maybe the best, though this album is a blast all the way through. I thought it might be an “eat your vegetables” kind of good, but it’s a sundae with a cherry on it.

Jennifer Kelly

Gaika — “Lady (Feat. Bbymutha)” (Big Dada)

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Coming off the War Island OST that soundtracked a room at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2022, “perennial internationalist” Gaika returns with a new song on a personal note ahead of his Big Dada debut Drift in September. We covered him some years ago and said then that “a claustrophobic line runs through his production work,” and nothing’s changed his mood in the years since Security; it’s just that now it feels like the world has started to catch up with him. Part of this is because Yves Tumor’s similar David Bowie/Marilyn Manson/TV on the Radio approach to postmodern pop music has popped open an avenue of sound artists like Gaika and Le1f had already been exploring alongside them, and Drift will likely feel familiar to those already on board with such sonics. The trip-hop pace of “Lady” features strung out guitar flourishes and a few percussion fills as delivered by Kidä (from, yes, Yves Tumor), Azekel (Gorillaz) and Max Winter, and as a love letter to a partner, it sure sounds sinister. A promising shot across the bow to anyone that might’ve forgotten he was still out here putting in the good work.

Patrick Masterson

Geld — Currency // Castration (Relapse Records)

Currency // Castration by GELD

Geld doubles down on the groin-clenching characteristics of their band name with the title of this new LP, Currency // Castration. Yipes. Not sure if all the emasculating terminology is ironically intended, but there’s a strongly macho vibe running through Geld’s music. It’s hardcore from Oz, after all. A fair amount of critical chatter about the band stresses the ostensibly “psychedelic” properties of the music, and that was true, to some degree, of Beyond the Floor, the band’s 2020 LP (though for more effective recent demonstrations of what happens when the punks take some acid, see Glittering Insects or that amazing Oily Boys record). Geld’s move to Relapse Records has come with an intensification of big rawk sounds. See “Clock Keeps Crawling,” “Fog of War” and “Hanging from a Rope,” which evoke long-haired thrash as much as the metal-edged hardcore records of the late 1980s. This reviewer likes it when Geld plays fast and feral: “Cut You Down” and “Success” don’t seek to innovate, and the songs succeed by keeping things simple, snarling and frantic. The guitar solo in “Success” has some appealing shreddy intensity, like Dimebag Darrell in an especially hostile state of mind — not a dude who was ever interested in neutering his sound. If you’re going to strut, might as well do it like Darrell. If you can.

Jonathan Shaw

Grindhard E, Rio Da Yung OG, RMC Mike — Ed, Edd n Eddy (Grindhard 4 Money)

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These Flint rappers worked in twos before, but this is the first time they’ve recorded as a trio. It’s quite chaotic and kind of drifts along, perhaps because it didn’t have a clear structure in the first place. Just leftover studio sessions, late-night freestyles slapped together, clearly with no pretensions to be anything more. Only the final track “Heads,” with Louie Ray as a guest, has something resembling the usual verse-chorus structure. And it is the best among six songs, with RMC Mike and Grindhard E coming up with a memorable chorus and Rio and Louie Ray providing funny verses on a switched beat.

Ray Garraty

Jean Luc Guionnet — Dyslexic Harp (Deciphered In The Dark) (Amgen)

DYSLEXIC HARP (DECIPHERED IN THE DARK) by Jean-Luc Guionnet

Dyslexic Harp is a test of memory and mettle. The piece, which was composed by Jean Luc Guionnet for harpist Rhodri Davies, is not a set of notes on staff paper but a set of rules. In short, the musician must sit in darkness so absolute that they cannot see their instrument and, using both hands, play all the possible pitches on the harp. When they make an error, they must play a specific pitch that signals that an error has occurred and then resume. There’s more — a lot more — but that’s enough to give a listener the idea of the sort of memory and concentration that a performer must bring to the task at hand. So, what one hears is a struggle to remember and recover rendered as sound, in which the moments of silence feel more tension-fraught than the purposeful sequences of known notes. Davies’ performance is by turns confident and hesitant, and the spacious recording puts the listener right in the room with him.

Bill Meyer

Hatred Surge — Demo 2004 (Iron Lung)

Demo 2004 (LUNGS-246) by HATRED SURGE

It may take you longer to read this brief review than it will to listen through Demo 2004, a sorta-significant document of heavy music — five songs in three minutes from the salad days of Hatred Surge (which may be the purest name ever devised for the super aggro sort of noise the band has made). Since churning out these formative sounds nearly 20 years ago, the band has made some terrific grind and powerviolence records, also experimenting in death metal and harsh noise. On later recordings, it would be hard to overstate the strong creative productivity of Chris Ulsh, the guitarist and drummer who has cut a merciless path through the 21st Century with a number of great bands, including Mammoth Grinder, Power Trip and (of course) Hatred Surge. For this one, Alex Hughes played everything. This reissued demo is likely most appealing to the historically minded and to collectors. But even in their raw, unproduced forms, tunes like “Invisible Noose” and “Wolf in Idiot’s Clothing” are immediately engaging, forecasting the powerful sounds to come.

Jonathan Shaw

Hypnodrone Ensemble — The Signal in the Signal (Trepanation)

The Signal In The Signal by Hypnodrone Ensemble

It says something about Hypnodrone Ensemble’s last record, 2020’s Gets Polyamorous, that this one feels pretty stripped down in comparison. Boasting a mere six participants (including three drummers) vs. that album’s 15 (six drummers!), The Signal in the Signal still displays plenty of the ensemble’s trademark, well, hypnotic spacerock drone, just more monolithically. The two sides (which split the album title between them) started from a bass/drum pattern that repeats for the whole hour as other members layer guitar, bass, drums, sax, and viola over it. As the sides gradually build towards a swelling storm of noise it’s fascinating to hear how the character of that initial pulse appears to change as its surroundings do. It’s as apt a demonstration of “the more things change the more they stay the same” as you’re likely to find on record.

Ian Mathers

Induced Geometry — S/T (Trouble in Mind)

Induced Geometry by Induced Geometry

Philadelphia duo Writhing Squares produce a prog-inspired psychedelic squall that is pretty darn catchy, so this cassette from bassist Daniel Provenzano is quite a surprise. Stark in comparison to his band’s more visceral sound, Induced Geometry borrows liberally from the oeuvres of Reich and Riley. Short synth patterns build upon each other until they become hypnotic geometric structures, with ever-shifting vertices. The complex and evolving shapes are luminescent, producing a strange aura that seems to morph with a deepening textural quality. There’s a warmth here that belies his initial intent with these songs, which was to create a plain, characterless music. Instead, Provenzano has produced an elegant series of synth tapestries that aren’t necessarily lush but are pleasing to behold.

Bryon Hayes

Aaron Leaney featuring Guy Thouin — Lockdown (Astral Spirits)

Lockdown by Aaron Leaney feat. Guy Thouin

The Astral Spirits release schedule is sufficiently full-on to tempt a body to skip over a title every now and then. If you’re considering such a move, Lockdown might not be the one to pass by. The title tells you when this Montreal duo made their record (at Hotel2tango, if you’re keeping score), but not much else. It turns out that Guy Thouin is a first-generation Canadian free jazzer, on board since the late 1960s. Aaron Leaney, who is much younger, contributes husky but nimble alto and tenor sax melodies, and also plays enough flutes and percussion that it’s tempting to pull the phrase “little instruments” out of your bag. Leave it there; this is more Interstellar Space meets Babi than AACM in sound, albeit not as heavy and full-on as such comparisons might imply. Instead, there’s a floating quality to this music that’s easy to hang with.

Bill Meyer

Fred Lonberg-Holm & Tim Daisy — Current 23 (Relay)

Fred Lonberg-Holm / Tim Daisy "Current 23" (relay 034) by Tim Daisy, Fred Lonberg-Holm

Cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and drummer Tim Daisy have been recurring partners in improvisation for over two decades, dating back to a time when they both lived in Chicago and they were in a couple of the same combos led by Ken Vandermark. Residence and work locations change, but they still make it a point to play together at least once a year, world health catastrophes permitting. The title of this recording, which was made while Lonberg-Holm was back in town for the Catalytic Sound Festival, suggests that it is a report — “This is how it is at the start of 2023.” At the moment, Daisy seems especially interested in using dynamic aggregations of small and varied sounds to create open fields of possibility. Turn up the music, and you’ll hear tiny strikes and rustles amid his brisk, ever-changing drum kit-work. Lonberg-Holm alternates between acoustic and amplified, electronically set-ups, but either way, he presses the boundaries of convention and instrumental potential. Daisy proves the perfect accompanist for his forays, forever expanding the perimeter in ways that frame and support Lonberg-Holm, but never limit him. Two notes: James Falzone’s long but extremely edifying liner note on the record’s Bandcamp page are well worth reading. And fans of physical products should be aware that this album, unlike other recent Relay releases, is a commercial CDR, not a glass-mastered CD.

Bill Meyer

Andrea Neumann — elletseuef (Thanatosis)

elletsreuef by Andrea Neumann

People who make the transition from classical music to various forms of improvisation sometimes talk about having to divest themselves of various forms of acquired baggage. Few have done so quite as literally as Andrea Neumann, who long ago got rid of the keys and the big, boxy parts of the piano in order to concentrate on the sonic potentialities of the rack of strings inside. She sounds said strings with bows and kitchen implements, and magnifies and distorts them electronically. Elletseuef, a solo performance from 2021, is particularly worthy of attention because she tends to record in collaborative settings. While there are passages whose patient accretion of details brings to mind Keith Rowe’s similarly re-evaluative guitar playing, it’s the quasi-industrial bursts of electricity, and her expert shifts between loudness and silence, that command attention.

Bill Meyer

Night Gestalt — Staring Light (Bigo & Twigetti)

Staring Light by Night Gestalt

Swedish musician Olof Cornéer’s latest release as Night Gestalt takes all the finest qualities of his last album, Thousand Year Waves (covered in last March’s Dust) and distills them into a simpler, more resonant musical statement. The central elements are closely mic’d piano, where the creak of the wood and the swing of the hammers are as much of a sound source as the vibration of the strings, plus some glassy, nocturnal synth tones. There’s plenty of space in the mix, allowing all elements to individually shine, reverberate and fade away. Nothing gets cluttered or sounds out of place. Pop this one on headphones at night, venture outside into the chill air for some star watching and you’ve got your perfect soundtrack: pin pricks of light in an inky expanse, with sufficient breathing room for the mind to wander.

Tim Clarke

Maria Norseth Garli — Morning Light (Sonic Transmissions)

Morning Light by Maria Norseth Garli

Order and entropy do battle for Maria Norseth Garli’s allegiance on Morning Light, which is the Trondheim, Norway-based singer/guitarist’s third LP. You don’t get a Master’s degree from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in that town without sharing some practice rooms and student combos with free improvisers, and her work evidences an appreciation for dynamic and textural extremities that you don’t usually find in the work of self-confessed singer-songwriters. But it’s not really a fair fight; Garli is too committed to melody and the song form to let things fall apart. Instead, heavy guitar chords (including a few played by the undeniably industrious Nicolas Leirtrø of I Like To Sleep, Dafnie and TEIP Trio) fall like toppling timber into the moody meadows of Garli’s spare, image-oriented writing. It might sound dangerous, but nothing ever lands on her voice. Still, the combination intrigues.

Bill Meyer

Palace, AmaneOG — Drive 2 EP (Noir)

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It was one of those fortuitous occurrences that remind you the algorithms really are listening: There I was on the eve of the hundredth running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans — arguably the most famous motor race aside from maybe the Indianapolis 500 or the Monaco Grand Prix — casually searching for some distraction amid a final push on this work project I had going on when, lo, what should appear in my sidebar but Polish producer Palace’s “Drive” and what looked to be a scene from Lost Highway. What I clicked into and found was an eerie night cruiser akin to Kassem Mosse’s early Workshop releases set to actual onboard footage of a Porsche at Le Mans from 2015. The synchronicity was unsettling. AmaneOG goes uncredited in the above video because it’s not from the unhelpfully named Noir Records, which put out the Drive 2 EP upon which this song appears, but I assure you that won’t matter when you hear it. That the Porsche in question was a 919 and not a 909 feels like the only missed opportunity here.

Patrick Masterson

Nathan Alexander Pape — coat after coat (The Jewel Garden)

coat after coat by Nathan Alexander Pape

This CDR (all respect to Jewel Garden for correctly identifying it on the label’s Bandcamp page; not everyone is so honest these days) documents the solo work of Tulsa, Oklahoma-based guitarist Nathan Alexander Pape. Sometimes titles provide clues, and coat after coat provides a few. If your thoughts drift to paint, it invites you to think of layers, which makes sense of music that is the product of a multi-staged signal chain comprising ideas, fingers, steel-stringed acoustic guitar, amplifier, an overwhelmed recording microphone and an out-of-town space that allows Pape to turn it up and get just the right in-the-red sound. If your associations are more attire-oriented, the direction is towards a series of outer garments. On successive tracks, Pape applies his imagination to Derek Bailey-descended harmonics play, seething timbres and minimalist strategies. And the choice to opt for completely lowercase titling suggests that this stuff is not meant to be momentous. One supposes that, instead of heading for a studio or navigating to some distant city for a gig, Pape has made music-making a part of everyday life.

Bill Meyer

Pylar — Límyte (Cavsas/Cyclic Law)

Límyte by PYLAR

Andalusian doom-drone occultists Pylar are back with another slab of cosmically scaled, weirdo bum-outs that are psychedelic and soul-consuming in equal measure. Límyte isn’t quite as flat-out bananas as Abysmos, the band’s previous LP, but what it lacks in unhinged intensity it gains in relative momentum. This time around, the collective — allegedly formed by musicians in the orbits of metal bands Teitanblood and Orthodox — foregrounds a conventional trap set in its rhythmic structures and even experiments with traditional metal riffage, here and there; see especially “Ruptura-afuera.” Chanted clean vocals and moaning modular synths come and go in extended waves. The songs are still very long, and the rotational suck into a maelstrom of unhappily dense, strangely sticky textures is very strong. This reviewer likes it when the atmosphere gets spacy and the vibe is slightly more playful. The title song could be a soundtrack for a trip into a haunted house decorated by Dali, or it could just be the consequence of those suspect-looking mushrooms you ate an hour ago. Aficionados of music like this might say: Why choose?

Jonathan Shaw

Queens of the Stone Age — In Times New Roman (Matador)

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Longtime listener, first time caller. I’ve been digging QOTSA, on the sly, since Rated R. The last two albums got by me, but this one has the rupturing power, the slithery chill that has always defined this band. The sheer churn and roar of “Paper Machete” is what you come for, all roiling bass, thunderous drums, guitars yelping in electro-shocked outrage, and Josh Homme’s weirdly mannered, baroque falsetto. It’s a gas and a pose, but it also rocks you right to the ground. This is said to be QOTSA’s “angry” album, but man, I don’t know. Did you listen to Songs for the Deaf? They’ve always been pretty pissed. “Emotional Sickness” rides jabbing hook, as precise and violent as a boxer’s punch, then spirals out in swirling, psychedelic melody; QOTSA picks up your machine-gun riddled body and cradles it in gentle currents of song, and then hits you again. It’s obliterating, and smooth, like the best kind of whiskey, and it may remind you of all the records you don’t listen to anymore. At least it did for me. The girl who loved Van Halen 2, the women who went to school pickup with “Monsters of the Parasol” drifting through her head, the old lady who wants to listen to In Times New Roman one more time: all the same person. Hail the rock.

Jennifer Kelly

The Soft Moon — Exister (Sacred Bones)

Exister by The Soft Moon

On June 23rd, Soft Moon dropped remixes for the 2022 LP Exister. It seemed like an opportune time to revisit the 2022 recording. Mostly a one-man show, Luis Vasquez handles the instruments and vocals. Even by the standards of The Soft Moon’s previous polyglot assemblages, Exister is a versatile affair. The singing is post-punk with a tinge of goth. The music itself encompasses these styles, with the addition of industrial electronica to the mix. “Sad Song” and “Answers” lean in to Vasquez’s haunting snarl. “Become the Lies” is altogether different, with a high-lying vocal and an alt-rock hook. There are guest artists, the rapper Fish Narc on “Him” and Alli Logout, who adds scary screams to “Unforgiven.” The title track arrives last, and its edgy yet atmospheric arrangement is well worth the wait.

Christian Carey

Star City Survivor — Orbital Decay (Soul City)

orbital decay by star city survivor

Star City Survivor is an electric guitar and drums duo from Chapel Hill, NC. The name of this album of spontaneously co-created, open-ended encounters suggests an eventual crash to earth, but the sounds they make are sufficiently gravity-defying to avoid any shattering impacts. Instead, Phil Venerable plays inward-turning, fuzz-encrusted lines that alternately surf atop or surge straight through Tommy Jackson’s kickdrum-heavy attack. A historical challenge of jazz-rock summits is the tendency of the musicians to neglect to rock, but that is not the case here.

Bill Meyer

Rowland Taylor — A Righteous Man Falling Down Before the Wicked Is a Troubled Fountain (self-released)

a righteous man falling down before the wicked is a troubled fountain by Rowland Taylor

Virginia-based Rowland Taylor has released a number of singles and EPs of Takoma school guitar music over the past few years. The latest release is the longest yet, nearly half an hour, and it hits all of the sweet spots, from Rose-worthy slide (“boss card,” “hold fast”) to lengthy excursions (“krakow lament,” “the seagull”) and a banjo piece reminiscent of Glenn Jones (“i lost my way home last night”). Taylor can play very fast and forcefully when he wants to, but A Righteous Man is a bit less frenetic than some of his earlier work and even ends with a neat Eastern European-sounding fiddle piece swathed in studio effects. This recording also whets the appetite for a full-length album in which Taylor can develop such ideas more fully and indulge in the kind of experimentation on display in that final track.

Jim Marks

Vasco Trilla — A Constellation of Anomaly (Thanatosis)

A Constellation of Anomaly by Vasco Trilla

Percussionists commonly find themselves either keeping time or unleashing frenetic salvos of beats. Vasco Trilla obliterates both notions, choosing instead to explore and manipulate resonance. Every surface is a potential instrument for him to push to the extremes of its sound-making potential. On A Constellation of Anomaly, he produces a vast array of textures with an eclectic set of resonant bodies. Drones and groans sustain such that they hover like contrails in the air. Metallic shrieks slice through the atmosphere, leaving a vacuum that Trilla fills with microscopic sound particles. Not every track is wildly experimental: the two pieces called “The Shaking Hand That Leaves a Mark” find Trilla straying into territory that borders on melodic. These pleasing sonorities are a rare glimpse into the lighter side of his personality. He’s happier exploring the uncanny sound world of a timpani filled with wind-up music boxes or crafting a cloud of resonance with bowed bells. In his mind, the permutations and combinations of sound-making surfaces are limitless. Merely producing beats is out of the question.

Bryon Hayes

Vulture Feather — Liminal Fields (felte)

Liminal Fields by Vulture Feather

Back in the 2000s, Baltimore post-punk band Wilderness released a handful of decent records then disappeared off the radar. Now, nearly 20 years later, Wilderness guitarist Colin McCann and bassist Brian Gossman are based in California and have regrouped with a new drummer, Eric Fiscus, to form Vulture Feather. The two bands have similar yet distinct DNA, clearly derived from the same lineage but evolving with their own character. Wilderness frontman James Johnson was a more declarative, center-stage singer, repeating his oblique, mantra-like phrases over and over. McCann takes vocal duties here, weaving his higher, wavering voice in the midst of the guitars and bass more discreetly, singing along with the music rather than standing atop it. McCann’s guitar lines are as chiming and anthemic as they were back in the Wilderness days, but more repetitive and driving, sounding as if they’ve sparked aflame in the jam room and the songs took shape from there. The result is an economical, tightly written and energetically performed record that proves there’s a worthwhile next phase underway.

Tim Clarke

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