#Decoherence

[edupunkn00b]

Decoherence, Ch. 12: A Place Not So Foreign

Creative Commons 1.0 Public Domain

Prev - A Place Not So Foreign - Next - Masterpost - [ AO3 ] - Playlist

“Pa took a key ring out of his vest pocket and unlocked the door, then swung it open. Each of us shouldered our bags and walked through, in eerie silence, into a pitch black room. Pa reached out and pulled the door shut, then there was a sharp click and we were in 1975.” - A Place So Foreign by Cory Doctorow

WC: 1727 - Rated: T - CW: swearing, alcohol -

2027, April 29 - London, England

Lo had a key to the building and Remus watched, mouth agape, as he smoothly unlocked the lobby door and held it open for him. “I’ll explain everything, Meus,” he murmured, pocketing the key and lifting Remus’ free hand to his lips. Remus didn’t realize he was crying until Lo reached up to dry his cheek. “I promise.”

Swallowing back a sob, he turned his head and nuzzled his cheek against Lo's palm. His hand was warm and smelled like antiseptic soap and vinyl gloves. And whiteboard marker ink. He smelled real. Lo lowered his hand and hooked it through Remus’ arm and walked with him upstairs. 

He walked right to their door and wiped his feet on the mat before he unlocked it. Again, he held the door for Remus, turning and locking it behind them as he toed off his shoes and set them on the empty spot on the rack.

Shaking his head, Remus leaned back against the door but his knees shook too much to stand and he slid down to the floor. 

“Meus!” Lo dropped to the floor in front of him and took both of his hands. “Meus, it’s going to be alright. Here,” he muttered, fishing through his bag for a moment and pulling out a bottle of Vimto. “Drink something,” he smiled, worry pinching his face and exaggerating the little dip in his cupid’s bow. “You skipped lunch today, didn’t you?”

Remus accepted the bottle but wouldn’t let go of Lo’s hand. Instead, he pulled him closer until they sat together on the floor, Lo curled sideways against his chest, Remus’ knees bent with one leg on either side of him. Curled around Lo, he finally took a long drink of the Vimto, then fished in his bag for a different one.

Finally, he found the burgundy-colored can and offered it to him. “This one’s yours, right?” he murmured, prickly barbs in his chest loosening at the softness in Lo’s eyes. 

“That’s my favorite,” he nodded, accepting the can and taking a sip. “Here, at least. I’m partial to other drinks when this isn’t available.”

“Rose water tonic,” Remus murmured, rubbing his cheek against the top of Lo’s head. He nodded and settled closer to Remus, head resting on his shoulder. Remus set down his drink and wrapped both arms around him, fingers closing and opening on his sleeves. “This is real, isn’t it?”

Lo nodded again, reaching up to cradle his jaw. “It is. I… I wasn’t completely certain you experienced it, too.”

Remus was quiet for a long time, until the sunlight spilling past the kitchen windowsill finally dipped behind the building next to theirs. Lo was still in his arms, warm and heavy and real. “Are you hungry?” He asked, chuckling at his stupidly simple question.

Smiling, Lo nodded. “Let’s make dinner.”

~

Cooking with Lo, it was easy to forget anything was wrong. Lo knew where everything was, reaching without looking for pot lids or aluminum foil, opening his mouth for a taste as soon as Remus filled a spoon and blew on it. They worked together without words, the small touches shared between them serving as both communication and comfort.

Remus plated the rice and curry, and Lo poured them each a glass of water and pineapple juice. He frowned when he shook the bottle before returning it to the fridge and made a note on the little pad stuck to the front. A plate in each hand, Remus stared at the kitchen table, the chairs nestled around it miles apart from each other.

He set one plate down and grabbed an extra stack of napkins from a drawer and tilted his head toward the hall. Lo smiled and followed him to the living room.

The coffee table was low to the ground, smooth and waxed, Remus wiggled his arm and set down a napkin for Lo’s plate, then his own. Once he’d settled in front of the table, legs criss-crossed in front of him, Lo moved closer. He reached for his hand, nodding, and pulled Lo onto his lap. Hands now free, he laced them together, holding him close. “Is this okay?” Remus asked, voice cracking, but, fuck if he could help it, he needed him nearer.

“More than okay, Meus,” Lo murmured. He laid another napkin over his lap and picked up one of the plates. Wordlessly, he scooped up a bit of tofu and rice and held it out for Remus, waiting until he’d had some before taking a bite for himself.

They ate in silence, taking turns with Lo curled against Remus’ chest feeding him, then himself. They shared a few bites of the second plate before Remus shook his head with a little smile at Lo's next offering. Nodding, Lo set the plate back on the table and drew closer, arms looped behind Remus’ back.

“Everett and DeWitt were right,” he finally said. “All of this really is just one world of many.” He chuckled and smiled up at Remus. “You were right, too, Meus.”

“But that’s… none of it’s not meant to be real. It’s… it’s just a way to explain the math, explain the weirdness. No,” Remus shook away the doubt creeping into his own voice. The sun had set but they’d turned on the little lamps near the couch and the warm light diffusing through the space banished the cold creeping over him. He looked around the room, memories layering one on top of the other.

Lo laid his own hand in Remus’. The gold band on his ring finger glowed. “This is real. And the ranch, with your brother and his family… that’s real, too.”

“Ro thought I was having delusions.” He hid his face in Lo's hair. “Again,” he whispered.

“This is not a delusion,” he whispered back. “Come with me, Meus.” Keeping one hand cradling the side of Remus’ face, Lo moved carefully off his lap, then took his hand and stood, tugging him gently up with him. “Let me show you something.”

Lo led them to the bedroom. Their bedroom. He stood with Remus in front of the big mirrored door of the wardrobe. Patting his pockets, he found a whiteboard marker and, reaching way over his head, sketched out a series of equations in his careful, neat print. Remus followed the familiar expressions, nodding. He froze when Lo lingered over the wave field formula. “You’re not saying…”

“I am. We never postulated that the wave fields might remain distinct on either side of the points of collapse.” He was quiet while Remus scanned the equations.

“Because it didn’t make any sense,” Remus shook his head. “It’s some sci fi bullshit, time travel and ‘spooky action from a distance’ and all that.”

“How many sheep did Virgil take out to the pasture last week?”

Remus answered automatically. “Twenty-eight.”

“One of them didn’t make it,” they said together. Remus’ jaw fell open and he nodded slowly.

“He cried all night,” he whispered.

Lo capped the marker and stuck it back in his pocket before pulling Remus close. “We all took turns sitting with him.”

“‘Uncka Woe.’” Remus wanted to seal Lo's smile in a bottle and keep it forever. “Okay.” He swallowed hard, nodding. “Okay so this is real.” He turned back to the mirror-turned whiteboard. “Okay,” he said again, blowing out a slow breath and standing up a little straighter. “So the theory says there would be countless points of coherence… Infinite universes. I don’t remember infinite.”

“That would be logical. Each of us, really everyone, is a combination of countless choices branching off to create, well, us.”

“Remember the old train car time theory?” 

Remus frowned, but nodded. “That Twilight Zone shit?”

It was one of the things they’d laughed about the day they’d met. Huddled together in a dusty old café, sharing a cheap pot of tea, they’d poked fun at the cheesy sci-fi story line where a couple got trapped out of time because they got out of sync when the world around them changed to the next time frame. Like video frames.

“It turns out… that seems to be a rather apt metaphor. However some, instead of merely moving to the next car in the ‘train’ of time…” He sketched another train intersecting the first. “At each point that the wave field collapses into coherence, we hop trains.”

He drew the two points in the next car, one train over. “Anecdotally, of course, we only have a control group of one in this instance, however it appears that those who are prevented from hopping to the next car when the pilot wave collapses…”

“They stay in a universe where they don’t belong,” Remus whispered. 

I’m standing in my shorts in the bathroom, staring at the tattoo of a snake coiled around my left arm. My fucking left arm. Not my right. “That’s not where it was last night, Ro, I swear to god, you gotta believe me!”

“Shh, relax Re, relax… Look—” He backs away from me, nose scrunched. “Shit, Re, how much did you drink last night, man? You reek!”

“I—I’m not drunk, that’s not what this is.” I open the medicine cabinet and pull out the toothpaste. “This isn’t mine!” There’s a tub of pomade, too, the real waxy kind I hate. I yank it out, too, along with a spool of spearmint floss and drop it all in the sink. “None of this is mine, Ro… this arm, it’s not right…” I catch my fingers in the door as I slam it shut again. “Fuck!”

“Re…” Ro grips my arms. “Re, you gotta come down from whatever this is. C’mon, let’s get you in the shower, one thing at a time.” He meets my eyes. He’s scared. And so am I. “Please? For me, I’m still me, right?”

I stare back at him. There’s a little scar over his eyebrow that I’d never seen before and his teeth are perfectly straight, like fucking braces straight. A plastic retainer case sat on his side of the sink.

My brother never wore braces.

“Yeah,” I nod anyway. “Yeah, of course you’re my brother.” The lie catches in my throat.

“Okay, good,” he nods and lets out a slow, shaky breath. “Alright, let’s get you in the shower, then. We’ll get you feeling back to yourself in no time.”

#Decoherence #ts logan #ts remus #intrulogical #Logan Sanders #Remus Prince #ts roman #ts patton #ts janus #ts virgil #ts lucas #Roman Prince #Patton Hart #Janus Pater #Lucas Sanders #Roman Sanders #Janus Sanders #Patton Sanders #Virgil Sanders #for the character tags #human au #alternate universes #physics #tssstorytimesubmission2023 #tss storytime 2023 #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides fanfic

[sidui]

[disillusioned / dissolution]

no single thing is ever really complete anyway

#chaotic #decoherence #original work #digital composite #scanography #weird art #💸

[loki-who-remains]

This is a post about space exploration game-induced existentialism and quantum decoherence parallel realities. So not a Loki post like my bio promises, and it doesn't have loki tags. So, pardon me, I just need to put it somewhere. In my defence, season 2 is very thought provoking, and maybe if not for Loki I wouldn't finally try to understand quantum principles that make my brain hurt a lot.

And if not for Loki, my partner wouldn't have advised me to play a very time-loopy game called Outer Wilds. I just finished it and honestly I cried as much as Tom Hiddleston in both seasons of Loki. It's beautifully bittersweet and thought provoking, too. Because of it I decided to write this down.

I think a lot about the end of everything: planets and stars, history, time, matter, consciousness. When no one is left to observe the Universe, how will it be? Will it be at all? When I'm gone will my consciousness simply fade or will the last electric impulses of my brain travel somewhere at the speed of light or become something else?

At that scale nothing on this tiny rock orbiting around a pretty average star at the outskirts of a galaxy, nothing seems to matter that much. But then, I, as tiny as I am, probably can't grasp the meaning of the Universe. Because we are of different scale.

Yesterday in a local bookshop I saw pop science and philosophy books side by side, which made me smile ironically, knowingly. Haha, I thought, that's what many scientists had arguments about, including the famous one between Einstein and Bohr: is there actually a line between physics and philosophy?

This morning I watched another couple of videos about observer effect and decoherence of a wave function. Both can potentially explain the results of the double-slit experiment. Observer effect brings some metaphysical element to otherwise rational science. Decoherence, on the other hand, opens a fathomless abyss of probabilities, all existing at once. It's not what if this happened, it's everything happens and exists, we just can't know it. Both theories make my brain explode. I just wanted to understand quantum physics better. Instead I got all them existential vibes.

Yesterday in a local bookshop I saw a heavy book titled Astrology, published by Taschen. I stopped believing in astrology or anything esoteric many many years ago but I opened this book and it was so beautiful. It's basically a collection of esoteric art. Still, I thought, I don't believe in it, I don't endorse it. Instead I bought an AD magazine, my favourite.

But another me bought the book.

Another me took an astronomy calendar for the next year.

Another me left without buying anything.

Another me didn't go to the local bookshop.

Since all of me exists and makes different choices that I don't make, and though we're completely disconnected and unaware of each other, I am the complexity of choices, whims and wishes, and logic and knowledge, and moods and emotions, and people. And vibes, of course. But this complexity leads to multiplying myself exponentially, until I start making more and more of questionable choices that end in my death, or until my natural life span ends.

And now I think, wouldn't it be more natural for people to call themselves we instead of I?

And how will be the Universe?

#sylvie is a mood #thinking thoughts #existentialism #decoherence #unknown #multiverse #parallel realities

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume Nine, Number Seven

Chuck Johnson

Is it hot where you are? Has it been raining a lot? Is there smoke in the air? It's been the weirdest, most disturbing summer, and you might think it would make music irrelevant. But no, this is Dusted, and we continue to listen and judge and write about records even at the end of times. So here's another Dust. Enjoy. We hope there will be one next month, too, but let's see what happens, eh?

Contributors include Jennifer Kelly, Bryon Hayes, Jonathan Shaw, Chris Liberato, Ian Mathers, Patrick Masterson, Jonathan Shaw, Andrew Forell and Tim Clarke.

Omar Ahmad — Inheritance (AKP)

Inheritance by Omar Ahmad

Omar Ahmad’s music follows dance pulses through thickets of memory. A glitchy beat sinks into slippery textures of synthesizer, piano, strings and field recordings; the music moves but in a haze of memory, as the sounds of women, children and running water flashes and subsides. Omar Ahmad is a Palestinian-American electronic artist and DJ currently based in Brooklyn and in this first full-length, he explores identity (ethnic and otherwise) through a scrim of memory. These glowing ambient compositions don’t hammer the point home—rather they gently suggest and evoke a dual western/Arabic identity. The baby in “Gesso” says “Daddy” in English but is answered in another language. The cut “usra” whose name translates as “home” or “family” incorporates a ululating non-western vocal alongside the pristine electronic modernity of synths. “Sham Oasis” has, perhaps, the most concentrated array of Middle Eastern sounds, a jangle of not-guitars, the thud of hand drums, a shaker, but it also twitches and glitters with space-age electronic sounds. The songs have lovely, idealized, luminous textures that don’t belong, exactly, to any single culture, yet they are warm and beautiful enough to make it feel like home anyway.

Jennifer Kelly

Animal Piss It’s Everywhere — S-T (Half a Million)

Animal Piss, It's Everywhere by Animal Piss, It's Everywhere

This loose and goofy country ramble obsesses over Jesus and intoxicants, sometimes but not always in the same songs. Indeed these bleary sing-alongs seem best suited for Sunday morning with the sun streaming in on the tail end of a one- or two-day bender. They’re exhausted but full of good feeling, played on muscle memory and love of the game. “Jesus Got Under My Skin,” for instance, ramps up the roadhouse boogie in a stunned and stoned narrative about finding one’s savior—and then trying to ditch him. “Naked” slouches and twangs in a righteous chorus of “Naked…ass…man…blues.” There’s considerable talent on hand, however casually it is deployed, from a confederation of Western Mass freak folk regulars. A guitar-heavy line-up features Anthony Pasquarosa, Clark Griffin (Weeping Bong Band, Pigeons), Shannon Ketch (Bunwinkies) and Andy Goulet on pedal steel (Winter Pills, Lonesome Brothers etc.). Rob Smith from Rhyton and Mouth Painter plays drums and Jim Bliss (of various Matt Valentine projects) sits in on bass. “I’ve found sucksess, sucking at success,” croons the singer, making a point; this band of miscreants achieve their aims without coming within a hundred miles of commercial palatability.

Jennifer Kelly

Aunty Rayzor — “Nina” (Nyege Nyege Tapes)

Perhaps the hardest song I heard over the last month opens with an almost demented pogoing and a video staring straight at the sun with an airplane’s corpse and a silhouette on the wing fixing her hair before she struts into your life and all over your ears. If you don’t already know Bisola Olungbenga aka Aunty Rayzor, Nyege Nyege Tapes has done a fine job ensuring you’ll want to hear everything the Nigerian has to say after one listen through of “Nina,” the lead single from September’s Viral Wreckage. Veering between red hair and blonde amid rusty MiG-21s, Rayzor takes the hard-nosed rhythm from Berlin-based beatmaker Debmaster — just listen to the way that kick rumbles on the low end — and matches it step for step to powerful effect. You don’t need Nyege Nyege’s effusive description of the forthcoming full-length to gather we have another formidable female rapper waiting in — or is it on? — the wings to embarrass the boys and prolong women’s global chokehold on the genre that little bit longer. Only a fool or an incel could complain.

Patrick Masterson

Aware — Requiem for a Dying Animal (Glacial Movements)

Requiem For A Dying Animal by AWARE

Alexander Glück, who records as Aware, specializes in producing a haunting tributary of ambient sound that aims to cause unease. His music is ghostly, chilling, and morose. It evokes loneliness yet, like most good stories, contains a faint trickle of hope. His compositions encompass vast swathes of tone peppered with microscopic flecks. These resemble large chunks of metamorphic rock that Glück has fused into rich, veiny patterns. These polychromatic constructions tell stories of isolationism and hardship interspersed with hopefulness and joy. They reflect our species’ interconnectedness with a natural world that simultaneously seeks to nurture and destroy us, as we in turn seek to exploit its bounties. With his music, Glück seeks to find an equilibrium, a stalemate between us and our environment. He will likely never solve this riddle, but Requiem for a Dying Animal is a fruitful step on the journey toward his goal.  

Bryon Hayes

Blight House — Blight the Way (Syrup Moose Records)

Blight the Way by Blight House

Blight House makes the kind of death metal-infused grindcore that aims for utter absurdity: absurdly heavy riffing; absurdly fast drum-machine blips, blats and thumps; absurdist, so-stupid-they’re clever semiotics. It’s hard not to laugh (or at least ruefully chuckle) at the puns in the band’s name and in the title of this new record. Song titles are even dumber and sometimes even more funny: “Dismembers Only,” “Bible Belt Baby Buffet,” “Walpurgis Date-Night.” And so on. But as is generally the case with records like this, it’s hard to know where the joke ends and the band begins. If it’s all done for laughs, then why is the music executed with such apparent seriousness (n.b., for a less overworked version of a grindy gag act, see this)? And if we’re supposed to hear at least some of Blight House’s stuff with a dash of gravid sincerity, then please, band, send instructions on how to pull off that bit of cognitive jiu-jitsu. Or on second thought, maybe don’t. It’s probably better for everyone involved if we just accept the low-brow yucks to be found in songs like “Acephalophilia III: Hopelessly Headless for You” for what they are, and take the tune at its word. If you think about this sort of edge-lord-adjacent, meme-driven cultural production too hard, you may end up in the writers’ room for Ron DeSantis’s next campaign commercial. Headless and heedless, thoughtless and feckless—blight the way into our collective, idiotic future, dudes.

Jonathan Shaw

Buffalo Nichols — The Fatalist (Fat Possum)

The Fatalist by Buffalo Nichols

Buffalo Nichols’ Carl Nichols has a fine gravelly voice, an unfussy skill with the pick and the slide and the swagger that turns songs of suffering into songs of defiance. In other words, he’s a bluesman of the first order and unusual, these days, in that he’s not 100 years old or a suburban white guy. Yes, Buffalo Nichols is on a mission to reclaim the blues for the folks who invented it—black people—and this very fine album makes a pretty good case for the rightness of his cause. How so? Well, to begin with The Fatalist is mostly acoustic, relying on the speed and accuracy of Nichols fingers rather than a floor sized pedal board; there are no endless wah wah’d solos, no feedback freakery. His vocal delivery matches up, too, quiet but intense, an on-pitch growl that pulls you in and holds you there. There’s a simplicity in the playing and arrangements that underlines the power of these song. Listen, for instance, to the eerie magic of slide, the elemental punch of kick drum on the Blind Willie Nelson cover, “You’re Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond.” Or the winding melancholy on “The Long Journey Home,” which frolics funereally in banjo and fiddle tones. He brings in the Philadelphia singer and songcatcher Samantha Rise on “This Moment” for a duet, her voice warm and resonant, his hoarse with emotion, a violin twining around the both of them in a dizzy mesh of sounds. A subtle album, but a good one.

Jennifer Kelly

Cyberplasm — First Emanation (Iron Lung)

First Emanation (LUNGS-262) by CYBERPLASM

Electro-punk dissonance melds and mixes it up with anarcho-freak industrial noise on this new EP from Olympia-based Cyberplasm. The band doesn’t seek to exorcize the ghost in the machine so much as conjure it, feed it with nerve impulses harvested from your frontal lobes and then unleash it on our various political and informational systems. Chaos ensues. Maybe it’s liberatory, maybe it just wants to raze all signs of institutional power. Too damn bad if your sense of security or self-worth gets in the way — and in any case, the music is perversely enjoyable. Check out the d-beat scree of “Spit from Fluid” or the foreboding, crust-infused “Second Mind.” The EP’s ten minutes flash by in a series of burned-out synapses and frying amplifiers. Cyberplasm makes underground music that captures the grit and weirdness of lawless subterranean spaces, virtual and material. It’s exciting stuff. It feels dangerous. Punk’s not dead.

Jonathan Shaw

Decoherence — Order (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Order by DECOHERENCE

If you have been following Decoherence’s coruscating, cosmic circuit through the 21st century, you won’t find much to be surprised by on Order, the band’s new LP. It’s 40+ minutes of pounding, pyrotechnic industrial metal, thoroughly blackened and shot through with enough harsh noise to burn off your eyebrows. The pace is a little slower, vocalist Derek Jacobsen (who appears on Decoherence releases as Tahazu, an anglicized version of the ancient Sumerian word for battle) sounds like another layer of gristle is occluding his vocal cords, and the compositions of musicians Stroda and Prior are marginally less engaged by melody than many of those on the band’s previous LP, Unitary (2020). If you’re into this sort of thing, none of those small changes is a bad thing. But while Unitary represented a profound development when contrasted with the band’s first several releases, Order feels like a consolidation — a band summing its aesthetics and refining its songwriting sensibility. Which suggests an interesting question: How much order do we want in metal music? This reviewer likes it when Decoherence embraces the chaos denoted by its band name. Check out “An Unconfined System” on this new record. Play it very, very loud. Order? Not so much.

Jonathan Shaw

Drekka—The Water of Life (Orb Tapes)

The Water of Life by Drekka

Michael Anderson, the artist who records as Drekka, made these four long-form meditations for a live performance in Indianapolis in 2015, loosely basing his mix of primitive and electronic sounds on the sci fi classic Dune. All four cuts evolve slowly out of hiss and static (the first one is even called “Stasis and Static”), a buzz like live power wires in the foreground, the faint ghosts of bells, altered choral voices rising up occasionally to mysterious ends. You could, of course, construct an imaginary Dune world out of these sounds, its vast deserts and obliterating sandstorms, its mystic addiction to spice, but it would take some active listening and imagining on your part. The title track assists, somewhat, submerging drips of liquid in the rumble of wind flapping through sails, and the nearly human chants that rise as if from a distance out of the noise. There’s a lot of activity here, a scramble to rattle bits against each other, the click and ching of various percussive elements. And through it comes the hum of dawning revelation, just hovering notes rising, but seeming to reach some inscrutable insight out of the noisy scrum.

Jennifer Kelly

The Finks — Birthdays at Solo Pasta (Milk!)

Birthdays at Solo Pasta by The Finks

Courtney Barnett’s recent announcement that her label Milk! Records will be closing down at the end of the year means that The Finks’ Birthdays at Solo Pasta will be one of the label’s final releases. This feels fitting for a label that has quietly released some understated gems over the years from artists such as Tiny Ruins and Mess Esque. The Finks, led by Oliver Mestitz, create the kind of intimate, loosely woven songs that thrive on the obvious ease between the players, as if you’re listening in to a front-room jam session in which everyone is warmed up and starting to develop their instrumental parts into a lively, organic whole. Mestitz leads the way with his quiet, congested voice, as if he’s perpetually getting over a head-cold, often accompanied by the complementary vocals of Sarah Farquharson. The rhythm section, piano and guitar are wonderfully restrained, the woodwinds muted and sinuous, with everything unfolding patiently. At their best, such as on “Marco Polo” and the instrumental “Ego Slump,” The Finks tap into something truly gorgeous and radiant.

Tim Clarke

Frode Gjerstad / Kalle Moberg / Paal Nilssen-Love — Time Sound Shape (PNL)

Time Sound Shape by Gjerstad / Moberg / Nilssen-Love

If you’ve been tracking Scandinavian free music for the past few decades, you might think you know what record sounds like when you hear that Frode Gjerstad and Paal Nilssen-Love are on it. After all, they’ve been playing together since the latter was a teen and the former was trying to lure promising players into the out-jazz life, and they’ve made a fair number of steaming recordings in that time. But they haven’t made anything quite like Time Sound Shape. Recorded at the Gamle Aker Kirke, Oslo’s oldest edifice, in 2021, it may be completely improvised, but it takes its cues from circumstance, space and opportunity, and those cues point the music in a very different direction. The old stone church’s resonance amplifies Nilssen-Love’s all-gongs set up into a massive sonic presence, and accordionist Kalle Moberg conspires with the percussionist to create a solemnly orchestral breadth of sound. Gjerstad, alternating between alto sax, alto flute and Bb clarinet, sharpens the action with short, anguished cries. This is the biggest sound that three guys can make without the assistance of electricity.

Bill Meyer

Gerrit Hatcher — Solo Five (Kettle Hole)

Solo Five by Gerrit Hatcher

Gerrit Hatcher’s learned well. Instead of waiting for fortune, the Chicago-based tenor saxophonist makes things happen. He plays in town quite often, tours econo and self-releases music on his own label, Kettle Hole Records. The title of this album (a real, glass-mastered CD, unlike the blue-faced disappointments so often sold under that name on Bandcamp these days) attests to his devotion to solo performance. It takes practice as well as physical prowess to command the quivering presence and driving force of his tone, which might remind some of Dave Rempis. Each of the album’s seven tracks makes an assertive statement, but not always a big, loud one; windy textures can be as compelling as rippling notes.

Bill Meyer

James Howard — Peek-a-Boo (Faith and Industry)

Peek-a-Boo by James Howard

James Howard’s debut is all stardust and stopped time. For some reason, I’m reminded of that scene in Buffalo ‘66 where Ben Gazzara, in surreal Sinatra-in-a-tee-shirt mode, croons his father-in-law-y feelings to an entranced, doe-eyed Christina Ricci. Except that Howard’s voice is closer to the dreamy, chill side of Roger Waters (see “St. Tropez'' and “Wots… The Deal”). And his songs are about things like meeting up with your drug dealer on the scenic outskirts of town and raising your children to fear nuclear annihilation. The high point of Peek-a-Boo might be “The Reckoning,” where Howard’s fingers tiptoe up the fretboard like a kid on Christmas Eve on his way to peek at his presents, and cymbals splash like someone on tranquilizers falling into a pool. But really the whole record is a gem and feels like one big, wonderful, floaty, pill-powered dream.

Chris Liberato

Chuck Johnson — Music from Burden of Proof (All Saints)

Music From Burden Of Proof by Chuck Johnson

Chuck Johnson has long been a master of eerie pedal steel atmospherics, building shadowy cloudscapes out of shifting, resonating guitar tone. Here he turns his grasp of sonic mystery to cinematic ends, composing music both guitar-based and not for the HBO series Burden of Proof. If you’re familiar with Johnson’s solo work, the opening “Burden of Proof” will catch you up short with its Bach organ cantata ominous-ness, its densely arranged chamber strings. It sounds not at all like the silvery dream narratives of Balsams or The Cinder Grove; it gathers up in stirring crescendos of emotional turmoil. “The Night of the Disappearance” fits more neatly with what you might have heard before from Johnson. It floats lingering traces of bending guitar sound over a slow lattice of electric keyboard. But setting aside expectations of what Chuck Johnson should or shouldn’t sound like, there is quite a lot to appreciate here: the glittering rhythms and bare-bones bass plunk of “Interrogation,” the swelling synth tones of “Ruth Ann,” the bright cerebral keyboard cadences of “The Note.” Not having seen the show, I can’t tell you how the music works (or doesn’t) to support mood or plot points, but here on the record, it’s subtle and varied, and occasionally, as on “More Surreal” has the slow moving contemplative grace that distinguishes Johnson’s best work. He’s making art and likely getting well paid. Good for him.

Jennifer Kelly

Héctor Lavoe — La Voz (Craft Latino)

After arriving in New York as a teenager, Puerto Rican singer Héctor Lavoe became a key figure in the popularization of salsa during the 1960s and 1970s. As part of the Fania label roster that included Willie Cólon, Rubén Blades and Celia Cruz, Lavoe released nine albums beginning with his 1975 debut, the aptly named La Voz. Produced and arranged by Cólon, the album foregoes much of the instrumental pyrotechnics of his contemporaries’ records to focus on Lavoe’s voice and improvisational talents. Opener “El Todopoderosa” (The Almighty) features frenetic percussion, piano vamps and blasts of brass which, good as they are, have no chance distracting from Lavoe’s caramel smooth tone and timbre. The clarity of his voice carries the emotional weight of “Un Amor de la Calle” even as the horns weep behind him. On the joyful, faster numbers his call and response with backing vocalists Cólon, Blades and Willie Garcia drive the songs forward but there’s plenty in the background to grab the ears. Witness the off-kilter piano and trumpet solo in “Rompe Saragüey” or the percussion and horn breakdown in “Mi Gente.” Whether you’re a salsa fan or not, this is an opportunity to hear one of the great vocalists in his prime with a killer band and irresistible songs. What’s not to love.

Andrew Forell

Natalie Rose LeBrecht — Holy Prana Open Game (American Dreams)

Holy Prana Open Game by Natalie Rose LeBrecht

It would not be accurate to describe Natalie Rose LeBrecht’s new record as a mix between La Monte Young/Marian Zazeela’s (who she’s studied with and assisted) cosmic minimalism and the Dirty Three’s more spacey, searching efforts (that trio’s Mick Turner and Jim White both play on Holy Prana Open Game), but even in its inadequacy the comparison points towards the kind of rarified air the record is floating amidst. It’s kind of wild to remember that “Amok” here is a radically transformed (one might even say, ahem, improved) cover of the Atoms For Peace song, it’s so of a piece with the other five pieces that make up the album. Whether it’s the more open excursions of “Open” and “Prana” or the gentle lilt of the opening “Home,” this suite soars into inner space immediately and rests there contentedly.

Ian Mathers

Gabe ‘Nandez — “Louis XIV” (POW Recordings)

Anyone paying attention to Jeff Weiss’ POW Recordings has been able to surmise how enthusiastic the label head has been about the hushed husk of New Yorker Gabe ‘Nandez, and Gabe’s returned the favor in kind with polyglot explorations of the inter- and intrapersonal alike, most recently on April’s Pangea, plus a feature alongside fellow East Coast tome spitter Billy Woods on last year’s Aethiopes. The one-off “Louis XIV” finds Gabe talking kingly killings and heartbreak over a sublimely paired beat from Tel Aviv producer Argov (he of “Venus in Mercury” that preceded this) and kitted in a Burberry coat amid London’s Abney Park cemetery. A low-slung, high-intensity performance, “Louis XIV” is self-evident, a perfect portrait of what makes ‘Nandez so lethal (and appealing) as a rapper. Anyone with an affinity for bars ought to appreciate it.

Patrick Masterson

Jim O’Rourke — Hands That Bind OST (Drag City)

Hands That Bind (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Jim O'Rourke

Any word of a new Jim O’Rourke release is justifiably greeted with excitement, especially when that release is via Drag City. However, Hands That Bind isn’t a continuation of the glorious singer-songwriter fare O’Rourke has perfected on albums such as Eureka, Insignificance and Simple Songs, but rather the soundtrack to a new film by director Kyle Armstrong. The instrumental atmosphere is aligned with many of O’Rourke’s Steamroom explorations, which he’s made available in a steady stream via Bandcamp: slow, sparse, mostly abstract synthesizer soundscapes. The difference here, given O’Rourke is responding to a visual medium, is deeper grounding in the creation of an immediate evocative mood. Shimmering synth textures evoke the chittering of crickets and wide-open expanses of countryside, punctuated by percussion and the reassuring thrum of upright bass. Then, suddenly, a detuned piano or dulcimer will cut through the mix, raising an eyebrow of concern, as if uncertainty is looming on the horizon. The drama of this simple juxtaposition creates an addictive tension that sustains this elegant suite’s runtime.

Tim Clarke

Rat Heart — “Flashing Lights Freestyle” (Shotta Tapes)

Rat Heart - Flashing Lights Freestyle by Shotta Tapes

One of Kanye’s most indelible beats is herewith given a kind of Jai Paul-like treatment via Mancunian Tom Boogizm, who runs the Shotta Tapes label that’s known best for the free-for-all experiments of his increasingly visible Rat Heart alias. We’re a far cry from Northern Luv Songs 4 Wen Ur Life's a Mess, obviously, which threw all manner of spaced-out, instrumental guitar hypnotics at the wall only to see it all stick in a manner most Dusted faithful would find familiar — but this isn’t a total left turn for Tom given we’ve also seen stuff like the Actress-esque 'A Blues' come out in the last year. If you don’t know where to start with him, this serves as a good point of entry for his more beat-driven material, the vocals submerged just that little bit too much beneath the fluorescent, once-ubiquitous backing beat of the Graduation staple. Nobody’s asking for a return to 2007 (that I know of, anyway), but it’s enough for a moment to remember the music once outshone the hubris of its creator. Some of us might call that moment simpler.

Patrick Masterson

La Sécurité — Stay Safe! (Mothland)

Montreal quintet La Sécurité combine insouciant new wave and funk driven post punk on their debut album Stay Safe! It’s a lane that’s been driven before by bands like Romeo Void and Au Pairs, but they bring an infectious energy to bear. Singing in French and English, lead vocalist Éliane Viens-Synnott moves from the ironic detachment of Debora Lyall to indignant recrimination, shaping her voice to inhabit each song.  Atop Kenneth Smith’s propulsive drums and Félix Bélisle’s elastic bass lines, guitarists Melissa Di Menna and Laurence Anne Charest-Gagné add chunky chords and sibilant solos. Although you can spend time picking the influences, the songs are uniformly good. The dispassionate sprechgesang of “Le Kick” with its motorik drums and Au Pairs guitar licks, the mocking tone of the Devo like “Waiting For Kenny,” the groove of “Serpent” which sounds like an amalgam of “Snakes Crawl” and “Too Many Creeps.” The rhythms are tight, the guitars slash and chime in equal measure, the quintet all contribute synths, percussion and backing vocals to their stories of toxic men, relationship ups and downs and daily grind of existence.

Andrew Forell

Jumping Back Slash, Būjin — “Order of Change” (Future Bounce Ltd.)

Would you believe this started as a piano-based folk ballad? Maybe not if you only heard the first half of the first single from a promised forthcoming album due in November. But what originated as a song with a “folklike Kate Bush flavor to it” morphed into a Janus-faced split of a dancefloor-filling first half that runs Brit-turned-South African Jumping Back Slash’s bass-heavy club deconstruction right through Cape Town native Būjin’s delicate but firm vocal before turning into a lush, orchestral outro much closer in spirit to the original idea. The balance works both ways for Būjin, who tightropes across the transition clear to the other side. What else this LP has in store remains to be seen, but it’s a promising first dispatch for those who err on the side of futuristic pop sounds.

Patrick Masterson

Whose Rules — Hasler (777 Rules)

Hasler by Whose Rules

If you’ve got any sort of weakness for airy, breathless, pristine indie pop, may I suggest Whose Rules, the solo endeavor from a busy Norwegian producer named Marius Elfstedt. This first album, Hasler, touches ever so lightly on sonic territories staked out by Elliott Smith: a wistful tenor warble wrapped around softly inevitable tunes. You might even catch a whiff of the Sea and Cake’s breezy artfulness. Yet while the songs aren’t weighted down, they’re not exactly scrubbed bare either. Elfstedt’s producer background shows through in shifting, transparencies of overlaid sound: guitars, synths, percussion frame delicate melodies but don’t overwhelm them. The music wafts by in a flavored cloud, but there’s a good deal of nourishment in its ethereal mix. I like “Stone” with its scrabbly guitars, its rainy/sunny moods, its sudden swells of synth that could easily be horn lines. There’s a bigger, brassier song in here somewhere, but for now it’s hiding shyly, reticently in a private corner of Elfstedt’s imagination.

Jennifer Kelly

#dusted magazine #dust #jennifer kelly #omar ahmad #animal piss it's everywhere #aware #bryon hayes #aunty razor #patrick masterson #blight house #jonathan shaw #buffalo nichols #cyberplasm #decoherence #drekka #the finks #tim clarke #Frode Gjerstad #bill meyer #gerrit hatcher #james howard #chris liberato #chuck johnson #hector lavoe #andrew forell #Natalie Rose LeBrecht #ian mathers #Gabe ‘Nandez #jim o'rourke #rat house

[natureintheory]

Quantum Darwinism • Physics Illustration • 2019

Quantum Darwinism is an idea to explain how the quantum world decoheres into our own through a process of Darwinian-like selection.

The mirrors represent reality and the foreground a fantastical quantum world with a wave in superposition. When it decohered, only blue remained.

#natureintheory #physics #sciart #science illustration #3d #published #quantum physics #quantum darwinism #decoherence #fantasy art

[unspokenmantra]

#Insomnium #Beyond The Horizon #Decoherence #Karelia #instrumentals #mood #🖤

[renovatio06]

New Theory Unites Einstein’s Gravity With Quantum Mechanics | Scitechdaily.com

A new approach seeks to unify quantum theory with classical General Relativity. The testable assumption here is to probe masses with unprecedented accuracy in order to find out, whether or not random fluctuations in the tested results point to a quantum n

The weighing of a mass — an experiment proposed by the UCL group that constrains any theory where spacetime is treated classically. Credit: Isaac Young Source: Reimagining the Cosmos: New Theory Unites Einstein’s Gravity With Quantum Mechanics The assumptions and their implications thereof going into the design of these experiments sound a lot like quantum decoherence to my ears, something…

View On WordPress

#BlackHoles #ClassicalGeneralRelativity #decoherence #Einstein #EN #Newton #quantumgravity #quantumTheory #ScitechDaily #spacetime #SpaceTimeCurvature #TheoryOfEverything #UnifiedTheory #UnquantizedSpacetime

[art-for-sounds]

#decoherence #order

[sabrinalovesyou]

the only thing i can think about recently is quantum mechanics

#quantum physics #quantum mechanics #quantum mind #decoherence #consciousness #free will

[mangor]

Ai Disco Diffusion animation, the infernalis machine. #DiscoDiffusion 'DECOHERENCE’ by Scott Buckley – www.scottbuckley.com.au

#aianimation #decoherence #scottbuckley #horrorart #aiart #animation #experimental #alien #scifi #Youtube

[prolix-yuy]

Okay, I'm a big ol' nerd so please forgive this question...

Is your Jack in the whiskey and westworld series a first generation host (the mechanical kind) Or second generation (biological, virtually indistinguishable from human).

Again, I'm only asking because I'm a big nerd and I watched all the seasons of the show. LOL

In any event, I love this series and it's one of my favorites! ❤️

This is the discourse I am always here for! And it's awesome that you're asking about this because I had to have a big old think on it myself!

Spoilers for Chapter 8 of Decoherence and a little bit of weird host biology talk:

So when I imagined Jack's place in the timeline, he's definitely not a first gen host. Ginger wasn't at Delos early on, and she was the one who designed him, so he was probably made around the time that Maeve and more of the Gen 2 hosts were. So his anatomy would be virtually indistinguishable from a biological human.

But LJ! you might say the way you described Jack's pearl makes more sense for the Gen 1 hosts!

Ehhh yeah I messed around with the mechanics a little bit here. I justified it to myself because of the little girl host in S4's face-splitting mechanics, even though those that's pretty specific to that unique host (compared to Maeve and most other Gen 2 hosts, whose pearls are accessed out of the back of their heads). Mostly I wanted to use this mechanic because it's not gross and because it's a really gorgeous uncanny valley moment.

So if Jack does get into an accident or need repairs, he's not putting on the weird skin suit Dolores had. Neck-down he'll appear as a human for all intents and purposes, and could probably pass for a human if he wasn't in a hospital setting. Just don't go messing around under that head of hair!

Thank you for this awesome conversation, it's so much fun getting to talk to another Westworld fan about specifics for that show because there's sooooooo much awesome story to delve into! Thank you for reading!

#lovely reader! #decoherence series #let's talk about robots! #god I love scifi

[edupunkn00b]

Decoherence Masterpost

Creative Commons 1.0 Public Domain

I am thrilled to publish Decoherence, my story for the 2023 @tss-storytime Big Bang. I was lucky enough to have the super talented @threecrowsinatrenchcoat beta read and to collaborate with the amazing @lost-in-thought-20 for the heartfelt artwork (Go look at it in all its splendor on Lost's blog below!)

Thank you both for your creativity and for helping bring this story to life!

Dawn was ablaze in red and orange, the sun nearly visible through the vidscreen’s haze. Lingering over dreams and tea, Remus and Logan enjoyed a typical morning before jetting off on a second-hand electrobike to the Physics Theory Unit at CERN.

At 0530 the next day, the President and First Gentleman’s agenda began with their scheduled morning run down an undisclosed trail, surrounded by Secret Service agents. After a calendar packed with position papers, negotiations, and a red-faced Secretary of State insistent on war, Logan managed to tear Remus away for dinner with his brother and his family.

Morning the following day was terrifically dreadful, with damp wind howling over the moor, the chill stabbing through cracks and crevices with long, icy fingers. Extricating himself from Logan’s warm embrace was torturous, but his love’s little shiver finally spurred him to action and Remus stoked the fire before clambering back to bed.

Day after day, Remus and Logan led uneventful lives. They woke in each other’s arms, worked, created… Evenings usually brought dinner with Roman, his partners, and their child. Until one day, a strange encounter at Aldi’s left Logan quiet and withdrawn.

The next morning, everything changed.

Playlist - [ AO3 ]

Decoherence Chapter List

(below the cut)

Our Foundations

Oath and Office

The Professors

Rapture of the Nerd

Riding Through Purple Sage

I Howl

Probabilities

Night Falls

True Faith and Allegiance

Mementos

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Stays in Town

A Place Not So Foreign

Radicalized

A Little Help

Walk Away

Our Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow

#Decoherence #ts logan #ts remus #intrulogical #Logan Sanders #Remus Prince #ts roman #ts patton #ts janus #ts virgil #ts lucas #Roman Prince #Patton Hart #Janus Pater #Lucas Sanders #Roman Sanders #Janus Sanders #Patton Sanders #Virgil Sanders #for the character tags #human au #alternate universes #physics #tssstorytimesubmission2023 #tss storytime 2023 #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides fanfic #Spotify

[sidui]

#original work #dice #artistic shaders #video synthesis #unicode art #decoherence #stochasticism #abstract digital art #digital composite #glitchcore #vhs aesthetic #synthwave #making shit like this while I should be sleeping

[balsa-margarita]

Rimworld YouTuber recommendations

I thought of this post specifically because of @nyansense-the-nyanbinary, who just bought that most accursed game, but I figured others might want to see it. So here's a list of the Rimworld content creators I like:

Be aware that there is a lot of really good content across these four channels! You can very easily lose hours or days here.

#rimworld #rarr #rhadamant #decoherent #mr samuel streamer

[owlkalinity-books-and-music]

An Intro to My Characters!

Today's Character: Win Filcrow

(I thought I had more good drawings of him but apparently not)

A Quick Overview

Full Name: Winchester Upton Filcrow

Species: Domestic Dog (Canis lupus familiaris)

Age: 32

Element: Air

Occupation: Physicist Receptionist

Nationality: Halsian

Main Sources of Inspiration: ✋︎☞︎ ✡︎⚐︎🕆︎ 👍︎✌︎☠︎ ☼︎☜︎✌︎👎︎ ❄︎☟︎✋︎💧︎📪︎ ✡︎⚐︎🕆︎🕯︎☹︎☹︎ ☼︎☜︎👍︎⚐︎☝︎☠︎✋︎☪︎☜︎ ☟︎✋︎💣︎ (There's also a smidge of Sheldon Cooper in there too, maybe)

Win, my beloved. I could write (and have written) about Win for hours on end. There's something about a floofy Yorkie scientist that's really appealing to me as a concept.

He hasn't been around long (he's only existed since 2019, and we don't talk about 2019) but he's already earned his place in my books namely for the bizarre things I decided to make happen to him.

Proto-Win was going to be a white dog, but I decided against it because then one of the many many references in Win's design would be a bit too blatant.

I don't have a lot more to say about Win. I can't really say anything about what he's like for... reasons.

Quotes That Fit Even Now!

"What if we're just part of a game of - oh, look at the time, I need to go."

"Oh, no. The doctor is worried this'll be messy."

"This is my home lab coat."

If you're interested in hearing more about Win, then keep your eyes peeled for when The Acorn Detective Agency is released. If I've done well, it should be very interesting (¯▼°)

#owlkalinity #wattpad #wattpaders #wattpad writer #the acorn detective agency #adventures in fragmentation #the decoherence principle #sfw furry #furry #furry writing #sfw anthro #anthro #anthro writing #winchester filcrow #win filcrow #mapicca #intro to my characters

[phaedoe]

the everett interpretation is literally just cartesian dualism for physicists and marvel fans

#descartes how does decoherence push the extraversal wavefunctions and descartes is like uh a thing’s heaviness wait we haven’t solved quant #um gravity yet