#melancholic euphoria's writing list

[nananarc]

Alright so I know I'm a month late to this Art Summary thing, but I'm Vietnamese, and we don't consider the year to end until Lunar New Year (which in here we call Tết holiday). And today, is in fact, the true last day of 2022.

The pic in January feels like years ago actually. I felt like I'm a completely different person compared to back then, both in art and in life. As in, a more skilled and mature person (i hope?), but also beaten up and without all the high hopes and energy that I used to have. I guess it's a funny coincidence that I ended the year with that artwork depicting that particular scene in Truyện Kiều (The Tales of Kieu). She's beautiful, singing songs and citing poems, but in a whorehouse, trapped and melancholic. Well, I can't compare my life to hers. But I'm at that stage of life where it might seem like everything is doing ok but the ground under my feet is rumbling and cracking but no one else can see it.

I feel like "I have been getting it wrong, Father", quote Fleabag, and that probably reflected in my art a bit. At this point I'm just living for that momentary trance / manic / whatever you wanna call it that art is capable of sometimes putting you in.

I might sound all sad and shit and, well yes I am crying and basically a pink fur ball of anxiety as I write this, but I will be relatively fine. So, in order to remind myself of all the good shits that happened despite it all, I'll put a list of them under the cut. Mindful and all that shit, yeah?

No expectation or wish for the next year for me.

But Happy Lunar New Year, everyone! :)

Go by exclusively they/them now and even though I'm still navigating through this identity, I felt gender euphoria when, in eng speaking space, people start to refer to me with the right pronoun.

I still don't make much money, with only 1-2 commissions/month, and most months without any order. But all of my clients were such good people (well except for one, bitch turns out to be crazy as shit but not to me lmao, she was still fulfilling her end of the bargain), they are also good friends, and I love them dearly. They all gave me so much support and care through everything.

I tried edibles, ate a bit too much, was tripping balls so hard I had a disco dance game in my head but with 90s graphics and the characters are all of my worst anxieties. Also had that glitchy, time skipping, reality bending experience. It was all very fucking awesome. Not gonna do that again tho lmao.

Visited the MOCA in Bangkok and reignites the love I have for art.

Realized I am asexual and it was extremely freeing. I thought lewd thoughts more than I have ever been because of that ahahaha XD

Start to embrace the fact that I'm probably neurodivergent.

Got really good at making mods of the Cyberpunk 2077 game and I'm really proud of my works.

Finally got to treat one of the health problems that have been plaguing me for years.

Had some really fun hangout with my dear friend over a drink at small, low-key pubs. She used to refuse to even touch a drop of alcohol because all her experiences with it left too at an impression. Now she drinks for me if I can't finish my cocktail.

I bought 2 traditional dresses and I love them dearly.

Busted a bitch's fake ass for stealing art. That was fun because no one even realized the extend to how shameless that shithead was. But even then, I still have no hate ask, that is kinda a bummer tho lol.

I talked more to my classmates and even though I still don't really vibe with them that much, I appreciate them more now.

Starred in an indie movie. Wasn't a particularly fun thing the whole time, but it was an experience nevertheless.

Got more daring about my makeups.

#learn to be kinder to oneself please na #art summary #cryptic na posting

[itstheendofthegoddamnworld]

November Exophilia Fics

Lupin/ Raesokeran Canis (Casen) - OkCryptid Collab

Alien Captain (Sorloith Qhundin) Part 2 [NSFW]

Golden Prince Naga Boyfriend (Shesmetet) Part 4

#exophilia #melancholic euphoria's writing list #exophilia monster #golden naga prince #prince shesmetet the golden naga prince #alien boyfriend #alien captain #lupin boyfriend #naga boyfriend #my writing list for november #november writing goals #writing for this month

[stillflight]

Bird therian traits

I realized recently that despite having had this blog for a while, I’ve never actually sat down and wrote about my experiences as a raven and an osprey, which you’d think would be the most obvious thing to write about on this blog. So here’s this, a list of ways birdness manifests for me, both as a record and as a possible resource for those questioning bird.

Birds require less energy to cool themselves down than mammals and are generally better at it. So heat is a big issue for me, as I feel like I should be able to handle heat better than my human body can. (Doubly so as a desert mammal.) I often find myself holding my mouth open and lightly panting the way a bird might in the dead heat of summer trying to cool myself down, unconsciously before I realize what I’m doing and that it won’t actually do anything.

Obviously flight urges are a thing. This is something that’s very real that mammal therians often dismiss as a quirk. When I’m startled I have an overpowering urge to literally get off the ground and a burst of anxiety when my avian brain realizes I’m grounded. This also manifests as melancholic dysphoria on days when all I want is to be soaring to look for prey or playing in the wind like a raven.

Phantom shifts. I feel my wings not on my back, but over, or “replacing,” my arms. This often gives me dysphoria over my hands and how obstructive they are when I feel like I should only have wings. I don’t feel my tail feathers, I only feel the base of the tail, so it’s always hard to tell which avian species the phantom shift is coming from. Most of my phantom and envisage shifts in general are focused around the head and face area, so my beak shifts are the strongest, and I can tell the difference between raven and osprey beak. When I get a raven beak shift, it often accompanies a weak mental shift, and it causes dysphoria when I’m unable to manipulate objects with my beak. I also get feather shifts, to quote something I said in my server: “I mostly feel feathers on my chest and stomach similarly to fur shifts, as a kind of fluff where my clothes would be interacting with my feathers if they were real. Like how your hair feels when you wear a hoodie with the hood up.” I experience digitigrade leg and talon shifts very rarely, almost always raven. I believe this is because ravens walk more than ospreys and use their beak more than their talons to hold and manipulate objects and food, while ospreys’ primary way to grasp is with their talons (we are raptors, after all), which causes a disconnect on my mental body map.

I experience dysphoria over being unable to whistle like an osprey (and boy have I tried). However, when it comes to raven noises, I experience more euphoria than anything, as I’m actually able to replicate most raven calls with ease because my voice is fairly deep. This is my biggest source of species euphoria, even beyond being recognized as a raven by my therian friends.

I do have nesting urges. I usually satiate these by gathering blankets from around the house and arranging them in a nest shape.

Of my two avian theriotypes, ospreys have more visible sex dimorphism. I consider myself a male osprey. This means that I am smaller than a female, that I have lighter plumage and little to no chest barring, and I would have taken the male role in a pair, i.e., bringing food to the female during the breeding season.

Ravens’ eyes are on the side of their head, and like most perching birds, they turn their heads to the side to see things straight-on. I often have weak mental shifts where this is the only trait I take on; I keep trying to see things in front of me by turning my head to the side.

There are aspects of my birdness I have had long before I even knew I was a therian. Some, like my desire to hunt exactly the way an osprey might (soaring over a body of water to look for a fish, hovering when I spot one, then diving into the water and flaring to hit the fish with my talons), I do attribute to my kintype; I believe I have this urge because I am an osprey, because I imprinted on ospreys. Others, like my desire to fly or my love for fish, I believe are simply human traits that combined to become a part of my animality.

#birdkin #bird therian #musings #alterhuman #therian

[fmdminaharchive]

❧ put yourself on fire.

date(s): july 2021 mentions of: n/a word count: 1k words (without lyrics) warnings:  n/a details: full lyrics verification for ‘fireworks’ of minah’s upcoming album. minah falls in love with an instrumental and is offered the chance to write the lyrics for it. in the process, she ponders the meaning of happiness and how to treasure it, concluding that sometimes all you can do, is let life pass you by

when minah heard the instrumental for the first time, her eyes twinkled a specific kind of way, an excitement and drive that only surfaced every once in a while. 

apparently, her passion had not gone unnoticed by the producer sitting next to her, eyeing her expression with barely concealed amusement. “what do you think? could you write lyrics to go with it for me?” he offered, catching minah off-guard.

“what? me? write this song?” her eyes flitting from the computer monitor to the producer and back a few times “but i thought you were writing it?”

the producer chuckled in amusement. “yeah, i was, but you seem passionate about the song so far. might as well let you do it.” he shrugged casually. “it’s nothing to me, just saves me time to work on other stuff.” and while the man’s expression didn’t betray a damn thing, neutral as always, minah knew that wasn’t the reason at all, there was no mistaking that this was a favor he did her, not the other way around, more a gift than anything else.

it was an opportunity minah wasn’t about to let go of.

“yes. of course i can write it. leave it to me.” 

➽───────────────❥

that however, was easier said than done. for the first time ever, minah was writing a song purely based on an instrumental rather than on a concrete idea. usually, when she wrote songs, she had a theme or concept in mind lyrically. hell, usually she didn’t even have an instrumental to go with it yet, lyrics first music second. but that wasn’t a viable option this time.

but minah wasn’t going to let that scare her off. working on this album had been nothing if not a learning curve, a collection of creative firsts and this would just be an addition to the list, the next experience on a rapidly growing resume.

this time, the process started with an extensive breakstorm session, an afternoon during which minah put the instrumental on repeat until she was absolutely sick of hearing it for at least the next couple of days. but it did end her with a significantly long list of notes and ideas, bits and pieces to weave into the song.

the instrumental was a lot more energetic and fast-paced compared to minah’s usual ballad sound, a sharp edge brought to the song by the electric guitar laced throughout the chorus and the drumline keeping up the pace. the closest any of her solo songs had gotten to that sound had been ‘timeless’ and even that song, while heavy on rock vibes, had been drenched in a lethargic, melancholic sensation. 

this song wasn’t like that, it was energetic and powerful and upbeat, like a crackling fire or an explosion, some euphoric and bombastic, like fireworks. 

and just like that, minah had a title.

she didn’t have lyrics yet, but she at least had a title and with that, a theme, a starting point, something to work with.

➽───────────────❥

with her concept worked out, all that was left to do was write the song, something that no longer seemed like the daunting task it had been at first. now, minah was just excited, a deep-rooted, all encompassing enthusiasm for this song, for the instrumental she had fallen in love with at first listen.

make a fire where the flower blooms the hands on the clock stop in place

minah was not an outrageous or big personality in any way, not one for going out or doing something crazy but from her limited experience, this song felt the same way a party did. the feeling of when you were walking the line between tipsy and drunk and you feel bigger than life. the last time minah had felt like that had probably been the new year’s party on the cruise last year, a particularly invincible feeling where everything felt fun and exciting, nothing else to worry about but the moment. minah wasn’t one to chase these thrills but she indulged them when they came along. perhaps that was why she treasured those moment so much, because they were rare.

put yourself on fire

it was often said that being an idol was to burn bright quick and then die out. pushing nearly a decade with lipstick, that was something minah should probably begin to worry about as well. and she had for a while, when goeun had left and she was assured their careers would be over. but the tides had turned, lipstick was fine, probably would be for at least another couple of years and her solo career showed promising longevity. a relief, because minah was nowhere near ready to give up the rush of being on stage and performing. she didn’t always agree with everything lipstick related, their songs or their styling, but god, had it given her some of the most incredible moments in her life so far.

leave it to go crazy this moment won’t last forever make your breath rise up even if it disappears and becomes ash

most of all, the song was about that, the breathtaking moments of euphoria, the rush of adrenaline leaving one feeling invincible. be it at a party or up on stage or having a beautiful experience for the first time ever, they all had the same addictive feeling. and maybe, minah was just as excited about the possibility of performing the song already as she was about the song itself, fantasizing about standing up on stage, belting out the song at the top of her lungs.

even if a long time passes i hope it’ll be unforgettable fireworks

and maybe what people said was right, she would inevitably fizzle, her career, her passion for being on stage dying out until no longer visible. but it would still have happened, little fragments of memories she’d collect like stars and would get to keep. there was no use in desperately wanting to cling onto these little moments, this feeling, she never could, they would always be passing. but she could treasure them, keep them close to her heart and never let go. and maybe, as long as it all lived on in her memory, it could be immortalized in a way after all, in the only way that really mattered.

#fmdverification #*:･ﾟ♔– «am i the only one who remembers» // solos. #«where the wind blows // era.»

[westernchords]

2020: a replay & reflection

so... here we are at the near end of a very long, unsettling & strange year. and at this particular moment in time, spotify has released its 2020 wrapped feature, an annual highlight for gay people everywhere (self VERY included). since the world is very large & this is a personal blog with a limited scope, i'll talk about what i know best: the view from my corner of the musical world.

i only had two songs in common with any previous year -- i wish i missed my ex by mahalia & sugar by brockhampton (... i know, the heartache is loud already,)

4 unique rain asmr audios made it into my top 15 (they help me sleep lolol)

show tunes was my #4 most listened to genre and yet not a single one made it into my top 100. (i'm pretty sure it was all of my late night waitress sing alongs)

i discovered 1,012 new artists and 162 new genres

all very fun and interesting things! however, in looking at this year, there are two things to discuss that are most important: the amount of time i spent listening to music (111,989 minutes) and my top song, fake mona lisa. let's discuss both.

on time: in short, music means a lot to me. in long, i mean that music has been central to my life for as long as i can remember. i think of my church choir and my mother singing eartha kitt and corrine bailey rae in the kitchen, my father's surprise talents at piano when he would play in chapel, and how i like to make up little ditties to sing for my dog or while i cook or to solely entertain myself. if one was to take a look at my journals, each entry is annotated with the song i was listening to or suited my mood at the time i was writing. at any moment, i am capable of revisiting the emotional landscape of old memories all set to the very soundtrack that holds that particular past closest.

i still remember plucking violin strings at 5, how i used to stack music books so i could sit up straight on my piano bench because i was too short at 7, picking up woodwinds in highschool and letting my best friend act as conductor, and now, singing endlessly- day in and day out, because it makes me feel like i am traveling home. i think of creole folk songs that connect me to my family, my diaspora. i remember the favorite songs and artists of people i don't know anymore, but still. it stays with me. my friend cj says i have a great emotional sensitivity to music, but more so, music simply connects to every cornerstone of who i am. the creation of it, the listening, the love of it. the constancy.

music is integral to my daily routine and life. since i was 13, maybe younger, i have always believed that the first song i hear in a day sets the tone so i always try to play something i love and makes me feel joyful to start off on the right foot. i will do this my entire life. every day is permeated by sound and the data shows it. 111,989 minutes is almost 3 months straight. this doesn't even count soundcloud listens or youtube tracks or music i play on my own. this felt fitting. music, this year in particular, has been a salve to both new and old hurt. and maybe i am picking at my scabs, but 2020 has amplified so much anger and shame and fear and despite that, there is so much joy in art. music is a balm for the world, it is poetry in its own right.

on fake mona lisa: so .. i am kind of obsessed with this song. fifteen hours worth of listening, i text my friends i'll join the video call soon - i just need one more replay, i got high and played this song while lying in the middle of a meadow and experienced more emotions than i had had in a very long time, my friends lovingly tease me about it so it's sort of like a character trait now, kind of obsessed. my turning to this song was the sort of romance that i didn't anticipate, but fell very hard into and, if you know me, you know that's my favorite kind. let's get into why: when dedicated side b came out, i was heartbroken. there's really no other way to put it. i was alone, back in my childhood bedroom, and harboring a reopened wound from past relationships that maybe had never closed in the first place. i was in this strange, melancholic knee-deep-in-emotions place & if you're an avid CRJ fan, you recognize that's a place she knows and sings about well.

as a song, fake mona lisa tends to be one of carly's more lyrically opaque tracks. which is fine, i'm a storyteller at heart, i'll craft my own narrative. (and honestly, there wasn't much legwork here.) without doing a full blown analysis, here are pieces that i find important to note about the song lyrically and resonate most with me -- big or small.

(transcription at bottom)

what i'm basically saying is that this song is about risk and young love and sex. its about secrets, cheap thrills, fast & easy desires, and the fantastical euphoria of a dead-end-but-still-fun “we're young so what's the matter,“ relationship. (very reminiscent of LA hallucinations, imo) and to me, someone who has been in and out of this same subset of emotional affairs, fake mona lisa stuck with me. vegas is a city of high risk, high reward- where else to chase that superficial, unattainable someone? more so, the song gives you the understanding that the relationship doesn't last, but that was not what carly ever truly wanted out of it. fake mona lisa is, at its core, about over indulgence in pleasure as a stand in for actual love + commitment, something i am oft to do myself & only did more of after dedicated side b dropped. i latched onto the slow and simmering exposition into glittery pre-chorus, starlit imagery, shiny-faraway vocals, and frankly, there was no competition for my song of the year. the song is a dream. i love it and i know what that says about me, but i stand by it. 

dedicated side b, especially fake mona lisa, carried me through the healing process of heartbreaks that crystallized into many other things- indulgence, desire, risk, short lived romances, secrets, joy, kisses i should've kept to myself, spontaneous dance breaks, tears, etc., it is an album about love, recovery, and returning to the self. fake mona lisa is just my favorite stop on a long train ride to an okay-ness with aspects of romance (both with the self and others) that i am still figuring out the messy, rose-tinted, contours of.

and sonically? i just adore the key of d minor.

as a last touch point, fake mona lisa was only the tip of the iceberg of songs  i obsessed over about not-exactly-ideal romances. again and again and again, heartbreak anthems appeared in my top 100, a deviation from my typical warmth towards romantic sentiments that appeared in past years. instead, there is a sense of love-at-a-distance, a painting yourself as the object of desire, a severed attachment, a not wanting to commit at all (see let's be friends, heartbeat, want you in my room, all by crj ... all appearing on the list.) however, much of what appeared celebrated love and having tremendous, special, struck by cupid, feelings. it's all there. what i'm saying is that carly rae jepsen writes music for lovestruck people- both lucky and not so much, hopeless or hopeful -- you name it. she writes about how you can fall in love with almost anyone, soundtracks for the highs of the first throes of intimacy, the first (and last) kiss, the shared moments between two people when they are each other's whole world, and the palpable distance of heartache, separation, and the landscape between. 

she writes as though she is both eros and psyche, armed with arrows of cascading melodies, tipped with a salve for suppressing+healing+amplifying heartbreak, and lyrics so intimate and dreamy, you really can't help but believe in love with the way she speaks of it. love is a venture from shame, a fantasy that is more real than anything else, tender and kind, pleasurable, and escapable into. the world is better in it, the world is better because of it. in carly rae jepsen's discography, love is the defining pillar of experience. a northern star and guiding principle. it is the only thing, no matter what form. & frankly? i cant help but agree.

as a final note, in hanif wills-abdurraqib's emotion review for MTV, carly rae jepsen's public displays of affection, he says this:

thats all for now. bye 2020.

- august

///

transcription of my notes:

verse 1:

city/star light imagery

i am known for wearing a star stamp on my cheek

infatuation & attraction

paints a photo of a starlet and her lover, a fair weather affair

pre-chorus:

always waiting fro a chance the object of desire

a high from love, addictive pleasures

chorus:

sex & art & risk taking (art synonymous with beauty. + seduction)

she knows she cant handle this in a real way, but wants it

desire vs/& (in conjunction with) pain

verse 2:

an idealistic worldview, hoping for the best, always somewhere else not present. 

dreamy lyrics + dreamy state of mind, cloudy even.

specifically the words fake mona lisa:

contrast, beautiful yet fully acknowledged to be unreal/superficial

a stand in for “real art“ aka “real love“

#crj #mine

[yuuforia]

why you should play euphoria instead of just watching the anime (a list of reasons)

While I was browsing the clockup tag I saw a lot of my old posts because, for some unknown reason, Tumblr only shows me old posts instead of recent ones, so I saw my post talking about why you should play the visual novel instead of watching the anime. Back then, I was young and my english wasn’t that good so I couldn’t explain actual reasons to play the game, but I tried anyway.

Let’s get started, then. If I forget to write something, please tell me!

Let me say something beforehand: euphoria is a very intense game (there are scenes with rape, scat, pee, vomit and so goes on) and it may not be suitable for everyone. You should play only if you feel comfortable doing so, don’t feel pressured please! All of this is my opinion as a fan :)

01. Story

euphoria’s story is intriguing even as a hentai - seven people waking up in a unknown white room and being told that they must have sex or die sounds bizarre and may get you curious about how they got in that situation. The anime doesn’t covers the entire story and only shows you what you came for (bizarre sadomasochist sex), but euphoria is more appealing than you think!

The game length is about 10 to 30 hours (as said by vndb) and even though there are a lot of hentai scenes, once you reach the true end, all the mysteries starts to unravel. euphoria has an captivating story that the anime doesn’t tells and the rabbit hole goes deeper than you think - it’s not all about sex in the end. It’s hard to tell about the game without spoiling, but trust me: it’s not what you think it is. Since you are in Takato’s shoes during the whole game, you end up feeling the same things as him: confusion, sadness, anger... and so goes on.

Recommended routes: Rika > Natsuki > Rinne > Nemu > Kanae (Nemu and Kanae must be the last ones, in that order)

02. Quality

We all know that the anime quality isn’t the best and we end up seeing some quality scenes sometimes, and this situation doesn’t happens when you play the game. All the game scenes are drawn by Hamashima Shigeo, a incredibly talented artist who has worked in other clockup games. 

Hamashima doesn’t disappoints when it comes to drawing hentai scenes, and euphoria has over than 1,500 CGs. There are scenes for all kinds of tastes, even the most messed up ones, and not all of them are hentai - some of them are quite heartwarming.

If you’re looking for a game with great art, then euphoria may be the one for you!

03. Characters

The hentai doesn’t goes deeper about the characters that are presented within six episodes, making them look shallow, annoying or simply not interesting. If you’re interested in knowing more about Kanae, Nemu, Rinne, Rika or Natsuki, you should play the game since all the heroines have their own routes and their own endings. During the gameplay, you even get to know more about Takato too; your feelings about the characters may change at some point, due to the story.

04. BGM

The anime opening is simply amazing and Aoba Ringo did a wonderful job, Rakuen no Tobira is a incredible song and the lyrics are awesome too. The game BGMs were made by Uehara Ichinoryuu - there are scenes with melancholic background music, intense background music, mysterious background music... The BGMs are available on YouTube if you want to hear.

05. Scenes

Okay, so euphoria is known for being intense and quite disturbing - while it’s true, it’s a bit exaggerated. There are scenes with scat, vomit and pee - but there is a option to deactivate those details in the CGs, and you also can skip those scenes if it’s too harsh for you.

euphoria has a great variety of scenes that can make you go from awww to sobbing (or I am too sensitive). There are heartwarming scenes, funny scenes, sad scenes, intriguing scenes, and so goes on - you will not be disappointed.

Those may not be the only reasons to play, I’m sleepy and I will stop here, but euphoria is truly a great game with a good plot - even if it’s a nukige.

#euphoria #clockup #ffffuckimsosleepy

[alivingroomatthebottomofalake]

My Top 100 albums of 2017

I listened to too much music in 2017. It was hard to keep track. Pop music was weak as fuck, I didn’t really find much joy in it, but I was finding roughly 10-30 albums each month that I could really enjoy in other genres. Many of these were releases on small labels. I must admit, listening to this much music made it hard to enjoy this much music. I don’t think I’ll be doing this in future. I have whittled it down to the 100 albums that came out in 2017 that I spent the most time with, that really lasted in my mind as great new music, i.e. my favourites, and while I try to be objective about my criticism, it’s still about what speaks to me specifically. Everything beyond the top 10-20 is in a pretty vague order, vaguer as it goes, with the final 20 being albums I liked a lot but didn’t spend as much time with, hence the vaguer reviews). I’ve limited each review to roughly 100 words (fewer as we go along, in fact, I tapped out towards the end because I got tired of writing. This took longer to do than I planned and fuck it), and as with last year’s list, I’ve intentionally avoided the use of genre words and pointless artist comparisons (as much as is possible). Check each record out on the merit of the content, not the style, and you will enjoy more.

1. Bjork - Utopia

Utopia sees Bjork return from the darkness with a fresh optimism, and also a fresh process and palette of sounds. The open form/narrative led song writing, and seemingly meandering vocal style that has been gradually replacing the pop style of her early albums has firmly cemented itself, and while not having an obvious verse/catchy chorus form, or club banger beat might be a barrier for the uninitiated, it is one of the album’s strengths, as Bjork explores the themes of the lyrics with some incredible arrangements and some of the most curious production experiments of her career, creating probably the most Bjork album yet. It’s dense and joyous, takes no prisoners in its honesty, and is lush as fuck.

Favourite tracks: Arisen My Senses, Claimstaker

2. Shackleton and Vengeance Tenfold - Sferic Ghost Transmits

Undulating and pulsing bells, acoustic and synthetic percussion, and cinematic swells of scifi synthesizer drones and blips framing a half spoken, half sung narrative about some dark shit. It’s the juxtaposition of the deep, almost monotone delivery of the tormented lyrical content and the brightness of the production, the activity in the sounds that really makes this music come alive. There’s something otherworldly and ancient about the material, curious and yet familiar. The poly-rhythmic patterns and the rich palette of sound textures draw one in for repeated listening, making this a highly addictive record.

Favourite track: Five Demiurgic Options

3. Children of Alice - Children of Alice

There’s so much going on in this music. A strange collage of textures and instruments play out a montage of ideas, flowing together in a seamless exploratory form. If there’s a story here, it’s not being expressed in any literal terms, yet the mood seems to flow in a radiophonic sort of way, and the listening journey is a blast. There are moments that the album falls into recognisable bursts and loops of what could be called “music” but the tracks don’t dwell on developing these ideas in any uniform or traditional fashion, and the pleasure here is how the disjointedness and variety keeps the listener on their toes, especially when several opposing genres and tonal centers begin overlapping. Then the magic really starts to happen.

Favourite track: Rite of the Maypole - An Unruly Procession

4. Saicobab - SAB SE PURANI BAB

What seems on paper as a really simple combination of instruments, becomes an intricate map of rhythm and unexpected sound interplay. The compositions are led by the voice and sitar, and glued together by a percussionist and double bassist. The backings are often as furious as the foreground energy, but the mix gives the instrument hierarchy a tension that totally serves the music. There is an additional level of intrigue in the quality of vocal treatments and fx that elevates the strangeness of the record. At times the energy is chaotic, but the music is highly organised, and while striking the balance of these feelings is no easy task, Yoshimi and co get it right.

Favourite tracks: aMn nMn, Bx Ax Bx

5. Dustin Wong & Takako Minekawa - Are Euphoria

Well, this is such an apt album title. The music on Are Euphoria is itself dancing. This is music reveling in process. Nothing ever really feels settled, but without giving off an unsettling feeling. Rather, it’s an exciting kind of bliss, the thrill of the search. Beats morph tempo, melodies orbit the tonic but hardly resolve, busy textures scratch away beneath nonchalant, liquid vocals, it’s all very quaint, yet mature and highly addictive. Mostly this album is just fun. Fun because one can hear the joy that went into it, and the euphoria is not just expressed, but easily received.

Favourite tracks:  Zaaab, Haha Mori

6. Rabit - Les Fleurs Du Mal

“Chop it up”, says the voice that opens this album, giving perhaps an obvious indication of the process behind the music that follows. Sharp strikes of strings and cut up bits of dialogue in various languages merge with mangled atmospheres and asymmetric synth melodies. There’s a lot going on in this album, but never too much at a time. It’s immersive, but there’s a sense of buoyancy. The album carries a dark quality throughout most of the themes, but it’s an enjoyable darkness, less overt terror, more curiosity. There is a prettiness that pervades the evil. Another aptly titled album.

Favourite tracks: Possessed, Ontological Graffiti, Bleached World

7. Yazz Ahmed – La Saboteuse

Yazz Ahmed’s trumpet tone is impeccable, and on this album she has assembled a cast of amazing players to deliver some incredible moments of ecstatic musicality. There’s a lot of brilliant soloing, infectious melodic themes and well-planned arrangements. The balance of light and shade, big and small, old and new, is constantly moving, like a tightrope walker, balanced and sure footed, but never at rest, never without risk. The album is a constant slight of hand, lulling the listener with warmth and gentle caresses, but beyond mere background moods, it’s full of adventure, and one can’t help but accept the quest it presents.

Favourite tracks: Al Emadi, The Space Between the Fish and the Moon, Bloom.

8. Emel - Ensen

Emel has the most haunting, captivating voice I have heard in forever. I don’t even really know what her songs are about, because she is from Tunisia and sings mostly in Arabic. This album is sombre in tone, and occasionally brutal. The drums sound huge, although they sound like small instruments turned up with great urgency. Even at it’s subtlest moments the album is urgent and immediate. That’s not to say the album is direct or blunt, it’s full of elegance and finesse, but it isn’t really nice, it’s beautiful and human, and it’s the latter quality that perhaps lets the darker side in.

Favourite tracks: Lost, Kaddesh, Ensen Dhaif.

9. Somi - Petite Afrique

This album was a surprise. The tone is set with a little soundscape/collage of music and dialogue snippets, and then segues into a beautiful reworking of Sting’s Englishman in New York (substituting Englishman for African).  The chords are re-harmonised and the lyrics altered, translating a new meaning.  Moving onward, the theme continues, lyrically exploring racial identity, and musically pushing the boundaries of African and African American music traditions. It’s a soulful and militant record. It’s catchy, but fully loaded with potent messages, wicked grooves, and hot arrangements.

Favourite songs: Black Enough, The Gentry.

10. Adult - Detroit House Guests

Adult invited a bunch of artists to stay at their place in Detroit and collaborate on some music whilst there. Artists including Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Michael Gira, and Douglas J McCarthy (and more) contributed ideas and vocals to the album. It’s a trippy, synth laden affair. Lots of cool modular sequences and minimal beats, matched with mantra like vocal passages, all whirling around together to create a pretty arty combination of club music and experimentalism. It’s a slow build over about the first 4 tracks, but once it gets going, it’s just a blast to move your body to. However, the weirdness doesn’t let up, and makes for great listening and dancing alike.

Favourite tracks: We Are a Mirror, This Situation.

11. Arca - Arca

It was such a surprise to hear Arca sing. Having produced tracks for so many vocalists, it was probably only a matter of time before they got on the mic. Arca’s voice expresses a sense of fragility, but it’s a deep and personal fragility, definitely not musical. Of that, there is confidence, expertise. The melancholic melodies are expertly accompanied by very sparse instrumentation, and the results are elegantly spun threads of sonic gossamer. But the album does take off and hit hard at times, with some instrumental tracks more reminiscent of earlier Arca works, but they’ve developed the sounds and ideas further, and these moments fit with the new sung material well.

Favourite Tracks: Anoche, Desafio.

12. Noveller - A Pink Sunset For No One

Noveller, aka Sarah Lipstate plays all this beautiful ambient music on an electric guitar. Her sounds are amazing, and the way she weaves it all together with a single instrument is masterful. I think what I appreciate about this record is the virtuosity it displays without ever needing to stand out. The tracks are all quite subtle, and even when the dynamics swell, it’s not about showing off, it’s about tension and release. They are great compositions, and Lipstate’s consummate execution make them a dream to immerse ones self in.

Favourite tracks: Rituals, Another Dark Hour.

13. Dale Cooper Quartet and the dictaphones - Astrild Astrild

Composed of lush, noise riddled drones, moody saxes and dreamy vocal croons, Dale Cooper Quartet & the Dictaphones perfectly invoke their namesake. Like a dreamy cinematic tribute album, but with all the right grit and character to own it. There’s some amazing atmosphereic floating choir “ahs” drifting between the sax lines, and some incredible soundscape tracks that barely feature any “notes”, they swell and dip and build some tension, interspersed with only a few dynamic peaks. The album is all tension and only a few moments of release, but they are beautiful releases. It’s a long album, with long tracks, and it’s a commitment to listen, but worth every second.

Favourite tracks: Pemp ajour imposte, Son mansarde roselin

14. Craig Taborn & Ikue Mori – Highsmith

Tarborn’s incredibly virtuosic avant –garde piano playing blends perfectly with Mori’s masterfully designed electronic textures. The two become one, effortlessly creating new worlds of sound with each gesture. Each piece explores the sound sources in a unique way. There’s a constant juggling of hierarchy that makes for interesting tensions, and while the complexity of the rhythmic textures and atonality make the album dense with information, it also has a really fun quality. The energy keeps it entertaining, but the talent and artistry elevates the listening experience to a state of enlightening euphoria.

Favourite tracks: Music To Die By, Variations On A Game

15. Black Quantum Futurism - Telescoping Effect Pt. 1 Soundscape

This album was composed/designed to accompany the words of Rasheedah Phillips, whom I was lucky enough to see perform with Moor Mother recently. On its own, this music is a powerful work, and an eclectic listening experience. There’s a sense of narrative built in to the collage of sounds and genre, a sci-fi attitude pervades the nature of electronic and synthesized elements, all the while balanced by a celebration of black American culture. It’s intense, and intensely musical without needing to fall back on tropes or tunes. Music that balances on that fine line between radiophonic story telling and acousmatic concrete/collage,  with a fresh and engaging character.

 Favourite track: 1919 (Saros Cycle)

16. Matt Mitchell - A Pouting Grimace

This album is dense, atonal, and rhythmically manic. It sounds like free improvisation, but feels highly organised. To be honest, I don’t want to know which it is (lies, I want to know everything). The virtuosity of the musicians is incredible, but the artistry in both the compositional forms, and how fearlessly the music is expressed are the real strengths of the record. The organised chaos could be annoying or pretentious, but it’s neither, it’s tasteful, exciting, and incredibly contemporary.

Favourite tracks: Mini Alternate, Heft.

17. Sarah Davachi - All My Circles Run

Davachi explores drone, stasis, duration, and the potential of simplicity in four different ways on four different instruments. The pieces for strings, voice and organ respectively, work in similar ways, with overlapping sustained tones gradually replacing one another, but the final piece, composed for piano is obviously a different approach, a kind of La Monte Young era minimalist approach to piano playing. The piano work isn’t out of place or character though. The album is broken up in the middle with “chanter”, another piano piece with a similar feel that ties the whole thing together at the end. It’s some incredible ambient background music, but also beautiful for deep listening.

Favourite track: For Organ.

18. Nicola Ratti – The Collection

Ratti’s Collection begins with a sophisticated arrangement of minimal rhythmic pulses and blips, some overlapping tones emerging from some swells of noise, developing slowly and gracefully into a gorgeous understated composition. The tempos and patterns change from track to track, but Ratti maintains a consistent quality and palette of sounds and across the album, doing as much as possible with the sparse instrumentation. It’s a brilliant album of delightful electronic sounds and intriguing patterns.

Favourite tracks: L2, L8.

19. Merzbow, Keiji Haino, Balazs Pandi – An Untroublesome Defencelessness

This is ultimately a drum record. Balazs Pandi is a monster. The drumming is off the hook. Haino and Merzbow exist as energy, fuelling the onslaught. That’s not to say the album is without variation or dynamic. The record has plenty of variety, up and down moments, subtlety, brilliantly crafted noise, beats, riffs, even some shouted vocals that tie it all together. It’s a sonic journey of discovery. Writing about music like this feels pointless because it taps into something more primal than words. However it feels more political than primitive. This music is reaching into the depths of the human condition.

Favourite track: How Differ the Instructions of the Left from the Instructions of the Right? (Part III)

20. Cleric - Retrocausal

Holy shit. Cleric do everything, like, they play all the notes, all the styles, all the… volumes (?). This album covers a lot of ground, and it doesn’t hold your hand or buy you breakfast first. Fuck, the first track alone is a relentless journey of musicality and brutality. Some of the heaviest riffs of the year, but also some maniacal juxtapositions and ruptures that cause it all to be even more interesting and intense. In the end though, this music is all the more engaging because it stretches so far beyond mere “heaviness” and brings in all these extra colours and feels. Not to mention, it’s great to have a heavy band with some idea of contemporary tonality that stretch beyond diatonic neoclassical lameness or drop D minor modal bullshit. Cleric fucking rule.

Favourite tracks: Ifrit, Resumption.

21. Dead Cross - Dead Cross

To think I almost didn’t bother checking this out. What a loser I’d have been. Dave Lombardo put a hardcore band together, and got Mike Patton involved on vocals, and it totally works. Some great lyrics on here, and Patton is on top form, showing no signs of going soft. The star of the record is the drums, Lombardo is a tight and ballistic barely even covers it when he’s underway. The song writing is also a highlight, the riffs and breakdowns, and overall catchiness of the album really makes this some brutally infectious music.

Favourite tracks: Idiopathic, Grave Slave

22. Alessandro Cortini - Avanti

This album is very special. I feel lucky in that my first hearing of it was a live performance. I saw Alessandro give a talk about synths and his process making the album, and then saw him do the album in full, with old home movies that his grandfather made playing in the background. The record is a beautiful nostalgic reflection. Made entirely with a EMS Synthi AKS (processed through guitar pedals) the beautiful drifting tones and the simplicity of the melodies makes this the kind of music one could be lost in forever, swept up in a daydream and forget time altogether.

Favourite tracks: Aspettare, Iniziare

23. Demen – Nektyr

Demen make soundtracks to dreams. This music is pacifying and disarming. It is spacious, lush, expansive, and yet reserved. Elegant, is perhaps the most apt adjective. The drums are huge and distant, drenched in reverb, as is almost everything, giving the music it’s floating quality. The hamonic shifts are few and far between, making the subtlest of transitions feel enormous. While some tracks begin with long emphasis on emptiness, the dynamic and emotional range of this album is not to be underestimated.

 Favourite tracks: Niorum, Illdrop, Ambur.

24. Mary Halvorson Quartet - Paimon

I’ve been a big fan of Mary Halvorson’s guitar work since her appearance on Trevor Dunn’s Trio Convulsant record. Here her playing and arranging are put on fine display as she interprets Zorn’s Masada material, for Book of Angels volume 32. The Quartet of drums, bass, and two guitars makes for a thicketed texture, and the musicians approach the material this way – texturally – more than they cover traditional jazz quartet roles. There’s still plenty of attention to the melodic frameworks of the original compositional intent, but the group has a tendency to go full battle royale in the solo sections, rather than politely accompanying. The soloing is superb, but the madness is part of what makes the Masada material so special, and Halvorson and co have captured it beautifully, adding a masterful spark and character to this ongoing series of releases.

Favourite Tracks: Yeqon, Chaskiel.

25. Pinkcourtesyphone - Indelicate Slices

Richard Chartier makes beautiful ambient sounds into dreamy musical landscapes. His new record, Indelicate Slices is a beautiful collection of such music. As the title may suggest, this record isn’t sweet background soundscapes to bliss out to, Chartier is delving into some gritty, dark territory on this album, playing with some suspense and pushing the extremes of what the genre may accept. There are some long moments of almost nothing but the tiniest record crackle, which says something of the artist’s minimalist attitude. It’s exciting to hear this approach to sound, from the negative perspective, as opposed to the tendency for bliss and serenity. The dark mood creates a sense of expectation, which Chartier only pays off in small doses, but they are worth the long moments in between.

Favourite tracks: minimumluxeryoverdose, in voluptuous monochrome

26. Nadah El Shazly – Ahwar

Hailing from the Cairo underground scene, Nadah is a beautiful singer, with an eclectic musicality and and abstract sensibility. Collaged forms of music swirl around, tonalities layer up in exciting unresolved ways, and yet it is always soulful. This is a really colourful record, with carefully attended to arrangements, plenty of chaos, but never a mess.

Favourite tracks: Barzakh (Limen), Palmyra.

27. Gravetemple – Impassable Fears

The tone of this albums is abrasive, the bass and guitar tones (if they even are instruments) are sheets of steel against gravel against my brain. It’s ugly in the most perfect way. It’s almost impossible to think of this as music – almost – but the human voice makes the intensity of the crunching somewhat physical, visceral, and the physicality of the drumming binds it all into something one can truly feel. Then somewhere in the middle the album introduces melodic electronic sounds, crunched, low res sounds that bleed into a fresh roaring onslaught. It’s full of surprises, but the gems protected by berserkers. This is not one to go into lightly, but fucking perfectly rewarding for those with courage.

Favourite tracks: Elavúlt földbolygó (World Out of Date), Domino, Áthatolhatatlan f��lelmek (Impassable Fears)

28. Nazoranai – Beginning to Fall in Line Before Me, So Decorously, the Nature of All That Must Be Transformed

From the long slow build of drums and curious noises, opening up to a cinematic landscape of another world, there’s a lot at play here, lots of colour, lots of restraint. It’s as if this group have only a small idea of the headroom they have to play with, and approach the music with calculated precision, allowing for a gradual, yet slow growth. The first track takes about 20 minutes to peak, and it’s a delicious, almost spiritual high point. Part 2 comes down for a moment, just enough to find a new path, before it begins to tear shreds off the feelings created in the first part, until it gets to the magic and truth at the core. When the vocals begin, all seems revealed, the search is over. The final 10 minutes is an unbridled expression of intensity, joyously reveling in the phenomenon of sound. It’s fucking awesome.

Favourite track: Part 2.

29. The Body & Full of Hell - Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light

Abrasive and dense, the pairing of these two bands ascends to dizzying levels of heavy. Maximum weight and intensity scrape through your ear-holes with this one. A really clever blend of electronic and  brutal metal elements, the former used sparingly to add highlights to the later, such as the abrasive synth tone in the opening track, or the bouncy kick and vocal fx in track two. It could be a bit pompous, or even a bit generic “noise band”, but it’s way more fun. It really sounds like this was made in a playfull way, and thus the music keeps you playing along throughout the onslaught.

Favourite tracks: Earth is a Cage, Farewell, Man

30. William Basinski - A shadow In Time

Basinski returned in early 2017 with a new album, 2 new works that continue the trajectory of his career, and adding a new sense of depth and density to his palette. The album plays with some familiar Basinski processes, the reverb feedback, gradually unfolding over a long duration, stretching and smearing the tones of loops until they become some kind of trans-sensoral phenomenon. The compositions seem more deliberate on this record, with less reliance on loops for loops sake. There’s a clear sense development in both tracks that make them engaging in a new way. I always like Basinski, but I’m loving this more than usual.

Favourite track: A Shadow In Time.

31. Félicia Atkinson – Hand in Hand

This album is a delicate and bold blend of pulsing electronic melodic sound, atmospheric incidental sound, and spoken word. Atkinson’s words and sounds aren’t expressly trying to teach or convey a sense of importance, but there’s something about the delivery that makes every moment feel important, something that needs to be learnt, or learnt from. Compositionally, Atkinson is a master at balancing textures, and the record explores a lot of sonic variety. On the surface the album is calm and you could almost tune out of it, but it is an album of exquisite detail.

Favourite tracks: Adaptation Assez Facile, A House a Dance a Poem

32. Ifriqiyya Electrique - Laa La Illa Allah

This album has a deep dark atmosphere, and dare I say it, something ritualistic is brewing away beneath these tunes. From the masses of percussion, the cave like reverb, and the mantra like chanting vocals of the first track, this group from North Africa have made a captivating collection that weaves in some upbeat bangers, and some super distorted, rumbling bass, creepers to make a potent spiritually cleansing record. I have very little knowledge of the where or who of the group, but it’s certainly not your typical nice easy world music for a day on the green. It’s gritty and up close and uncomfortable, but also kind of ground shaking and infectious.

Favourite track: Stombali - Baba 'Alaia

33. Anjou - Epithyma

Epithyma opens with a series of crossfading, delicate loop slices, melting and morphing shape, pulsing, but never really landing or forming in any repetitive musical sense. Anjou is sneaky with melody, it’s there, sliding around the periphery, never truly taking over or coming into focus. It’s perfectly ambient, by definition. As ideas are exhausted, they’re so naturally replaced and seamlessly transitioned from that one forgets what came before, or how long it may have been. A beautifully constructed collection of synths and space.

 Favourite track: Soucouyant

34. Walker Harris English - Walker Harris English

These 4 pieces feel like meditations on existentialist cinema rather than just music compositions. There’s something so haunting about it, and instantly immersive, like being lost in “the zone”. The trio have so masterfully developed and transmutated a realm of unfathomable beauty and familiarity into a mystery. Very little needs to be said beyond that. It’s incredible, subtle music. Listen to it.

Favoutie track: A2: Beyond House

35. Sevdaliza – ISON

This is one of the best singer/electronic music releases I’ve heard in a very long time. It has cool, chill grooves and tasty as fuck sound design, creative arrangements, and it manages to be totally current and on trend whilst unashamedly embodying myriad influences that could be easily failed retro pastiches, but instead serve to strengthen the record, and heighten the moods it’s invoking/expressing. Very disappointed that this didn’t seem more mainstream appeal, because its way better than many things of the genre that had half the content/detail.

Favourite tracks: Hero, Marilyn Monroe.

36. Idles: Brutalism

Idles is a brutal reality check. Working class punk rock too late for the world, self-aware, spitting in the face of bullshit and calling it what it is. They are angry, and they have a very good sense of humour about the world and their position in it. They also know sound. The drums and bass are solid bricks and the guitars are like swarms of killer bees. It all serves the lyrics, which I will leave you with a taste: “The best way to scare a Tory is to read and get rich/I know nothing I’m just sitting here looking at pretty colours”.

Favourite tracks: Mother, Well Done, Rachel Khoo, (Fuck it, all of them are brilliant).

37. Xiu Xiu - Forget

Forget is a pretty tidy record. I don’t know if that’s a compliment for Xiu Xiu, but I guess what I mean is that it is cohesive and coherent in a way that translates more directly than many of their earlier releases. I first heard this band live, and so my idea of Xiu Xiu is tied to the stage in a really hypnotic and noisy way, but I found this album has deepened my appreciation of their agenda/aesthetic more than before. Jamie Stewart’s voice sounds better than ever, and the arrangements are lush and exciting.

Favourite tracks: Queen of the Losers, At Last, At Last.

38. Trespass Trio – The Spirit of Pitesti

Sax, bass, and drums is an amazing combination of instruments. It never fails to capture my attention. Trespass Trio keep it simple and soulful, angular and loose, and constantly adventurous. The title track is a dirge like exploration of time and space that conjures an ocean of moods. There’s a few upbeat tracks that swing and hit and dance about the ring in confusing fashion. Very cool stuff.

Favourite track: In Tears.

39. Ulfur - Arboresence

Icelandic composer Ulfur opens his new album with a droney string motif that cinematically crescendos with the sounds of rain, culminating in a blistering explosion of black metal blast beats. This sets the mood for the various extremities one should be prepared for over the course of the record. Ulfur weaves between moody songs and soundscapes, electronic rhythms, dreamy psych-pop and dense spectral sound paintings. A truly unique and eclectic record, masterfully handled.

Favourite track: Tómi› Titrar

40. Ryuichi Sakamoto – Plankton: Music for an Intallation By Christian Sardet and Shiro Takatani

Plankton is an hour long composition by Japanese legend Ryuichi Sakamoto, designed for an installation that explores and documents the nature of the namesake micro organisms. It’s a subtle and immersive piece. Drawing on the philosophy of ambient, washing across the background with all its splendour and detail, free to be ignored or enjoyed on whatever terms you prefer. I could put this on repeat all day long.

41. Hogni - two trains

Two trains begins with a gorgeous Icelandic choral work, perhaps as a statement of identity, of origin, but it quickly moves on to more contemporary sounds, with Hogni’s beautiful falsetto voice leading the way through string laden electronic beats. The choir sounds return here and there over the course of the record, and there’s a great blend of light and dark moods on the record. I’m impressed with the way the variety of styles approached on here works, especially considering the more commercial bent to the song styles. Brave choices and good songs.

Favourite track: Komdu me>

42. Thor & Friends “The Subversive Nature of Kindness”   

Thor Harris delivers a feast of percussion on this record of repetition based minimalism. Each track takes a very simple motive and builds on layers of percussive melody with synth and voice and strings, taking the simplicity to very moving emotional, and cinematic places. It’s all very considered and my only criticism is how safe it all feels, which I guess is the point; kill them with kindness. It’s beautiful music.

Favourite track: Swimming with Stina.

43. Mario Batkovic – Mario Batkovic

I never could have thought I’d be writing about a solo accordion album in my yearly list. Maybe I’ve been listening to too much Pauline Oliveros over the last couple of years. That’s a good thing. Mario Batkovic is an amazing accordion player. The album highlights his virtuosity as an instrumentalist, as well as a consummate composer, but it also shows him investigating sound, delving into the tone of the instrument, and exploring what it can do. This is what makes me love it, because Batkovic presents the instrument as more than notes, and delivers a rich and complex series of sound paintings.

Favourite tracks: Gravis, Desiderii Patriae

44. Wadada Leo Smith – Najwa/solo reflections on Monk

Trumpet player Wadada Leo Smith released two great records this year. I am including them together only because I feel that his “Solo reflections on Monk” gives insight to the work on Najwa. Najwa is an ensemble record, with 4 guitars, and most notably to my ears is the bass tone of Bill Laswell. Each piece seems to be a moving tribute to a master of the jazz idiom, from Ornette to Coltrane, and the album explores this devotion in character. The dedications are blistering, joyous harmolodic/spiritual jazz experiences, while the title track feels like a tribute to Miles, a bare amorphous atmosphere, perhaps presenting the trumpeter’s influence as honestly as it can be. What is great about these two albums side by side, is hearing a modern master of the idiom pull new things out of the influences, and show that regardless of the instrument one’s hero played, the content is what inspires, not just the tool.

Favourite tracks: Najwa, Ohnedaruth John Coltrane: The Master of Kosmic Music and His Spirituality in a Love Supreme

Also: Adagio: Monkishness - A Cinematic Vision of Monk Playing Solo Piano

45. Ben Frost - The Centre Cannot Hold  

Frost had a fucking busy year, with a bunch of EPs, TV and film scores, and this full-length album (Edit: I just finished Dark, and if I could find the OST album I would be rating that in my top 20, it’s phenomenal). The Centre Cannot Hold is more of what Frost is known for with his solo works.  Dense harsh sound pounded, tenderised, and compressed into musical forms, often forcibly. But Frost’s sensibility as a composer of sound and music doesn’t lack subtlety or musicality, and the production is such high quality that after a few minutes the static and distortion become such natural entities, allowing the listener into the beautiful tones and warm beats tumbling throughout the record.

Favourite Tracks: A Sharp Blow in Passing, All That you Love Will Be Eviscerated.

46. Laraaji - Sun Gong/bring on the sun

These two albums seem to play best as companions. Bring on the Sun is a multifaceted exploration of minimal/ambient ideas using zither and mbra, voices and other sounds, beautifully recorded and performed. Sun gong uses metallic percussion as a drone instrument, and explores similar ground with different tools. Both albums are dense with content and yet easy to absorb, offering a constantly engaging and surprising experience on repeat listens. I actually feel bad that I haven’t spent enough time getting to know every nuance of these two records, as they have so much to offer.

Favourite tracks: Sun Gong No.1, Laraajazzi.

47. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe - Levitation Praxis

In a similar vein to Laraaji, Levitation Praxis sees Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe perform a beautiful series of sounds in a barn full of Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures. The resonance of metallic forms in such a reverberant space is intoxicating, and Lowe uses his dreamy falsetto voice to commingle in the reverb bringing a warmth and humanity to the cold steel sounds. The presence of the space is felt in the recording, the shuffling of a body through the room, the intuitive nature of the performance, all factors that make listening to this special.

48. Kyle Motl – Transmogrification  

A collection of solo double bass improvisations recorded over two days. Motl explores his instrument intimately, pulling sounds from the wood and steel and hair and shaping them into gorgeous careful music. There’s not a lot more to say. The album presents an imaginative and adventurous spirit making abundance with very full tools.

Favourite track: Urrong.

49. Kid Koala (with Emiliana Torini) - Music to draw to: Satellite

Sweet tunes, with a delicate balance of scifi and mellow pop. Emiliana Torrini’s voice is beautiful, and it breaks up the atmospheric instrumentals really nicely. This is some pretty easygoing music, great evening chill out soundtrack stuff.

Favourite tracks: Collapser, Photons.

50. Flaming Lips - Oczy Mlody

The Lips made a trippy as fuck, synth pop record. It’s totally acid, and only those who have the experience will know exactly how perfect it is. The lyrics are totally oldschool tripper lyrics. It’s kinda perfect at this stage in there career to just own that shit. It has some great sounds, and the comfortable nature of the music is constantly shifting, and gets a bit mucky from time to time. Definitely feels like acid to me.

Favourite tracks: There should be unicorns, Listening to the frogs with demon eyes

51. Shackleton and Anika - Behind the Glass

This goes here on the list because it’s so incredibly similar to Shackleton’s other record with Vengence Tenfold, and although it’s just as good, I felt two albums like this in one year wasn’t fair to put them so close together. Proves how pointless this rating system is. Anika’s voice and words are cool as fuck, and the sounds, production, and arrangments are hypnotic. Enjoy.

Favourite track: The Future Is Hurt / Dirt and Fields

52. Will Guthrie - People Pleaser

This is another great album that I heard for the first time as a live performance. Will has amassed an odd bunch of sounds/samples and collaged them into something quite abstract to accompany his percussion and drums. It’s quite a mission. It has a punk quality to it, sounds a bit DIY and noisy, and I love it for that. Unfortunately I’ve only got it on vinyl and have paid no attention to the track transitions. Just check it out.

53. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe - Kulthan/Marlek

Two very cool modular synth albums, that are both 2 long tracks that explore very simple repetition/minimal ideas, probably each a single synth patch. Lowe has been doing a fair bit of this lately and I’m really enjoying it. It’s not super ground breaking, it’s just cool music. Lowe uses his voice as a subtle element in there with the machine which really elevates the sounds to a higher level, and gives the music a mystical feel.

Favourite track: Magnamite

54. Boris - Dear

Boris return with massive drums and some dense as fuck doom. I think my favourite thing about this band is the way the simple pounding weigh of the band is juxtaposed against the vocals, which are, for lack of a better word, beautiful and clean against the heavy tones.

Favourite songs: Deadsong, Kagero

55. kara-lis coverdale - grafts

Grafts is a single 22 minute track. It would seem that it is made up of a whole bunch of simple little loops, grafted together. I’m not really sure if that’s the idea or not, but it makes sense. The sounds are gorgeous, and the piece flows seamlessly. It’s a great work and can be enjoyed repeatedly with much depth to be discovered over multiple listens.

56. Moor Mother X Mental Jewelry - Crime Waves

It’s moody, dark, angry, bold, and it’s gonna fuck with you. The lyrics are heavy. It’s not quite hip hop. It sits more in line with the recent afro-futurist/punk movement. I love it. I saw Moor Mother Goddess live in January and her shit is the real deal.

Favourite tracks: Death Booming, The City.

57. Nicole Mitchell - Mandorla Awakening II: emerging worlds

This is a psychedelic free jazz odyssey, on the Sun Ra level. It inhabits so many sound worlds, it’s cosmic. The flute is the focus, but it’s full of some amazing percussion and string passages that blur the lines between late 1960s scifi film and gypsy music. It’s kinda hard to pin it down, which is why I love it so much. Great music in the car. So much happening.

Favourite tracks: Egoes War, Forestwall Timewalk, Staircase Struggle.

58. Colin Stetson: all this I do for glory

I love Colin Stetson. Every year he tries something new. This album opens with a cool little beat based track, which caught me off guard, and the beats/percussion continues throughout as a feature of the record.. His sax tone is still dirty as fuck, but no longer the only focus. I love the way he has tried some vocal things on here, which sometimes sounds like he’s singing while playing the sax (I wouldn’t be surprised) and the percussion stuff is very cool. Tracks still fall into the classic Stetson, repetitive minimalism/arpeggio word, but it’s still refreshing and surprising.

Favourite tracks: Like Wolves on the Fold, In the Clinches

59. Thurston Moore - rock and roll consciousness

I guess what I love about this, its that it takes a bunch of really aggressive and noisy elements, things one usually expects from Thurston Moore, but it uses them as this really positive tool, and explores a really trippy type of happiness. It’s almost summertime, getting high on the beach music. It really caught me by the heart.

Favourite tracks: Turn On, Exalted.

60. Kaitlyin Aurelia Smith - The Kid

What an incredible universe of sound Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has created. The more I listen to this, the more baffled and in love with it I become. I’m always finding new nuances, and there is a lot of ideas drifting through this record. This album is more focused on the “song” than her earlier works, and there’s a lot more beats and vocal led tracks. The beats are grainy and glitchy, and the vocals are very processed with harmonies from vocoders and such. I like the songs, but I love the synth instrumental bits. Overall, this album is super playful, and colourful, and lots of fun.

Favourite tracks: Who I Am & Why I Am Where I Am, I Am a Thought.

61. Mere Woman – Big Skies

What a fucking great sound. Sydney’s Mere Women have produced an enormous sound, and they have some great beats and lyrics. Ultimately, the guitar sound is what has captured my attention the most, but I’m really excited by the overall package, the consistency of the songwriting and the way each some has a clever, stripped back and focused character. There’s never a generic beat or form.

Favourite songs: Big Skies, Drive.

62. Binker and Moses - Journey to the mountain of forever

A fantastic 2 disc set with one album entirely drums and sax duets, and the second disc augmented by some additional saxes and drums, trumpet, harp, and tabla. It’s the perect background music for art making, and that’s how I usually listen to it. Disc two is the shit!

Favourite tracks: The Shaman's Chant, Valley of the Ultra Blacks.

63. Nadia Sirota – Tessellatum

Nadia writes such epic string arrangements, I can’t even tell what instruments I’m hearing after a while. It’s an exploration of drone and rhythm, but it feels super fresh, and it avoids a lot of minimalist clichés while still seeming canon.

It’s a deep listening, immersive, durational work, and as such, it needs to be listened to in full, perhaps a few times, to really be appreciated. Totally worth the time.

64. Ecca Vandal – Ecca Vandal

Feels like the most mainstream thing on my list is a DIY local who brings the party and the fight on her debut record. It’s probably the best pop record of the year, and one of the best local releases in years. Ecca is a phenomenal performer and a great songwriter. Her team, the band and collaborators, have really made something fresh, mashing a lot of different genres together, and making if work. The best thing is how courageously heavy and out there the riffs are.

Favourite tracks: Price of Living, Future Heroine, End of Time.

65. Actress - AZD

Beginning with some totally cool blippy synth bits, AZD takes its sweet arse time building up into the masterful dance album it is. Once it does, each cut is just as perfect as the next. This is the perfect music for late night house party dancing.

Favourite tracks: Fantasynth, X22RME, Falling Rizlas.

66. The Necks - Unfold

Four nice long tracks, each with a different mood to explore. The Necks are masters of the long unchanging, durational improvised sound world. On this album, the focus is less on groove and more of texture, and the organ plays a central role in the first two pieces, giving this a kind of spiritual, 1960s, Terry Riley/Alice Coltrane kind of vibe. The percussion takes more of the lead on the last track which is more rhythmic, but still not really a groove. Great stuff for sure.

Favourite tracks: Overhear, Timepiece.

67. Jeff Mills - Trip to the Moon

Jeff Mills scored the old 1902 silent film, A Trip to the Moon, using beautiful synthesisers and playing with all the oldschool scifi tropes, reworking it into a delicate collage of music and soundscapes. What’s great as a listening experience is that the transitions that would no doubt seem obvious with the film, create surprising forms in a purely musical realm. Very cool stuff.

Favourite tracks: Rocket Spaceship Destination, Outer Space, Bewilded, But Not Confused

68. Lau Nau – Poseidon

Finnish artist Lau Nau has a dreamy and delicate sound, but it avoids being overly twee and meh with some lush arrangements and her cool, lazy vocal style. I’m a fan of the string sound on this record, and the subtle fx processing/electronic textures, which totally fly under the radar, but serve to really enhance the mood. Occasionally things get a bit more outrageous, and bizarre, and it adds t the overall adventure of the record.

Favourite tracks: Unessa, Suojaa uni meitä, Kun lyhdyt illalla sytytetään, ne eivät sammu koskaan

69. Cornelius - Mellow Waves

I love Cornelius, and it has been so long since he released anything, so this had me super excited. Point was a life changing record, and the follow up, Sensuous, was good, and mellow Waves is still pretty good, although I feel like Cornelius has a thing he does and it’s pretty clear now that that isn’t about to change much. Mellow Waves is more cool Cornelius tracks, lots of sudden blips and shifts in reverb, lots of polyrhythms and noisy guitar solos. Quaint and sophisticated yet also kind of raucous. I can’t help but feel he does this sort of thing in his sleep, but it’s still good music.

Favourite track: Sometime/Someplace.

70. Avey Tare - Eucalyptus

I like this so much better than Slasher Flicks, and the recent Animal Collective Painting with… Avey has developed a really interesting bunch of ideas, ranging from loose psychedelic meanderings, to straight up pop folk tunes, all built around voice and acoustic guitar, and punctuated by strange arrangements of sounds, worked on in collaboration with the genius Eyvind Kang. It’s relaxed and ambitious at the same time. A curiosity of sorts, with lots of depth.

Favourite tracks: Ms. Secret, Selection of a Place, Coral Lords.

71. Black Cube Marriage - Astral Cube

Chicago instrumentalist Rob Mazurek leads this ensemble of improvisers and sound adventurers. The results take on many forms, with shifting and cascading textures and rhythms bursting with noise and all manner of avant shit on display. It’s a little bit chaotic, but it represents masters of their art doing what they do best.

Favourite track: Syncretic Illumine

72. Graham Lambkin & Taku Unami - The Whistler

Well, I mean, what even is this? On the surface the record comes across as nothing more than a bunch of random recordings. Maybe that’s what it is. Stuff is happening, it has been recorded, and it’s really fascinating to listen to. The first disc sounds like someone in a workshop, occasionally whistling while they work. Disc 2, titled Small Mistakes In Nature has instruments being played at times, and the sounds of the outside world, and really flows on into bizarre headspace of where the hell am I and why? To be honest, this is an acquired taste and sometimes a frustrating listen, but it’s something I like, so…

73. Brooklyn Raga Massive – Terry Riley in C

I’ll begin by saying, I love Terry Riley and I love In C, so this was an easy win. Traditional Indian classical instruments playing an amazing piece of western music, that itself was inspired by Indian classical traditions. It works, and it’s a fucking awesome version of the piece. Just do it.

74. Jlin - black origami

Curiously, it took me a while to get into this. Something about the sound is too clean, and I couldn’t quite get into it. But after a few tries, it got me hooked. I think what I dig is the types of patterns and the choices made in terms of percussion sounds and vocal textures. It has such a cool feel and great movement, but it’s abstract enough to ponder and delve into with the ears as well as the body. I saw Jlin a couple of times live recently, and it translated so well that the album got back on my radar.

Favourite tracks: Enigma, Nyakinyua Rise.

75. SUBHEIM & MONOLOG - Conviction

A very cool dark, downtempo mix of drones and throbbing beats. With lots of space, some lush guitar, and plenty of swelling dynamics. Not much to say about it, it’s simple and tidy, and calculated.

Favourite track: Wone

76. Erin K Taylor - Source

Source is 1 track, almost an hour in length. Centered around a field recording, with bird calls and a trickling stream, and the very distance sounds of traffic. After a while it sounds like other sounds are being subtly added into the mix, but I’m unsure how much this is edited/constructed, and how much is just captured. Eventually, there’s some vocals, and the planning and artistry is revealed. This is a deep listening album and really requires patience and attention. It has some surprised buried in there, that will reward you for your time.

77. Pan Daijing - Lack

Maybe this could have made it higher on the list. Listening back again now, it is so much more interesting than I remember. The voice seems to be the central connecting element of the work, and Pan Daijing constructs a variety of abstract forms, punctuated by noise and synth, and a mix of acoustic instruments (what sounds like dulcimer on the opening track). All very cool stuff.

Favourite track: A Loving Tongue

78. Smakos - A Vampire goes west

Synth based instrumental music, all very atmospheric and cool, with what seems like a strange narrative throughout. The sound is a bit distant, with a sweet little reverb to it, and it plays on the nostalgia a bit with the blippy arpeggios floating through the tracks. Very cool use of sampled voices in the background too.

Favourite tracks: One Day We Will Trip Out From Star To Star, Picnic In A Multiverse Cassette.

79. Schnellertollermeier - Rights

Minimal math rock type stuff. The first track caught my attention by barely doing anything for the first minute and a half. But then things develop, and grow and the patterns are fun. It takes a while, but gets pretty heavy. Each track follows a similar formula, building up from a simple polyrhythmic idea, but they are cool ideas.

Favourite track: Round

80.  Ex Eye - Ex Eye

Colin Stetson teams up with Shahzad Ismaily, Greg Fox, and Toby Summerfield to make a kind of Baritone sax centered (for lack of a better word) metal album. It’s heavy and chaotic and mixes up the genre elements in a fresh way. Nice to hear more sax in heavy music. This album takes some risks and it pays off.

Favourite track: Opposition/Perihelion; The Coil

81. Deradoorian – Eternal Recurrence

Stripped back and mellow, moody, lush, emotionally rich and dynamic. All this and more, Angel Deradoorian has made some beautiful and thoughtful tracks. I often get lots in this record, and just let it play on repeat because it’s a bit short, and it’s really hypnotic. Aptly titled I guess.

Favourite tracks: Return-Transcend, Ausar Temple

82. Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke, Oren Ambarchi – This Dazzling Genuine “Difference” Now Where Shall It Go

More pounding noise, guitar and drum improv, from three fucking legends of the game. It’s wild and full of energy and never really lets up. Keiji Haino has been mad busy with these kinds of collab albums of late, and somehow, they’re all winners. Check it out if you’re into this sort of thing.

83. Platform - Flux Reflux

An album of avant garde improvisation, with some incredible sounds and textures.  Platform seem like a pretty hip group, and they craft a bunch of really cool, diverse pieces.

Favourite Track: Reflux

84. Tyshawn Sorey - Verisimilitude

Moody, dark and slow, atonal and pointalistic modern jazz type stuff. Led by Percussionist Tyshawn Sorey, and with some amazing piano playing by Cory Smythe, Verisimilitude offers a lot of very creative and interlectual approaches to new music, crossing over the contemporary classical avant garde and free jazz worlds seamlessly.

Favourite track: Obsidian

85. Matt Nelson, Tim Dahl, Nick Podgurski - GRID

Four tracks of screeching bass guitar, sax, and drum interplay. It’s noisy as fuck, and really interestingly constructed. There’s a form of instrumental torture at play, but everything is completely in sync. The group operate as a single unit. Destroying everything with blissful abandon.

Favourite track: (-/+)

86. Trio Heinz Herbert - The Willisau Concert

A live improvised album of electronics, drums, and guitar, some of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. It moves between abstract and odd to pulse driven and musical in waves of expressive brilliance.

Favourite track: Fragment Z / Brugguda

87. Bérangère Maximin - Frozen Refrains

Aptly titled, Frozen refrains could well be just that, a small collection of time stretched moments. But it’s a lot more, and it takes a little patience to delve into. It really teases you, and makes you wait, but the detail in the sound design and in the micro forms of the long seemingly unchanging sound scapes are rich and exciting once you really listen.

Favourite tracks: Burn and Return, Clash.

88. Ohmslice - Conduit

This album is a mishmash of bizarre processed percussion, synthesiser, and abstract/surreal poetry, with some crazy guitar and horns in there for some bizarre accompaniment. It’s actually really compelling, and the words make it seem all the more interesting.

Favourite tracks: Crying On a Train, Broken Phase Candy, Paint By Numbered Day

89. Here Lies Man – Here Lies Man

This review is a cop out, (this is where I tapped out of writing in general) but… This is a dirty psychedelic rock/afrobeat cross over record, and it is pretty cool. I enjoyed it a bunch of times, not much more to say.

Favourite tracks: I stand alone, Belt of the sun

90. Perera Elsewhere - All Of this

Dark moody beats and singing. I liked it a lot. Something kinda post triphop, downtempo type music with cool modern production ideas. Definitely worth a few listens.

Favourite track: Girl from Monotronica

91. Locust Toybox - Drownscapes

David Firth of Salad Fingers fame has always made music under this moniker, but this is the first in a while, and usually his music is kind of broken beat type stuff. This is a lush dreamy ambient album, and it’s totally gorgeous.

Favourite tracks: Return To The Meadow, Birthday Lungs

92. Chicago/London Underground - A Night Walking Through Mirrors

An excellent live free jazz album that I spent quite a lot of time with in the first half of 2017. Beautiful sounds and textures, great players. Put it on at night.

Favourite tracks: Something Must Happen

93. Wolf Eyes - Undertow

Abstract and noisy, with cool spoken word bits. I was a bit surprised by this one. It’s trippy and dark, which I like.

Favourite tracks: Undertow, Thirteen

94. Lee Gamble - Mnestic Pressure

This is just some cool electronic music that I enjoyed. It’s not solely focused on beats, and that makes me happy.

Favourite tracks: Istian, East Sedducke

95. Tomutonttu – Kevätjuhla 

Cool and exotic sounding electronica. Beautiful sounds full of curious charm and otherworldliness.

Favourite tracks: Kuteen valoon I - Lukin jalka, Operaatio satamassa

96. Juilia Bloop - Roland Throop

Cool loops and beats, amounting to some excellent atmospheric oldschool sampler music. Very chill and yet very clever.

Favourite tracks: Too Many Ghosts, Let’s have some music

97. Cologne Tape – Welt

A really eclectic and exciting mishmash of ideas and instruments on this one. Moves from blippy electronic experiments to bombastic drum focused stuff but always with subtlety and an atmospheric quality.

Favourite tracks: Welt 2, Welt 4, Welt 8.

98. Rafael Toral - Moon Field

This is a brilliant electronic/scifi style soundscape album. It’s a weird and beautiful combination of sound design/fx and abstracted music ideas.

Favourite track: The Stars

99. Bellows - Sander

Beautiful and sweet tape loops and synth patterns. It’s really simple and sophisticated.

Favourite tracks: Untitled #2

100. Do Make Say Think - Stubborn Persistent Illusions

A really good collection of ideas in a genre that doesn’t often have any. I enjoyed this a lot.

Favourite tracks: Bound, And Boundless, As far As The Eye Can See.

Honourable mentions.

There were a whole bunch of albums I enjoyed that didn’t technically fit the list, compilations, and a few EPs, all great but not right for a full length album list. I also left off a bunch of things that I thought were great, but I just didn’t have time to delve into it all. I wish I had’ve had more time with a bunch of albums.

That all said, these two albums deserve a mention, but not in the top 100 because both these albums were recorded in 1975, and only released in 2017. They both show innovative legends doing their respective things as well as can be expected, and are both gorgeous listening experiences. Neither needs more detail than that.

Terry Riley & Don Cherry Duo - Live 1975

Organ minimalism and trumpet improvisations, a meeting of two legends, a conversation through the medium of music.

Suzanne Ciani - Buchla Concerts 1975

Ciani demonstrates the potential of the Buchla synth, in all its glory. What more do you need.

[sgtxpreacher]

headcanon: jake + mental illness/specifically cyclothymia (aka this is almost 1500 words and it doesn’t even cover everything)

part i. the meta of how i even wound up with this headcanon

so mental illness I’ve covered a lot before on this blog re: Jake + PTSD and Jake + alcoholism, though more in general blog content than particular headcanon posts. but, in case you’re new to this blog and haven’t had time to swing over to my about page, let me catch you up quickly: Jake has PTSD connected to his time spent fighting the Cybermen, and his already heavy drinking habits turned to alcoholism after he returned to London. (he insists, if pressed, that he’s a functional alcoholic, but that also depends on how you define functional. can he hold down a job? yes. is part of the reason he can hold down this job because Pete Tyler is lenient when he disappears on a bender for two days? yes.)

however, something’s been nagging at me since... pretty much the first iteration of this blog, I think. I think I originally tried writing Jake as having comorbid PTSD and depression, but I don’t think that worked very well, in part because I was relatively young when I started writing Jake and was still learning how to write effectively and respectfully about mental illness, and in part because it simply didn’t fit with how I wanted to portray Jake. he had depressive episodes, but not to the extent that would seem to fall under clinical depression. early on in this blog, I toyed around with the idea of Jake having ADHD; it seemed to fit some aspects of how I wanted to portray him, but again, it seemed like I’d be adding in symptoms to go “look he has ADHD!!” rather than letting them arise more naturally from the character. which may sound like a weird thing, but having written Jake off and on for four years, I feel pretty set in my characterization of his behavior, even if the details of backstory, likes, dislikes, etc. may change. and writing him as having ADHD still just didn’t feel right, especially since it felt like I would be constantly forgetting about it and having to think about it almost as a separate concern from the character – which just doesn’t feel like the write way to write about mental health to me. (and if you keep forgetting about a major headcanon, it’s probably not a very strong one.)

so, back to the drawing board. for a long time now, i think my mental picture of jake’s mental health has gone something like ‘PTSD + alcoholism + ??????? generally unhealthy coping mechanisms ????? other forms of addiction ?????’ i occasionally (quietly) tossed other headcanons at myself to see if they stuck, but nothing did.

and then i remembered that cyclothymia exists. it’s not as well-known as some other mood disorders and is easily misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed, but it’s one that i’ve grown up seeing in members of my close family (though i didn’t know the official diagnostic label until a few years ago,) and i decided to do a little research. and, rather than feeling like i was adding additional symptoms onto my portrayal of jake to fit a Specific Diagnosis, it felt more like something that helped categorize and explain headcanons i already had, and help me realize other places in his characterization that might be expanded upon. maybe that’s a weird thing. i don’t know. but i think i’m keeping this headcanon.

part ii. so what is cyclothymia, you may ask the college student using this post in part to procrastinate on doing her homework

since people don’t always know what cyclothymia is, let’s explain it a little. (please keep in mind i’m not a mental health professional; the research i’ve done draws on personal observation, reading first-hand narratives of dealing with cyclothymia, and official diagnostic manuals/medical sources i’ve managed to find on the internet. i’ve tried to make sure they’re reputable, but i can’t make guarantees. if there’s any part of this post you think is wildly inaccurate or offensive or something along those lines, please let me know.)

cyclothymia (also known as cyclothymic disorder) lies on the spectrum of bipolar disorders, and could be considered a milder form of bipolar i and ii (though it’s important to note that milder does not mean mild. while some people can manage their symptoms without a therapist or medication, that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily easy to live with.) it’s characterized by hypomanic periods and chronic periods of mild-moderate depression (also known as dysthymia) that occur semi-frequently (though i’m still trying to work out exactly what’s meant by ‘semi-frequently.’) 

here’s a list of some symptoms to start us off with, though of course not every person with cyclothymia experiences all these symptoms or all in the same ways. (and i grabbed this from the mayo clinic website for purposes of expedience.)

hypomania

An exaggerated feeling of happiness or well-being (euphoria)

Extreme optimism

Inflated self-esteem

Talking more than usual

Poor judgment that can result in risky behavior or unwise choices

Racing thoughts

Irritable or agitated behavior

Excessive physical activity

Increased drive to perform or achieve goals (sexual, work related or social)

Decreased need for sleep

Tendency to be easily distracted

Inability to concentrate

dysthymia or depressive symptoms

Feeling sad, hopeless or empty

Tearfulness

Irritability, especially in children and teenagers

Loss of interest in activities once considered enjoyable

Changes in weight

Feelings of worthlessness or guilt

Sleep problems

Restlessness

Fatigue or feeling slowed down

Problems concentrating

Thinking of death or suicide

i’ve also seen a couple of first-hand accounts mention that the depression experienced in cyclothymia tends to be atypical depression rather than melancholic depression. so, a tendency for excessive sleep rather than insomnia, increased appetite rather than loss of appetite, and still experiencing mood reactivity to environmental circumstances – mood reactivity being a major differentiator. something good happening can still cause a positive uptick in mood, but when the mood drops again, it drops into a depressive state rather than what one might consider the baseline mood (if i’m understanding this correctly; if you know otherwise, please feel free to shout.) there are a couple of other symptoms (increased sensitivity to rejection, a physical feeling of being weighed down or paralyzed, etc.) but that probably sums it up for our purposes.

part iii. so how does this actually tie into actual headcanons, raptor???

taking into consideration we’re (in this case) talking about a fictional character, and given that people (fictional or no) aren’t just a walking list of symptoms, how does this tie into the context of jake’s life? i wrote down some thoughts. 

jake’s been living with cyclothymia since he was a teenager. it runs on his father’s side of the family to varying degrees, but none of them have ever been given an official diagnosis. it’s just common family knowledge that simmonds men (some simmonds women, too, including jake’s aunt evie) have a “switch” in their head that sometimes just flicks off or on.

has never been diagnosed with cyclothymia, nor does he know that it exists (he’s got a pretty vague idea of mood disorders in general)

the same therapist who diagnosed him with PTSD misdiagnosed him with depression. he was put on antidepressants. they triggered a hypomanic episode. he stopped going to therapy and taking medication (partially in an instance of “i’m fine, i don’t need any help” fueled in part by his general stubborness and reluctance to accept help, fueled in part by exaggerated feelings of his own well-being.) in the grand scheme of things, it was not a good time, and it contributed to his eventual decision to quit therapy and quit medications.)

instead, he self-medicates with alcohol and nicotine. (in university, he also smoked weed every once in a while, but he kicked that habit in jail.) alcohol continues to not mix well with his brain chemistry, and can trigger (usually short) depressive episodes. he usually dismisses these as really bad hangover blues.

most notable major depressive episodes have been after returning to london at the end of the cyber wars, and after journey’s end. both were triggered (in part) by feelings of Well, The World’s Safe, What Point Does My Life Have Now? the first one was exacerbated by being wheelchair-bound and recovering from major injuries; exercise is a really important part of his routine and helps ground him, so being left without it at the same time as a major depressive episode hit was not at all good. not to mention feeling like the cause he’d spent years of his life working for – and risking his life for – was suddenly being dismissed by politicians who never bothered to speak with anyone directly involved in stopping the cybermen. the second one, post-journey’s end, was exacerbated by the major shake-up to his support system that mickey leaving caused, then further exacerbated by the bender he went on shortly thereafter. the first time, and possibly the second, he had suicidal ideations, though he’s never made an attempt.

his struggles with mood stability became worse in general after the war; he attributes this to PTSD.

during hypomanic episodes, his sleep habits fall to shit. (i mean, he doesn’t sleep well most of the time, but it’s particularly pronounced then.) he’ll feel well-rested and alert after four hours of sleep, wake up, go on a run, look over case files from work, go on another run (generally with a camera to do some photography in the early-morning light,) get distracted flicking through his photographs in the middle of making breakfast and end up with burned eggs, etc. he’s more likely to go out clubs than he usually is (which is... already almost a weekly occurrence, so it does not do good things for his rate of alcohol consumption)

alternatively, there’s that fun combination of irritability + poor judgment + extreme optimism, which in jake’s case leads to things like bar fights, getting on pete tyler’s nerves, dangerous motorcycle driving, and picking a fight with his friends over relatively minor issues. (he usually ends up apologizing for the last one, though sometimes only a week later.) (also ought to note that jake doesn’t just get into fights when in a hypomanic period; it would happen anyway, even if he didn’t have cyclothymia. jake’s mental health issues may affect or compound upon the ways in which he expresses aggression, but they’re not the root of him being prone to aggressive behavior. this has been your reminder that equating mental illnesses with violent behavior is gross and stigmatizing.)

more headcanons will probably end up coming up later, but these are the main things i wanted to talk about for now! if you read through all this, i congratulate you. if you have any feedback, i would love to hear it! especially if there are any places in this where the language that i’ve used is inaccurate or disrespectful; i’m continually learning, so please let me know if there is anything i need to improve upon!

#; headcanons #so i've been researching + writing this instead of writing my class journals #whoops ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #seriously this post is super long but i have a lot of feelings about this headcanon #and i felt the need to provide some background for it #suicide mention / #alcohol mention /

[amercurialbeing]

Making Love

Rating: M

Summary: They say that there is a thin line between true love and stupidity... I don't know where we fall Sakura, but who cares, right?

a/n: I wrote this right after my exams. I wrote this on a whim. I wrote this, not knowing I would be writing a fluff-smut fic.

This is a sort of sequel to Daddy-like Kid, starring Boruto and Sarada, but this fic can stand on its own. I don't own Naruto. This is also posted in my Fan Fiction Account: AliceInRealWorld. I hope you guys will enjoy it! :3

I woke up with a sharp jolt. I didn’t have the time to remember the context of the nightmare. The dark room didn’t help. It only lured the images that had faded. The silence didn’t help. It only encouraged the voices of my distress that disrupted my sleep. It was the nightmare so disturbing that it left my heart to beat plangently, causing my ears to ring, making my head ache, tightening my chest.

Cold sweat started to secrete from my bare skin, mixing with the sticky precipitation that was produced from last night’s copulating.

I trembled. I waited for the pounding of my heart to slow down. I thought back the passionate hours to keep my mind from retracting in the darkness. I combated the blood-curling screams with the timbre of my Sakura’s pleased moans and small whimpers. I replaced the scenes of death with the picture of my wife’s pink hair, curtaining her bright green eyes as she erratically move her hips to achieve euphoria.

That’s right. It’s alright if I got roused again and had to relieve it by myself (it’s rude to wake someone up just for such insolent reason.)

I allowed myself to think of anything, everything, just to dispel affective residue of the nightmare.

Think of anything but that.

“Sasuke-kun.” I flinched.

A small, delicate hand patted my back. When I didn’t respond, the hand trailed on to my shoulder, squeezing it affectionately. She scooted closer so she can place her chin on the spot where the curse mark used to reside. “Do you want to talk about it?”

After hearing those words, the dangerous beating of my heart appeased. I bowed down and shook a no.

She made a sound behind her throat, a sign that she’s thinking of ways to distract me from my thoughts. The hand on my shoulder tickled its way down my sole arm. Her nimble fingers traced the visible veins and then it landed on my palm where she drew infinite spirals. She repeated this antic until my breathing went back to normal.

“I’m not supposed to say this.” She began as her hand clasped mine. She pressed her body closer, my bare back feeling her healthy breasts. “But I think Sarada has already forgotten about it, so I guess it is okay to share it.”

I squeezed her hand, silently encouraging her to continue.

She let out a giggle, “When Sarada was six she started a list that she called, ‘Things That I’m Gonna Tell Papa When He Comes Home.’”

A small smile graced on my lips. I released Sakura’s hand then gently shrug her off. Understanding my actions, she moved away and began piling the pillows against the headboard. When that’s done, I rested my back on the make-shift lean. I opened my arm, gesturing her to come closer. She happily obliged. She took a small pillow, placed it on my nether region before sitting on my lap. I wrap my arm around her waist. She looped an arm round my neck. I pulled our comforter over our naked body.

“What does it contain?” I mumbled.

“Hmm…” She wondered as her fingers play with my hair. “On the… Let’s say, preface of her list, she said, ‘Papa comes home only once or twice a month. You have to persuade him to teach you something new.’ Then at the bottom, there’s a footnote that says, ‘You have to perfect everything that Papa teaches you Sarada! Shannaro!’”

We chuckled quietly in unison. Nuzzling her cheek on the crook of my neck she continued, “If memory serves right, one of her anecdotes is when she finally perfected her shuriken throws. You should’ve seen her solo trainings Sasuke-kun. Every day, I had to tend her hands full of cuts and grazes.”

My eyebrows knotted as Sakura tells the story because of two reasons. One, old friends, regret and longing visited my chest. I wish I was there to see, watch her struggle for greatness.

“Oh! Speaking of training, next to shuriken throwing is, ‘The Day I Finally Created a Katon Goukakyuu!’” She made a circle in the air, her viridian eyes gleaming with pride. “She never faltered even if her cheeks are blistered!”

She laughed softly at the memory. She glanced up and reached for my forehead. “You know what Sasuke-kun?” She tenderly brushed away the bangs that’s covering my other eye then cupped my face, “She reminds me of you.”

And two-Sakura’s right, verbalizing my thoughts perfectly. Sarada reminds me of me, Sasuke, two decades younger. Sasuke with eyes that can shine even if they’re dark as coal. Sasuke who had his head lifted as he chase down his idol, his inspiration, his reason. Sasuke who died in my personal nightmare.

“She embodies you in so many ways. Not that I’m complaining though.” She sighed dramatically then pointedly followed, “But I wish a child would inherit some of my features.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is that bad? That… she’s like me?”

‘lub-DUB…’

Do you think that she’ll also commit the same mistakes and sins that I did?

‘lub-DUB.’ Inferiority. ‘lub-DUB.’ Fear. ‘lub-DUB.’ Anxiety. ‘lub-DUB -!’

Do you think she’ll get lost on the darkness too?

‘LUB-DUB, LUB-DUB-!’ Trauma. ‘LUB-DUB, LUB-DUB-!’ Hatred. ‘LUB-DUB, LUB-DUB-!’ Loneliness-

‘LUB-DUB!’

The awful metamorphosis of my heart in the last moment of my childhood, hand in hand, the countless tomoe spiraled in to a constant repetition.

When can you say that you have atoned for the sins you have done?

“Sasuke, love.” I flinched.

Sakura ran her fingers through my hair as her other hand remained on my temple, keeping my bangs from covering my powerful eyes. She held their glare, showing no fear. “That’s not what I’m trying to say.”

I know. But…

“Is that bad?” I asked again, this time, it came out raspy and strained. “Do you think-”

She kissed the tip of my nose then pinched my cheeks, “Of course not! You got it all wrong Sasuke-kun!”

It was her blush and her futile effort to hide her breasts that supported her words, “ahhh I shouldn’t have said that! I’m sorry Sasuke-kun!”  

No. It’s my fault. Sometimes… This heart of mine falters easily when reminded of its old scars.

“Hn.” Having no idea how to return the ambiance of nostalgia, I turned my attention to her belly. In an attempt to distract myself from the rising panic, I started to map out the smooth pattern of her stretch marks.

She gasped at the touch. She replied by tugging at my hair. “It’s alright, Sasuke-kun.”

I have to turn the tables before this conversation went downhill. “What were you trying to say then?”

The crimson hue on her cheeks deepened. I pondered if it’s because the trail of my fingers was leading deep down to her thighs or it’s because of the illocutionary force behind her words.

Or maybe both.

“I remember another anecdote from her list.” She offered with voice strangled between decency and erotica. “T’was the d-day she went home late. Her eyes were puffy from crying and her glasses were broken.”

My hand paused when her words registered. “Who did it?” I asked sharply.

She massaged through my hair again to calm my nerves, “Sarada was bullied. When I asked her who and why, she won’t tell me because she knows that I’ll make a huge fuss about it.” She let out a melancholic sigh. “It was Naruto’s children who told me about it. Boruto explained, ‘we found her crying under the slide because some jerks broke her glasses and told her that she’s adopted.’”

So that’s when she started to doubt her mother.

I pulled Sakura closer and planted a chase peck on her forehead.

She placed a hand on my chest as a response and connected the scars that decorate my skin. “But get this Sasuke-kun-Sarada entitled that anecdote ‘Daddy-like Kid.’ She cracked a smirk. “Himawari told me it was Boruto that calmed Sarada down.”

I kept my expression blank but no doubt she noticed my tense muscles. All of the emotions that surfaced because of the nightmare and unnecessary panic attack died down. However, to my demise, it was replaced by crazy assumptions, fueled by my fatherly instincts, suggesting of what could be the possible future of-

“Darling.” Sakura directed her lips on my ear, “Your jealous side is showing~”

I cringed back to glare at her properly, “I am not jealous.”

She narrowed her eyes mischievously, challenging my infamous glare, “oh really now.” She copied my smirk. “So it is fine that Sarada thinks of Boruto as-”

I dove down to capture her lips, preventing her from saying another word about the ridiculous matter. She giggled at my growls, still teasing through the use of lips and tongue and rising intimacy.

She tried to withdraw from the assaults of my mouth but failed ultimately. She instead let her body melt in to my dominance by audaciously asking for an entrance.

When I refused, she wrapped both arms around my neck and then swiftly shifted in to a straddling position to win back control. She now had me trapped between her legs, boldly showing what’s in between. And to further clarify the contexture of her demands, she lewdly ground her hips, flattening the pillow (and something else beneath it that’s throbbing) that prevents us from colliding.

I groaned out of frustration because that minimal amount of sensual pressure was not enough. And she took this as an opportunity to gasp for air as she annoyingly chortled. She brushed off my bangs again then placed her forehead to mine.

Our eyes met. “Are you okay now?”

I held her gaze. My heart picked up its pace. The countless, rotating tomoe dispel under her emerald eyes.  

Are you okay now?

Emerald eyes that have always been asking those words always have been looking at me even if it makes her cry. Those are the eyes that brought light to our coal black eyes, Sarada. The gleam that I never thought would come back. Those are the eyes that granted me the ability to think of a mirthful place in the midst of my chaotic mind. The place where all the forgotten beautiful memories reside that I never believed that could be revived.

           Am I okay now?

           Yes. Those are the emerald eyes that made me remember Sasuke who always die in the nightmares. Those are the beautiful eyes that beaconed as one of the proofs that there is something worth discovering, something worth protecting in this cruel world of ninjas.

“Sasuke-kun?” She caressed my cheeks.

           I captured her lips again, slowly, devotedly, reverting from the animalistic desires earlier. Her hands found their way to my hair again, tying knots, drawing me closer. My shoulders relaxed as the temperature of the room rose once again.

           Do you want to talk about it?

           It was my brother, Itachi’s love that demonstrated me the highest form of unmitigated familial love. It was the love that I have forgotten because it was buried underneath layers of deception, diffidence and corruption.

           “Sa-ku-ra…” My fingers outlined her spine with every syllable of her name, armed with the knowledge that the gesture turns her on.

           Yes. I want to talk about it but…

           It was Naruto, the idiot, which made me realize that I have someone who understands the pain and the loneliness of an orphaned kid starving for love-finding nothing but hatred. It was Naruto who swore that he would always willingly, stubbornly drag my ass back when I lost to the darkness again. It was him who taught me that it’s vacuous to sacrifice your own happiness so that you can cold-heartedly save the world.

           “S-sasuke…” She moaned as my lips ghosted to her jaw, then to her chin and then peppered hot nips on her neck. One of her hand relocated to my chest, drawing smooth lines leading leisurely down to my chiseled abs. She dared an experimental thrust, causing me to bite down at her pulse, earning herself a love mark and prizing me with the sweet sound of her whimpers.

           “Sakura…”

           -it was you who never did give up on loving me in spite of my countless, unforgivable attempts in ending your life. It was you-your lively eyes, your ever loyal heart, your boar-like determination that brought me in to conclusion that one of the justifiable means to obtain peace is to truly, faithfully, unconditionally love.

“Sasuke-kun…” She whined unabashedly as my lips latched themselves to one of her pink, perky breasts. Her hand ventured below the belt, trying to remove the pillow. It was my turn to halt her from getting what she wanted as I amorously embraced her closer, closer, until our torsos mashed. I rolled her other nipple between my teeth, making her arch her back, allowing me to behold a better view of her arousal.

I don’t know how to tell you.

I thought about it as I was on journey to redemption-it was Naruto and Itachi, my brothers who allowed me to forgive the world.

And that, it was team seven that reminded me what’s like to have a family.

“Sa-ku-ra-chan.” I mumbled against the valley of her bosoms. “You’re right…”

So, instead, let me show you...

-you who convinced me that it was time to forgive myself-

“A-about what, Sa-su-ke-kun?”

Let me prove to you…

-you, Sakura Uchiha, who strengthened our bond by graciously adopting my name even if you knew the burden it carried. Even if you knew I would be seldom home, resulting to numerous rumors about our marriage. For example, I chose you because of physical attraction or maybe because I couldn’t be bothered to search for a more suitable vassal to restore the Uchiha Clan.

 I returned to her sweet lips and muttered, “I would love to make, I mean, see a child bearing your features~”

That I’m forever thankful…

As a respond to those accusations, you intrepidly showed those people, who would never understand, that the time you can truly say that it is love is when-even if every bits and pieces of flaws are laid bare and even if hope is just a small ray of light, it is enough to sacrifice, to inspire one in holding on and moving on along love and hate.

She shivered at my words. I tried to subtly slide away the pillow between our… a, object of desire but she ceased my attempt by clutching my waist with her muscled legs, pressing her drenched core to my abdomen.

That I love you too.

“Darling… I want you to know that one of the things that Sarada listed…” She pulled at my hair to make me look at her irises again, staring me down, stating that her next words are quite important.

They say that there is a thin line between true love and stupidity…

“…she wants a baby brother…”

…I don’t know where we fall Sakura. But, who cares, right?

I narrowed my eyes mischievously, enjoying that flustered expression she had on her face, “oh really now.” I smirked.

We just love.

My hand moved on its own, searing every inch of skin it fondled.

“I love you Sasuke-kun…” She proclaimed once again.

These words are left unsaid yet you understand.

But before my lone hand wandered to the area where it would minister miracles (as she describes it) it folded into an all too familiar hand sign to give Sakura’s forehead a light tap.

That’s the reason why I chose you.

And it will always be you…

a/n: haha hope you guys enjoyed it. Been loving these two for a decade and thank heavens they’re canon. Don’t you think so too?

#sasuke #sasuke uchiha #sakura #sakura haruno #sakura uchiha #sarada uchiha #fluff #fan fiction #fanfic #SasuSaku #sortof #smut #smut-fluff