#music is truly what keeps me on this rock instead of exploding into space

[its-scoots]

Orville Peck and Chappell Roan releasing a song while I’m crying in the club (my bed) is truly a blessing. Guess I’ll exist another day so I can enjoy these fucking bops.

#chappell roan #Good Luck Babe #Orville Peck #cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other #music is truly what keeps me on this rock instead of exploding into space

[creativeashproductions]

Subconscious Match Making // Charlie Gillespie

Summary: Kenny brings in his niece Y/N and her band to provide a demonstration of the stage presence of a band. More than happy Tarnished Poets become mentors during the process of bootcamp. Charlie’s eye is stuck on Kenny’s niece; Kenny’s so powerful he subconsciously did match making

Warning: Swearing, talk about car accident, angst, and fluff.

Words: 4.6k

A/N: The song used by my fictional band is High Hopes by the Australian band Yours Truly.

Masterlist

Being part of the audition aspect of Julie and the Phantoms was unreal, especially being young with such an opportunity. The timing couldn’t be better with the band stationed stateside for recording; Kenny had presented the offer to mentor during auditions. The capacity as a musician mentor was alien, but you would do anything for the guy you considered an uncle.

Stopping briefly at the bathroom, you encountered one of the options for Julie that Kenny had sent in the PDF file of people auditioning. As you stepped up to wash your hands, you noticed her lips moving along to the song they had been given.

“Are you okay?” You questioned turning to face the teenager no more than fifteen at the most. Her brown eyes colliding with yours unable to hide the nerves, “You’re auditioning for Kenny Ortega’s show, right?”

“Yeah. I’m Madison.” The girl spoke, holding out her hand to shake, “Are you auditioning for Carrie?”

You smiled at her question, “No.”

Julie went to answer before the glance at her watch, startled her barely getting a goodbye out before she was rushing out the door. You went back to drying your hands before heading to the room Kenny had messaged you about. It was a large room with people sitting at tables and four people on stage. All in a circle speaking quietly, you took the opportunity to settle beside Kenny and your three band members.

“Hey Kenny.” You murmured turning to the man, the myth, legend Kenny Ortega himself. The man beamed at you as he had not seen you in months due to touring.

“Y/N! Sweetheart.” Kenny spoke, taking in the differences, the bags under your eyes gone from the last time he had a video call, “You look stunning as usual.”

You chuckled at his compliment, feeling he was right; sleep was definitely better when not on a travelling bus. Late nights now found at the recording studio with the band and less stress on being hounded by fans.

“So, what do you want us to do?” You questioned glancing at the quartet on the stage each keeping their attention on each other, “Who are they?”

Kenny glanced at his colleagues ready for the day to start, “This the first time they will be performing on the stage as the band. They don’t know yet. As being their age, I’d like you to show them the dynamic we’re looking for.”

You nodded along with Lachlan, Brad and Jay. Kenny’s happy smile directed you guys for a second before turning to the stage. Huddling with your bandmates, you started throwing out song choices, one the most challenging things.

“Okay. Before we have you sing Bright, I convinced my niece to join us while they are off touring.” Kenny told the actors gesturing to the band in a huddle unbothered at the lack of listening, “Okay.”

Turning as Kenny’s voice centred towards you, the people on the stage caught sight of you all; Madison’s eyes grew. She adored your music, and not recognizing you in the bathroom, burnt her. The other guys were less familiar with the band other than Owen who knew them through Madison and Savannah.

“This is my niece Y/N along with her band members Lachlan, Brad and Jay. Tarnished Poets this is candidates for the show Charlie, Jeremy, Owen and Madison.” Kenny gestured to the two separate groups who quickly switched.

With a vast amount of experience, the small stage revamped itself with the band’s personal instruments. People held to move the stage drums to replace with Brad’s drums behind the clear plastic with quick succession as the remaining members took their places.

Your dark wash jean jacket tossed to the side of the stage mere seconds before Lachlan’s fingers started the song off with shredding on his baby pink guitar. The room melted away from your mind as the four got lost in the music.

You got the nerve to come and say 

That you’re not standing in my way

When we both know

Eyes closed you moved to the fast beats feeling on the top of the world as if nothing would knock you down.

The room was quiet aside from the music enthralling the occupants as this band shocked everyone but Madison and Kenny. This was precisely how Kenny envisioned Julie and the band would be like as the room burst into noise as if it was a concert. The stage was electrifying, and the actors couldn’t sit still with big smiles and bodies moving to the beat.

Well I’ve had high hopes up til now

 And I was kinda hoping. 

 You could be my hero

 You could be my hero

At the lull, in words, the guitars and the drums wove through the room as you flipped your hair side to side concealing the expression. The music brought a feeling euphoria to you as it always had because nothing made you feel as alive.

You never stayed in one place when you weren’t cupping the microphone singing you jammed with the others. Cleaning removing the mic from the stand you move to face Brad through the clear screen with a grin. A smooth practised twirl you found yourself by the bassist Jay delving into the lyrics once more.

You can’t take it back

With all, I’ve tried 

And I know that you can’t shape me

Moving back in fluid motion Lachlan and you switched places across the stage from Jay. Lachlan began his solo ending just as you circled back to your original positions. Everyone had watched Lachlan they missed your microphone being replaced in the stand.

As the song came to an end, you ended the last note bending to the side with the stand, every member leaning over to the floor. The guitar notes faded as the room burst into applause.

“This is what I want the band to be like!” Kenny called moving to the stage you hug you, “I knew I chose the right people. Did you see how they commanded the stage? They used the entirety, exploding with energy.”

Charlie’s jaw was dropped at how great the band was, they transformed the room into a concert, and you were damn good. Owen reached over and gently pushed Charlie’s jaw back up without looking; this move alone gave Kenny insight into the dynamic between the actors.

“Can you all come up here?” You asked the four actors moving aside for them as they stationed themselves you all wandered around, “Naturally you’ve all equally spaced yourselves out. That’s good because you understand you need space to rock out, but it comes with a negative.”

Lachlan stepped forth his accent, bringing the group to surprise, “But don’t stay in the box you’ve created. The stage is yours. You’re a band so interact.”

“Don’t play the music. Become the music you play, Luke doesn’t just love music. It’s in his blood and part of his soul.” You finished squeezing the arm of Charlie, eyes fractionally widening at the solid muscle. Charlie’s eyes glued to your eyes he didn’t notice as you gently pushed the white guitar into his chest.

“Show us Luke’s bond with music.” You softly spoke, backing away from the Canadian male turning on your heel to sit with Kenny again.

Your eyes couldn’t help but return to the male with the cut off shirt, and his hair pushed up out of his face. Suspenders connected to his jeans rolled above the brown boots. Your lips parted as Madison introduced the group.

“Hi, we’re Julie and the Phantoms I hope you enjoy.” The girl spoke before the group transformed in front of the group. They were no longer actors hoping for roles, but they became the characters they desired to play.

Charlie melted into the character of Luke with ease; it was beautiful and poetic. What they didn’t know was that they were, in fact, the band.

As the music died down, you relaxed into the chair as Kenny cheered with his hands high in the air with the entire room as they bowed. Kenny’s teasing grin glanced back as he approached the stairs to the huddled youth.

“I don’t know. Can we?” Kenny spoke to the audience amused with the anticipation of the stage.

“Do it!” You called out with a grin along with the rest of Tarnished Poets keeping your eyes on Charlie. His energy intrigued you incredibly.

“Yeah you are our band.” Kenny announced changing the lives of the official cast forever. The quartet exclaimed in response clutching each other close as if they had been friends for years instead of months.

Charlie’s grin fluttered your heart as you leaned back, watching the excited group knowing you would be watching the show when it came out.

 The summer breeze was serene in the quiet area outside of the beautiful city of Vancouver, Canada where filming had commenced. Scheduling was perfect with the members of Tarnished Poets breaking off for the break. Lachlan returned to his family in Perth, Australia while Brad and Jay decided on a road trip in their home state.

You had accompanied Kenny to Canada for the first part of filming moving into a small house near the set. The home quickly became the hub of the cast with the close proximation to filming, you had even given Charlie the spare key. You two incredibly close.

“So, this is where you disappear to.” The teasing voice came from behind you. Glancing over your shoulder, you met the gaze of Charlie’s hazel eyes.

He moved through the meadow to the tree you found shade under with your guitar nearby. You always had a feeling the adventurous guy would find the trail to the meadow you frequented. His forest green shirt bringing out the green of his eyes that you adored. As if you were a character in a Tumblr story, you fell for him and wondered if he felt the same.

“Sometimes I need to leave the city. I spent too much time in them.” You spoke, closing the notebook of the song you were working on. It wasn’t one you planned on using for Tarnished Poets, but instead something you hesitated on showing Kenny.

 “I didn’t know you could play the guitar.” Charlie softly spoke gently, stroked the neck of the well-used guitar. Passed down from your mom who loved playing at cafes in her teens and into her early 20s.

“Probably because we perform with electric more often. Plus, I like doing vocals.” You spoke shuffling to face him, “So it took you over a month to find this meadow.”

Charlie chuckled glancing at the notebook with interest. He always wanted to know more about you from the moment he saw you.

“What are you working on?” He questioned slowly grasping the notebook in his hand. Usually, you would be shy and letting someone see an unfinished song. Still, something about Charlie never made you feel nervous.

“A song about regret over hurting someone.” You softly replied, moving to bring your knees into your chest thinking about one of the final devasting moments, “I’m kinda the female counterpart of Luke. I grew up in a small town where people had reliable jobs. I always loved music. My mom taught me to play the guitar.”

“Yeah?” Charlie smiled, wondering what a kid version of you would have been like. Your eyes raised to meet his.

“Her dream was to make a living out of her music, and she got rejected. A lot. I think she lost a part of herself when she gave up for a secure, stable job as an accountant. Didn’t mean she didn’t still love to play, so she taught me how to play as a hobby.”

“But you loved it like she did.” Charlie breathed picking up where the story would be going so he gently took your hand in his; something not unusual with you two.

“I posted videos of covers on YouTube and Lachlan saw it. He had moved to America to make his dream and closely, our band came together. We did some gigs around my hometown even making the long trips to the city.” You reminisced on the times where you were an underground band with a small following. Things went sour when you hit more immense success, “We had the opportunity for our music, and at eighteen we took it.”

Slowly you leaned into the body of Charlie relaxing as his arms encompassed you in a feeling of safety and warmth. His fingers tangling in your hair as he focused on your story.

“My parents found out, and Mom just exploded. We both said cruel things, and I left that night. We played gigs constantly, so I always pushed back, making up with her. Six months into the move, she got into a car accident.” You sighed nestling further into Charlie, “I wrote that song, but I couldn’t even finish it, but with Luke’s storyline, I think it would be perfect. I’m polishing it up to present to Kenny.”

“What’s it called?” He inquired, smiling as you shifted to lean your back against his chest to cradle the guitar in your lap.

“Unsaid Emily. My mom’s name is Emily.” Your words nearly buried under the soft notes from the guitar. Your lips opened to sing, but you didn’t have to. Charlie started it.

The emotion was raw in the air as the power in his voice brought you to tears, unable to do more than strum the guitar and harmonizing at one point. It was like Unsaid Emily was made for Charlie to sing. At that moment you knew, this was the song Luke needed to do for his mom in the show; however, it could be incorporated.

Overcome with an emotion you pushed to your knees to cup his cheeks as he trailed off the last word. The guitar keeping you from pressing your chests together to kiss you poured your feelings in the kiss. A kiss he returned with gusto.

“Whoa.” Charlie breathed, keeping his forehead connected to yours smiling as your eyelashes tickled his cheeks. Calloused fingers set the guitar aside as he tugged you into his chest as his lips drew closer.

Your lips parted as a tingle overtook your whole body as he lips caressed yours soft lightly you thought you imagined it. His mouth claimed yours in what might be the most passionate one you’ve ever had. Pulling away, you became aware your hands had flipped under his shirt with knowing.

“Thank you.” You spoke softly looking up through your eyelashes at the guy the grew as important as the band.

Charlie’s cheeks painted a soft pink set off by the hypnotizing brown of his hazel gaze as if you were his whole world. His eyes scanning all your features from the small scar in your hairline thanks to a table edge at six years old.

 “For what?”

“Being you.” You replied tugging fists full of the green shirt to silence her thoughts with another fervent meeting. Yours arm coming to encircle his neck as his hands copied the move on your waist. Sitting on knees time slowed in the toe-curling kiss, he pulled away once more.

 “I could kiss you forever, and it still wouldn’t be long enough.” Charlie spoke, keeping his eyes closed as his fingers pinched his skin. This was what he dreamed of, being able to hold you more than a few seconds of an embrace.

“How is this going to work? My band goes on tour when you’re at the end of filming.” You questioned nestling into his arms again. The future was scary when you both were incredibly busy with the upcoming months.

“I’ll fly over for a few weeks. See you in action.” He chuckled, pushing you away to stand up, “How about we start with dinner first?”

It seemed the universe took pity on a young couple when Charlie took you home to his family to meet. His parents and siblings being the only ones aware of the relationship. Tour came and went with Charlie, using the time before promoting JATP, attended before you flew back to Canada with him.

Being with Charlie was like breathing, necessary and beautiful. You got along with his family as he did with yours. It was remarkable how interconnected you became together in the months committed to the relationship.

“Hey.” Charlie spoke, kissing your cheek in your private home you were renting in the country of Canada. When whispers of the pandemic came around, you had flown from the house you rented in LA with a friend to home.

Charlie had had the same idea to return home to his parents’ home while you settled into a house further away from other people. Charlie walked the distance to your place, and when lockdown came into effect, the decision was, he would stay with you.

“Well hello.” You cheekily responded, resting your fingers on the sleep flush of his cheeks as the glazed look faded.

 Charlie straight out of sleep was by far your favourite version of him with the genuine and raw unguarded emotions he displayed. In the nine months together, you had fallen for him swifter than Swiper from Dora could take items. Completely reciprocated on his side.

“You look happy.” Charlie murmured tracing the path from your temple to the corner of your mouth. The boy with messy hair, he had started growing it out after Julie, and the Phantoms wrapped.

“I am.” You softly spoke, shifting closer to him, “I’ve never been happier than I am tucked away from the world in your arms.”

The flush of Charlie’s cheek no longer came from the nap, but from the attention, you placed on the actor. He could feel the love radiating from your heart just by the look in your eyes.

“I’m going to be incredibly cheesy and reply that I am holding my world in my arms.” He expressed leaning over to press his lips against your forehead raptured by the honour he had at loving you.

“The next few days will be hectic.” You articulated running your hands through the thick brown hair focusing solely on his eyes—the building excitement budding within the actor.

Charlie’s lips parted to reply when his phone vibrated on the side table, “One moment. It’s Owen.”

You shifted out of the camera view per the mutual decision to keep the relationship under wraps for the time being. You absolutely knew the show would be a hit and thousand, make that hundreds of thousands, of people, would crush on the character. By keeping the relationship quiet, it would increase the fanbase because some people honestly only care about looks.

“Hey Buddy!” Charlie beamed at his fellow quarantine hair buddy with over 3,000 kilometres between each other.

“Eh! Charlie!” Owen greeted just as excited at his best friend delving into a story of the recent lego build his mom had made.

“So, the show debuts in a few days. How do you feel about it? I’m excited but also nervous. First leading role.”

“I think people will relate to the show. I mean the music is amazing, and the acting wasn’t too shabby.” Owen replied just about to open his mouth when he slammed it shut. His blue eyes narrowed together, picking up on the odd background. He had to lean closer to his phone, “Either I’m suddenly eighty years old or your definitely not at home.”

“W-what?” Charlie scoffed eyes flicking to the surroundings completely forgetting he was in his girlfriend’s home instead of his parents, “I’m at home.”

“No! We’ve chatted so many times I could draw your family’s house blueprint with my eyes closed. That is a bedroom and it ain’t in the Gillespie home.”

Charlie moaned hanging his head, “C’mon buddy. I’m at home.”

“Charles Gillespie, you have sex hair.” Owen deadpanned unamused at the obvious and quite literally horrible dishonesty from the Canadian male. Charlie’s cheeks puffed as he blew air out of his mouth and taking the ‘L’ in the situation.

“One moment.” He spoke, putting his friend on mute and setting the phone down to create a black screen. The entire short conversation you had delved back into the songbook always on your person, “Babe, Owen won’t let it go.”

“Tell him.” You replied gazing over the rim of your glasses with a smirk scarcely visible to your partner. Your full attention returned to scribbling in the book while Charlie inhaled sharply; psyching himself up.

“Okay. I’m seeing someone.” Charlie admitted sending the blonde into screaming having been suspicious. Jeremy’s wife, then girlfriend, had tried setting Charlie up with countless refusals.

“Who is it?”

“Don’t get upset. I’m dating Y/N-“

“-like Y/N from Tarnished Poets? The musician from Bootcamp that completely made us look like toddlers?” Owen demanded gasping as Charlie panned the FaceTime to the girl under the blankets, “Holy shit!”

“I don’t know how I managed to get her date, but it’s the happiest I’ve been.”

“Hey Owen.” You acknowledged the blonde drummer with a shy smile and kind eyes that he had found numerous times on set. He looked up to you along with loving the suggestions and help Brad gave him on the drums.

“How long have you been together?” Wondered Owen with the cute little smile you found endearing. You felt happy that it was Owen that had pieced it together.

“Going on ten months now-“

“-and I’m only just now finding out!” Owen exploded jittery in his seat at the pairing he had wanted to get together since the unbreakable gaze multiple times on set, “God I love the world!”

“Just don’t tell anyone, okay? We want to keep this private; you wouldn’t have been told had you not figured it out.”

“More like hounded it.” Charlie muttered under his breath, slinking his arm around your shoulders as his right hand held his phone. You slapped the bare chest of the love of your life heart fluttering at the solid muscle as it always did, “We need to get together as soon as we can.”

“I’m so done. There’s nothing to do in Oklahoma man. So that photo from Tarnished Poet’s European tour was real?” Owen recalled the picture that had crossed his Instagram For You page a few months prior.

“Yeah. I flew over for two weeks having the best time watching my girl kill it on the stage, they destroyed the stage each performance.” Charlie gushed unable to hold himself from frantically telling Owen about you unfazed by your presence.

“Why am I so single!” Owen groaned flinging his head back, “Is it the whole living with my parents at twenty? Am I not established enough?”

“Nah, you’re just too boring.” Charlie quipped thankful he was out of reach of the taller boy earning a laugh from his side. Owen snickered with a quick retort to his fellow actor.

“Well I’d stay and chat, but my phone is at 10%, and I’m too lazy to find my charger.” Owen started waving as he hung up on Charlie without waiting for a reply.

Your lips twitched that the profanity that fell from your boyfriend’s lips at the abrupt end of the call. Owen was like that in the end, living in the moment to an extent. Charlie turned on his side to tug you into his side, uncaring of your task.

“You’ve slept enough.” You chortled at the clinging boyfriend you had.

“Do you think we should tell the cast? Owen will be bursting with the secret if we don’t” queried Charlie pining his gaze on the steadily flushing cheeks with a fondness, “They wouldn’t tell. I really want to brag about my hot rocker girlfriend.”

Your hand dropped the notebook to play with his hair, “We’ll just keep the relationship to close friends and our family.”

Too bad you didn’t place a bet with Charlie because two hours after the convo with Owen your phones harmonized together. Your iPhone showing Carolynn’s cute selfie while Jeremy called Charlie.

“You’re dating Charlie!” Carolynn practically screamed into the phone, completely excited, “Owen told Jeremy, and I have wife privileges.”

“Dude! How long?”

“Near ten months.”

“Damn, we missed so many chances for double dates, but hey now I know who you kept sneaking into the apartment. Not like the smug smirk, the next day and her stiff walking didn’t speak for itself.”

“Jer!” Charlie called out mortified yet also proud that you couldn’t walk the night after. Your reaction was to Jer’s blunt statement was to bury your face in Charlie’s neck, concealing the deep blush.

The two couples conversed a couple more hours before ending in the evening for food. The same routine would continue for the next few days with alternating between the cast. The day Julie and the Phantoms dropped on Netflix, you binged it. The acting was insane and the storyline paired with the songs? Beautiful.

The issue came when Episode 8 came with the tsunami of emotions as Luke shattered himself singing Unsaid Emily.

“Oh my god.” You sniffled shakily cupping your damp cheeks in your hands, “It hurts. He’s having this cathartic release while agonizing himself. His parents can hear him singing the song.”

Charlie tugged you into his side equally moved from the cinematic beauty Kenny’s team had done. Unsaid Emily was the most emotional piece of music you had ever written in your career; Kenny had fallen in love with it. His genius mind recreating the scene of Luke singing and changing his mother’s name to Emily.

“Sh.” Charlie soothed in your ear, rubbing circles on the small of your back crying along with you, “It’s just a show.”

“Where in the hell did you pull off that level of regretful sadness? Who hurt you.” You replied, breathing shakily as the scene. Your eyes still tearing up as Emily finally got a little peace back after losing her son twenty-five years in the past.

“I took inspiration from your story, and I watched a video with a bunch of people describing the last moment with their loved ones. Add some sad music and missing my family…well this happened.” Charlie explained gently pushing your hands away to wipe your damp cheeks in a soft smile, “You created the song. It’s your work that moved so many people.”

“I provided words and a melody. You provided emotion and bridge between Luke and the audience.” You retorted leaning closer to the Canadian boy so very much in love with him.

Charlie pressed another kiss to your forehead as you tried to pull yourself together but watching Luke and Julie try to touch? That shattered you even more. Luke deserved a hug, and he can’t even get one from his crush? Extremely tragic.

“Maybe we should write a song together.” Charlie suggested quirking up one eyebrow as his green eyes spoke volumes on his feelings no words could ever match. His long fingers playing your digits.

“I have a better idea.” You grinned, “I know season two hasn’t been confirmed but what if Jer, Owen, you and Mads write songs for the band? Give an authentic aspect to your characters and band. Do it together, in pairs and alone.” You breathed straddling him to ensure you had his full attention at the suggestion that lit a light in his eyes.

“You must be on to something.” Charlie acknowledged removing his phone from his pocket to use the group chat. In a few minutes, he had exciting suggestions for the song ideas, “I love you.”

“Love you too.” You replied, sitting back as he continued planning both via the group chat and FaceTime with the others.

Kenny was a genius both on screen and at matchmaking. As evidenced with Charlie and Kenny’s niece.

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#charlie gillespie imagines #charlie gillespie fanfiction #charlie gillespie x reader #charlie gillespie imagine #charlie gillespie #jatp fanfic #luke patterson imagines #caitsy and ash productions

[callmemythicalminx]

Wonderin’ What If - Sam Trapani x Reader

Fandom: Mafia Definitive Edition

Warnings: Mild language, that’s about it. 

Summary: Morello is finally dead and the family are celebrating. You and Sam have been in a relationship for a while now, but he wants to keep it secret to protect you. You expect to celebrate the end of the gang war without your man, but Sam has other ideas...

A/N: Surpise 1! Yayyyyy! I know Paulie is next, but I like to balance out my works between smut and fluff, so here’s a little Sam fic to brighten your day! The other surprise will come a little later...  👀👀👀

Dedicated to: @kaiiiiiiparkerismyhusband @lolita-wolfson@mayday1284 @xxsamanthaxx @kneelingforvillains @loutino20@levitate-gengar @dorothynerding ​ @blackbladevika ​ @my-blog-for-me ​ @rammstein-obsession ​ @octorebel @demonsouthere

The atmosphere is positively electric tonight at Salieri’s. It’s a far cry from what it was like this morning when the order was finally made to kill Morello. Everyone was stressed, worried of what was to come, but now there’s smiles all round, booze flowing and music in the air. You and Sarah had got to decorating out back behind the bar as soon as you heard word from your brother Paulie that the job had been finished. In a few short hours, the area had been transformed into a lively party space, ready for a grand celebration. There were fairy lights hanging, creating a cocoon of warmth with the fires lit around the space. There were tables and chairs scattered everywhere, filled with drinks and a banquet of food. 

The whole family is gathered, laughing, dancing and getting drunk. You stand off to the side, leaning against the wall of the garage waiting for Ralphie to come out. When this war started, you promised him a dance if you made it this far, so now you’re all too happy to pay up. He emerges, all smiles, and you beam back at him. You grab his hand and practically drag him to the makeshift dance floor you created earlier, happily laughing when Ralph holds your hands and begins dancing in exaggerated steps. The melody of your happiness joins in chorus with the rest of the family’s joyous celebrations. 

You’re too occupied in your happiness to feel the gaze of the man standing against the wall in the corner, smoking amidst the shadows. The steel grey eyes of the man you adore so much look at you with warmth, a slight crack through his usually stoic expression. You’d blush if you knew he was looking at you in such a way, but as you twirl around the dance floor, your cheeks already bloom red. When you laugh again, the noise echoing through the courtyard, you have no idea just how sweet it sounds in the man’s ears. As he stands there watching you, he wishes he were the one twirling you, making you laugh in front of his family, instead of only in secret back at his apartment. He wants to kiss you in public, hold you close when he walks you home after working late at the bar. If he wasn’t so afraid of losing you, he’d take you into his arms right now and kiss you in front of everyone. 

“You’re drooling Sam.” The man in question whips his head towards the sudden noise, glaring when he sees Paulie standing there smirking. 

“Fuck off Paulie.” He says it with anger in his voice, but his best friend can read him like an open book. He leans closer to Sam, wiggling his eyebrows as he laughs drunkenly. 

“Don’t go acting all defensive now pal! I ain’t blind! I know there’s something goin’ on between you and my sister. For fuck sake, you standing here watching her for the past ten minutes is proof enough.” Sam’s head shoots back, eyeing Paulie with annoyance but he can’t argue- he knows he’s been caught red handed. Instead, he looks down, taking a large puff of his cigarette. 

When a large hand falls roughly onto his shoulder, breaking him from his reverie, Sam looks up to see Paulie leaning against him. 

"I don't mind you being with her if that's what you're worried about. I know she's gonna be well looked after with you." 

He sighs. "Paulie, buddy. You're drunk. You won't rem-" 

"Shhhhh!" Paulie's finger smacks against his best friend's lips, shutting him up while nearly poking him in the eye at the same time. Sam smacks his hand away, but can't help letting a small smile appear at his friend's drunk antics. "She's crazy about you Sam, I can see it in the way she looks at you like your her whole fucking world!" 

Paulie shakes Sam as he speaks, pushing more of his weight onto his friend. The sober of the two grunts from the weight, a small breathless laugh bubbling from his throat. Still though, Sam doesn't say anything. 

Paulie sighs. "I know you're worried about losing her. It's fucking wearing me out too knowing everytime I leave for a job, I might never see my sister again. If she makes you happy though pal," he pats Sam's shoulder gently, " it’s better to love her properly now than spend the rest of your life living in the shadows, wonderin’ what if.”

Sam looks up at you, now sharing a drink and some laughs with Tommy and Sarah. His heart clenches when he sees you look between the couple, your face going sad for a second when you watch them hold each other close. 

"I love her Paulie. It fuckin' scares me how much I care for her." He looks at his friend, clearly showing the battle raging in his eyes. Is he selfish enough to keep their relationship private, just so he can keep from worrying? Or should he show just how much he cares for you in front of everyone, so that you can finally be truly happy? Paulie recognises the pain in his friend’s eyes and clasps Sam around the neck, pulling his face towards his. He shakes his best friend slightly as he grates "Go get her pal. Make my sister happy." The two embrace with one of those manly hugs, slapping each other on the back. 

"Thanks Paulie." He pats him on the shoulder. After a smile of encouragement from him, Sam throws his cigarette to the ground and makes his way towards you. 

---

You're smiling at Tommy and Sarah slowly dancing when you suddenly feel a comforting presence at your back. You look behind you to see those pale grey eyes you love so much looking down at you with an unreadable yet warm expression. 

"Will you dance with me Y/N?" he holds his hand out for you to take. You hesitate at first, trying to figure out what’s going on in his mind, then take his hand, letting him lead you to the dance floor. The eyes of everyone seem to follow you, surprised not only that Sam is partaking in the celebration, but that he’s going to dance with you. Even Tommy looks surprised when you both stop beside him. 

Sam gently takes you into his arms, beginning to rock gently. You lay your hands on his shoulder and upper arms, caressing him as discreetly as you can. 

“Sam I-I don’t understand what’s happening. Why are you dancing with me?” You whisper it between you, your voice breathless. The combination of being this close to Sam in general, nevermind in front of your family, is making you feel weak at the knees. You distinctly wonder for a moment where your brother is and what he thinks about this, but then you’re twirling. 

You spin back into Sam’s arms, to find him looking down at you with a small smile. “I wanted to celebrate with my girl.” Your eyes squint in confusion again, but he offers no other response. 

“I want to celebrate with you too. But-but what about keeping us a secret? Everyone is looking at us, they’re gonna suspect something!” 

"I know. I want them too. I want them to know you're my girl.” Then his lips are on yours, effectively cutting off your gasp of shock. You stay stock still for a second, letting the shock wear through, then melt into Sam, turning your head so he can deepen the kiss. His arms wrap around you tighter and you can’t stop the giddy feeling that explodes in your body. You smile against his lips. 

"Fucking finally! Tommy you owe me 100 bucks!" Paulie yells from one of the tables, breaking you and Sam apart. You look towards your brother, seeing him smiling smugly while Tom and Sarah stand frozen, staring at you with their mouths open. The rest of the family look at you in pretty much the same way until Vinny whistles, cheering too. You laugh, tucking your face into Sam's neck. He hugs you close, letting out a throaty laugh himself. 

As you continue to dance with your man, this time your heart full with the love of your family around you, you can’t help smiling up at him like you’ve just become queen of the world. You never thought you’d be able to be with Sam this way, away from the confines of his apartment. In your heart, you know he’s scared of losing you. But as he looks down at you now, happier than he’s ever been in his entire life, you know he’s willing to do anything to keep you in his arms forever. 

---

Thanks for reading minxies! I can’t wait to reveal the suprise!

(Unedited)

#mafia remake #mafia 1 #mafia definitive edition #mafia #sam trapani #sam trapani x reader #paulie lombardo #tommy angelo #writtenbyme #SamHoes

[ourladyofomega]

Summer of 2006. I waited to take the trip to Philadelphia for a month to see Sleater-Kinney since my former ‘friend’ and fellow DJ D-Klein offered tickets for people to go with him. We had no idea who else would be playing up until then. With us was Elizabeth, D-Klein’’s friend and a huge Sleater-Kinney fan. And off we went to Philadelphia in a sweltering partly cloudy 95* day.

We travel through Coney Island when out of nowhere D-Klein and Elizabeth decide to stop at Astroland to ride the Cyclone. It put the trip on pause like a video game to take a spontaneous time out. But they enjoyed themselves, and why not? I wasn’t going to keep them.

We then drive through the Verrazano Bridge, then Staten Island and through New Jersey. I see all the industrial areas, petrol-storage facilities, the many rest stops, restaurants, and Sunocos lining the New Jersey Turnpike. Last time I checked, the Sunocos averaged no more than $3.05 a gallon. The music played nothing but, you guessed it, Sleater-Kinney, a taste to what to expect. So Olympian, so Kill Rock Stars. Also on the player was D-Klein spinning almost the ntire X-Ray Spex CD as well. We finally arrive in the Philadelphia outskirts at around 6:30 PM and shortly thereafter we cut through Chinatown. I didn’t know Philadelphia even had a Chinatown, but the three of us riding around assumed this was where we would go for some sushi.

Eventually we drive past the venue and see the young Philadelphia hipsters do nothing but stand in line waiting for the show to start and others walking the Philly streets towards the venue as well. We park in front of the bistros and tables and chairs set up on the sidewalks of Philly. At this point we still had no idea who else was playing other than Sleater-Kinney.

We choose Swanky Bubbles, a champagne and sushi bar. For a small eatery it was pretty neat with well-lit ambience and matching low-volume music to go with it. Me, D-Klein, and Elizabeth sit down and talk about the difference between the Philadelphia and Long Island punk scenes, some college student economics, party appearances, and other fine places to eat over our sushi dinner. We order between us wasabi mashed potatoes, a lychee drink, six spears of buttered asparagus salted with parmesan cheese, and sushi rolls such as California, Tuna, Philly, Spider Leg, Time Bomb, and Double Dragon (wasn’t that a video game?); and for dessert, a crispy Thailand banana split. $110.00 was the bill. Sold.

We walk back to the venue and the valet parking guy allowed us to park right in front of the entrance. It was now Club Polaris, formerly the Starlight Ballroom. We get there and find people with extra tickets to give away or sell. In the meantime, we hang out with the organizer of the venue. D-Klein was talking to him about the past shows of yester-years and decades ago. The promoter informs us that Clear Channel was trying to buy out both their venue and Philly scene. It’s depressing to think that Clear Channel would buy out the punk, indie-rock, and hardcore kids and tell them to fuck off so that Clear Channel can put their clean, polished, packaged industry acts in there, with no other outlets for these kids to go who call the streets their own. How we thought that pretty soon, the scene could implode with nowhere to go and be swallowed up into nothing. Where else would we go but further down?

It was when we stand in front of the Polaris waiting to get in that we heard music from inside the venue. We all finally find out to our surprise from the organizer the band was sharing the bill with Sleater-Kinney:

…The Roger Sisters.

Me and D-Klein were floored and it was then we knew that a great show was already going to become even greater.

We go in and this truly was the scene the magazines always talked about. Guys dressing hardcore, some moppy, some Napolean Dynamite cartoonish, and some slim t-shirts. The girls were pretty cute as well with their art-school haircuts, skirts, funny tees, piercings, and either Olympia-type or Williamsburg-type super-feminist style. Imagine makeoutclub ever having a meeting center.

Polaris was dark and crowded. All around us were many bars to get beer. There were many booths where kids sat around and mostly in groups drinking beers and water. (Remember, this was during a heat-wave. The Eastern board was hit with 90 degree-plus weather with lots of humidity). Some were quiet, arms crossed and minding their own. Others were very delighted to see each other and were greeted with hugs and kisses. We witnessed a couple of lesbians making out as well. And you had to give it to one fan who came to the show in a wheelchair.

The ballroom, as expected, was huge with lots of standing space. When the three of us got there, the front of the standing room was taken up but we managed to make our way about ten feet from the speakers, with a very lucky few who took a spot standing right under the vent. We had a good view to see the Rogers Sisters perform. Miyuki Furtado (bass / vocals) dedicated a song to Spiro Agnew, but took it back and later dedicated it to Condoleezza Rice. Jennifer Rogers (vocals / guitar) applied her lip gloss to prepare for the end of their set. Miyuki whipped himself around in a frenzy, performing sonic guitar tricks and creating feedback for all of us. We literally see the sweat and mist come off of his forehead. Laura Rogers (drums / vocals) whipped herself into a frenzy, too. The set lasted only 45 minutes but it was a good set. As we didn’t even know that the Rogers Sisters would play, it was no loss and all gain. Everyone wins.

The three of us hit the merchandise tables. I score Sleater-Kinney’s self-titled CD for $15.00 and I wanted to get some Rogers Sisters stuff but no one was at the tables yet. We sit around taking in all this humidity and heat observing the scene for a little bit more before we hit the merch- tables again where Miyuki and Laura finally set shop. A d.i.y. ethic. For $7.00 I grabbed three 7” singles from the Sisters who came off as very nice and gracious people. Elizabeth scores a Roger Sisters CD and matching Sleater-Kinney tees for her and her friend.

What hooked me to the Rogers Sisters was that I discovered them on WUSB’s Riot Grrrl Plus show in Summer 2003 and happened to record “I’m A Ballerina” on tape. And every chance I had I aimed to play them on the air. Why not? I figured people can be art-smart from getting into them. Bonus.

Sleater-Kinney finally came to play for a good 90 minutes. I believe D-Klein’s life has now culminated into this one night: he’s a huge fan who never had failed to play them on his show on a consistent basis (and he’s known to do that with Sonic Youth as well). Without him he wouldn’t have made this attempt to see them one last time.

One last time? Yes, Sleater-Kinney would finally call it quits after eleven years of making Kill Rock Stars a lot of money. This was their last tour and The Woods was their final record. They had to go out with style big time.

They came on and it was deafening. These ladies knew how to rock. Listen to the way they sound as theirs was rivaled by no other. Mid-set, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker faced off and play their guitars towards each other and it was amazing. I was taken over. For 90 minutes I was trying to follow and absorb everything that Sleater-Kinney performed. Janet throws drumsticks and Carrie shakes out water bottles at the crowd to cool themdown. Fans screamed for them to keep going, not to go. They really loved this band that truly represented the indie-rock crowd and grrrls / femmes in general. One guy even ran on stage and urged the crowd to get ready to catch him up as he was about to stage-dive. He jumps off and instead lands on his feet. Sorry, Charlie. It’s not how it goes here at a Sleater-Kinney show.

After a while, they walk off-stage and fans just did not want to get it, so they stand there cheering and clapping heavily for five minutes more. And yes, they came back to play a few more songs, some off of The Woods. And that’s all she wrote in Philadelphia. An extended ovation as one-by-one Sleater-Kinney walks off-stage and acknowledge their fans with handshakes and smiles.

I don’t know about D-Klein or Elizabeth, but my head was about to explode. Throbbing. My entire body dripping of sweat, my shirt damp from the humidity. We leave Polaris and start driving home, a very exhausting three-hour drive compounded by listening to more Sleater-Kinney, X-Ray Spex and now The Rogers Sisters, taking home a still-pounding headache and wonderful memories from the last day of July that year.

#omega #our lady omega #grrl #riot grrl #hipster #Sleater-Kinney #personal #Philadelphia #Rogers Sisters #Janet Weiss #Carrie Brownstein #Corin Tucke #Laura Rogers #Jennifer Rogers #Miyuki Furtado

[perseusjackson-jasongrace]

His Blood Runs Gold V

Percy is a God: Part V

Here’s my masterlist for the next part and my other stuff

---------------------------------------------------------

it’s a quality of the gods

to see a creature with its back broken

and be unmoved.

-It’s a Quality of the Gods, Suniti Namjoshi

They raced through the ocean, stopping only briefly when the call of the sea forced Percy to pause, to listen, to aid. Jason would stand back and watch as his friend– his friend– became somehow more powerful and more human.

“Okay, I think that’s the last of the turtles.” He smiled, turning to face the demigod who was already staring.

“You ready to go?”

“Lead the way Jackson.”

A few thousand miles, passed by in a blur of blue and sand, saw them to their destination.

“This is it, 0°00'0.00" N -77°59'18.59" W. The equator.”

Night had fallen but that made no difference this far underwater. Percy drew Riptide, using the glow of the sword to illuminate the space.

“Are you sure?”

The god just gave him a look.

“Sorry, the sea makes me jumpy. I want to get out of here as soon as possible and searching in the wrong place is just going to delay us.”

“Well instead of jabbering let’s get on with it.”

With a nod, Jason drew his own gold sword and started swimming.

“We’re looking for the Arrow of Hate right?”

“Yes prophecy says, ‘Retrieve the arrow of foe but gain a scar’” The demigod recited.

“I seem to remember Annabeth telling me Eros has two arrows, one of lead and one of gold.” He mused.

“So we’re looking for something the colour of charcoal?” Jason mumbled, “Any idea how big?”

“No but I suspect it gives off some real bad vibes if it confers hate.”

“Don’t all godly weapons give off bad vibes?” Blue eyes rolled in exasperation.

Percy just snorted, and turned to a cluster of coral trees, carefully pulling the branches apart to peer in-between.

“You really think it’s gonna be this easy?” He called, using the currents to carry his voice.

“I’m just ignoring the fact that we’ve been here for a full five minutes and nothing has tried to kill us.”

He huffed a laugh, “Let’s hurry this up and keep it that way.”

“Right with you on–“

“Grace?”

“I think I found it!”

Within moments he was by the blonde’s side. Jason pointed to a glinting sliver behind a cluster of rocks.

“Well that looks like a divine object if I ever saw one.” Percy shrugged

Together they swam towards it. Jason wrapped his fingers around a jagged edge and with his other hand reached for the arrow.

An enormous, swamp green eye opened. And then a second, and third, and fourth, fifth, sixth. Too many to count. Eye after horrid, vile eye opened until there were too many to count.

“We really are foolish, aren’t we?” He whispered, letting go of the cold, smooth arrow-shaft, and releasing his grip on the rock. Not a rock. The rugged hide of whatever this thing was.

“Hope really is a fool’s choice.” Percy echoed the sentiment, staring in horror at the beast before them.

“You think we can take it?”

“I don’t think we have a choice, Grace.”

Indeed, they did not, for rising higher, higher, higher than mountains was the monster from a grown man’s nightmares.

“I have not smelt the blood of a god in many moons,” It hissed, “But I still remember the taste.”

“Listen buddy, my mom says I’m sweet and all, but I don’t actually taste like that.” Percy piped up.

“The prodigy of Poseidon. Even down here the currents have whispered your name.” Its voice sounded like the darkest parts of winter. Like the coldest parts of night.

“Truly I’m honoured mister, but I’m just helping my friend. Would you mind if we grab that little arrow from you and then we’ll be on our way?”

All the eyes turned to him, unblinking, curious, hungry.

“I do not see why,” A gaping, rotted mouth curled up, “I should give away a treasure and not get one in return.”

“That arrow does not belong to you,” Jason said.

“Nothing belongs to anyone Son of Jupiter. That is the first thing Lupa should have taught you.”

“How do you–“

“I have been around a very long-time half-blood. I see many things.”

“Don’t think you have much of a choice,” Percy mumbled.

The monster cackled, “I see why the beings of Tartarus do not like you Olympian. You are much too quick in wits for their puny brains to keep up.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying. Thank you!” Percy flung up his arms, “At least someone gets me. Jason, I like this one can we keep it?”

“You can do whatever you want, I just need the arrow.”

“What is your name?” The demigod asked.

Ah so they were going with the distraction tactic.

“I am older than language itself half-blood. You could not pronounce my birthright.” Its glee was the edge of a serrated sword.

Percy inched around, slowly, steadily, and hoped the monster kept all its eyes firmly on Jason.

“You old monsters always tell me that but in the end you all bleed the same.”

With a lunge, as quick and vicious as a snake, the god grabbed the arrow and yanked. In his hands the metal glowed, radiating power– horrible, ancient power.

“Jason I got it, let’s go!”

But when Percy turned to his friend once more, the breath tore from his lungs.

“Let him go.”  That voice was ice, it was death, it was destruction, it was God.

“Or what Son of Poseidon?” The creature sneered, squeezing the demigod just a little tighter between its short, ragged limbs.

Jason gasped, writhing and squirming to get loose. His sword lay far below, a gold speck of light.

“Did you really think your meek attempt at distraction would work? My eyes miss nothing.”

Percy didn’t deign to give it a reply, instead summoning everything within him.

“Let. Him. Go.” It was a final caution, a last chance for surrender.

The creature grinned. Percy erupted.

He slammed ropes of water into the body of the monster, whips that should have blinded those disgusting eyes. The water bounced off, recoiled from the gleam in all those pupils.

The God growled and cleaved a hole in the ocean. Suddenly they were surrounded by nothing. A dome of water hovered over them but not a drop touched their skin.

The monster laughed, “That little trick may have worked on my weak cousin, stupid Ketos, but it will not work on me Percy Jackson. I have survived all manner of life. The oceans were not always so deep.”

“What are you?” He breathed, slamming the sea back together. His anger froze the world around him.

“You are very powerful,” It said, staring at the ice that surrounded them.

“What are you?” The god repeated, and it was savagery that glittered in his ocean eyes.

“I am your worst nightmare.” That sickening smile again.

Jason had stopped moving. They noticed at the same time, turning to look at the demigod. He was limp, golden skin leeched of colour, electric blue eyes closed, closed, closed.

“The poison must have worked.”

Percy looked up, looked straight into the monster, “The what?”

“Oh, you did not know?” It taunted, “My skin is poison, blessed by the goddess of misery herself. It protects my eyes. It has been very useful these long years.”

He had tasted fear like a metallic tinge coating his tongue. He had felt anger like lava under his skin. He had even experienced true sadness like a greyed canvas of life. But never, never had he felt the complete lack of emotions. The world was so quiet. So dull, muted. There was nothing. There was no-one.

“Do not worry Son of Poseidon, your friend has lived a good life.”

He smiled. The monster did not smile back.

“You keep calling me that,” The God said, “But you do not remember who Poseidon is, what he can do.”

A thousand eyes blinked. Widened at the gleam in his own sea-green eyes. Percy Jackson slammed his hands onto the rock-made skin and laughed.

For a split second there was a complete absence of sound, and then… BOOM. The Son of Poseidon started an earthquake.

The monster screamed; its body split, cracked, exploded. The roar of pain and despair was music to the god’s ears. He grinned, wicked and wild as pieces of shrapnel ripped off it, as they pierced everything, drawing foul black blood.

And when all that was left of the creature was dust and debris, Percy willed the ocean to scatter the remains.

Everything came back into sharp focus all at once. Jason. A broken noise escaped him as he dove for the unmoving body on the ocean floor.

It didn’t matter.

Jason Grace was dead.

The roar the god let loose, could be heard from the heavens.

It was not grief. It was a warning.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please don’t hate me?!?!?!?!?!??!?

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#percy jackson is a god #percy jackson #percy #jackson #his blood runs gold #part V #PJO #HOO #dark percy #jercy #jercy fanfic #percy jackson fanfic #PJO fanfic #baby fanfic #baby fanfic series #mini fanfic #mini fanfiction #ason grace #jason #grace #baby fanfiction #PJSSG fanfic #PJSSG series

[solarsmith49]

First Entry

So I figured I should have a preface/background post before I jump into sharing my writing lol, be warned this is kinda sappy but necessary haha.  I’m going to focus on writing for Creatus Annus; I got back into watching Mark’s channel during the initial March lockdowns after being away for a couple years, and from there into Ethan’s channel and Unus Annus.  I relate so much to Ethan in the brutally honest video talking about how he’s felt aimless and drifting the last few years, because that’s exactly how I felt for a long time- I started 2020 unemployed, no money, no direction, with seemingly no passion or drive to really get out and /live/ instead of just existing.  In April I had a breakdown, and I realized I had to get myself and my life together while I still could because it really did seem like the world was burning down (thanks covid!) and if I didn’t do it now then there wouldn’t be another chance.  I was able to mentally get myself together, and I did find another job in May (which has been a godsend).  And at about the same time as I got hired, I found Mark’s vlog talking about his surgeries and the post-op pain medicine screwup that almost killed him.   I closed my laptop and cried after that, because it was exactly what I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it, by the right person I needed to hear it from.  Because I realized it described me perfectly, not acting on my potential and (even worse) not feeling the /need/ to do so.  So I took a long look at myself, and this essay below is the first thing I wrote after watching the video, exploring my complete love of space and /why/ it drives me in the way it does.  I think it fits the whole message of Unus Annus, and what we’re trying to do here with Creatus Annus, trying to give our own answers to why our lives and our art matters.  Space colors all of my poems (as you’ll see later haha), as well as the creative tension I have from my religious and spiritual background (I was raised Catholic, and still am to a degree, but my personal beliefs range all over the place and the relationship and dialogue I have with God/the Divine and what it means to Create Things is a major theme with space).  So, here’s my first entry for the project; I’m going to write my general ideas for specifically what I want to do in the ideas thread later, but enjoy the essay - I think you guys will like it.

Even until just a few days ago, I didn’t think I had any life passions, or at least, any passions that mattered.  I have hobbies, sure - gaming, crafting, reading, general learning - but I never thought much of them because I didn’t see how I could use them or even if I should bother trying to make anything of them.  Certainly I didn’t think I had any interest that moved me enough to devote a life’s pursuit ot it - but that was another self life, perhaps the greatest, one born from a mix of complacency, lack of faith in myself, and a fear of really facing what truly honestly drives me and the action that that would demand.  The change that that would demand.  Because I do have a passion, and I love it in a general sense, learning about it and following it casually.  But it's also something I turn to in dark hours, something that resparks me when I’m tired, that keeps me going and holds my faith and sustains me when everything else fails - family, friends, my job prospects, failing health, chaos in the larger world, evil in the larger world, even when my belief in the Church burns down and God as seen through the “Catholic” lens seems distant and irrelevant.  Something that I adore with every fiber of my being and in the core of my very soul.  That something is space: the stars and galaxies and their natural functions and processes, but also in particular the space program and what it says about human nature and our relation to the wider universe and ultimately to God himself.

I believe the human endeavour to get to space and the various space programs throughout the world showcase the pinnacle of what our species can do, the best of humanity in terms of technology and cooperation and curiosity, and one of the most fundamental drives we have as humans - the drive to be remembered.  Every single human being, from the greatest to the worst of us, is the end product of 13.6 billion years of cosmic cycles, stars being formed, exploding, sending out dust that forms new stars.  Every single atom and primal element in our bodies, our carbon, iron, calcium, magnesium, everything was forged in the nuclear fusion reactor in the core of a star, untold eons ago and untold millions of lightyears away.  Probably more than once as the dust clouds combine, are forged, and then scattered by the shockwaves of supernovas across time and space.  Over and over and over again, until 4.6 billion years ago when our Sun grew from dust and the planets grew from the leftovers.  And the Earth - the Earth! - undergoing the same process in microcosm, plates shifting and rock melting and gas expanding and water sifting until the Earth was made solid, and then!  In the process, as a by-product, a side effect!  The right combination of star forged elements and electricity and chemical reactions was struck and gave the collections of dust atoms Life and Breath!  Living, self sustaining action on its own accord, independent of outside forces, movement greater than the stars because it happens on its own!  And THEN - a more focused microcosm of the star forge, as 4.5 billion years of evolution refine Life, uncounted species live and die and refine their genes and physical makeup and brain processes and living interactions with the inert world around them; the decay of their bodies feeding plants which feed animals which lets them reproduce and keep the cycle going, echoing the ancient and unaware supernovas, until at last! 100,000 years ago the human species was fully evolved, and, miraculously, became self aware.

Think about that for a minute.  As wonderful as Life is, we could have been just another species of animal, but for the greatest innovation and combination of stardust the universe has ever seen.  We were cavemen, we knew next to nothing about the stars or the wide earth or about our potential, but for the first time Life had gained the capacity to know.  For the first time in 13.6 billion years, dust atoms had gained the capability to learn their origins and how they were made and ultimately to define why they were made.  So, what is almost the very first thing we do with this capacity of thought as an infant species, newly self aware?  We make art.  We make, preserved by some quirk of fate in a French cave, handprints on a rock wall.  We - living stardust - take inert ochre and pigment and stamp an outline on the wall, and those outlines survive intact for 50,000 years.  In this scribbling of an infant species we can already recognize the drive still present in ourselves - the need to say “we were here once, and our existence mattered”.  Humanity for the first time, living relics of ancient stars, giving voice for the first time to those stars, saying in art and words what stars declared in the mute atoms and elements and light they left behind: “we existed once, and that existence mattered.”

Humanity is the universe made self aware.  And just as galaxies are made of millions of individual stars, so too do we as individuals make up Humanity as a collective.  Every single one of us is the universe learning about and defining itself.  And the impulse behind our earliest achievements of cave art is present in everything throughout our history, our collective achievements, our art, our architecture, literature, science, theology, our empires, our struggles, our failures, our compassion for each other.  It's present in all of us as individuals, for which of us doesn’t want our life, our memory to be remembered when we are gone?  We as a species are capable of such great things, great destruction and great good.  And throughout our entire history as a species, we’ve never stopped looking up at the moon and the stars, admiring them, fascinated by them, studying them, unaware at times of our origin among them but always drawn to their light, their unspoken promise.  Until finally in the 20th century, the culmination of thousands of years of research and science and engineering, the best efforts of the best we humans have to offer - we unlock the sky we’ve dreamed of for so long and we build machines to take us to the Moon.  We build the Saturn V, the Apollo capsules, we push ourselves from the cradle and beyond our ancient limits and we - fragile, living mortals - walk upon the Moon itself.  We leave our handprints, after all this time, in the purest form of star dust we will likely ever physically encounter, the living imprinting its shape into the inert, like a brother finally coming home.

But we don’t stop there.  We build satellites and the Hubble Telescope, the International Space Station and satellites and rovers and probes to pave the way for us, our reunion with the stars.  We take more stardust and primal elements and fashion them in our image, to go to other worlds and scout the cosmos for us.  We name them after the best of ourselves: Pioneer, Perseverance, Curiosity, Sojourner, Spirit, that they may represent us well to the cosmos and whatever it may contain.  We build Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, currently the furthest of our creations from the Earth in the cold vastness of interstellar space, and in Voyager 2 we place the Golden Record.  A disk of pure gold upon which we recorded the sounds and voice of Earth - water running, leaves falling in the wind, ocean waves, volcanoes bursting, birds singing, and us - human voices, human laughter, human crying, greetings in every language, our music, a baby crying, a heart beating.  We took inert stardust and imprinted ourselves, living dust, upon it, and sent it out into interstellar space to be our witness and our message.  That we, the universe living and self ware, see the stars we came from and that we understand; we say through the pinnacle of our innovation and with the same depth of expression as those first handprints, “We, the living dust, give this record back to you and for ourselves, that we existed once, and that it mattered.”  We sent it as a testimony, as an offering, as a prayer, and as a vow: that we aren’t done yet, that as long as Humanity lives we will never be done, and if we do eventually end that there will have been a time, if only briefly, that the stars knew and understood themselves, and that despite or even because of its brevity, it will have mattered.

#creatus annus

[nexstage]

Starless

Andy Demayo: Changes passing, essence unmoving

Life is a roller coaster of changes.

The weather changes: one day it's all sunny then the next day you are drenched because of the rain.

Society changes too. The once venerated politicians become a thing of the past people want to remember or forget and new candidates prepare themselves to compete in elections.

The whole Earth changes. Millions of years ago, dinosaurs inhabited every piece of land as if their reign was eternal, then, a moment later, a rain of asteroids kicked them out of their throne and humanity came, taking their place.

Many things change. Fashion, religion, family structure, romantic relationships, educational system, technology. Andy could never stop listing how many other aspects change. However, there is one thing that is invulnerable to that: essence.

No matter how much time might pass, rocks are still rocks in any corner of the world. Big, small, of any shape or color, in mountains, hills, in the deepness of the ocean or in a desert, they're still rocks.

The same can be applied to trees. They can be tall, short, with or without fruits, with too few or too many leaves, and they would still be trees.

Animals too. The lion is still the king of beasts, a predator whether he lives in a zoo, a circus, a refuge or a cave. The sun and the moon can still shine in their own time even if one eclipses the other. The stars are still in the sky even if there is rain or hail.

Change could come and go whenever it wanted, but the essence was immovable. It was eternal. Sure you could change your way of seeing things, or acting towards others, you could be the bad guy today and become good the next one, or inverted. Still, you were you.

But not everyone feels comfortable by being oneself. Not everyone sees the true worth in their essence, and by that he meant Steven.

To think one moment he was that happy-go-lucky child who wanted everyone to get along no matter if they were gems or humans and now he was gone. Disappearing with his car with an unknown fate ahead of him. It sounded surrealistic.

Surrealistic and absurd. Steven had everything with him and he was so loved by everyone so why leave?

Then he remembered that Greg told him: 'The Gems listened to some things he planned to say just to himself, Andy. Pretty worrying things. Like he needed to be needed, everyone stopped needing him as if he saw himself as a tool and he also thought some ugly things about the Gems and kept them in secret. Now we don't know where the hell he is!'

The explanation was certainly disturbing but confusing at the same time which made Andy wish he had met Steven and watched him grow up to see if what Greg has told him was true.

But after listening to him one more time, more calmed and composed, the gears of his mind started working and the pieces of the puzzle regrouped into a clearer image. A clearer and very concerning image of Steven's future.

The first time he met Steven, he thought he was a naive and sweet kid, too kind for his own good whenever he talked to people, and yeah, that part was true. Years later, he was still being a social butterfly, always willing to help.

Always. Willing. To help.

If there is something he has learned is that it's impossible to live with the term 'always' applied to every aspect of your life. Because you can't always have every answer, you can't always solve every problem, you can't always be there for others, you can't always make people happy. 

You can't always be everyone's messiah.

You might explode if you try to, that's why balancing 'always', 'never' and 'sometimes' is the healthier way to live.

Unfortunately, no one taught Steven that motto. Or cared to do it.

He wishes he was there to teach him that, though. Maybe this mess would have never happened if someone had put more effort into telling Steven to take things easy instead of waiting for people to need him or put a lot of pressure on his shoulders.

And now he's gone.

He's gone because he felt useless. Gone because he felt lost.

Steven's gone because he felt like an obsolete thing while the people around him are changing, upgrading and enjoying better things.

He got that sentiment.

'Why'd you leave?'

'I'm the only one who didn't! It was your goofball father who was the first one to hightail it out of here. Then after him, it was Aunt Deb. She and her partner got the RV. No reason to stick around with that thing! Grandpa moved to the keys, too old to make the drive anymore. I was the only one who tried to keep everything how it used to be. I knew what it meant to really be a family. And look what that got me, huh?! Nothin'! It just doesn't feel fair, everything got so different. I wanted everybody to stay the same, but they- they just didn't. Geez. What am I even doing? I got an airplane. I could've been visiting everybody, everywhere they went. I could have known about you. I guess I could have just changed too, you know?

It's not too late. We're here. If you want us to be.'

He wishes he could tell Steven the same things he told him when Andy felt so frustrated and lost with himself.

Back then, it was him and Greg and Grandpa, and the others of the family. But then Greg felt like life had better things for him and wanted that, so he left to pursue his musical career despite his father's protests. After that, the world went downhill for Andy. Moving on and going to other places became the 'new trending', and while the rest of the family was happy with that, he couldn't accept it.

He became old-fashioned and obviously when something gets antiquated, it is forgotten. But the problem didn’t come from him being forgotten because of his traditional ways, it came from the fact that he didn't make space for the new times to accommodate in his life. He was so caught up trying to keep the family together that his old-fashioned ideas blinded him. He could have balanced traditionality and change, but just stayed in the same spot thinking the others went insane when the crazy one was him. Thankfully, Steven encouraged him to reconnect with Greg and be more open-minded with change without losing himself in it.

Maybe that's what the kid needed all this time: someone to help him live through the multiple changes and cheer him up to be himself whether people need him or not.

Besides, why being needed when you are so loved and estimated by everyone?

That's another thing that Steven hasn't figured out or had trouble figuring out: he didn't need to be needed. If he has a family and friends that love him for who he is, it is because they truly feel that way, not because they have some ulterior motive to want Steven around.

If things were like that, then there would be no family and no friends, just people riding on his coattails to get what they want.

That's not the kind of people he has been having around. That's not the kind of change Steven wanted around him.

Or that was what Andy hoped.

No, wait! He was jumping into conclusions, the kid's family wasn't like that, it was just that Steven couldn't handle change in a good way.

And obviously, he was desperate to change alongside the others but it was like he was stuck in quicksand while the rest of the world could get itself out of that bad place and keep moving.

He wondered if Steven was mad at the others because they were leaving him while he tried to keep things static, unchangeable.

Andy shook his head, no no, that was him back then not Steven. Maybe the boy was mad at himself because he couldn't advance like his friends or his family and came to the conclusion that he wasn't necessary anymore.

If he couldn't change and became obsolete then it was better to go to the trunk of memories and stay there.

It was really worrying. Now he got why Greg was so desperate to find him.

But the question was what would they do once they found Steven?

The boy has stopped seeing his self-worth as something beneficial for everyone, he might have believed himself as unfitting for change and therefore unworthy to try, so even if they talked with Steven he would push them away as if that would make everyone a favor.

They needed a wise approach to get through the kid.

Shit, he didn’t have a single idea of what to say when the moment came.

Any word, any good intention could be interpreted in the wrong way.

Steven might think he was being a burden on his family, that everyone was wasting their time on him, that it was better to hide much farther away than before.

No, stop that nonsense! This wasn't the time for worst-case scenarios, this was the time for action!

On the road, he would think what might be the best approach to give Steven some well-deserved encouragement, but now finding him was the priority.

He hoped it didn't take that long, though. Teenagers who ran away from their homes didn't have it as easy as the ones who are kicked out.

Geeez, it was so hard to believe that the roles have changed. Here he was, Andy Demayo, someone who Steven helped with kindness and empathy, looking for the same boy who gave him a bit of hope to embrace change.

Well, it was time for him to return the favor.

And he'd do it like Steven. With his whole heart open to listen and comfort.

The kid deserved it, after all.

He deserved to take a break and not focusing on if he is changing enough for everyone or not, to live life carefree and do stupid things like all teenagers without caring about the consequences, to believe his future is much more than being a self-sacrificing messiah.

He deserved to know that even if millennia passed in front of his eyes, Steven would always be loved for being himself.

Because that's how you let change enter your life without losing yourself.

#Steven Universe #Andy Demayo #Steven Universe Future #Post-Prickly Pair episode #Angst #Family feels #Self-worth issues #Inadequancy

[soundsandnoises]

Slam Dunk Festival 2019: SOUTH, Hatfield Park (26/05/2019)

I was extremely anxious about this one. I was usually going to the one in Midlands, knew the site inside out. Knew how to get to the festival, where to stay, etc. Made it easier to focus on music. This year I worried about so many things, like if I bought right ticket to right Hatfield (can't count the amount of times I actually checked maps, infos and trains, still wasn't enough). I'm not a fan of big train stations and King's Cross ain't a small nor easy for first, second and third timers. It can be quite overwhelming, but what's the fun in it when it's simple, right? Then there was a question of – what gate leads to festival site. Or where to buy a coffee - that one was left unanswered, Sunday morning and relatively small train station (for a change) didn't help.

And then there was... waiting. Before the main gate opens, before the actual festival site opens... Longest three hours full of wondering, while people gathered in a constant flow in space between wristband exchange and gates, green grass was replaced by black blur of people.

But, but... As soon as it opened and I could start realizing my plan: get to the chosen stage, see the first artist, enjoy. I could relax. And that was the leit motiv of this day (maybe except the part where I felt like thirst in Sprite commercial during Busted intense and punk as fuck set when I was fighting for survival, but to be fair, even then I felt so alive and... happy).

I was in for a treat after all and it started perfectly with William Ryan Key opening on Marshall Stage. I would love to hear his material, but I understand his choice to play Yellowcard's songs. Fans surely appreciated the acoustic nostalgia floating through surprisingly sunny morning/midday. There was a bit of a technical hiccup at the beginning, but other than that things ran smoothly.

Milk Teeth took over on the adjacent Dickies Stage. Faster. Louder. Wake up Slam Dunk. Sunny day or not a mix of moody grunge and raw punk energy should do that to you. Make the crowd sit down just to make them ask “Why the fuck are we sitting down?!” seconds later. It's a rock show! But clearly Milk Teeth captivated the audience enough to pull pranks like this.

Hot Milk didn't have easy on The Club Key Stage, 'cause people started to gather for Busted and tent was packed, yet their Left side was in for a fun gig and soon enough young rockers won hearts over with their 'non compromise, everyone's invited attitude'. They were all in, mixing pop, punk and lacing it with electronic samples – nothing better to make you bounce, dance and have a good time.

Quite right warm up for Busted on the Right side of the The Key Club Stage. The tension, the anticipation was hanging thick and heavy over people's heads. The excitement exploded with joyous scream when boys appeared onstage. Boy, I didn't expect the madness. My body wasn't mine for most of the gig, pushed and shoved in random directions as the crowd waved under the tide of moshing, crowdsurfing and bouncing quite randomly. But it was strangely beautiful, the mad joy of people screaming out the lyrics. This was absolutely fabulous surprise act (clearly the cat was out of the bag on Saturday when it turned out that mysterious Y3K was in fact Busted). Slam Dunk did slam.

Then I've had a bit of a change of the scenery with As It Is on the main stage (Monster Energy Stage). I understand the appeal, 'cause it was truly engaging performance. Powerful speeches, truly humble spirit and very positive attitude (they even turned smashing an acoustic guitar into a good deed; after the hardcore version of the song, instead of acoustic one as they teased before guitar was obliterated, Patty [Walters, singer] explained that they'd donate the pieces for a charitable cause). Oh, and show worth a slot at the main stage – emotional, catchy, monumental at times, intimate.

Waterparks brought the green (backdrop, Awsten's hair, security outerwear) and crazy (emanating from both band and extremely devoted fans). Crazy in the best kind of way, the one you lose yourself in the music, the one that makes you happy, the one that courses through every inch of your body. Add funny banters and Awsten's cheeky charisma. The response from green clothed fans was overwhelming to say the least. Strong unison singing every word, mad screams and constant wave of crowdsurfers. What a show.

Simple Plan took over the refreshing and pop rock vibe taking the crowd to the beach and sunny holidays with their beach balls flying over the crowd and summer hits' tunes. Canadian rockers made people jump, yell shamelessly 'dick', sing along. Nostalgic mood mixed with excited screams, they wouldn't be themselves if they didn't joke around (basically rock and comedy show in a price of one). Their youthful approach was and is always something that moves mountains and brings fans to them.

Neck Deep didn't waste a second to establish their rule over the Monster Energy Stage after Simple Plan. Faster, louder, reach to the punk rock roots, start that mosh pit, oh but hold that thought here's Natalia Imbruglia's 'Torn' cover for you, let's feel like it's 90s again and if you don't know it, you lived under a rock. But basically keep the energy flowing, keep it up, keep in coming.

But rock music has so many names, so Hellogoodbye (back in Marshall Stage) was a interesting change of gear, leaning towards indie, electropop and all the weird and beautiful things between them. Oh, how I danced, danced like no one was watching, my face with stupidly wide grin from the sparkling, positive energy I was coated in. Audience was advised to drink pure distilled water, distilled from potatoes (wink, wink). Basically it was a party. Or maybe the party? Well, I was glad I stumbled upon it and stayed.

Touché Amore on Dickies Stage tore the air with growl which seemed to be an appropriate reaction for heavy rain that came down. But their music must have had some magic in it, 'cause soon clouds separated and sun started lurking through them. Or maybe they just had the sunshine with them all this time and brought some from L.A.. Heavy was the music, hardcore stage presence and singer's presence, front barrier seemed to be more appropriate place to scream words than small stage that frankly couldn't contain their energy.

I wasn't even close and I could hear Lights' powerful voice echoing through The Club Key Stage. Tiny figure with flame coloured hair was ruling the stage, voice clear, loud and soulful. Her music taking the best bits from rock, pop and electronic genres was a catchy blend to dance. Her vocals are phenomenal.

One of the band's I was really looking forward to see was Plain White T's (yes, yes, they played 'Hey There Delilah', 'course the did) and I loved every minute of their show [on Marshall Stage]. Indie pop/ indie rock with bits of samples was exactly what I needed, it was my kind of show no matter the time of the day. I could enjoy the music and not worry about being hit by half empty cup with beer (although it was funny to hear the story of crowd starting the biggest moshpit to 'Hey There Delilah', 'cause the band was on stage before Metallica, to be honest it's no the first time when I hear or experience the audience going absolutely bananas to the slowest song, so the story is even funnier), move to the beat. New staff had these nice, not too much electronic touch and was pulsing with energy. But of course the older goodies hit people's hearts harder.

I've managed to catch half of the set of IDKHow on The Key Club Stage Left I'm glad I did, 'cause boys sassiness must be legendary by now. The cheek, the charisma, the silliness acted out with serious faces, the instant bond with adoring crowd makes it all so special. Rhythm section and samples, bit of 80s synth tone, bit of 90s pop and sharp lyrics make their show something to talk about. Just like the acoustic set they played on the top of The Fearless Arms (bar), I'd assume sometime around their time in signing tent and because why not. Got to enjoy that one from the distance, the kind of surprise you could compare to sugar rush every kid gets when eating a candy floss.

From sweet tunes I switched to heavy metal brought by Bullet for My Valentine. Jägermeister Stage's tent was coming off the seams with gathered crowd, when it seemed it was loaded to its ends more people were getting in and immersing in roaring guitars and drums going faster and faster. Crowd gathered there was in for a wild ride.

NOFX headlining on Punk in Drublic Stage and bringing whole bunch of punk rock bands that they’re on tour with) were the living proof that punk's not dead and it's not going anywhere. Talking about snots, cum, walking on the thin line and reigniting the punk rock spirit with each song they were hosting a celebration, party mood was lit up. Punk and ska and a setting sun.

Big surprise, very good surprise was All Time Low's show to me (Monster Energy Stage). There were these jokes, on the borderline of pervert (oh, I've heard so many stories them boys were so inappropriate, but to be fair they never said they were playing songs for children), but the vibe - oh it was magnificent. It was great pop punk, pop rock show and people were literally invited, so it became a dance off onstage. The band was grateful for their fans, entertaining, connecting with their fans and gave fantastic show. Also, brand new song had its debut at Slam Dunk's stage – 'Getaway Green'. What a night.

#slam dunk festival #slam dunk 2019 #slam dunk 2019: south #hatfield #hatfield park #festival #rock music #rock show #gig #concert #william ryan key #milk teeth band #hot milk band #as it is band #waterparks band #simple plan #neck deep #hellogoodbye #plain white t's #lights singer #idkhow #Bullet for My Valentine #nofx #all time low #singer songwriter #pop rock #pop music #pop punk #alt rock #touche amore

[your-dietician]

The worst hit singles from 12 major artists | Arts & Entertainment

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/entertainment/the-worst-hit-singles-from-12-major-artists-arts-entertainment/

The worst hit singles from 12 major artists | Arts & Entertainment

The biggest music artists of all time typically have dozens of hits in their portfolio, often so many that they can’t play all of them in concert.

But sometimes artists are so popular that radio plays their singles and fans buy them because of unyielding devotion, not artistic genius. While diehards will love even the ugliest child, it’s fair to say that not every hit song is equal. So we’ve picked our least favorite song from a sampling of major artists — what we consider some of the worst from some of the most familiar hit-makers.

Yes, in a way, we’re trolling those dedicated fans, many of whom will likely howl in protest over some of our picks. Unlike them, our devotion isn’t unyielding.

Melissa’s pick: “Die Another Day”

There have been numerous worthy James Bond theme songs this century, such as Adele and, um, well, OK, Adele. But Madonna may have kickstarted the string of recent forgettable offerings with her 2002 dance smash. If you’re into rote electro-stuttering and nonsensical lyrics, congratulations for perpetuating mediocrity.

Rodney’s pick: “Don’t Tell Me”

Most of Madonna’s hit songs have a catchy melodic twist and/or lyrical intrigue along the lines of “Material Girl,” “Vogue” or “Music.” Then there is this decidedly unmemorable ditty, which inexplicably peaked at No. 4 on the American pop chart. Even the song title is boring. A mildly countrified guitar riff is accompanied by Madonna sounding mildly defiant in a way that comes and goes with no emotional impact whatsoever.

Melissa’s pick: “Purple Rain”

I know, I’m ducking already. And I’ll concede that when Prince performed the title track of his 1984 soundtrack in concert, even the cacophonous guitar solo at song’s end exploded with vitality. But on record? A thumping slog.

Rodney’s pick: “Batdance”

The 1980s were a prolific period for Prince, including some of his most iconic hits that R&B and pop radio stations continue to play today. This song hit No. 1 in the summer of 1989 but is rarely heard for a reason: it’s basically a weird promo for the “Batman” movie. There are elements of cool songs embedded in here, but it feels cobbled together more for commercial purposes than artistic merit.

Melissa’s pick: “A Matter of Trust”

By 1986, Joel certainly earned the right to indulge in a vanity project, and this is his only hit to spotlight him on electric guitar instead of piano. Unfortunately for longtime fans, Joel’s pet project was manifested in simple, monotonous chords, a sluggish pace and a cringing attempt at Springsteen-esque grit.

Rodney’s pick: “You’re Only Human”

Billy’s best songs are romantic or parables of sorts. This is Billy at his preachiest. An original song he wrote for his “Greatest Hits Vol. 1 and Vol. 2” release, this top 10 hit from 1985 was a way to help young people with depression and thoughts of suicide so the intentions were good. But as a song, it’s both annoyingly chipper and lyrically flaccid.

Melissa’s pick: “Crocodile Rock”

Perhaps it’s due to decades of witnessing thousands of uncoordinated suburbanites attempting to dance while singing the grating “la la la la la” chorus of John’s first No. 1 hit (in 1972) in concert that has spoiled any enjoyment of this ditty. But the inanity and novelty song quality also contribute.

Rodney’s pick: “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”

John went through a 1990s phase of bland balladeering which sticks in my craw including “Circle of Life” and “Believe.” This is probably the most famous of that era, his “Lion King” cash grab that won an Academy Award and a Grammy. I’d take the worst of his 1970s hits (including “Crocodile Rock”) over this drivel any day.

Melissa’s pick: “Blood on the Dance Floor”

With production by new jack swing maestro Teddy Riley, the lead single from Jackson’s 1997 “Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix” album was originally slated for his 1991 “Dangerous” release. That explains the victim-heavy lyrics about backstabbers (prime early ’90s Jackson fodder), but not the middling funk backbeat. While the song only climbed to No. 42 in the U.S., it was a worldwide smash, proving that sometimes, Americans do have better taste.

Rodney’s pick: “Dirty Diana”

This song, his fifth No. 1 song off his “Bad” album in 1988, is about aggressive groupies and feels dark and dreary, with overdramatic guitar rock licks. Tell me where the actual hook is in the chorus. And the odd lack of percussive rhythm keeps it from ever finding its core essence.

Melissa’s pick: “One Moment in Time”

Look, I adore a good anthem. And this one is all about anthem-y things such as inspiration and pride in accomplishments (Houston recorded it for the 1988 Summer Olympics). But sometimes Houston’s schmaltz-ometer needed to be tempered and this was prime time.

Rodney’s pick: “I Have Nothing”

Houston during her peak was able to belt a ballad in her sleep. This David Foster/Linda Thompson tune from “My Bodyguard” is very prototypical Houston with her requisite dramatic flair but has always made me want to go to sleep instead. I suspect the excessive use of this song on “American Idol” has soured me even more on its charms.

Melissa’s pick: “Lover”

It’s a word that prompts all of the blechs, and coupled with Swift’s cooing delivery and the echo-y drumbeat powering the ballad, it results in continued wincing. Despite a killer bridge — which is becoming a Swift specialty — her breathy delivery of “You’re my, my, my, my love-ER” is straight-up icky.

Rodney’s pick: “Look What You Made Me Do”

This song was super impactful for many reasons when it came out in 2017 due to the lyrical content about her reputation and its obvious electro-pop vibe. But there’s a reason you hardly ever hear it on the radio in 2021. It’s less a viable pop song and more a treatise about Swift’s fame and how people perceived her at the time. Unlike most of her other hits like “Blank Space” and “Delicate,” this one doesn’t hold up well over repeated listens.

Melissa’s pick: “Bed of Roses”

Even hardcore Bon Jovi fans (hand raised) will admit that the band’s ’90s-era ballads were brutal (see Rodney’s choice to further solidify). But between Jon Bon Jovi’s cliched Romeo routine and one of the most ludicrous lyrics in rock history — “I wake up and French kiss the morning” — this one is unlistenable.

Rodney’s pick: “Always”

This power ballad about someone who sounds like a stalker hit the top 5 in 1994 but is largely forgotten a quarter-century later. Why? It’s so dull and shapeless, the lighter you’d raise in concert would refuse to ignite in protest.

Melissa’s pick: “Pour Some Sugar On Me”

Released in 1988, the Mutt Lange-produced track is inarguably Def Leppard’s best-known hit. It’s still horrible. Dopey lyrics and minimal use of the band’s copious musical abilities mar every bar. The song was a last-minute add to the “Hysteria” album. If only we had gotten lucky.

Rodney’s pick: “Let’s Get Rocked”

This 1992 top 20 hit feels like a ragged compilation of all their previous hits amped up to 11, led by a super cliched chorus and song title. It’s like Def Leppard color-by-numbers.

Rodney and Melissa agree: “Work”

Rihanna has said her broken, often half-hearted vocal style in this dancehall song represents her culture. But that doesn’t seem to explain the basic lack of a hook, a melody or anything resembling a coherent outline of a song.

Melissa’s pick: “One”

While I appreciate Bono’s sentiment that we can be simultaneously unified and diverse and while I will never disparage the charitable causes associated with the band’s No. 1 hit from 1992, I will also never be swayed of the opinion that musically, it’s a droning snooze.

Rodney’s pick: “With or Without You”

The opening single off U2′s most successful album “The Joshua Tree” from 1987 has a pretty solemnity, but after countless listens, I’ve lost patience with Bono’s overwrought delivery. In other words, I can easily live without you. Give me “In God’s Country” or “Red Hill Mining Town,” thank you very much.

Melissa’s pick: “Animals”

I have a visceral reaction to Adam Levine’s nasal whine, so truly any song from Maroon 5′s inexplicably extensive catalog is on my list. But if forced to choose one waste of four minutes of my life, it would be this 2014 hit laced with Levine’s grating falsetto and packed with high school-level sexual innuendo.

Rodney’s pick: “Moves Like Jagger”

It’s mind-boggling how many top 40 songs this band has generated over the past two decades: 23! This was their biggest hit of them all and possibly their most memorable song as well, given the Mick Jagger twist and help from Christina Aguilera. But this fangless song packed with whistling has none of Jagger’s actual swagger. Even Aguilera’s contribution is unmemorable.

©2021 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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[sapphicalexaandra]

Impossibility Is a Kiss Away from Reality (8/?)

Pairing: Jace/Alec

Rating: E

Summary: “…New York shooting, the official victim count is twe-”

“Wait, what? What did the radio just say about New York?!”

Notes: Chapter 8 of Sense8 AU. The plot thickens...or it’s just angst, you decide ;)

Real?

“Jace? I appreciate your enthusiasm, but we have customers?”

Jace was yanked away from Alec, only to end up back on his seat behind the counter. Damn it.

Simon was in front of him, glaring at him as a small group of girls tried to stifle their snickers a few feet away.

Jace blinked, before covering up his confusion with a smile. “What? It’s a great song, our customers will surely appreciate it.”

He looked at the girls, and they nodded quickly.

“Yes, of course! You sang it perfectly,” one of them said. “We would…would you please sign our notebooks? We’re huge fans of yours.”

Jace’s smile became Cheshire-like. “See, Simon? Make space for the ladies.”

Simon rolled his eyes, but he did as he was told, and Jace gladly spent the next few minutes chatting animatedly and signing his name on things. That was not why he had gotten into the music industry, but it definitely didn’t hurt. He winked at his fans, making them blush, before they turned towards Simon and asked for his autograph, too. Jace just knew that Simon was going to complain to him, as soon as they left, about this being a “shop, and not your personal office!” That should shut him up, instead. Jace laughed when the girls did indeed leave, and Simon only had a goofy grin on his face.

Simon still stuck his tongue out at him, before welcoming the next customers.

It was a busy afternoon, thankfully. With a bit of luck, the shop would survive another month.

“…New York shooting, the official victim count is twe-”

“Wait, what?” Jace blurted out, after waving away the latest costumer. He looked up at Simon, who was reordering a shelf. “What did the radio just say about New York?!”

Simon raised his eyebrows at him. “That there was a shooting? Twenty victims, plus dozens of others wounded?”

Jace started sputtering. “Wha-wai-w-why the hell did nobody tell me?!”

“It’s not exactly the ideal topic before a major show, is it? And it’s been all over the news since yesterday, we thought you knew! Where the hell have you been, under a rock?”

Jace shot upright, almost knocking his chair over, before he almost ran towards the computer at the other end of the counter. His fingers flew over the keyboard under Simon’s widened eyes, but Jace didn’t care. He had opened countless pages in the next ten seconds, and he was gawking up and down at the articles, at the pictures, unblinking.

The place…the formation of the police cars…the view of the Statue of Liberty…the maniac’s face…

It all fit what he remembered of his hallucination.

“Jace?”

Jace ignored him. His hands had stopped moving, and he was frozen in place. “I – I need to go to the bathroom.”

He could feel Simon’s worried eyes on his back as he made his way, a hand firmly wrapped around his phone in the pocket of his jeans.

He swiftly took it out as soon as the door closed behind him.

Alec Lightwood, he typed on the search bar, New York Police.

And there he was. Tall, dark hair, broad shoulders. There were various photos of him in uniform, often accompanied by the blonde woman Jace remembered from the shooting. He was listed among the wounded of yesterday.

Alec…was real? The man Jace had almost got killed. The man who had shown up in Jace’s apartment half-naked, yelling at Jace that he wasn’t real. The man Jace had sang to like never before, danced with and almost kissed. The man Jace had been in the body of, as they…wanked. Yep, that had happened. Jace could still only think holy shit as he remembered it. And as he remembered all the glimpses he had caught of Alec that entire day, or when he had jumped on Alec’s bed, singing with him without a care in the world because he had been so sure it was all just a fantasy…Jace’s eyes were just about to pop out of his head.

Bloody hell.

“Jace, man, are you alright in there?”

Jace cleared his throat and got out of the bathroom. “Yeah. Sorry. I don’t know why I reacted like this.”

“Yeah, it’s so awful. I can’t believe that it just keeps happening…do you need to go home? It’s fine by me.”

Jace shook his head. “No, I’m fine.”

He needed the distraction of work, or his head would truly explode.

But it didn’t, not even when he finally got home. And the next time he saw Alec, sleeping peacefully on his bed, Jace started paying more attention.

He inspected every inch of the room, he touched every surface, and he catalogued every reaction his body received from all of that. Again, Jace thought he felt the vibrations of the objects against his skin, as if between them and him there was a thin veil that he couldn’t quite pierce…

It still far closely resembled a legitimate touch. He was in that room, for sure. A vision could never be this clear, this detailed…and Alec…

Alec drew him in more than anything else. Jace sat down next to him, and he reached for his hand like he had done at the hospital. But, this time, he didn’t hesitate to interlock their fingers, closing his eyes to focus better on that contact.

A raw energy seemed to radiate from their clasped hands. It flowed up Jace’s arm, until his entire body reverberated with it. Jace gulped, suddenly feeling overwhelmed by the sensation. He felt the need to open his eyes again, but he didn’t want to let go. He studied Alec’s face more closely. How the light danced on his relaxed lineaments…

How was this possible? How could this be real? How could he be seeing Alec, be near him, feel him in that peculiar way he did? And on such an intimate, deeper level than he had ever felt anything else…

Thoughts he’d had before but he had refused to listen to came back to him.

Alec had felt like an extension of himself…a separate being, but tied to Jace indescribably. When they’d danced together, for instance; Jace had, in a way, known Alec’s movements before he made them.  And what about those doubled, multiplied, synchronous sensations that he – they? – had experienced as they…masturbated? In each other’s bodies?

It all sounded impossible, crazy, yes…but if they were both real, and weren’t imagining it…

Jace was no closer to an understanding, but, for some reason, he accepted that possibility; that what had been happening to him was a reality. He wasn’t a spiritual person, he had never been a believer; yet, something was telling him to give this a chance. And for once in his life, he listened.

He would just…treat this as an experiment. He wanted to explore the situation, he wanted to talk to Alec and see if they could make sense of it together. And he wanted to get to know Alec-the-person, as deeply as he already felt to know the…being. A sound plan to get to the bottom of it all.

Doing the part of the infesting pest, after all, was also kind of fun, he had to admit. Alec got more exasperated at his antics than Jace’s grandmother ever did, but Jace could tell, and not because of any supernatural power, that Alec was actually enjoying his presence. Jace wasn’t that delusional to think that this would be any epic, out-of-this-world romance, but he couldn’t deny neither his attraction to Alec, nor Alec’s apparent attraction to him. And if Jace were to approach the subject, Alec couldn’t deny it either, because he had been the one about to kiss Jace.

But that was probably stretching things a little too far.

Experiment. Observation to draw reasonable conclusions. Nothing more. Focus, Jace.

Amongst the things he consequently added to his mental list; according to Alec’s…sister? Alec had talked in a perfect British accent just as Jace did. That was a third party taking notice of something weird, so it couldn’t just be in their heads, could it?

Another factor was that Alec still thought this wasn’t real. That was something Jace wanted to discuss with him. He wanted to tell Alec to just look him up on the internet; literally, it would be so easy for Alec to find proof of his existence, just as it had been for Jace (once he had thought to do it, that is).

Yet, something in Alec’s expression…the way he said, “It’s been two days! I was perfectly normal before, and now I’ve gone crazy hallucinating you! Yes, this isn’t real,” made Jace bite his tongue. If Alec refused to look past the initial improbability to ground all of this in a tangible reality, Jace didn’t feel like forcing him quite yet. It had been two days. And it was not like Jace was one-hundred percent sure himself that he wasn’t living some kind of fever-dream. Better give them both more time to ease into it, he concluded; this could all very well end as abruptly as it had started, after all.

So Jace merely followed Alec – an Alec who, for all his denial, still talked to him and indulged himself in what he thought was a dream, so there was hope for him yet – to the rooftop of Alec’s apartment building in New York, all the way across the ocean for Jace, and he got to know another side of his grumpy companion in all this weirdness. Alec looked truly beautiful under the dim light of the stars, shadows playing a fascinating game on the side of his face that Jace could see. His eyes shone when he looked into the lens of his telescope, and not because of any outside illumination.

Jace didn’t forget to take note that one part of him, somehow, was truly singing in their shop’s garage to get ready for their next big show…but, apparently, his brain had so much space now that he could still give most of his attention to what Alec explained to him. And he could swear he wasn’t the only one being enraptured by it all.

“You’re late,” Imogen greeted him when Jace arrived at her house for lunch.

“Hello to you, too, Gran.” Jace grinned.

“I swear you have baggier clothes each time, aren’t you tired to always pass as a street urchin, my child?”

“I love you, too.”

Imogen’s lips turned upward as she led him inside the house.

“You didn’t tell me that you were filthy rich. Why the hell do you live in a dump?” Alec whispered into his ear, walking beside him with wide eyes as he looked around at all the sophistication Jace’s grandmother surrounded herself with.

Jace raised an eyebrow, before whispering back, careful to put a little more distance between him and Imogen, “I’m not filthy rich, that’s my grandmother. Now back off.”

Alec rolled his eyes, but disappeared.

He returned when Jace sat at the dining room table. Alec simply appeared on the chair next to him, still surveying everything with clear awe, from the rich wooden furniture to the pure silver flatware.

“How is your…business going, dear?” Imogen asked as she put her napkin over her legs.

“I’d say nicely, and we’ve booked a couple of shows this month, as intro for other bands,” Jace answered casually.

Imogen nodded, before looking at him pointedly. “If you have any problems, you do know that your inheritance is always there for you, right?”

Jace sighed. “Yes, Gran, I know. But I’m saving it for bigger things, which does not include,” he quickly added with a sideway glance, “buying a better apartment. I’m fine with this one.”

“Ah,” both Imogen and Alec echoed.

Seriously, why was Alec, an allegedly real person, so similar to his grandmother? Jace wanted to facepalm so hard at both of them.

Thankfully, lunch was served, which shut them all up for a while. As usual, it was a very grand affair of double courses and the best ingredients coming from all over the world. Imogen would literally die if she ever did anything but the best.

Even after all this time, Jace couldn’t deny that he was still a bit uncomfortable with that. He had grown up with nothing, and suddenly finding himself being the grandson of a high-borne diplomat hadn’t been an easy shift. He also knew that he could never be fine if he allowed himself to be dependent on his grandmother’s money. That was simply not who he was, yet at this point it’d be useless trying to make her understand it, if she hadn’t already done so.

Alec, though, was a whole other matter…Jace didn’t usually share personal information with anyone outside of his circle of close friends, yet there was an itch in him that urged him to share all of this with Alec. To make him understand who he was, and why he wasn’t rich.

If he could only truly talk to Alec, instead of them just accidentally finding themselves in the same room while they were doing something else…Jace was sure that if they ever did so, he’d manage to get through to Alec. If he learned more about him, Alec just couldn’t not see this for what it was, he couldn’t not see Jace as a real person!

“So, this is your grandmother…but where are your parents?” Alec asked him as if on cue.

That, however, wasn’t something Jace would’ve wanted to start with straight away.

“Dead,” Jace curtly replied, and Alec’s eyes widened slightly.

“What, dear?” Imogen inquired.

Jace cursed himself mentally. “I – I’m gonna die if I don’t taste that pork immediately.”

“Who’s the terrible liar, now?” Alec asked, but he sounded hesitant, most likely still registering what Jace had just told him.

Yeah, having Alec pity him wasn’t exactly what Jace had meant to go for. He made sure to glare at Alec to express his annoyance...but he felt himself losing all fire as soon as he met Alec’s eyes. They were indeed creased in a sympathetic way, but they also conveyed a warmth and understanding that Jace was surprised to find. Unexpectedly, Jace felt his eyes sting.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” Alec told him quietly.

Alec was a cop, he probably dealt with similar situations on a daily basis, so there wasn’t anything that personal about the honest concern Jace could hear in his voice. And those words had been repeated to Jace all his life, so there was nothing new about them. Yet, if he thought about the fact that Alec believed he was just imagining everything, and he was still this into it… Jace had to swallow down a prominent lump and avert his eyes to not get too overwhelmed by Alec’s intensity.  

He didn’t know whether or not to thank the fact that he didn’t see Alec again until much later. It was probably better that way, and Alec stayed with him either way; Jace could only put on him his sudden implacable need to clean his apartment after a long while that he hadn’t. He had found this place a long time ago, and it had always served him right, it surely didn’t deserve to be called a dumpster!  

He popped up into Alec’s apartment only once all afternoon. When he realized, however, that people he had never seen – Alec’s friends or colleagues, he figured – were visiting Alec, Jace didn’t feel like staying to investigate who they were. Better if he just kept some distance. Alec was already complicated on his own.

He couldn’t pass on family dinner, though. That was not exactly a very unobtrusive way of getting to know someone, but Alec had barged in on his lunch with his grandmother, hadn’t he? It was only right that Jace returned the favor, sitting right next to Alec as who he guessed were Alec’s mother, brother, sister and work partner came over for dinner. What did Jace have to do anyway…he was so not used to go to sleep at a reasonable hour.

He tried to place a name to each face. Mary, no, Maryse was the mother. Mat-Max was the teenage brother. Easy? No, Izzy was the sister, seated next to the blonde, Lynn…Lydia!

“So, let me get this straight, or…gay. Your partner got together with your sister?” Jace asked Alec with a smirk.

Alec reflexively turned his head towards him, and they were on Jace’s bed, Alec crossing his arms as he spoke, “Yeah. Been two years already.”

“Isn’t that a bit weird?”

“Nah…well, it was at first. They even hid it from me, thought I’d freak out…which I kind of did. But I would’ve very much preferred they told me, instead of finding Lydia in my sister’s bed. Literally, I think most things would’ve been better than that.”

They both chuckled. Jace dared to look sideways at Alec’s profile. “What about your father? Not together with your mother?”

“No. But it’s better this way.” Alec’s eyes met his for a brief second, before he averted them, clearing his throat. “I just…I’ll go back now.”

“Wait, Alec.”

Alec froze, looking back at him. Jace took a deep breath.

“Listen, I’m not saying now, but…I really think we should talk. No pressure, no nothing, but we should try to figure out what…”

Alec closed his eyes. “I already said that I don’t feel that talking a fantasy out would really do anything. I must really go back.” And he did, just like that.  

I’m not your fantasy, Jace would’ve wanted to tell him.

#shadowhunters #jalec #jalec fic #my fic #my writing #sense8 au #impossibility is a kiss away from reality

[thebandcampdiaries]

Untitled Art - Philly To Long Branch (Part 2)

Electronic music is definitely unlike any other genre out there. A rock band, for example, would be largely confined to many limitations: their physical space, their instrumentation, the room they perform in…on the other hand, electronic music producers are almost like painters with an unlimited selection of colors available to them. The computer opens up the possibilities, allowing them to explore a world of sounds, samples, ideas, textures and arrangements that were previously largely inconceivable. In spite of the kaleidoscopic range of possibilities, the sad part is that many producers still choose to rely on presets or pre-made formulas, instead of going out of their way to experiment with sounds. This is certainly not the case of “Untitled Art”, a production duo with a unique take on EDM, House music, and electro. On “Philly To Long Branch (Part 2), he explores a unique cinematic sound, with lush textures and deep melodies, perfectly in tune with the punchy beats. The music strikes for the many layers of the production, adding a lot of sophistication to the mix and going for a truly special approach. The song immediately opens with some volume swells that feel like waves crashing on a shoreline, as the beat cuts through the mix beautifully.

Eventually, the track explodes in a fast-paced groove and glitchy saturated overtones that make me think of the work of Aphex Twin or Prodigy but with a more melodic edge. The production approach has got a somewhat progressive vibe to it, going for a diverse and edgy sound that animates the aesthetics of this release.

The ambiance tones are absolutely stunning: melodic drones offer a spacey, roomy sound that really brings the song to life in a phenomenal way. On the other hand, the rhythm section counteracts with some exceptional dry punch, forming what could be considered the true backbone of the music. Ghost notes, unexpected shifts, and tight grooves are only some of the many things that make this production absolutely outstanding.

Untitled Art managed to showcase their ability as a pair of producers, as well as their very diverse taste in terms of electronic music.

Find out more about “Untitled Art” and listen to their music directly through the following link: https://untitledart.bandcamp.com/

Interview:

We had a chance to have a chat with this talented artist. Read on to learn more!

I love how you manage to render your tracks so personal and organic. Does the melody come first, or do you focus on the beat the most?

Answer: I am the only one writing the songs so it varies per track but with Philly it’s a very personal song about someone I got to experience true love with…the relationship ended but there are hidden meanings throughout it lyrically that lend to the personal. I tend to write all the songs on my baritone guitar first jumping from bass lines to melodies along the way adding another layer of personal since I'm not using electronics at all in the writing process so that helps lend an electronic track to have a more organic feel. For Philly the chord changes came first followed by the guitar melody, the vocals were all added on the first take all ad-lib after reading my notes around the song. After writing the song with standard instruments the electronic conversion happens, this process can take a month per track…James and I will talk about the songs for about an hour or 2 breaking it down and choosing the direction and executing it, we tend to talk about it a lot more than the actual execution. James is a genius when it comes to production and mastering, I try to give him interesting songs to work with, It’s a really unique relationship. We both push for the songs to have a UA sound to them from our producers point of view.

Do you perform live? If so, do you feel more comfortable on a stage or within the walls of the recording studio?

Answer: I used to play live all the time when UA was more of a true 5 man guitar driven band but once I started to get obsessed with pro tools I spent more and more time writing and recording, …I am more at home in the studio working on songs these days, but I am anxious to get back out and play live sets in support of the new record. I have a few offers to do some true Untitled Art DJ sets based around Florida, but I’d rather tour with a full line up for the full effect.

If you could only pick one song to make a “first impression” on a new listener, which song would you pick and why?

Answer: W.A.M 17 (part 1 & 2) it encompasses the entire gambit of what we are trying to accomplish and showcase with UA. It covers all the aspects of electronic from alternative electronic rock to EDM going from darkness to light, plus it is a great dynamic track for a live setting with a lot of power…the full version part 1 & 2 will be on the full length titled “13”

What does it take to be “innovative” in music?

Answer: Don’t use presets for starters…I have always been told along the way that I am m non-conventional in my approach…it’s because when I was told you can’t sing through a guitar delay pedal, I decided that was all l was going to sing through going forward and it’s like that with everything when I approach a song, I use a baritone guitar so that alone puts me in a unique camp right out the gate…experiment is the real takeaway, It’s your art, your rules, check out early New Order, Siouxsie and the Banshees or Cranes for interesting takes on the norm…or the stereotypical answer - go listen to my bloody valentine for recording and guitar technique/innovation…Cocteau twins, if you like alternative music.

Any upcoming release or tour your way?

Answer: The plan is to keep putting out the individual songs for now leading up to 2 releases, one is an ep containing all the part 2 versions (slated release date is Oct 2, 2017) and then late 2017 release the full record titled “13” we would like to set up a full support tour through Europe first then focus on the USA 2nd half of 2018.

Anywhere online where curious fans can listen to your music and find out more about you?

Answer: just the usual suspects, band camp, sound cloud, youtube, and iTunes.

[tinymixtapes]

Music Review: Alan Vega - IT

Alan Vega IT [FADER; 2017] Rating: 4.5/5 The infamous early performances of Suicide are understood to be foundational events that set the bar for shock-punk extremity. As Henry Rollins stated a year ago in the official public announcement of Alan Vega’s death, “[Suicide’s] confrontational live performances, light-years before Punk Rock, are the stuff of legend.” These performances (along with the preceding efforts of The Stooges) ushered in a lineage of shock-rock egos purporting hypotheses for experimentation with violent confrontation, social sculpture, hierarchical relations, and rock & roll as their interests. These now tired and problematized theses have had their moments: Suicide’s eventual colleague James Chance physically confronted apathetic audiences just before harsh noise pioneers Hanatarash and Hijokaidan brought threat levels to a peak with explosives, projectiles, bulldozers, and urination. These theses may have met maximum attention in the mid-80s when artists like GG Allin and The Mentors regularly appeared on daytime talkshows to gleefully debate their violence with angry and bewildered parents. At their worst, these experiments in shock rock were backed by a familiar argument: an artist inflicting violence for the sake of truth. “Twentieth century art movements were veritably obsessed with diagnosing injustice and alienation, and prescribing various ‘shock and awe’ treatments to cure us of them — a method Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke usefully, if revoltingly described in a 2007 interview as ‘raping the viewer into independence,’” notes writer Maggie Nelson in The Art of Cruelty. Nelson argues that performative cruelty is generally only more irritating when its actors propose it is for their viewer’s good. When such a harbinger appears, he implies that he not only knows what is wrong with his audience, but also what will cure them. It is with this attitude that GG Allin appropriated the punk ethos of anti-consumerism and anti-puritanism and proposed that his concoction of irreverence and violence was the pill to solve it all. A similar attitude carries Sun Kil Moon’s Mark Kozelek through his own verbal abuse. He once advised to Guardian journalist Laura Snapes, “Listen to your elders. I’m 48 and I have wisdom. I’ve seen girls laid out on the street with an ambulance picking them up because they are crossing the street with those stupid headphones on.” This already demeaning piece of advice came before he publicly called out its recipient by name in front of an audience of 1,900 (of which she was not a part). Kozelek finds himself consistently bemoaning journalists, reporters, and commentators for the simple reportage and speculation upon his own speech. The irony of his (as well as many others’) grumblings about the truth is that he won’t have it fed back to him. Of course, such an attitude is nothing new; Nelson quotes painter Francis Bacon stating in 1966, “people tend to be offended by facts, or what used to be called truth.” Here tells the 79-year-old Vega — in anticipation of his own death, writing, recording, and performing in spite of it — “the truth is dead… the saint is dead… the motorcycle explodes.” Vega doesn’t beat around the bush. Within the dark cityscape of IT, there are eight different proclamations of death spoken with the same structure: “the [creature/man/brotherhood/skull/ghost/truth/saint/blaze] is dead.” This is not to mention the provocation that introduces the album, delivered with the nonchalance of Drake letting loose an acronym (e.g. “YOLO,” “HYFR”), Vega snickers, “DTM. Dead To Me.” It is this very nonchalance that carries Vega through the drama of IT without the faintest pretension. Listening to the album, I never had the feeling that a promise of horror went undelivered. Instead, the album’s mild horror lurched from a presence, as if to say, “it is what it is.” Vega’s stake on truth is an effect of his adherence to simple sentences and present tense. The album’s title track, for example, screams, “It has a gun/ It is ready/ To kill somebody/ The killer is close/ You can smell it/ The weapon is loaded.” These disaffected proclamations meet some of the harshest yet most vibrant instrumentals to support Vega’s voice to date (production is credited to Vega and his wife/frequent collaborator Elizabeth Lamere). Exempting a few moments of punctuation — the sudden drop and spattering that occurs five minutes into album-opener “DTM;” the butchering edits that close “IT” before Vega’s voice is lost to a vacuum — the music enables Vega’s voice as his best accompanists have: providing the expository setting and minimalistic bedding necessary for Vega to project his scene upon and float above. His delivery will sound strange to those unfamiliar, but it will be oddly cozy to those who have known it all along. Vega is at his most animated and affected on “Motorcycle Explodes,” a song that represents, if not Vega’s own death, the death of his image. It begins with a dry howl that effectively carries the horror of his trademark “Frankie Teardrop” shrieks. The song’s subject can be none other than Ghost Rider, the figure that opened Suicide’s discography four decades ago and provided the band its name. “[T]he ghost is dead, the truth is dead/ At rocket speed, subhuman,” Vega shouts, imagining the rider killed by his ride, his only point of relation to his surroundings. This represents Vega’s point of simultaneous reflection and collapse, a marker at which the relationship between his art and his life can maintain conversation no longer (Rollins: “Alan’s life is a lesson of what it is to truly live for art. The work, the incredible amount of time required, the courage to keep seeing it and the strength to bring it forth — this was Alan Vega.”) The album’s coda — “Prayer,” “Prophecy,” and “Stars” — is both cruel and forgiving. More or less a kick in the ass. “Prophecy” begins as a direct reflection, “Been kicked hard/ Friggin punched out/ Pushed into cement walls/ Got a bloody head/ Blood is dripping down my face.” Then he hands off his experience, “I’m bruised everywhere/ It’s happened before/ In the street/ On the stage/ And it will/ Happen again/ Yeah tremendous over/ And over and over and over/ Again/ It’s my prophecy.” Vega universalizes his defiance. “Over and over and over and over again” cannot be contained within one life. The care with which he delivers these lines, the lack of audacity, allows their recipient inclusion. “I will get up/ I will survive,” he continues, “I will go on and on and on/ So fuck you killers/ Fuck you/ I stand/ It’s my prophecy.” With that, Vega hands off his spirit and his legacy. The next words we are gracefully given, “It’s yours, It’s your life/ It’s your given hand.” --- G.G. Allin once threatened to the audience of The Jane Whitney daytime talk show, “your kids are my kids.” When he said this, he was suggesting a battle over ideology. He felt the very real power an artist may have to stake a claim over another’s subject formation. IT, in all of its auditory abuse and bleak imagery, shows no such ambition. The burden Vega bestows is the act of engaging with the world as he has: experimental in art as in life, such that the two converge. Vega’s interest in cruelty arose from an interest in how a social space could be transformed by a single action that none before had thought possible. In Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, he recalls seeing The Stooges: “[Iggy] went to sing and he just pukes all over, man. He’s running through the audience and shit �� staring at the crowd and going ‘Fuck you! Fuck you!’… It was one of the greatest shows I ever saw in my life. It changed my life, because it made me realize everything I was doing was bullshit.” Of course, venue violence is no longer interesting. Beyond that, it is increasingly a very real threat. Perhaps it is no coincidence that IT’s cover appears to be an EXIT sign severed by the camera, marking Vega’s exit with a material affirmation. This simple transformation echoes the legend that Vega, at Suicide’s early performances, used to cause himself to bleed amidst Martin Rev’s cacophony, only to block the rear exits so audiences could not flee. Amidst the fires, shootings, and bombings that have unfortunately become a familiar part of our musical landscape, such a stunt is no longer respectable. On the other side of four decade’s growth sits IT with its intentions intensified and redirected. The sign half-visible on the cover does not obfuscate the way out. Transformed, it encourages consciousness, directness, and presence — nothing more. http://j.mp/2h1JvFw

[tunesiloved-blog]

Chris Cornell - a 24 year soundtrack to my life

I don’t think that there has been a week in the last 24 years when I haven’t listened to Chris Cornell’s voice. His music has been the soundtrack to my life and listening to his songs conjures up vivid memories - sitting in a field watching bats at twilight, bouncing around in a darkened club with sticky floors, sitting in the car listening to just one more song before going to the office, his screams drowning out the clanging in a MRI scanner… Knowing we’re in a post Cornell world has made everything feel off kilter. I won’t grow old together with his music; instead he now occupies the same space as Jeff Buckley. A music catalogue that is beloved yet tinged with sadness and what could have beens.

At first I didn’t know the song that was playing when I first heard him. I was listening to John Peel on my Walkman in 1993 and his voice stopped me in my tracks. It was days later before I found out it was Rusty Cage. His music meant a lot to me because from that night, before I knew who or what it was, it spoke to me on a visceral level. Something in me recognised itself in the music and it was like coming home. As simple as that.

Finding out about bands, especially the ‘grunge’ ones in the 90s involved a lot of detective work, you were reliant on the weekly music press, radio, and friends who had access to MTV. I remember waiting weeks for the Louder than Love, Temple of the Dog and Singles CDs to arrive from the US and had a tape of Badmotorfinger that I literally wore out. So it was surprising when I was in the US a few months after the release of Superunknown to see exactly how popular they were.

Superunknown will always be their most well known album. It showed greater sophistication than Badmotorfinger but still as heavy and fearsome, you could hear echoes of the struggle with depression and darkness in the lyrics. I also associated with it as an introvert, dealing with other people and trying (and failing) to find a way of fitting in only to be left confused and exhausted by it all.

The Day I Tried to Live is a perfect example of this frustration. It starts out ‘I woke the same as any other day/Except a voice was in my head/It said seize the day, pull the trigger, drop the blade/And watch the rolling heads’ but then by the end of the song ‘I woke the same as any other day, you know/I should have stayed in bed’. And who hasn’t felt like that? Other stand outs were Mailman as the perfect ‘fuck you’ song, My Wave, Fell on Black Days and of course Black Hole Sun.

However Down on the Upside is my favourite album; it’s complex and dark and I have a greater understanding of it as I have grown older. Jason Heller from Pitchfork said that it is “every inch as dense and harrowing as In Utero” and he’s right. It starts off with Pretty Noose, a track that could have been on Superunknown, then by the third song you are swept into Zero Chance starting with the poetic ‘I think I know the answer/I stumbled on and all the world fell down/And all the sky went silent/Cracked like glass and slowly/Tumbled to the ground.’ Then it hits you in the gut with ‘They say if you look hard/You’ll find your way back home/Born without a friend/And bound to die alone.’ You are then promptly thrown into Dusty where you are ‘back on the upside’.

This rollercoaster goes throughout the album – and it’s worth noting that this is an album that you need to listen in its entirety and not cherry pick. Grab a drink, sit down and truly immerse yourself in it. After all these years Tighter and Tighter still makes me tingle down to my toes and Blow up the Outside World is now desperately sad.

Temple of a Dog was an album that simply ached with longing and grief (Reach Down and Hello 2 Heaven), but valiantly tried to pull you into a celebration of life and love too (All Night Thing and Call Me a Dog). It was completely different to Badmotorfinger and gave a hint of what would be found in his solo albums. Euphoria Morning felt like an explosion of everything that he was keeping to himself since Seasons. You can’t miss the sense of grief for Jeff Buckley threaded among the songs about alienation and relationships in Wave Goodbye and When I’m Down, where he says ‘I’m always drowning in my grief’. In fact I think that the loss of his friends had a greater impact upon him than anyone realised.

In 2015 in a one off gig called Sonic Evolution, Cornell joined the remaining members of Mad Season and accompanied by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. I can’t think of anyone else who could do justice to Layne Staley’s lyrics and make it sound less like an elaborate karaoke and more a celebration of his work. Once again, he sang some Temple of the Dog songs and you just knew that there was so much musical potential in that room just waiting to explode.

King Animal showed that Soundgarden weren’t reforming just to make money off the old back catalogue, with an album that was a solid progression from Down on the Upside, borrowing influences for Cornell’s time with Audioslave and Timbaland as well as Matt Cameron’s experience with Pearl Jam. One song in particular stands out for me and has been the perfect kick up the ass track. Rowing is powerful with its mantra like simplicity, pulled along by a bass line that is reminiscent of Rusty Cage, complemented with some mixing that he clearly picked up from making Scream. ‘Don’t know where I’m going I just keep on rowing/I just keep on polling, gotta row Moving is breathing and breathing is life/stopping is dying/you’ll be alright/Life is a hammer waiting to drop/Drifting the shallows and the rowing won’t stop… Rowing is bleeding, bleeding is breathing/Breathing is feeling, running and freezing We’re getting dirty but I stared out clean/Keep on Rowing.’

I was lucky enough to see him twice, once with Audioslave in 2003 and the other in 2013 with Soundgarden. Each time was truly exceptional and were the best gigs I have ever seen. They both simultaneously gave me goosebumps and also bought me to tears more often than I’d like to admit. Hearing Tighter and Tighter, Cochise, Rusty Cage and Outshined were some of the highlights. I don’t think I’ll ever attend a better concert, what’s more I think that everyone attending knew they were witnessing something special.

He left such an extensive back catalogue, but also worked not only with his friends from Seattle, but further afield. The three Audioslave albums were inspiring with a shift towards a Morello style rock where he was able to showcase another aspect of his voice. Scream with Timbaland was …. interesting (although the title track is an insistent ear worm). He also helped produce the posthumous Jeff Buckley albums, and showed great sensitivity handling the unfinished work. It makes me wonder what will stem from his death, you cannot be such an integral part of a musical scene without shockwaves being felt far and wide. When that happens, the safety valve is to make music. Even in death, he will be the source of musical inspiration.

While I’ve been writing this it has been thundering for most of the time, as if the music is reaching the heavens and the sky itself is shaking with frustration of the unfairness of it all. A friend said we shouldn’t have been surprised that it ended as it did, in retrospect we were warned - and we were. Yet in listening back (and some of the songs are exceptionally hard to do so) I feel that he was often recognising his depression and the darkness that haunted him, yet he said he’d carry on and still got up every day – until he didn’t.

My heart hurts for his family and how much pain he must have been in, and how hard he fought it for so long. His was a talent that only happens once in a lifetime and only truly recognised now he is gone. We as a society let him, and so many others like him down. We need to end the stigma of mental illness, especially for men. He did warn us and carrying on with that burden must have been exhausting, I hope he is at rest now.

#chriscornell #soundgarden #ripchriscornell #chris cornell

[oblivianclassic]

Game Ramble: Helldivers is Other People

Helldivers, developed by Arrowhead Studios, published by Playstation Mobile, Inc. Available on PS4 and Windows (Steam).

It’s interesting how I started playing Helldivers just this year, as the climate of North American politics becomes ever more absurd. Interesting because Helldivers is “Starship Troopers: The Game” in all but name. Not Starship Troopers, the novel, but rather the Verhoeven movie which satirized everything from fascist ideology to Hollywood’s idea of battle strategy to military propaganda films. Like all good satire a good many people failed to see the joke, but that’s another story. Luckily for us, Helldivers’ satire is very on-the-nose with its vainglorious musical themes, the defense of Democracy for Super Earth™, and various Helldiver vocal barks such as “How d’you like the taste of democracy?!”, “Freedom delivery!” and “Have a nice cup of liber-TEA!”. Taking Helldivers seriously is like taking any aspect of the Warhammer 40000 setting seriously. Indeed Helldivers does seem to have some 40k in its rather Imperial Guard skulls-and-fascism aesthetic.

The fact that I’ve only begun to play Helldivers in the recent few months is also interesting because the game is extremely focused on cooperative multiplayer, and my friends are three time zones away from me. I’ve had to mostly play Helldivers with random strangers, and while I’ve had some great moments of team triumph and disaster, it’s really not the same as experiencing those kinds of moments with friends. Helldivers’ co-op nature won’t be a surprise to anyone who has played Arrowhead Studios’ claim to fame: a little game called Magicka, in which a team of between one and four incompetent wizards try to save the world. Part of what made that game tick was the spell casting system; you controlled your wizard using a top-down Diablo-like control scheme, and you could combine eight different magical elements on the fly in various quantities and combinations to create spells. Learning various spell combinations and unleashing over-the-top displays of elemental death was a big portion of the game. Either that, or you’d accidentally leave a crucial element out of a spell and set yourself on fire, or electrocute yourself, or heal an enemy instead of disintegrate them, or... well, let’s just say that there’s a reason Magicka is known to many as the Mage Suicide Simulator.

The other thing that made the game tick was other players, since spells could interact with other spells, and there was no option to turn friendly fire off. Fire a beam of healing energy and if it accidentally touched your friend’s arcane death beam it would create an explosion, probably hurling your friend off a cliff. Cast a bubble shield to keep everyone safe while your friend is firing a blast of electricity and the energy would ricochet around inside the bubble, zapping everyone. What kept it from turning into a rage-fest were a couple of things. Firstly, the revive spell was very easy to cast even while you were being mobbed by enemies and it would bring all your dead friends back to life immediately. Secondly, a team of wizards who knew what they were doing would become a force of nature, combining elemental effects to devastating effect. Occasionally even a competent team of wizards would self-destruct in spectacular fashion (my “favorite” is “exploding circle of electrified arcane ice walls”. That’s right, Thegiant, I’m talking to you), but the results are generally as hilarious as they are explosive.

Helldivers, then, is a decent if finicky top-down shooter when played solo, but truly shines when you start playing it with others. It takes a little more nuance to play than you might expect from the seemingly standard twin-stick shooter template. Weapons have a fairly small amount of ammunition per magazine, the number of magazines you can carry is limited, reloading takes a long time, and whatever ammunition was left in your magazine when you reload is dropped forever. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from a simulation-focused game like ARMA, not from a twin-stick shooter. On top of this, your character can equip four “stratagems” -  air support and special equipment dropped from orbit. These are called in by pressing a sequence of direction keys, a system which is a little reminiscent of the famous Konami code. Completing the sequence correctly gives your character a beacon which they then throw like a grenade. The stratagem will then arrive at the beacon’s location: generally a pod containing the requested equipment, landing at terminal velocity from space. As this is a game from the people who made Magicka, the pod (or airstrike, or vehicle) will kill anything it lands on. The contents of the stratagem usually need to be treated with care as well, since things like turrets and airstrikes will not care if you happen to be in the way. They won’t deliberately target you, but a turret can and will shoot anything that’s between itself and its target. All in all, at this point Helldivers is a game that requires some finesse to play, but doesn’t seem all that special. In fact, a lot of the things it does seem like small inconveniences for the sake of inconveniencing the player.

And then comes the point at which you call in some friends or strangers, or join someone else’s mission in progress. On the easier missions, what usually happens next is pure chaos. Friendly fire is once again a reality of life, not an option to be turned off. It’s easy enough to call in dead friends as reinforcements from orbit, but the stratagem beacon is damnably imprecise, and its resemblance to a grenade means that all too many people will throw it at a mob of enemies. Then again, the pod you arrive in will kill anything it lands on, but that can also include the guy who dropped the respawn beacon in the first place. Being killed by your own friends is a reality in Helldivers, even by complete accident. Even something as simple as waiting for the shuttle to pick you up at the end of the mission can become deadly as people start calling in spare mech suits, extra turrets, landmines and airstrikes whether they’re actually needed or not. The shuttle itself will crush anyone incautious enough to be standing under it when it arrives.

But then you play enough games with the same group or with your friends, you start playing harder missions, and something magical happens: everyone starts working as a team. You start noticing how entire systems of the game are built to encourage, nay, require cooperative play. The camera itself, locked into a top-down view which forces all four players to be on the screen at once, ensures that everyone is always moving as a team. The risk of friendly fire means that everyone instinctively starts moving in staggered formations and will maintain clear cones of fire. Simply calling in an essential stratagem can take time and attention away from incoming enemies, and having friends to cover you when you’re stratagem-ing and reloading your gun is enormously helpful. Since each player can only bring four stratagems into a mission, this encourages specialization. One player might use two slots for mech suits so she has a spare if one is destroyed or runs out of ammo. Another player brings a personal shield generator and a repair gun to act as the engineer. Another one brings turrets and barbed wire. The fourth brings a variety of heavy weapon options.

Many weapons and vehicles themselves flat out work better if you’re playing with a team. Simply wielding a lot of the heavy weapons keeps you stationary, so you’re relying on teammates to watch your back. Mech suits turn slowly and have a weak point in the rear, so it’s a good idea for other players to keep enemies off of the flanks. The APC has huge blind spots in its firing angles unless a full team of four are manning all the turrets. The rocket launchers in Helldivers come with a support pack which carries all the spare ammunition. The player using the rocket launcher can carry the support pack themselves and reload their weapon solo, but this takes several seconds during which they’re immobile. If another player carries the support pack and reloads the launcher for their friend when prompted, however, this only takes about half a second. A team of players who know what they’re doing can bring a truly impressive amount of firepower to bear, and are all the more impressive for the fact that this represents a lot of trust, communication and genuine teamwork between them.

The final thing that makes Helldivers a blast to play is the way that the game throws in small bits of chaos. Mainly these involve the inherent lack of precision when tossing out stratagem beacons crossed with the abundance and power of friendly fire. The finicky nature of a lot of this game’s mechanics at this point become points of failure, things that can and do go wrong when you’re under attack and just want to call in some more ammo, dammit!  Small crises can cascade into larger crises, leading to panic and improvisation and the moments of triumph or disaster which make a good co-op action game shine. Two people reload at the same time, and suddenly cyborg dogs are eating your faces off. A stratagem beacon, thrown in the middle of a pitched fight, might bounce off a rock. Seconds later, your respawning friend arrives in a pod dropped from orbit and flattens your team’s APC. The guy piloting a mech suit might step backwards at the wrong moment and take off most of your health. One enemy patrol might wander in while you were dealing with a persistent tank, extending the engagement long enough for two more patrols to wander in, and then what was only a small, controlled engagement becomes a full on brawl. A turret might get placed just a few feet short of where you had meant to put it, and your friends were paying too much attention to the incoming wave of enemies to notice that they were between the turret and its targets. Like Magicka, the ease with which dead friends can be brought back means that death is mainly a source of comedy rather than a major setback. Like Magicka, it is when you’re teetering right at the edge of triumph or disaster with a dozen small things that could tip you either way that the game is really at its best.

A knife’s-edge of tension and a lot of balls to juggle isn’t required for all cooperative multiplayer games, but it certainly seems to be an important element of the shooter ones at least. Left 4 Dead’s Director AI was designed explicitly to keep players constantly on their toes, and the composition of later waves in Killing Floor is tuned to overwhelm the players unless they prioritize targets properly. The famous Nazi Zombies mode of the later Call Of Dutys kept players running around performing damage control by putting up barricades to keep the horde at a manageable level. Helldivers accomplishes the same thing by giving everyone a dozen things to do and get wrong at the same time, but compensates by keeping the price for each individual failure fairly small. A great mission in Helldivers is one in which each small crisis leads into another just as the previous one is resolved, and you don’t quite get the opportunity to recover and brace yourself for the next one. A great mission in Helldivers ends when the extraction shuttle lands on top of a giant alien bug and narrowly avoids crushing the player that the bug was about to eat. That player piles in just as another player dives out of the way of a badly placed strafing run and the third player sprints over from where he’d been taking cover next to his minigun turret and a pile of bug corpses. Finally, the shuttle takes off moments before the explosion of a nuclear bomb stratagem someone dropped just for the hell of it.

Tune in next time when Taihus thumps a rhythm somewhere out beyond the limits of sanity.

-Taihus “How about a nice cup of liber-TEA?!” @raincoastgamer

#Video Games #Gaming #The Oblivian Studios #Oblivian Studios #Raincoastgamer #A Rain-Coast Gamer's Ramblings #Game Ramble #Review #reviews #ramble #Helldivers #Magica #Arrowhead #Arrowhead Studios

[thepodreviews]

THE TOP 20 ALBUMS OF 2016

20. clipping. - Splendor & Misery

“Shoulda made the noose a little tighter cuz there ain’t nobody dead just some motherfucking riders”

Concept albums are tricky to pull off. You can either end up with a Ziggy Stardust, or with Drones. In this case, noise rap trio clipping. ended up with something totally unique. The album tells an afrofuturistic story dealing with the aftermath of a slave rebellion on a cargo ship lost deep in space. That’s all i’m willing to reveal about the story, because this is an album that has to be experienced firsthand. Frontman Daveed Diggs showcases his chops not only as an MC, but also as a fantastic storyteller, complimented perfectly by the cold, eerie electronics, which help give the album a really unsettling feel. Do not let this album slip by.

19. Weezer - The White Album

“If I was king of the world, you’d be my girl, you wouldn’t have to shed a single tear”

With an incredible return to form, Weezer make me almost want to forgive everything since the Green Album. From the moment the chorus exploded in California Kids, I knew the old Weezer I loved had finally returned. Everything that made them great is back in full force here. The clever lyrics, the catchy melodies, and of course, Rivers Cuomo shredding like nobody’s business. Here's hoping they keep it up.

18. The Body & Full of Hell - One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache

  This is, by far, the single most intense musical experience I had this year. Fresh off the heels of their equally intense collaboration with Merzbow in 2014, Full of Hell joins forces with sludge metal act The Body to deliver something even more hellish and abrasive. This album effortlessly combines droning guitars, harsh noise and some incredible screamed vocals to create an overwhelming and oppressive atmosphere that makes listening to it all the way through a punishing, but ultimately rewarding experience. Definitely not one for the faint of heart.

17. The Avalanches - Wildflower

“I just want to know, what’s wrong with me? Being in love with you.”

The one nobody ever thought was ever gonna happen. After 16 years (16 years!), the legendary Avalanches finally came out of their hiding hole and delivered one of the most fun albums i've heard in a long while. The Australian trio blend together samples and, for the first time, guest appearances by the likes of Danny Brown, DOOM, Ariel Pink and even Biz Markie to create the musical equivalent of pure, unbriddled joy. This is an album to lose yourself and get lost in, while never losing a smile on your face. Welcome back guys. Now please stick around a little longer this time.

16. YG - Still Brazy

“I really got something to say: I’m the only one to make out the west without Dre”

It’s rare when an artist completely manages to change my expectations on them. YG, however managed to do this with just the first song on this album. By swithing over DJ Mustard´s boring, repetitive sound in favor of a classic West Coast G-Funk influence, the Compton rapper completely won me over. But it’s not just the production that shines in this record, but rather YG himself. He constantly switches from topic to topic, including race, politics, police brutality, even getting autobiographical in some tracks, but never does he sound like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. All throughout the album he proves to have enough charisma and self-confidence for the listener to buy every single word he’s saying. Who even needs DJ Mustard anyways?

15. Mitski - Puberty 2

“Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me, but I do, I think I do”

This is an airing of grievances in musical form. Very few times before has a howling guitar expressed such frustration and anger, but at the same time, such deep sadness. Mitski’s voice carries the album from moments of tenderness to those of visceral bitterweet emotion, all of them carrying the same weight and never pulling any punches, wether they be quiet or loud. And in that same bittersweet emotion, there’s always a tiny, hopeful sensation that somehow, maybe, just maybe, it’s all gonna work out in the end. Just maybe.

14. Vektor - Terminal Redux

“I think I’m losing my mind”

This is the second concept album on this list, and coincidentally, it’s also (partly) about space. But if Splendor & Misery was subtle and understated, Terminal Redux is the complete opposite. This is thrash metal taken to the extreme. From the opening seconds, the album hits the ground running and never slows down once, building towards an absolutely massive climax. The entire band brings their A-game, from the furious shredding and riffing of the guitars, to the machine gun drumming, including lead singer’s David DiSanto’s fantastic vocals. What truly amazes me about this album is the fact that, despite being so long, with various tracks reaching well beyond the 7 minute mark, it never feels tiring or repetitive. The band somehow manages to be constantly inventive and engaging throughout, including some unorthodox elements, for example the choir in the opening track. And that’s not even taking into account the album’s story, which is so insane I won’t even try to describe it. It’s an album you have to experience firsthand. Just sit down and enjoy the ride. 

13. KA - Honor Killed the Samurai

“I plea to treat all just. To get what we need, we did what we must”

This might be the most bleak album of the year. Most of the songs lack a definite beat or rhythm. The instrumentals are grimy, cold, and gloomy. But KA ties it all together with some the most poetic and dense lyrics I think I’ve ever heard. The Brownsville rapper is introspective and philosophical, soundind like a weathered voice of wisdom who has lived through countless tragedies and has seen how the world around him corrupts those around him. Although his voice never rises above a grizzly monotone, he conveys the pain all of this has caused him masterfully. It’s not the usual hip hop, but it’s one of the best.

12. Preoccupations - Preoccupations

“You don’t need to say sorry for all the times when everything fell through”

The band formerly known as Viet Cong ditched nearly everything that characterized their 2015 project (the speed, the controlled sonic chaos, even the name), but they’re still inequivocally themselves. In choosing to make a slower and more reflexive album, they made moments like the long, washed-out ending to the 10-minute epic Memory make sense, instead of making it boring. Every single moment is filled with a profound feeling of loneliness that resonates in every note played by the band, and in Matt Flegel’s smoke cloud of a voice. But in the end, it all contributes to what is ultimately an incredibly mesmerizing and hypnotizing experience, and it serves to prove that order and control can hit just as hard as noise and chaos.

11. Angel Olsen - MY WOMAN

“Was it me you were thinking of? All the time when you thought of me”

Angel Olsen’s ode to, in her own words, “the complicated mess of being a woman” has a certain aura of sadness all throughout. It’s the sadness of someone who has been through just too much. Wether it’s about family, love, unfaithfulness, or unreachable standards, the end is still that same sadness. Olsen, talking from the perspective of someone who clearly knows this all too well, pours her heart and soul over this album, and it shows in the amount of sheer emotion that is put on display in the heartbreaking lyrics, or even just in her delivery of said lyrics. A single cracking of the voice carries more feeling than certain artists only hope to achieve. Sometimes the most emotional moments don’t even have any words, like in the explosive and pained climax of Shut Up Kiss Me. However, all of this emotion doesn’t alienate, but instead does the contrary, inspiring a deep sympathy that makes you come back again and again, even if you don’t share those feelings. And in the end, that is what all good music must aspire to do. 

10. Nicolas Jaar - Sirens 

“No hay que ver el futuro para saber lo que va a pasar”

A protest can come in many shapes and sizes. Some of them are loud and ensure that they are heard by everyone, while others are quiet and preach to whoever will hear. To chilean producer Nicolas Jaar, this concept is nothing new. Jaar, who specializes in quiet, understaded music, produced a more subtle kind of protest. Instead of dropping anvils left and right and hitting you over the head with his message, he instead talks in abstract ideas and concepts, that at first appear to be vaguely related, if at all. But then it all comes together and he lets that moment of realisation do all the talking. He even lets his signature soundscapes contribute to the mood and message of the album. It combines and contrasts many sounds, textures, instruments, even singing styles to create something unique, that’s sometimes rhythmic, sometimes hectic and formless, but always carrying the same haunting message. 

9. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Nonagon Infinity

“Nonagon Infinity opens the door”

King Gizzard are not a band that are afraid to experiment. Every album is dedicated to some crazy off-the-wall idea and they fully commit themselves to make it work. In the hands of any other band, it would just be a bunch of gimmicks. But in their hands, it’s an entire playground of ideas and originality. In the case of Nonagon Infinity, they have effectlively made an endless loop of an album. It has no true beginning or finishing track, and every track blends together seamlessly. It’s an insteresting concept, sure, but if this was all there was to it, this album would not be just a one-note affair, something that most people wouldn’t give a second look. Luckily, King Gizzard know this, and made the album one of the fastest and hardest-rocking albums to come out in the entirety of 2016. From the very second it begins, you’re blasted by some pf the most energetic, catchy, and just plain fun songs the band have made to this date. It’s a flurry of fuzzy guitars, groovy basslines and powerhouse drumming. And that’s the magic of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard: they don’t make an album an endless loop just to say they made an endless album, they make an amazing album, one that you could listen to over and over again, that just so happens to be an endless loop. That’s why it could only work in their hands.

8. Kaytranada - 99.9% 

“I’m here and I know y’all be waiting for me.”

You may or may not know Canadian producer Kaytranada for producing for the likes of Freddie Gibbs, Mick Jenkins, The Internet, among others. He’s always been great at creating groovy, easy-going beats, but he’s never really come out into his own. Until now. With a more than impressive debut, Kaytranada shows the world what he’s capable of and makes the case for being one of the best producers out there today. This is first and foremost a beats tape, with contributions from the likes of rapper Vic Mensa, singer Anderson .Paak, and even jazz quartet BADBADNOTGOOD. But these guests never feel like they’re the focus of the album. Instead, each of them feel more like elements that are mixed together into the groove of the album. Kaytranada takes their voices, their words, their instruments and waves them together with his own impossibly catchy melodies to create something that is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Every song here will get stuck in your head for at least a day, and they will very hardly leave. And I guarantee that no matter what, you’ll be left wanting more. 

7. Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Denial

“I didn’t want you to hear that shake in my voice, my pain is my own”

Will Toledo sings about what everyone else would rather not. Depression, social anxiety, failing to make something out of your life, you name it. True, he might not be the first to do so, but it doesn’t mean what he writes isn’t engaging or full of true, raw emotions. Finally free of the constrictions of lo-fi, Toledo takes advantage of it and expands upon his creativity, being loud, huge and bombastic when he needs to, and then going back to being tender and quiet, sometimes in the same song. He’s not the best singer, but for some reason his certainly unique voice works perfectly here. He also manages to add extra instruments, like horns or keyboards, and they complement the music perfectly. But it’s the fantastic songwriting that truly drives the album home for me. Yes, it can be sad and heartbreaking, but there’s moments of catharsis that make it feel like it’s okay to laugh at your own pain. And in the end, we’re all better for it. 

6. Bon Iver - 22, A Million 

“Philosophize your figure, what I have and haven’t held.”

Every once in a while comes an artist that with a single album alters everything about them. Their image, their sound, everything. Radiohead did it with Kid A, Talk Talk did it with The Colour of Spring, Primal Scream did it with Screamadelica, and now, Bon Iver have done it with 22, A Million. Even though Justin Vernon has subtly been evolving ever since he started the Bon Iver project (replacing the minimalistic sound of For Emma, Forever Ago with a full band on their self-titled album), and even though we’ve seen him collaborate with Kanye West on Yeezus, his most experimental album yet, I don’t think anyone was ready for this radical of a change. Replacing live instrumentation entirely, Vernon instead opts for glitchy soundscapes, manipulated samples of his own voice, and horns aplenty. Even his lyrics have changed, becoming even more cryptic than they already were in the past. But even though the instrumentation is weird and out there, and you never really know just what he’s talking about, Vernon still  manages to create something that resonates within you, and the emotions shine through. No matter where he goes next, I don’t have a doubt that it will still be incredible.

5. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree

“I move, you move, and one more time with feeling”

To say that Skeleton Tree might be Nick Cave’s most emotional album yet is saying a lot. Cave is known for making dark and generally disturbing music, but this record is dark for a very different reason. During the sessions for this album, Cave’s son Arthur tragically passed away. Even though no explicit mention or reference is made, this tragedy haunts the record. That sickening, oppresive feeling of loss lingers in every word and in the sparse, minimalistic production. And then, on the second half of the album, Cave turns his head from the darkness and starts looking towards the light. A ray of hope illuminates the back half of the album, simbolizing the beginning of a healing process. Musically, this album is the most minimalistic Cave has ever gotten. But what’s there is more than enough to convey exactly what needs to be conveyed. This is not an album of despair. It is an album of surviving through that despair and the peace of mind that comes with it. 

4. Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool 

“Broken hearts make it rain”

Thom Yorke and co. are no strangers to the feeling of deep sadness that accompanies loneliness. But on A Moon Shaped Pool, they dive deep within this feeling and produce their most depressing and heartwrenching set of tracks in a very long time. More than being simply emotional, A Moon Shaped Pool is the most human album that has come along in a while. The band, accompanied by Jonny Greenwood’s orchestral arrangements, wear their hearts on their sleeves, resulting in an album that’s mainly about love, or more specifically, what comes after it is gone, and what fills the void that’s left in its place. While album closer True Love Waits might be the most gentle song on the entire album, it’s also the heaviest in terms of what it’s saying. And unlike Skeleton Tree, there’s no comfort at the end of it.

3. David Bowie - Blackstar 

“Look up here, I’m in heaven”

When Blackstar came out, the world received a weird, ominous and cryptic album that talked about death, the afterlife, and all that you leave behind when you die. Two days later, we all understood why. More than an album, this is the final testament of an artist coming to terms with his own untimely passing and releasing one final parting gift. This album is chaotic, it’s nightmarish, at times profoundly sad, but in the end, if it truly is Bowie’s final goodbye, then it accomplishes what it sets out to do. One can choose to handle death in a number of ways. The way Bowie chose to do it is unusual, yes, but it feels like something that only he could have done, and it truly ends his decades-long career on a high note, leaving behind a legacy that few people can even hope to accomplish. R.I.P.

2. Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition

“Made 30 band in 30 minutes. Before I count it I done damn near spent it.”

This is, no contest, the single darkest album of the year. The Detroit rapper taps into something truly twisted and demented on a lot of tracks in this record. His usual themes of drug addiction, crime, poverty, and death take on an even more sinister turn paired with some of the beats in these songs. This album truly feels like a never-ending downwards spiral. One that just turns darker and more hopeless with every passing song. Danny raps his ass of through the pain, from the perspective of someone who has gone through this and knows what it brings all too well. He raps, more than anything else, from the perspective of someone who’s determined to live and survive through it if it kills him. 

1. Frank Ocean - Blonde

“I thought that I was dreaming when you said you loved me”

When Frank returned after a long four year hiatus with Blonde, he released something that did not resemble Channel Orange at all. Instead of the smooth R&B beats, the hooks, the guest verses, we got simple guitar lines, which, in most cases, make up the entirety of the songs’ instrumentations. Again, this is a sparse and minimalistic record, but in the abscence of extra instruments and sounds, the feelings truly shine. The lyrics in this album are, to put it simply, masterful. Dealing with youth, love, and identity, among other subjects, they all come together to create a near-perfect experience of an album that resonates hard within anyone who has ever been young and foolish, or even not that young anymore. It is, in a few words, the best album of 2016.

[oarfishfever]

QUAG DUMPS MUSIC MASTER POST 7

i had to sweep through all of these and fix a bunch of links. here’s a new this one’s a doozy because im lazy.

previous posts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 

Chet Baker - I’ve Never Been In Love Before [Jazz] Hiromi Mine - Akutagawa Ryuunosuke’s Kappa ~ Candid Friend [Touhou/Piano] Macross 82-99 - 葛城 ミサトYEBISU (YUNG BAE EDIT) [Future Funk] マクロスMACROSS 82-99 - NEW DAWN [Future Funk] architecture in tokyo - ヒスイ MARBLE (ft. ULTRA ウルトラ) [Future Funk] architecture in tokyo - CITY (ft. マクロスMACROSS 82-99) [Future Funk] Logic - Under Pressure [Hip-Hop] Perturbator - Meet Jimmy (ft. Le Cassette) [Synthwave] Ox - Soul [VGM/Hip-Hop] Masayoshi Furukawa & Apollon Quartet - But Not For Me [Anime/Jazz] Naofumi Hataya - Burning Depths [VGM] Grant Green - My One And Only Love [Jazz] Lupe Fiasco - Mural [Hip-Hop] Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back In Town [Rock] BLΛNK BΛNSΗΣΣ - Eco Zones [Vaportrap] SAINT PEPSI - Cherry Pepsi [Future Funk] Carpenter Brut - Roller Mobster [Synthwave] The Green Kingdom - Untitled [Ambient] Magna - Divide (Miami Edit) [Synthwave] El Huervo - Rust [Electro] Riyou Kinugasa, Takuya Kobayashi & Hiromi Mizutani - Life Is Beautiful [VGM] Obadiah Parker - Hey Ya [Cover/Acoustic] Shibayan ft. nachi - Turn Back Time [Electro] iamthekidyouknowwhatimean - Run [Electro] El Tigr3 - She Swallowed Burning Coals [Synthwave] M|O|O|N - Dust (Carpenter Brut Remix) [Synthwave] Towkio - Heaven Only Knows (ft. Chance the Rapper & Lido) [Hip-Hop] YUNG BAE - Honey [Future Funk] Harrison - Sure Ain’t News [Future Funk] マクロスMACROSS 82-99 - Fun Tonight [Future Funk] Flamingosis - Outside/Grounded [Beats] Rika Muranaka - The Best Is Yet To Come [VGM/Gaelic Folk] ❀ Harrison ❀ - Comfort Cruise [Future Funk] Stevie Wonder - Higher Ground [Soul] Vanilla - The Winter [Instrumental Hip-Hop] コンシャスTHOUGHTS - Take Control [Future Funk] DJ Okawari - Represent (ft. Chieko Kinbara) [Instrumental Hip-Hop] BLΛNK BΛNSΗΣΣ - Ammonia Clouds [Vaportrap] BLΛNK BΛNSΗΣΣ - Teen Pregnancy [Vaportrap] ❀ Harrison ❀ - Down, B, Up, B [Chiptune] LCD Soundsystem - Get Innocuous! [Dance-Punk] Flamingosis - Football Head [Beats] SAINT PEPSI/Skylar Spence - Fall Harder [Nu-Disco] Machinations - No Say In It [Disco] Tohru Minegishi, Shiho Fujii - Staff Roll [VGM] Al Stewart - Roads to Moscow [Folk] The Long Winters - The Commander Thinks Aloud [Indie Rock] Ray Bryant Trio - Misty [Jazz] 悲しい ANDROID - APARTMENT¶ - の主人公 Heartbeat Soap Opera 恋に落ちます [Future Funk] Dance With The Dead - Nightdrive [Synthwave] Perturbator - Humans Are Such Easy Prey [Synthwave] Perturbator - Perturbator’s Theme [Synthwave] Jan Hammer - Crockett’s Theme [New Wave] マクロスMACROSS 82-99 - Lynn Minmay [Future Funk] Pete Rock & C. L. Smooth - They Reminisce Over You [Hip-Hop] Jungle - Busy Earnin’ [Neo Soul] 猫 シ Corp - Ocean Beach Highschool Prom 1984 [Vaporwave] Nujabes - Voice of Autumn [Chillhop] Disconscious - Endless Escalation [Mallsoft] 死夢VANITY - kiosk centre [Mallsoft] B L U E - ☕ Coffee Break ☕ [Mallsoft] 식료품groceries - Interlude (Lost in the Freezer Section) [Mallsoft] B L U E - \ \ Visual \ \ / / Entropy / / [Mallsoft] Toby Fox - Nyeh Heh Heh!/Bonetrousle [VGM/Chiptune] Toby Fox - Spider Dance [VGM/Chiptune] The Specials - A Message To You, Rudy [Ska] Infinity Frequencies - Lotus Bloom [Vaporwave] Skylar Spence - Can’t You See [Nu Disco] Chance the Rapper ft. Saba - Angels [Hip-Hop] Soul Purpose - Survival [VGM/Hip-Hop] Flamingosis - G E T - L O W [Hip-Hop]* NOVA - Agua de Beber [Cover/Lounge] Thomas Happ - Trace Awakens [VGM/Synthwave] Boom Boom Satellites - Shut Up and Explode [J-Rock] Hideki Okugawa - Let’s Get It On [VGM/Hip-Hop] Run The Jewels - Lie, Cheat, Steal [Hip-Hop] ２８１４ -  恢复 [Vaporwave] Floème - Joanna [Instrumental Hip-Hop] Chet Baker - Let’s Get Lost [Jazz] Vince Guaraldi Trio - Christmas Time Is Here (Instrumental) [Jazz/Piano] Masato Nakamura - Star Light Zone [VGM] Meiko - Leave the Lights On (Silent Gloves remix) [Synthpop] Herb Alpert - The Midnight Tango [Jazz] Leslie Odom Jr, Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan - Washington On Your Side [Hip-Hop/Musical] Carpenter Brut - The Good Old Call (ft. Franky Cadillac)  [Synthwave] Tame Impala - The Less I Know The Better [Synthpop] VHSテープリワインダー- showering together [Vaporwave] Infinity Frequencies - As Darkness Falls [Vaporwave] Skylar Spence - I Can’t Be Your Superman [Nu Disco] Masafumi Takada - Steel Python [VGM] Mitch Murder - Ocean Avenue [Synthwave] Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels [Hip-Hop] コンシャスTHOUGHTS X 悲しいANDROID - APARTMENT -『ダンス! ダンス!』 [Future Funk] ceruleancerise - cosmic space latte [Future Funk] C2C - Happy (ft. Derek Martin) [Electronic] DKO - School Pop Machine [Beats] Kamasi Washington - Miss Understanding [Jazz] Hiroshi Kawaguchi - Passing Breeze [VGM] Run The Jewels - Rubble Kings Theme (Dynamite) [Hip-Hop] Tsukasa Saitoh - The First Hunter [VGM] SAINT PEPSI - ENJOY YOURSELF [Vaporwave] Masahiro Aoki, Keiki Kobayashi - Theme of F.A.N.G. [VGM] The Seatbelts ft. Tim Jensen - Ask DNA [Anime/Jazz] The Seatbelts - What Planet Is This?! [Anime/Jazz] POCARI ステューシー  - Adorée [Vaporwave] Saint Pepsi - Better [Future Funk] 식료품groceries - s o f t drinks [Mallsoft] Televisor - The Pressure [Nu Disco] Disasterpeace - Vignette: Panacea [VGM] Disasterpeace - A Chorus of Tongues [VGM] L'indécis - Staying There [Triphop] Emapea - Smooth Walk [Triphop/Funk] Boho Fau & Elevated Soul - Really, Truly (INS) [Triphop/Instrumental] saib. - hawaiian flower. [Chillout/Tropical] Hiroki Morishita, Takeru Kanazaki, Yasuhisa Baba, Rei Kondoh, Masato Kouda - Road Taken (Roar) [VGM] Digital Voyager - Introducing Your New Spaces! [Vaporwave] ２８１４ - 悲哀 [Vaporwave] S U B W A Y S -  アイスクリーム [Future Funk] Disasterpeace - Cascades [VGM/Ambient] Perturbator (ft. Greta Link) - Venger [Synthwave] Takeshi Terauchi & His Blue Jeans - Diamond Head [J-Rock/Surf Rock] The Avalanches - Frankie Sinatra [Plunderphonics] Ryo Fukui - Early Summer [Jazz/Piano] Takuya Kuroda - Everybody Loves The Sunshine [Jazz] Daisuke Ishiwatari - Starry Story [VGM/Rock] Trevor Something - Summer Love [Retrowave] Ronnie Jones - Video Games [Disco] Masafumi Takada - When The May Rain Comes [VGM] Ryan Amon - Hail The Nightmare [VGM/Choir] tyDi - Die This Way (ft. The Ready Set) [EDM] Spyro Gyra - Morning Dance [Jazz Fusion] The Who - Eminence Front [Rock] Kraftwerk - Computer Love [Synthpop] DJ Shadow ft. Run The Jewels - Nobody Speak [Hip-Hop] Barns Courtney - Fire [Rock] BLΛNK BΛNSΗΣΣ - Dreamcast [Vaportrap] Terukazu Hiroki, Yumiko Hagiwara - Transvestite (Boutique) [VGM] DJ Okawari ft. Agehah - Chocolate [Chillhop] Waveshaper - Wisdom of Rage [VGM/Synthwave] Kn1ght - Something Memorable [VGM/Synthwave] Blazo - Essential Violet [Jazzhop] 死夢VANITY - moonlight  [Mallsoft] 死夢VANITY -  ガレリア [Mallsoft] milo - Going No Place (ft. Elucid) [Hip-Hop] Ashtar Command - Deadman’s Gun [VGM] LCD Soundsystem - you can’t hide/shame on you [Indie Rock/Live] Tatsuro Yamashita - Magic Ways [City Pop] Hiroshi Okubo - Disco Ball [VGM] Nujabes - Sea of Cloud [Chillhop] LCD Soundsystem - New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down [Indie Rock/Dance-Punk] Gorillaz (ft. DOOM) - November Has Come [Hip-Hop/Triphop] Shibayan -  躍る夜雀～Invitation to evening [Touhou/Electronic] Bill Evans Trio - Nardis [Jazz/Piano] Carl Norén - DonAcDum [VGM] Daisuke Ishiwatari - Jack-a-Dandy [VGM/Rock] Run The Jewels - Down (feat. Joi) [Hip-Hop] Mitch Murder - Breeze [Synthwave] マクロスMACROSS 82-99 -『82​.​99 AM』 [Future Funk] Masafumi Takada - Season of the Samurai [VGM] Rui Sato, Kokoro - No More No [VGM] MatrixMarioX - Oldies But Happiest [Mashup/VGM] Carl Norén - Bullet Rain [VGM] 

*the link is no longer available on SoundCloud; to keep the order correct, instead of deleting and remaking the post, i provided a youtube link to the song in the text of the post  

#quag dumps music #master post #this shouldn't have taken so long to do #look at the size of this fuckin thing