#oK that doesn’t actually matter. someone being a fan of sonic or not is Not the deciding factor of if i would date them despite how it seems

[cadomoisspokenfor]

I haven’t watched the Knuckles show yet, but even before seeing it I’m tired of the discourse. Mostly I’m tired of the way this fandom talks about each other, and how we’ve seemingly given in completely to the narrative of universal toxicity prescribed to the fandom by people outside it.

If someone says they dislike a certain piece of Sonic media, or have even an inkling of criticism for it, they get thousands of responses decrying them with things like “the Sonic fandom hates fun” or “the Sonic fandom is so toxic, they can’t handle even the tiniest adaptational changes” or “Sonic fans literally don’t even like the character.”

If someone says they like a certain piece of Sonic media, or even just praise certain aspects of it, they get thousands of responses along the lines of “Sonic fans standards are so low they’ll praise ANYTHING” or “Sonic fans don’t even know what good media is” or “the Sonic fandom is a cult that doesn’t accept even the smallest criticisms of their god.”

First off, which is it? Is the Sonic fandom incapable of hearing criticism, or does it only ever criticize without enjoying new things?

Second, this idea of the Sonic fandom being inherently toxic no matter what is a large part of what’s breeding so much toxicity in the first place. Can’t you see it? Please tell me you can see it. If no one can discuss ANYTHING, no matter what opinion they have, without it being labelled as “typical Sonic fan craziness,” than any attempt at building healthy community in the first place is forfeit because it’s already been decided that talking about the character we all like is off limits. We’re all only here to be mad at each other. No one dares say they’re actually a part of the fandom. We all have to be “fandom adjacent” to not be perceived as toxic by default. And that’s stupid.

Why do we talk to each other with such condescension? Why have we just accepted this state of affairs? Why do we act like our opinions are objective and that everyones else must agree with us or else be labeled as “crazy Sonic fans” even if we’re clearly Sonic fans ourselves? And if we don’t act like that, why do we tolerate so many others acting this way and ruining what could be a fairly straightforward and happy fan community? (Not to point the finger but many popular youtubers who dabble in Sonic perpetuate the above quite a bit and I very much wish we’d all stop treating them as arbiters of reason. They’re just people, same as you and me. It’s ok to disagree with them. It should be at least.)

I’m serious. Toxicity in the fandom is a real problem that needs constant vigilance in order to maintain a healthy community space, but that idea has been weaponized and the fandom’s become exponentially worse for it.

I guess I’m just asking, more like pleading, that before you jump to labeling someone saying they like or dislike a piece of media as toxic, stop and ask yourself “Are they really being toxic? Or are they just having an opinion in a completely-unsensational-if-it-was-any-fandom-but-the-sonic-fandom kinda way?”

People need to be able to say “Yes, we’re Sonic fans” without it carrying a negative connotation. And that takes recognizing the humanity in each other first and foremost. If we keep capitulating to those who call the fandom inherently toxic, it will only get worse. Again, toxicity is bad but we lost the plot ages ago. Let’s try and find it and then maybe this fandom can actually be fun again.

#sonic #sonic the hedgehog #sonic movie #knuckles series #knuckles the echidna

[pacifistcowboy]

hmm. i think i have something resembling a crush. idk for sure but i definitely like being around him, would like to hold his hand, and don’t mind the concept of us being called boyfriends. oh boy. ooh boy.

this was not part of my college plans

#i guess i share personal stuff here too now #idk i ain’t gonna say this anywhere else in case the feelings go away or the feelings get so strong i get shy about it or som shit #he doesn’t even like sonic. how would we even work 😔/j #he has seemingly opened up to the concept of sonic not being entirely full of creepy weirdo fans since befriending me tho #oK that doesn’t actually matter. someone being a fan of sonic or not is Not the deciding factor of if i would date them despite how it seems #i digress. the point is. uh. boy? boy make me go :]? and when boy touch my shoulder or hands i don’t get uncomfy? i actually enjoy it? #i’m having a Time okay

[theyandereonmyoji]

General Yandere Sonic the Hedgehog Headcanons

TW: mentions of kidnapping, implied murder

Well, just say goodbye to having any time for yourself whatsoever, because he’ll make sure that he’s the most prominent hedgehog in your life. He’ll be there for you almost 24/7, and If he has other stuff with any other friends that day then he’ll make sure to include you in whatever it is.

He’s 100% a showoff, no I don’t make the rules. If Eggman is causing any trouble, Sonic would basically challenge himself to a speed-run of how fast he he can beat him. Then return to you and wait for you to praise how much of a fast, strong, and reliable hero he is. It doesn’t matter if you actually praise him or not, because either way he’ll just try to beat his last record, even if it means abandoning some of his heroism in favor of being more…brutal and efficient. After all, he has to work hard to earn your affection.

As long as it is with his friends, he would allow to have somewhat of a social life outside of him. However, anyone who he doesn’t know prior is a big no-no. The moment he sees you chatting with someone he considers a stranger, he’s shoehorning himself into the conversation and make up whatever excuse in order to get you away from them. The next day they seem to avoid even looking your way, or in some cases they just disappear. When eventually most of your friends leave you, Sonic will make sure you know that he’ll never, ever leave your side, just make sure to not point out the subtle scent of blood emanating from his body ok?

He’s really touchy, definitely. While with other people he would limit himself to holding your hand (probably a bit too tightly) and just being nearby you all the time. Once you two are alone, you’re his personal pillow that he can hug, sleep, and nuzzle against. He definitely also loves headpats, both giving and receiving. There’s just something so precious about you that he can’t help himself but want to give you as many headpats as he can, and he definitely adores how soft your hand feels when touching his head, even if just for a second.

He may be a hero that fights for the freedom of everyone around him. But he know how dangerous the world can be, whether it’s Eggman or some ancient god that decided to try to destroy the world that day. He would have a breaking point where he would lock you up “somewhere safe”, and while that breaking point is really hard to snap, it’ll always be a matter of when rather than if. 

Maybe you were getting tired of him not letting you have a life outside of him, but the moment you try to tell him that you don’t need him and you can take care of yourself, it’s game over. It would be a bit ominous to see him just stand there and do absolutely nothing to stop you from leaving that awkward scene. But that night will be the last time you get to sleep in your bed, because the next day you’ll wake up somewhere else entirely with a shackle around your ankle attached to the bed you’re laying on.

He would enter the room to greet you as if nothing from the prior day had happened, but the smile plastered in his face doesn’t seem to reach his eyes. As he approaches you, he begins to scold you for your behavior the other day, and that he clearly can’t trust you to be out and about in the world if you think something that foolish.

This hedgehog can run around the entire planet in less than a minute, so unless you can live underwater for all of your life, you can’t escape him. So you should probably make life easier for the two of you and just let him hug you already. PD: Hi guys I finally made some time to write something, yay! I have some other stuff planned, but seeing how Twitter is getting a bit of a fan art push for yandere Sonic, I couldn't help myself but post this one first. we need for yandere content for him! Who's with me?

#yandere #sonic the hedgehog #yandere sonic the hedgehog #yandere x reader #yandere x y/n #yandere headcanons #sth #sonic x reader #yandere sonic the hedgehog x reader #yandere sonic

[another-sonic-blog]

do u have any advice for writing amy rose? i am trying to get back into writing fanfiction again and i love yours so much so i thought i'd ask for ur take on her character.

A short analyzation on Amy Rose.

I want to start by saying that I really appreciate the support and I am honored that you asked my intake on Amy’s character. So, I am not a professional writer or anything for that matter however I will give you my intake on Amy Rose as a fan and how I perceive her as a character. So, let’s start!

The positive and negatives of Amy Rose

           To write a good character we need someone who people can relate to. This character needs to be three dimensional, meaning that they act like a person. Someone who struggles, thinks, learns and develops. This character has good and bad. Good written characters are not all good nor all bad so let’s think about that while we talk about Amy Rose.

Canonically speaking Amy Rose has a lot of good traits:

-Loves unconditionally

-Loyal

-Kind

-Cares for others

-Determined

And negative as well:

-Has an explosive personality, gets angry easily

-Has no patience

- She takes other’s needs into consideration but hers. (This may be seen as a good quality but on the long run it actually isn’t. This is more of a personal opinion but I think it is important to consider our own happiness as well.)

-Obsessive (Although we can see she has grown out of this recently

-Stubborn

You can play around with these but we can talk about that later.

Amy’s uniqueness

Alright so now that we know her good and bad, let’s talk about her character. The unique thing about Amy Rose is that out of the Sonic characters she has been the only one who has shown development. (Besides Shadow in 06, but that didn’t happen so all his character development went to the trash lol)

So, we went from this:

To this:

In conclusion, Amy stopped being that obsessive, she developed. Our pink hedgehog is now independent and pretty much do whatever she pleases. She is not as attached to Sonic and although she still loves him, she now thinks for her own and may even question his decisions from time to time. I believe she does her own thing now and wants to give him Sonic his space as well. For me Amy can be described as ‘Cute & Dangerous’

Amy’s interaction with other characters.

Alright, so Amy Rose is a pretty solid character and it’s a cinnamon roll. So, her bad qualities are not going to show up as often. For these negative (and good) qualities to show, it all depends on circumstances and character interaction. Just take a few minutes and think about it …

How will Amy interact with Rouge? Would she be more open and let get girly side show up? Will they even be friends? Does Amy see Rouge as an older sister?

How will Amy interact with Shadow? Would they be friends? Or would their personalities just crash? Does Shadow’s character take out the worst on Amy?

How does Amy interact with Sonic? With Knuckles? Cream? Tails?

           This also depends in what kind of story and circumstances you will place Amy in. Does she live in our world and is struggling to get by the days? Does that make her stop caring about herself and only focus on work? Does she still love Sonic but he doesn’t love her back so that makes her depressed? Will she be stubborn enough to get him to love her? Will she love him regardless and put her happiness aside? Or is she afraid that she won’t be able to find happiness or love? Maybe she has other things in mind besides love? Maybe she wants to do her own adventures? Or she just wants to open up a café and live a peaceful life forever?

As you can see, you can explore a lot of situations with her character. So, here are some (in my opinion) relationships that Amy would have with other characters. (Based on canon and personal opinion)

Amy/Sonic: Love interest of course, but its platonic romance. Care deeply for each other. Friends for life. Sonic is just not that interest in love right now but that doesn’t mean he can’t love others or Amy.

Amy/Knuckles: Older brother and sister. Both are matured when needed and protect each other.

Amy/Silver: Crazy all the time together, plan the stupidest shit and get away with everything. Besties.

Amy/Shadow: (I can honestly write an entire essay as to why this two have such good POTENTIAL platonic or romantic but anyways) They are ok with each other’s presence.  Won’t willingly talk to each other unless they are forced to. Once they do though, I can see them hanging out from time to time. They are friends and nobody expects that from them.

Amy/Rouge: Rouge is the big sister and Amy the little one. Amy goes to her for advice and talk about things she can’t talk about with Vanilla or Cream.

Amy/Cream: Amy is the oldest sister and she takes care of Cream and advises her. Amy would do anything for her.

Amy/Blaze: I think she will be the closest to her. Amy has helped Blaze open up and they are really good friends.

Alright now, some tips:

1.     Feel free to write your character according to your interpretation.

           There is no good or bad way to write a character. At the end of the day everything comes down to character interpretation. I personally see Amy as a young adorable, fashionable girl who is not afraid to express how she feels. She can be sweet and dangerous and she won’t let anyone step on her unless is totally necessary. However, you may see her or interpret her differently and that’s completely fine!

2.     Let your character feel, suffer and develop.

I cannot stress this enough, everyone is a sucker for a character development. Not everything has to be flowers and sunshine. Let your characters have flaws, let her to be annoying or a cry baby, what matters here is that you DEVELOP them throughout the story.

3.     Plan ahead and don’t

First, write down the kind of story you want to write. Romance? Adventure? Mystery? Then start writing your characters. After you are done writing your characters, analyze them. However, I was once told that your characters are kinda like your kids. You made them but you don’t ever truthfully end up knowing them. Just like people, we have our embarrassing, sad, happy moments. We even have our ‘Out of Character’ moments. Just explore your characters, let them be free as they can.

           Amy Rose is a very versatile character. If you think about it, Amy can literally be in any story and she still be such a good character to write about. She is funny, entertaining, stubborn and obsessive. She can be so many things! At the end of the day, it all really depends on how you develop her.

           I hope this helps somehow? Like I said before I am no expert but this are some tips and character analyzation that has helped me when I write stories. I am honestly SUPER excited to see what kind of stories you come up with and if you ever need help with something else let me know! If you do end up writing a fanfiction, please do tag me! Or just tell, I will loooooooooooove to read it.

           Again, thank you so much for the support! I am glad you enjoy my stories. I will keep working hard! I can’t wait to see what kind of stories you come up with!

#Amy Rose #amyrose #sonic the hedgehog #sonic fanfiction #sonic fanfic #sonamy fanfiction #sonamyshad #sonic boom #Shadamy #sonic fan character #character analysis #writing tips #character study

[boomstyle]

Sonic Boom : Friend or Foe

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and settings of Sonic boom. Oh, watch out for OCs!

Truth Hurts But Heals

On the Next day

I was on my way to Meh Burger when I saw Shawn passing through the route close to Amy's house. Amy's house is as close as a zip across the beach. It's easy just go straight to the right and you'll see a lush garden with a practical stilt hut close to the shore of a clear lake. That's where Amy's house lies. Yup, he's going there. Now, I'm hiding close to the window. I just hope I don't get caught or else I'm doom.

Amy Rose's hut

(door knock)

"Coming", Amy Rose said.

When Amy open the door, she invited Shawn in. Amy, I hope you're more careful with him. He's dangerous.

"Shawn, come on in!"

Amy is really happy to see him but did she know anything about him. I guess not. What she knows is his vacant mask. I will unmask him but I have to be careful. If I get caught up in the process, there's nothing he could do to harm us or even the whole village.

"AMY(cries)", Shawn cried crocodile tears. What a fake guy he is?

"What happens, Shawn?", Amy asked.

"Amy, I am hopeless, very hopeless.", Shawn fooled her. Oh, he can fool the whole team or even the whole world but he can't fool Shadow and me. I'm glad Shadow shows some of his soft spot toward me despite the fact we're rivals.

"Sonic, he... kicked me out of his house and said that I'm worthless pal."

What? I never said that. Sure, I was jealous and suspicious of him over the course of months but this is just too far. That's it. I'm barging in. I don't care if I ever get caught as long as my team was safe.

"That's it, Shawn or should I say Zuko.", I give out a firm statement after I barged into Amy's house.

"Zuko. Wait for a second! Are you the former East Bender that Grand Master Heretic mentioned?", Amy asked.

"Yep I am.", Zuko said.

"OMG, I am so fan of you. Grand Master said, "You're awesome but you vanished." but why did you vanish from the martial art world?", Amy asked.

"It's a long story.", Shawn answered.

"yeah, a long story of the villainous scheme. HUH?", I retorted.

"Look, Sonic. Let me explain!", Shawn said.

"Explain what? That I am worthless. Yeah, whatever.", I retorted.

"Sonic, what's the matter with you? You're being offensive today.", Amy talked back.

"Oh yeah, I am. I am tired of this whole thing. It seemed that he mattered to you more than me, right?", I said.

"What? No, but...", Amy said.

"But I am mean to him, right? I kicked him off and said he's a worthless pal but I'll tell you one thing, Amy. He's not the guy you thought he was.", I recklessly explained the fact. Great! Now, I am toast.

"That's enough, Sonic. Today, your attitude is totally unacceptable. Let's go, Shawn!", Amy said.

Great! Now, he's taking Amy too. What am I going to do now?

"Brokenhearted?", Shadow suddenly appeared. That's shocking. I wonder since when Shadow started a conversation. Last time he only started combat with me or even the whole team.

"No. It's just that Amy is in danger. I'm worried about her. Shawn, con her.", I lied as I face him. Not exactly, just a half-truth.

"Uh Huuhh.", Shadow drone, raising his brow in a way that implied he doesn't believe me

"Fine, I am.", I grumbled after I murmured a little.

"It's just that I feel like Amy doesn't love me anymore. She might as well leave me for him or worse going back to her first crush. What a nightmare?"

"Hmph, just as I thought.", Shadow melancholy implied.

"What's the matter?", I asked. Geez, why he's so fried up now? Don't say that he's in love with Amy? There's no way Shadow is gonna be lovey-dovey toward her. He's just too cold-hearted, self-centered, and aggressive to actually be in a love relationship with someone.

"It's none of your business", Shadow blushed. OWW... He's blushing. No, I shouldn't tease him. He would be really furious. Just get to the business!

"So, Shadow. Are you fine right now?", I expressed my concern. Yesterday, he seemed to be perpetuated. I didn't want to stir a riot.

"Hmph, I'm always fine.", Shadow was being Shadow again. It's obvious he's not fine. I just hope he would just swallow his pride a bit.

"Yeah, sure. Shadow.", I said.

"Anyway, how do you know I am brokenhearted?"

"I'm a skilled surveillance. You won't even notice I am here in the first place.", Shadow implied.

So he's here the whole time I was spying on Shawn today. Wow, that's just creepy. Okay, Sonic. Now, the most important thing is finding what's Shawn has been up to.

"Okay, Shadow. See you around. I gotta see Amy and Shawn for a bit.", I said.

"Not so fast, Sonic.", Shadow said.

"What is it?", I said impatiently.

"Gotta go fast. Gotta reach and beat Shawn or else Amy would be in danger."

"Why are you so impatient, Sonic?", Shadow said slyly.

"Do you think you can beat Shawn?"

"Of course. I am Sonic The Hedgehog, the fastest being alive. Even Rere and Clara admired me.", I confidently boast myself.

"Pfft. You won't even stand a quill against him.", Shadow deem me pathetic

"How can a panther stand a chance against elemental bender?"

*flashback

*LOL*

Oh, so he insults me. Hm, nevermind! I don't want to cause a scene. Try asking how to approach them, that's more like it.

"Then what should we do?", I asked.

"We? More like you. I don't care about her.", He blushed in embarrassment and backed away.

"Ok, so what's your suggestion?", I asked.

"Follow me!", Shadow instructed while holding my hand.

(Teleported)

Meh Burger

"Wait, what?", I mumbled. How is this possible? I thought Shawn was just gonna kill her or anything. It turned out they're eating at Meh Burger with my other gangs.

"But...but"

"Humph...What do you expect? If Shawn devises a murder plan too early, his plan to dominate the world and destroy all organic life forms will fail.", Shadow revealed his intention blatantly. Wow, Since when did shadow care about saving the world. I suggest he care neither to save nor to destroy the world. No! He must have another reason why he wants to get rid of Shawn. Shawn must have manipulated, enslaved, or controlled him. Otherwise, Shadow wouldn't hunt Shawn. Remember, he's neither hero nor villain though that doesn't mean he's to be taken lightly.

"I see. He took us as bait to fulfill his wicked ambition.", I said.

"Wicked? Define what is wicked! Saving the world is not my concern, Sonic. I just didn't like the face of him. He manipulated me to the point I lose someone special.", Shadow explained. I know it. Shadow doesn't help me to save the world or probably even care to be an extra member of Team Sonic. He pursues Shawn out of a grudge for losing his special someone. It's unfortunate. I wish he will be more open to friendship. Who knows someday he might be my pal just like Tails someday?

"Until next time, Sonic.", Shadow part away.

"Sonic.", Shawn calls and waves his hand.

"Uh, Hi.", I greet and takes a seat at Meh Burger.

"Are you going to order something?", Shawn asked.

"Oh yeah", I said without hesitation. Nah, why should I grumble and mumble against him? If I want to save my friends a lot of trouble, I must keep a poker face in the meantime.

And yeah, I immediately take an order in a zip. Uhm..., I longed for a chili dog a lot.

"One chili dog with fries"

(Several minutes later)

"One chili dog with fries", Dave the Intern repeats.

"Ugh, chili dog is my faves.", I complimented.

"You should try some. It will", I advised Shawn and give him an intense stare.

"Oh yeah. I will", Shawn stares his eye down. At the same time, I look at Amy to start a conversation but she gave a sour look and turned her face back.

"Amy..."

"Hmph", Amy huffed and closed her arms as well.

"Uh, guys.", Tails called. Oh, Tails. You don't know what happen between Amy, Shawn, and me.

"What a great couple", Sticks said sarcastically. How? How do you know?

"No, we're not...", I tried to explain but something urgent happens.

Not again. The whole village is surrounded by robots. It must be from Roboken. Where is Team Cyborg? The duplicate of us? We need you guys.

Ok, this is gonna be interesting. Remember Sonic Boom episode, "Robot from the Sky part 1-4". Yeah, the story will be similar to that only that there will be 3rd person in the game of robot war. What do you think Shawn is up to?

Anyway, Shadow had a soft spot toward Sonic right now. I hope he will get along well with the whole team soon but right now, this is good. Unfortunately, Amy and Sonic's relationship worsen due to a misunderstanding.

#robots #sonic boom #Sonic characters #sonic the hedgehog #Boom!Tails #boom!sonic #BOOM!SHADOW #Boom!Amy #Boom!Knuckles #Sticks the Badger #Friend or Foe? [Anonymous] #intrigue

[theeverlastingshade]

Favorite Albums of the 2000s

10. In Rainbows- Radiohead

After Radiohead released Hail to the Thief it seemed pretty set in stone that while they may still go on to continue releasing great records, it’s unlikely that they’d ever put out another record that shatters expectations and makes a bid for being among their best work. And then we received In Rainbows, a shocking late-career game changer so assured, dynamic, and brilliant that there are music fans that came of age around its release that still claim it’s the best Radiohead album. It’s not, but it’s exceptional nonetheless; a perfect fusion of the art-rock, electronic rock, and avant-guard impulses that they’d seem to have perfected by the time Kid A dropped, but had never quite navigated so fluidly. It’s a best of both worlds record that’s lean, perfectly paced, and contains some of the strongest songwriting of Thom Yorke’s entire career. It was the first Radiohead record since Kid A to sound like a revelatory statement able to stand on its own, and not simply exist in the shadow of prior records. The pay what you want model that they used to sell the record was a game-changer at the time of its release, but it’s the warm orchestration, frigid beats, and dynamic range that gave this record the staying power that it has. It’s the kind of record that displays an assured effortlessness that belies what exceptional musicians they all are, and reminds you why you fell in love with the band in the first place.

The one-two punch of “15 Step” and “Bodysnatchers” sets the pace for what’s to come; the former a glitchy electronic song that seems to hint at a less claustrophobic approach to Amensiac before the latter, propelled by a motorik rhythm and Yorke’s fractured wail, erupts and shatters that notion. The two of these songs taken together give a fairly apt depiction of the poles that Radiohead where bouncing back and forth from, and the tension arising from that balancing act propels the record forward. Caught between the somber guitar ballad “Nude” and the lumbering, electronic midpoint crescendo “All I Need” is the fidgety, nimble guitar work of “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” which does a wonderful job of offsetting the dreaminess of the previous track and preparing you for the creeping dread of what immediately follows. “Faust Arp” is a welcome, jangly transition from the heaviness of “All I Need” into the album’s most accessible song, “Reckoner”, and through that song’s warm melody and infectious percussion the downtempo march of “House of Cards” sounds like a perfect transition, with its string drones setting the stage for the record’s best song to arrive. There isn’t a moment wasted throughout the entire record, and it’s a marvel to hear the band cover such vast ground and still end up with something so concise.

Being a Radiohead record it should come as no surprise that In Rainbows tackles themes of existential dread, apocalyptic visions, corruption, and alienation throughout. “Nude” grapples with groupthink, the tendency for societies to not operate in the best interests of its people, and the inherent emptiness that defines the human experience “You paint yourself white/And fill up with noise/But there’ll be something missing”. “Bodysnatchers” explores someone faking their way through life and being unable to live the way they truly are “I have no idea what I’m talking about/I’m trapped in this body and can't get out” while “Faust Arp” finds someone crushed under the weight of monotony, recognizing the issue but seemingly lacking the courage or conviction to change his surroundings “Dead from the neck up, I guess I’m stuck, stuck, stuck/We thought you had it in you/But no, no, no”. “Videotape” ends the record on a perfect thematic note with the narrator making a videotape for the love of his life before he kills himself “No matter what happens now/You shouldn’t be afraid/Because I know today has been/The most perfect day I’ve ever seen”, drawing an unsettling through line from the closer on Kid A. The themes of despair throughout the digital age have become increasingly more realized with each subsequent Radiohead album from OK Computer onward, but they hit a notable new peak on In Rainbows. In Rainbows isn’t their most ambitious, or accomplished album, but it perhaps best distills what their essence best, succinctly showcasing just how peerless they were and remain.

Essentials: “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”, “All I Need”, “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”

9. The Glow, Pt. 2- The Microphones

Before Phil Elverum recorded two devastating records about the loss of his wife, Genevieve, and the process of having to raise his daughter without her by his side under his current Mount Eerie moniker, he spent several years recording lo-fi psychedelic folk songs as The Microphones. He switched gears in 2003 and continued recording music as a solo act, having swapped the name of The Microphones for Mount Eerie (the name of the final record recorded as The Microphones) feeling that he had taken the former project to its natural conclusion. Before making the switch, Elverum recorded four albums as The Microphones that each rank as among the most accomplished and thoroughly engaging albums that he’s recorded to date. While all are exceptional and worth anyone’s time, The Glow Pt. 2 is the best of the bunch, and still stands as Elverum’s magnum opus. An idiosyncratic LP bursting with personality and color while folding in psychedelic folk, noise, lo-fi, ambient, and indie rock The Glow Pt. 2 is a colossal tour de force through Elverum’s tastes, and it hangs together remarkably well. He would continue to explore various facets of styles explored here on subsequent releases, but no single record of his before or after captures the vivid imagination and breadth of his musicianship quite like The Glow Pt. 2.

Opener “I Want Wind to Blow” sets the stage for what’s to come through gentle acoustic strums, repetition, and a generous use of space while growing increasingly grand in scope until it explodes during its last minute with pummeling percussion and thick slabs of distorted noise. “I Want Wind to Blow” is one of the longest songs here, with most ranging from 1 to 2 minutes, just long enough to begin exploring an idea and then smoothly transitioning to something else before wearing its welcome. There are songs like “(Something)” that drift by quickly with little more than droning strings floating eerily throughout the mix, and others like “Map” that are a treasure trove of eclectic instrumentation that seem to be constantly rising and falling in intensity for several minutes without locking into a steady groove for too long. “Headless Horseman” gets a ton of mileage out of a softly strummed ukulele and Elverum’s tender vocals while the menacing “I Want to be Cold” pits a searing cymbal rhythm against smoldering, distorted guitars with Elverum’s voice barely audible above the noise. The individual songs may run the gamut through a myriad of different genres, but the analog warmth, droning motifs, tape hiss, and punctual silence tie everything together as one vast landscape of thematic and sonic coherence. No matter how far ranging some of the songs here develop with respect to everything else around them, the production renders each song with the same unmistakable warmth and richness.

The Glow Pt. 2 is centered around a breakup that Elverum experienced, and he details his thoughts and feelings throughout the ordeal, consistently blurring the lines between fact and fiction while gradually finding solace in nature. “I Want Wind to Blow” opens the record right after the storm has died down as he begs for a change to sweep away the sense of loss that he’s beginning to endure “My clothes off me, sweep me off my feet/Take me up, don’t bring me back/Oh, where I can see days pass by me/I have no head to hold in grief”. This leads directly into the record’s centerpiece and title track where Elverum comes to terms with the fact that his girlfriend and best friend became romantically involved with one another. Elverum recognizes that life will go on whether or not he wants it to in that moment “I could not get through September without a battle/I faced death, I went in with my arms swinging/But I heard my own breath/And I had to face that I’m still living”, and slowly works his way back towards the resolve to go on. Throughout the rest of the record he tries to erase memories of the relationship (“The Moon”), succumbs to pure apathy (“I Want to be Cold”), comes to terms with how insignificant he is within the scope of the universe (“I Felt My Size”), and eventually comes to terms with what remains of his life as he slowly bleeds out in the forest (“My Warm Blood”). The experience that Elverum draws from throughout The Glow Pt. 2 is universal, but it’s rarely been translated into such a rich, transcendent experience.

Essentials: “I Want Wind to Blow”, “The Glow, Pt. 2″, “Map”

8. Since I Left You- The Avalanches

While the last decade saw the release of many brilliant records, there were very few that were as legitimately inventive as Since I Left You. The debut album by The Avalanches is a plunderphonics record that seamlessly blends disco, r&b, jazz, bossa nova, comedy skits, and pop music into a glorious, kaleidoscopic whole that truly sounds like nothing else. SILY wasn’t the first plunderphonics record, but nothing working entirely within those parameters before or since has achieved something so fresh and singular, creating a colorful, fully-lived in new context for the 900 plus samples that make up its whole. The perfectly natural flow that guides the record is part of its inherent charm, and belies just how intricate and complex the creation of the record actual was. SILY was so painstakingly meticulous to construct that it took The Avalanches 16 years to return with a proper follow-up, and while that follow-up, Wildflower, was a great return to form, it doesn’t quite capture the singular beauty of their inimitable debut.

The eclecticism of SILY is one of the most immediate, and impressive draws. There are recurring samples and motifs that occur multiple times throughout the record, but no two songs sound anything alike. The pacing is sublime, with songs bleeding into one another in a manner that approximates a DJ mix with supreme versatility. Samples are constantly shifting, being pitched in different directions, being sped up, slowed down, or swapped out entirely. There’s never a moment where something isn’t in flux, and the fact that they manage to accomplish this while still constantly giving each song such a defined shape and tone is a marvel. Sampled voices appear periodically, but rather than leading the arrangements, in true plunderphonics fashion they're tucked into the fold alongside everything else, treated as percussion or texture depending on the song. No single moment overstays its welcome, and because of how much texture is being employed at all times it’s easy to constantly discover something new each time that you listen to it. The last song on SILY transitions seamlessly into the first song, which only heightens the potency of its DJ mix structure.

With a record as coherent and consistent as SILY it’s difficult and almost beside the point to zero in on highlights since it’s meant to be consumed all at once as an experience. But there are a few astonishing songs that stand above the already strong pack, and rank as among the strongest plunderphonics songs that I’ve ever heard. “Two Hearts in ¾ Time” unloads a swirling concoction of xylophone, flute, and keys atop breezy scat singing, and the carefree exuberance that radiates from the composition is infectious. “Radio” pits a massive bassline against repetitious chants and distorted bursts of guitars and keys while “Summer Crane” pairs down the sonic density (slightly) as a slurring thermin, strings, and sleigh bells dance in tandem while the recurring string motif flickers throughout. “Frontier Psychiatrist” is as ridiculous and absurd as things get here, and is legitimately one of the funniest moments on any electronic album through its use of vocal samples lifted from the Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster comedy sketch of the same name “The man with the golden eyeball/And tighten your buttocks, pour juice down your chin/I promised my girlfriend I’d play the violin. And the closer “Extra Kings” unravels in a bouncy psychedelic sprawl with the voice from the first song and title track singing “I’ve tried but I just can’t get you/Every since the day I left you” as noise makers and woodwinds swirl around the vocals in rapturous joy.

The one thing that cannot be overstated is just how much fun it is to listen to this record. Through its many songs and moods, joy, pain, sorrow, regret, and unease are conjured at various moments, but throughout it all there’s a palpable sense that the band are thoroughly enjoying themselves. It remains playful and whimsical even at its most crestfallen, and thrills even at its deepest lulls. A sense of discovery and communal spirit animates this record, and The Avalanches achieve a sense of weightlessness that pervades even the record’s densest moments. It’s the rare record that matches its remarkably accessible, party-friendly nature with an equally groundbreaking execution that completely rewrote the cultural relationship to sample-based music. The Avalanches wisely opted to downplay the inherent brilliance of the music, and they made it as easy as possible to simply get lost in the endless spirals of grooves, texture, and pockets upon pockets of melody. There’s no air of pretension in The Avalanches’ universe, just the pure, unmitigated joy of stumbling upon new sounds in unusual contexts again and again and again.

Essentials: “Extra Kings”, “Frontier Psychiatrist”, “Two Hearts in 3/4 Time”

7. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot- Wilco

Wilco was already a great band before they released Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but it’s this record that cemented them as one of the most compelling of their era. When their label, Reprise Records, an imprint of AOL Time Warner, heard the record they assumed that it would essentially amount to career suicide and opted to release them from the label with the rights to the album. In order to not significantly delay the release of their record before touring it as well as controlling the quality of the songs that were already being leaked from it Wilco put the entire record on their site and embarked on their most successful tour up to that point. Both Being There and Summerteeth were massive leaps forward for the band, defined equally by Jeff Tweedy’s increasingly accomplished songwriting and the studio wizardry of multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennet, but on YHF these forces hit a peak. The songs on YHF are intensely felt, and earnestly conveyed by a band that was completely in-tune with one another, and were perpetually firing on all cylinders. The tasteful sonic experimentation, warm rock and baroque arrangements, and Tweedy’s wistful, romantic sentiments coalesce into a superbly realized whole. Mature, earnest, empathetic, and adventurous, YHF is a landmark for indie rock, and one of the most beautiful and compulsively listenable albums of the century so far.

The biggest development that took place on YHF was Tweedy’s songwriting fully blossoming into a sincere, singular voice that propelled to the band to unprecedented heights. On opening song “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” Tweedy’s depiction of someone wandering around Chicago post-breakup “I am an American aquarium drinker/I assassin down the avenue/I’m hiding out in the big city blinking/What was a I thinking when I let go of you?” sets the tone of the album with wistful, poignant urgency. “Jesus, Etc” depicts the desolation and the simple pleasures clung to within urban, contemporary American life “Voices whine/Skycrapers are scraping together/Your voice is smoking/Last cigarettes, are all you can get/Turning your orbit around” while positing love as a balm for the ills of modern existence “Our love is all we have/Our love/Our love is all of God’s money/Everyone is a burning sun”. On the album’s stunning closer “Reservations” Tweedy’s trying to reassure his love that he’s invested in their future “Oh, I’ve got reservations/About so many things/But not about you” while on the album’s centerpiece, “Radio Cure”, Tweedy laments the difficulty of sustaining a long distance relationship despite advancements in technology making it easier to do than ever before “Oh, distance has no way/Of making love understandable”. Tweedy’s writing is concise and direct, cut with an emotional through line that elevates the sentiments beyond what may scan as initially simplistic.

YHF doesn’t provide any overhauls to their approach to the extent that Wilco’s previous two records did. Rather, it’s a case of tightening up what they already did well and improving considerably on all fronts. Jay Bennett continues to showcase how he was the band’s not-so-secret weapon at this phase of their career with a sly touch that embellishes each song here with surprising amount of dimension. Bennett really began to experiment considerably with Wilco’s sound on Summerteeth, but his most compelling contributions are those throughout YHF. Whether its the ambient swirl of chimes that open “Ashes of American Flags”, the spring-loaded percussion on “Pot Kettle Black”, the melancholic string drones that dominate “Poor Places” or the whirring samples that swirl in perfect harmony alongside the infectious concoction of cymbals, xylophone, and acoustic guitars throughout the build of “Radio Cure”, Bennett’s use of texture was subtle, but supremely effective in fleshing each composition into wonderfully distinct shapes. The songs are certainly strong enough to stand on their own in much simpler, stripped down forms, but Bennett’s tinkering perfectly complemented Tweedy’s songwriting, imbuing his romanticism with a welcome surrealist bent.

The suspected allusions to 9/11 in a few of the songs despite the record having been finished months before 9/11 dominated the narrative of the album upon its release, but that supposed prescience overlooks Tweedy’s astute observation of American despair and generally just glosses over the fact that, regardless of possible foresight, YHF is simply a magnificent record. There’s a universality to the sentiments that are beautifully rendered by Tweedy’s aching tone, and the band finally seemed completely comfortable dropping all pretenses of “alt-country” and leaned unabashedly into their intrinsic weirdness without much concern for what the record might initially scan as. What continues to really impress about YHF is that Wilco simultaneously became more experimental and tuneful, with some of the melodies dominating songs like “Radio Cure”, “Jesus, Etc”, “Pot Kettle Black”, and “I’m the Man Who Loves You” ranking as among their strongest to date. There are few albums that I’ve heard that strike such a fine balance between strong melodies and forward-thinking composition, but YHF manages just that, while offering a compelling insight into initial 21st century American malaise.

Essentials: “Radio Cure”, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”, “Jesus, Etc”

6. Madvillainy- Madvillain

MF DOOM and Madlib were already renowned figures in underground hip hop with a couple of great records under each of their belts before they linked up to write and record Madvillainy. But in each other they found the perfect collaborator whose sensibilities ran parallel to their own. In the universe that they built together dense internal rhymes float effortlessly over dusty soul loops and thick clouds of pot smoke. There were obvious precedents for what they accomplished on DOOM’s Operation Doomsday and Madlib’s The Unseen, recorded under his Quasimoto alias, but on Madvillainy they helped one another reach a creative breakthrough with them both redefining the form of their respective crafts. Madlib’s beats are relentlessly eclectic, gorgeously textured, and masterfully mixed, while DOOM’s verses are some of the most varied, superbly rapped, and thought-provoking of his entire career. The ease with which their styles complement one another belies the effort that they put into it, and the end result doesn’t sound fussy or labored over, but it did herald a new era of faded west-coast hip hop built on a throne of comic books, jazz records, and a dizzying array of internal rhyme schemes.

The production on Madvillainy was handled entirely by Madlib, with DOOM co-producing the opening track “The Illest Villains”, and it’s the most cohesive collection of beats that Madlib has ever assembled while still packing a considerable amount of variety within its grooves. “Rhinestone Cowboy” is the longest song, clocking in at 4 minutes exactly, but most of the songs are under 2 minutes and concisely introduce their ideas while DOOM unloads brief, but substantial bars over them. The samples span the likes of The Mothers of Invention, Sun Ra, George Clinton, Bill Evans, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Street Fighter II, and so much more sometimes within the same songs without once showing the seams. The atmosphere is soulful and jazzy with a hazy tinge that the samples lend the compositions on the whole juxtaposed superbly against the visceral nature of DOOM’s rapping. The music is rendered within a quantized grid so there’s no mistaking it as anything other than hip hop beats, but these beats are arranged more tastefully than the vast majority of instrumental hip-hop that’s come before or since. Whether it's the guitar/sleigh bell stomp of “Shadows of Tomorrow”, or the sluggish bass crawl and metronome sigh of “Meat Grinder”, or the anthemic brass leads that frame “All Caps”, the beats are simply bursting with texture and personality.

Since reemerging as MF DOOM towards the end of the last century Daniel Dumile has completely owned this specific lane of verbose, off-kilter hip-hop defined by his knotty phrasing, complex internal rhyme schemes, and magnetic personality that draws from all ephemeral of pop culture. Madlib brings out the best in DOOM, and his rapping is by turns loose and tight, dense and reference heavy while delivered with a level of precision that transcends pop culture acumen. “Living off borrowed time, the lock ticks faster/That’d be the hour they knock on the slick blaster” are the first lines on “Accordion” that open the record, and things only get more surreal from there. The rhymes are eloquent and guttural, often open to various interpretation, and packed with colorful imagery while never being anything less than thought-provoking. “Meat Grinder” depicts DOOM’s pimping of a stripper named China “Heat niner, pimping, stripping, soft sweet minor/China was a neat signer, trouble with the script” while “America’s Most Blunted” is an absurdist ode to marijuana “Quas, when he really hit star mode/Never will he boost loose Philies with the bar-code”. “Curls” reveals a glimpse of DOOM’s lost innocence after smoking his first spiff at 7 “Spliff made him swore he saw heaven, he was seven/Yup, you know it, growin’ up too fast/Showin’ up to class with Moet in a flask” while on “All Caps” he’s reveling in pure braggadocio “So nasty that it’s probably somewhat of a travesty/Having me, then he told the people “You can call me your majesty””. The complexity and eclecticism that DOOM imbued his lyrics with hit a new peak for hip hop as a whole on Madvillainy.

Although the partnership between MF DOOM and Madlib only resulted in Madvillainy, the influence of that lone masterwork continues to ripple throughout the underground and mainstream alike. Odd Future, Brainfeeder, Black Hippy, Pro Era, Bruiser Brigade and countless other crews, collectives, and labels were informed tremendously by the nerve this record struck. DOOM clones are still rampant, and Madlib’s anything goes crate-digging approach to sample-based composition can be heard in everyone from Kaytranada to JPEGMAFIA. There were very few records that came out this decade that drastically altered the direction for what hip hop can sound like quite like Madvillainy. DOOM and Madlib were such a perfect match for one another that neither of them have made music with anyone else before or since (or solo) that comes close to the brilliance of Madvillainy. Whether or not the two of them ever reunite to create that tantalizing follow-up seems like a coin toss, but truth be told we’re better served with things as they are. The original is still paying enormous dividends 15 years later and it’s only going to continue getting better from here.

Essentials: “All Caps”, “Figaro”, “Curls”

5. Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.- Deerhunter

No other double LP from the last decade delivered so much, or asked so little from the listener, as Deerhunter’s extraordinary Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. Originally just intended as a single LP, Bradford Cox generously recorded all of Weird Era Cont. to reward fans that purchased Microcastle after it leaked months in advance (unfortunately, Weird Era Cont. would be leaked as well). Microcastle finds the band honing their populist impulses with impeccable clarity without completely abandoning their murkier roots, while Weird Era Cont. completely dives into their stranger, more abstract realm of their sound. Each record is exceptional in its own right, but when taken together they form the perfect realization of all the sides of the band, spanning the likes of garage rock, post-punk, shoegaze, ambient, musique concrete, krautrock, and psychedelic pop while managing to make such amalgamations sound like second nature. There’s more range covered on each of these LPs than most bands manage within entire careers. While Cryptograms first showcased the seemingly limitless potential that Deerhunter was capable of, Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. proved that they were one of the defining bands of the century so far.

Microcastle is sequenced in a way that is comparable to Cryptograms, but there are just a few more bright pop moments right out of the gates before the record descends into its shorter ambient middle section. After the obligatory ambient opening interlude, this time in the form of “Cover Me (Slowly)”, Lockett Pundt begins the record proper by taking lead vocals on Cox’s “Agorophobia”. Having Lockett sing the first actual song on the record is a testament to how far their lead guitarist had come as another vocalist (and songwriter, with “Neither of Us, Uncertainly”) in such a short order. With “Agorophobia” Lockett leads one of the gentlest sounding songs that the band had released up to that point, with a disarmingly gorgeous vocal melody superbly juxtaposed against lyrics that describe the sensation of being buried alive for sexual pleasure. The sharp immediacy of “Never Stops” follows suit, and here Cox completely comes into his own a pop frontman, no longer content to wallow innocuously behind the squall of guitar distortion, and he propels the arrangements with a legitimately anthemic melody. Both “Little Kids” and the title track provide two of Cox’s most tender vocal performances up to that point while still making room for Lockett’s spellbinding guitar tones.

“Calvary Scars”, “Activa”, and “Green Jacket” aren’t quite as engaging as any of the ambient songs throughout the stretch from “White Ink” to “Red Ink” on Cryptograms, but they nonetheless draw an effective bridge to the record’s high-point, the colossal “Nothing Ever Happened”. “Nothing Ever Happened” has the band firing on all cylinders and delivering a show stopping performance that blends krautrock, garage rock, and shoegaze for a song far more satisfying and life-affirming than the sum of its parts. After that rollercoaster we’re treated to the bouncy jangle pop of “Saved by Old Times”, and the soothing dream pop of comedowns “Neither of Us, Certainly” and “Twilight at Carbon Lake” before the later erupts into a cacophony of jerky guitar spasms. It’s a welcome ending for a record with such a clear emphasis on melody, and it reinforces the notion that you shouldn’t get too comfortable with any fixed idea of what Deerhunter sound like at any given point in time.

Weird Era Cont. is where things really get interesting. It’s the only album of theirs that includes songs that were recorded and performed by individual members of the band intended for their various solo projects (these being Bradford Cox’s Atlas Sound and Lockett Pundt’s Lotus Plaza). The album as a whole hews closest to the first Atlas Sound LP, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel, in that both are absolute treasure troves of sonic riches that prioritize pure sound and overall immersion above proper song structure. The fact that Weird Era Cont. is so disparate and yet hangs together so cohesively is as much a testament to Deerhunter’s discipline as it is their sheer intuition with respect to flow and pacing even amongst such inherent disorder. And so here you get the raucous garage rock anthem “Operation” colliding into the noise-pop gem “Dot Gain”, the ambient interlude “Cicada” seeping right into the twisted ethereal waltz “Vox Humana”, and the whirring instrumental collage pop “Moon Witch Cartridge” segueing nicely into the droning noise of “Weird Era”. While Weird Era Cont. is only strengthened when viewed through the lens of it existing as the flip side to Microcastle’s warped pop, it still provides a welcome microcosm of Deerhunter’s incredible range all on its own, and it’s the most adventurous record that Deerhunter ever recorded.

Due to the fact that Microcastle and Weird Era Cont. are both Deerhunter records, the lyrics deal almost entirely with dreams and death. Most of the characters that occupy these songs are trying to escape from their nightmares or literally sacrificing themselves for the sweet ecstasy of oblivion. A version of “Cavalry Scars” appears on both records, the former a brief guitar lullaby and the latter a blistering shoegaze freakout, but the constant thread that ties them together aside from the title is that the narrator is crucifying himself in front of all of his friends. “Saved By Old Times” is more literal, and it depicts the alienation that Cox experienced growing up in his parents house by himself after his parents divorced while trying to cope with his Marfan Syndrome “You are trapped in your basement for a war of 16 years/In a combat for victory/In a combat with ourselves/In combat with these cultural vampires”. Cox’s fixation on death seems to serve as the ultimate salve for his lifelong struggle with simply having to exist, and regardless of whether or not music functions as a temporary solution for his anguish it’s clearly a natural medium for him to exercise his demons. Deerhunter have spent the rest of their career honing in on that release, but Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. is where those fixations first crystallized into something truly singular.

Essentials: “Nothing Ever Happened”, “Never Stops”, “Microcastle”, “Vox Celeste”, “Dot Gain”, “Slow Swords”

4. Strawberry Jam- Animal Collective

Strawberry Jam was the first Animal Collective record to have been released after band member Panda Bear’s exceptional solo breakthrough, Person Pitch, so for the first time in their career there was an obvious precedent in place for where the tight knight crew of David Portner (Avey Tare), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Geologist (Brian Weitz), and Josh Dibb (Deakin) might take their sound, but like all their prior records it sounds nothing like anything that came before it. Having completely moved on from the full-band analog approach, SJ is the sound of a band moving fearlessly outside of their comfort zone and harnessing the immense potential of samplers. On the whole, the compositions are more richly textured, melodic, and better paced than the bulk of their past work. The band continued to incorporate field recordings into their music, but given the prevalence of the samples happening at all times it can be difficult to parse who’s doing anything other than percussion and vocals at any given point in time. Avey’s presence dominates SJ to a large degree, with his idiosyncratic approach to melody defining the bulk of the standouts here. But despite Tare’s voice being the focal point on most of the songs on SJ, Panda Bear still holds his own as a songwriter throughout, and his softer melodic tone helped superbly counterbalance Tare’s outbursts. On SJ you can hear the band bending the fabric of pop music to their will in real time, and it remains both a masterclass in warped pop, and a joy to revisit time and time again.

During the tour in support of their incredible 2005 psych-rock LP, Feels, Lennox was mesmerized by the look of a tray of inflight jam, and decided that the production on their next record should sound the way that the jam looked. On SJ the band capture that superbly as they deliver some of their strongest, and sweetest melodies coupled with Avey’s most abrasive, and expressive singing to date. This tug of war between the band’s heightened melodic instincts driving candy-coated, psychedelic arrangements against Tare’s octave leaping shrieks provides an entrancing juxtaposition that loses none of its potency from the frantic opening song “Peacebone”, to the longing closer “Derek”. Songs like “Chores” and the aforementioned “Derek”, both of which are Panda songs, execute sublime, unpredictable transitions midway through that demonstrate both his knack for sample-based composition and the West-African influence on his songwriting that really congealed in earnest on PP. Meanwhile Tare songs, like “Unsolved Mysteries” and “Cuckoo Cuckoo”, still favored conventional chord changes and verse-chorus-verse structures, but they managed to pack the hallmarks of the band’s sound into much more succinct packages that don’t nullify any of the impact. Neo-psychedelic synth textures, tribal drumming, choirboy vocal harmonies, feral shrieks, and a pervasive use of space still reigned supreme throughout SJ, but the band were crafting legitimate pop songs while still in service of their wonderful idiosyncrasies. Nothing on SJ could be mistaken for the work of any other band, but it’s remarkable to hear just how significantly they tightened up their arrangements while still still remaining an island unto themselves.

As soon as opener “Peacebone” kicks into gear with its stomping percussion and dazzling array of arpeggio synth leads setting the foundation for Avey’s full-throttled yelps, it’s clear that this is his record. At the time of its release, “Peacebone” was the most immediate that AC ever sounded, but Tare’s shrieks kept listeners giddily at arm’s length even as they adopt more approachable structures. The midsection breakdown is still thrilling, and a good barometer of whether or not SJ is really your cup of tea or not. “Unsolved Mysteries” follows suit and doubles down on the pervading sense of whimsy from a compositional standpoint, and Tare’s vocals continue to provide a satisfying juxtaposition. The backbone of the album consists of “For Reverend Green” and “Fireworks”, the strongest back to back songs on any of their albums. On “For Reverend Green” Tare provides one of his most thrilling vocal performances to date, gleefully leaping between octaves mid-verse and switching between cathartic wordless croons and feral shrieks on a dime. It’s a stunning display of virtuosity and passion that couldn’t have come from any other musician. “Fireworks” is one of Tare’s most tender vocal performances to date, and it finds him contemplating the cycle of life as well as his place in the world over stuttering percussion, wordless croons, mesmerizing field recordings, and minor key piano. It’s a touching, albeit heavy listen, but the band play with such joy and warmth that it never suffocates under the weight of its ambition, and it’s one of the greatest songs that Tare has ever written.

Despite SJ being an album dominated by Tare’s presence it was still a major showcase for Panda Bear as a songwriter in his own right. “Chores” nails the sort of transitional finesse perfected on PP as it starts from a frantic intro dominated by bass drums and noisemakers before seamlessly shifting into a brief droning mid-section and then ending on a psychedelic, West-African influenced march. The disparate movements sound nothing alike one another, but they’re stitched together in a way that not only flows incredibly well, but sounds completely natural. “#1” is the closest that the band get to one of their signature drone compositions, and although it’s far sparser, and not nearly as developed as most of their prior ones it works on the strength on Panda’s gorgeous vocals alone. The arpeggio synth melody, sleigh bells, and vocal samples provide a refreshing minimal framework on an album otherwise defined by maximalism, and gives Panda’s voice the kind of room necessitated for it to achieve its maximum impact. The finale, “Derek”, also clearly sprang from a PP compositional influence, with an intro full of chirping synths and tranquil organ chords that slowly give way to an explosive, double kick drum wall of sound beneath one of Panda’s most triumphant vocal melodies to date. It’s a massive sound, but his sentiments couldn’t be any more tender “You can count/When you count/Count on me/What do you/See when you/See inside of me”.

On SJ AC grapple with their adulthood, their lives as touring band, and the daily routines they now find themselves entwined in. Panda’s “Chores” is about him getting his chores out of the way so that he can get high in the rain while his closing contribution, “Derek”, finds him pondering the weight of having a living being depend on him for survival. None of Avey’s songs have the the playful energy of “Chores”, and he spends the album delivering a stream of consciousness on the nature of death (“Cucko Cucko), exploring the delusions that we buy into to feel okay about life (“Winter Wonder Land”), and the futility of living in the past (“Peacebone”). In addition to to being compositional standouts, “For Reverend Green” and “Fireworks” also form the emotional backbone of the album. The former explores the jovial existence of childhood against the crippling realities of adulthood “A running child’s bloody with burning knees/A careless child’s money flew in the trees/A camping child’s happy with winter’s freeze/A lucky child don’t know how lucky she is”. It almost plays like a spiritual successor to Tare’s masterful early song “Alvin Row”, and it perfectly exemplifies their ethos as a band. On “Fireworks” Tare contemplates the passage of time, acknowledging how quickly everything moves, and fantasizes about what bliss might look like to him “It’s family beaches that I desire/Sacred night where we watch the fireworks/They frighten the babies and you know/They’ve got two/Flashing eyes and if they’re color blind/They make me feel/That I’m all I see sometimes”. It’s a universal sentiment delivered with their singular charm, and one of their strongest statements to date.

On SJ AC retained their idiosyncratic whims and experimental proclivities, they just learned how to harness these elements into more immediate forms. As with each of their records released throughout the last decade SJ sounds nothing like what preceded it, but it’s too eclectic to be the work of any other band, and despite the shift in sonics it still operates by the dreamy logic that the band imbued it with. Each release following Danse Manatee has found the band creeping closer to full on pop, and although they embraced it unabashedly on SJ it’s still on their own terms entirely. SJ was the latest in a progression of records since Ark that found AC being ahead of the curve of several indie trends, and many of the sample-heavy indie acts throughout the end of the last decade owe their careers to this record. SJ isn’t AC’s most immediate record, nor is it their most challenging, but it is one of the most inspired developments within their progression, and it jump started their sample-based mature phase. MPP remains their most celebrated work, but the crystallization of their sound that took place on that record wouldn’t have been possible without the groundwork laid by SJ. Although SJ was overshadowed by PP the year that they both came out, SJ still stands as the best showcase of the band’s work with samplers, and it remains a landmark of experimental pop music.

Essentials: “For Reverend Green”, “Fireworks”, “Derek”

3. Kid A- Radiohead

Few artists have managed to make such a drastic leap in sound on any of their records the way that Radiohead did with Kid A. Throughout the 90s they developed organically from a run of the mill Brit pop band into one of the most idiosyncratic and forward thinking bands of all time. With their landmark 1998 record Ok Computer they created a blueprint for a form electronic rock equally informed by classical music and the various strains of experimental electronic music that emerged in the 90s courtesy of the likes of Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, and Autechre. By the time that they were gearing up to record the follow-up to what was then unanimously recognized as their masterpiece they disavowed the form of rock music entirely. On Kid A the guitars are stripped away in favor of icy keyboards and the austere glare of syntheizers, with the stark precision of drum machines deployed to provide the heartbeat for their desolate soundscapes. The risk paid off immensely, resulting in a work that sounds like nothing that’s come before or since. It’s the sound of a band grappling with existentialism, early information overload, and the sweeping saturation of advanced technology and responding with doomsday prophecies that sound more prescient with each passing year. No other record released this century has better set the tone for everything to come quite the way that Kid A has.

As soon as Kid A’s opening song “Everything In It’s Right Place” begins it’s undeniable that a great deal has changed with Radiohead this time around. Despite the chilly exterior that Ok Computer exudes, there are still moments of melodic warmth such as on its opening cut “Airbag”. “Everything In It’s Right Place” presents an uneasy atmosphere at the offset, and things gradually become more foreboding from there. Thom Yorke’s heavily manipulated wail sounds like it’s glitching as it soars over the horizon of digital keys and kick drums. The mix slowly becomes an overwhelming wall of vocals and keys that form a repetitive bludgeoning motif, incorporating their heightened love of krautrock. Along with the classical music and IDM touchstones that informed Ok Computer, krautrock, jazz, and ambient were large influences they drew from as well. The title track follows “Everything In It’s Right Place”, and it’s an ambient lullaby that finds the band prioritizing atmosphere and texture over any semblance of conventional composition. On the following song, “The National Anthem” the band spiral into a propulsive epic that fuses jazz and krautrock into something else entirely. The first three songs sound nothing like one another, and in addition to the late album IDM stomp of “Idioteque”, they set the parameters for the record as a whole.

Despite the variety on display throughout Kid A it still achieves a remarkable cohesiveness through tone and atmosphere. Every song is masterfully paced, and exquisitely produced, and most blow open their sonic parameters further then they’ve ever dared before or since. “Optimistic” is one of the few songs here that hints at the sort of driving guitar compositions they prioritized early on, but when coupled with the forlorn melody and the eerie synth loops it almost sounds like an unsettling throwback that achieves a sense of perpetual weightlessness. “Treefingers” dives headfirst into ambient, and is one of the most gorgeous instrumental compositions that Radiohead have ever written. It also provides a superb bridge from the existential acoustic reverie “How to Disappear Completely” into the moody lurch of “Optimistic”. “Idioteque” is the pounding heart of Kid A’s detached overlook, but despite being the closest the album comes to a single it’s still claustrophobic and uninhabitable. After several songs that aim to instill dread and discomfort at every turn, the album’s last proper song “Motion Picture Soundtrack” ends things with a gorgeous harp arpeggio set against an organ wail as Yorke sings softly about a suicide fantasy. All these years later and Kid A continues to hold together as an astonishing collection of experiments from a band at the height of their powers.

Emerging at the dawn of the current century, Kid A didn’t commit to any pretenses of subtlety whatsoever, particularly with respect to its thematic concerns. On “Everything In It’s Right Place” Yorke lays out his perception of the state of a world laced with depression, anxiety, fear, and disconnection “There are two colours in my head/What was that you tried to say” informed by a breakdown that he experienced while touring Ok Computer. “How to Disappear Completely” takes the form of an out-of-body experience with a narrator thoroughly disillusioned with his life and ready to precede to the next plane of existence “In a little while/I’ll be gone/The moment’s already passed/Yeah, it’s gone”. “In Limbo” traffics in pure abstraction as the narrator wanders aimlessly throughout life unable to escape from his fantasies “I’m lost at sea/Don’t bother me/I’ve lost my way” while “Morning Bell” depicts a lingering spirit that supposedly resided in a house that Yorke used to own “The lights are on but nobody’s home/Nobody wants to be a slave”. The aforementioned “Motion Picture Soundtrack” provides a superb ending to the album rendered in bleak, cutting detail “Red wine and sleeping pills/Help me get back to your arms/Cheap sex and sad films/Help me get where I belong”, and it culmines with the narrator easing into suicide. The songs portray a grim culture of isolation and pacification that we’re much closer to living than we were when the album came out.

A year after Kid A Radiohead returned with their fifth LP, Amnesiac, but it mostly plays like a well-sequenced collection of thoughtfully repurposed leftovers from the Kid A sessions. Several great records followed suit, the latest being their sublime 2016 LP A Moon Shaped Pool, while various members of the band have spun off to focus on solo careers and film scores. Radiohead have never released anything less than a good record, but nothing since Kid A has come close to capturing the consistent brilliance of that record. The paranoia, uncertainty, and disillusionment that was pervasive at the turn of the century is rendered remarkably through their stark arrangements, liberal use of space, and distant temperament. The shift in Radiohead’s trajectory following Kid A was so pronounced that a band releasing their Kid A has become shorthand for the sort of dramatic, swinging for the fences left turn that's all too rare in music these days. While it’s almost certain that Radiohead will never release anything of this magnitude again, Kid A has held up incredibly well, and it continues to loom large as a relic of an already bygone era defined by a sense of wonder slowly being crippled beneath the weight of an encroaching dystopia.

Essentials: “Everything In It’s Right Place”, “The National Anthem”, “Optimistic”

2. Feels- Animal Collective

While Sung Tongs was the true breakout record for Animal Collective, Feels was where the band locked in as a full group to showcase that the remarkable melodic warmth peeking out through their intrinsic weirdness was far from a fluke. Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist, and Deakin had all come together once before for Ark two years prior, but the pop craftsmanship, confidence, consistency, and sheer range displayed on Feels are worlds apart from the unsettling, freak-folk noise collages that define Ark. Psychedelia and drone music are still large facets of their sound, but they hadn’t previously been utilized to reinforce such strong song craft. Having moved beyond their freak-folk and noise roots, Feels was a departure towards presenting themselves as more of a conventional rock band, and it’s still the closest they’ve ever come to releasing any semblance of a traditional “rock” LP, but true to form Feels defies any easy classification. Guitars, drums, piano, and vocals dominate the proceedings to be sure, but so do dense field recordings, and otherworldly drones, particularly on the record’s spellbinding second half. While perhaps not their most adventurous, nor their most unpredictable record, Feels is certainly their most consistent, offering a glimpse of a band still changing dramatically from record to record while offering far more than any of their peers.

Since Feels was only the second album of theirs to feature all four members by that point it’s a far more fleshed out sounding record than the bulk of those that preceded it. Both Avey and Deakin play guitar throughout, and Avey typically played lead while Deakin provided a warm melodic underpinning. Feels was the last record to feature Panda Bear behind the kit until Centipede Hz, and his drumming is some of the best that he’s ever recorded, alternating from frantic tribal percussion on “The Purple Bottle” to serene minimalist rolls on “Loch Raven” and everything in-between. Geologist’s superb use of texture hit a new peak here, particularly throughout the dreamier compositions that made up side B. Tare’s singing is anything but conventional, swinging wildly between octaves mid-measure, and flipping from tender croons to blood-curdling shrieks on a dime. Panda’s vocals continued to play a larger role in their music, and throughout Feels his voice acts most frequently as additional texture that lends their music an ethereal glow. In addition to larger contributions from all of the members besides Tare no other record of theirs features as much from outside collaborators. The piano playing courtesy of Doctress (who was married to Tare at the time) and the violin playing courtesy of Eyvind Kang add quite a bit of unexpected dimension that evens out the record’s more warped leanings. Despite everything that’s going on the instruments all have quite a bit of breathing room thanks to the record’s superb mixing and pacing. No single element ever dominates, and the amount of variation on display is a marvel.

Feels tells you everything that you need to know about its sentiments in the title alone. From the opening track “Did You See the Words” all the way through to the closer “Turn Into Something”, the band chronicle the euphoria of falling in love on the first side, and detail the poignancy of enduring heartbreak on the second side. With the exception of the superb, droning breather “Flesh Canoe”, that bridges the adrenaline burst of “Grass” to the grand, propulsive shuffle of “The Purple Bottle” the first side translates the euphoria of falling in love with infectious giddiness. It’s here where Avey’s delivery is at his most delirious and unpredictable, and he provides two of his greatest vocal performances with “Did You See the Words” and “The Purple Bottle”. “Did You See the Words” establishes the scope of the record as Tare recites the sparks that led to the relationship with keen details “Have you seen them?/The words cut open/Your poor intestines can’t deny/When the inky periods drip from your mailbox and/Blood flies dip and glide reach down inside/There’s something living in these lines” as his voice enthusiastically zig-zags around Panda’s minimalist tribal percussion. “The Purple Bottle” articulates the pure bliss of a relationship in its honeymoon phase, and features what’s quite possibly the most expressive vocal performance of Tare’s to date as he fantasizes about a future with his girlfriend “Well I’d like to spread your perfume around the old apartment/Could we live together and agree on the same wares/A trapeze is a bird cage and even if its empty it definitely fits the room/And we would too”. Naturally, things take a turn for the worse.

Side B is what really elevates Feels to a classic, and it’s the strongest stretch of songs that AC have ever recorded. Even though “Bees” is technically the conclusion of side A, tonally, and especially sonically, it fits far better with the rest of side B. Over chiming autoharp drones and sprinkles of piano, Avey depicts the calm before the storm “They came wide/So wild, the bees/They came crying/They said, “I’d take my time/You take your time/Please take your time”” as Panda’s angelic croon glides across the mix like a mirage. It’s a breathtaking moment of mesmerizing tranquility that emerges just before the clouds begin to take shape. We then transition into “Banshee Beat”, the centerpiece of Feels, and arguably one of the best songs that the band ever recorded. On “Banshee Beat” Avey depicts how his relationship fell apart after he learned that his girlfriend cheated on him, and every second of the sublime, nearly 8-and-a-half-minute song is necessary. “Banshee Beat” opens to wispy trails of droning guitar and brief spurts of piano as Avey solemnly sets the tone “Oh there’ll be time, to get by, to get dry, after the swimming pool/Oh there’ll be time, to just cry, I wonder why, it didn’t work out”. The song then slowly builds up steam as melodic guitar chords cut through the drone set against Panda’s nimble, chugging rhythm. Avey looks back on the memories that he and his ex had together, and despite his sorrow, he comes to the conclusion that he’s far better off without her in his life, and the song reaches a cathartic coda that features wordless harmonies between him and Panda as the song spirals into silence.

After “Banshee Beat” we’re led into “Daffy Duck”, the record’s most surreal, structure-less drone song. The guitar textures that Deakin provides here are some of the most immersive in their discography, and Avey’s at his most abstract “And if I had volcano boots/For swimming in volcanoes/Do you know the origins of laughing ducks?/Oh what’s a matter with those words”. It plays like a dream sequence that emerges right at the tail-end of the glowing resolution from “Banshee Beat” right into “Loch Raven”, one of the record’s other high-points. “Loch Raven” is perhaps the closest that AC have come to writing a straight-up lullaby, and it’s equally haunting and life-affirming thanks to the understated melodic sweep and soft, high-pitched textures that wafts through every corner of the mix. Panda’s honeyed tenor is unbearably tender as he repeatedly sings “I will not give up on you” juxtaposed against Avey referencing lines from Little Red Riding Hood that contextualize his cheating partner as the wolf plotting her deception. It’s truly something that couldn’t have been written by any other band, and it’s the last completely ambient song on the second side before the explosive finale, “Turn Into Something”. “Turn Into Something” is a classic sounding AC song, defined by explosive yelps from Avey alongside droning guitar, sprightly piano, and a bouncy floor-tom beat courtesy of Panda. At the 4-minute mark everything breaks apart and the song transitions into a ambient conclusion with Tare and Bear’s vocals floating through the ether as the droning guitars chime around them. It’s just as effective as a conclusion to Feels as it is an entry point into their work as a whole.

Merriweather Post Pavilion is easily the most successful record that AC have ever released, and most critics will tell you that it’s their best work, but it doesn’t come close to Feels across most conceivable metrics. Feels is the sound of the band firing on all cylinders, having developed exponentially as musicians and songwriters within the span of just five years. It didn’t push their sound forward quite as much as Strawberry Jam, nor did it signal quite as dramatic a leap in song craft as ST, but no other record of theirs succeeds in tackling so much ground with such remarkable consistency across the board. Feels was the last record that AC released before Panda Bear’s landmark solo LP Person Pitch irreversibly changed the entire trajectory of indie music, and influenced them to begin using samplers as the focal point of their compositions over guitars. Like all of their great records from Ark onwards, there are traces of everything that they had done prior on Feels, but listening to this record still leaves the impression that they could truly go anywhere. With almost any other band that’s ever existed, that claim is mostly disingenuous, but up until Centipede Hz the possibilities for AC truly seemed limitless, and that unprecedented unpredictability remains a key component of their appeal to this day. No 2 of their 10 records sound alike, and while they’ll almost certainly never again release anything that comes close to touching the pure bliss of Feels, the magic of this record is still an absolute marvel to revisit every time.

Essentials: “Banshee Beat”, “Loch Raven”, “The Purple Bottle”

1. Person Pitch- Panda Bear

By the time that Panda Bear (aka Noah Lennox) released Person Pitch he had moved from Brooklyn, New York to Lisbon, Portugal, gotten married, and his band Animal Collective were rapidly growing into one of the defining bands of the 21st century, but even knowing all the ground that they covered in such a short span could hardly have prepared anyone for anything as singular as PP. The last solo record that Panda released prior to PP was his gorgeous, yet devastatingly poignant 2004 folk record Young Prayer, a tribute to his late father who passed that same year from brain cancer. On PP the analog instrumentation that defined YP and Panda’s past work with AC was opted out entirely in favor of compositional approach informed by plunderphonics that was spurred by his increasing fondness of producers like Madlib, and his formative musical influences like GAS, The Orb, and Daft Punk. The end result is a remarkably rendered patchwork of disparate sounds that span the scope of recorded music history tied together with Panda’s signature tenor, and his sharp ear for sequencing. While PP isn’t technically a plunderphonics record due to the incorporation of Panda’s vocals recorded fresh for these compositions, it’s still more wide-ranging, and superbly realized than any plunderphonics record released before or since. PP went on to completely shift the trajectory of indie music in the years since its release, and very few artists have managed to release an album that matches the scope of this dazzling breakthrough since.

PP is superbly sequenced into seven songs, two of which broach the 12-minute mark, with well-placed comedowns emerging right after the epics. The songs consist of loops cherry-picked from old records that Panda was exposed to during his time working at the Other Music record store in Brooklyn throughout the early aughts. The music shifts and contorts on a whim, segueing through different motifs with acute finesse while drawing through lines between various eras of music that may have been previously unthinkable, but nonetheless seem to sound like natural evolutions in Panda’s hands. Nothing sounds out of placed or forced because of the careful sequencing, and the precise tweaking of the samples that are being deployed. The opening song “Comfy in Nautica” perfectly sets the tone as a choir of vocals descend upon what sounds like an ascending roller coaster, and samples of racing cars. The construction is simple, but striking, and the tone he achieves is one of pure humility established with his homespun mantras of self-preservation “Coolness is having courage/Courage to do what’s right/Try to remember always/ Just to have a good time”. Whether it’s the dreamlike glide of “I’m Not”, or the cozy, glowing conclusion “Ponytail” the samples that Panda utilizes perfectly achieve the aesthetics of what the songs themselves are striving for. Everything is meticulously placed, and a single shift would disrupt the lean symmetry of the whole.

Nothing on PP underwhelms, but the high points are among the most remarkable achievements throughout the history of sample-based composition. “Take Pills” starts with what sounds like a lumbering stroll along a cobblestone road with percussion cribbed from Scott Walker’s “Always Coming Back to You” as Panda’s sighs guide the caravan forward unassumingly, but after several minutes the song transitions smoothly into jaunty surf rock propelled by a sample courtesy of “The Popeye Twist” by The Tornadoes. The shift is immense, but nothing about it scans as gimmicky or unnatural, and the ease with which the song transitions belies the ingenuity on display. “Bros”, almost certainly the most celebrated song of Panda Bear’s solo career, is a masterful 12 and a half minute tour de force that cycles through various eras of pop music’s history with the sharp precision of DJ set. Beginning with another sample from The Tornadoes (this time in the form of “Red Roses and a Sky of Blue”), “Bros” establishes a merry-go-round framework that never manages to sound stale within the course of its 12 and a half minutes. The acoustic guitar thrust sampled off of Cat Steven’s “I’ve Found a Love” alongside Panda’s harmonies that forever recall those of Brian Wilson propel the second act of “Bros” up until its life-affirming third act that gets a great deal of mileage out of a sampled vocal loop from The Equal’s “Rub a dub dub”. PP’s other epic, “Good Girl / Carrots”, spends its first 3 minutes spiraling through a dub freakout that eventually folds neatly into a rousing, spring-loaded midsection featuring some of the finest melodies that Panda has ever sung. As the song transitions into its carnival-esque, music box final act with a sample from Kraftwerk’s “Ananas Symphonie” Panda caps things off with a rejection of the sort of music nerd hive fandom that helped propel him to such heights in the first place as noisemakers soar along the periphery of the mix. The peaks of “Bros” and “Good Girl / Carrots” are astonishing, and those two songs alone cemented Panda Bear’s status at the vanguard of sample-based composition.

The lyrics throughout PP are heartfelt admissions from someone whose life had undergone massive shifts within the few years leading up to it. The release of AC’s landmark LP Sung Tongs in 2004 allowed him and the rest of AC to begin sustaining a career in music, and that very same year his father died, he decided to move from New York to Portugal after falling in love with a woman while on vacation from tour, and he soon after married her. The warmth seeping out of the music on PP reflects the atmosphere that Panda suddenly found himself immersed in much in the same way that AC’s superb 2003 record Ark was informed by the chaos of their lives in Brooklyn. “Take Pills” grapples with the history of Panda’s family’s reliance on anti-depressants “Take one day at a time/Everything else you can leave behind/Only one thing at a time/Anything more really hurts your mind”. “Bros” is a plea to his brother Matt for space to live his own life in the wake of their father’s passing “I’m not trying to forget you/I just like to be alone/Come and give me the space I need/And you may you may you may you may/You may find that we’re alright” while on “Good Girl / Carrots” Panda’s taking taste makers to task for trying to instill a false sense of superiority over those who aren’t as informed on underground music “Get your head out from those mags and websites who try to shape your style/Take a risk yourself and wade into the deep end of the ocean”. On the album’s closer, “Ponytail”, Panda offers up little more than “When my soul starts knowing/I am as I’d want to be/And I know I never will stop caring”, but it’s a perfectly fitting conclusion to the record, and as sincere a sentiment as anything I’ve heard on any album. The overwhelming sincerity of the music is tempered by a beyond-his-years wisdom that’s well-earned and deeply empathetic.

Panda Bear released three solo LPs following PP, and the approach on this record has gone on to inform all of the AC records that have followed in its wake. The influence of this record simply cannot be overstated. As easy as it is to roll your eyes at chillwave and the “vibe” generation, everyone from Tame Impala to Travis Scott owes an enormous debt to Panda Bear. As the bulk of their peers began to stick to their respective lanes Panda and the rest of AC continued to swing wildly between trends and genres throughout the last decade, leaving their stamp on various forms before pivoting wildly to where their muses led them next. Thankfully, Panda has continued to push his sound forward throughout his solo career as well, and even when returning to sample-based composition for his stellar 2015 fifth solo record, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, it marked a clear shift towards the influence of hip-hop and house, and away from the minimal techno meets psychedelic guitar pop that PP favored in abundance. No musical artist throughout the 21st century has covered as much ground as consistently or as impressively as Panda Bear, and PP still stands as one of the few truly idiosyncratic statements from any artist throughout the last decade. It’s aged tremendously well in the years since its release, and it still presents a disarmingly well-realized euphoria that couldn’t sound more radical in the moody, deconstructed landscape of music that has defined this current decade.

Essentials: “Bros”, “Good Girl / Carrots”, “Take Pills”

#panda bear #Animal Collective #Radiohead #deerhunter #madvillain #wilco #the avalanches #the microphones

[wizardoftrash]

Pokemon Talk Pt 5: Other Worlds

I can’t take all of the credit for what I’m about to discuss, as this is something that my partner has observed over the past year or so, and I felt like it was really applicable to the controversy surrounding the new Pokemon game. Without spoiling or leaking anything, some folks are really upset about a variety of things with how pokemon Sword and Shield were handled, and upset about some of the content that will or won't be in it. If a player was counting on those features, I could understand that they would be disappointed and might not want to buy the game.

What throws me for a loop however is when it goes further than that. Some slices of the community find it unacceptable, shameful, and a sign that the franchise as a whole will collapse simply because it doesn’t meet their specific expectations. They are attacking the players who are vocally excited for the games, claiming that official announcements by the company are straight-up lies (and some of which seem to be), even going so far as to harass individual employees at Gamefreak over it. Not only does that behavior go way too far, but I simply couldn’t understand how someone could even be that upset about the way a company handled a video game. Gamefreak isn't really hurting anybody by goofing up a game a bit, and harassing individuals in such an extreme way can lead to actual bodily harm.

In my mind, this is a game company that is working under tight deadlines and with a new system. As the franchise grows and adds more pokemon with each generation eventually compromises will need to be made. When crunch time comes, there are bound to be hiccups. At the end of the day, the new game could kinda suck for some people, and that’s ok. I’m sure most of us who are fans of one particular series or another can point to an entry in the series that was done poorly or that we liked less that we might have still enjoyed a bit. At the very worst, I could see how that might be sword and shield to somebody: like the Sonic 06 of the series or something.

That however didn’t explain how people are acting like the world is going to end. That is until my partner pointed out that the real world really is on the brink of disaster right now. As life continues to be a source of great stress, people are leaning much harder on their escape outlets than they might otherwise. People going berserk about changes to an MMO ten years ago would sound crazy, but every time a new entry in a major series shakes things up lately, people lose their minds. It does make sense if you see it through the lens of the fantasy world being the one that matters most, given that the real world is becoming increasingly frightening and uncertain. This happened of course with Fallout 76, which was initially met with massive backlash from the core fanbase of the Fallout series, but which turned out to be a solid game to most, and just a different cup of tea from the previous games.

My fellow gamers are increasingly living from fantasy to fantasy, deriving more of their joy from these fictional worlds, and I can’t blame them. When the next fantasy doesn’t meet expectations, then what’s left? They can’t afford to travel, they can’t afford to have a house or a family, and they probably hate their job. For someone who was counting on this game to provide an escape, having it fall short of expectations is crushing. While I feel for whoever is caught in such a tough situation, sometimes a game studio has a rough release. This places way too much responsibility for people’s happiness in the hands of people who are just making video games. They are a business making a product and artists making works of art, not the keepers of our eternal happiness.

TLDR: People are mad because the world sucks, not just because the game sucks.

#pokemon #pokemon sword and shield #gaming #climate change #video games

[sonic7ischaos]

is to

as

is to

...Ok, obviously I don’t mean literally. I’ve said this before but I feel like the visual comparison helps illustrate my point (Plus, any excuse to post Yuji Uekawa Sonic). Classic Sonic and Megaman Classic are Mickey Mouse esque cartoons (or Astro Boy in the case of Megaman). All their stories and scenarios are fairly episodic with a relatively lighthearted tone. Eggman and Wily still present a threat and the stakes still matter (they’re not kidding around, without Sonic and Megaman they WILL take over the world), but they’re not complex (lacking complexity doesn’t preclude depth).

Uekawa Sonic (I fucking hate the terms “Modern” and “Classic” for Sonic, I’ll still use them for clarity but I want to start calling them something else when I can), and Megaman x are more like Shounen anime, in the vein of DBZ and Naruto. These stories are serialized, continuity focused stories that emphasize character drama and personal motivations. Events from previous stories have an effect on events from stories after. Shadow falling from space in SA2 results in him losing his memory which results in the events of Shadow (however THAT actually took place what with the branching levels). Characters in these stories are capable of expressing a greater range of emotional complexity as are the narratives they exist in.

Neither of these are inherently better than the other, they just have their own strengths and weaknesses. If what you want is a story about a cool character taking down a simple villain, Classic is your speed. If what you want is webs of fun character interaction and comic book style narrative stakes, blowing up the moon, awakening ancient gods, building unstoppable armies and death machines, Modern is what you want.

All of this is predicated on writers who know what they’re doing. I don’t want to be mean but I want to restrict my criticism even less. The current writers, Ken Pontac and Warren Graff need to go. I say this as someone who cares deeply about the Sonic series. These two have no idea what makes a Sonic story compelling or how to write one. I don’t know if they would be better in a different wheelhouse but Sonic is not the place for them. Even if they’re not responsible for the story itself and only write character dialogue? They still need to go. The dialogue in the games since Colors have been abysmal. They’ve made these characters bad parodies of themselves and, being that the characters are a HUGE part of this series identity, that’s unacceptable.

I hear Shiro Maekawa wouldn’t mind writing for Sonic again and Ian Flynn has seemed pretty open to working on the games too. Both of these people come from a background of working on Sonic stories and Most of their work in the series has gone over well with fans. People remember the stories of the Adventure games. They remember Heroes. They remember the better parts of the Archie comics where Flynn was at the helm (fuck you penders). The IDW comics have gotten off to an INCREDIBLE start, even redeeming some of Forces story (not enough but Forces story is improved a lot by the IDW comics). Doesn’t even have to be these two, it just needs to be someone better. Someone who genuinely cares about Sonic and who has proven themselves able to write memorable, compelling Sonic stories.

#sonic the hedgehog #megaman #megaman x #classic sonic #rockman #rockman x #yuji uekawa #modern sonic #archie sonic #idw sonic #sonic adventure #sonic adventure 2 #sonic heroes #sonic forces #shiro maekawa #ian flynn #warren graff #ken pontac #character writing #sonic writing #writing

[kirinda-ondo]

Rant/tell me about Cobalt and why u love him so much??

Ok so this is probably going to get very long, and very, very cheesy, and I hope y’all are ready for this.

Cobalt is a very special character to me and is absolutely my favorite character of all time, from anything in the history of ever. It doesn’t matter what other fandom I’m hyperfixated on or what character I’m saying is my son at the moment, if you bring him up at any time, in any context I will be there.

So you’re probably wondering how I got here.

Once upon a time, it was 2009 and I was a young weeaboo, constantly absorbing everything anime or manga I could. I had just come out from the Astro Boy movie, and I immediately wanted to watch the source material. I’d already seen a bit of it on adult swim when they were running an Astro Boy marathon, but I had to go to bed at 11:30 then so I didn’t get to see much. So this time, I went to youtube and I found all the (dubbed) episodes of the 60s series. (Sadly you can’t find them all there anymore and it’s a crying shame).

I basically marathoned them, but over in the sidebar where the recommendations were, I kept seeing the thumbnail for part 2 or 3 (this was back when youtube only let you post 10 minute videos and you had to watch anime in 3 parts) of the episode “Brother Jetto.” You could plainly see him, and so it was clear this was supposed to be Astro’s brother. I thought it was neat that Astro even had a brother, as I’d only known about Uran before. I wanted to know more, but I promised myself I wouldn’t skip ahead. Though it was very tempting at times, I stuck to my guns and watched all 83 episodes up to that point.

However, it was not actually love at first sight. When I finally got to this episode 84, I wasn’t really impressed. “Wow, he’s kind of annoying, what’s the point?” I had thought like a fool, but I was still willing to accept him as part of the canon, as I figured I’d be seeing a lot more of him now that he had been introduced. After all, that’s what they did with Uran! But then…. that pretty much didn’t happen at all, which I thought was kind of weird. After all, why introduce a new sibling if he’s not going to show up again?

But then I got to the episode “A Deep, Deep Secret” about 6 episodes later, and I found myself a little relieved that he wasn’t completely canned. Upon watching that episode, I’d found that he’d started to grow on me a bit, but he still wasn’t my favorite. However, the trend of him being gone for several episodes only to show up once in a blue moon continued until I’d run out of episodes. I moved on to the 80s series next (and then the 2003 series) having learned that Cobalt had been replaced by Atlas as Astro’s brother. While I enjoyed those series (the 80s one a bit moreso than the 2003 one), I found myself kind of missing Astro’s dingus brother that had barely seemed to get a chance. After marathoning all the series (at the time), I started doing some googling and found out he had a slightly better run in the undubbed Japanese episodes (which was also how I discovered AB-O! Hi fandom!) and I’d learned a lot more about him. But the most important thing I’d learned was that I was in fact very emotionally invested in this character now and I was in deep.

Mind you at this time the undubbed Japanese episodes were nearly impossible to find without purchasing the complete DVD set and a player that could play them (on account of the fact that the set was region locked from western DVD players) so for years I sat wondering more about what those Japanese episodes were like, as the forums only had plot summaries with a handful of screencaps to go off of. Nowadays you can watch all the undubbed (and sadly unsubbed) episodes here but 13 year old me did not have the knowledge to do foreign language googling at the time.

But still, my Cobalt-loving heart wanted more, so I scoured the English speaking internet for whatever I could find, official or fanmade. Official content was virtually nonexistent, and the amount of fanmade content, I could count on one hand. The general fan consensus at the time seemed to be “Who the hell is Cobalt” or “Eh, whatever,” which was a far cry from how it is now. But being horribly deprived back then, I did the only thing I could: I combed through the dub for every episode he was in, coming up with a whopping total of…..four (well technically five but in that one he’s literally only in the last five seconds with no animation or lines), and I watched them religiously. I could pretty much quote Cobalt’s debut episode by heart. (For the record I can no longer do this to the extent I used to, but should the opportunity arise, I can still quote large chunks of it).

As I did this and learned more about him in my desperate googling, I started developing jokes for what would become my first silly comics, for which I am known in this fandom for. The art and writing for these was….. painful, to say the least, so I don’t even like to think about it, but as I’d already had a decently sized following from drawing silly (read: bad) Sonic comics, they caught on decently well, and I’d even managed to drag my friend and son down with me into Cobalt Hell™. Together, we made a group for Cobalt fans on deviantart (which is still up, but I no longer run it, as I deactivated the account that modded it without transferring ownership, so now it’s likely a wild west hellscape that I’m a little scared to look at).

This seemed to help do the trick though, as Cobalt fans were slowly coming out of the woodwork and appreciating this good boy. On and off I’d spread my yelling about Cobalt (and my silly drawings) to different platforms like the Astro Boy forums and tumblr, and even as I got into different things, after awhile, things kinda grew without me. Now I’m not gonna be out here claiming I built this city myself with my own two hands, as a lot of people got dragged into this hell of their own accord, but I do like to think my, umm….passion at least helped generate some interest, and I can’t help but be proud of how far this fandom has come from “Who the hell is Cobalt” to “Look at this good boy, I love him” and literally all the other Cobalt fans I’ve met have been the coolest people (in general, not just because of their good taste).

I think what really changed my life though was when AprilSeven, a mod on the Astro Boy forum and also probably the original Cobalt fan, as she’d seen the 60s version back when it was originally airing, finally got a hold of the undubbed Japanese episodes, and graciously allowed me and a few of the other big-name Cobalt fans get in on that action, and boy howdy, the screenshots and plot summaries really did not do these episodes justice (at least in terms of Cobalt content). My understanding of him as a character expanded like tenfold, and my appreciation of him expanded even more than that.

…Which brings me into a nice segue in which I shift more into just exactly why I like Cobalt so much. Yes, there’s more. I warned y'all, this was gonna be a Pandora’s Box that could not be closed once it was opened.

I honestly just find him a joy to watch. A lot of what made him grow on me was just how funny he is. I’m a sucker for comic relief characters in general, and he has a personality that lends itself to comedy. In the anime version, he’s literally introduced right out the gate as being kind of a dingus. He’s naive, he’s way too trusting of obviously suspicious people, he’s easily confused, he’s easily distracted, he’s a klutz, and he just… regularly destroys the laws of physics and/or the fourth wall just because. Sometimes he also gets weird ideas in his head to do things that could have been done a completely different, easier way and weirdly enough, it actually kind of winds up working? It’s so fun to watch him approach problems because he’s just… so far out there sometimes.

But beyond being absolutely weird and hilarious, he’s just a really sweet kid. He doesn’t like to fight, he wants to make friends with everyone and everything, he will drop literally anything he’s doing, no matter how important it is, to help someone in need, he’s good with babies and small children and puppies (sometimes), he would fight (and sacrifice himself) for his family, and just means well even if he tends to bungle things up and make them worse sometimes. Honestly, and this is gonna sound dumb, but he helped me be a better person. I used to be an absolute asshole when I was younger, but once I’d gotten into Cobalt Hell™, I was like “I wanna be that sweet and good (but with a better sense of stranger danger)” and I made that effort and did that shit.

That being said though, he’s not perfect, and I wouldn’t want him to be. His flaws, though they kind of give him the short end of the stick in life, are a lot of why I find him so endearing. All the naivety and confusion and general lack of coordination I mentioned before aside, he’s honestly just really relatable. He’ll say jokes so bad that Uran wants to punch him, he’ll opt out of the plot because he doesn’t want to get out of bed, he’ll fight with his siblings over silly petty things, he’ll get frustrated if he tries something and it doesn’t go his way, he’ll absolutely partake in his siblings’ mischief (if not start it sometimes), and just so much more. He just feels like a kid you would know (or maybe a kid that you were at one point) and I really appreciate that about him.

Unfortunately, the canon was not kind to Cobalt, and I think a lot of that comes from Osamu Tezuka just… not knowing what to do with him after making him? Like in the manga, he was just kind of created as a really rushed contingency plan because they thought Astro was missing. Sure, he was taken in as part of the family afterward, but not many appearances later, he was killed off in a firey explosion… Until Tezuka decided to change his mind and let him live in the end. His grave’s still there though. He gets to see it. I know it’s a framing device to explain the circumstances of Cobalt’s retconned death but it’s kind of fucked up to let a boy see his own grave..

Even being brought back, Cobalt didn’t get to do very much. He’d get some good scenes with Uran, but a lot of the time, he was sort of just relegated to filling up space in the background, provided he actually survived til the end of the chapter. When he wasn’t getting forgotten by the plot and thusly zapped out of existence, he would wind up sacrificing himself in some way that wouldn’t allow him to continue to take part in the plot anymore (be it parts, energy, etc.) The most painfully egregious example of this is in the chapter “Youth Gas.” Astro and Cobalt are convinced to fight each other to the “death.” They’re not really dead, but Ochanomizu says they are and can’t be repaired. At first, there’s mourning for “two of the world’s greatest robots,” but then we see a funeral service in which only Astro’s body is shown and his parents are only mourning him, completely forgetting Cobalt exists. He’s never seen again for the rest of the chapter. Now I would assume this is just a writing mistake, but it really does make it look like Cobalt’s own parents wouldn’t even bat an eye if he died, so there’s that.

The anime isn’t quite as horrible, and it is kind enough to give Cobalt a more prominent role once he finally shows up (even getting a handful of focus episodes!), but he doesn’t go unscathed either. In this version, he has the misfortune of being created by Dr. Umataro “Father of the Year” Tenma before Astro was made and was scrapped because, to quote dub!Ochan, “his electronic brain wasn’t as perfect as Dr. [Tenma] wanted.” (read: he thought Cobalt was a dumbass). Cobalt is eventually found and brought into the family, but because he still winds up not being relevant to the plot a lot of the time, he is once again zapped out of the existence and looks like a victim of child neglect. As a result, he gets left out of family vacations and holidays, even in favor of Chi-tan, who is usually even higher on the scale of irrelevant Astro Boy characters. Unlike Astro, Cobalt doesn’t have any consistent friends to even remotely justify what he could possibly be doing offscreen by himself, so it just kind of implies a very sad and lonely existence in-universe.

And of course, the final, meta blow that literally every fan of Cobalt is still despairing about to this day: basically being yeeted out of the canon. After the 60s series, he disappeared off the face of the earth until 2015 when some lovely soul decided to bring him back for Peeping Life TV: Season 1?? (The question marks are part of the title). He’d be referenced again a couple years later in Atom: The Beginning, and will be here for the game Eshigami no Kizuna sometime in 2019 as a… moe anime girl. That’s a little weird, but I’m hoping these sorts of weird appearances will mean a trend toward putting him back in the canon (and hopefully being treated better).

It just hurts my heart to see such a good character get treated like this by canon. He deserves way better and it just seems really clear to me that Tezuka didn’t really know what to do with him. I feel like he has a lot of potential as a character, though. Regardless of what origin you pick for him, Cobalt is essentially existing as a worse version of Astro. I feel like you could have some good character development regarding how he would feel about himself in relation to Astro in sort of a parallel to how Astro might feel about himself in relation to Tobio, the person he was based off of. You could go some neat places with these sort of questions about identity and expectations, I think. Or if you want to just do something funny because your character arcs are getting too real now, you can just let Cobalt do some silly shit. He’s a versatile character!

I’ve done all this rambling and now I’m not really sure how to wrap all this up, so umm

Cobalt is a good boy and deserves better, please hire me Tezuka Productions, and thank you for coming to my TED Talk

#cobalt collection #kateh rambles #i feel like there's probably more i could have rambled about believe it or not but this is already so long.......

[minigenos]

Coffee and a Cinnamon Roll

Sonic tries to extract information from Mumen Rider over coffee, and ends up finding out the hero is almost too much of a cinnamon roll. 

The smell of hot coffee, freshly-baked bread, and sweet iced cinnamon rolls was almost overwhelming as it drifted around the coffee shop. Sonic stood next to the building and breathed deeply, savoring the aromas as he inhaled. He had to admit the owners of the place knew what they were doing, and he commended them for that. While the ninja didn't have time right now, he made a quick promise to himself to stop by another day.

Until he heard an unusually friendly voice behind him.

“Hi there! You enjoying the smells too, huh?”

Sonic whipped around while discreetly pulling out a throwing knife from his sleeve. Standing next to his bike with a warm smile on his face was Mumen Rider. It only took a few seconds for the ninja to size the other man up and conclude that he posed absolutely no threat.

“Oh, I'm sorry if I startled you. My name's Mumen Rider.” The hero held out his hand, which Sonic hesitantly shook after quickly re-hiding his knife.

“Ah, I'm Yûki,” the ninja replied while he went over what information he had on the C-Class hero. If his memory served right – which it, of course, did – the man standing before him is at the very least acquaintances with Saitama.

“I couldn't help but notice you seem a little hungry. Did you skip breakfast?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sonic said with the best sheepishly guilty smile he could muster. Acting came so naturally to a skilled ninja such as him.

“Now now,” Mumen lightly admonished. “don't you know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day? Tell you what, how about you come get a coffee and bagel with me – my treat.”

The man's offer of food shocked Sonic. From what he could tell the man liked to talk, and with him being in some way acquainted with his arch-enemy...

This was the perfect opportunity to extract as much information as he could from the hero, and he even got a free meal out of it, too. The only way it would have been easier is if a stack of classified documents wrapped up in a neat bow had landed smack dab on his lap right now.

“Sure, if you're offering,” Sonic replied with a small smile. In his mind, the ninja was grinning ear to ear over his sheer stroke of luck.

As expected, the smell inside the family-run shop was even stronger than what made it outside. Small coffee-themed curios were nestled between lush plants on any shelf or flat surface that could accommodate them. Pictures of famous European buildings, most notably French ones, had been photoshopped to shades of pastel pink, green, beige, and gold and hung along the wood panel-covered walls. The panels themselves looked like they were recycled for the purpose – that's one way to reuse all the scrap that results from the near-constant monster attacks, Sonic supposed.

Sonic ordered a medium coffee with one cream and one sugar – just enough to take the bitter edge off for him – and watched with a smug smile as Mumen added a whopping five creams and one sugar to his coffee.

“Hey you want any coffee with that?” he jested as the other man picked up his drink and cinnamon roll from the self-serve counter.

“Ah... haha,” the hero laughed as the pair found a small table to consume their breakfast. “I don't really like bitter foods, but I'm trying to watch my sugar. That stuff's no good for you.”

“So that's why you got the most sugar-laden food they have here?” Sonic replied good-naturedly as the hero unwrapped the warm cinnamon roll from its packaging.

“Haha, well...” Mumen sheepishly looked away, “I can't help it. They're too good. But are you sure you don't want anything to eat?” Before Sonic could reply the hero had already stood up, a smile on his face.

“I know, why not have half of my cinnamon roll then?” he offered while walking away to grab a plastic knife and spare napkins. The ninja tried to get a word in edge-wise, but could only utter random noises before continuously cutting himself off.

Sonic eventually fell silent as he watched the other hero return, plastic utensil and napkins in hand. He let out a sigh as he mentally reminded himself what he was here for. The information would be worth the minor inconvenience of having to sit through some boring drivel and eat half a cinnamon roll. Considering what the ninja did on a regular basis, this was practically a cake walk for him.

“Ah, thanks,” he said as Mumen passed a near-perfectly cut half of a cinnamon roll to him. Sonic tried to come up with a good conversation starter to segue into the important questions, and opted to go with one of the most innocuous things he could think of.

“So, why did you offer to buy me coffee? It's not like we know each other.”

“Yeah, you're right. But I think as a hero small acts of kindness are important.”

“Why?”

“Well, maybe someone's having a bad day, or even a bad week. Offering to buy them coffee or a meal might seem insignificant compared to, say, saving a city from a monster, but it would make their day and remind them that they're not alone in this world.”

Sonic wanted to cringe. This guy was almost too goody two shoes for him. And for some reason he was continuing.

“That's what a hero's job is. We help people, no matter-”

“I'm not a hero,” Sonic interjected before taking a long sip of coffee. He couldn't stand any more of Mumen's little hero speech.

“Um, what?” He almost seemed... confused over what the ninja had just said.

“I'm not a hero,” he repeated. It was a bit of an understatement.

“Oh, oh I'm sorry,” Mumen replied. “I just thought, maybe you were a new C-Class hero.”

The ninja resisted the urge to roll his eyes and groan out loud. Him? In C-Class?! He was outraged!

Mumen, oblivious as to what was rolling around in Sonic's head, continued on.

“Or, maybe you're training to become a hero? Are you planning on taking the entrance exams sometime soon? I think the next exams are in Z City. That's where my friend Saitama lives!”

This was it! The perfect opportunity! Sonic shifted all of his attention back to the hero in a heartbeat, unwilling to skip out on anything that might prove useful to him in his endeavors to destroy his nemesis.

“Wait, who?” the ninja asked as he shifted his body in the chair ever so slightly.

“Oh, Saitama? Well, he's one of my hero friends, and he's really nice! Honestly I don't think people give him enough credit for what he does. It almost seems like he gets overlooked all the time and nobody even really knows about him.”

“I've heard about him,” Sonic said in a bid to keep the other man talking. So far all of what Mumen said was completely useless.

“Oh, really? That's great!” Somehow the hero seemed even happier than he was before. “Haha, I never thought I'd meet someone who was one of Saitama's fans.”

That wasn't quite what Sonic said, but he let it slide. Mumen might finally get to the good information he was looking for.

“Yeah, haha,” Sonic said with a smile. “Actually, I kind of hoped I'd be able to meet him one day. Do you happen to know where he does his usual rounds?” To anybody else the questions might have seemed suspicious, but Mumen wasn't fazed by them at all.

“Oh. No, I don't, sorry,” he replied in a tone that carried just a tinge of regret before switching back to his normal chipper voice. “But I'm sure you'll see him around if you visit Z City enough! The next time I see him I'll let him know I met one of his fans. I bet that'll make his entire week, if it's alright with you of course.”

“Yeah, that's fine,” Sonic said nonchalantly. He was starting to become bored with their conversation again.

“Awesome, will do!” Mumen said before checking one of the shop's wall clocks. “Oh, um, I have to do my usual patrol.”

“Go ahead,” the ninja said with a wave. “I'm gonna sit here for a bit longer.”

“Ok, sorry for having to leave like this-”

“Don't worry about it,” Sonic dismissed the other man's apology before he could even finish.

“Alright, thanks.” The hero paused as he was picking up his used napkins and the cinnamon roll's wrapper. “Hey Yûki, I know you said you weren't a hero, but could you do something for me?”

“Hm? What?” the ninja said while sipping his coffee.

“Could you do something nice for someone today? It doesn't have to be anything big, maybe just covering for them if they're short on money, or hearing them out if they look a little down in the dumps. Or something else small like that? Consider it repayment for the coffee,” he added with a cheesy finger-gun.

Man, this guy really was too much of a goody two shoes. Sonic nodded regardless, agreeing to the hero's request “if something happens to come along.”

“That's great! Thanks so much!” Mumen gave the ninja one last smile before putting his waste gently in the trash container and leaving.

Sonic let out a loud sigh. This had almost been a waste of time for him. After putting up with that insufferable hero for over ten minutes he still knew next to nothing new about Saitama, and what he had learned gave him no advantage over his enemy whatsoever.

He leaned back in his chair and looked down at his half of the cinnamon roll. It was completely untouched.

Well, waste not.

As Sonic left the coffee shop and made his way down the street, he couldn't help but think about Mumen Rider and the conversation they had earlier. For all intents and purposes, the hero was hopelessly weak  compared to him and naive to boot. The ninja could literally run circles around him no problem.

But still, Sonic did give him some credit – despite the hero's clear disadvantage in this world of monsters and destruction, he stayed adamantly faithful to his beliefs. Mumen's kindness had done him well thus far at keeping himself alive. While the ninja could never return to being so naive and innocent, he was still a man of his word no matter what, and would resolutely follow through on the promise he made in the coffee shop.

Sonic dropped what was left of his lukewarm drink in a nearby trash can as he eyed an opportunity to disappear into the shadows of an alleyway. He had some work to do.

The sun had mostly set by the time Mumen Rider returned home. Aside from talking to the peculiar stranger over coffee earlier in the morning, his day had been surprisingly boring. Maybe tomorrow he'd have the opportunity to help someone and meet his weekly quota for the Hero Association. As he walked his bike up to the house a slight flutter of movement in a bush caught his attention. The hero let out a small tsk as he reached down expecting a piece of litter, but was instead met with a nice 2000 yen bill.

Mumen looked around to see if someone had dropped it or if it was being used as a lure for a trap. The street was quiet with only the small fluttering of moths and swaying of nearby tree branches to keep him company. He shrugged, thanked his lucky stars, and headed inside with his new little fortune and a smile spreading along his face.

Off in the distance a shadow watched the hero. “Consider our contract fulfilled,” he said as the hero locked the door and turned in for the night.

#one punch man #opm #mumen rider #speed-o'-sound sonic #minisfic #i really just wanted to write mumen rider being a cinnamon roll

[geek-gem]

Sonic Movie Reddit Leak

Well that's something and noticed I didn't need to click in the title again.

Yet I felt and just honestly I just read this. I'm gonna tell you this. The internet is a crazy place. Their are some stories that are true and some that are not. Basically some bullshit stories and I feel some of the best examples are probably oh my nose but the DCEU because theirs a lot of shit on that instead of Marvel and that's not the topic.

Yet like what people say take with a grain of salt and honestly I was excited after my last text post I mentioned it.

The Sonic movie now the rights owned by Paramount and gonna be in 2019 it's a movie I've been obsessed with. Including I've thought of ideas how the movie and other movies should be basically a franchise. Because it's something I'm honestly excited for and frightened.

Including as I read okay I'm gonna say it again. This isn't confirmed or anything. This could be a fake. But it's something in.....@greendiablo just texted me on my phone holy shit lol just OK KO related. But this is something I wanna talk about whether it's fake or not. The film is due for released in 2019 and I've at times almost gone insane just thinking about. It's something I think about every day or some shit.

So I was excited to read it. But as I read it more. My excitement well it's not gone yet just it went down a bit yet surprised and even some of it.... thought in my head now would do that.

Maybe a mixed bag but I wanna talk more about it. If it turns out being fake well it was something. It probably is but just I don't know. This is just something I wanna speak about okay. In fact my ideas might not be better or whatever.

So if you read the post on Reddit. The story is well it features Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Eggman as it says those are the main characters. But also some others. Including this new human character named Grant who's a journalist.

Basically the story is the four of them and I'm making this short they have to team up to stop Eggman and just honestly I don't wanna talk about everything. Including worried of this post might not fit everything.

I wanna say this. For Amy I honestly like it what I read she isn't as obsessed with Sonic as like in some of the games. While I'm a Sonamy fan. Their are at times I honestly feel it's mainly the English versions of some stories where how Amy is written. She has a crush on him. This was just someone on my mind yet maybe I feel I should read it more. But I wanna talk about the main human character.

To be honest the idea of a live action and cgi film okay was gonna be honest about humans first. But just I would prefer a CGI film or whatever.

But now to talk about Grant and to be honest I don't mind some human characters. Because I feel it would be expected. Including I'm okay with characters like Princess Elise and Chris Thorndyke I don't hate them. But mainly the focus being on Sonic while also the humans would need to be well written. Including have some sort of importance and I'm not oh head and got text from Greendiabo again but I don't wanna hate on anyone.

Now with Grant so adult that's nice but he's a journalist. While I don't hate the idea. I think I'm just so used to the idea looked up on right tv still fine. But I'm just seem aboard with the idea of a human character being a soldier of some sorts or even a GUN soldier or even a Autistic soldier or someone who gets weapons from Tails.

Because I keep thinking okay people won't think this character is useless got a text again man. But I keep thinking this idea if we have a human character be a badass, give them guns, and have them kick robot ass. Basically I keep thinking of examples being Chris Redfield and Leon Kennedy who were trained for combat and shit. Got a text again but yeah basically a human character like that.

I'm spending too much time on this yet I think and notice making a human character badass and by giving them a gun to shoot things mainly Eggman's robots isn't gonna immediately get people's respect. Including it doesn't mean it will make the character better. It depends on the writing.

Also theirs this idea that having a human character as a soldier it may sound like bullshit even when I thought of it. It might not be the most friendly of choice. I'm sounding stupid yet I just seem to want main human character their have been others like Topaz who basically use guns and shit.

But just the idea that still won't help unless written well and....Shadow....yes comics but those aren't canon yet his interactions or just......soldiers.... I seriously feel he wouldn't like to hang out with one just I'm being stupid.

Finished a text and I'm rambling on. Yet we have other characters like even Rouge and Madonna who was originally Sonic's girlfriend from Sonic 1 but they scrapped her. She's with Rouge and theirs well...I wanna say this character. But I wanna mention this first.

Their is no Knuckles in it. I'm bothered by that including I honestly feel like that would make sense. Because I like to call him and other characters the original six. This includes Metal Sonic but their are mentions of his race a civilization.

Yet the one character that's very surprising is Chaos.....yeah I'm being serious Chaos the God Of Destruction himself.

But his role and theirs no Tikal mentioned. Including the leak mentioned it's even a mixture of Sonic Adventure and just theirs even some classic stages referenced and part of the story like Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Labyrinth, and just a casino I said I'm not gonna mention everything oh stomach.

But the Chaos part it does share his history including even the final battle is between him and Super Sonic almost put Metal Sonic lol well mainly Metal ha ha smiling a bunch sorry.

Almost left but again yet yeah a battle between Super Sonic and I forgot if they mentioned Perfect Chaos or not.

Said sweet in my head yet here's this man. I'm gonna say this I like Chaos.....but as in the first film Including risky and why.

In fact it's this weird comparison so Chaos and Doomsday from Batman V Superman Dawn Of Justice. While Doomsday is also the big monster of BVS his role and his character was never really that deep. So finished a text but yeah and Doomsday I don't wanna spoil BVS just if you know Doomsday and seen BVS you'll know what I mean but their was some sort of depth of what Doomsday meant.

I'm getting off topic but Chaos is different. For Chaos and I sometimes don't know or just confused. But going by @greenyvertekins sorry to mention you where I got this. He is actually a Chao like she said an enraged one who is the guardian of the Chao. Including I've been compared him to Shadow's role in Sonic Adventure 2. Now finished a text yet seriously what I wanna get to I think is that making Chaos a some what generic huge monster and I don't seem to finished text sorry. Okay what I mean I don't seem to like using the word generic now.

Including I've even thought of imagined if Chaos was reduced to that kind of role and I don't like that. While Chaos isn't the most I don't wanna say popular character but he's a character who doesn't speak much and we never play as him in Sonic Adventure but the back story with him and the Chao at least gave him meaning. Including comparing to Shadow and even thinking more in depth of Chaos's character. I seriously feel like Chaos being reduced to that kind of role is troubling.

Just finished a text and God it's funny smiling but back to this. Yet seriously so it takes place on South Island and even Station Square and Metropolis are mentioned too.

Their are some other details. Including the post credits scene is of Eggman in a new base and I mentioned this in my reblog I smiled by reading that. The last part is Metal Sonic being revealed in some tube. Supposedly setting up a sequel.

Now just finished a text oh my God just....theirs a lot of stuff to mention. But I'm worried I won't fit them all. Including I wanted to talk about the stuff that mattered to me the most.

I've also wanted to say I forgot the whole character having weapons and just I've noticed Buddy/Gadget/Rookie the wolf fits that role or just the avatar. So the idea well you can still have a soldier whatever my head not to bad ha. It's just I don't think Sega and Sonic Team wanna make a Sonic game where you play a part of the game and it's a human in third person shooter gameplay. Even if they did make Shadow's game.

Seriously to be honest it's shit sneezed to the left and had mouth closed. But it honestly seems okay and simple a bit. Minus the Chaos part because I'm bothered by instead of having Chaos with depth. He just some monster or some what I remember right. Including I don't remember any Chao mentioned. Now just finished a text with that friend of mine talking about this.

Really I feel like while I love the Sonic franchise a whole lot. The first movie in a franchise no not boring oh head. Yet I feel like and even I keep forgetting it needs to be okay not perfect just.....it needs enough to be good or just.....

Okay basically what I mean it needs to be a good movie or whatever. Including you can't just shove everything in everyone's faces. Because critics will hate that shit.

Including honestly I keep thinking about just if the movie was in my heads. While it's very crazy and this was even an idea for a reboot. In fact the whole South Island thing and Grant going to almost reminds me of some story ideas of mine of own.

Yet my idea was of the move showcasing Sonic and Eggman first meeting the iconic first boss and it's in Green Hill. After that Sonic is a pain in Eggman's ass for three year or six years. Including theirs idea of having Sonic and others aged up. Such as even Amy and Sonic the same age but I don't know at times them being young adults. So after some years Eggman decides to take a risk and builds what he thinks could finally beat Sonic, which is basically Metal Sonic. Including whether to go with a story like the Death Egg or Little Planet. Including have Knuckles and Angel Island in there and his story.

Yet honestly that's quite a bit for a first movie. Even the idea of Metal Sonic. Because even if I love Metal Sonic a lot and this is me too. Because I seriously think or unless he's crazy enough or just wants to Eggman making a robotic Sonic right after he meets him. Which is why I put the years later thing they've been fighting for some time. Also theirs Metal Sonic's mindset with their can only be one Sonic and who should the real one.

In fact even the idea while I like it and I say Sega would probably do this. The idea of a sequel mixing the stories of Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 with Shadow and Chaos teaming up with Eggman also Rouge and Metal Sonic. With Tikal appearing with characters of the story sometimes even talking to Shadow. Also the death of Shadow story.

Then the next film being a mix of Sonic Rush, with features Blaze, Lost World the Deadly Six as the main villains, and the rebirth of Shadow. Also a Team Chaotix film even with thoughts of Madonna being in it, a Shadow film, a Sonic Unleashed film, a Sonic Mania film, and a two part movie that is Sonic Forces.

Yet after playing Sonic Forces the idea of having that as a grand finale.....or just....I'm still thinking and just my opinion on that game being mixed.

Basically I've already thought of a franchise. While we are still waiting and you can tell now why I say I've went basically insane thinking of the movie waiting. Including with Sonic Forces out and everything I suppose is not what I expected with my silly posts. Almost put including again but this build up to Infinite okay shit changes man it really doesn

But just...it's interesting. Honestly I wanna look at the leak a bit more the details. I might talk about it more. Including the Sony Sonic Movie 2019 tags are for nothing now.

Well got tags done and after I put Blaze's tag decided to put more and even almost left Chris Redfield and Leon Kennedy tags but weren't needed. Even also didn't put BVS tags.

This is mainly me rambling and after now no reblog I just wanna wow difficult to spell brush but wanna brush my teeth.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic movie #sonic forces #sonic adventure #sonic adventure 2 #sonic rush #sonic lost world #dr. eggman #miles tails prower #amy rose #knuckles the echidna #perfect chaos #chaos #metal sonic #blaze the cat #buddy the wolf #gadget the wolf #rookie the wolf #infinite the jackal #shadow the hedgehog #rouge the bat #sonic adventure battle 2 #sonic mania #tikal the echidna #the deadly six #sonic movie 2019

[chorusfm]

Noah Gundersen’s Restless Heart

In 2014, Noah Gundersen released his first full-length album. The record in question, Ledges, was a masterclass in contemporary folk music, loaded with confessional lyrics, acoustic guitars, and fiddles. By all accounts, Gundersen seemed like a traditionalist. In 2015, Gundersen quickly followed Ledges up with his sophomore LP, the spiritually fraught Carry the Ghost. It was still a folk album, but Noah was fleshing things out, adding fractious electric guitar and other elements of full band instrumentation into the mix. It was clearly the work of a young songwriter who was yearning to grow. Between the fall of 2015 and the early winter of 2016, Gundersen did two tours in support of Carry the Ghost. The first was a full-band endeavor, presenting the songs on Ghost as they were meant to be heard. The second was a solo tour, where Gundersen played songs from both Ledges and Carry the Ghost on acoustic guitar, solo electric guitar, and piano. It was a stark, intimate presentation, and it showed off what made Gundersen so special: his vulnerable, fragile voice; his songs that could work well no matter how much he built them up or stripped them down; and his honest, forthright lyrics. But something was wrong. Gundersen was having a crisis of faith—not the same crisis of religious faith he wrote about on Carry the Ghost, but a crisis of faith in his own art. When I saw Gundersen on the solo tour for Ghost, he was pointedly reserved. He bantered with the audience occasionally, but during the songs, his eyes were cast toward the floor or closed entirely. And at the end of the show, when a condescending moderator led a Q&A session and suggested that Gundersen was “so young” and “couldn’t have possibly experienced what he sang about in his songs,” Noah seemed at a loss for how to answer—at least politely. When the Q&A ended, Gundersen headed quickly for the stage door. “Instead of my life up to that point flashing before my eyes, it was my future,” Gundersen says of that tour in the press materials for his new album, titled White Noise and out September 22. “A future of playing songs I didn’t believe in and pouring my soul out into a vehicle I no longer recognized or loved.” For those who have been following Gundersen for a little while, that statement may or may not be shocking. Gundersen, I’ve gathered, is the kind of artist who turns against his old work as he continues to grow and change. When I spoke to him in the lead-up to the release of Carry the Ghost, Noah explained the evolution in his sound by distancing himself from Ledges. “My taste and my aesthetic has changed since the writing of those songs,” he said. “I wanted to make something that was different, something that I would enjoy listening to.” While Carry the Ghost may have been something Noah would have enjoyed listening to then, though, it probably isn’t anymore. Just like he grew out of the Ledges material, Gundersen now views the Ghost songs with a similar level of detachment—like they were written by someone else instead of from his own pen. “I wish I knew why it happens,” Gundersen said, speaking of his consistent artistic restlessness. “It’s kind of a pain in the ass. I just think I’m perpetually dissatisfied, which can be really frustrating. But it also drives my creativity and my desire to do better and to make things that are better than what I’ve made in the past.” On Carry the Ghost, that desire drove Gundersen to take the contemporary folk sound of his debut and flesh it out. On White Noise, it drives him to take that sound and crash it off a cliff. Where Ghost felt like a natural evolution from its predecessor, White Noise feels every bit as restless as Gundersen seems in conversation. There are three songs that may have fit on previous records. The rest find Noah casting about and exploring new frontiers. He’s helped in his exploration by Nate Yaccino, the friend who Gundersen brought in to produce the record. (Noah self-produced both Ledges and Ghost.) “[Nate] pushed me sonically in a lot of ways that I wouldn’t have necessarily gone on my own,” Gundersen said. “I think having someone to push back against and have a dialogue with, someone who is creatively enhancing the experience, I think that’s really important. This record definitely wouldn’t be what it is without his contributions.” On first listen, some fans—particularly the ones who have been with Noah since the bare bones EPs he made as a teenager—will probably find some of those contributions jarring. Noah’s vocals get pitch-shifted, multi-tracked, and buried in reverb in the middle of “After All,” the 90s rock flavored opener. Laser-blast sound effects and other ambient noises canter around in the background of “Cocaine, Sex, and Alcohol (From a Basement in Los Angeles).” And “New Religion” builds from an organ-drenched piano ballad into a full-on psychedelic, Beatles-inspired bridge. Still, it’s fairly clear that Yaccino isn’t pulling Gundersen anywhere that he wasn’t ready to go on his own. That’s partially because Gundersen is far from the traditional singer/songwriter that he presented himself as on Ledges, but it’s also because he didn’t completely know where he wanted to go when he started making White Noise. “The early formation of the ideas for this record were kind of all over the place,” Gundersen said. “When I started writing it, there was a phase where it was going to be like a Nine Inch Nails record. I was listening to a ton of Nine Inch Nails. Then there was a moment where it was going to be more like a Nick Cave record. And then it was Radiohead’s OK Computer. And Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years was actually a really influential record for us, too. “So there were a lot of moments along the way where it was going to be something more specific. And then it kind of just morphed into an amalgamation of a lot of the different phases of obsession that I had.” White Noise sounds as scattered as Gundersen’s words imply. Lead single “The Sound” is a surging rocker with shades of Noah’s side band, Young in the City. Ditto for the cheekily titled “Number One Hit of the Summer.” The synth-heavy “Heavy Metals” recalls the 1980s ambient rock style of The 1975. “Bad Desire” is a bluesy pop song that wouldn’t have been out of place on John Mayer’s Battle Studies. “Sweet Talker” has shades of Coldplay’s X&Y and U2’s The Unforgettable Fire. And “Bad Actors” and “Cocaine, Sex, and Alcohol,” likely to be the record’s most polarizing moments, see Noah wearing his Radiohead influence proudly on his sleeve. The themes of the record are no less expansive. In his Facebook post announcing the album, Noah wrote that it was about fear, anxiety, desire, despair, hope, and joy. It’s also about alienation and division, caused by the simultaneous connection and isolation allowed by social media and by the hateful political landscape inspired by our current presidential administration. The statements here aren’t as clear as they were on Carry the Ghost. There, Noah was exorcising years of personal demons about how religion so rarely practices what it preaches. Here, he’s threading a more universal needle—a fact that pushed him to write more toward a feeling or vibe than a literal narrative. “I didn’t want it to be some kind of confessional on-the-nose angst thing,” he said. “I didn’t want to get up and literally say ‘Social media is destroying humanity’ and ‘Trump sucks’ and all this stuff. That feels so cliché and banal when you hear it laid out literally.” At the same time, though, Gundersen also didn’t want to hide his “confessional on-the-nose angst” behind irony or cynicism, in the way that recent records from the likes of Father John Misty and Arcade Fire have done it. He didn’t want to be afraid of his own earnestness—even if being sincere is rarely what moves the needle in music these days. “I’m not an ironist,” he said. “That’s never really been my style. Something that’s been a part of my music for a long time is trying to express human feelings in a simple way, but an intimate way. And I think [this album] is another side of human feeling. It’s something we’re all going through right now. Experiencing the world changing, feeling this sense of fear and anxiety and not really knowing what to do with it. I can only communicate that through the lens that I’ve experienced it, but it does feel like a kind of universal thing that’s been going on. So I think trying to express that, at least through my own lens, is my own little contribution.” White Noise doesn’t feature a single overt political statement, nor does it include any immediately obvious references to social media or subtweet culture. Still, Gundersen is a deft enough songwriter that you can feel those topics in his songs. “The Sound” resonates as a pointed jab at entitled internet goons who refuse to acknowledge their own ignorance. “How many times will you shit on what you’re given?” the song asks; “How many times ‘til you shut up and listen?” “Fear and Loathing,” meanwhile, was written before Trump got elected—Noah was playing the song on his acoustic tour in early 2016—but might be the perfect anthem for the feeling of dread that seems to have blanketed the entire nation this year. “Nothing changes much/The quarterbacks are drunk/The prom queen just gave up/In Fear and Loathing.” In a lot of ways, White Noise is a record about cutting ties with the past. “There’s nothing left for us here now,” Gundersen sings on “Fear and Loathing.” It’s a fitting lyric for one of the few songs on the album that sounds like his old style of music. Even as Noah turns away from folk music, he has to give it at least one more aching send-off. But Gundersen is smart enough to know that, no matter how much he experiments, his purest emotional fireworks still come when it’s just him and an acoustic guitar. That’s why the three songs that sound the most like Ledges and Carry the Ghost—“Fear and Loathing,” “Dry Year,” and “Send the Rain (To Everyone)”—serve as homecomings of sort at the end of the first and second halves of the record. Both “Fear and Loathing and “Send the Rain” build from slow, acoustic starts to big, full-band catharses. “Fear and Loathing” handles the build-up itself, painting the picture of a small town that’s falling apart—breaking its citizens down with it. “Dry Year” and “Send the Rain,” meanwhile, function almost like two parts of a whole. The former is the record’s sparest and most desolate moment, painting a portrait of a world ready to burn. “Some days the world feels like a building on fire/But everyone’s ignoring the smoke/You would vote for a comedian/If he could comfort you with a joke,” Gundersen sings on the record’s closest thing to an overt political lyric. The “dry year,” it turns out, is a metaphorical drought—the result of a world sapped of its values, its empathy, and the genuine human connection that used to keep it spinning. But Noah’s words aren’t judgmental or hateful. Instead, he hopes that someday, things will change. We’ll stop burning ourselves with political wars and stupid insecurities and let the rain save our ravaged world. Even if none of us live to see that day, Noah reckons we can be a part of the solution. When the audible sound of rainfall cuts through the end of “Dry Year,” he sings “Now the sky is giving up her child/To the dead grass of the back lawn/I hope she takes the water in my body when I’m gone.” And as the album’s final song barrels toward its epic climax, it’s to Noah’s repeated cries of “Send the rain, send my love/To everyone,” shouted over the noise of crashing guitars and pounding drums. The message, I think, is simple: in a world on fire, maybe we can all be somebody else’s rain. --- Please consider supporting us so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/features/noah-gundersens-restless-heart/

[sonicsatori]

LOVE + GRATITUDE = CAN Happen (even when Fam Steals From You)

OR: MAKES EDITORIAL CHANGES TO MY MOST CHERISHED LIL' BLOG - AND: F___K I I'LL JUST SAY IT: HAS NO REASON TO EVEN ATTEMPT TO DO THIS.

****I THINK I MAYBE IMPORTANT TO JUST DROP THIS BIT A' HEAVY RIGHT HERE TOO: MOST OCCUPYHIFI.ORG READERS & SUPPORTERS KNOW DURING THE LAST 2 YEARS I'VE BEEN TRYING TO CLAW FORWARD IN THE WAKE OF THE DETERIORATION OF  20-YR MARRIAGE

To be honrest, I'm not sure how this is gonna go, so just hang in there my OccupyHifi brethren:

The reason I wasn't sure: This is supposed to be the Memo where I offer my Love+Gratitude to those friends and peers in the high-end audio communities: Headphone culture & 2-channel audiophile; that, no matter what crazy shenanigans I pulled (and believe me, there was plenty of stupid shit on my part) they never gave into rumor and innuendo. If anything, as my friend Andy from JH Audio said to me months ago (well, he kinda-yelled it actually, but he was giving me a well-deserved rebuke shortly beforehand): He said: "Michael, if I'm concerned about you, I call you." "I don't continue the rumor-mongering by calling someone else, I go directly to you.". He also went on to tell me "and anyone who doesn't do the same, in my opinion, isn't your friend." Andy's right on the money I think. Another friend last year told me I had to start doing a better job of separating real friends, from industry people/contacts. He was also right. It's one of the few disadvantages of actually growing-up in the high-end audio community. Harry (Pearson, Founder of The Absolute Sound and dearly departed friend and mentor) told me something else many years ago while I was working at Atlantic Records. We were talking about my return to the hi-fi community, and Harry told me: "Moishe, remember you have a naturally disarming way about you, and with these people, many of them have literally watched you grow-up." "So, even if you end up working for a competitor, many of them will also naturally want to see you succeed". I think he was right too. I just wish I were more "naturally" skeptical of people. It would've come in-handy when it came to business, period.

All that aside, I know I can't blame anybody for my divorce, nor the events that proceeded it. I also, despite the many inquiries, don't regret taking a stand for my good friend Bruce Balls health over everything at T.H.E Show Newport this year. If you have no clue what I'm talkin' about: I wrote about it at Positive-Feedback for my Behind-the-Booths-and-Back series. Long story short: Bruce was having some chest pain and other symptoms on set-up day, and I was working for him at the time as Brand Master. Next thing you know, because we are friends first, and co-workers second. I was quickly out-of-a-job, but I got Bruce to the hospital to get checked out. While I'll leave those details to Bruce and I (and NOBODY else knows the truth) I wanted to share here what eventually happened as the result of that lil' medical adventure:

One of the leading cardiologists in the Country read my article, and reached-out to Bruce. As it turned out, either he aleady owned a QP1R and was a Questyle fan, or he bought one and then got in touch, I honestly can't remember. We'll let Mr. Ball answer that in the comments section if he wishes. Nonetheless, the cardiologist asked Bruce if he would come down to get checked-out more thoroughly. He offered Bruce a work-up worth a sum that I haven't yet asked if I can share, but lets say you could purchase a car with the same amount of money. Bruce took him up on his offer, and as it turned out, he has something that needed to be taken care of. So, do I regret losing the gig working with Bruce? Absolutely, in more ways than I can tell you. Would I do the same thing again? No choice for me. Now, that was about Bruce and I - however, I feel obligated to share some thoughts on the man who literally gave me a roof, a place to stay during what amounted to be the most-difficult, scary, transitional time in my life.

Bruce and I go way back. I remember when h was the hotshot thirty-something coming over to Harry's place with cartridges, cable-lifters, years after that he was running XLO and would drop by with goodies from them. Bruce loved Harry, and Harry thought Bruce was Salt-of-the-Earth. It was actually one of the first times I can remember that phrase being used to describe someone. He couldn't have said it better. When I was crashing on Russ Strattons couch (a HUGE SHOUT-OUT to the Stratton Family - you will ALWAYS have a very special place in my heart - that family gave me a place to crash when all I had was my John Cooperworks Mini, and as cool as that car is,  - it's not exactly the provide the most comfortable accommodations for long-term living) - but when I was crashing on the couch Bruce asked me if I wanted to perhaps rent a room in his parents old house in The Valley. He lives elsewhere in LA with his lovely bride Youn Sun, and he occasionally heads up there for deliveries, and other Questyle business, and he also wanted someone to look after the house. PERFECT! This is one of those rare occasions where I can honestly say I'm not sure where I'd be without Bruce and Youn Sun. I haven't had any luck with regard to getting help from my family out East, and Bruce has also been a source of inspiration for me when I've been really depressed. He'll come over and talk to me about the different things I'm doing and how to better organize those things. Mr. Ball is a serious slf-starter, and has been working his ass off since he discovered the concert merchandise business in his teens - so he also has roots in the music industry, and ended up in high end audio. I went the other way, from TAS to Atlantic, and who can believe all these years later - the man literally saved my life. I can't thank him enough for the gift of sanctuary he's given me, and I can only pray to be able to do the same thing for someone else one day. So, Mr. Bruce Ball, you New Wave Rock-n-Rolla: I salute you good sir.

Speaking of Russ Stratton: He's a dear friend, fellow music addict and proud audiophile. He's been in a couple of my Sonic Satori columns at Positive Feedback, and was also featured at Part-Time Audiophile when I was on-staff there (in a piece entitled Mercers Winning Combo: covering my early adventures in portable hi-rez audio).  Russ is also a live sound engineer, so we can talk about recording/production, all kindsa' good shit related to music. After all, those of you who know me know I like to talk. Even though he's far from a motor-mouth like me Russ was kind enough to offer a spot in his living room for me to crash despite my running mouth. I was also so grateful when Russ told me his sons Miles and Dylan were both OK with it. I'd met Miles before, but I hadn't spent any time with Dylan (the youngest, and, IMHO, perhaps the most critical of the Stratton Clan). I was previously informed by Russ, specifically about Dylan: "Dylan's the lynch-pin here, if you can get Dylans approval you're golden." Now that's a good dad. I wasn't quite sure if I'd made the cut to be honest. But in the end, I spent many glorious months over at the Stratton household. They even included me in some of the family holiday affairs. For this Jewish boy from New York, spending Christmas with this wonderful Christian family was indeed a blessing. Christmas tree, songs at church, and all. Hey, so much has gone in the last 18 months it's better fit for a documentary or book than real life (and I have the next person to thank for inspiring the latter). I'm probably going to repeat this at the end of this glorious segment of the Mercer Memo - so please forgive me in advance: But all the quotes and well-known phrases about getting to know who your real friends are in times of crisis? Yeah, unfortunately, the fuckin' cliche (that one was for you Dylan ;) is true.

When I was flush: When we lived in Pasadena, and I could toss money around at-will, everybody was my friend. But I moved back up-North, things went pear-shaped, and all-of-a-sudden I'm the hottest fodder for the haters, rumor mongrels, and biiaatches (I know I know, that's been happening for years). I was perhaps the most grateful for the fact that Russ always gave me the benefit of the doubt, and called me when he heard something about me that troubled him. He did what Andy talked about: He came to me. I appreciated, and I appreciate it now, so very much, I don't wanna get all sappy and kill the flow just yet, because this family did so much for me in so many ways. However, I JUST realized left out someone very special outta this part of the story: Jennifer. Russ and Jenn are, sheesh, what are we calling couples these days? I guess the ol' standard boyfriend-girlfriend status applies here. Am I correct guys? Anyway, Jennifer had to make some sacrifices too, occasionally giving up what would be a quiet house on Friday evenings with her man (when I didn't make it out for the night). What a good sport! She also made me feel at-home and I will NEVER forget that time of my life. I was so un-certain about everything. Fort Stratton (as I later dubbed it) became the place I realized it wasn't gonna do me any good continuing to look in the rear-view. I had to, as my friend Mike Hobson says, "roll with the clock baby, and it only rolls forward." Thanks to Russ, his boys, grandma Stratton, and Jennifer for making me feel like less like a leaf in the wind, and more like someone who's simply going through another transition. And aren't we always doing things like this as the clock ticks on? Well: For a latch-key kid like me (yeah, I know, I'm in my forties now - so sue me) sometimes, it takes sacred things like witnessing the very special bond of a strong family foundation to remind me that I can build that same foundation on my own, whether it's there for me in another place or not. For that: I am forever in your debt guys.