Film Review: Mother Mary

A song is a prayer is a spell is a confession is an exorcism is a spectacle is a revelation is a birth

From time to time, horror writer Gabino Iglesias reposts this litany on his Bluesky profile:

Many people have a book in them,
but it takes a special kind of freak to leave the Land of Laziness,
cross the Plains of Procrastination and Insecurity Mountain,
find the Blade of No One Made You Do This,
and use it to cut your chest open and yank that book out.

Such is the view of art that permeates David Lowery’s film Mother Mary. The story sounds deceptively simple: Mary, a dance/pop diva in the middle of a creative crisis, returns to the workshop of her former costume designer, Sam, to apologize for breaking their professional partnership and beg for a new dress. Most of the film consists of this single conversation, like a one-act play that reveals entire inner lives as the two lead characters tear down their barriers and take off their veils. Within the space of a small interpersonal drama of wounded trust and unspeakable regrets, Mother Mary weaves its statement about what it takes to produce any genuine art.

Anne Hathaway’s performance as Mary, which includes providing her own voice for all the songs, balances, on one hand, an irresistible scenic presence capable of commanding the adoration of masses of fans (her character is presented as a world-class star on the level of Lady Gaga or Beyoncé), and on the other hand, when she’s off stage, a consuming sorrow that overwhelms her words and movements. Both facets of this character convey the same vulnerability, but it’s fascinating to see how differently she expresses it before a full stadium versus in private conversation with her artistic collaborator. Sam, as played by Michaela Coel, is like a bird with a broken wing, but a bird of prey with eyes that miss nothing and a deadly beak. She takes delight in the return of her muse, but can’t just shake off the years of hurt. This creation is going to be personally costly for both of them.

I often say on this blog that the best stories are those about stories. Mother Mary is something very close: art about art—barely a story, more a portrait that’s being painted as you watch. The emotional bond between Mary and Sam is kept tight, on the verge of snapping, under looks of compassion that shoot daggers and poisoned recriminations coated with sweetness. Mother Mary isn’t trying to convince you that artistic creation has to hurt; it just assumes that it already does. So it’s fitting that Mary shows up on a Thursday to request a dress for the Sunday: the exact timeframe for a full Via Crucis and resurrection.

In a film like this, filled to the brim with Catholic imagery, the fashion designer’s name, Sam Anselm, has to be read as an allusion to the 11th-century Burgundian monk and philosopher St. Anselm, whose method of theology put faith before reason: in his system, you first assent to the revealed truth and then seek to understand it. That’s how you’re meant to experience a film like Mother Mary. It defies logical analysis unless you first accept it on its terms. Instead of arguing for a point, what it’s doing is push out a raw feeling through a scream drowned in sobs.

The connections between the religious experience and the mass ecstasy of pop music have been noticed since before “Madonna” became a stage name. In keeping with the theme of death coming before resurrection, Mother Mary links the act of creation to a demand for bloody sacrifice, an interchange of equally sincere love and hate (think Black Swan, Farinelli, Amadeus). This pain is physically inscribed on the two protagonists: when she’s not performing, Mary is shown with plain, shoulder-length hair, evoking the image of a suffering Jesus, while Sam wears her hair in rigid, pointed locks, arranged like a crown of thorns. The turning point of clarity, when the nature and shape of the new dress is revealed, arrives by a succession of stigmata, confession, forgiveness, and angelic visitation. The film opens with a song about a burial and closes with a song about a cradle, in a moment marked visually on the screen by a line that literally goes full circle.

But then, the end credits conclude with a puzzling statement: a shot of a human skull on a shelf, a common motif in Western painting that retroactively casts the whole film as a vanitas piece. The traditional function of this motif is to remind the viewer that eternity outweighs worldly pursuits, and ultimately anything we build here turns to dust. And yet, Mother Mary exists. It’s a complete experience of rhythmic beats and color and dance moves and ritual and brightness, as if defying the verdict of time. All is dust, but some of that dust is glitter.

To the extent that Mother Mary is articulating someting, as opposed to inviting you to feel it, its verbalizable content is dressed in swirling, uncut drapes of black and crimson. Image here is paramount, which makes it easy for viewers more inclined toward tangible substance to dismiss this film as too enamored with its own aesthetic. Meanwhile, in the real world, Madonna has just released a new album, Confessions II, whose third song, “One Step Away,” contains this spoken monologue:

People think that dance music is superficial. But they’ve got it all wrong.
The dance floor is not just a place. It’s a threshold,
a ritualistic space where movement replaces language.

So go into Mother Mary as you go into a holy ceremony. You have my blessing.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Film Review: KPop Demon Hunters

A fresh take on familiar themes, played out with bright animation and appealing characters

Netflix’s latest animated adventure, KPop Demon Hunters is a useful option if you’re ready to take a break from the weight of the world and enjoy bit of light adventure. On the eve of their greatest triumph, a trio of female K-Pop rockstars who moonlight as demon hunters find themselves thwarted by the arrival of a competing group of performers secretly bent on demon-serving, soul-sucking destruction. The story manages to be both comfortably familiar and freshly amusing, both laugh out loud funny and substantially tragic, and is filled with catchy tunes that will stay in your head long after the credits roll. Although aimed at a younger generation, older viewers will recognize the film’s familiar call back to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jem and the Holograms, and other secret hero stories.

Musically talented orphan Rumi and her two besties, tough and cynical Mira and energetic rapper Zoey, are part of a super popular K-Pop trio named Huntrix. Beyond their musical success and millions of adoring fans, they also have a secret side job killing demons (hence the band’s name). All three young women are trained, fearless demon hunters, complete with magical blades and supernatural acrobatic skills. They are working towards achieving a final victory over the demon world via an event called the Honmoon (never clearly explained). However, just as victory seems close, an unexpected new enemy arrives to thwart their plans. They soon find themselves faced with an alluring boy band, the Saja Boys, secretly made up of super gorgeous demons. Their new competition is led by the seductive but internally tortured Jinu. Following a theme explored in the film Sinners, we learn that throughout time, variations of musically inclined hunters have used their special musical gifts to transcend the natural realm and fight demons. Huntrix gets much of their strength from the energy of those who cheer them on. The arrival of the Saja Boys creates competition for both Huntrix’s fans and Huntrix’s physical strength, even as the new arrivals secretly wreak havoc on the people of the city by stealing their souls. This may sound a little intense but the film is played out in bright neon colors and shiny computer animation. At times, the soul stealing is so subtle that it takes a moment to realize what is happening. But what makes the story particularly entertaining is the fact that Rumi, Mira, and Zoey immediately realize the Saja Boys are demons and the Saja Boys know the Huntrix singers are demon hunters. As a result, much of the film involves hidden hijinks and sarcasm as the two enemies publicly interact at press conferences, concerts, and televised events. And of course, there is a lot of music and a reminder of how influenced K-Pop is by American hip hop. The songs are high energy and bubbling with dual meanings, and all of this is wrapped up with ridiculously intense K-Pop choreography displayed in dramatic, big screen worthy animation.

In addition to the external battles, the film deals with internal elements of self-identity, self-hatred, guilt, and shame. It also reflects themes from contemporary popular fiction, including enemies to lovers and morally gray love interests, as Rumi and Jinu find themselves thrown together. The vibe of fierce but hidden female fighters is reminiscent of the vibe in Justina Ireland’s novel Dread Nation. The importance of music as a spiritual element in fighting and provoking evil is an interesting call back to Sinners. However, unlike those stories, the Netflix film is gore-free, safe for tweens, but still entertaining enough for adults who want something lighter and more amusing.

A key element of the film is the visual choices. The demon king is never really seen but appears as an amorphous pink cloud. The Saja Boys are each designed with extreme K-Pop beauty that creates a hilarious contrast to their true nature. Jinu communicates with Rumi via a show-stealing, enormous, teal blue, striped cat who travels with a bird who wears a top hat on its head. The big cat is the most understatedly fun and funny thing in the visuals and it roams throughout the plot unbothered by being both gorgeous and outrageous.

Despite the interesting set up and the seductive dynamic between Rumi and Jinu, the ultimate messaging of the film stops short of attempting a deep dive into, or a meaningful resolution of, the demon world. The demons are portrayed primarily as comically grotesque, generally evil, and mostly two dimensional. That approach is not uncommon in many demon hunter stories (such as Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer) but, in this film, two of the main characters have a significant connection to the demon world. So, it feels like a missed opportunity not to delve deeper into the identity and motivations of that world, especially since it defines and affects the two lead characters. Additionally, unlike Jinu, Rumi’s backstory remains mostly a mystery. We never hear the story of her parents or their demise although it’s a critical element in who she is. But this is a ninety-nine minute animated PG film and the focus is on the primary plot: achieving the Honmoon and defeating the demon world despite the efforts of the tortured yet seductive anti-hero. Does that happen? Surprisingly, you’ll have to watch and see, because KPop Demon Hunters has enough built in twists to keep viewers guessing.

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Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Highlights:

• Fun, likeable, characters
• Familiar explorations of classic themes
• Catchy music and animation, safe for the whole family

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction-writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Review: The Tufa Novels, by Alex Bledsoe

Irish fairy Appalachian hillbillies playing bluegrass

In the creation of his Tufa chronicles, Alex Bledsoe has perfected the art of carving out a niche for oneself in a rich and varied field. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a series so utterly confident in being distinctly what it is. The foundational conceit is this: uncountable millennia ago, some of the Tuatha Dé Danann (that’s Irish fairies, in case you didn’t know) got exiled from their homeland and ended up in the mountains of Appalachia. Time passed, they interbred with local humans, and also got really into Smoky Mountain Bluegrass music. Now, in the modern day, the Tufa community keep largely to themselves, living in rural Cloud County, Tennessee, in an odd sort of numinous hillbilly squalor. One minute they might be sprouting wings and flying off in the night winds; but the next morning they’re sitting in a ratty lawn chair in their underpants, throwing beer cans in the front yard of a double-wide trailer. Some of them might be playing transcendent music and singing fit to break your heart; others might be poaching deer or driving beat-up pick-up trucks, drinking straight bourbon out of a paper bag and looking to harass pretty girls. They live in Needsville, Tennessee, a town with a bed & breakfast, internet, grocery stores, schools, and a small tourism industry associated with its location in the Smoky Mountains—except sometimes outsiders can’t seem to find Needsville, and cell phone signals fail to get out. Bledsoe’s genius is in balancing these two worlds effortlessly, so that each feels as real as the other, both equally foundational parts of what and who the Tufa are.

Because the Tufa are, truly, a product of two worlds. After aeons in Appalachia, they are no longer Tuatha Dé Danann, and all of the books center around themes of duality and identity: How much ‘pure’ Tufa blood is necessary to retain whatever it is that makes a person truly Tufa? Sometimes it seems as if an unbroken bloodline is vital to preserve the magical heritage; other times the magic emerges from people who have been the product of multiple generations of couplings with humans. Sometimes it seems as if the Tufa magic derives from their Tuatha origins; other times it seems as if they’ve found a new source of power and identity in the entities that belong to the mountains of Tennessee. Some Tufa have been alive since their original arrival in Appalachia, exempt from the standard human relationship with time, remembering everything about who they once were; others have been born in America, and feel more tied to the human world around them than the supernatural roots of their ancestors.

The books in this series stand alone well, each telling a complete story, fully contained within its covers. The best ones lean into the duality of human and supernatural by bringing in an outsider to witness or engage in the events of the story. In the third, Long Black Curl, a rock star crashes a plane in Tennessee in the 1950s and wanders in the woods until a local hunter welcomes him to spend the evening by his campfire. When he walks out again, it is the 21st century. In the fourth, Chapel of Ease, a puzzled Broadway actor, dazzled by the talent of a new playwright in town, finds his way to Needsville, where he looks to solve an unanswered mystery embedded in the musical whose lead role he plays. In the last, The Fairies of Sadieville, we get a layered narrative construction: the main story has two graduate students arrive in Needsville to research an old movie hidden in a sealed film canister. They uncover the story of another town in Cloud County, from the first decades of the 20th century, which was, briefly, a coal town, until it disappeared from the face of the earth, from all remaining maps, and from everyone’s memory. The story of what happened in the coal town itself cycles back to a third embedded narrative, in which the Tufa themselves are new arrivals to North America, no longer the mysterious indigenes mystifying outsiders, but outsiders themselves, mystifying to the locals.

Structurally and thematically, these books are very strong. The vibes are rich and specific; and the setting is rock solid, fleshed out with recurring characters whose personalities are distinct and serve to make the town of Needsville feel real. And throughout each story, we have the running theme of music, the heart of what the Tufa are. They sing, they play; and though the fractures in their community run deep, all is temporarily set aside when they come together to make music. All the books are built upon this foundation.

Narratively, Bledsoe takes pains to avoid the easiest tropes that might cheapen the impact of what he’s built. For example, in the first book, The Hum and the Shiver, the main character, Bronwyn Hyatt, is returning to Needsville after having spent time in the military. A mission went horribly wrong; she was captured, injured, and sexually assaulted (or ass-fucked, as she puts it, because one thing the Tufa are not is decorous in their language). She doesn’t remember much of what happened, but the process resulted in the loss of her magic, and for various Tufa-internal reasons, it’s a matter of some urgency that she recover it. The book thus sets up a kind of tension, in which it seems that the only way to recover her magic is to relive the memory of her assault: face the trauma, accept it, and only in this way can she move forward. I was squirming the whole time as this plotline played out, because it seemed as if it was building towards some horrible kind of titillating climax involving an on-page rape.

But rather than fulfill that trope, Bledsoe sidesteps it neatly. Bronwyn decides that, actually, she’s perfectly happy living without the memory of that horrible thing happening to her. The lost magic does not need to be a metaphor for her imperfect sense of self that can never be whole until she relives the atrocity. She can find a way forward without going through it all again. I’m not thrilled that this plotline existed, because rape-as-motivation is gross and bad; but given that Bledsoe decided to invoke the trope, I’m impressed at how he subverted it.

This discomfort from the first book carries through the whole series in small ways. In every book there is always something that rubs me just a bit the wrong way. For one, the narrative is extremely male-gazey. Not maliciously so—and it’s clear that Bledsoe is trying super hard not to be a jerk about it. We’ve got explicitly matriarchal power structures, combined with cultural norms that do not shame women for promiscuity or unmarried pregnancies. But still: there are an awful lot of highly sexy Tufa ladies who shimmy and purr and wriggle in a way the men do not match.

Other books make narrative decisions that (for me) don’t quite work. In Chapel of Ease, the whole book is built around a mystery that never gets answered. There are thematic reasons to justify leaving the mystery unsolved, but they depend on the magic of the Tufa music to fill in the gaps. I haven’t got the Tufa music outside the book, so I walked away feeling unsatisfied. In The Fairies of Sadieville, the nested narrative is a clever conceit, but each narrative is increasingly shallow. In principle this could act as a commentary on the way history can become simplified, losing nuance in the memories that are preserved only as stories. Except, like the unsolved mystery in Chapel of Ease, it doesn’t work: many of the Tufa were there at the events being portrayed, so the simplification cannot be the result of oral traditions smoothing out the snags of real history. And most egregiously, the fifth book, Gather Her Round, culminates in an act of shocking brutality that we are invited to interpret as justice, but which I can only see as murder.

These books are not perfect. But they are unlike anything else I have read. Redneck fairy bluegrass musicians is something that feels like it should be a joke; but in Bledsoe’s hands, the Tufa are portrayed even-handedly, virtues and vices alike; and the result endows them with dignity and respect for their otherworldly wonders, alongside a clear-eyed acknowledgment of their undeniable humanity.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10: Well worth your time and attention.

Highlights:

• Bluegrass music

• Hillbilly redneck fairies

• Rural squalor

• Not always successful narrative decisions

References: 

Bledsoe, Alex. The Hum and the Shiver [Tor Books, 2011].

Bledsoe, Alex. Whisp of a Thing [Tor Books, 2013].

Bledsoe, Alex. Long Black Curl [Tor Books, 2015].

Bledsoe, Alex. Chapel of Ease [Tor Books, 2016].

Bledsoe, Alex. Gather Her Round [Tor Books, 2017].

Bledsoe, Alex. The Fairies of Sadieville [Tor Books, 2018].

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative, and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/ergative-abs.bsky.social

Book Review: Sorcery and Small Magics, by Maiga Doocy

 A whimsical romp combining familiar tropes with inventive charm.

Tropes are not rules, and they are not poison. They are tools, shortcuts to simplify some elements of plot construction by using familiar component parts. They are pieces of mating plumage, which signal to the reader that the author is engaging with a particular set of expectations. Maiga Doocy has a deft hand at deploying tropes to advantage in Sorcery and Small Magics, so that the story felt comfortable without being stale, full of familiar bits of structure that guided my expectations along familiar paths, while allowing me to be surprised by inventive bits of character or world-building that filled out the details.

We open with a Magic School™ setting, in which Leovander Lovage and Sebastian Grimm are Rivals™, nearly Enemies™, who have been snarking at each other their entire time at school. In full fairness, this is on Leo, because Leo is kind of a jerk who can’t resist picking on straight-laced and reserved Grimm; and indeed his juvenile shenanigans have put him on the edge of expulsion if he doesn't shape up. Now they are in their last year of studies, preparing for the Trials™ which will determine their magical futures. Leo, with an aristocratic and respected magical lineage, is skilled at small magics (charms and cantrips), but useless at Grandmagic, as larger spells are called. They always go wrong, someone gets hurt, and so he’s sworn off them, which means his career options are limited. Nevertheless, he’s rich and privileged, so that’s not really going to be a real problem for him. Meanwhile, Grimm is serious, highly skilled, and fully invested in making a name for himself – which is important, since he comes from a much less privileged background.

Through a reasonably plausible but also entertainingly contrived accident, Grimm inadvertently casts a spell on Leo that renders Leo subject to every one of his commands. Whatever he orders, Leo must obey, and if Grimm gets too far away, Leo suffers increasingly agonising discomfort that becomes life-threatening. Such spells are highly, highly illegal, so rather than go ask for help, our boys decide to keep it secret while trying to work out how to undo this curse on their own.

This premise could absolutely be a paint-by-numbers enemies-to-lovers forced-proximity magic-school romantasy. But because Doocy uses the tropes as tools, rather than crutches, instead it’s something a bit more inventive. For example, the Quest™ to undo the spell takes Leo and Grimm out of school, so really only the opening scenes make use of the familiar Magic School trappings. Further, every element of the world-building is constructed to reinforce their character arcs, which lends a really pleasing coherence to the story. This is most obvious in the magic system. In this world, magic requires two types of people to cooperate in order to cast a spell: scrivers, who write the spells, and casters, who actually cast them. Leo is a scriver, and Grimm is a caster, so in addition to the Forced Proximity™ of the curse, their complementary skills also add a structural component of Working Together™.

This magic system is itself deeply intertwined with the best bit of the setting: the Unquiet Wood, a wild forest whose dangers are walled off from the domain of humans by a boundary that is constantly refreshed by governmental magician teams. But the boundary is not perfect, and when magical influences slip through, the results can be deadly: blights that destroy crops and ruin whole towns, poisonous flowers that will kill a person in hours. Yet the magic can also be wondrous, and a whole economy of Unquiet Wood foragers makes its living by venturing past the boundary and collecting magical artifacts. A single wing feather of a griffin can be a vitally important magical tool in spell casting.

So naturally – naturally – Leo and Grimm find that the only path to undoing their curse takes them into the Unquiet Wood, where various eventualities cast light upon their magical capacity, their relationship, and the true nature of the Unquiet Wood.

One thing I quite liked about this book was the absence of any real antagonist. Leo and Grimm get into their current situation through a genuinely innocent misunderstanding, and the solution that they seek is accomplished by acting in good faith with everyone they meet. Sometimes they are collaboratively working together to solve mutual problems, but sometimes people just help out out for the sake of helping.  The baseline assumption of this book is that most people are Good, Actually. It's not quite the same as Cozy Fantasy, which tends to focus more on importing rituals of self-care into fantasy land (coffee, baking, books, cushions, cats, hygge, etc.), but it's still a comfortable worldview to spend a few hundred pages with.

And it's worth noting that this theme — that people are Good and Cooperative, Actually — serves as a structural glue to many elements of the plot and setting. It underlies the duality of the magic system; it shows up in the actions Leo and Grimm take, and the bargains they strike with other people they meet during their quest; and I would bet folding cash that it will also turn out to be the solution to the current deadliness of the Unquiet Wood. This world is built on combining unlike things to build something larger, not walling them off from each other. So despite the crossbow bolts that start flying in the climax, no one is really operating out of malice here. It’s a kind book, peopled with basically good folks — yes, even the ones that need to get fed to monsters have Reasons. It is entertainingly written, tightly plotted, and not (quite) as predictable as you’d expect from its component parts. I expect to read the next books in the series with great pleasure.

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Nerd coefficient: 7/10, an enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws

Highlights:

• Slow-burn stormcloud/sunshine order/chaos romance
• Whimsical, charming setting and magic
• Effectively deployed tropes
  

Reference: Doocy, Maiga, Sorcery and Small Magics [Orbit 2024].

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative, and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/ergative-abs.bsky.social

Summer Reading List: Vance

As the resident cult film nerd here in the flock, sometimes a book pops up that's just so exactly up my alley that I really don't have a choice in the matter. That book simply is going to be coming home with me. A few summers ago it was Dirty Words and Filthy Pictures, about the evolution and eventual breakdown of film censorship, and this year, well, the wife found me two such books that are now demanding my eyeballs. And Summer Reading Lists being what they are, now I get to share them with you!

1. Glamour Ghoul, by Sandra Niemi
This biography of Maila Nurmi, the woman who created and played Vampira, the first late-night television horror host, was written by her niece. It was created through a combination of family history learned from her father, Maila's estranged brother, and the diary entries, tapes, and scraps of never-finished autobiography that Maila had assembled over the years, and Sandra came into possession of after Maila's death. I first learned of Vampira, like many other people did, from the Tim Burton movie Ed Wood, which was a transformational movie for me. It introduced me to outsider cinema at just the right age and in just close-enough proximity to a non-Blockbuster neighborhood video store. But Maila Nurmi, the woman behind Vampira, was always a mystery. She was the life model for Disney's Maleficent around the time of her Vampira fame in the 1950s, but by the 1980s was impoverished and unsuccessfully suing Elvira for stealing her act. Maila died not long after I moved to Los Angeles, and was reportely living in dire poverty, trying to scrape by on occasional jewelry and artwork sales. There was no money for internment, and some of her acquaintances reached out to fans to get Maila a plot at the Hollywood Forever ceremony. A few years later, there was a second fundraiser to purchase her a fitting tombstone, and I contributed to that effort. I am very excited about this book, and about learning how the few dots I know of connect in the life of this singular personality.

2. Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film, by Kevin Whitehead
In an animation class I took in college, we watched some early Betty Boop cartoons that had live-action footage of Cab Calloway and His Orchestra included in them. I love Cab Calloway, and seeing this footage was more exciting to me that even the way out-there, surreal ghost-trip that was the cartoon. A few years later, when you could walk into a Walgreens or Rite-Aid and see a spinning carousel of $1 DVDs of programs you probably never heard of and had fallen into the public domain, I discovered more films featuring Cab Calloway, as well as Duke Ellington and his orchestra, performing in the 1930s. These are gems of early jazz. There are also animated films made by John and Faith Hubley in the 1960s featuring Dizzy Gillespie, sometimes just as a voice actor, but sometimes performing, that I've been a fan of for a long time, and recently I've been able to catch landmark films with jazz performers on the Criterion Channel, such as Shirley Clarke's Ornette: Made in America, about Ornette Coleman. If this book is what it announces itself to be — the definitive guide to jazz on film — then I expect to discover many more gems I would not otherwise come across.

3. How Music Works, by David Byrne
I have to be honest — I don't really know too much about this book. I don't know if it's mostly biography, or theory, or ruminations on music in general and in specific. It's probably not a cookbook. But I think I kind of want to be David Byrne when I grow up, so it seemed like a sure thing. 

 

 

 

4. Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World and What We Can Do to Fix It, by Mike Montiero
My drummer, who is also a UX designer doing really good things for great organizations, gave me this book. It's about design ethics with an emphasis on Silicon Valley, tech start-ups, and social media platforms. The central premise is that these companies and applications that have found their way into almost every corner of our daily lives are doing tremendous harm, and that's actually on purpose. They are working the way they were designed to work. So this book, then, is an attempt to engage in a conversation about and for the designers who are employed by these companies, and who are asked to do unethical things, or things that can easily be twisted into unethical uses. Doctors have a code that begins with "do no harm," architects are having conversations about whether or not they should be involved in designing facilities like super-max prisons, where people are routinely treated in dehumanizing ways, and this book suggests designers need to be having the same kinds of conversations.

5. The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill
When this book was released in 2016, it quickly became a favorite of the site. After Joe's wonderful review, I grabbed the book and read it to my kids. And then I read it again. And then I read it again. We just did a big reorganization of bookshelves, and one of my kids found our hardcover of this pushed back behind another book. It had been at least a year, probably closer to two, since I last read it to them. She found the book, then found me, put it in my hand, and said, "You're going to start reading this to us again. Tonight." Who am I to argue? 

 

POSTED BY Vance K — cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather, flock together for a long time now. Maybe one of these days he'll have a Hugo Award above the fireplace to show for it.

Summer Reading List 2020: The G

It's that time of year again (which of course you already know since we've been running these all week long). But ever since 2012, when I started our annual Summer Reading tradition, it's been the post series I've most looked forward to. After all, what's summer for if not sitting outside in the warm sun, beverage of choice in hand, and the pure joy of getting lost in other lives and worlds. So without further ado, here is my list of books for 2020 - a year that needs every last bit of joy there is.   

1. Hothouse, Brian Aldiss.

Aldiss wrote one of my favorite SF novels, Non-Stop, and one of my favorite short stories, "Supertoys Last All Summer Long." Hothouse is a far-future novel where a growing (i.e. dying) sun has triggered a massive vegetative bloom and humans are among the last fauna left. Hothouse promises to be very weird and unnerving. (Spoiler alert, as I'm 3/4 of the way through: it's very weird and unnerving.)

2. Children of Ruin, Adrian Tchaikovsky

Children of Time is one of the best SF books I've read in years - the kind of "hard SF" novel that used to win Hugo Awards, just without the dreary libertarianism. Children of Ruin is the sequel, which if reports are to be believed, picks up exactly where the first one left off.

3. The Mothman Prophecies, John Keel.

Do I believe in UFO visitations? No. Not really. Do I like the idea of UFOs, alien visitations and all that fun stuff? Hells yes. Also, this book will apparently melt your brain, so there's that too.

5. Your House Will Pay, Steph Cha.

Korean-American author Cha is one of the hottest names in crime fiction - I read Follow Her Home and found it to be a fresh new spin on the hardboiled detective formula. Your House Will Pay is much more ambitious, taking on the riots and racial tensions of 1990s Los Angeles.

5. The Vanished Birds, Simon Jimenez.

Paul DiFilippo recently called this a "touching, bold, surprising, gorgeous debut novel—a certain manner of postmodern space opera." I like everything about that description, so count me ready to blast off into the far future.

6. Pedal Crush: Stompbox Effects for Creative Music Making, Kim Bjørn.

My nerdliness stretches into many a domain, and the latest obsession is the wonderful world of boutique guitar pedals. These boxes, often handmade, can transform any sound in all kinds of wonderful ways. Plus they are just fun to look at. Cue a future We Rank 'Em that only Vance and I (and NOAF alum Philippe) will want to read...

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POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a
Feather founder/administrator, since 2012. 

Interview: Emily Skrutskie, Author Bonds of Brass

What do you get when you mix a passion for game design, film, computer science? Now throw in a love of space opera, humor, and compelling relationships.  Stir it up, add a few surprises, and you're getting close to Emily Skrutskie's new novel Bonds of Brass, available April 7th.    Everything I see about this book, everything I read about it,  Bonds of Brass just sounds like a joy to read, a book that's filled with everything I enjoy - crushes, banter, scams, quick getaways, politics, explosions, and oh the tension!  

Not sold yet?  Scroll down until you get to the "poster", don't worry, you'll know it when you see it. How can you look at that poster and not smile?    And I don't know about you, but right now I only want to read books that make me smile. And the best news ever? Bonds of Brass is the first in the Bloodright trilogy!

Emily Skrutskie is also the author of The Abyss Surrounds Us, The Edge of the Abyss, and Hullmetal Girls. She was born on one coast of the United States, and now resides on the other, and is currently working on the next two Bloodright novels.  You can learn more about Emily's work on her website, Skrutskie.com or by following her on twitter, where she is @skrutskie. She was nice enough to let me pick her brain about where she got the idea for Bonds of Brass, if she's a plotter or a pantser, music playlists and listening to movie soundtracks for inspiration, the now famous poster, and more.

Let's get to the interview!


NOAF: Tell about Bonds of Brass. What's the elevator pitch? Where did the idea for this book come from?

E.S.: Bonds of Brass is basically Star Wars meets The Road to El Dorado. It’s the story of a pilot on the run with his best friend, roommate, and possibly the love of his life—who happens to be heir to the brutal galactic empire that ruined the pilot’s life. I got the idea for this book in the period of time after The Force Awakens had just come out, when I had also just finished reading Pierce Brown’s Morning Star. I wanted to write a big dramatic space opera with tricks up its sleeves—and I was also deeply inspired by stories about charming con men running elaborate scams. Mush those two things together, and you’ve got the basic ingredients for Bonds of Brass.

NOAF: You had me at "meets Road to El Dorado".  Talk us through how you developed Ettian and Gal's characters. As you were drafting the novel and deciding where the story would go, did their characteristics or goals change?

E.S.: I had a pretty clear vision for who Ettian and Gal would be from the start. Ettian is the pilot, the underdog who came up from nothing, the reserved kid who survived hell and keeps his emotions close to the chest. Gal is the prince, the negotiator, the person the universe is meant to revolve around. As I drafted, I got a better sense of what those qualities meant and how they functioned in action, and figured out all the ways they'd tie the two of them together. The most interesting evolution came when I realized Ettian needed a stronger motivation to put Gal on the throne than "he's my best friend" and as a result had to give Gal a significant anti-establishment streak that promised radical change to the cruel galaxy Ettian grew up in.

NOAF: What was your writing process like for Bonds of Brass? Are you a strict outliner, or do you let the story "write itself"?

E.S.: Outliner all the way! For me, a story is only as good as its ending - first impressions are important, but last impressions last. So I plan a story all the way to the end before I start it, and that way I know what I'm working toward. This really helps me write economically, because everything I put on the page is a building block toward reaching that ending and driving it home in a way that’s satisfying to the reader.

NOAF: What was the most fun part of this book to write?

E.S.: About halfway through, there’s a chase/fight sequence that takes place on a public transit wiretram. To put myself in the mood for the scene and lock into the wham-bam improvisational mindset of the characters, I watched Jackie Chan clips on YouTube for about an hour straight. I really wanted it to feel like a Hong Kong action movie, and it was delightful to slip into that mode for a while.

NOAF: The only thing that looks more fun than the book itself is the adorable promotional poster! This poster is so cute, it looks like doodles you'd find in a high schooler's notebook, notes that would be inside a student's locker, it is just covered in fun everything! Where did the idea for the post come from? Is this how you imaged the promotion for the book would look?

E.S.: The words on the poster were from a graphic I whipped up ages ago to pitch the book - which had its own little viral moment when FinnPoe twitter found it and EXPLODED. That was incredible to watch, and proof that those words did a fantastic job of pitching the book, so my marketing manager, Ashleigh Heaton, designed that wonderful little promo graphic with the handwriting and doodles for us to share. I think we’re seeing a really interesting moment where book promotion is truly adapting to social media, figuring out the most fun way of showing off what a book has to offer an audience in a highly-shareable format. If you want fans, you have to be able to prove both that you have what fans want and that you know how to talk about it in a way that engages them, and for me personally, that’s super fun to do.

NOAF: You recently posted a Bonds of Brass track list on your blog, of the music that fueled your writing. How do you use music as a writing tool? Do you listen to faster paced tracks to write action scenes, for example?

E.S.: I feel like I use music in three main ways when working. Most of the music you find in that playlist is music I use for inspiration - songs that speak to different aspects of the book and guide me as I think about them/develop stuff. Then there’s music I use for motivation - such as the Skydiving track from the Kingsman soundtrack or Storming New Caprica, from the Battlestar Galactica season 3 soundtrack. Those are songs I'll put on to ground me in the mood for a scene and help me focus on how I want to express myself. Then there's music I'll actually write to, which I'm very particular about. I can’t hear English words when I draft, so I usually stick to instrumentals, and I have collections of film soundtracks I rotate between depending on who I’m writing - for example, most of the big Wen action scenes in book two were written to a mix of the Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman soundtracks.

NOAF: I saw this on your blog as well: "WIPs: John Carter Book: Basically if John Carter and The Fifth Season found themselves in the same pot of soup" and OMG YES. Yes please! Why'd you choose John Carter, and why throw him onto an Earthquake planet (other than that it's fun)?

E.S.: Haha, I hope I get to go back to that WIP someday. I'm itching to write something that has John Carter or She-Ra vibes—something that's got the magic and scope of epic fantasy grounded in sci-fi worldbuilding. I feel like that’s really going to push me as an author, since so far I've been strictly science fiction. Developing a magic system has been breaking my brain as someone who understands a little bit too much about physics. But first things first, I have two more Bloodright books to get out the door.

NOAF: Thanks Emily!

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.

Holiday Gift Guide: Movies, TV, and Music

In this, the gift-giving season of 2019, we find ourselves at a strange technological crossroads. In years past, I have wrapped and given, and received and opened countless CDs, DVDs, vinyl records, you name it. For two generations, we have given each other *a* movie or *an* album we think will mean something to the recipient. But now, suddenly, with the proliferation of streaming services, we can give someone...*all* the movies. Or *all* the albums. It's a huge shift, and one that will continue to play out for many holiday seasons ahead, but this year it creeps into our Gift Guide. What will Gift Guides of Christmases-Yet-To-Come hold? Only Criswell knows for sure. - vk.

Joe:
Disney+

It is the height of consumerism to recommend Disney+. It's the new streaming service on the block and there have been some technical hiccups in the roll out, but I have two small children and there is just so much goodness available and more on the way. From the Pixar movies to Marvel to Star Wars to Disney animated classics to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (I've got small kids) to the wealth of 90's cartoons (Darkwing Duck, we're looking at you) - Disney+ has something for the whole family.

The G:
Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky (Criterion Collection Edition)

Did you like Chernobyl? What about Annihilation? Men in Black? Mash those three together and then crank the weirdness factor up to 11 and you’ve kinda sorta got Andrei Tarkovsky’s adaptation of the classic SF novel Roadside Picnic. Not for the faint of heart, and like a lot of European arthouse cinema, it requires a good deal of patience. But the viewer’s patience is duly rewarded in spades.

Vance K:
The Criterion Channel

Filmstruck is gone, and the Criterion Channel has taken its place. This streaming service boasts access to the Criterion Collection library, but there are licensing deals on certain titles that mean they'll either never show up on this platform, or will only be there for a little while. This is familiar to all of us who have watched things disappear from our Netflix lists, so we know the drill. But in addition to bringing film nerds (like me!) the works of Bergman, Kurosawa, Ray, Tarkovsky (see above), and other legends of world cinema, the channel is also doing a great job of curating new and under-appreciated talent. With showcase collections about women filmmakers, LGBTQ+ cinema, various spotlights on specific areas of the world and filmmakers from there, animation, and other specialties, it's a rewarding streaming option on several fronts.

Brian:
Shazam! by David F. Sandberg (director)

It’s easy to be skeptical of the DC comic universe of movies. They’ve had a rough launch. But Shazam! requires none of the backstory of those movies, and it’s easily the most fun. Billy Batson is a teenage orphan who suddenly finds himself with super powers. It’s a stark contrast between the dour Superman we’ve seen recently, and a kid who wasn’t born Superman but needs to learn some of the same lessons. It doesn’t bury you under mountains of comic book history. It gives you a quick supervillain origin, a quick superhero origin, and then lets those two forces collide. If you’ve been disappointed by DC’s previous comic book movie outings, forget about them and give Shazam! a shot. It’s just a fun superhero movie, which is what this universe of films should’ve kicked off with in the first place.

Shazam! is available on most major video media formats, streaming, physical, and otherwise.

1000 Gecs by 100 Gecs

1000 Gecs might break your brain. I know it broke mine the first time I listened to it. Coming in from having listened to Stupid Horse on repeat for it’s ska-influence, I wasn’t sure just what in the hell I was listening to. But the more I listened to it, the more I liked it. I’m not a music critic. I don’t know anything about music, and I have bad taste. But 1000 Gecs sounds different. It sounds fresh and new. It’s a brisk 20-something minutes of the best post-pop I’ve heard in a long time.

1000 Gecs is available on almost all music streaming platforms.

Phoebe:
There Existed an Addiction to Blood by clipping.

For the hip-hop fan, the horror fan, the narrative fan — heck, the Hamilton fan — in your life, may I recommend clipping.'s latest album There Existed an Addiction to Blood. Some folks might be aware of their Hugo-finalist album Splendor & Misery (a narrative story about an AI and a prisoner), but this album shakes things up by going full horrorcore. Each song is a story all in itself, ranging from cannibals to werewolves. That being said, the songs don't get lost in the story and remain tracks ready to break out at the next Halloween party. While the songs definitely have a Halloween flare — perfect for its October release — the atmospheric elements will engage speculative fans all year long.

Posted by Vance K — cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012.

Microreview [music video]: Deutschland by Rammstein

(Content warning: Discussion of possibly disturbing visual material, violence, sex and the Holocaust.)

With new material from the German industrial metal/rock/NDH band Rammstein in nearly a decade, pretty much nobody expected anything safe-for-work — at least nobody familiar with the grand scheme of Rammstein videography. Videos of lead singles of their past albums have included, for example, Pussy, a collection of hardcore pornography clips featuring the band members, and Mein Teil, a smorgasboard of fighting and copulating bodies with a fellatio performed by an angel who is later eaten.

Fortunately, instead of NSFW (or in addition to it, depending on one's coworkers' appetite for concentration camp visuals, cannibalism and kissing severed heads), Rammstein delivered some amazing SFF this spring with their music video Deutschland, the flagship song from their new self-titled album.

Let me argue why the video directed by Specter Berlin is definitely something to enjoy from an SFF perspective (and maybe even consider when filling out the Hugo nomination ballot in the category of Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form next year so that we could have the first non-English finalist in this category for the first time in 18 years).

Well, depending on one's appetite for a number of things, as the case always is with Rammstein.

For those unfamiliar with the band, it's a musical act from Germany, probably best known for their Du Hast hit which was included in the original Matrix soundtrack back in the 90s. The band has had a long career, though, even if nothing they have published since has done quite as well in global terms. In Europe, however, it is a massive cultural force, seemingly becoming more and more popular even without publishing new music for quite some time now. Their new album has topped the album charts in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland (in addition to being #2 in Spain and Sweden).

I'm not a huge fan of the band's music per se, but on the other hand I'm not sure that the music is what they have been about for some time now. In interviews, the members often joke about how everything in music has been invented already and they are not skilled enough to play anything else than their style of monotonous, ramming, sample-heavy metal. Their last fifteen years since Reise, Reise came out have been a slow slog towards somewhat more accessible (if at times uninspired) rock while their edgier creative energies have went to dreaming up crazy flame thrower and missile pyrotechnics for their tours. Rammstein gigs are state-of-the-art horror circus, basically like Eurovision song contest with all the songs not about love but hate, perversions and cannibalism with some over-the-top silliness (like keyboardist's treadmill on stage) and sex antics thrown into the mix. On a US tour, performing Bück dich ("Bend down") with the customary slime-throwing dildo skit even got singer Till Lindemann and keyboardist Flake Lorenz arrested.

In addition to the bizarre sex stuff, Rammstein has been in some sort of trouble over their aesthetics and politics for numerous times. They took some heat after using footage from Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propadanda film in their music video of Depeche Mode cover "Stripped", and some more after it has been reported that fans of theirs have perpetrated a number of violent crimes. Apparently a favorite band of several school shooters and right wing extremists, they even decided to do a song about the fact that, when push comes to shove, they are politically on the left: the chorus of Links-2-3-4 ("Left-2-3-4") states: "They want my heart in the right place, but when I look down, it beats left". Not to be confused with any sort of politically correct or culturally sensitive Anglo-American left, of course.

However, it's an open question whether the actual lyrics make any difference when most listeners are not fluent in German. Similarly, the language barrier makes it kosher to casually listen to songs about sadomasochism, abuse, sexual violence, necrophilia, cannibalism and related topics (at least when there are no Germans, Austrians or Swiss people present), so there's a tremendous amount of irony around Rammstein to appreciate.

As far as the Deutschland video is considered, there has been some criticism over the inclusion of concentration camp imagery, but for Rammstein's standards, the song and the video are probably some of the least provocative ones in their disco/videography even if Holocaust is definitely as sensitive a subject as it gets in Germany. In contrast, their previous album's second single (after the X-rated Pussy) Ich tu dir weh ("I want to hurt you") was blacklisted by German officials due to violent content for some time so that the album had to be rereleased without it and only an instrumental version of the song could be played on tour.

This time around, the habitual record publishing controversy is a little more nuanced — and what's better, involves some science fiction.

The song Deutschland itself is a mundane rock anthem discussing the love/hate relationship Germans have with their country and its history for obvious reasons. In the chorus, between rhythmic DEUTSCHLAND chants, the I of the song announces their desire to love and condemn a thing at the same time with a flaming heart.

"Deutschland
Mein Herz in Flammen
Will dich lieben und verdammen
Deutschland"

Lindeman's lyrics are a mishmash of dark, megalomaniac metaphors delivered with ominous rolling r's, which are both his trademarks. It's an extremely catchy song trying very hard to get the listener throw their fist in the air during the chorus, as many characters do on the video, or at least nod their heads during the Deutschland shouts.

Still, the song is probably not of interest for the Nerds of the Feather readers out there. All the science fiction content is found on the visual track of Specter Berlin's video. While the track addresses the nation's dark past on symbolic terms without much in the way of specifics, Berlin's dramatization adds more of them than one can easily digest.

Black actress Ruby Commey plays the part of Germania, the embodied nation who is also a space amazon of some sort, coming from the futuristic space age to unearth or relive the past. With her, we take a tour through German history starting from the wars between the Roman empire and Germanic tribes 2000 years ago, focusing mostly on the violent bits: with jarring synthesizer effects on the background, Germania saws off the head of Till Lindemann's corpse and faces the attacking Roman legionnaries. At this point, the song and the fast forward time jumps really start.

We see glimpses of Germania with astronauts in space, her organizing a fist fight between two moustachioed gentlemen during (perhaps) the Weimar-era, at the scene of a Medieval battle clad in a golden armor, in a GDR office with Stasi operatives, and other times and places. A memorable segment features gluttonous monks with a serious rat problem feasting on Germania's body while a BDSM party is taking place under the table — everything is symbolically turbocharged.

There's guns, dogs, flames, crashing Hindenburg zeppelin, antique cars, prisons, protests, police brutality and V2 rockets taking off until we get to the concentration camp scenes which have caused some controversy in Germany. An SS commander (guitarist Richard Kruspe if I'm not mistaken) executes some of the other Rammstein members while Germania, this time wearing a Nazi uniform and an eye patch, looks on and Lindemann delivers the National Socialist "Deutschland Deutschland über allen" quote for good measure. It's difficult to fault Holocaust survivors' criticisms about it, but to be fair, the camp is only a part of a tapestry of violent events taking place in the German history and leaving that out would have been quite odd considering what the song is about.

Later, Baader-Meinhof Group gunmen from the violent 70s exchange fire with police and the monks burning Germania's body at stake meet and greet NSDAP goons burning books in the 30s until we get to the more apocalyptic visions. Concentration camp prisoners, knights, riot police and laser guns from space take part in the same epic fight scene and Germania in transformed into an mechanical angel, gives birth to puppies and is shot into space in a casket.

Your guess is as good as mine as to what the hell it is supposed to mean (if it is in fact supposed to mean anything) but I rather enjoy the mind blowing collage and insane production values.

Some of the elements are swipes from previous Rammstein videos. The band crawling on all fours towards the camera is also seen on Mein Teil and the casket holding Germania's body is quite similar to the one in which midgets place Snow White after she OD's in the video of Sonne — and the a piano version of the song is also heard during credits. Not to mention Till Lindemann's flame-throwing angel wings he uses when performing Engel. Recognizing these easter eggs is not necessary for enjoying the ride, though.

All in all, Deutschland lives up to the Rammstein motto of "Do you own thing — and then overdo it!" For anybody who read this far, I heartily recommend watching the video below.

(Apparently, the video cannot be embedded here — you have to sign in to YouTube to verify your age and conform that you really really want to see it. So, heres a link.)

The Math

Baseline Score: 10/10

Bonuses: +1 for overall craziness and production values

Penalties: -1 for the song being probably not that good (even if it's way better than the horrible Pussy), -1 for shock aesthetic getting inflated eventually

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 – "Very high quality/standout in its category"

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Reference: Rammstein. Deutschland [2019]

Song written by: Richard Z. Kruspe, Paul Landers, Till Lindemann, Christian Lorenz, Oliver Riedel and Christoph Schneider

Video directed by: Specter Berlin

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POSTED BY: Spacefaring Kitten, an extradimensional enthusiast of speculative fiction, comics, and general weirdness. Contributor since 2018. 

NERD MUSIC: Science Fiction/Synthwave Pairings

Way back in 2013, in the midst of a serious heavy metal binge, I posted this piece. The idea was to match metal albums to grimdark fantasy novels, the way you'd match wine or beer with food. So now, in the midst of an even more serious synthwave binge, I figured it was high time for a sequel. And why not? Synthwave is futuristic, or rather, retrofuturistic--and a large subset is explicitly SF-themed.


Selection Criteria

I've selected 6 science fiction novels--not necessarily the best, or even my favorites. But 6 novels that people who read science fiction generally know, or at least know of. Next, I paired these with synthwave albums that best capture what these books mean to me. So without further ado, I present to you six science fiction/synthwave pairings. Oh, and if you like what you see/hear, click on the book title link or on the musician's Bandcamp embed to purchase.

Don't forget to swish and spit after you taste...


The Pairings

1. Neuromancer by William Gibson/Wilderness by Makeup and Vanity Set

To start things off, I'm pairing the greatest cyberpunk novel with the greatest cyberpunk-inspired synthwave album. Neuromancer is a complex, multilayered and challenging novel--it is remembered for being mesmerizingly original and conceptually breathtaking, though it is Neuromancer's strong emotional core that convinces me to re-read it every few years. Wilderness is much the same, but in musical form. Featuring compositional complexity, high concept and deep emotional resonance, it is probably my favorite electronic album of any kind ever made.


2. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin/Return to Alvograth by Futurecop!

LeGuin's Hainish cycle radically transformed our understanding of what science fiction could do. It is, at base, a work of speculative anthropology. With its focus on culture and ritual, The Left Hand of Darkness is a warmer and more earthy (for lack of a better term) book than most of its colder and more clinical contemporaries. This is not a common aesthetic in synthwave, but is well represented by Futurecop's brilliant 2017 album, which integrates New Age and mystical elements into their dreamy, pop-inflected synthwave. A lovely book paired with a lovely album.


3. Warchild by Karin Lowachee/Bionic Chrysalis by DEADLIFE

DEADLIFE is one of the best new darksynth artists around, and his music is basically hard-charging action music that draws heavily on science fiction themes. That reminds me of Karin Lowachee's Warchild, a riveting, action-packed but thoughtful military SF novel whose protagonist can only survive by becoming a living weapon. In other words, by undergoing a bionic chrysalis.

4. Saturn's Children by Charles Stross/Galactic Melt by Com Truise

Science fiction isn't the most romantic or sexiest of genres, but every once in a while there's a novel that explores romance and sexuality in more than a cursory way. Saturn's Children is one of those books, and is full of sex and romance. It centers on a femmebot courtesan, designed to serve human desires, and her adventures long after humanity has gone extinct. Galactic Melt by Com Truise is similarly one of the few synthwave albums that is not only science fictional, but also explores sex and romance thematically.

5. The Apollo Quartet by Ian Sales/The Space Tapes by Syntax

When I listen to Syntax's music, it makes me feel like a kid again--looking up at the stars and imagining what's out there. Similarly, Sales' Apollo Quartet captures everything about classic science fiction that attracted me as a kid, but with a modern sensibility and direct engagement with all the stuff that makes classic science fiction feel dated and regressive in 2018 (e.g. the sexism, militarism, uncritical positivism, etc.). Both, moreover, evoke that "sensawunda" we all remember from childhood but can rarely recapture as adults.

6. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson/Cosmopolis by The G

Apologies for the shameless self-promo here, but I made Cosmopolis with books like Red Mars in mind. The album is about the journey to a domed city off-world, and explores both the romance of space travel and anxiety that life under a hermetically sealed dome would engender. Red Mars is, I think, the best novel written about building these kinds of settlements. So while the two aren't an exact fit (Cosmopolis is retro '80s, whereas Red Mars is distinctly progressive), it's books like Red Mars that give me inspiration for my music.

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POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a
Feather founder/administrator, since 2012. 

SIDE QUESTS: Synthesizers, A Love Story

Today's episode of SIDE QUESTS is more than a little personal. That's right, it's about my favorite inanimate objects: synthesizers!  - G


What Are We Talking About?

A synthesizer is an electronic instrument that produces sound waves. The earliest and basic method is called analog subtractive synthesis. An oscillator produces sine, square and/or sawtooth waves with electrical current. A filter and envelope generator then cut into, or subtracts from, the waveform to alter the sound. With the advent of digital synthesis in the late 1970s, new forms of synthesis became possible, including wavetable, FM (frequency modulation) and S&S (sample and synthesis).

The synthesizer has actually been around since the 1930s, but didn't really catch on until Bob Moog's voltage-controlled synthesizers made their way into studios in the late 1960s, and onto albums by Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles and The Monkees. By the mid-1970s, synthesizers were a thing, though it wasn't until the 1980s that they threatened to displace the sainted guitar. 

Bob Moog with some of his 1960s and 1970s synths.

Nowadays you hear far more music made with synthesizers--or samples of synthesizers--than with guitars. That's a sad fact if you're the kind of person who yells at clouds and hates Millennials because they love avocado toast and refuse to spend money on Budweiser or Applebees. For someone like me, it's bittersweet. I love the synthesizer, and am proud of its ascendence to the pinnacle of music making; but I love the guitar too. 

The Rabbit Hole

So, basically I've been obsessed for as long as I can remember. Why? Because, in their purest form, synthesizers don't sound like anything you make with strings, reeds or stretched out skin. They sound like the future. They still sound like the future, even though now it's more often the future we dreamed of in the past.

I don't know how it started. I certainly didn't get it from my parents: my dad mostly listens to classical music and a smattering of rock and folk, while my mom refers to all music as "noise." But my dad did have the Vangelis album Spiral on vinyl--in retrospect, that was probably ground zero.

Flash-forward to 1983. We were just getting music videos at that time--not on MTV (no cable), but on weekly shows that came on just after the news. If I was lucky enough, I could watch half before my parents shut the TV off and told me to get ready for bed. Those shows played a bit of everything, but the only songs I remember were the ones with killer synth lines, like "Jump" and "The Message."

The school I went to had a really strong music program, and in the music room, they had a Casio CZ-5000 and a Roland Juno 106. Whenever possible, I'd sneak in early and move the knobs and sliders around. I didn't know what I was doing--I was just a dumb kid. Most of the time, I ended up playing the baseline from "Blue Monday" on the Juno, or some Flock of Seagulls chords on the Casio.

In 1991, I finally convinced my parents to go halfsies on a Roland D-50. My keyboard teacher, Carl, assured me it was the "best one in the biz," and that his guy could get me an unbeatable price. I adored Carl, who was an old timer from the northside of town--an area mostly known for red sauce joints and organized crime. So I mowed lawns and shoveled sidewalks until I'd earned half.

Now, $500 in 1991 was a lot, but it wasn't a lot for a new Roland D-50. Looking back, I've often wondered if my synth just fell off the back of the truck, as they used to say. More likely, Carl's guy just wanted to liquidate stock. After all, by 1990 the D-50 was out of production and had been emphatically replaced by the mighty Korg M1.

The Roland D-50 used something called Linear Arithmetic (LA) synthesis, which was proprietary speak for "sample and synthesis" (S&S). What that means is that the D-50 paired the attack transient from 8-bit samples (think the precise moment a trumpet blares or a mallet hits a xylophone) with the decay, sustain and release from a synthetic waveform (think everything that comes after that moment). It sounded otherworldly--and in fact, you'll recognize the D-50 from basically every late '80s New Age cliche ever. Perhaps the most iconic use of the D-50 was on Enya's 1998 song "Orinoco Flow," which used the Pizzicato Strings patch.

Unfortunately for young teenage me, the D-50 was also brutally difficult to program. Unlike the Juno 106 we had at school, you had to go menu diving to make anything happen--there was nary a slider or knob in sight. But I didn't care--I had my first synth.


The Music of Futures Past

By the mid-1990s I'd discovered techno, house and ambient music. This wasn't music featuring some electronic instrumentation; it was all electronic instrumentation. I did like some sample-based house music, but by and large I gravitated towards the stuff that sounded like science fiction expressed musically.

A lot was made with really cheap gear that had been repurposed from its original intention. For example, the Roland TB-303 Bass Line--a cheap-looking plastic box with a single oscillator designed to provide accompaniment for practicing guitarists. It didn't sound much like a bass guitar, and was kind of a pain to program. But it did have this wonderfully squelchy filter and a characterful way of tie-ing notes together. In 1987, a producer from the South Side of Chicago named DJ Pierre discovered that sweeping the filter along short patterns created an irresistible hypnotic effect. Techno producers from Detroit (and, later, New York, Canada and Europe) achieved a similar effect with other synths, including the same ones I'd used from school--the Roland Juno 106 and the Casio CZ-1000. I can think of no better vision of the future, as seen from 1997, than "Organa" by Dutch producer Steve Rachmad:

I started making my own techno in 1996, though I never really finished anything. I had a mental block--a fear of failure, I think. Basically, if I never finished anything, then I never had to experience the pain of rejection. So I'd muck around, make loops and then fuck off for a few months at a time. Looking back, I regret that I wasn't more serious and driven from the get-go.

That changed in 2015, when I discovered synthwave. Actually I already knew Kavinsky and College, who are widely credited with inspiring the genre. But I didn't realize there was this whole scene of people inspired by magenta-tinted '80s retrofuturism.

That changed soon after we began our series Cyberpunk Revisited. I was re-reading Neuromancer, Mindplayers, Software, etc. and I wanted to find something that captured the mood in musical terms. I found a couple cyberpunk playlists on Spotify and immediately got shoved down the rabbit hole. Makeup and Vanity Set, Perturbator, Miami Nights 1984...I couldn't get enough. I was hooked.

Slowly but surely I got back into making music, and found that--with kids and far less free time--I suddenly had the drive and discipline that had been missing during my 20s and early 30s. I started finishing songs, decorating them in lush, lovely synth tones--I even released some of them. And then made an album!


Synthesizers: The Greatest Thing on Earth

But enough about me--let's talk synths. There are many kinds of synthesis, but I'm mainly into subtractive--the studio sound of the late '70s and early '80s, and the underground sound of the late '80s and early '90s. One of my all-time favorites is, of course the Roland Juno 106. Released in 1984, was basically the older Juno 60 only with MIDI (which allows electronic instruments to communicate with one another) but no arpeggiator.

The 106 features a single digitally-controlled analog oscillator (DCF), which means it produces sound via electrical current but also features an electronic pulse that keeps the oscillator in tune. It has a single digitally-controlled filter (DCF), a single envelope generator, which modulates both amplitude and the frequency cutoff on the DCF, and a single low-frequency oscillator (LFO), which can modulate either pitch, pulse width or the filter cutoff. The 106 also has a silky smooth chorus effect that makes everything sound like gold. So while the 106 has a more limited feature set than some of the other synths I'll talk about, it's almost impossible to make a bad sounding patch with it. It has been called, rightly in my view, the ultimate beginner's synth. And boy does it sound lovely...

Next up is the Oberheim OB-8. Released in 1983, the OB-8 replaced the more famous OB-Xa (made famous in "Jump"). For my money, however, the OB-8 is the best of the bunch. It featured two voltage-controlled analog oscillators (VCOs) per voice, with 8 total voices of polyphony, a Curtis ladder-design voltage-controlled filter (VCF), two envelopes and a whole junk ton of LFO modulation capabilities. You can also pan individual voices across the stereo field (i.e. left to right speaker), leading to some seriously out there stuff.

The last hardware synth I'll present for you is brand new, the Korg Prologue. It's not out yet, but I've had the pleasure of playing one in the shop--and let me tell you, it is mighty fine. The Prologue features a pair of VCOs, a VCF and two envelope generators, but also has a digital multi-oscillator that can do simple FM or wavetable synthesis. What that means is that you can do classic analog, '80s digital or more complex patches that blend the two.

Of course, one of the great things about being alive today is how cheap, convenient and good software synthesizers have become. Some are truly excellent, like Diva by Germany's u-He: a synth that lets you mix and match modules emulated from various classic pieces of kit. It can even simulate the character analog synthesizers pick up as they age...bad tuning and oscillator drift! Here are a couple videos made by my favorite sound designer for Diva (and now friend), Swan Audio. The first is a synthwave track using sounds be made for the preset pack Analog Hits, and the second are his OB-8 recreations, which sound amazingly realistic if you ask me.

Well, that about wraps it up! But just for good measure, here are a couple love songs I've written to the synthesizer. Enjoy!

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POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a
Feather founder/administrator, since 2012.