One of the best things about travel is that first-hand experiences in other cultures demolishes stereotypes. One of the worst things about travel is that first-hand experiences rarely live up to the imagery that drew us to visit a place. I looked forward to seeing China’s picturesque city squares filled with traditionally dressed octogenarians and their pet songbirds. And I did see lots of songbirds in bamboo cages placed outside for fresh air and company. But it was not always so picturesque as in the movies.
On September 20, youth around the world went on strike, skipping school to march and demonstrate, demanding that adults start acting like grownups and take meaningful action to deal with the climate crisis. Among them were my youngest daughter and some of her friends.
As a 10-year-old, my daughter only recently learned about the climate crisis. Last summer, she accompanied me on two interviews with local youth climate activists. While I got information for my articles about Fridays For Future and other local groups, she learned about climate change as a problem that kids are active in solving.
In anticipation of the Global Climate Strike, she prepared a presentation for her classmates. I thought it was pretty good. I was especially impressed that she did not piggyback on the information from the interviews she heard, but built her powerpoint on her own research. So I thought I’d share it here.
I used to write random Music I Like posts that included whatever I discovered each week. Then I started thinking of themes and started draft posts for each idea, dropping bands in until I had enough to publish. I like having themes, but with more than 20 draft music posts going at any given time, I still find music I like that doesn’t really fit with any categories I have in mind. Sometimes I just want to share my latest finds. So here’s an eclectic collection of music I like.
Lo Pan
Lo Pan (no hyphen, it does make a difference) showed up on the Bandcamp Daily in a tag-hopping post. Their album Midgar takes seven tracks from the soundtrack to the video game Final Fantasy VII and reworks them as retro-futuristic synthpop. FFVII holds a special place in my heart as the only video game I ever beat. That means its soundtrack holds a special place in my brain, what with having listened to it for something more than 100 hours of game play. And on Midgar, it sounds better than ever.
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Aeon Winds
Is blackened prog a thing? On Stormveiled (a title that brings Stardust‘s Stormhold and inexplicably Tad Williams’ Memory Sorrow Thorn books) that’s what Aeon Winds sounds like to me. It’s a surprisingly successful combination, since neither of those genres usually rise to the top of my list. The first time I heard it, I meant to listen to one track just to check it out. Then I forgot to stop and finished the whole thing, the way I do with a really good book. It’s not just the title of Stormveiled that leads my mind to scifi places. I mean, a lot of metal has a scifi theme, but this album feels like reading high fantasy. And coming from me, that is high praise.
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Yellow Eyes
Rare Field Ceiling, the newest album from Yellow Eyes, is black metal. I usually only like black metal when it is either blended with something else or extremely atmospheric. Yellow Eyes is neither of these things, but Rare Field Ceiling got its hooks into me anyway. Yellow Eyes is based in Brooklyn but they are known for incorporating field recordings of chimes, dogs, and choirs from Siberia. That is my kind of thing, but it’s not what grabbed me about this album. Rare Field Ceiling is that rare thing in black metal – an engaging album with interesting riffs and dynamics that never stray into monotony.
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lakis tsirkinidis
I would never have discovered lakis tsirkinidis without a tag-hopping post on the Bandcamp Daily. “Electronic demos from Greece” is not a regular search term for me. But there are so many things I love about Eleusis.
A Greek electronica artist would seem to have no connection to me. But I feel strangely connected to this one, a left-handed hematologist who was born four days after me. We nearly share a birthday, and I’m left-handed, and I worked in science while loving the arts.
But mostly I love the music. Especially the track Mt. Sinai, where the synth sounds like banjo. But that track and the others have so much structure and interest, especially compared to the endless repetitions of most electronica. Every one feels like an emotional journey.
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3TEETH
I hardly ever listen to industrial music anymore, but it was my go-to heavy music throughout much of the 90s when metal seemed to have died. Nowadays, industrial is the genre wallowing at its nadir, but there are still some interesting projects to be found. One of these is 3TEETH. They have a Bandcamp page, but the album that I discovered, Metawar, was released by Century Media, so it isn’t posted there. Here’s a video off that album instead:
And just for fun, here is their cover of “Pumped Up Kicks,” which I might actually like better than the original.
In Qingdao, my daughter and I loved going to those chichi cafes like the girls in the comic books do. The decor is the point and an iced drink costs $5 but you get to sit in the air conditioning and chat and feel stylish while you rest your feet. Oh My Garden was one of those delightful little havens.
Before I ever heard heavy metal, I was drawn to the darkest, moodiest things I heard on Top 40 radio. In the 80s, that meant the odd Peter Murphy or Cure single. But in the age of the internet, I can find entire genres. I’ve mostly outgrown depressive pop, but some days, especially in the fall, you just want dark without the heavy. Darkwave, Goth, or whatever you call it, sometimes you just want to listen to something dark, romantic, and moody.
Fee Lion
Blood Sisters by Fee Lion definitely fits that rainy day-too much coffee vibe and they prove it’s possible to be spooky and danceable at the same time.
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Jakuzi
Turkey has a lot to be depressed about these days, but that’s not the inspiration for Hata Payı (meaning literally ‘’a part of the mistake”) by Istanbul’s Jakuzi. This is exactly the sound craved by my moody adolescent (and sometimes middle-aged) self.
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Sannhet
It’s only two tracks, but the eleven and a half minutes of Short Life leave me longing for more Sannhet. And would you look at that cover?
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Life on Venus
Thanks to a Bandcamp Daily post, I recently discovered that I like Russian shoegaze. “Hovering in the middle ground between shoegaze and goth” is Life on Venus. Their latest album, Departure, is just dark enough, with a veil of nostalgia perfect for cloudy fall days.
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OGRE
Of all the post categories on the Bandcamp Daily, I think the one that feeds me the most new music is Bandcamp Navigator’s tag-hopping. I’m beginning to suspect that they listen to a lot of bands for each tag they select, because the choices are too good. One of these unexpected discoveries was the electronic OGRE, whose #DungeonsandDragons tagged I: Lords of the Black Citadel was the third band I liked in the journey from Southern Gospel to Wizard Disco. Black citadel certainly does sound like the soundtrack to a spooky dungeon adventure. Which is a mood I have, sometimes.
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