the message in the bottle is the booze

So, apparently, there is a long-running scandal involving the music of Doom Eternal that I had not been aware of because I never got around to playing it. The OST was terrible, despite the composer, Mick Gordon, having previously done excellent work for other Doom titles.

Management blamed Mick Gordon for the failure, publicly. On Reddit, of all places.

Mick Gordon has posted a lengthy, detailed response, explaining how he was exploited, fucked over, and turned into a scapegoat for management's multiple failures. It's nightmarish stuff.

Bethesda claims his account is a "distortion of the truth", but like, it would have to be basically all lies in order for it not to be terrible mistreatment.

If it's true that Mick Gordon turned down a six-figure settlement in order to be able to post this, then it really deserves to be read.

It was great, and even more so because it was Jemaine Clement doing David Bowie doing a crab.

I was chatting with sudaki earlier, and I said

HEY, I'VE BEEN LISTENING TO THAT ONE-TWO-ONE-TWO SONG ON A LOOP

and she laughed.

And then I said

I'VE EVEN INFLICTED IT ON OTHERS

and she made an exclamation of horror.

You see, if you were to try to create the most infectious and persistent earworm, perhaps by pitting earworms against each other gladiator-style and then only breeding the victors together, you might end up with something like this song. She sent it to me for my birthday, and I've been listening to it since. (It's been months.) I can manage a week or two without hearing it -- but then, I'm struck by the urge to play it again.

But, on the plus side, it's a GOOD SONG, despite being dorky. It's about TACKLING LIFE'S CHALLENGES or something. Or maybe about kicking puppies; I don't know Japanese so I have to trust sudaki.



There, now I've infected my friends list.

I feel like posting, but I have nothing to post about in particular, so I am going to post about the artist who is my most played during the past week.



Asakawa Maki (浅川マキ) was a Japanese jazz and blues singer who was active from 1967 until she died in 2010. She has the perfect voice for dimly-lit, smoky bars--deep and husky. It's hard to say what her style is, because it varies from groovy, to more straight-up jazz, to blues so steeped in old fashioned sleaze that you expect a jaded private detective to step out of the shadows at any moment.

Here she is covering "House of the Rising Sun":



I prefer her earlier recordings for the most part. Here are a few of my favorites, including the above song.

夜が明けたら / Yo ga Aketara / When Dawn Breaks
ちっちゃな時から / Chicchana Toki Kara / Since I was Little
朝日のあたる家 / Asahi no Ataru Ie / House of the Rising Sun
ゴビンダ / Govinda
セント・ジェームス病院 / Saint James Infirmary
ちょっと長い関係のブルース / Chotto Nagai Kankei no Blues / Kinda Long Relationship Blues
あの男(ひと)が死んだら / Ano Hito ga Shindara / If He Dies
眠るのがこわい / Nemuruno ga Kowai / Scared to Sleep

Thank sudaki for translating the song titles so you don't have to deal with my terrible terrible attempts.

It's Saturday and I was up at 5AM! Yesterday was my probability final, and after I got home I was just bushed. I am not so hot at this math stuff, y'all. What the hell am I doing?

I really should just hire a dominatrix to beat me. It'd be cheaper.

ANYWAY

San Chuan is a trio of Chinese zheng players who make beautiful contemporary Chinese classical music. Here is a particularly energetic piece.



Their website has more videos and some downloadable MP3s.

Day 04 - A Song that Makes You Sad

Iyomante Upopo - Ando Umeko

This is a song in Ainu, the language of the indigenous people of Japan. The Wikipedia article on the Ainu people will explain their history and their struggle to retain their culture better than I can.

The Ainu language is moribund--likely to go extinct very soon. There are language revitalization efforts, but that's no guarantee that Ainu will be around in, say, ten or twenty years.

Ando Umeko, an Ainu folk musician, died in 2004.

A while back I posted a soundtrack of sorts for something I haven't written yet. This is a companion piece--same story, different character.

Calling it a soundtrack is really pretentious, since those need things like stories and titles, and this is just a list of songs, but whatever.

( kuri is the only one who knows that this is about, but the songs are all good )

... instead, you're going to sit at home and creep yourself out. Here's some music that I've been listening to the past couple of days, in honor of the season.

It's not great for parties, but then, neither am I.

Canti del Capricorno no.1 - Giacinto Scelsi (performed by Hirayama Michiko)
Canti del Capricorno no.4 - Giacinto Scelsi (performed by Hirayama Michiko)

Elegia per Thy, for viola & cello - 1 - Giacinto Scelsi
Elegia per Thy, for viola & cello - 3 - Giacinto Scelsi

Wallfahrtslied - Arvo Pärt
Wenn Bach Bienen gezuchtet hatte - Arvo Pärt

(I'm not sure why beekeeping is so menacing.)

Biomutanten - Les Vampyrettes
Black Tar Frequences - Grails
Easy on the Bones - Svarte Griener
The Dining Table - Svarte Griener

Cris D'Aveugle - Diamanda Galás
Je Rame - Diamanda Galás
Sono L'Antichristo - Diamanda Galás
Hex - Diamanda Galás & John Paul Jones

(You can't have Halloween without Diamanda Galás and her interpretations of morbid French poets. That last one might work at a party, now that I think of it. IT DEPENDS ON YOUR GUESTS. Also, if you never downloaded Skótoseme when I posted it before, you really should do so now.)

And just for the hell of it, here are some songs that are a little more, um--or maybe a little less um.

Howl - Florence & The Machine
Varulven - Garmarna
Dead Man's Party When the Lights Go Out - Oingo Boingo
Äijo - Värttinä
Monster - Kanye West feat. Everybody, but especially Nicki Minaj
The Curse of Millhaven - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Jack the Ripper - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Psycho Killer (Live) - Talking Heads
Bloodletting (The Vampire Song) - Concrete Blonde
Harald Kongen - Sorten Muld

Some of those are really nostalgic. But all of them are good*. I urge you to download them even if you're the type of person who dresses up as sexy elmo and therefore have totally missed the point of the holiday.

*Okay, so "Monster" is basically only fantastic once Nicki Minaj starts in and is all like, "Actually, I'm not gonna let you finish. This song is MINE."

Here is a collection of songs that I put together as inspiration for a story. It somehow ended up having a theme of apocalyptic religious confusion with a bit of LOLmetal thrown in for garnish.

( Interested? Playlist behind the cut. )

I'm too lazy to upload them all separately, so here they are as a .zip.

Don't you know
We got smart bombs
It's a good thing
That our bombs are clever
Don't you know
That the smart bombs
Are so clever
They only kill bad people
Don't you know
Though our kids are dumb
We got smart bombs
What a joyous thing
Here we go
So let's drink a toast
To those clever bombs
And the men who built them

War Again - Oingo Boingo