Everything & 1 Half // Music of the Week / WS 7 Mar 2021
It’s all been a little everything and a half last week. Yes, I took a week off from Stranger Fiction, but it was hardly a week off from life. There was picking a new apartment, picking new furniture, picking new clothes that more reflected my tummy’s post-2020 girth while still attempting to make me resemble my pre-2020 self. It’s all been a bit exhausting. But here I am, on the other side of the week, and embarking on new professional and personal challenges; for someone who is as forthcoming with the negatives as I am [1], I must say I’m feeling good: good and a half, perhaps. I hope I don’t jinx it by admitting this; I’d like to ride this feeling for a bit.
Musically, I deviated from the previous three weeks of punk, and explored the many worlds of electronic music. The way things are going, I’m likely to occupy this space for a while longer. In fact, but for Chumbawumba’s Tubthumping, you’re going to find virtually no obvious references to punk and its offshoots in this week’s playlist. I returned to Stranger Fiction yesterday with a Music Box piece on Shawn Rudiman’s 2020 and 2021 albums – Conduit and Flow State. In that piece, I wrote.
Music – like most creative work – is part art and part craft, and mastery of the craft helps further self-expression through the art… It’s clear that the Pittsburgh-based Shawn Rudiman works tirelessly to make music that flows so effortlessly. It’s easy to see that for every minute of music committed to tape, hours of music must’ve been consigned to oblivion. When I think of the flow state of [his] 2021 album’s title, I imagine not someone ignorantly assembling blips and blops and hoping for the best, but someone whose skill has been honed, someone who disappears into his studio every single day of the week to assemble a perfect emotional mindmap.
I also spent a good amount of time with my Nintendo (which I love, by the way). I particularly enjoyed Stardew Valley. For those who don’t know, Stardew Valley is a game that simulates the life of a new farmer in a small commune. It’s remarkably simple; all you’ve got to do is live, make friends (and spouses, if you wish) with fellow villagers, fish, and farm. What makes the game truly remarkable is that it was developed entirely by one person, ConcernedApe (who also wrote its music). It has, like the similar Animal Crossing and the Sims – games with massive developer teams and the financial clout of a Nintendo and an EA – captured the attention of casual and serious gamers around the world. I’ve also been experimenting with visual novels; I’ve been attempting VA-11 HALL-A, a bartender simulation game / visual novel. I wrote about visual novels in an early version of Stranger Fiction, then a newsletter [2]. Although it’s an interesting medium, I’m not certain I like this particular example of its use; I’ll keep trying, however.
The rest of the playlist is rounded off with more electronic music; I’d like to bring particular attention to Prabh Deep’s Maya and a version of Bajre Da Sitta by Rashmeet Kaur, Deep Kalsi and Ikka, two songs about which I’ve written in the past. About Maya and the album that contains it – K I N G:
I’ve been unable to indulge in hip-hop much anymore. A weird thing that has begun happening with me and hip-hop is something happens whenever you hang out with your alco-weird friend. You’re always on the look out for a fight picked with a stranger, or inappropriate views about women or some other such in a litany of embarrassments. Anyway, I don’t feel that way about Prabh Deep’s K I N G. In fact it’s one of my favourite records from 2019. It’s also likely my most listened to album from that year.
And about Bajre Da Sitta:
Despite its boom-boom party treatment in this incredible well-produced banger, the poetry of the folk song on which the track is based is quite layered too… Quite simply, the woman who sings this song compares the dexterity with which she lures her lover into her orbit to the dexterity with which she splits the cob of bajra (pearl millet) before cooking it.
This roundup of a here-and-there week is also a little here-and-there. There’s no neat way for me to conclude this week in music. So I’ll leave you with wise words from Chumbawumba.
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You’re never gonna keep me down
[1] The last year-and-a-half has easily been the most difficult of my life – personally, professionally, emotionally, psychologically. I’ve been knocked down, but hopefully I’ll follow the sage advice of Chumbawumba’s biggest hit and get up again. Hopefully, they’re never going to bring me down.
[2] Here’s what I wrote about them then.
I’m sure you’ve seen the ad for that choose-your-own-adventure game Choices on Facebook or Instagram or whatever your preferred delivery mechanism of poison into your brain through your eyeballs is. The choose-your-own-adventure story-telling mechanism is by no means new, but with all this easy-access powerful technology in our hands, creators have access to all-new ways of telling stories.
I’ll admit, several people have wagered several bets over several decades about how computers will change the way we tell stories. The conclusion that it’ll be interactive stories was reached about 30 years ago, with the release of electronic literature like afternoon, a story and Homestuck. While things haven’t entirely panned out that way, the rise of narrative-driven video games like Last Of Us and Red Dead Redemption indicate there was certainly some truth to that idea. Besides, I’d say Bandersnatch is another example of an interactive story, albeit in the context of moving pictures unlike the text of afternoon, a story and the [image + text] of Homestuck.
But there's also the visual novel, a relatively new text-driven storytelling medium that combines with text other media (video, music, images, gameplay) to form interactive stories. To get a sneak peak into what these are like, I recommend Adventures With Anxiety! by Nicky Case.
It’s getting increasingly easier to write interactive fiction with tools like Twine, which has been used to write many games, interactive stories, visual novels, even the aforementioned Bandersnatch. What I hope for is more interesting stories, told in more interesting ways.
