Monday Chat #7 – Album Roundup

So as it turns out, college has left me much more busy than I had originally anticipated. So much so that Monday chats might actually not occur every Monday after all… just a quick warning. I’m also planning on only uploading these on the original blog from now on, simply because it’s much easier on me and I don’t have to fix formatting and insert images over and over again. Fortunately I do have a pretty good topic for today, and that is my current listening roundup.

Over the past few weeks I’ve had little time to consume heavy focus media like movies of videogames, so I dedicated most of it to listening to music. New music. Some of it I loved, some of it… not so much. I figured I’d share a few quick fire opinions on the albums that I’ve listened to, as well as what I plan on checking out next.

God Tier

Brockhampton – Saturation

My friends have been going on about Saturation for awhile now, but it was only shortly after the release of Saturation II that I finally decided to fall into the hype. To be honest, I knew nothing about the album going in – I didn’t even know that it was a hip hop album. So it came to a pleasant surprise that it was exactly the type of music I usually really like listening too; a good mix of modern R&B mixed with group rap. Saturation II might as well be here too, though I haven’t actually finished listening to most of that album yet.

Carissa’s Weird – Songs About Leaving

Okay, this one’s a lot more special. I found this album by complete coincidence – those who know me know that, in addition to jazz and hip hop, I also listen to a lot of dark music (fits with some of the Monday chat topics, doesn’t it?). So I was looking through an emo rock thread on /mu/ where there was only one song posted. I was about to leave this boring thread when I decided to give the single song on the thread at least a try before I did. That song was “So You Wanna Be A Superhero” from this album.

Usually most “dark” songs have either one thing going for it: either really good lyrics and a pretty basic rhythm (a la A Crow Looked at Me) or really shitty lyrics but damn good bangers (a la The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me). So I was surprised this song had a good mix of both. So I listened to another song on the album. And another, and another, and another…

Soon enough I had listened to the whole thing and I could say I loved pretty much every song on it. This is a pretty special occasion for me personally because this is the first album which I’d say would fit into my top 25 favorites of all time and yet no one I know has ever heard of it. That includes my really in depth music fan friends. I imagine there’s probably a lot of emo rock that sounds like this (I’m not very well acquainted with the genre) but damn does this album sound really, really good.

Good Tier

Mac DeMarco – 2

Based on the wide amount of negative criticism Mac DeMarco gets, I would have assumed I wouldn’t have liked him. However, after listening to “My Kind of Woman” I decided to give the whole album a shot, and honestly… it wasn’t that bad. Some of the songs are just generic indiefolk which I hate, but there’s some decent bangers in there.

Mobb Deep – The Infamous

Though I still think this album is a little overhyped, I’ve gotten to appreciate it more over time. “Shook Ones” is still one of the best old school hip hop songs of all, and most of the album has a pretty consistent quality level.

Mark Ronson – Uptown Special

After being a big fan of Mark Ronson in elementary school, I kind of skipped out of town after he became famous. I figured Uptown Special would be, for the most part, a cop out album – however, after finally deciding to listen to it, I can say it’s actually not that bad. The quality and theme is consistent, and there’s some nice bangers in there that were simply overshadowed by “Uptown Funk”.

Slime Girls – Vacation Wasteland

I normally hate chiptune music, but the sort of shoegaze infusion that occurs in this album is super tantalizing. Probably has one of my favorite intro preludes ever. Worth listening to even if you aren’t into 8 bit (or 16 bit? 32 bit??) music.

Meh Tier

The Antlers – Hospice

Not going to lie, this album would probably down into Shit Tier if it wasn’t for the fact that the main vocalist in this band is really good. Like, really good. This is coming from the guy who thinks some of even the best singers in the world sound kind of cringy. This is the first time I’ve ever listened to a song and actually said to myself “Oh wow, this guy is actually really good”. It’s worth listening to at least a few of the songs in here to at least get a grip on how good this guy is (I recommend “Kettering” and “Wake”). Other than that, unfortunately, Hospice lacks a whole lot of substance. The lyrics are pretty meaningless, and the sound is simple.

American Football – American Football

This album is full of pretty nice emo math rock, the only problem with it is that… well, all of it sounds pretty much exactly the same. Like, literally, exactly the same. It gets old after awhile.

Shit Tier

Giles Corey – Giles Corey

And now we get to the one album here I really just didn’t enjoy. The lyrics on this thing are so basic and obnoxious (one of the songs is just him repeating “I’m going to kill myself” over and over again) and the beat is so practically non existent that there’s not really much to talk about here.

On Deck

Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t bend! Ascend!

Black Emperor – Yanqui UXO

Miles Davis – Bitches Brew

David Bowie – Blackstar

Sufjan Stevens – Carrie and Lowell

Sunny Day Real Estate – Diary

Television – Marquee Moon

Mf Doom – Mm… Food

Slowdive – Pygmalion

Slowdive – Souvlaki

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Currently reading: The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee!

Currently watching: Narcos Season 3!

Currently playing: Nothing!!

Currently listening: I think you know what I’ve been listening to.

Well, that’s all for now. Remember to follow Codex of Aegis on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.

Monday Chat #6 – Ideas for the original Codex of Aegis blog

This post will be a lot shorter, mostly due to the fact that I’m still trying to get used to this whole college thing, but I think it’s pretty important nonetheless.

For awhile now I’ve thought about going through the old stories that I have on the Codex of Aegis blogspot (http://codexofaegis.blogspot.com)  and deleting ones that I don’t think are good anymore. My standards for my writing are way higher than they were when the blog started around 2013, and I feel like it’s time for the content up on there to reflect that.

Of course, I don’t want to outright remove them from existence. I know that there’s probably some people who like ones that I don’t like, and besides that I find it fun to look at old stories even if I don’t think they’re good. In that case, I’ll probably bring back something similar to the Astuka Looks Back series – a series, this time having its own separate blog entirely, that deals with looking at some of my older, less good stories in a more critical lense. This way people will still have access to them, I will be able to learn from them individually, and the whole process will be much sweeter.

I’m not sure exactly when I’m going to start this process, but hopefully it will be sometime soon. I will start by actually removing the stories, then go back and begin on the new critical series. Anyway, I’m short pressed on time now like I mentioned before, but I still wanted to release a Monday Chat, and this is what I’ve come up with.

Currently reading: I’ve decided to drop all my previous reads, mostly because each of them I either didn’t have time for or just wasn’t interested in continuing. I’ve now begun a book I have been meaning to read for quite awhile now, that being The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee. So far I’m only 30 pages in, so I’ll update as time goes along.

Currently playing: Nothing! No really, nothing. The laptop I’ve brought to university is pretty bad, and it can only play the SNES/N64 roms I’ve downloaded onto it (that being literally every single SNES and N64 game in existence). But besides that, I just haven’t really been motivated to play much recently. I was meaning to play Overwatch again when I visited home, but I was too busy doing unrelated stuff that I didn’t really have time to fit in.

Currently watching: Also nothing! Though this one is a bit more concrete – I did catch up on Twin Peaks, a series I had kind of lost track of for a bit due to university stuff and everything, but now I’m back in. I’ve also successfully dropped Game of Thrones seeing that I now fortunately don’t have the time to keep up with it and that has helped me stay away from that burning dumpster fire. Unlike with games, I do have some plans to see some movies – Michael Haneke has been brought up recently, and speaking that I haven’t seen any of his movies and nearly his entire filmography has been on my watchlist for years (the only other director to have that honor is Kurosawa), he’s definitely in my sights now.

Currently listening: Recently discovered Brockhampton, and have been listening to Saturation Parts I and II almost constantly this week.

Well, that’s all for now. Remember to follow Codex of Aegis on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.

Monday Chat #3 – Kid Shows Take on Reality

While this is not what I promised the next episode of Monday Chat would be about, but I did go on one hell of a weird tangent this week. For these past seven days I have been looking up a bunch of cartoons and advertisements from my childhood, seeing if I recall anything that I’ve forgotten or gotten some nostalgia boost out of it. For the most part, I didn’t – I did get Heroscape, though.

And while I did not discover anything crazy from my childhood, I did discover something else… something that I could have only discovered as an adult now. And that’s the way kid show’s try to take on serious topics in order to teach kids about them.

From what I’ve seen the greatest example of this – and the first example I’ve found – is Sesame Street. Sesame Street deals with so many topics like these at the onset its kind of hilarious. I mean, canonically within the Sesame Street Universe, Elmo received PTSD at a very young age. Also, his Uncle Jack died “in the war” (what the war is we’re never actually told) which then later causes Elmo’s dad and his neighbor Ricardo (Eduardo? I don’t actually remember his name) to join “the war” and when they come back Elmo and his father’s relationship is stunted not to mention that Ricardo doesn’t have fucking legs anymore. And beyond the deployment trilogy, there’s also other small tidbits here and there – Gina is apparently given death threats for being in a mixed-race relationship, Mr Hooper (who’s store burned down, thus giving Elmo PTSD) is later found dead, and Lil Oscars father is apparently incarcerated. These revelations just lead to more questions – what is this so called war? What are its combatants? Does that mean there’s a greater world outside of Sesame Street? Is there prosthetics in the Sesameverse? What about funerals? What is Sesame Street prison like? If there’s racism and incarceration, does that mean that there’s a Sesame Street Aryan Brotherhood? Sesame Street, however, leaves these questions up to the imagination.

But when you take the videos into the context which they are actually meant to be taken, it is equally interesting. The method of trying to teach a kid about things like death or war or racism are hard for anyone to do, so it is interesting that these cartoons and other children shows have decided to step in and help in describing such things in a way kids will understand.

Sometimes they aren’t so blatant as Sesame Street, though, and are instead worked into the plot of the show itself in which the characters directly are impacted, and their responses are used as guidelines for the children watching. Such is the case in Why, Charlie Brown, Why?, where Linus’ playmate Janice is diagnosed with leukemia.

I prefer this method (though it is more difficult) because you’re enhancing the narrative while still giving people – including kids – something to think about. These serious moments in children’s TV can help teach people how to cope when dealing with a troubling situation like this while also help develop characters and story that will engage the audience.

Of course, Janice never actually appears outside of that episode. A more appropriate example in this case would be in Doug, where Doug’s crush Patti ends up falling into an eating disorder due to constant media outpouring on how the ideal female body is unnaturally slender – a problem that was very real at the time that the episode came out.

Throughout the episode Doug struggles to get help for her from other adults, though merely throw it off, also falling into the ploy of the media. This all escalates when Patti actually passes out during a track and field match, in which the previous satirized adults now take the topic very seriously. Doug in itself is full of moments like these – which may make it good for a full analysis on its own.

And, of course, this topic as a whole has more to be discussed as well. These are just three examples of such introspection in kids shows that I find the most poignant. Of course, there’s always the lighter side of cartoons to – what makes the best ones accessible to kids and adults alike – and that might be a topic for later as well. I know I’ll probably continue this binge into next week, so there might be some sort of continuation then, but for now this has been this week’s topic for Monday Chat.

Currently listening: I have spent about 90% of my listening time this week dedicated to Scum Fuck Flower Boy and my honest opinion is that it’s just as good as any of Tyler’s other albums. I’m one of the music rogues who really did heavily enjoy WOLF and Cherry Bomb (not Goblin though, we don’t talk about that) so I’m mostly just glad that most other people now have the respect for him that I already had. I honestly can’t really tell the quality difference between this and other albums he’s done, other than that the songs are much more catchy this time around. A solid 8/10, as always. Favorite songs: See You Again, Pothole, Boredom, I Aint Got Time, 911.

Currently watching: Uh… late 2000s ads? Honestly I had a bit of an existential crisis when I found out my childhood years happened then. 2007 still seems real damn recent – I mean, I guess it was, in the grand scheme of things – but I still feel pretty comfy watching them, so I guess I’ll keep doing that. In other news, Twin Peaks and Game of Thrones is tomorrow (I am once again writing this not actually on Monday). I honestly would have dropped GoT by now since the episode was in fact exactly like the leak, but the action sequence brought me up just enough that I felt some weird purgatory state with the episode itself (which really can describe my entire feeling with the show), so this time I’ve decided if I hate the next episode OR feel “meh” about it I’ll probably drop it. I also think I watched like, half an episode of House of Cards before I remembered why I dropped it.

Currently playing: Mostly been Skyrim and Age of Empires II this week. Not that I dropped Rome Total War, but as fun and hilarious as the elephants are to use it does kind of get old of being so easily able to wipe out a massive enemy army. There’s also the fact that the game crashes 66% of the time with them in it. Mistakes were made.

Currently reading: Nothing new. I am a very slow reader and all the books that I’m reading are 500+ pages – what did you expect?