Mafiascum.net

you should aim to come up with 8 songs that each support a category described below. i tend to like songs that address the category in an artsy, unexpected, or funny way, and i also often just find ways to give something a high grade that you wouldn't expect (especially if i like the song, which can threaten to happen at any time). as well, i am dropping your lowest score, so don't feel bad if you don't have 8 killer ideas.

i will try to avoid finding out who submitted each song until shortly before each reveal, so i prefer that everybody sends me their songs via youtube link (i live in the US and almost never have region-restriction problems) through a PM on mafiascum (other places sometimes show a preview of the videos when you send the message). if a song doesn't exist on youtube, that's not a huge deal and you should feel free to link it somewhere else. avoid using the "youtu.be" links if possible. you can submit at any time until i have revealed the second category, and also change your submissions until then.



if you'd like to avoid submitting music i've heard before, my rateyourmusic page has a "search schadd's music for..." box in the middle, which will pull up substantially everything i've listened to while paying attention. you don't need to adhere to this religiously especially since i like to re-listen to songs with this new context, but you should avoid stuff from my very favorite albums as well as most of the material from those artists (i deduct points for particularly familiar music).

MUSHSHAGANA CLAUSE: you can include any number of supplemental comments about the songs in your submission, but preferably you would do those separately in a spoiler= box to make it easier for me to anonymize things

well, that's the name of the game. for this category, just send me a song that you think i'll like. the catfit points will just reflect my enjoyment.

here is the first walrus i did, where you can peruse the winning songs.

some songs i've liked recently:
deftones - be quiet and drive (far away)
cocteau twins - ups
toots & the maytals - pressure drop
horsegirl - world of pots and pans
mass of the fermenting dregs - ベアーズ (musically this live version is like worse than the album version. but youtube just keeps recommending it to me and don't i just keep clicking it)

it's fun to have cat 2 be like an opposite to cat 1. in the first walrus i think i executed that vaguely and badly. hopefully the idea here is simple enough and also gives you different ways to approach it.

most of the time it's easy enough to click on a song and start listening to it, but plenty of things hit you with this flash of memory that makes you wince and think "i gotta emotionally prepare to listen to this again". these moments are increasingly rare for me after the several thousandth album i've listened to but, go on and have a go.

adrianne lenker - blue and red horses: man, this song. i think there's some cocktail where it's creepy and foreboding, and also strikes at the feeling of childhood vulnerability in a way that's hard to grok. there was this one time a few years ago i randomly listened to it in the car and i was like "i think i won't pick this back up ever again." nowadays i have the ability to say "this song is like skinamarink"

model/actriz - slate: just from an album that recently made me scared of the feral instinct it unearthed. the sonic intensity and gushing sexuousness build a powerful two-stroke engine here.

iris dement - our town: very thorough walloping of a song. i think it speaks for itself. rarely find myself able to sit through this one.

here, i am looking for music that

• demonstrates some kind of impressive technical or creative ability
  
• seems to be doing something different from music you and i usually hear

.

emahoy tsegue-maryam guebrou - the homeless wanderer: she's somebody that had an eclectic piano education and just uses some unique and remarkable approach to rhythm that feels less like a classical structure and more like the act of waiting for a meandering thought to resolve.

life without buildings - the leanover

(chickadee's past cat 1 winner)

: the vocal in this song is what they call "really something else"

i'd like something that produces multiple different emotions in the listener, especially simultaneously or in the creation of a cohesive whole.

.

elizabeth cotten - freight train
isaiah rashad - 4r da squaw
big thief - black diamonds

my brother's girlfriend coaches synchronized swimming at the local high school & we went to see a show. shortly beforehand, i was like "what kind of song do you use for synchronized swimming?" and started excitedly imagining a bunch of different ideas. after the show i was charmed by the little bits of expression and flair you can use to act out a certain song, as well as the high school-ness of it i guess.

send me a song that i'd want to see a synchronized swimming routine for, or at least see them try. it helps to have something that excites one's visual imagination.

.

autechre - cfern
alice in chains - rotten apple
billy woods & kenny seagal - red dust "it's how she arch her back when she-"
the free design - kites are fun
el chombo - chacarron

forgiveness is complicated and i think lends itself to music well. send me something that engages with the idea of forgiveness, or the lack thereof.

i'll give 3 examples which aren't great
liz phair - divorce song
kendrick lamar - mother i sober: i kinda took issue with what i might vaguely call the "methodology" of this song but there's a lot of ways it thought-provokingly touches on the largeness of the problem of intergenerational trauma
boards of canada - over the horizon radar: mostly i just felt compelled to try putting in an instrumental song & boards of canada songs feel like they're about everything

it turns out that drumming is like maybe my favorite thing in music generally. send me a song where the drums (or generally, percussion) are good.

i had an identical category in my first walrus. in writing out the category proposal i voiced a mild distaste for drum machines, which i now think i don't care about as much as i dislike stuff where the drumming wasn't a primary consideration when building the song.

for my examples i'll name several songs which Happen to be some of my very favorite songs from 2022:
immanuel wilkins + elena pinderhughes + also other people - lighthouse
converge - they stretch for miles (redux)
pillow queens - my body moves

here's three funny little ideas for a category, choose one that you can submit to. when you are sending me the message, you should specify "cat 8, section 1 [or 2 or 3]: https://youtube.fart/song" (or two links for section 3) but .

if somebody submits to a section that nobody else does, they will receive 3.9 points.

section 1: pokemon dual type

send me a song that calls to mind a certain pair of pokemon types, especially in a funny or compelling way. you can pretty much do this without having played pokemon, there aren't many nuances to understand beyond the names of the types (i mean there are but you know.)

elliot smith - roman candle: fire/dark
boards of canada - diving station: normal/ghost
scene queen - 18+: fighting/fairy (my favorite song from song contest 200)

section 2: seasons

send me a song reminiscent of one of the seasons, especially via indirect or purely-musical ways.

cocteau twins - sigh's smell of farewell: winterㅡthere's a few things that just remind me in maybe a superficial way of instruments/melodic motifs typical of Winter Music, but it also feels like winter. the bass occasionally reminds me of a lower limb that loses heat and starts to feel numb.
hania rani - buka: winter. honestly both of these last two struggle to fully differentiate themselves from autumn
lil ugly mane & denzel curry - twistin: summer

section 3: paired songs

i am stealing a category from the tris hellbooks walrus, which involves just sending two songs who complement each other in an interesting way. i will grade the enjoyment points as some kind of average of the two songs, which is to say this section wouldn't be worth double.

in your submission you should put the first song link, a space, and then a second song link. i shall listen to them in that order, one after the other such that there is a clean track-transition.

.

you can peruse the past walrus for examples of submissions; you can expect me to look for vaguely similar things as what hellbooks explained. i thought

alameda riddle - my little rooster b/w devendra banhart - little monkey

from chevre was particularly brilliant and i revisit that pair of songs every so often.

around when that category got revealed i came up with

joanna newsom - peach plum pear b/w soccer mommy - scorpio rising

; two songs that survey the failure of a relationship due to the narrator ultimately not being appealing enough. both of them have a feeling of fatalism, peach plum pear has the period where it seems like the relationship is succeeding in spite of being fated to fail (which eventually happens) whereas scorpio rising seems more confident it was never gonna work out.

i give each song a rating out of 5, which becomes up to 7 points (i double the amount by which the rating exceeds 3). i give between 0 and 3 points based on its aptitude for the category. i will give 1 point for a song i don't know, and 1.2 for something particularly unfamiliar; there is a sliding scale downward if i've heard the song or artist before (possibly down to negative points). i try to guess who submitted each song and deduct 0.1 points when i am correct. the four top scorers in each category will receive 2/1.5/1.2/0.9 bonus points.

medals

i will award points to submissions that do any of these random things, potentially multiple times (with different respective point values). sometimes it is worth negative points if that would be funny. two people can get the same medal in the same category and have different points because i e.g. listened to one song slightly sooner. these points do not contribute to the bonus points for 1st/2nd/3rd place.

laugh out loud from reading a song/artist award: 1.1pts / 1.5pts / 0.8 pts / 0.3 pts / 0.2 pts / 0.2 pts / 0.1 pts
grand slam award:

0.5 pts

/ 0.4 pts / -0.9 pts / 0.1 pt
exactly 3 minutes and 46 seconds award:

0.5 pts

/ -0.6 pts / 0.7 pts / -0.8 pts ... ad infinitum
chills award:

1.1 pts

/

1.1 pts

/ 1.1 pts / 1.1 pts
MUSHSHAGANA awardㅡ

make me think you are mushshagana

:

0.4 pts

/

0.5 pts

/ 0.4 pts / 0.3 pts; the

second

and fourth awards will include 0.1 pts awarded to MUSHSHAGANA
CALEDFWITCH awardㅡ

get 5th or 6th place two times in a row

: 4.0 pts / 0.4 pts
CHEVRE awardㅡ

submit after the first category has been revealed

: 0.3 pts / 0.2 pts / 0.2 pts
PANZERJAGER awardㅡ

have a placing in the bottom 3 and a gold medal in adjacent cats

: 1.6 pts / -1.8 pts / 2.2 pts
PANZERJAGER award 2ㅡ

get banned

: 0.3 pts / -0.5 pts / 0.1 pt

invisible cats

i had a bunch of ideas for categories, many of which don't lend themselves to being a full category because it's hard to ideate around them, or they are too specific, or too small in scope, or whatever. and so i am taking those ideas down in my notepad document and assigning point values which i will award to the first several submissions that successfully meet those cat ideas. whenever somebody gets an invisible cat bonus, i will publicize the description of the cat and the sequence of point values associated with it. like medals, they don't count towards 1st/2nd/3rd place.