WALRUS SQUARED (feat. me and hellbooks)

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm in. I'm going to submit something for Tris TOTALLY BLIND, in fact. I'm going to submit NOW. That's how in I am.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Submission done. Don't need to know the deadline if you submit before the folks in charge manage to edit one in!

I will possibly beg to change one or two later, but I'm solid on the Tris one (even if it goes against what she says she likes afterwards! Some songs just have the "damn good music" vibe) and most of the rest. Hellbooks was harder because I'm trying to push boundaries while I got a whole massive collection of stuff I know will be an easy grand slam, and I might decide the balance struck was wrong later. And the paired category was one I might have overthought, and I might decide to go for a different pairing that's less of a risk. We'll see.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Personally I agree that paired submissions should be twice as many points.

I also would not be opposed to doing a training run -- I can do paired songs easily, but I'm worried that my current submissions are too high-concept. I would submit them to the training run and change to something else after I got a sense of what would be noticeable.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm torn between sticking with the existing submission I have for hellbooks and changing it -- either going a bit poppier or taking the long-shot of mind-bendingly weird slam-death. (And no, it would not be Dripping -- they're comparatively tame.)

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I’m not withdrawing my submissions, but I won’t be changing any of them no matter what because I am as of 10PM CST tonight entirely deaf in both ears due to earwax buildup so bad the hospital failed to deal with it despite two hours of multiple approaches and a lot of effort. A request to the hosts to try not to do anything that would require new submissions; I am actually not capable of replacing them. Thanks.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I managed to break one of my ears free of the horror of the wax. The other (first one to succumb) is stubborn and unyielding but I will prevail probably I hope. Need to find some peroxide and a dropper for it.

In other words, proceed as normal, I can listen to music again. Not well, speakers or mono only, but better than nothing.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For tris: the song is about sickness, sex and death, and is very much a meandering journey through those philosophical concepts through an existential, slightly misanthropic lens (the EP is the remnants of an unfinished second half of a concept album about very personal, intimate takes on various apocalypses). Beyond that, in the songwriting, it reminded me of very theatrical, "old western" themed country music. Horses slow-stepping through endless grassy plains. I figured if it didn't win on lyrics, the songwriting would hit the mark. Swing and a miss, such is life. Can't believe you guessed it was me though -- I believe hellbooks due to the similar wavelength we seem to be on, but you were a definite surprise.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

If you catch all of mine after schadd did, I'll need to give up and move to Antarctica. I hear the pay is really, really good.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I am legitimately surprised at the score order being totally flipped for me here ... I can't wait for the thoughts here. Hoping I snuck in without being caught, too...

[MUSHSHAGANA]

That'd be both hilarious and offend my sense of goodness in this world. So it's probably true.

Sorry for disappointing you with my music for the first time(?), hellbooks!

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I’m vaguely surprised I didn’t get higher enjoyment from hellbooks here, but then again maybe it’s the particular resonance that song holds in the context of the full album for me. Ambient music normally is background music, Tineidae demands engagement, and that song is one of three absolutely stellar moments of lovely, lush space ambient synth that has to make Jarre flush with envy in an incredibly dark and moody album.

Doesn’t hurt that normally Tineidae is, I shit you not, a psytrance producer.

It also is infuriating that I got caught by accident. Maddening. That’s TWICE, in TWO separate WALRUSes where the entire rest of my submissions will probably be blatant as hell. How! How!

[MUSHSHAGANA]

At this point I'm inclined to say I'm going to dip precipitously and continuously, COMPLETELY cratering after a decent start.

At the very least no one guessed me, right?

Right?

Not right. Of course they did, because what other monster on this site listens to nu metal. HOIST BY MY OWN PETARD.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Honestly I’m just kicking myself for not switching the last two categories for different songs, because I was considering it for quite some time.... I was seduced by Tineidae’s incredible space ambient and my deep love of nu metal, that’s my only excuse.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Both of you should check out the full album, Exo. From Blacklight Trail to Epilogue, every track is amazing, and I had a sort of minor existential crisis choosing one to submit. Tineidae is just outrageously good at space ambient. You'd think it was their usual wheelhouse, and you'd be wrong -- no other Tineidae album is space ambient or even space-themed.

If you want more stuff like that, in a very vague way, you can also check out Hilyard - Furthermore and Silent Universe - The Infinity Coordinates. Both are far heavier on the ambient and aren't as jawdroppingly amazing, but they all fit in a meditative playlist together.

Closest I can recommend in sheer quality would be In Quantum - Memory 417, which is practically an hour long audio drama with less than a dozen lines, and is absolutely THRILLING for its entire runtime, but it's very much cyberpunk, not space.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

FWIW, I expect PMs about any new WALRUSes. I have my external now, I have realized I have typecast myself, and I'm going to fix it.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Judging by the scores, I either maximized enjoyment or maximized the catfit by succeeding in my attempt to come at it from a non-obvious direction.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

The intent of mine was to pick a song that used piano sparingly but which leaned on it so hard it totally changed the tone of the song.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For Hellbooks:

If you liked that general style, check out the Haujobb album New World March alongside Solutions for a Small Planet. In hindsight, NWM feels like a response to SfaSP.

And don't listen to Blendwerk until you've fallen in love with everything else under the Haujobb name (there's a lot to love), it's a very emotional album that will be wasted on you if you don't already appreciate the fuck out of the band.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

To explain my idea here:

Dream Fever has these really bouncy rubbery effects and guitar riffs, a fun square bass, really intense but almost cute vocal stylings, and so on. It's just really silly, in a very cheap haunted house sort of way. Late 70s cartoon Halloween special music. It's the kind of silly, bouncy jank that is just hard not to smile at -- I tend towards very self-serious or sarcastic music and Charms has this sweet, earnest fun loving heaviness. Neopagans having a 70s surf rock party vibes.

I figured that'd speak for itself, my mistake there.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

When's the next reveal? No pressure, just curious!

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm just hoping that tris and hellbooks get to hear the songs I picked for /them/.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

There was a fairly high concept with mine. Emotional tone, primarily. That desperate, despondent hopelessness, everyone you know receding away, the self-loathing aspects, and the lack of a conclusion -- just the continuation of a cycle. It's a very very specific emotion, and I think there's probably only a handful of songs I've listened to that touch on it -- all in wildly different genres. I picked the two most removed from each other.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Wrong way to do it: use less reputable Youtube channels. If the video title includes a track number and ends in ".wma" you're in good hands.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Can't wait to see what you had to say about Thank. It was either going to be the gold or the last place and I had no idea which one -- total gamble.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Can't wait to see what you had to say about Thank. It was either going to be the gold or the last place and I had no idea which one -- total gamble.

when I'm impatient for commentary updates, I'll scroll through the discord chat logs

Ah, but I'm not on the Discord.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Thank is really, really good. They're actually very far left (part of CHUNK, an autonomous artistic collective in Leeds), which makes some of their more ideologically confusing lyrics fall into place a bit... most of their music is mocking themselves a bit. Except Taxidermist, which is completely uninterpretable noise-dance-punk, and Thank The Universe, which is about the crushing ennui of capitalism destroying the humans dwelling in it.

Probably my favorite song of theirs changes with the day. In my current Ambien addled state (waiting on the heavy eyelids right now) I'm REALLY feeling No Respect for the Arts, which was a contender for the song I was going to submit. Would it have done better? Worse? Too late to know. Check out the stuff off of Please, and then join me and like 2 other complete gremlins in rattling Thank's social media cage and moaning "new releaaaaasessss"

[MUSHSHAGANA]

thankology is going to be edging up against aoty for me

Can I just say I'm surprised?

Like, not by you, but that literally every single person I've played Thank for this year has been like "Oh fuck yeah", even if their music taste is normally miles off of that.

EDIT: Tris is apparently the exception? Sorry, just remembered that.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

A housemate who almost exclusively listens to late 90s and late 00s pop punk loves them. That's when you know you have something special, I think.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I'm having flashbacks to the marketing campaign for Leviathan Warships.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

damn i was so ready for that shitp

I have a hypothesis that it was a murder plot, because I'm now dead from lack of WALRUS.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Cannot wait for this category's comments... I picked my tris song on the basis of NOTHING AT ALL.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I figured it out!

Since I sent mine in blind, I had to apply a different metric to pick something nifty for you. I figured some songs are just a lot of good fun and hit every one of the right notes to be at least listenable for just about any music taste -- Hate Dept's Ditch is FULL of those, and this is by far my favorite song. The unexpected soul-music-esque backing vocals for the "yeah yeah" at the end always make me crack a smile, no matter how bad a day I'm having. The backbone guitar riff is just this dancy blues ditty, tuneful distortion guiding its fun groove around, and the synth bass, far from being a bad fit for such a 70s-esque sound, acts as propulsion and glue for the whole bit.

In short, I basically went looking for the one song I could play pretty much anywhere and get people excited, but without shading into pop music. Success? Well, it seems like it!

Thanks for the WALRUS, it was a lot of fun.