Birthday Delayed, Now Accomplished

Yesterday was my middle child’s special birthday celebration: a D&D one-shot where he, his siblings, and his two best friends all played shapeshifters on a mission to uncover a hidden evil lurking in a newly-renovated children’s hospital.  While it’s always difficult to wrangle teenagers (plus the one slightly younger and the one slightly older)—and as a result we ran long—it was still a success, and everyone seemed to enjoy it.  Hopefully next week I can post a longer recap.

Darktime I

"My Shadow Will Cover"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

Welcome to the second of the “transitional mixes”—what I used to call my “mood mixes”—that’s been updated to come into line with the modern mixes.  The first of these was Dreamtime, which has a decent explanation of what I’m talking about with all these terms, but, if you don’t want to go back and reread that, what it basically says is, these mixes were composed almost entirely of instrumental music to set a particular (fairly broad) mood, and mostly consisted of random stuff I found floating around on the Internet.  This one has been reworked a bit more extensively though: part of the reason for that is that, while the original version still felt like it was two volumes, it wasn’t nearly as long as Dreamtime.  So this version has more modern choices, including a couple of vocal tracks, even.

The “mood” of this mix is (as it says on the tin) darkness.  We’re looking for music that just drips darkness, oozes it out of every pore.  Of course, the best types of music for this are darkwave and dark ambient, and we’ve got plenty of it here.  Falling You leans a bit too far into trip-hop for this mix, but Black Tape for a Blue Girl is fond of long, meandering, dark semi-instrumentals, as are German neoclassical-adjacent darkwavers Love Is Colder Than Death.  “A Good Omen” (from the former) is an echoey, bass-heavy affair with wordless vocalizations that are just a step away from moans, backed by mysterious whispers that almost push it into the realm of the creepy.  Meanwhile “Very Ill” (by the latter) is more of a tribal, percussion-heavy foray into a moonless night; there are vocals here, but they seem to come from far away (and are likely not in English, so even harder for us Yanks and Brits to make out).  Unto Ashes is perhaps a slightly less obvious choice, but “Viper Song” is an interesting little tune which seems to evoke a gothic nursery rhyme, backed by what might be a harpsichord (or then again might just be a more common plucked chordophone such as a lute or even a guitar).

On the dark ambient side, Jeff Greinke (who is the linchpin of the Shadowfall Equinox mix) is always an excellent choice, and we have two of his tracks here.  Kevin Keller doesn’t make an appearance,¹ but I’ve always felt that Chad Kettering was a musical cousin of Keller’s.²  But “Into the Gate” is a bit more “out there” for Kettering, which is why it ended up here rather on a more traditional one of my mixes.  Seeming to consist almost entirely of echoes, and the small discordancies that you might hear when removing a bow from a cello or when accidentally bumping into a marimba, this is a hard tune to place, in general, but I thought it worked pretty well here.  As for Greinke, I chose “River Limba” off Big Weather, which is a weird little creepy tune, and “Crevice,” off Cities in Fog, which is ... well, also a weird little creepy tune.  The first one sounds more like the frenetic scramblings of small animals (or large insects); the second, like pretty much the entire album from which it derives, sounds more like slowly traveling through a vast, underwater space (or, yes, like wandering through the fog).  Primarily “Crevice” is a bridge to get us to Rapoon,³ whose “Estuary” feels like a continuation of “Crevice,” execept ratcheting up the creepy tension to deliciously unbearable level.  Finally, a short bridge from Michael Stearns and Ron Sunsinger, off Sorcerer, adds a ghostly vibe that flows beautifully from “Estuary” to “Into the Gate.”

There’s also a pretty decent dark neoclassical contingent here: from Amber Asylum’s carnivalesque “Black Waltz” to our closer, Jami Sieber’s “Darkening Ground.” The former we’ve heard from primarily on Shadowfall Equinox,⁴ and this doesn’t stray too far from that template.  The latter is an uncharacteristically spooky track from the electro-and-acoustic alternative cellist who I first discovered on Magnatune⁵ and who we’ve heard from many times before on many different mixes.⁶

And the proper goths should get their shot too: I’ve chosen a short bridge from Clan of Xymox, from their 1986 album Medusa,⁷ and the meandering, understated, almost muted part 1 of Bauhaus’ 3-part “The Three Shadows,” off of The Sky’s Gone Out.  Neither of these non-vocal tracks were likely to fit anywhere else in my mix universe, but they work really well here.

That primarily leaves the “cinematic” music.  In terms of television soundtracks, I of course couldn’t resist throwing in a Twin Peaks tune—“Night Life in Twin Peaks” is a slow, building tune that doesn’t really build to anything, which only adds to its creepiness—and perhaps the ultimate Darktime pick: the theme from the original Dark Shadows.  I’ve only used this soundtrack once before,⁸ primarily because it has a very strong 60s-TV vibe that makes it sound out-of-place on many mixes.  But I think this one works well here.  As for videogame soundtracks, I thought Jesper Kyd’s “Meditation of the Assassin,” from the original Assassin’s Creed, slotted perfectly between “Very Ill” and “Crevice”: it’s got that tribal percussion like the former, but also the echoey, lost-in-the-fog feel of the latter.  In the not-really-a-soundtrack category, Dead Man’s Bones, the self-titled debut (and only) album from Ryan Gosling and his equally-ghost-obsessed pal Zach Shields, has been described as the soundtrack to a movie that was never made.  A lot of the album doesn’t work in my opinion, and many tracks that do work don’t fit anywhere traditional.  But, as we’re seeing, Darktime (and its cousins) are home to the oddballs, and I always dug its “Intro,” with the spoken-word poem backed by spooky sound effects.  It’s super-short, but it’s less of a bridge and more the centerpiece of the volume.  Plus it’s one of only two tracks here with any words at all, so I took advantage of that to extract our volume title.

And of course we mustn’t forget my two favorite bands for providing soundtracks to D&D and other tabletop roleplaying games:⁹ Midnight Syndicate and Nox Arcana.  From the former, “Diversions in the Dark” is practically a soundtrack for Halloween attractions, and, being off the aptly titled Carnival Arcane, flows beautifully into “Black Waltz.” From the latter, “Ghost in the Mirror” is another of NA’s music-box-reminiscent spooky tracks, this one off Legion of Shadows (which is one of my favorite Nox Arcana outings; it’s less tightly-themed, so I think it offers a more varied experience).  And it carries the listener perfectly along from Dead Man’s Bones’ “Intro” to the weird maze that is Love Is Colder Than Death’s “Very Ill.”

Darktime I
[ My Shadow Will Cover ]

“Night Spirits” by Angels of Venice, off Music for Harp, Flute and Cello
“A Good Omen” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl, off The First Pain To Linger
“Persian Teardrop” by Massive Attack [Single]
“Theme II” by Clan of Xymox, off Medusa
“River Limba” by Jeff Greinke, off Big Weather
“Dark Shadows Theme/Collinwood” by Robert Cobert, off Dark Shadows, Volume 1 [Soundtrack]
“Diversions in the Dark” by Midnight Syndicate, off Carnival Arcane
“Black Waltz” by Amber Asylum, off Frozen in Amber
“The Three Shadows, Part I” by Bauhaus, off The Sky's Gone Out
“Night Life in Twin Peaks” by Angelo Badalamenti, off Twin Peaks [Soundtrack]
“Intro” by Dead Man's Bones, off Dead Man's Bones
“Ghost in the Mirror” by Nox Arcana, off Legion of Shadows
“Very Ill” by Love Is Colder Than Death, off Teignmouth
“Meditation of the Assassin” by Jesper Kyd, off Assassin's Creed [Game Soundtrack]
“Crevice” by Jeff Greinke, off Cities in Fog
“Estuary” by Rapoon, off Cidar
“Between Parallel Lines” by Michael Stearns and Ron Sunsinger, off Sorcerer
“Into the Gate” by Chad Kettering, off Into the Infinite
“Viper Song” by Unto Ashes, off Moon Oppose Moon
“The Darkening Ground” by Jami Sieber, off Lush Mechanique

Total:  20 tracks,  72:32

On the “possibly unexpected” side of the mix, Angels of Venice are typically new age (which is why we’ve seen them primarily on Numeric Driftwood¹⁰), unless you count that one album Angels founder Carol Tatum did with the lead singer of Seraphim Shock.¹¹  But, surprisingly, it’s not that more gothy Carol Tatum collaboration I’m drawing from here: it is in fact “Night Spirits,” the centerpiece of their debut album Music for Harp, Flute and Cello, which is, I’m fairly certain, the only track to include any noises not generated by a harp, flute, or cello.  The opening to “Night Spirits” is all distant, moaning wind, and faint, ghostly voices, and the occasional muted chime.  It settles into a more typical neoclassical AoV vibe after that, but that opening was just too perfect for it not to be the opener here as well.

And, weirdly, I first discovered Angels of Venice by poking around early Internet music-sharing sites.  And that’s also where I found perhaps the most unlikely choice here: a remix/mashup of “Teardrop” by Massive Attack with what I think is Lisa Gerrard’s vocals from “Yulunga (Spirit Dance)” by Dead Can Dance.  We heard the latter on Shadowfall Equinox V; you’ll probably recognize the intro of the former as the theme music for House.  I have zero clue where this incredible mashup originates; I’ve only ever seen it credited as “Persian Teardrop” by Massive Attack, but I suspect that MA had nothing to do with it.  Although of course all the places on the Internet where I originally discovered it are long gone, it seems to have lived on in YouTube form, which is what I’ve linked to above.¹²  Now, why Elizabeth Fraser (of the Cocteau Twins: that’s whose voice MA employs in “Teardrop”) and Lisa Gerrard (of Dead Can Dance) have never sung together in real life I can’t say for sure (although a 2012 article reports Gerrard saying that Fraser’s approach was too similar to her own), but it does seem like a missed opportunity: both 4AD artists, both pioneers of dreampop, both contributors to This Mortal Coil (albeit never on the same song).  So I completely understand why some enterprising ‘netizen created this.  And I think it’s come out beautifully: Fraser’s atypically intelligible vocals, backed by Gerrard’s vaguely Middle-Easter glossolalia, all set to the techno thump of Massive Attack ... it’s just gorgeous, and I’m glad to have had a chance to showcase it here.

Next time, we’ll hit our first volume eight.

__________

1 This volume.  Next volume ... who knows?

2 We first saw Ketting on Shadowfall Equinox II, appropriately enough.

3 Who we also met on Shadowfall Equinox, though this time on volume IV.  Honestly, just expect artists from SfE showing up here to be a recurring thing.

4 Specifically volumes I and II, but also on Phantasma Chorale II and even on Eldritch Ætherium I.

5 For more details of what Magnatune is and how I discovered it, see the discussion in Rose-Coloured Brainpan.

6 If you want the complete run-down: Shadowfall Equinox IV, Numeric Driftwood II, Rose-Coloured Brainpan II, Smooth as Whispercats I, and Dreamtime I.

7 Their last album before becoming simply “Xymox,” though the “Clan” would return in 1997.

8 That would be Phantasma Chorale II again.

9 For an expansion on what I mean here, see Phantasma Chorale I.

10 Volumes I, II, and III, in fact, although also on Shadowfall Equinox VI.

11 Sometimes you’ll see that album credited to Angels of Venice, though it is usually (and more properly, in my opinion) credited to Carol Tatum.  Certainly that’s how I’ve credited the songs I’ve used from it in my mixes, specifically on Penumbral Phosphorescence I and Fulminant Cadenza I.

12 Although that version has nearly a minute of inexplicable dead air tacked on at the end.  But it’s close enough to get the general drift.

The Shape of Things to Come

This week I’ve been concentrating on my middle child’s much-delayed birthday celebration: a one-shot D&D campaign that celebrates his love of shapeshifting.  Since it’s a special occasion, I’ve been trying to get really prepared and make it very special.  Perhaps after it’s done I’ll report on how it went.  Stay tuned!

The Pros and Cons of Working from Home

[This is ostensibly a short post week, so I was going to do a quick discussion on a random topic, but it came out a good deal longer than I expected.  So, lucky you: you get two long posts in a row.]

I was speaking to a friend of mine earlier today; he has a job in the government, and I guess our government (or at least some parts of it) are not really into the whole remote working thing any more.  I’ve also been hearing some stories lately about big companies like Google who are apparently now telling employees that they have to return to the office.

But here’s what I don’t get:  I also heard a bunch of stories about how companies are having trouble retaining employee.  This is not one of those things where maybe a few news outlets are trying to sensationalize something: this is something that people are doing studies on, and it even has a name (and corresponding Wikipedia article): the Great Resignation.

Now, even Wikipedia will tell you that part of the reason for this—and not that you needed anyone to tell you, because: duh, of course it is—is that many people enjoyed working from home.  They enjoyed not having the vicious commute (some people are saving 2 – 4 hours a day, five days a week ... that’s 10 – 20 hours per week of their life they’re getting back), they enjoyed being able to work in whatever environment and clothes and furniture they find most comfortable, they enjoyed the freedom of not having to spend all that extra time in the bathroom making themselves “presentable” (assuming no Zoom meetings that day, of course).  Sure, many folks ended up feeling isolated and disconnected from their companies and their coworkers, but I personally believe there were just as many people who were appreciative of the chance to spend time with their families during times when they normally couldn’t.  Being quarantined with your family with no job surely must have been a trying experience; being quarantined doing remote work with no family must have been even worse.  But for those of us fortunate enough to have both a job and a family, there have been perks.  When I got tired of my job, I could go see what my kids were doing, and maybe spend a few minutes just chatting with them, or, hell: go out in the yard and do things with them for a bit.  When I got tired of my family, I could just say “gee, guys: I gotta get some work done now” and go in my room and shut the door.  It was, in many ways, the best of both worlds.

And so many companies had to figure out how to make an all remote workforce work.  And they did.  And I bet that my company was not entirely alone in discovering that an all remote workforce has its advantages: you don’t have to pay for office space, and suddenly your candidate pool expands exponentially.  No longer are you limited to candidates who live in your area, or candidates willing to relocate ... you can hire anyone. Anyone in the country, at least, and maybe even anyone in the world.  There are a few challenges dealing with a bunch of different tax jurisdictions, but I would guess that, at this point, my smallish company (around 200 employees, more or less) has workers in at least a dozen different states, and that number keeps growing.

So, given all that, what crazy people are going to demand that people come into the office if they don’t want to?  They’ve already been forced to prove that they don’t have any good reason to do so—they’re basically just being dicks about it at this point, which was really always true, but now it’s obvious to everyone.  And the Great Resignation means that job opportunities abound, so it’s not like the employees are stuck with you whether they like it or not.  So, if you’re a corporate entity in 2022 telling employees that they “have to” come back to the office, I think you’d best be prepared for a healthy chunk of responses that are something like “oh, yeah? you sure about that?” And also a lot fewer employees.  For instance, I wouldn’t want to say that my friend is definitely looking for another job right about now ... but I’m guessing he’s not not looking either.

Another interesting topic we broached in our discussion that I hadn’t even considered: workplace drama went way down during the pandemic.  Office politics and scheming and backstabbing and so forth: turns out there’s a lot fewer opportunities for that sort of thing when your primary interface with your coworkers is, you know: the work.  I personally work in a place that never had very much of that anyhow, but that’s obviously the exception.  Most places I’ve worked are full of people who believe they live in a soap opera.  Some of them are just on power trips, but a lot of them are using their social manipulations skills to cover for not being very good at their jobs.  I bet a lot of those people struggled during the pandemic.  Of course they’re probably very happy to return to the office.  And, hey: if corporate America is going to get divided into those companies that embrace all-remote working and those that reject it, I’ll be super-happy to see all the assholes on the same side of that line where the only people they can fuck with is each other.  I’ll be over here on my side, living my best life.