#wiseguys quest

[obstinaterixatrix]

OH MY GOD VICTOR PULLED THROUGH WISEGUYS QUEST COMPLETE

#unless we could somehow hunt down john wiedman #talking abt musicals #wiseguys quest

[tanadrin]

More World of ArdaCraft patch notes

Version history for 1.0

Version history for 2.X

PATCH 3.0 - “THE THIRD AGE”

Welcome to World of ArdaCraft 3.0: The Third Age!

Player factions and super-guilds are now automatically disbanded if they control no territory. This means that some player factions, like “MordoR,” no longer exist. These factions can be re-created if contested territory that once belonged to them is reconquered.

Feudal sub-realms have been implemented. Feudal sub-realms offer a way for player realms to grow even larger, but unhappy Feudal realms can rebel, or simply cease to acknowledge their overlords. If the rebellion last long enough, they will become independent.

New classes are available, including Loremaster, Horse-Lord, Corsair, and Wild Man.

The prestige class “Wizard” has been made available to players who meet its requirements.

The prestige class “Ulairi” has been made available to players who meet its requirement.

The prestige class “Hideous Thing Slumbering Beneath the Mountains” has been made available to players who meet its requirements.

These classes are intentionally difficult to unlock and will likely only ever be available to a few players at a time.

New players looking for a gentler introduction to the PVP zones of Middle-Earth may wish to start in Lothlorien, Arnor, Gondor, Ithilien, Greenwood, Arnor, or Imladris.

PATCH 3.1 - “NORTHERN REALMS” UPDATE

Arnor is no longer on our “Recommended Starting Zones” list on the website.

We can confirm that player “witchk1ing” was indeed forced to change his name from his previous handle, as it contained a banned string.

Ithilien is no longer on our “Recommended Starting Zones” list on the website.

Players engaging in PVP in the Arnor super-zone should be advised that if they continue indiscriminate killing of NPCs, subzones, and even player territory, may be rendered depopulated, and therefore “abandoned,” under the PVP zone control system. Then only strange dark things which dwell in the ruins will haunt these lost cities random spawns will occur, and the zone will be avoided by traveling NPCs.

PATCH 3.2 - “ECONOMY BALANCE PATCH 2″

To accommodate the increased player activity in the area and numerous requests we have received, the central part of the Arthedain zone has been split off as a new zone centered around various Halfling player settlements. It currently has a placeholder name, “The Shire.” Recommendations for the new zone name can be submitted via the website!

We have received complaints about the Halfling players in the Shire ganking all “big folk” who stray over its borders. *~*Emergent Gameplay*~*

In their quest for epic loot, the Dwarves of Khazad-Dum delved too greedily and too deep, awakening a nameless terror from ancient days which has claimed the city for its own.

Allegations that we bribed a Balrog player from 1.0 to log back in and trash the place because it was causing massive server-wide gold inflation are simply untrue, and those who repeat them may be cast into the outermost dark banned.

Dwarf players are reminded they still have Erebor to hang out in.

Due to ongoing ganking in the southern part of the zone, we are tweaking the Greenwood zone to warn away unwary players. It is now called “Mirkwood.” Random spawns have been changed to reflect that fact. Hope you like spiders!

PATCH 3.3 - “ECONOMY BALANCE PATCH 3″

We regret that Erebor has also fallen victim to inflation control a monstrous horror from the First Age a PVP incident.

At least you still have... the Iron Hills? To be honest, we haven’t been over there in a while.

The abandoned subzone “Orthanc” has been claimed by the “WiseGuys” player faction.

While the ganking incidents in Mirkwood have died down thanks to the intervention of the WiseGuys, we have no plans at this time to revert the zone.

PATCH 3.3 NEWS UPDATE

Congrats to “Thorin” and his raid on reconquering Erebor! We’re so... thrilled. This won’t break the in-game economy that we spent months trying to fix, or anything

We are currently investigating nerfing the shit out of the Halfling race. Don’t @ us, he pickpocketed a dragon.

Player “Balin” is off to Moria to try to repeat this success. We wish him the best of luck.

PATCH 3.4 - “WAR IN MIDDLE-EARTH”

Due to heavy player activity in the zones Ithilien, Gorgoroth Plateau, Nurn, Rhun, Near Harad, and Eastern Gondor, we’ve pushed some hotfixes that should improve stability and handling of large battles.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, the “MordoR” player faction has reoccupied their old haunts, and “Saur0n” has logged back in to, I quote, “fuck up those cucks who stole my ring.” We remind player “Saur0n” to abide by the Community Guidelines, and also that we can always ban him again.

We’re testing out a new Alliances feature that should let player factions coordinate in PVP over much larger areas, potentially including whole continents. Please report any issues you find on the bug tracker.

PATCH 3.4 NEWS UPDATE

Orc players are reminded that player “Galadri3l” has been in the game since beta, has somehow managed to create her own personal Sim City smack dab in the middle of a PVP zone, and wields an unknown number of ancient artifacts of unspeakable power; and they should probably stay well away from Lothlorien as a result.

The Alliances feature has been a success, with a few hiccups. Currently some wars are not merging correctly, such as the war between player guild “HandOfSaruman” and player faction “Riders_of_rohan.” We’re looking into it.

Rumors that a small player group “killed a balrog” in Khazad-Dum are untrue. A small group of players did in fact escape from a Balrog. Player “Gandalf” solo’ed the Balrog. I believe his last words before he logged out were “gg scrub.” When he returns from wandering pathless regions out of time and memory logs back in we’ll talk to him.

PATCH 3.4 NEWS UPDATE 2

While Halfling players are perfectly welcome to cross-class into Warrior, we emphasize that Halfling are not designed to do this. Meme builds like this are not meant to be viable in PVP, so don’t complain if you find it’s underpowered. Cross-class Halfling Diplomat/Warrior is apparently broken as hell. We’re looking into it.

Player guild “HandOfSaruman” has been forcibly disbanded by player “Gandalf.”

The “Riders_of_rohan” should now be part in the wider “war of the ring,” since HandOfSaruman disbanding has negated the previous bug.

PATCH 3.4.1

We aplogize for the brief period of server instability yesterday. Players “frodo” and “sammy_boy” apparently discovered a corner case in the code to destroy the Artifact-tier [r1ng_of_ultimate_p0wer], which has also had the unusual effect of corrupting the database entry containing character data for player “Saur0n”‘s main, his primary guild, and his player faction. While apparently unintended, we have no ruled out that someone in the “Fellowship” guild has somehow acquired undue knowledge of the game’s inner workings and is exploiting it. The devs would like to remind all employees that using your employee position to get ahead in-game is a violation of both TOS and company rules.

We cannot “unban” Saur0n, because there’s nothing to unban. As far as our database is concerned, his account never existed.

Abuse of the “Oathbreaker” debuff on certain mobs allowing players to raise an army out of a forgotten age by claiming a defunct faction title has been hotfixed. We think. Crossing our fingers this one doesn’t come up again.

Despite the large number of player transfers to the Valinor server recently, we don’t plan to redistribute their loot and wealth to other players who choose to stay in Middle-Earth. Just this once, you can take it with you!

PATCH 3.4.2

We continue monitor the exodus of Elf characters.

Rumors of certain non-Elves being permitted into Valinor by the Valar are categorically false.

We’re looking into reports that Lothlorien is looking a bit... peaky.

By “you can take it with you,” we didn’t mean other players. The glitch allowing Dwarves to sneak into Valinor has been fixed.

PATCH 4.0

Due to backend improvements, we’re incrementing the version number.

World of ArdaCraft is going free to play this summer!

Yes, the first autumn in history has come in Lothlorien. Imladris is quieter now, too.

Your friends haven’t logged on in a while, have they?

PATCH 4.1

Then again, you log on less and less.

The old zones are still there, they’re just... different, now. Fewer people. The ones you do see rarely so much as /wave.

There’s some nostalgia to be had, for sure. Those old dungeons you ran. The raids you went on.

Funny, now, you can’t even remember the loot you were so excited for.

Mostly what you keep in your bags are mementos. Souvenirs of time spent with friends.

PATCH 4.2

One day you looked up and realized it had been a year and a half since the last time someone on your friends list logged in.

You just re-downloaded the game for the nostalgia hit.

The cities are mostly empty. Just NPCs standing around, repeating the same lines regularly into the air.

The world is still there, of course.

A great wondrous expanse teeming with possible adventures.

But somehow it just feels... kind of empty now.

PATCH 5.0

And time seems to move faster, the longer you’re away.

A non-gamer friend once asked you, if you regretted sinking so much time into a video game. After all, with that kind of /played time, you could have learned an instrument. A language. Gotten a degree. What did you do instead?

Well... you lived. In an alternate world, with strangers you would never meet, and you paid $15 a month for the privilege. But do you regret it?

Not really.

PATCH 6.0

There is a peculiar fondness and grief to be elicited, from seeing the places inhabited by friendship again, though they have not changed at all.

What has changed is what they mean to you.

They used to mean escapism and relaxation.

Now they mean that joy must be savored, because it is always fleeting.

Not even out of grief or the sharp unfairness of the world--though these things are very real also--but simply that the world is ever-changing. Life happens. You move on. You lose touch with people.

But how much sharper is the pain of loneliness! How much sharper the pain of not having to feel that lesser pain, because you never felt that bond in the first place.

No. You’re not imagining it. The ages are coming quicker now. All things speed toward their end. That’s just how the world works.

PATCH 7.0

It’s true that all joy will die, either in the shredder  or grief, or the way a childhood afternoon in summer doe, in relaxed exhaustion.

But so will all grief, too.

And thus in time may new joys succeed to old griefs, and on and on, until the stars burn out and the universe dissolves.

Unless there is a day of wrath to come a final storm of suffering and loss, which will cleanse the world and lead to paradise forever.

I do not think that day will come.

But you’re still logged in, aren’t you?

It’s just you and Tom Bombadil now.

PATCH ???

We will haunt unreal places, our minds pacing back and forth over these immaterial landscapes of vanished worlds, long after they became inaccessible to every sense but memory, as living ghosts in an unliving land. Will anything remember our world when it, too, has passed away?

[blueikeproductions]

Heathers AU 80’s Pop Culture Interests

Veronica: Loves classical literature, John Hughs movies, and Disney movies. Enjoys an occasional fantasy film like The Princess Bride, Willow and Legend (the Tom Cruise movie where Tim Curry plays the devil btw). can usually be found B Dalton Booksellers at the Sherwood Mall pouring through its collection on the weekend. Developed an interest in Transformers from her friendship with Dan.

Martha: Particularly enjoys cute things. A huge movie fan and a bit of film snob, she loves Princess Bride above all else. Likes Jim Henson projects, Disney, My Little Pony, She-Ra, Peanuts, ALF, Garfield, Heathcliff, and sitcoms like Punky Brewster, Saved By The Bell and Mama’s Family.

Dan: Wears his interests proudly. Transformers, ALF and Disney Ducks, specifically DuckTales, are his top interests. Likes sci-fi and fantasy movies like The Last Starfighter, Wizards, Dragonslayer, The Dark Crystal, The Flight of Dragons, They Live, Enemy Mine, and The Transformers: The Movie. Famously he was the only one in his friend group back in Hawkins, NOT traumatized by the death of Optimus Prime. Can usually be found at Waldenbooks, KB Toys, Hills and Ames looking for books and Transformers. Likes sitcoms like Family Matters, Doogie Howser and Growing Pains.

JD: Likes chaos and dinosaurs, especially when the two go together. Dabbles in classic literature, and likes Dr. Jeckle & Mr. Hyde in particular. His favorite non Slushee thing is the trading card series Dinosaurs Attack!. Likes The Transformers, with his favorite teams being the Dinobots and Terrorcons. He also likes Soundwave’s two dinosaur cassettes Overkill and Slugfest. Enjoys westerns, schlocky monster/Kaiju movies, RoboCop, the Mad Max series, Escape From New York, The Terminator, Hellraiser, Critters, The Dark Crystal (mostly because of how gnarly the Skeksis look), The Secret of NIHM, Rock & Rule, and shooting games like Operation Wolf and Duck Hunt. Also enjoys crime shows like Wiseguy and Hunter.

Red Heather: Enjoys romance and mystery movies like Cocktail, Dirty Dancing, Body Double, The Bedroom Window and Vision Quest. Looks down on those who still watch cartoons at their age like Dan and Specs, despite she herself liking a good Bugs Bunny cartoon once and awhile. Enjoys teen gossip magazines like Teen Beat, ‘Teen, and Super Teen, but doesn’t read much otherwise.

Green Heather: A closet Muppets, Indiana Jones and Star Wars fan. Particularly likes the Ewok spin off movies, but desperately tries to hide this from the other Heathers. Absolutely hates romance movies like Can’t Buy Me Love, and chafes when Red Heather forces her to watch them for movie night. Has a thing for musicals like The Phantom of the Opera, Starlight Express and Cats.

Gold Heather: Despite her sweet demeanor and appearance, she LOVES horror and slasher movies like Hellraiser, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Child’s Play, Army of Darkness, Creepers, and Fright Night. The bloodier and more chaotic, the better. Red and Green are too disturbed to really judge or comment and just let Gold enjoy herself. She also dabbles in anime because of Specs, owning a Doraemon keychain he gifted her clipped to her purse. When asked by others, she denies knowing what it is and just found it cute in a crude attempt to protect her reputation.

Specs: HUGE Star Wars fan. Had he survived, he would also be a fan of the Prequels and Sequels, mostly happy there’s more movies to enjoy and analyze, despite agreeing the sequels aren’t that great. Big anime fan, enjoying stuff like Space Adventure Cobra, Demon City Shinjuku, Arcadia of My Youth: Endless Orbit SSX, Doraemon, Saint Seiya, Space Warrior Baldos, Robot Carnival, Giant Gorg, Ronin Warriors and Sherlock Hound, but particularly loves Tatsunoko Productions like the various Time Bokan series and Tekkaman.

Kurt: Enjoys stuff like Conan the Barbarian, TMNT, He-Man, Thundercats, Thundarr the Barbarian, Blackstar and Bravestarr, but hides it initially. He-Man is his jam, and is both his “gay awakening” and the reason he started working out and getting into sports. Once admitted to Dan that Prince Adam/He-Man is his idol and who he strived to be, but failed and instead became an Evil Warrior like Two-Bad (in conjunction with Ram). Likes to collect He-Man toys but is often in a disguise when going to places like KB Toys to find them. Similarly likes collecting He-Man and TMNT comics but tries to hide them In between workout and swimsuit magazines. Also reads the gay model magazine Stud Puppy, but isn’t as good at hiding it… Actually got to model for Stud Puppy in his early twenties as part of a personal milestone.

Ram: A big TMNT fan, especially the movies and video games, but initially hides it. Is actually a pretty big gamer when he’s not playing football, and frequents the arcades to play the games albeit in disguise. An expert BurgerTime, Pole Position, Contra, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong player, and is very fond of Mario and The Legend of Zelda. Isn’t particularly great at sports games like ExciteBike and Track & Field ironically. A casual fan of Star Wars, and unsurprisingly his favorite part of Return of the Jedi is the slave Leia stuff. Enjoys testosterone charged movies like Top Gun, The Running Man, Commando, Bloodsport, Big Trouble in Little China and The Warriors.

Betty: Similar tastes to Veronica and Martha. Seems particularly into Care Bears, ironic given her cruelty later on. Likes sitcoms like Family Ties, The Golden Girls and Nightcourt.

Jamie: Shares Dan, Kurt, Ram and Spec’s interests. Big Dungeons & Dragons kid and loves the cartoon. Big movie guy like Martha. Enjoys stuff like V, Quantum Leap, TerraHawks, Poltergeist, Batteries Not Included and Flight of the Navigator.

Thrash: Shares Ram’s interest in testosterone based movies. Big Arnold Schwarzenegger and Slyvester Stallone fan.

Throttle: Like Veronica, he is a bit of a bibliophile, and enjoys classic literature. Likes Steven King and the Dune series in particular.

#heathers #heathers fanfic #heathers au #heathers the musical #veronica sawyer #jason dean #heather chandler #heather duke #heather macnamara #heathers headcanons #heathers oc #blueike productions #heathers 1989

[infini-tree]

thinking about my idea of a cu ttrpg, and the concept of “merchant”-type npc characters that a party may encounter in between major monster of the week encounters and i have 2 (technically 3) ideas for that:

for the oneshot (though, it could be used for a longer campaign)

an older kid from jerome horwitz. probably an older grade, if not already on their last year. as a result they knew of george and harold, as well as captain. not sure what sort of clique/Type Of Kid they’d be, but i feel like that’s the Dungeonmaster’s Choice. you can get assorted confiscated items from them, and perhaps a few secrets to help you... for a price. 

(said price is usually candy, or whatever thing would be alluring to kids)

for a long form campaign

both typically would ask for a type of item/favor-- something that would be vaguely tied to the upcoming plot ahead but is out of the way of the main “quest” that there’s some difficulty to get it.

(eg. another bee themed monster of the week pops up and the player characters either have to collect royal jelly before defeating the monster and everything is cleaned up while said monster is in the same chamber that houses it, or make sure another character isn’t enthralled by said monster for Plot Reasons)

the first of these is an employee working for the in-universe equivalent of scholastic. they work in a warehouse that houses all the inventory for all those book orders you get in elementary school. specifically, they keep a specific section of books and other paraphernalia that are “off-catalogue” for various reasons (due to how dangerous they are), and can perhaps be useful on your journey to figure out the Monster Resurgence. good for anyone with a science/gadgeteer/equivalent of magic build here

the other is the same sort of deal, but they work in a warehouse that houses wiseguy branded pranking supplies and are similarly “off-market” for similar reasons. items are geared towards pranking (and therefore stealth) and are the most risky to use with high reward. would be good for any rogues or heavy hitters in the party

#mells thinking out loud on her blog again #captain underpants #the calamitous perils of the city of piqua

[tommytranselo]

henry liked stories about knights as a kid, i think.  the loyalty, the pageantry, the code of honor, the going off on quests for the sake of your lord or for a princess or whoever.  one of his older brothers would read them to him and his second older brother and get really into it, doing the voices and acting it out and stuff.

joe admired the neighborhood wiseguys since he was very young, but i think he also liked stories about pirates.  being the captain of a loyal crew, living outside the law adventuring on the high seas, the excitement of it all...

and vito, of course, likes cowboys & westerns.  still does.

#headcanons #henry tomasino #joe barbaro #vito scaletta

[rollibestof]

Warrior cat quest game

#Warrior cat quest game Patch

Players will now get nibbles when their fishing levels are too low for the area.

Survival Hunter’s Lock and Load effect should now trigger correctly.

Death Knight’s Ghoul from Raise Dead will now resummon when dismounting after flying.

Resolved an issue where a Druid could appear to have two copies of Leader of the Pack active.

Players that are logged off inside a dungeon instance when it is reset will now log back into the nearest graveyard.

Queue up via the Battlegrounds tab on the PvP menu.

Players may now queue for Battlegrounds from anywhere, without having to speak to a Battlemaster.

Resolved an issue that could cause the visual effect of Cartel Wiseguy’s Lightshard Retreat to sometimes not be visible.

Cauldrons’ Soup Spray debuff to be damaged by Luminore’s Burning Blaze.

Resolved an issue that could cause players with Mrs.

Rygelon – Dark Eclipse and Event Horizon.

Halondrus the Reclaimer – Volatile Charge.

Sire Denathrius – Blood Price, Crimson Chorus, Fatal Finesse, Night Hunter, and Impale.

Stone Legion Generals – Heart Rend, Heart Hemorrhage, Ravenous Feast, Crystalize, Crystalline Burst, Seismic Upheaval, Anima Infusion, Volatile Anima Infusion, Volatile Anima Infection, and Wicked Laceration.

Sludgefist – Chain Slam, Chain Link, Hateful Gaze, and Seismic Shift.

The Council of Blood – Dancing Fever, and Dark Recital.

Lady Inerva Darkvein – Warped Desires, and Shared Suffering.

Hungering Destroyer – Gluttonous Miasma.

Artificer Xy'mox – Glyph of Destruction, Stasis Trap, Withering Touch, Aura of Dread, and Dimensional Tear.

Sun King's Salvation – Burning Remnants, Vanquished, and Crimson Flurry.

Huntsman Altimor – Sinseeker, Petrifying Howl, and Deathly Roar.

Shriekwing – Earsplitting Shriek and Exsanguinated.

Lady Jaina Proudmoore, Sylvanas Windrunner, and Uther the Lightbringer.

The loot table for Blue Sack of Gems now only includes loot from Onyxia's Lair, as intended.

Argent Dawn vendors for the Scourge Invasion can no longer be put into combat by players "at war" with them.

Fixed an issue that caused the freeze visual effect to never expire.

Sepulcher of the First Ones: Anduin Wrynn.

The following NPC’s will no longer be afflicted by Fated Infusion: Protoform Barrier:.

High Test Eternium Fishing Line that was applied prior to Wrath of the Lich King Classic pre-patch should now correctly grant +5 Fishing Skill (was +2).

Fixed an issue where the bonus armor was not being granted on some rings.

Fixed a very rare issue where a player could be unable to access their second talent specialization after learning Dual Talent Specialization.

The PvP window should now move or hide itself as necessary when other UI is opened.

Paladin’s Seal of Corruption can no longer be dispelled.

We have implemented this alternative method to give players an opportunity to drop Bypass Codes so other players can grab them.

Developers’ note: Blind players are reporting difficulties with Bypass Codes because they are unable to drop them and they are unable to complete the mechanic using just /follow.

Added an extra action button for depositing or dropping Bypass Codes in addition to manually interacting with the Security Panel.

Lords of Dread – Fearful Trepidation, Anguishing Strike, Cloud of Carrion, Paranoia.

Anduin Wrynn – Domination Word: Pain, Hopelessness, Hopebreaker, Blasphemy (Hopelessness/Overconfidence), Lost Soul, Wicked Star, Empowered Wicked Star.

Prototype Pantheon – Runecarver's Deathtouch, Sinful Projection.

Skolex, the Insatiable Ravener – Ephemera Dust.

Sylvanas Windrunner – Expulsion, Lashing Wound, Crushing Dread, Curse of Lethargy, Domination Chains, Banshee's Mark, Banshee's Bane, Veil of Darkness, Haunting Wave, Shadow Dagger, Death Knives, Barbed Arrow.

Kel'Thuzad – Glacial Wrath, Frost Blast, Oblivion's Echo.

Fatescribe Roh-Kalo – Grim Portent, Invoke Destiny, Call of Eternity.

Guardian of the First Ones – Threat Neutralization, Obliterate.

Painsmith Raznal – Shadowsteel Chains, Lingering Flames, Cruciform Axe, Reverberating Hammer, Dualblade Scythe, Flameclasp Trap.

The Eye of the Jailer – Dragging Chains, Deathlink, Scorn and Ire, Hopeless Lethargy.

The Tarragrue – Chains of Eternity, Predator's Howl.

The following encounter abilities will no longer be notably altered by Fated Infusion: Creation Spark:.

This list will be updated as additional hotfixes are applied.

#Warrior cat quest game Patch

Please keep in mind that some issues cannot be addressed without a client-side patch update. Some of the hotfixes below take effect the moment they were implemented, while others may require scheduled realm restarts to go into effect. Here you'll find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, Burning Crusade Classic and WoW Classic.

#Warrior cat quest game

[driftbending]

Throughout the onslaughts against their families, America's wiseguys have retained a precious asset that contributes to their survival. It is the media's romanticization of mobsters, subtly encouraging acceptance of the Mafia as just another aspect of the nation's culture. The Oscar-winning "Godfather" movies in the 1970s set the stage for the public perception that a biased Wasp-run society had compelled a tiny segment of Italian-American immigrants to form criminal bands and resort to violence and stealth as their only means of acceptance and advancement. A raft of novels and films spiced with empathic and comedic touches, such as "Prizzi's Honor", "Analyse This", "The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight", and "Bugsy", cast some mobsters as high-living, lovable rogues. These films present them as dedicated criminals; yet, too often, they are given redeeming qualities, a revered code of honor, loyalty, and obedience. Their quest is simply the American ideal of obtaining wealth and respect, even if an occasional homicide and betrayal is required.

Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires by Selwyn Raab

#don't say that kdrama's name don't say that kdrama's name don't say that kdrama's name #anyway the excerpts of this book are fascinating and i can't wait to get my copy of it #to read

[nerdy-bits]

Ghost of Tsushima and PlayStation Prestige Storytelling

There is an unspoken, yet constantly spoken, expectation that exists in the game industry that demands that games change over time. That they evolve. Yet, it is an expectation that is demanded hypocritically, or perhaps misguidedly. 

When I started writing about games I remember holding a firm stance that Call of Duty was actually garbage, because it was all just recycled gameplay with minimal facelift year-to-year. There is this unspoken standard in games, it seems, that demands a distinguishable improvement over time. Yet, it never seems to quantify its own qualifications. What does that improvement entail? Surely graphical and mechanical improvements, yes? Do those expectations also include things like gameplay evolution? Does Last of Us II need to feel different than its predecessor or is it possible to just build on the framework that its priors have already laid?

None of these questions seem to have answers. At least I have never seen anyone take the time to sit down and build a more specific set of guidelines with which one can view a game’s…”uniqueness”? See, I even struggle to find the right word for the concept as a whole. 

So let me start over, if not for you than for myself. 

When I sat behind my desk to start playing Ghost of Tsushima, I was immediately confronted by a feeling of familiarity. I knew how to play this game already. Combat was simple, light and heavy attack, parry, counter-attack. It all felt very Assassin’s Creed 2, or perhaps even Arkham Asylum. Truthfully, I haven’t played the game in close to three months, but the mechanics are so easy to pick up that I have no doubt it would be a breeze to return. 

Ghost of Tsushima, for the last AAA exclusive release on the PS4, is largely a summary of the genre for the last generation and a half. It’s both extremely appropriate and - in a sort of way - unavoidably disappointing. See, Sony has realized its version of what we call Prestige Television. Allow me the short diversion to explain myself. 

In 200, 2008, and 2010 AMC discovered that it could deliver a version of television that bordered on the production value of film, but also allowed its storytellers the ability to tell a story over ten or twelve hours. Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead all established that television need not only be a procedural drama focused on serialized formulaity. They established that building a prolonged narrative arc could pay off, and draw record viewership in the process. Were they the first to do this? No, of course not. The Sopranos, The Wire, and before them the likes of Hill Street Blues, or Wiseguy. But see, the difference between the latter examples there and the former, is the accessibility. Hill Street Blues airing on NBC and Wiseguy on CBS. The Sopranos and The Wire continued the tradition of stellar television but on a far more exclusive stage. HBO wasn’t and still isn’t in most households. Then, at some point in the late 2000s, cable television stepped to the plate, and prestige television reemerged, and this time it propagated outward in every direction. Now nearly every network wants its own prestige show. 

But what does any of this have to do with the Ghost of Tsushima and PlayStation? I think that Sucker Punch is another studio swallowed up by this generation of Playstation Prestige Storytelling. If swallowed up sounds a bit negative, that is on purpose. Last of Us started something, and after seven years of AAA exclusives focused on telling mature stories, Tsushima feels like the perfect bookend to this generation. A generation of exclusives full of prestige storytelling but not particularly full of unique or revolutionary gameplay experiences.

Look at both Last of Us titles, God of War, Uncharted, and Horizon Zero Dawn. It’s hard to find better single player experiences over the last 8 years. Each game is well written, expertly acted, and smartly directed. I deeply enjoyed each one. But over time it was hard to not realize one similarity: PlayStation exclusives don’t really push any boundaries outside of delivering highly manicured story and stunning visuals. 

The toughest part about writing this is making clear that my opinion, despite sounding critical, isn’t. I own my PS4 for these titles. I lap them up hungrily. I feel I’ve just recognized what they are for me. Beyond a way to stay relevant, they act as a window into some of the best writing in the industry. 

Ghost of Tsushima is a beautiful game complimented by an equally beautiful story. That story resides in the most refined version of recycled gameplay mechanics I have ever seen. And what’s more? It absolutely works. Tsushima is the summation of open world games for the last decade. It does very little new, but everything it does, it does markedly better than its predecessors. Arguably its most unique feature is its navigational breeze. Removing the non-diegetic quest marker and dotted-line trail for a more diegetic system that draws the breeze to guide you. The flourish of foliage is stunning almost always, and by hour three I had forgotten that it was a mechanic completely, and felt it more as a system of the world’s design. 

But the combat is Arkham, the exploration is Assassin’s Creed, and the stealth is Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell. But the cutscenes. The attention to detail in exposition and composition is deliberate and masterful. In the opening moments Jin finds his family katana in a dark room. After a flashback, showing you his first moments learning under Lord Shimura, he unsheaths the blade over his head. The high moon shining through the torn walls casting a brilliant silver glare on across the folded steel. He positions the blade in a Jodan Kasumi stance, flaring the light of the moon across his face. This extremely good shit is painted across every scene in this game. 

As much as I found myself quietly laughing at the novelty of a game made of a generation of parts, it wasn’t long before I absolutely didn’t care anymore. 

That’s the trick. The conceit. Prestige television ostensibly didn’t change what film had been doing for decades. Rather it took that formula and drew it out, carried it over to a different medium, and used viewers’ desire for a good story to leverage their attention. God of War takes the Dark Souls formula for combat and boils it down, hones, and tunes it to its purposes. Uncharted is Tomb Raider with a heaping spoonful of Indiana Jones. Last of Us is almost literally apocalyptic Uncharted. Bloodborne is, well, Lovecraftian Dark Souls. You see the point. PlayStation’s story based exclusives, have built upon what has come before to hone something truly special for each of its games. Just not unique.

Podcasting and writing about games independently means you play a lot of games to stay relevant. A lot of games. I end up putting at least a dozen hours into most releases. When I like a game it generally means mainlining it to make way for the next game. I put 110 hours into Valhalla in the month and a half since it has been out. Playing that much means that when games are similar it can start to drag on you. It almost impacted my enjoyment of Ghost of Tsushima. 

I started extremely critical of Tsushima’s willingness to borrow. I thought it cheap and lacking imagination. The story even immediately impacted me as a bit of a general take on very mainstream ideas of Japanese culture. I saw the combat and, though thoroughly enjoying it, kept reminding myself that it is just recycled mechanics. The first five hours of the game I tried so hard to convince myself that Ghost of Tsushima was too much of a copycat to be enjoyed. I’m honestly not even sure what it was that changed my mind. All I know is, around hour six, I realized what was really going on under the hood of Tsushima, and I fell in love with the notion of paying homage to what has come before. And that brings me closer to my point.

Ghost of Tsushima is Assassin’s Creed 2 made better. Logical visual update afforded by the passage of time aside, it’s combat is smoother, systems more diagetic, design more nuanced. It’s the culmination of a generation of games striving to be more. But it’s not the end of that pursuit. While Tsushima is incredible it’s not perfect. There are small flaws. Some persistent, some one off. 

But it’s another step forward. In the journey of PlayStation Prestige Storytelling it is a logical step. An investigation of further leaning on established systems as an avenue for improvement. Expect future titles to do the same. We are definitely getting a second Tsushima game. Count on that. We also know we’re getting another God of War. 

PlayStation exclusives refined themselves this generation. They are heightened storytelling experiences with a tremendous amount of good writing, jaw dropping visuals, and reimagined mechanics. Have they been a consistent wellspring of innovation? No. But then neither has prestige television. It’s a familiar system, twisted and turned, made to look fresh. And it’s perfect, and learning. 

@LubWub ~Caleb

#ghost of tsushima #playstation #exclusive #article #readable #review #sucker punch #ps4 #games #nerdybits

[theirrationalzone]

My Top Ten Games of 2020

Let’s just address the giant elephant in the room from the offset: 2020 has been one giant mess of a year. Every event, every major moment this year just felt like the worst case scenario every time.

For a lot of us though, there was one saving grace: video games.

2020 has been a damn fine year for video games. From the return of certain classic franchises to some amazing new entries and experiences. Gaming really managed to thrive in a year where other entertainment mediums such as films and television struggled.

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the games that made this year a lot more bearable:

10: Watch Dogs Legion

I’ve had a soft spot for Ubisoft’s hack ‘em up franchise for quite a while. I didn’t think the original was as disappointing as it was made out to be and I thought the second one was an underrated gem. When Legion was first announced, I liked a lot of what the game was setting out to do but I wasn’t ready to pull the trigger on getting it. I decided to give the game a chance in the end and I’m glad I did.

Legion might suffer from the same pitfalls that have plagued other Ubisoft enterprises, but the recruitment mechanic is one of the coolest systems I have seen in any game ever. The fact that you can recruit any NPC that you see on the streets of London and use their unique talents to complete your objectives is just an awesome thing in and of itself. Its depiction of London is also incredibly fun to explore and cause mayhem in. While I found the writing to be pretty subpar, the game quite buggy and the whole PS5 upgrade fiasco a farce, I still found Legion to be a fun open world experience overall.

9: Resident Evil 3

Resident Evil has been on a real hot streak as of late, hasn’t it? Ever since Capcom made a promise to its fans that the Resident Evil series would go back to what made it so popular in the first place, the series has gone from strength to strength. Last year saw the release of the RE2 Remake which was absolutely excellent in that it kept the spirit of the original while also taking a few liberties of its own. It was only a matter of time before RE3 got the same treatment and well... it did.

I’m just going to spit this out. It’s not as good as the RE2 Remake. It didn’t need to be though. I still think this is a good game that provides a satisfying and fun survival horror experience. It carries over a lot of the elements that made the RE2 Remake such an excellent game and in certain areas (especially the writing) it makes a few improvements. Plus the game looks absolutely stunning thanks to the RE Engine. It is quite short. It is missing quite a bit of content from the original game. It definitely isn’t as replayable as the RE2 Remake. I still had a blast with it though overall. If this really is a blip for the Resident Evil series, then it must be in a really good place right now.

8: Tell Me Why

Dontnod Entertainment have fast become one of my favourite developers in the industry right now. When I first played Life is Strange back in 2015, it felt like a revelation. It weaved a fantastic story with characters you genuinely cared for and took you to a place you never wanted to leave. I’ve enjoyed all of their other ventures since then such as the underrated (if quite janky) Vampyr and Life is Strange 2.

Tell Me Why is another venture that fits the Dontnod MO: A grounded emotional story with slight supernatural elements, a degree of player choice and a setting that makes your jaw drop. The major difference here is the game’s attempt to portray a transgender character. That’s nothing new in and of itself. It’s more the fact that it attempts to accurately portray a transgender male character which is a bit of a rarity in all forms of media. Transgender portrayals (from what I’ve seen) tend to focus on male to female rather than female to male.

I’m in no position to comment on whether the portrayal is accurate or not, but I got the impression that Dontnod really went out of their way to get this right. Their FAQ explains that they worked with GLAAD and the voice actor to get it as right as they could. That alone deserves huge praise, but I also loved the Ronan Twins’ story as they dealt with their harsh past and the uncertain future. The game was a delight from beginning to end and it just looks absolutely gorgeous to boot. Dontnod have done it again.

7: Bugsnax

One of the early delights of the last generation was a little ditty known as Octodad: Dadliest Catch. It was a fun little physics based affair which cast you as a octopus masquerading as a human. The game had a terrific sense of humour and it was just bloody fun to play. Young Horses (the developer of the game) kinda went dark after that. They only really resurfaced to release two bonus levels for that game and then they just disappeared again. Now we know why that was the case...

Bugsnax retains some of the qualities that made Octodad such as a memorable game. A great sense of humour and a unique gameplay hook. You play as a reporter sent to the mysterious Snaktooth Island to interview an explorer called Elizabert Megafig who has discovered these unusual creatures known as Bugsnax. After crash landing onto the island, you discover that Elizabert and her significant other have gone missing. It’s up to you to find out what happened while also documenting and capturing Bugsnax for yourself. Capturing the Bugsnax is a big part of what makes this game such a delight to play. As you unlock more tools to play around with, you can come up with different strategies and methods to capture these weird snack based creatures. It’s pretty awesome. Throw in a lovable set of characters to interact with and a beautiful environment to explore, and you’ve got one of the most lovable games released this year.

6: Mafia: Definitive Edition

The last few years haven’t been too kind to the Mafia franchise in my eyes. I really wanted to like Mafia III when it came out back in 2016. It was a sequel I waited years for and it did have some good qualities such as an excellent story that dealt with some pretty heavy topics, solid gameplay mechanics and an amazing licensed soundtrack. Unfortunately the game had one of the most tedious and boring gameplay loops I think I’ve ever seen in an open world game. It just got so dull after the first couple of hours.

This year saw the announcement of the Mafia Trilogy which was to be a celebration of the entire franchise with a remake of the first game, a remaster of the second and a re-release of the third. Half of this was botched with the remaster of II being poorly put together and the re-release of III receiving a broken patch. Things were looking grim for the remake...

As you can see by it being in this list, we were proven wrong. Mafia: DE is a fantastic remake that pays good lip service to the original while also expanding on certain elements. The story which follows the rise and fall of cab driver turned wiseguy Tommy Angelo is more fleshed out with new sequences and character moments that weren’t in the original. Gameplay still retains the solid shooting and cover mechanics of Mafia III and the driving feels absolutely excellent especially when you put it in simulation mode. Lost Heaven is just gorgeous to behold as well with its bustling neighbourhoods and beautiful countryside. I hope this is the beginning of a redemption arc for Hangar 13 and the Mafia franchise. There is a lot of promise to build upon from here.

5: Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise

Anyone who knows me personally or has followed me on social media for a while knows that I’m a big fan of Deadly Premonition. The 2010 cult survival horror hit pretty much encapsulates why I love video games with its lovable hero, an eccentric cast of characters and surprisingly solid mechanics considering the budget it was made for. It was definitely more than the sum of its parts.

When I found out that a sequel was being made exclusively for the Nintendo Switch, my jaw hit the floor pretty hard. I thought any hopes for a sequel were dashed when SWERY left Access Games (the original dev), and yet here we are. A Blessing in Disguise is a brilliant sequel to the zany original. It captures everything that I loved about the original game to a T while also improving in certain aspects. The story is more ambitious this time with it being both prequel and sequel. A lot of the gameplay elements have been improved. The combat benefits from better aiming controls and an upgrade system for both York and his weapon. Getting from A to B is less wonky (and more fun) thanks to the addition of a skateboard rather than a car.

While I do still think the original is better due to the more creative side quests, the more challenging difficulty and the fact that it functions better from a technical perspective, I’m still a big fan of DP2 and it deserves your attention. Here’s hoping that it makes its way to other platforms in the future.

4: Ghost of Tsushima

This last generation has been good for Sony and its Worldwide Studios. In the last five years, they’ve managed to produce hit after hit after hit. A definite far cry from the first year of the PS4 where they produced some dire exclusives. Infamous Second Son was one of these. Sucker Punch’s first effort on the console was very pretty and a good technical showpiece for the console, but as a game, it was boring and dull. I couldn’t even muster the strength to finish it. The standalone expansion First Light was a huge improvement in my eyes. It cut out a lot of the fluff from Second Son. I knew then that Sucker Punch would eventually give us something amazing. They certainly did in the end...

Ghost of Tsushima is honestly one of the best exclusives that Sony has ever produced. Giving us a brutal tale in the vein of a Kurosawa flick where samurai Jin Sakai is forced to betray his code in order to drive out the Mongol force that has enslaved his homeland; we have a story that is genuinely gripping from beginning to end with an incredibly powerful final duel to boot. The combat is incredibly fun with a brilliant combat system that is easy to pick up but challenging to master. Duels especially show the combat system at its finest. Upgrading your abilities genuinely makes you feel incredibly powerful as you begin to decimate enemies left, right and center. Stealth is solid giving you plenty of tools at your disposal and certainly changes up the gameplay a fair bit. Did I mention that Tsushima Island is one of the most aesthetically pleasing locales in any game to date? Well I’m saying it now. It is one of the most beautiful locales in any game to date.

I’m very excited to see where this new IP goes in the future because this first entry is just incredible. A must buy if you own or plan on owning a PlayStation 4 or 5 in the near future.

3: Astro’s Playroom

Memorable pack-in exclusives are a bit of a rarity nowadays. The last one that sticks in my mind is Wii Sports, and that was a long time ago.

Astro’s Playroom serves as the pack-in title for the PlayStation 5 as it is pre-installed on all units. It’s also my favourite exclusive for the console so far. The main reason for this is that Astro’s Playroom evolves past being just a tech demo for the console and its fancy new controller. It actually is a fun little platformer in its own right. It offers something different with every level. In one level you can transform into a giant ball and attempt to navigate some pretty tight platforms, and in the next, you take control of a rocket ship and navigate through corridors while also avoiding bombs. There is great variety here and to be fair, it shows off the potential of the new DualSense controller fantastically.

Plus the game is just one giant love letter to the PlayStation brand and the games that made it what it is today. You’ll see references to obscure PlayStation paraphernalia such as the Multitap and UMD discs, and also games like Final Fantasy VII and Silent Hill. The final boss of the game in particular is one giant callback to something you might remember if you got a PlayStation 1 back in the day. I won’t say any more, but it made me yelp in joy when I saw it. If you plan on getting a PlayStation 5 in the future, make this the first game you play. You won’t regret it.

2: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2

Activision have been on a roll in the last few years with the revitalisation of some of their classic franchises. Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon for example have enjoyed newfound success thanks to the excellent N Sane Trilogy and Reignited Trilogy. When it was revealed earlier this year that Vicarious Visions and Beenox would be resurrecting the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater franchise with a remake of Pro Skater 1 and 2, my heart skipped a good few beats.

The Pro Skater franchise means a lot to me personally as I have very fond memories of putting hours into 1 and 2 when I was a kid. Going through the Career mode with each skater, learning the gaps and getting used to doing manuals when they were introduced in 2, it’s all ingrained into me. I’m happy to say that this is probably the best remake I have ever played. It perfectly captures what made those first two entries so special. Each level is beautifully recreated with a ton of new details that serve to enhance these levels. The soundtrack includes all of your old favourites like Goldfinger’s Superman and Rage Against the Machine’s Guerilla Radio along with some fantastic new tracks like Less Than Jake’s Bomb Drop.

The gameplay definitely taps more into Pro Skater 3 and 4 territory with Reverts and Flatland tricks included. These tricks don’t feel out of place and the game does give you the option to play it legacy style if you want. It feels magnificent overall though. The physics are pitch perfect. Creating lines and large combos is still as addicting and rewarding as ever. Online leaderboards certainly tempt you to reach for the stars if you’ve got the ability. Career mode isn’t particularly long, but the pretty robust Create-a-Park editor and solid multiplayer suite should keep you coming back for more. I’ve already put dozens of hours into this and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon.

If my number 1 entry on this list didn’t exist, this would be my Game of the Year. As it stands though, this is a very close second.

1: Doom Eternal

How do you follow up one of the best first person shooters in recent memory? Basically turn everything up to eleven and then some. Doom (2016) was such an eye opener when it launched. It gave everything we could have ever wanted from a new Doom game: a whole planet full of demons to kill and some big guns to help them back to where they belong. It was awesome and an easy choice for my GOTY back in 2016.

I anticipated Doom Eternal with bated breath. The excitement was building but the nerves were building with it. How could it live up to the previous one? What if it makes the same mistakes as Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus? Thankfully my worries were unfounded as soon as I loaded up the game and was thrown straight into the fold with a Combat Shotgun and some entry level demons to destroy with it.

Doom Eternal is the FPS genre at its absolute finest. The levels are much bigger with more secrets to find and loads of demons to kill. Said demons are much more plentiful in their ranks and they move faster too. Fortunately enough, you have a huge arsenal to deal death to these demonic denizens from the depths of Hell such as the starter Combat Shotgun, the Plasma Rifle, the Ballista and even a giant sword known as the Crucible. Enemies now have weak points to exploit as well which can turn the tide of battle and it rewards accuracy. Before you know it, you’ll be entangled in a ballet of bullets, beams, blood and guts (HUGE guts mind you.) This game makes you feel like a hero at the end of every fight. It’s so satisfying.

Toss in a soundtrack that will get your blood pumping and your goosebumps raising along with environments that will make your TV or monitor look like a window to a scorched earth, and you have my Game of the Year for 2020. Well deserved for sure. I really need to get on that DLC.

To those of you who actually took the time to read all that, you have my heartfelt thanks. I really appreciate you reading this and I hope my choices made sense.

To those of you who just glanced at each entry and skimmed through the text, I don’t blame you for doing that. I still appreciate you taking a look anyway.

All that’s left for me to say is that I hope each and every one of you has a safe holiday season and I hope that the New Year will be better for all of us.

I’ll see you all in 2021. Stay safe and well, folks.

#goty 2020 #ps5 #ps4 #switch

[emj-tolj]

Adventures via The Media

Since I am very limited to physically take adventures. I often live them through TV and movies. Thus my Adventure Hunter Media list reads as follows:

Action-Adventure: MacGyver (New and Old),  WiseGuy, Castle,                Bones, Bourne movies, Dead Heat, Mission Impossible,

Actionploitation: Messenger of Death, Death Wish movies,                      The Mechanic, Streets of Fire

Adventure/Pulp: Rocketeer, The Spirit, Sky Captain, Goonies,                  Cool World, Hardy Boys, Drums of Fu Manchu

Archaeology: Mummy, Indiana Jones, Jack Hunter, Dakota Jack,

Atom Punk: Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon,

Aviation: Wings (tv series) Biggles, Fly Boys

Barbarian: Beastmaster

Buddy cop: Simon and Simon, Hardcastle and Makepeace,                       American Justice,

Comedy: Top Secret, Lemonade Joe, Johnny Dangerously,

Cops: Adam 14, CSI (Original) CHIPS

Desert: Prince of Persia, Adventures of Sinbad, Sinbad movies

Detective: Blue Dahlia, Dick Tracy serials, City Heat, Big Sleep

Dinosaur: Jurassic Park films, Valley of Gwangi, (many more)

Drama: (Too many to count)

Espinoage/Spy: Le Samouria, Cerce Le Rogue, Jeff, (Many more)

Fantasy: Lord of the Rings, Robin of Sherwood, Roar, Knights Tale (Many more)

Gangster: St. Valentines Day Massacre,

Greaser: Lords of Flatbush, The Leather Boys, Grease, Teenage Wolf Pack, Outsiders, Wild One

Greek/Roman: Atlantis series, Clash of Titans (Original) Jason and Argonauts, The Odyssee (Many More)

Horror: (Too many to list)

Jungle: Jungle Jim, Sheena, Tarzan TV series & films 

Mountie: Whispers of the Heart, Perils of the Royal Mounted, King of the Royal Mounted

Neo Noir: Reign of Blood

Noir: Night an that City, Laura, Out of the past, Raw Deal, Fallen Angel, Double Indemnity

Ostern Western: Winnetou Movies 

Pirate: Princess Bride, The Pirate Movie,

Post Apocalyse: Mad Max movies

Sci Fi- Firefly, Battlestar Galactica (Original) Star Wars, Alien Nation, Dr. Who, Orville, V, Farscape, Guardians of the Galaxy

Superhero: Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern,

Thriller: Supernatural, Tenebrae (many more)

Western: Red Sun, Rio Bravo, Kid From Texas, Night Passage, Kansas raiders, Spikes Gang, The PLunderers, The Outlaw, Range Rider, White Feather, West World, Bordertown series, Bonanza, The Quest, Lawman, The Monroes, Red River, (Many others)

Clearly there are tons more but I thinks these are my first Go-To’s when I need an Adventure fix. 

#Movies #TV series #aesthetics #aesthetic #adventure aesthetic #adventure #Adventure Hunter #adventurecore

[absul]

not to make this Too Deep but also it absolutely is this deep; ppl wouldn’t be so quick to call Beffica a bitch or act like she’s the most annoying character ever if she was a guy instead 😶

like think abt it. you’re around 30 minutes into a game and you have this character that’s a bit snarky, maybe you’d even describe him as arrogant, or a know-it-all. the first instant you meet him he butts heads with another character and calls them an, honestly, harmless(and arguably humorous, from an outside-the-game perspective) insult. but the second you talk to him he immediately is warm to you, and he instantly starts complimenting you and even calling you by an affectionate nickname(bestie) despite having never met you before. he even lets you borrow his stuff no sweat despite, AGAIN, ONLY JUST BARELY EVEN KNOWING WHO YOU ARE. the dude literally serves as a tutorial for one of the main features of the game.

as you keep playing you get a better feel for his personality; he’s very conflict-oriented, and butts heads with pretty much every other character because of the way he likes to snoop around*. many of his quests for you features you getting dirt on the others. however, at no point does he make a show of telling anyone else about it; he talks about it with you, and only you, for like 2 minutes each time, and then he never brings any of it up again. it almost feels like he wants to know just for knowing’s sake, rather than to be directly malicious.

(*but, honestly, ALL of the characters are at least halfway at each other’s throats. his vague dislike of them does not stick out, at all. they’re very much a hastily-cobbled-together team of misfits each with their own personal issues, and it shows.)

he mentions that one of the other characters is a thief, and that he took pictures of said thieving and told everyone else about it. huh, that’s actually kinda... thoughtful? why would a gossip like him care about someone stealing? surely it would be more entertaining for him(which he often complains about being ‘bored’ in the town) to NOT say anything and let the drama play out? how odd. later on, when you find out a secret about said character, he talks about how he doesn’t know why they keep it a secret, since to him it makes them seem more likeable. again, why would a know-it-all like him even care, especially considering it’s a character that he’s actively gone against in the past? bizarre.

all throughout the game he keeps talking about how you can’t REALLY depend on others or REALLY trust others, and alludes to the fact that he had a falling out with his ex friend group because of his tendency to be brutally honest. he comes across as the kind of person to cover up his loneliness with a sort of nonchalant, sly wiseguy façade. and it works; the other characters always talk about what a bothersome snoop he is, and whenever they do it do his face he never denies them, instead brushing it off by saying he doesn’t care what they think. no, really.

later on, he mostly talks to himself about how isn’t it so sad how he treats you like his best friend despite barely even knowing you? and how you’d just hate him if you knew the real him? then, again, he brushes it off like that didn’t just happen and carries on. his last quest with you involves him questioning if he can truly trust you, and that he would probably be better off if he didn’t know the answer to that question.

and, man, doesn’t this guy have some serious issues that he needs to work out, and isn’t it kind of unfortunate how he treats himself, and what ever did happen between him and his ex friends anyways?? is he really that worried about being ‘left behind?’ what happened to him for him to build up that kind of a wall around himself? idk i think he’s kinda likeable, in a ‘oh you little rascal!! ;D’ kind of way.

except OH WAIT nevermind! silly me, the character’s a GIRL that talks in ‘stereotypical teenager lingo’ and has kind of a valley girl accent--who cares about her potential backstory or her character arc she’s just an annoying cringey bitch who’s WAAAY meaner than the other characters wow she needs to take a chill pill who does she even think she is why does she always act like she’s so much better than everyone else what a rude bitch ugh why is she even a thing.

but anyways.

#screech #this got longer than i meant and for that i apologize #but also Am I Wrong. #every day i think abt character personalities that get wildly different reactions from the same ppl depending on whether the character in qu #*question is a guy or a woman #also this isn't me blaming the developers btw. they just wanted interesting & fleshed-out characters for their snack parasite game #it's 200% the fault of ppl eating this shit up when it's a guy but then turning around and complaining when a girl does the exact same thing #tldr; i'm so tired of gamer dudebros & just GamersTM in general. these ppl need to read some fucking books

[obstinaterixatrix]

That reminds me, I was listening to wise guys act 2 (again) and I don’t know if I noticed this before but I like how after they go like ‘and take the sunshine express/to your new address’ the music goes from steady beat to more train-like and that’s also when paris gets prompted. he’s got the train motif…

#talking abt musicals #wiseguys quest

[silyabeeodess]

Total rant here: Whoever made the bulk of the Shire quests in LOTRO is an absolute sadist. Thank you, you terror from the bowels of Earth, for turning what should've been one of the most chill locations in the game into an absolute nightmare! >:( I've been running around nonstop on quests that don't let you hit pause to actually explore anything for two seconds--because some wiseguy thought they should all be ridiculously timed across massive landscapes, through enemies and random, moronic NPCS that won't leave you alone. Top that off with the fact that you don't know where you’re going most of the time, so going on foot is about the only option with the auto travel limits otherwise. Oh, and if you miss the timer? You get to go ALL the way back and start over! What psycho thought this was a good idea?

#lotro #lotr #lord of the rings #video games #rant

[olderthannetfic]

Tags on my tumblr

Huh. I didn’t know archive view showed this!

#fandom meta 984

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#I actually have thousands of posts about some of these topics #I just hate tagging

[viggletips]

Amazon Prime for June 2019

Here’s what’s coming to Amazon Prime in June 2019.

June 3

District 9 Jackass 3D

June 4

Chasing Happiness Creative Galaxy: Season 3

June 7

Home Again

June 13

No Strings Attached

June 14

Absentia: Season 2 Law Abiding Citizen

June 17

Suits: Season 8 Yardie

June 21

Documental: Season 3 Final Life: Season 1 Tokyo Alice: Season 1

June 24

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Electronic Music Styles - Electronic Music

Acid Jazz

The music played by a generation raised on jazz as well as funk and hip-hop, Acid Jazz used elements of all three; its existence as a percussion-heavy, primarily live music placed it closer to jazz and Afro-Cuban than any other dance style, but its insistence on keeping the groove allied it with funk, hip-hop, and dance music. The term itself first appeared in 1988 as both an American record label and the title of an English compilation series that reissued jazz-funk music from the ’70s, called “rare groove” by the Brits during a major mid-’80s resurgence. A variety of acid jazz artists emerged during the late ’80s and early ’90s: live bands such as Stereo MC’s, James Taylor Quartet, the Brand New Heavies, Groove Collective, Galliano, and Jamiroquai, as well as studio projects like Palm Skin Productions, Mondo Grosso, Outside, and United Future Organization.

Acid Techno

When the squelch of mid-’80s acid house music was given time to sink into the minds of impressionable youths, they became quite influenced by the sound. Many who began to make music in the early ’90s applied the sound to harder techno instead of the warm sounds of classic Chicago house. Quite similar to early German trance, Acid Techno includes the earlier recordings of Aphex Twin, Plastikman, and Dave Clarke, among others.

Alternative Rap

Alternative Rap refers to hip-hop groups that refuse to conform to any of the traditional stereotypes of rap, such as gangsta, funk, bass, hardcore, and party rap. Instead, they blur genres, drawing equally from funk and pop/rock, as well as jazz, soul, reggae, and even folk. Though Arrested Development and the Fugees managed to cross over into the mainstream, most alternative rap groups are embraced primarily by alternative rock fans, not hip-hop or pop audiences.

Ambient music evolved from the experimental electronic music of ’70s synth-based artists like Brian Eno and Kraftwerk, and the trance-like techno dance music of the ’80s. Ambient is a spacious, electronic music that is concerned with sonic texture, not songwriting or composing. It’s frequently repetitive and it all sounds the same to the casual listener, even though there are quite significant differences between the artists. Ambient became a popular cult music in the early ’90s, thanks to ambient techno artists like the Orb and Aphex Twin.

Ambient Breakbeat

Ambient Breakbeat refers to a narrow subgenre of electronic acts with less energy than the trip-hop or funky breaks, but with a pronounced hip-hop influence to their music. Some of the more downtempo works on British labels like Mo’Wax and Ninja Tune paved the way for New York’s DJ Wally (of the Liquid Sky Records brigade) and British artists such as Req, each good examples of the style.

Ambient Dub

Coined by the Beyond label for its compilation series of the same name, Ambient Dub has since been generalized by artists, critics, and audiences alike to refer to any form of rhythmic, usually beat-oriented ambient using the tastes, textures, and techniques of Jamaican dub-style production (e.g. reverb, emphasis on bass and percussion, heavy use of effects). Although the term has fallen out of favor due to the fevered intermingling of styles characteristic of post-rave electronica, it remains useful in demarcating the denser, more electronic applications of dub from the more hip-hop derived styles of downtempo, atmospheric beat music. Artists include the Orb, Higher Intelligence Agency, Sub Dub, Techno Animal, Automaton, and Solar Quest.

Ambient House

An early categorical marker used to distinguish newer wave ambient artists such as the Orb, the KLF, Irresistible Force, Future Sound of London, and Orbital, Ambient House was often applied indiscriminately to designate dance music not necessarily just for dancing. In its more rigorous application, ambient house implied music appropriating certain primary elements of acid house music-mid-tempo, four-on-the-floor beats; synth pads and strings; soaring vocal samples-used in a dreamier, more atmospheric fashion. It’s since been replaced (or rather, some would argue, complicated) by a barrage of more specific terms and is rarely used.

Ambient Pop

Ambient Pop combines elements of the two distinct styles which lend the blissed-out genre its name-while the music possesses a shape and form common to conventional pop, its electronic textures and atmospheres mirror the hypnotic, meditative qualities of ambient. The mesmerizing lock-groove melodies of Kraut-rock are a clear influence as well, although ambient pop is typically much less abrasive. Essentially an extension of the dream pop that emerged in the wake of the shoegazer movement, it’s set apart from its antecedents by its absorption of contemporary electronic idioms, including sampling, although for the most part live instruments continue to define the sound.

Ambient Techno

A rarefied, more specific reorientation of ambient house, Ambient Techno is usually applied to artists such as B12, early Aphex Twin, the Black Dog, Higher Intelligence Agency, and Biosphere. It distinguished artists who combined the melodic and rhythmic approaches of techno and electro-use of 808 and 909 drum machines; well-produced, thin-sounding electronics; minor-key melodies and alien-sounding samples and sounds-with the soaring, layered, aquatic atmospheres of beatless and experimental ambient. Most often associated with labels such as Apollo, GPR, Warp, and Beyond, the terminology morphed into “intelligent techno” after Warp released its Artificial Intelligence series (although the music’s stylistic references remained largely unchanged).

Bass Music

Springing from the fertile dance scenes in Miami (freestyle) and Detroit (electro) during the mid-’80s, Bass Music brought the funky-breaks aesthetic of the ’70s into the digital age with drum-machine frequencies capable of pulverizing the vast majority of unsuspecting car or club speakers. Early Miami pioneers like 2 Live Crew and DJ Magic Mike pushed the style into its distinctive booty obsession, and Detroit figures like DJ Assault, DJ Godfather, and DJ Bone melded it with techno to create an increasingly fast-paced music. Bass music even flirted with the charts during the early ’90s, as 95 South’s “Whoot (There It Is)” and 69 Boyz’ “Tootsee Roll” both hit the charts and went multi-platinum.

Bhangra started in Northern India, and shows what happens when you blend traditional music with electronic dance sensibilities. It has now spread to other parts of Asia and the UK.

Big Beat

Rescuing the electronica community from a near fall off the edge of its experimental fringe, Big Beat emerged in the mid-’90s as the next wave of big dumb dance music. Regional pockets around the world had emphasized the “less intelligent” side of dance music as early as 1994, in reaction to the growing coterie of chin-stroking intellectuals attached to the drum’n’bass and experimental movements. Big beat as a distinct movement finally coalesced in 1995-96 around two British labels: Brighton’s Skint and London’s Wall of Sound. The former-home to releases by Fatboy Slim, Bentley Rhythm Ace, and Lo-Fidelity Allstars-deserves more honors for innovation and quality, though Wall of Sound was founded slightly earlier and released great singles by Propellerheads, Wiseguys, and Les Rythmes Digitales. Big beat soon proved very popular in America as well, and artists attached to City of Angels Records (the Crystal Method, Überzone, Lunatic Calm, Front BC) gained a higher profile thanks to like-minded Brits. Other than Fatboy Slim, the other superstar artists of big beat were the Chemical Brothers and Prodigy, two groups who predated the style (and assisted its birth). Both the Chemical Brothers and Prodigy were never tight fits either, given productions that often reflected the more intelligent edge of trip-hop, and rarely broke into the mindless arena of true big beat.

The sound of big beat, a rather shameless fusion of old-school party breakbeats with appropriately off-the-wall samples, was reminiscent of house music’s sampladelic phase of the late ’80s as well as old-school rap and its penchant for silly samples and irresistible breaks. Though the sample programming and overall production was leaps and bounds beyond its predecessors, big beat was nevertheless criticized for dumbing down the electronica wave of the late ’90s. Even while recordings by the Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, and Fatboy Slim hit the American charts and earned positive reviews-granted, from rock critics-worldwide, many dance fans rejected the style wholesale for being too reliant on gimmicky production values and played-out samples. Big beat lasted a surprisingly long time, given the restraints of a style reliant on the patience of listeners who’ve heard the same break dozens of times, as well as the patience of DJs to hunt local thrift stores to find interesting samples on old instructional records.

Dance Hall Reggae

This dance music style takes reggae and electrifies it, strips down the beat to the essentials of drums and bass, and adds a vocalist doing rapid-fire “toasting” over the beats. Several pop groups have adopted this style and had hits, but the results are pretty diluted compared to the original.

Dance-Pop

An outgrowth of disco, Dance-Pop featured a pounding club beat framing simple, catchy melodies closer to fully-formed songs than pure dance music. It’s primarily the medium of producers, who write the songs and construct the tracks, picking an appropriate vocalist to sing the song. These dance divas become stars, but frequently the artistic vision is the producer’s. Naturally, there are some major exceptions-Madonna and Janet Jackson have had control over the sound and direction of their records-but dance-pop is music that is about image, not substance.

Dark Ambient

Brian Eno’s original vision of ambient music as unobtrusive musical wallpaper, later fused with warm house rhythms and given playful qualities by the Orb in the ’90s, found its opposite in the style known as Dark Ambient. Populated by a wide assortment of personalities-ranging from aging industrial and metal experimentalists (Scorn’s Mick Harris, Current 93’s David Tibet, Nurse with Wound’s Steven Stapleton) to electronic boffins (Kim Cascone/PGR, Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia), Japanese noise artists (K.K. Null, Merzbow), and latter-day indie rockers (Main, Bark Psychosis)-dark ambient features toned-down or entirely missing beats with unsettling passages of keyboards, eerie samples, and treated guitar effects. Like most styles related in some way to electronic/dance music of the ’90s, it’s a very nebulous term; many artists enter or leave the style with each successive release.

Detroit Techno

Early Detroit Techno is characterized by, alternately, a dark, detached, mechanistic vibe and a smooth, bright, soulful feel (the latter deriving in part from the Motown legacy and the stock-in-trade between early techno and the Chicago-style house developing simultaneously to the southwest). While essentially designed as dance music meant to uplift, the stark, melancholy edge of early tracks by Cybotron, Model 500, Rhythm Is Rhythm, and Reese also spoke to Detroit’s economic collapse in the late ’70s following the city’s prosperous heyday as the focal point of the American automobile industry.

The music’s oft-copied ruddy production and stripped-down aesthetic were largely a function of the limited technology available to the early innovators (records were often mastered from two-track onto cassette). The increasingly sophisticated arrangements of contemporary techno (on through to hardcore and jungle), conversely, has much to do with the growth and increasing affordability of MIDI-encoded equipment and desktop digital audio. Second- and third-wave Detroit techno, too, has gained considerably in production, although artists such as Derrick May, Juan Atkins, and Kenny Larkin have sought to combine the peerless sheen of the digital arena with the compositional minimalism of their Detroit origins.

No longer simply contained within the 313 area code, Detroit techno has become a global phenomenon (partly as a result of the more widespread acclaim many of the original Detroit artists have found in other countries), buoyed by the fact that many of the classic early tracks remain in print (available through Submerge). Detroit’s third wave began re-exploring the aesthetic commitment of the music’s early period, with hard-hitting beats (Underground Resistance, Jeff Mills), soulful grooves (Kenny Larkin, Stacey Pullen), and a renewed interest in techno’s breakbeat roots (Aux 88, Drexciya, “Mad” Mike, Dopplereffekt).

Disco marked the dawn of dance-based popular music. Growing out of the increasingly groove-oriented sound of early ’70s and funk, disco emphasized the beat above anything else, even the singer and the song. Disco was named after discotheques, clubs that played nothing but music for dancing. Most of the discotheques were gay clubs in New York, and the DJs in these clubs specifically picked soul and funk records that had a strong, heavy groove. After being played in the disco, the records began receiving radio play and respectable sales. Soon, record companies and producers were cutting records created specifically for discos. Naturally, these records also had strong pop hooks, so they could have crossover success. Disco albums frequently didn’t have many tracks-they had a handful of long songs that kept the beat going. Similarly, the singles were issued on 12″ records, which allowed for extended remixes. DJs could mix these tracks together, matching the beats on each song since they were marked with how fast they were in terms of beats per minute. In no time, the insistent, pounding disco beat dominated the pop chart, and everyone cut a disco record, from rockers like the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart to pop acts like the Bee Gees and new wave artists like Blondie. There were disco artists that became stars-Donna Summer, Chic, the Village People, and KC & the Sunshine Band were brand names-but the music was primarily a producer’s medium, since they created the tracks and wrote the songs. Disco lost momentum as the ’70s became the ’80s, but it didn’t die-it mutated into a variety of different dance-based genres, ranging from dance-pop and hip-hop to house and techno.

Downbeat is a quite generic term sometimes used to replace ambient house and ambient techno, considering that the amount and complexity of electronic listening music described under the “ambient” umbrella had made the terms practically useless by the mid-’90s. It often implies the use of moderate breakbeats instead of the steady four-four beats of most ambient house or ambient techno. The style also breaches territory claimed by trip-hop, ambient techno, and electro-techno. In its widest possible definition, downbeat is any form of electronic music created for the living room instead of the dance floor.

Dream-Pop

Dream Pop is an atmospheric subgenre of alternative rock that relies on sonic textures as much as melody. Dream pop often features breathy vocals and processed, echo-laden guitars and synthesizers. Though the Cocteau Twins, with their indecipherable vocals and languid soundscapes, are frequently seen as the leaders of dream pop, the genre has more stylistic diversity than their slow, electronic textures. Dream pop also encompasses the post-Velvet Underground guitar rock of Galaxie 500, as well as the loud, shimmering feedback of My Bloody Valentine. It is all tied together by a reliance on sonic texture, both in terms of instruments and vocals.

Dub derives its name from the practice of dubbing instrumental, rhythm-oriented versions of reggae songs onto the B-sides of 45 rpm singles, which evolved into a legitimate and accepted style of its own as those re-recordings became forums for engineers to experiment with the possibilities of their mixing consoles. The practice of re-recording reggae tracks without vocals dated back to 1967, when DJs found that dancehall crowds and partygoers greatly enjoyed being given the opportunity to sing the lyrics themselves. Around 1969, some DJs began talking, or “toasting,” over these instrumentals (known as “versions”), frequently reinterpreting the already familiar original lyrics. The most important early DJ was U-Roy, who became renowned for his ability to improvise dialogues with the recorded singers; U-Roy ran the sound system owned by engineer King Tubby, who mixed all of the instrumental tracks over which his DJ toasted. Eventually, Tubby began to experiment with remixing the instrumental tracks, bringing up the level of the rhythm section, dropping out most or all of the vocals, and adding new effects like reverb and echo. The results were seen by many reggae fans as stripping the music down to its purest essence. 45-rpm singles with dub versions on the B-sides became ubiquitous, and King Tubby’s credit on the back soon became a drawing card in and of itself. Full-fledged dub albums began to appear in 1973, with many highlights stemming from Tubby’s mixes for producers Bunny Lee and Augustus Pablo (the latter of whom also played the haunting melodica, which became one of dub’s signature added elements); other key early producers included the minimalistic Keith Hudson and the colorful, elaborate Lee “Scratch” Perry. By 1976, dub’s popularity in Jamaica was second only to Rastafarian roots reggae, and the sound had also found acceptance the UK (thanks largely to the Island label), where roots reggae artists like Burning Spear and Black Uhuru became just as well-known for their forays into dub. The Mad Professor and the experimental Adrian Sherwood helped Britain’s dub scene remain vital in the ’80s, but in spite of skilled newcomers like Scientist, Prince Jammy, and Mikey Dread, Jamaican popular taste had by then shifted to DJ toasters and lyrical improvisers, which led to the prominence of dancehall and ragga. The downtempo atmospherics and bass- and rhythm-heavy textures of dub had a lasting influence outside of reggae, beginning with Public Image Ltd.’s 1979 Metal Box/Second Edition album; during the ’90s, dub was frequently incorporated into the melting-pot eclecticism of underground avant-garde rock, and Britain’s thriving electronica/drum’n’bass scene owed a great deal to dub’s mixing and production techniques.

Blending ’70s funk with the emerging hip-hop culture and synthesizer technology of the early ’80s produced the style known as Electro. But what seemed to be a brief fad for the public-no more than two or three hits, including Afrikaa Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” and Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message,” neither of which made the pop Top 40-was in fact a fertile testing ground for innovators who later diverged into radically different territory, including Dr. Dre (who worked with the World Class Wreckin’ Cru) and techno godfather Juan Atkins (with Cybotron). Electro also provided an intriguing new direction for one of the style’s prime influences. Herbie Hancock, whose 1973 Headhunters album proved a large fusion hit, came storming back in 1983 with the electro single “Rockit.” Despite its successes (documented in full on Rhino’s four-disc Electric Funk set), the style was quickly eclipsed by the mid-’80s rise of hip-hop music built around samples (often from rock records) rather than musical synthesizers. Nevertheless, many techno and dance artists continued harking back to the sound, and a full-fledged electro revival emerged in Detroit and Britain during the mid-’90s.

Electro-Acoustic

Electro-Acoustic music thrives in more unfamiliar territory; the styles that emerge are often dictated by the technology itself. Rather than sampling or synthesizing acoustic sounds to electronically replicate them, these composers tend to mutate the original timbres, sometimes to an unrecognizable state. True artists in the genre also create their own sounds (as opposed to using the preset sounds that come with modern synthesizers). In progressive electro-acoustic music, the electronics play an equal if not greater part in the overall concept. Acoustic instruments performed in real time are usually processed through reverb, harmonizing, and so on, which adds an entirely new dimension to the player’s technique. At best, this music opens up new worlds of listening, thinking, and feeling. At worst, progressive electronic artists worship technology for its own sake, relinquishing the heart and soul of true artistic expression.

Electro-Techno

Influenced by the early-’80s phenomenon of electro-funk but also reliant upon Detroit techno and elements of ambient house, Electro-Techno emerged in the mid-’90s when a full-fledged electro flashback hit London clubs, complete with body-rocking robots and vocoder-distorted vocals, inspired by original electro classics like Afrikaa Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock.” The actual fad-spearheaded by Clear Records and led by artists like Jedi Knights, Tusken Raiders, and Gescom (masks for Global Communication, µ-Ziq, and Autechre, respectively)-was quick in passing, but it inspired some excellent music during the latter half of the ’90s, including the work of England’s Skam Records, Sweden’s Dot Records and, closer to the original sources, Detroit’s Drexciya and AUX 88.

Electronic is a broad designation that could be construed to cover many different styles of music-after all, electronic instrumentation has become commonplace, and much dance-oriented music from the late ’80s on is primarily, often exclusively, electronic. However, in this case, it refers mostly to electronic music as it took shape early on, when artists were still exploring the unique possibilities of electronically generated sound, as well as more recent music strongly indebted to those initial experiments. Avant-garde composers had long been fascinated with the ways technology could be used to produce previously unheard textures and combinations of sounds. French composer Edgard Varèse was a pioneer in this field, building his own electronic instruments as early as the 1920s and experimenting with tape loops during the ’50s. Varèse’s work was hugely influential on American avant-gardist John Cage and German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, both of whom greatly expanded the compositional structures in which electronic devices could be incorporated. But electronic music didn’t really begin to enter the wider consciousness until around the ’70s, when sequencers and synthesizers became more affordable and easier to obtain. Wendy Carlos’ 1968 Switched-On Bach album, a selection of Bach pieces performed on the Moog synthesizer, had ignited tremendous public attention, and Stockhausen’s teachings had begun to inspire a burgeoning experimental music scene in Germany. Kraut-rock groups such as Can and Neu! integrated synthesizers and tape manipulations into their rabid experimentalism, but the two most important electronic artists to emerge from the scene were Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. Kraftwerk pioneered the concept of pop music performed exclusively on synthesizers, and their robotic, mechanical, hypnotic style had a tremendous impact on nearly all electronic pop produced in the remainder of the 20th century. Tangerine Dream, meanwhile, was indebted to minimalist classical composition, crafting an atmospheric, slowly shifting, trance-inducing sound that helped invent the genre known as space music. Other crucial figures included Klaus Schulze, who explored a droning variation on space music that was even more trancelike than Tangerine Dream, and Brian Eno, whose inventive production and experiments with electronics in a pop context eventually gave way to his creation of ambient music, which aimed to blend thoroughly into its environment and often relied heavily on synthesizers. Ambient and space music helped give rise to new age, which emphasized the peaceful, soothing, and meditative qualities of those influences while adding greater melodicism; the progressive electronic branch of new age crafted a more dramatic, lushly orchestrated style that broke with electronic music’s roots in minimalism. Synth-pop, techno, and its artier companion electronica all owed a great deal to the basic innovations of early electronic artists as well.

A suitably vague term used to describe the emergence of electronic dance music increasingly geared to listening instead of strictly dancing, Electronica was first used in the title of a series of compilations (actually called New Electronica) spotlighting original sources of Detroit techno such as Juan Atkins and Underground Resistance alongside European artists who had gained much from the Motor City’s futuristic vision for techno. The word was later appropriated by the American press as an easy catch-all for practically any young artist using electronic equipment and/or instruments, but electronica serves to describe techno-based music that can be used for home listening as well as on the dance floor (since many electronica artists are club DJs as well).

Euro-Dance

Euro-Dance refers to a specific style of club/dance music produced on the European continent during the ’80s and ’90s. Euro-dance is generally informed by disco, hi-NRG, and house music, and performed entirely in the recording studio on synthesizers and drum machines; the producers are much more responsible for the finished product than the singers. Like its close relative Euro-pop, it’s usually simple, lightweight, and catchy, with fluffy, repetitive lyrics that don’t require much translation among listeners who speak different languages. The main difference between Euro-dance and Euro-pop is the exclusive and pronounced dance-club orientation of the former; while Euro-pop is frequently informed by dance music, it doesn’t have to be, and when it is, it doesn’t always fit into dance-club playlists. Most Euro-dance artists concentrate on crafting hit singles, with album releases almost an afterthought.

Experimental Dub

Thousands of miles away from sunny Jamaica, a loose collective of Berlin producers jump-started the style of music known as Experimental Dub. If the scene was centered at all, it occurred at Hard Wax Records, a record store as well as a tight distribution company that was home to several of the style’s crucial labels (Basic Channel, Chain Reaction, Imbalance) and producers (Maurizio, Mark Ernestus, Porter Ricks, Pole, Monolake). Indebted to Chicago acid house and minimalist Detroit techno figures like Jeff Mills, Rob Hood, and Plastikman, experimental dub was rather easily characterized; the sound usually focused on a mix of crackling, murky atmospheres that sounded almost subaquatic, with a mid-tempo beat and strong, clanging percussion. The similarities to classic Jamaican dub producers King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry were indirect at best, but the term worked well for identifying the signature sound of many of Germany’s best experimental producers. Other than the Basic Channel camp, experimental dub’s most important figures were Mike Ink (aka Wolfgang Voigt) and Thomas Brinkmann. Ink, a longtime Berlin producer responsible for more than a half-dozen aliases and labels, did most of his important work on the Profan and Studio 1 labels. Brinkmann, a comparative newcomer to the style, earned praise for his remixes of material by Ink and Plastikman. Experimental dub, in turn, inspired several major techno figures (including Plastikman and Mills) by the late ’90s, and its influence was even seen in American indie-rock and post-rock.

Experimental Electro

With the revival of the classic electro style, dubbed the neo-electro movement, came a wave of Experimental Electro artists with more abstract agendas, still influenced by the sound of the streets but with more curious minds when it came to noodling around in the studio. Names such as Freeform and Bisk characterized the style.

Experimental Rock

As the name suggests, Experimental Rock is music pushing the envelope of the form, far removed from the classic pop sensibilities of before. Typically, experimental rock is the diametric opposite of standard “verse-chorus-verse” music. Because the whole point is to liberate and innovate, no hard and fast rules apply, but distinguishing characteristics include improvisational performances, avant-garde influences, odd instrumentation, opaque lyrics (or no lyrics at all), strange compositional structures and rhythms, and an underlying rejection of commercial aspirations.

Experimental Techno

The field of electronic dance music has limitless possibilities for experimentation, so Experimental Techno has a similarly wide range of styles-from the disc-error clicks and scratches of European experimenters Oval and Pan sonic to the off-kilter effects (but straight-ahead rhythms) of Cristian Vogel, Neil Landstrumm, and Si Begg. Experimental techno can also include soundscape terrorists such as Twisted Science, Nonplace Urban Field, and Atom Heart; digital-age punks like Alec Empire; and former industrial stalwarts under new guises, such as Scorn, Download, or Techno Animal. Any artist wishing to take electronic dance places it’s never been can be characterized as experimental, and for better or worse, that includes a large cast.

Often growing in tandem with contemporary styles like electro and house, Freestyle emerged in the twin Latin capitals of New York City and Miami during the early ’80s. Freestyle classics like “I Wonder If I Take You Home” by Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, “Let the Music Play” by Shannon, and “Party Your Body” by Stevie B relied on angular, synthesized beats similar to electro and early house, but also emphasized the romantic themes of classic R&B and disco. The fusion of mechanical and sensual proved ready for crossover during the period, and both Shannon and Lisa Lisa hit the Top 40 during 1984-85. Freestyle also dovetailed nicely with the rise of dance-pop during the mid-’80s-Madonna’s early producer and remixer, John Benitez (aka Jellybean), was also active in the freestyle community. By the end of the decade, a number of artists-Exposé, Brenda K. Starr, Trinere, the Cover Girls, India, and Stevie B-followed them into the pop or R&B charts. Even after popular success waned in the late ’80s, though, freestyle moved to the underground as a vital stream of modern dance music alongside house, techno, and bass music. Similar to mainstream house, freestyle artists are usually (though by no means exclusively) either female vocalists or male producers. Newer figures like Lil Suzy, George Lamond, Angelique, Johnny O, and others became big stars in the freestyle community.

Funky Breaks

An amalgam of trance, hip-hop, and jungle, Funky Breaks became one of the most widely heard styles in electronic music thanks to its popularity as the sound of choice for those wishing to make some noise on pop charts and television commercials during the late ’90s. Pioneered by the Chemical Brothers plus James Lavelle’s epic-stature Mo’Wax Records stable, funky breaks really came into the fore in 1997, the year music-industry experts predicted would finally break the new electronica in the mainstream. Of the artists picked to spearhead the revolution, almost all-the Prodigy, Death in Vegas, the Crystal Method, Propellerheads-had that sound. That’s also a significant reason why the electronica revolution failed, at least commercially, since the highly-touted acts all sounded similar.

Most popular in the Netherlands and Scotland, Gabba is the hardest form of hardcore techno, frequently exceeding speeds of over 200 BPM. Popular DJs and producers like Paul Elstak and the Mover categorized gabba’s early evolution from German trance and British rave. By the mid-’90s, the music had acquired some rather unsavory connotations with neo-fascism and the skinhead movement, though much of the scene was free from it. Surprisingly, gabba made a rather successful attempt at the Dutch pop charts, with Elstak producing several hits. Many producers and fans proclaimed him a sell-out, and soon there appeared a divide in the scene between the hardcore and the really hardcore.

Named for what is arguably the birthplace of house music, the Paradise Garage in New York, Garage is the dance style closest in spirit and execution to the original disco music of the ’70s. Favoring synthesizer runs and gospel vocals similar to house music but with production values even more polished and shimmering than house, garage has a very soulful, organic feel. Though the style was most popular in New Jersey in the ’80s, the mainstream of British dance clubs championed the style throughout the ’90s as well.

Goa Trance

Named after a region on the coast of southwestern India famed as a clubbing and drugging paradise ever since the ’60s, Goa Trance broke away from the Teutonic bent of European trance during the early ’90s and carried the torch for trance during the rest of the decade. The presence of LSD on the Goa scene-instead of the ubiquitous club drug Ecstasy-translated the music into an appropriately psychedelic version of trance that embraced the mystical properties of Indian music and culture. Traditional Indian instruments such as the sitar and sarod (or electronic near-equivalents) often made appearances in the music, pushed along by the driving, hypnotic sequencer music that trance had always been known for. The style is considerably less turntable-oriented than other electronic dance styles, especially since vinyl tends to melt in the heat (DATs are often used instead). As a consequence, Goa had comparatively few DJs to recommend it worldwide until the late ’90s. Labels like Dragonfly, Blue Room Released, Flying Rhino, Platipus, and Paul Oakenfold’s Perfecto Fluoro became important sources for the sound. Oakenfold, Britain’s most popular DJ, finally gave Goa trance the cache it had lacked in the past by caning it on the radio and in clubs across the country. The British sound system known as Return to the Source also brought Goa trance to the mainstream hordes, releasing three volumes in a compilation series of the best trance music on the scene.

Happy Hardcore

Gradually evolving from the English rave scene of the late ’80s and early ’90s, Happy Hardcore featured many of the same elements that characterized rave: impossibly high beats per minute, similarly fast synthesizer/piano runs, and vocal samples altered to make the most soulful diva sound like a warbling chipmunk. The jungle/drum’n’bass movement had also emerged from rave, but the two scenes split and grew quite anathemic. The positive vibes of happy hardcore were criticized by most clubgoers as music for the drugged-out youth, but just as the hardcore-into-jungle scene found favor with critics later in the decade, a certain amount of respect for happy hardcore appeared as well. The work of combination DJ/producers such as Slipmatt, Hixxy & Sharkey, Force & Styles, and DJ Dougal produced innumerable compilations, as well as the inevitable solo production LPs.

Hardcore Techno

The fastest, most abrasive form of dance music currently available at any one time, Hardcore Techno was, by the mid-’90s, the province of a startlingly wide array of producers, including breakbeat junglists, industrial trancesters, digital-era punks, and cartoonish ravers. The style originally emerged from Great Britain’s 1988 Summer of Love; though the original soundtrack to those warehouse parties was influenced by the relatively mid-tempo rhythms of Chicago acid house, increased drug intake caused many ravers to embrace quicker rhythms and altogether more frenetic forms of music. Many DJs indulged their listeners by speeding up house records originally intended for 33-rpm play, and producers carried the torch by sampling the same records for their releases. During 1991-92, hardcore/rave music had hit the legitimate airwaves as well, led by hits like SL2’s “On a Ragga Tip,” T-99’s “Anasthasia,” and RTS’ “Poing.”

The resulting major-label feeding frenzy produced heavy coverage for lightweight novelty fare like “Go Speed Go” by Alpha Team, “Sesame’s Treat” by Smart E’s, and “James Brown Is Dead” by L.A. Style. By 1993, British producers like Rob Playford, 4 Hero, and Omni Trio began leading hardcore techno into the breakbeat territory that would later become known as jungle, even as the Teutonic end of hardcore morphed into harder trance and gabba.

During the mid-’90s, most ravers had grown out of the dance scene or simply tired of the sound; though the original hardcore/rave sound had spread to much of the British hinterlands as well as continental Europe, most Londoners favored progressive house or the emerging ambient techno. The simultaneous lack of critical coverage but wide spread of the sound-into the north of England and Scotland as well as the continental centers of Germany and the Netherlands-served to introduce a variety of underground styles, from the digital hardcore of Germany’s Alec Empire to English happy hardcore. In fact, the term had practically become a dinosaur by the end of the decade.

Hi-NRG

Hi-NRG is a fast variation of disco that evolved in the ’80s. Driven by a fast drum machine and synthesizers, Hi-NRG was essentially a dance-oriented music with only slight hints of pop. There would be a few hooks-generally sung by disembodied vocalists wailing in the background-but the emphasis of the music, like most dance music, was in the beat. Hi-NRG was a predecessor to techno and house, which drew from its beats in decidedly different ways. House had a funkier, soulful rhythm, while techno expanded with the mechanical beats of Hi-NRG.

Hip-Hop

Hip-hop is essentially the rhythm track to rap, which meanders at a relatively slow tempo, and features a minimalist collection of samples, loops, and/or turntable playing. The emphasis is definitely on the bass, with fat, thick drum beats. Groups like Public Enemy took hip-hop beats but added raps with more of a political, literate edge.

House music grew out of the post-disco dance club culture of the early ’80s. After disco became popular, certain urban DJs-particularly those in gay communities-altered the music to make it less pop-oriented. The beat became more mechanical and the bass grooves became deeper, while elements of electronic synth-pop, Latin soul, dub reggae, rap, and jazz were grafted over the music’s insistent, unvarying four-four beat. Frequently, the music was purely instrumental and when there were vocalists, they were faceless female divas that often sang wordless melodies. By the late ’80s, house had broken out of underground clubs in cities like Chicago, New York, and London, and had begun making inroads on the pop charts, particularly in England and Europe but later in America under the guise of artists like C+C Music Factory and Madonna. At the same time, house was breaking into the pop charts; it fragmented into a number of subgenres, including hip-house, ambient house, and most significantly, acid house (a subgenre of house with the instantly recognizable squelch of Roland’s TB-303 bass-line generator). During the ’90s, house ceased to be cutting-edge music, yet it remained popular in clubs throughout Europe and America. At the end of the decade, a new wave of progressive house artists including Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx, and House of 909 brought the music back to critical quarters with praised full-length works.

A loaded term meant to distinguish electronic music of the ’90s and later that’s equally comfortable on the dancefloor as in the living room, IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) eventually acquired a good deal of negative publicity, not least among the legion of dance producers and fans whose exclusion from the community prompted the question of whether they produced stupid dance music. Born in the late ’80s, the sound grew out of a fusion between the hard-edged dance music heard on the main floor at raves and larger club events, and the more downtempo music of the nearby chill-out rooms. DJs like Mixmaster Morris and Dr. Alex Paterson blended Chicago house, softer synth-pop/new wave, and ambient/environmental music, prompting a wave of producers inspired by a variety of sources. (Many DJs and producers were also reacting against the increasingly chart-leaning slant of British dance music during those years, exemplified by novelty hits like “Pump Up the Jam” by Technotronic and “Sesame’s Treat” by Smart E’s.) The premiere IDM label, Sheffield’s Warp Records, proved home to the best in the sound-in fact, the seminal Warp compilation Artificial Intelligence alone introduced listeners worldwide to a half-dozen of the style’s most crucial artists: Aphex Twin, the Orb, Plastikman, Autechre, Black Dog Productions, and B12. Other labels-Rising High, GPR, R&S, Rephlex, Fat Cat, Astralwerks-released quality IDM as well, though by the mid-’90s much of the electronica produced for headphone consumption had diverged either toward the path of more experimentation or more beat orientation. With no centered, commercial scene to speak of, North America became a far more hospitable clime to IDM, and by the end of the ’90s, dozens of solid labels had opened for business, including Drop Beat, Isophlux, Suction, Schematic, and Cytrax. Despite frequent attempts to rename the style (Warp’s “electronic listening music” and Aphex Twin’s “braindance” were two choices), IDM continued to be the de facto way for fans to describe their occasionally undescribable favorites.

Industrial music was a dissonant, abrasive style of music that grew out of the tape-music and electronic experiments of the mid-’70s bands Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle (the term was coined from the latter’s label, Industrial Records). The music was largely electronic, distorted, and rather avant-garde for rock circles. By the mid-’80s, industrial dance bands Ministry, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, and Skinny Puppy had evolved from the original template. During the next decade, industrial went overground and became a new kind of heavy-metal courtesy of crossover groups like Nine Inch Nails, White Zombie, and Marilyn Manson.

Industrial Dance

During the ’80s, industrial music progressed from being an obscure, experimentalist style to a position where it was quite popular and straight-ahead for a growing audience unenthused by limp-wristed alternative music as well as cock rock and heavy metal. Early distinguished by the term “electronic body music,” several artists, such as Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, Skinny Puppy, and Ministry gained significant airplay in clubs. By the ’90s, industrial had split along a guitar/electronics divide, with the latter usually carrying on the tradition of electronic body music. America’s Cleopatra Records featured the most Industrial Dance acts, including Leætherstrip, Spahn Ranch, and Die Krupps.

Jungle/Drum’n’bass

Based almost entirely in England, Jungle (also known as drum’n’bass) is a permutation of hardcore techno that emerged in the early ’90s. Jungle is the most rhythmically complex of all forms of techno, relying on extremely fast polyrhythms and breakbeats. Usually, it’s entirely instrumental-it is among the hardest of all hardcore techno, consisting of nothing but fast drum machines and deep bass. As its name implies, jungle does have more overt reggae, dub, and R&B influences than most hardcore-and that is why some critics claimed that the music was the sound of black techno musicians and DJs reclaiming it from the white musicians and DJs who dominated the hardcore scene. Nevertheless, jungle never slows down to develop a groove-it just speeds along. Like most techno genres, jungle is primarily a singles genre designed for a small, dedicated audience, although the crossover success of Goldie and his 1995 debut Timeless suggested a broader appeal and more musical possibilities than other forms of techno. Dozens of respected artists followed in their wake, fusing breakbeats with influences lifted from jazz, film music, ambient, and trip-hop.

Kraut-Rock

Kraut-Rock refers to the legions of German bands of the early ’70s that expanded the sonic possibilities of art and progressive rock. Instead of following in the direction of their British and American counterparts, who were moving toward jazz and classical-based compositions and concept albums, the German bands became more mechanical and electronic. Working with early synthesizers and splicing together seemingly unconnected reels of tape, bands like Faust, Can, and Neu! created a droning, pulsating sound that owed more to the avant-garde than to rock ‘n’ roll. Although the bands didn’t make much of an impact while they were active in the ’70s, their music anticipated much post-punk of the early ’80s, particularly industrial rock. Kraut-rock also came into vogue in the ’90s, when groups like Stereolab and Tortoise began incorporating the hypnotic rhythms and electronic experiments of the German art-rock bands into their own, vaguely avant-garde indie-rock.

Madchester was the dominant force in British rock during the late ’80s and early ’90s. A fusion of acid house dance rhythms and melodic pop, Madchester was distinguished by its loping beats, psychedelic flourishes, and hooky choruses. While the song structures were familiar, the arrangements and attitude were modern, and even the retro-pop touches-namely the jangling guitars, swirling organs, and sharp pop sense-functioned as postmodern collages. There were two approaches to this collage, as evidenced by the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. The Roses were a traditional guitar-pop band, and their songs were straight-ahead pop tunes, bolstered by baggy beats; it was modernized ’60s pop. Happy Mondays cut and pasted like rappers sampled, taking choruses from the Beatles and LaBelle and putting them into the context of darkly psychedelic dance. Despite their different approaches, both bands shared a love for acid-house music and culture, as well as the hometown of Manchester, England. As the group’s popularity grew, the British press tagged the two groups-as well as similarly-minded bands like the Charlatans [UK] and Inspiral Carpets-“Madchester” after a Happy Mondays song. (It was also known as “baggy,” since the bands wore baggy clothing). Madchester was enormously popular for several years in the UK before fading, largely because the Roses and the Mondays fell prey to laziness and drug abuse, respectively. The genre never made much impact in America outside of alternative circles, but Madchester’s offspring-bands like Oasis, Pulp, and Blur that were heavily influenced by the collision of contemporary and classic pop-became international stars in the mid-’90s.

One of the main innovations in the contemporary classical field, Minimalism has also influenced new age composers and electronic producers alike, particularly in progressive electronic styles where sequencers play an important role. Generally, this music is characterized by a strong and relentless pulse, the insistent repetition of short melodic fragments, and harmonies that change over long periods of time. A trio of ’60s figures, LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich, did the most to pioneer the field, though Philip Glass had the most success with the style during the ’70s.

Neo-Electro

For several months in 1995, British clubs were afire with the sights and sounds of robots, body-poppers, and a revival of America’s early-’80s electro movement. Though much of the attention was given to the old-school masters (Afrika Bambaataa, the Egyptian Lover, Newcleus), much of the influence for the electro revival had come from more recent sounds. Detroit acts such as Drexciya, Underground Resistance, and Ectomorph had begun looking back to electro, and Drexciya’s multi-volume series of 1994 EPs were much-heard on the other side of the Atlantic. In Britain, Clear Records headed the revival hot-list, with singles from Jedi Knights, Tusken Raiders, Plaid, and Gescom (almost all were aliases for more well-known dance acts including Global Communication, µ-Ziq, and Autechre). Though the electro revival didn’t last long as a British club trend, good records continued to be released (especially by Clear), and other labels, such as Skam, Musik Aus Strom, and Dot, progressed beyond the sound to create intelligent new music with heavy electro influences.

A rather brief phenomenon (even for the style-a-minute world of dance music), Newbeat emerged late in the ’80s as a mid-tempo derivation of acid house. Influenced as well by Detroit techno and Euro-dance, newbeat was centered in Belgium, where labels such as R&S and Antler-Subway-home of the newbeat anthem “I Sit on Acid” by Lords of Acid-characterized the style with acid synth leanings, but more pop-friendly approaches to dance. The blazing success of the KLF during 1990-91 sustained newbeat for awhile, but after their exit from the music industry, the style faded quickly. While both Antler-Subway and Lords of Acid later moved on to a self-parodying approach to acid house, R&S became a respected name in the dance industry, focusing mostly on trance and ambient techno.

Sludgy, abrasive, and punishing, Noise is everything its name promises, expanding on the music’s capacity for sonic assault while almost entirely rejecting the role of melody and songcraft. From the ear-splitting, teeth-rattling attack of Japan’s Merzbow to the thick, grinding intensity of Amphetamine Reptile-label bands like Tar and Vertigo, it’s dark, brutal music that pushes rock to its furthest extremes. By the end of the ’90s, a resurgence in the use of sine waves-originally explored by musique concrète artists in the ’50s-became increasingly frequent among noise artists such as Otomo Yoshihide.

Noise Pop

Noise Pop is just that-pop music wrapped in barbed-wire kisses of feedback, dissonance, and abrasion. It occupies the halfway point between bubblegum and the avant-garde, a collision between conventional pop songcraft and the sonic assault of white noise-guitars veer out of control but somehow the melody pushes forward, and the tension between the two opposing forces frequently makes for fascinating listening.

Nu Breaks

A hard-edged dance style developed late in the ’90s with the convergence of techno and drum’n’bass as well as a few elements of the earlier rave scenes, Nu Breaks was led by artists and DJs including Brits Adam Freeland, Dylan Rhymes, Beber, Freq Nasty, and Rennie Pilgrem plus a bare few Americans like BT. From drum’n’bass the style borrowed two-step breakbeats and chilling effects, from techno its smooth flow and machine percussion, and from early-’90s rave/hardcore some of the crowd-pleasing bells and whistles (figuratively as well as literally) that in some cases had not been heard for years. Freeland was probably the best-known of the nu breaks crew (especially since most producers concentrated on singles output), as rock-steady mix sets like Coastal Breaks and Tectonics earned acclaim with dance fans around the world.

Old School Rap

Old School Rap is the style of the very first rap artists who emerged from New York City in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Old school is easily identified by its relatively simple raps-most lines take up approximately equal amounts of time, and the rhythms of the language rarely twisted around the beats of the song. The cadences usually fell squarely on the beat, and when they didn’t, they wouldn’t stray for long, returning to the original pattern for quick resolution. The emphasis was not on lyrical technique, but simply on good times-aside from the socially conscious material of Grandmaster Flash, which greatly expanded rap’s horizons, most old school rap had the fun, playful flavor of the block parties and dances at which it was born. In keeping with the laidback, communal good vibes, old school rap seemed to have more room and appreciation for female MCs, although none achieved the higher profile of Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five or the Sugarhill Gang. Some old school songs were performed over disco or funk-style tracks, while others featured synthesized backing (this latter type of music, either with or without raps, was known as electro). Old school rap’s recorded history begins with two 1979 singles, Fatback’s “King Tim III” and the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” although the movement had been taking shape for almost a decade prior. Sugarhill Records quickly became the center for old school rap, dominating the market until Run-D.M.C. upped the ante for technique and hardcore urban toughness in 1983-84. Their sound and style soon took over the rap world, making old school’s party orientation and ’70s funk influences seem outdated. When compared with the more complex rhythms and rhyme schemes of modern-day rap-or even the hip-hop that was being produced less than ten years after “Rapper’s Delight”-old school rap can sound dated and a little unadventurous. However, the best old school tracks retain their liveliness as great party music no matter what the era, holding up surprisingly well considering all that’s happened since.

Post-Rock/Experimental

Post-Rock was an experimental, avant-garde movement that emerged in the mid-’90s. Most post-rock was droning and hypnotic, drawing from ambient, free-form jazz, avant-garde, and electronic music more than rock. The majority of post-rock groups were like Tortoise, a Chicago-based band with a rotating lineup. Tortoise viewed their music not as songs, but as ever-changing compositions that they improvised nightly. Most post-rock groups were defiantly anti-mainstream and anti-indie-rock in the vein of Tortoise. However, there were certain groups-like Stereolab-that essentially worked in a pop and indie-rock format, only touching on the experimental and avant-garde tendencies of most post-rockers. Thrill Jockey’s reissue of albums by European experimental names like Mouse on Mars and Oval led to the birth of a transatlantic scene, of sorts, with Germans more focused on electronic music while most Americans preferred rock-oriented setups.

Progressive House

House music had reached the mainstream by the late ’80s (more so in Britain than anywhere else), and while several early house hits were by genuine pioneers, they were later overwhelmed by the novelty acts and one-hit wonders dominating the charts around the turn of the decade. As well, ambient, techno, and trance made gains early in the ’90s as electronic styles with both street cred and a group of young artists making intelligent music. A generation of house producers soon emerged, weaned on the first wave of house and anxious to reapply the more soulful elements of the music. With a balance of sublime techno and a house sound more focused on New York garage than Chicago acid house, groups like Leftfield, the Drum Club, Spooky, and Faithless hit the dance charts (and occasionally Britain’s singles charts). Though critically acclaimed full-lengths were never quite as important as devastating club tracks, several Progressive House LPs were stellar works, including Leftfield’s Leftism, Spooky’s Gargantuan, and the Drum Club’s Everything Is Now. By the mid-’90s, the innovations of progressive house had become the mainstream of house music around the world.

Rave is more of an event than a genre of music. Raves were underground parties where acid house and hardcore records were played and large quantities of drugs-particularly ecstasy-were consumed. Most of the music played at raves had a psychedelic quality, even before drugs became a major element of the scene. DJs played at the raves, mixing stacks of house and techno singles; the DJs, not the recording artists themselves, became the most recognizable names in the scene. Raves were primarily an English phenomenon during the late ’80s and early ’90s. They were conducted in large venues, particularly abandoned warehouses and open fields. Eventually, the British government became concerned that raves were a dangerous, antisocial phenomenon that had to be shut down, but the parties never disappeared, especially since word of the events were usually passed through word of mouth and handmade fliers. In the States, raves began to make some inroads in the early ’90s, but they never gained a large audience, even by underground standards. Throughout the ’90s, bands that were directly influenced by rave culture-particularly “baggy” bands like the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and Charlatans; Brit-pop acts like Pulp and Oasis; and techno artists like the Prodigy-made their way into the mainstream, and the culture continued to capture the attention of British youth into the late ’90s.

Salsa is the music of Latin America, which has stretched its way up to the United States by way of Puerto Rico. Rhythmically complex and featuring large bands with lots of personnel (percussion, horns, vocalists, piano, bass, etc.), salsa remains a vital form of music in the Latin community, and is becoming increasingly popular with mainstream America.

Schranz – New!

Since there has been a lot of talk about the word “Schranz” lately, I wanted to post my very own statement about it and not one,which is written by people who don`t really know. Yes, it is true, together with a friend I came up with the word “Schranz” in a Recordstore in Frankfurt in the year 1994. Not true is, that I am now annoyed by the term, I am only annoyed by all the discussions which come up about it, especially here in Germany. Everyone who uses the word “Schranz” to describe her or his musical taste or even way of living, shall do so and I think that is completely o.k.. Basically I like to call what I spin and produce “Techno” and in general “electronic Music”. For me personally, since that day in 1994, “Schranz” is a description for various dark and distorted sounds in Techno. At that point I couldn`t come up with a better word, but of course then I also didn`t know, that one day it would become so popular. I don`t want to and I can`t tell anyone how and where to use the word and in what respect. That´s CLAU 04 was called :”Call it what you want…” So be tolerant, make up your own mind about it and don`t believe everything which is written in magazines. Chris Liebing, 2002

Shibuya-Kei

The Japanese pop phenomenon known as Shibuya-Kei exploded forth from the ultra-trendy Shibuya shopping district of west Tokyo, an area home to some of the most fashionable and best-stocked record and clothing stores in the world. Shibuya-kei-literally, “Shibuya style”-was the name given to the like-minded pop musicians who emerged from this consumer culture, a group of young Japanese weaned on a steady and amazingly eclectic diet of Western pop exports; the result was an unprecedented collision of sights and sounds, with trailblazing acts like Pizzicato 5 drawing on disparate influences ranging from the lush lounge-pop of Burt Bacharach to the rhythms and energy of urban hip-hop. In its purest form, shibuya-kei is classic Western pop refracted through the looking glass of modern Eastern society-music cut up, pasted together, and spit out in new and exciting ways. Shibuya-kei is also pop music at its cutest: it’s a view to a world where the sweetness and simplicity of the girl-group era never ended but simply evolved, never out of step with the times but always true to its roots as well-the Lolita complex so pervasive throughout Japanese culture informs much of this music, and its youthful innocence is the key to much of its endearing charm.

Shoegazing is a genre of late ’80s and early ’90s British indie-rock, named after the bands’ motionless performing style, where they stood on stage and stared at the floor while they played. But shoegazing wasn’t about visuals-it was about pure sound. The sound of the music was overwhelmingly loud, with long, droning riffs, waves of distortion, and cascades of feedback. Vocals and melodies disappeared into the walls of guitars, creating a wash of sound where no instrument was distinguishable from the other. Most shoegazing groups worked off the template My Bloody Valentine established with their early EPs and their first full-length album, Isn’t Anything, but Dinosaur Jr., the Jesus & Mary Chain, and the Cocteau Twins were also major influences. Bands that followed-most notably Ride, Lush, Chapterhouse, and the Boo Radleys-added their own stylistic flourishes. Ride veered close to ’60s psychedelia, while Lush alternated between straight pop and the dream pop of the Cocteau Twins. None of the shoegazers were dynamic performers or interesting interviews, which prevented them from breaking through into the crucial US market. In 1992-after the groups had dominated the British music press and indie charts for about three years-the shoegazing groups were swept aside by the twin tides of American grunge and Suede, the band to initiate the wave of Brit-pop that ruled British music during the mid-’90s. Some shoegazers broke up within a few years (Chapterhouse, Ride), while other groups-such as the Boo Radleys and Lush-evolved with the times and were able to sustain careers into the late ’90s.

Ska originated in Jamaica in the early 60s, with an emphasis on vocals and horns, and rhythm guitar hitting on the offbeats. Today’s “ska revivalists,” like No Doubt, often jack up the tempo but otherwise remain relatively faithful to the concept.

Space-Rock

Once used as a tag to describe ’70s-era acts like Hawkwind, in more recent years the term Space-Rock has come to embody a new generation of heady, hypnotic bands with aspirations of cosmic transcendence. Arguably the first and most prominent of the new space-rock groups was Britain’s Spacemen 3, whose famous “Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to” credo subsequently influenced most, if not all, of the like-minded bands in their wake; indeed, the music of the genre is typically narcotic, defined by washes of heavily reverbed guitar, minimalist drumming, and gentle, languid vocals.

Speed Garage

Revving up the sweet sound of garage techno by adding ragga vocals, rewinds, and DJ scratching along with occasional drum’n’bass rhythms, Speed Garage hit the London clubscene in 1996, gaining momentum from its Sunday-night status as a good end-of-the-week comedown to supplant jungle/drum’n’bass as the hotly tipped dance style of the late ’90s. Influenced by American producers like Todd Edwards and Armand Van Helden, speed garage grew with European acts such as the Dream Team, Double 99, Boris Dlugosch, and the Tuff Jam crew.

Tech-House

Tech-House is used to describe a variety of rangy, mostly European producers who culled many of the rhythms and effects of acid and progressive house yet with a clean, simplistic production style suggestive of Detroit and British techno. The style came to cover a wide variety of names including Herbert, Daniel Ibbotson, Terry Lee Brown Jr., Funk D’Void, and Ian O’Brien, among others.

Techno had its roots in the electronic house music made in Detroit in the mid-’80s. Where house still had explicit connection to disco even when it was entirely mechanical, techno was strictly electronic music, designed for a small, specific audience. The first techno producers and DJs-Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins, and Derrick May, among others-emphasized the electronic, synthesized beats of electro-funk artists like Afrika Bambaataa and synth-rock units like Kraftwerk. In the United States, techno was strictly an underground phenomenon, but in England, it broke into the mainstream in the late ’80s. In the early ’90s, techno began to fragment into a number of subgenres, including hardcore, ambient, and jungle. In hardcore techno, the beats-per-minute on each record were sped up to ridiculous, undanceable levels-it was designed to alienate a broad audience. Ambient took the opposite direction, slowing the beats down and relying on watery electronic textures-it was used as come-down music, when ravers and club-goers needed a break from acid house and hardcore techno. Jungle was nearly as aggressive as hardcore, combining driving techno beats with breakbeats and dancehall reggae-essentially. All subgenres of techno were initially designed to be played in clubs, where they would be mixed by DJs. Consequently, most of the music was available on 12″ singles or various-artists compilations, where the songs could run for a long time, providing the DJ with a lot of material to mix into his set. In the mid-’90s, a new breed of techno artists-most notably ambient acts like the Orb and Aphex Twin, but also harder-edged artists like the Prodigy and Goldie-began constructing albums that didn’t consist of raw beats intended for mixing. Not surprisingly, these artists-particularly the Prodigy-became the first recognizable stars in techno.

Breaking out of the German techno and hardcore scene of the early ’90s, Trance emphasized brief synthesizer lines repeated endlessly throughout tracks, with only the addition of minimal rhythmic changes and occasional synthesizer atmospherics to distinguish them-in effect putting listeners into a trance that approached those of religious origin. Despite waning interest in the sound during the mid-’90s, trance made a big comeback later in the decade, even supplanting house as the most popular dance music of choice around the globe.

Inspired by acid house and Detroit techno, trance coalesced with the opening of R&S Records in Ghent, Belgium and Harthouse/Eye Q Records in Frankfurt, Germany. R&S defined the sound early on with singles like “Energy Flash” by Joey Beltram, “The Ravesignal” by CJ Bolland, and others by Robert Leiner, Sun Electric, and Aphex Twin. Harthouse, begun in 1992 by Sven Väth with Heinz Roth & Matthias Hoffman, made the most impact on the sound of trance with Hardfloor’s minimal epic “Hardtrance Acperience” and Väth’s own “L’Esperanza,” plus releases by Arpeggiators, Spicelab, and Barbarella. Artists like Väth, Bolland, Leiner, and many others made the transition to the full-length realm, though without much of an impact on the wider music world.

Despite a long nascent period when it appeared trance had disappeared, replaced by breakbeat dance (trip-hop and jungle), the style’s increasing impact on Britain’s dance scene finally crested in the late ’90s. The classic German sound had changed somewhat though, and the term “progressive” trance gained favor to describe influences from the smoother end of house and Euro dance. By 1998, most of the country’s best-known DJs-Paul Oakenfold, Pete Tong, Tony De Vit, Danny Rampling, Sasha, Judge Jules-were playing trance in Britain’s superclubs. Even America turned on to the sound (eventually), led by its own cast of excellent DJs, including Christopher Lawrence and Kimball Collins.

Tribal House

By the early ’90s, house music had undergone several fusions with other styles, creating ambient house, hip-house and, when the four-on-the-floor punch was blended with polyrhythmic percussion, Tribal House. The style covers a bit of ground, from the mainstream leanings of Frankie Bones and Ultra Naté to the electro-hippie sensibilities of Banco de Gaia, Loop Guru, and Eat Static (all denizens of the UK’s Planet Dog Records).

Trip-Hop

Yet another in a long line of plastic placeholders to attach itself to one arm or another of the UK post-acid house dance scene’s rapidly mutating experimental underground, Trip-Hop was coined by the English music press in an attempt to characterize a new style of downtempo, jazz-, funk-, and soul-inflected experimental breakbeat music which began to emerge around in 1993 in association with labels such as Mo’Wax, Ninja Tune, Cup of Tea, and Wall of Sound. Similar to (though largely vocal-less) American hip-hop in its use of sampled drum breaks, typically more experimental, and infused with a high index of ambient-leaning and apparently psychotropic atmospherics (hence “trip”), the term quickly caught on to describe everything from Portishead and Tricky, to DJ Shadow and U.N.K.L.E., to Coldcut, Wagon Christ, and Depth Charge-much to the chagrin of many of these musicians, who saw their music largely as an extension of hip-hop proper, not a gimmicky offshoot. One of the first commercially significant hybrids of dance-based listening music to crossover to a more mainstream audience, trip-hop full-length releases routinely topped indie charts in the UK and, in artists such as Shadow, Tricky, Morcheeba, the Sneaker Pimps, and Massive Attack, account for a substantial portion of the first wave of “electronica” acts to reach Stateside audiences.

Zouk comes from the Caribbean, but it also extremely popular in France, where musicians from former French colonies congregate (Kassav is one of the better-known Zouk groups in France). Zouk is uplifting, uptempo music with the kind of vocal and instrumental interplay that’s reminiscent of purely African music.