Subatomic

Issue Two featuring music, games, and literature with zero seriousness.

Abstract

How are you?

Seriously, I want to know. I feel like it’s such a throwaway question. But even this introvert genuinely wants that information when he asks it. Yes, in most instances I don’t have a lot of time to hear more than a couple of succinct sentences from you but if you’re reading this, it matters to me how you are.

The latest Subatomic features album reviews of Ibex Clone, David Edren & H. Takahashi, and Cruel Diagonals, an excerpt for a review of the board game Evergreen, as well as a review of Miki Berenyi’s autobiography.

Ibex Clone — All Channels Clear (Goner Records; LP/DL)

The conceit of genres is dead. It’s just an ancient cataloguing technique that record stores and disc jockeys adhere to out of some semblance of order. But the notion that most music falls neatly into a specific description, aesthetic, or sound is a fallacy that we’ve largely carried into the 21st Century (among many others).

This is the thought provoked by multiple listens of early AOTY candidate All Channels Clear. Sure, there’s little doubt that Memphis’s Ibex Clone channel their post-punk vibrancy like an ebon chakra. The production of their proper debut also owes its debt to crisp, spacious production reminiscent of the early 80s UK scene. It lends All Channels Clear a solid starting point.

Despite this tentpole, All Channels Clear explores a vast sonic landscape. I take it as no accident that the album’s title track is such a clear example of Ibex Clone purposely breaking from an archetype, they aren’t ready to be cast in; that the band is making a future statement by naming the album after a song that is decidedly jangly once the brow-beaten bass line gives way to 12 strings and near-jaunty drums. While much of the album features George Williford bending and stretching 6 strings, “All Channels Clear” is more Athens (Georgia) and less Liverpool (circa 1982).

These flourish and subtle touches are throughout the album. While the cues are familiar, All Channels Clear signifies the waypoint of so-called post-punk. Very few musical movements had an organic growth due to where mass markets shifted the whole industry before the birth of the post-punk movement. While All Channels Clear would file snuggly under “post-punk” in the record bins of the past and present, there is something wholly untethered to a musical genre that has a few hallmarks, but no real meaning in modern context. Ibex Clone has something more up their sleeves, and the hope is they continue to explore and flourish. There is no path to superstardom, but a waypoint toward sustainability in scenes that seem to be crushed by incessant labeling and confining parameters is waiting to collect dust as they cruise on by.

David Edren & H. Takahashi — Flow (Aguirre; LP/DL)

Just how cliché is the idea of spiritualism? It’s truly uncontainable, like water flowing through cupped hands. To possess something that is unobstructed and fickle is to pursue an endless routine of rituals and philosophies that become symbols for one’s spiritualism but brings one no closer to the essence of spirits they seek.

But if there were a church organ at this intersection of realism and spiritualism, and we were all celebrants within its hallowed cathedral, Flow would be the hymnal meditation under which we would ordain ourselves. It reaches into the recesses of the modern soul, deftly pulling out the litter of a life seeking spirituality through countless habits in favor of Edren & Takahashi’s own journey toward something greater.

The true failing of the spiritual is how insular a process it becomes for many. In severing the ties to the canonical, there isn’t a loss of order but rather sequence. Flow doesn’t promote itself as some new age remedy for a damaged soul; it doesn’t pretend to be anything more than what two artists with elegant stylings found in collaborating. But it’s this exact interaction — bridging gaps through shared interests — that turn the habitual into transcendent moments. It’s impossible to devout one’s entire being to an idea as obfuscate as the loosely-defined spiritual. But the desire to celebrate a deeper meaning in one’s life is but human nature; to commune with something greater than our brains can truly grapple. While it can be an isolating experience, the best path forward for those of us looking toward the metaphorical for guidance is coming together to create something beautiful, unique, and reflective. Flow is precisely the element of such lucid realization. Yes, we are all individuals but with purpose and determination, we find balance in the order of a chaotic and demeaning universe; a place to redeem and rebirth.

Cruel Diagonals — Fractured Whole (Beacon Sound; LP/DL)

Opening with Megan’ Mitchell’s angelic, layered vocal, Fractured Whole presents itself as one entity, when it’s truly a dark doppelganger. A moody, impenetrable eeriness envelopes “Penance,” the opener of Cruel Diagonals' latest, with an industrialized synthetic heaving. While Mitchell’s voice tries to rise above the harshness, it’s brought back down to the caverns of self-inflicted pain. Who we are paying penance to seems to be less about a higher being but rather our own selves, and we can’t help to flagellate ourselves in the weird interplay between pleasure and pain.

As I travel deeper into the glitchy despair of Fractured Whole, I’m reminded of Laurie Anderson’s ability to transform the mundane lives of a fractured nation into a tapestry of stories worth exploring. Similarly, I’m finding Mitchell’s vocals transporting me into dimly-lit views of herself, calling out both to humanity and void in this bifurcated take on Lars von Trier’s Dogville. Each song is an action, be it of forgiveness, violence, despair, or redemption. But outcomes are hazy, as the metaphorical noise of a society and self constantly waging war battle each other in a never-ending struggle. There are moments where Mitchell’s godly beam touches on our mortal coils. Within “Synectics” she’s trying to dial us in, but the signal is weak; a psychic break occurring to tamper out any notion of higher understanding between us.

But it’s the physical act of reaching out within that void and trying to find something or someone among the static-riddled channels that truly lifts Fractured Whole. We are all damaged; cobbled together by bits and pieces. If any album seems to get us — and embrace us for it — this would be a circumstance to attune oneself to such frequencies.

[The following is an excerpt from a review for Evergreen, released by Horrible Guild. The whole review can be read at Casual Game Revolution.]

Evergreen is a relatively easy game to pick up and play. The rules, despite having a bit of overhead, are simply and smartly laid out in the game’s rulebook. It’s easy to follow, there are pictures galore, and the symbology on both the biome cards and the player boards makes it easy to understand what to do after a couple of turns. And games are so quick, that when new players finally realize how Evergreen’s puzzle unfolds, they’ll want to play another with the new knowledge they’ve gained.

And this is not just the experience of new players. As the game becomes more familiar, even seasoned players will want to experiment with different strategies and gaming styles. Coupled with the drafting mechanism, it’ll take multiple games for people to come to any conclusion about these strategies because where they can place and grow trees, as well as end of game scoring, will often be different.

It’s this mix of direct interaction during drafting, coupled with the individuality of actions and powers on each player’s own boards, where Evergreen separates itself from Hach’s own Photosynthesis, which Evergreen was initially compared to. However, Evergreen is a far more streamlined game, both in terms of available actions and the correlations within.

As board gaming continues to evolve and grow, abstract puzzle games that are tests of player’s spatial abilities can often come with frustration. Evergreen may have a few players steaming, either due to another player drafting the biome card they were eyeing or trying to figure out how best to min-max their end of season scores with an eye toward end of game scoring. Yet, the ability to pivot mid-turn is available thanks to the use of powers.

Evergreen is an evolving game all on its own, despite being a simple game once players understand the basic strategy. And as much consternation as puzzle games may be to some, others will find it the perfect game to unwind with, either in a group or solo. It doesn’t hurt that Wenyi Geng’s artwork is eye-catching and relaxing all on its own.

Miki Berenyi — Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me from Success (Nine Eight Books)

Stories of success and failure are often at the core of any musician’s autobiography, as the artist remembers the monuments and marks of a life lived so far. But Berenyi’s life takes a few detours (some familiar, some not) that speak to how her view of two separate lives by two completely different parents were formative in establishing her own identity.

Of course, finding that identity turns Fingers Crossed into more of a bildungsroman than most artist autobiographies. Berenyi’s father and his mother are hanging on in a society that sees them as outsiders. The same holds true for Berenyi’s mother, whose burgeoning career as an actress and model provides a ticket toward something more, however exotic she is typecast. It’s a wayward family pocked by divorce, destitution, and desolation. And Miki is often the odd-person out; her mother remarrying into wealth and decadence; her father and grandmother living in moral and physical decay.

Much of the book focuses on Miki’s youth and how it was formative in forging her identity and norms. Again, there is little new ground to explore but it doesn’t make Miki’s tragedies any less meaningful. Readers may desensitize themselves for sexual abuse, incest, and violence but does this not make one’s experiences any less relevant?

Of course, Miki does get into the music — first as a fan, then as a member of bands, and finally the whole British scene as it transformed into the lad culture of Britpop that is still celebrated by many despite its excesses and stupidities. Miki speaks plainly and honestly about her relationship with Emma Anderson, as well as Chris Acland. She is often pointing out these are her experiences and insights, though she does try to project on Emma from time to time. However, it’s never done to make Miki look better or Emma worse, just Miki trying to explore the disconnects in their personalities despite their initial closeness through shared interests in their youth.

Nothing revelatory is unveiled within Fingers Crossed save Miki’s upbringing and the complications therein, but Miki’s writing style is like that of a well-documented journal. It’s easy to read, it’s informative, but also open and unforgiving to herself and others. It’s not a tell-all or a book slagging on others, just a throughline into a look of a brief moment of musical history and Miki’s small part in it.

NTS show Architects recently produced a show on the music of personal favorite, Roy Montgomery. Check it out here.

The excellent Spindle Podcast, which covers 7-inch releases largely from the 70s-90s, recently released an episode concerning Miles Davis’s “Vote for Miles” from the On the Corner album (celebrating its 50th anniversary). A companion of four pieces from the complete On the Corner sessions called Turnaround is due in April.

Speaking of — and please feel free to look away — the 2023 Record Store Day list was released. If you like standing in line for picture discs, live rare jazz gems, and interesting mid-90s alternative vinyl pressings, the list may have your attention. For those who hate major labels continuing to hog pressing plants to press “Macho Man” Randy Savage’s 2003 rap album, Be a Man, well you’re likely stewing.

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Twitter: @genxsaisquoi