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Cassandra-Leo
yeah though at the moment 99% of my steam activity consists of Risk of Rain 2 with occasional Risk of Rain Returns or Staioneers. my backlog has taken a backseat (pardon the pun) while i try to finish off some mods i’ve been a major creative force behind for the last ≈5 years
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sand-piper
Bro woke up one day in December and decided “yeah time to stop listening to music
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Cassandra-Leo
not so much that as i haven’t been playing anything on platforms i have last.fm set up to recognize (i really need to connect my Apple Music account to it). but that said, literally 95% of my listening the last couple years has been music i’ve been mixing/mastering for games i’m working on, and it feels really weird to scrobble that exclusively
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nfopuhfxir
TFW Vattnet Visker mauldlin of the Well Michael Giacchino Mayhem Isis Grateful Dead Pavement Joanna Newsom Wolves in the Throne Room Kayo Dot Midori Nokturnal Mortum Aaron Freed Shining Devin Townsend Project Sheena Ringo Koenjihyakkei Dead Kennedys Nine Inch Nails DIR EN GREY The Smashing Pumpkins Murray Gold Opeth Porcupine Tree Krallice The Beatles Todd Rundgren King Crimson Mastodon Radiohead Gorguts Yes Gridlink Assück Frank Zappa The Mars Volta Discordance Axis Hiroki Kikuta Sigh Panopticon Drudkh Ulver Moonsorrow Nobuo Uematsu Magma Genesis Enslaved Blut aus Nord Godspeed You! Black Emperor Deathspell Omega
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Cassandra-Leo
i’ve worked on several actually; see my response to PinkFloydrulez below for more info
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PinkFloydrulez
"game design uses most of my time" dude, I hope you are doing some awesome shit
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Cassandra-Leo
overview at https://aaronfreed.github.io/aaronfreed/ ¶ Apotheosis X, which I did sound and scripting for, got featured in PC Gamer, which is definitely pretty awesome given it’s a mod for a 28-year-old engine that was originally a Mac exclusive. (also, Marathon 2 is 28 years old? good lord, i feel so old now.) ¶ I’m pretty pleased with how Eternal X (which I’ve effectively been managing since 2020) is shaping up too, and i’m working on other projects that also have the potential to be quite awesome: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoysJW6pXQ6kTA-DquUYGZ9LNyuaW0com ¶ plus, all the remixes and rearrangements i’ve been doing, which are also linked on the GitHub page above. so yeah, hopefully some awesome shit
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Cassandra-Leo
i should note these are all mods for Bungie’s pre-Halo series Marathon, which is basically the Doom to Halo’s Quake. (i had written Half-Life here, but since Half-Life itself clearly took a lot of inspiration from Marathon, as Errant Signal pointed out in the “Children of Doom” episode on Marathon, the comparison might be confusing.) it’s a lot more focused on storytelling than Doom though; i’ve joked before that it’s a visual novel that has an FPS as a minigame. that’s obviously a comedic exaggeration, but all three games have *a lot* of text. they also pioneered environmental storytelling in the genre (one of the ways they influenced half-life) and introduced numerous genre staples like the assault rifle/grenade launcher combo, but most of this is now largely forgotten because they were Mac games. anyway, Bungie open-sourced the engine in 2000 and made the games freeware in 2005. and now they’re making a new game in the series, a thing i never thought would happen.
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roadkillfacepnt
hope you're doing good homie, hit me up if you wanna chat game design and music sometime :)
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Abroxas
Okay, so I learned about the Maor Appelbaum version of Sigh's Scenes From Hell and I just wanted to know what this is about, why is there an alternate Mastering which is supposedly just better but is hidden away and only released on a very limited re-press like a filthy bootleg? I tried to google it but no one seems to talk about it at all and all I learned is that you probably like Final Fantasy, and who doesn't?
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IDieScreaming
because Japanese band and fuck you. You can get it digitally on Mort Records' bandcamp page though.
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Cassandra-Leo
i elaborated to some extent on the main shoutbox (i also left a short review on bandcamp). it’s likely to be my aoty. it’s somewhat unexpected, but it’s not as big a departure as people are claiming; they always had slow melodic sections, even on fas and synarchy, and they’ve just chosen to make them the exception rather than the rule on this album. the fable is some of the best writing they’ve ever done, and the lyrics are great as well. the mural is breathtaking, and i can’t wait for the lp to arrive so i can look at a higher-quality print of it. it wasn’t precisely the dso album i was expecting (i learnt a long time ago not to expect anything besides amazing music and lyrics out of a new dso album), but it’s the one i needed right now. the only thing i’m not completely thrilled with is the cover art, but timo ketola was an irreplaceable talent, so i wasn’t expecting that to be up to their usual standard.
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nfopuhfxir
It means that he’s right about literally everything, like how the princess Cassandra prophecy’s always came true.
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nfopuhfxir
Actually, it’s a reference to the song ‘Cassandra Gemini’ by the band The Mars Volta, except he replaced it with his own sign, Leo
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Cassandra-Leo
correct. the secondary reference to the mythical cassandra was an added bonus to the name, though. also, i’ve been neglecting this shoutbox for entirely too long – sorry!
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Cassandra-Leo
thanks! i still need to listen to it more – it came out in a period where i was kinda just neglecting music (hence the delayed response; sorry about that). it’s clearly a great album, and human is hell is one of the best tracks they’ve done to date; parallax ii is probably impossible to top, though. it probably doesn’t top colors either. it might end up as high as #3 in their discography for me, though, which is pretty respectable!
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comfydrones
Intriguing library! There are many things I want to explore further. Do you have any BM or related recommendations for me by any chance? I'm revisiting that realm right now, and would like to delve further (should say that I'm not very trve, I mostly prefer atmospheric or more experimental parts of the genre).
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Erkan-Yilmaz
Happy 15th scrobbling anniversary today! ... How fast time flashed by enjoying your 413k scrobbles, ain't it so? ... May you have many more such musical anniversaries, and many more good things in the years to come! ... What are your thoughts about lastfm right now ( and how did you think when you joined it)?
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bastardizations
i dont know how to listen to dso anymore now i know mikko aspa is their vocalist
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Cassandra-Leo
on one hand, i see why his (apparent – afaik, the lineup has still never been explicitly confirmed by any official source) involvement makes people uneasy. on the other hand, making the completely plausible assumption that the comments in the bardo methodology interview are referring to him, he’s a glorified session musician who’s never had any hand in writing the music/lyrics, and with whom the members who actually write the music/lyrics vehemently disagree. it probably helps me feel more comfortable listening to dso that my politics, by all apparent indications, align extremely closely with those of the french members’, but i loved their music before i had any reading on any of their politics, and in any case, a musician being a scumbag doesn’t necessarily prevent me from listening to them. john lennon was a wife-beater (he later tried to make amends for this, but facts are facts), but i still listen to the beatles. i guess this just means i have lower standards than some people do.
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bastardizations
yh i mean it seems like the majority of musicians are/have been abusive or "problematic". and when i was younger i did listen to nsbm happily ignorantly (peste noire), but now for me, i cant reconcile supporting nazis (and in mikko aspa case a potential peadophile) with them also happening to make good music. i think for me, they didnt explicitately state their political beliefs (afaik) in the bardo mythology interview? if you have a source though i'll happily adjust my position. the fact they even chose to collaborate with mikko makes me question whether they genuinly stand by what they say they believe though.
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versionJBT
AOTY has officially been announced: https://www.karismarecords.no/details-of-latest-album-from-wobbler-revealed/
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Cassandra-Leo
hell yeah, instant preorder. hope you’re keeping well dude. that new dso interview is really something, isn’t it? i can’t say it fundamentally changed my perception of them like the bardo one did, but it definitely gave me a deeper understanding of them (i can’t believe i never consciously noticed the environmental themes on drought – it seems so obvious now that i think about it). also apparently there’s a second volume of the bardo interview that’s only in print; i’ve been thinking about ordering that.
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Cassandra-Leo
yeah, it’s great stuff. i need to listen more to it – and a lot of new releases. i’ve just not been listening as much to music in general, which i think is largely because i’ve been spending a lot more time playing/designing games lately. school’s starting up again today though, so maybe i’ll listen more to music while studying.
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IDieScreaming
I'm curious how you feel about grind these days. It seems you used to be super big on grind but gradually fell out of love with it.
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Cassandra-Leo
i still enjoy it a lot – frankly, i think it’s just that most of my favourite grind bands (gridlink, discordance axis, assück) haven’t released anything in years/decades, and i have a pretty strong recency bias overall when it comes to music, with a few exceptions, most of which i’ve been listening to since my childhood or early adolescence. i’d probably enjoy a lot of new bands if i spent time looking for them, but i find it increasingly tough to keep up with new music these days.
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IDieScreaming
Huh, that's very interesting. I've actually got a bias against recent music, and I find a lot of joy in listening to older things in opposition to new music; I usually make my best of personal lists one year after the year is over. I guess it could be because how long you've been listening to music though
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Cassandra-Leo
yeah, i’ve just got so much stuff in my library that i feel like i need new releases to jog my memory about bands. for an extreme example, godspeed you! black emperor are one of my two favourite bands of all time and i’ve barely listened to them this year. (dso is the other) i think i might also be trying to avoid overplaying bands too much, because if i become over-familiar with their output, it can (though doesn’t always) lose some of its magic.
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IDieScreaming
Ah yeah, over-familiarity does sometimes make things lose a bit of that "wow" feeling.
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Cassandra-Leo
thanks. it varies depending what i’m doing, honestly. now that i think about it, i most consistently focus intently on music when i’m driving… which i haven’t done at all since march. that probably hasn’t helped the amount of listening i’ve been doing in quarantine. but yeah, i can listen either way – i can focus on one specific instrument, or the overall sound of the song, or the lyrics, or just listen to music while i study/read/play games/whatever. so there’s not one definitive answer to the question
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Nathankelley
We used to talk almost a decade ago. You are a madaman for still using this site all these years! Hope all is well with you and yours
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Cassandra-Leo
thanks. i’m keeping pretty well, given how hellish things are outside… mostly by rarely going outside. to be frank, this wasn’t a huge change to my daily routine, but it does really suck not seeing friends irl at all. hope you’re staying well, too
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IDieScreaming
Your old reviews on M-A were a small goldmine. Also thanks for introducting me to Sheena Ringo.
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IDieScreaming
I was really surprised with the DsO Bardo interview, it was so much better than the last interview I read with them (the cringeworthy AJNA Offensive one steeped in needless metaphor and aesthetic). Even Niklas was on his A-game and wasn't coming off as full of himself. Really appreciated them and were very important in getting me into DsO finally as well!
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IDieScreaming
gonna go give the CND one a read, it seems pretty long so I need some time haha
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Cassandra-Leo
i have this possibly crackpot theory that they were playing an almost literal form of devil’s advocate (in the original meaning of the term) in their earlier interviews and music, and that the bardo and cult never die interviews are the first ones to represent their actual stances. however, it’s also possible that they just shifted *that much* as people over a fifteen-year period. fifteen years is a long time! in any case, i think the ajna interview is probably the same person speaking on behalf of the band, but one of the earlier, even more cringeworthy interviews sounds like a completely different writer – my guess is the earlier interview might’ve been shaxul or something. idk. with an anonymous band, all we have to go on are guesses for a lot of this stuff. i totally get wanting to take your time and absorb interviews as dense as these.
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proxximo169
hey! great library. I see your shouts in almost every shoutboxes of the bands I like, and I'm surprised that you haven't scrobbled In Vain yet. Try their Ænigma. Some of the best prog-death I've ever listened to.
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Cassandra-Leo
thanks, i’ll have to check them out. there are a lot of big gaps in my listening because i’ve been really out of the loop when it comes to recent-ish music… basically ever since since last.fm killed groups. (…also, wtf, this shout was five months ago. i’ve really been neglecting this site. and music in general.)
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