It’s a Fiddlehead summer over, lads.
Or, more precisely, it’s a Baby I’ll Change summer. Years have passed since a single song has found its way on repeat for me like this song has. Let’s explore that.
But first…
Get a load of these loose topics, my guy!
There’s no doubt that this is your favourite newsletter, but if you’re in the market for another, one that I enjoy is the Hiro Report. A more tech-related affair, it’s in its fourth year now and Hiro launched an archive for hardware and software broached in older issues.
Somehow, over here in the cradle of capitalism in Western Europe, gacha capsules never really got to the level of what’s happening in Japan. Case in point: GLOSSY SKINNED CHUBBY FROGS!
TECH NERD CORNER AHOY
Operating systems! They’re neat. Sometimes. But this one definitely is: HamsterOS! A 32-bit operating system that fits on a 1.44MB floppy diskette and runs on 386/486-class PCs and newer. What an enchanting effort for the love of it. Coming out November.
For the love of it, redux: creating a means to watch YouTube videos on a Game Boy Color. Why? Fuck you, that’s why. What a glorious concept.
Ok that’s enough nerd shit.
SYKE! Some more nerd shit for your ass: photographer James Popsys talking about what makes a camera "fun." A subject I have a lot of feelings about: the technically best camera I’ve owned so far was a Sony a7 III. It was a real workhorse, point it at a subject and shoot and you’re nearly guaranteed a good picture. But it’s also kind of boring to shoot that way. Instead, I work with machinery that requires more input and refinement from the user, and my work is all the more satisfying for it.
Ever wonder why all those action adventure movies on big streaming services… (let me look this up)… SUCK ASS? Yes, that’s a technical term. Whether it’s Fountain of Youth or Red Notice or any of the other bland bullshit that pollutes your screen, it all is incredibly expensive and also terrible to watch. YouTuber Patrick (H) Willems has some thoughts on how they come to be.
So then, Baby I’ll Change, clearly a song dealing with some regret, a dash of self-loathing, a cycle needing to be broken…
It’s not particularly crystal in my head what or who this work deals with specifically, but the lyrics are straightforward enough – and yet, not pornographically so.
There are some quotes and reviews about the track online, but quite frankly I don’t know the people involved so it would be gauche for me to delve into a mine so unknown. The work should stand on its own.
So instead, the opposite side of the coin is where my interest lies: how can a song be so gripping despite its subject matter being somewhat opaque that it makes you want to crawl inside of it over and over again?
A few working theories.
One somewhat optimistic, another, perhaps a tad darker.
Optimism triumphs first: although the song might not be endlessly clear on who it’s about, or specifically what events, it’s crafted in such a high-quality way that its themes penetrate even the thickest brains (such as mine).
The music and lyrics slip together like lovers’ hands, finding each other exactly where they are, driving the entire piece into my brain like a red-hot knife would.
A darker take: perhaps our brains are simply a more complicated version of input/output devices that are easily manipulated by certain sounds and a song like this "clicks" into place in an as-of-yet-unexplained-by-science kind of way.
(Aside: this could explain why AI-generated music can sometimes still hit those points in our brains, despite us hating the fact that it does so. But that’s a dark path to go down: are we really just animals who can be manipulated in a way not too different from a moose getting fooled by a fabricated mating call? Would be a sad discovery for us all, truly.)
Regardless. Let us end on a more fun note.
A swift delve into the archive that is my memory – a mouldy archive built on a crumbling foundation – looking for songs that have managed to capture my singular attention, has delivered me this list, all of which have at one time or another found itself on repeat for an extended period in my life:
Converge - Dark Horse
Propagandhi - Rock for Sustainable Capitalism
Catharsis - Duende
Aesop Rock x Blockhead - All the Smartest People
Angel Du$t - Fear Some
Doomriders - Heavy Lies the Crown
108 - Holyname