ALT Three Songs is, well, three songs played by the daughter of dreampunk David Russo (founder of Dream Catalogue and one half of 2418, better known as Hong Kong Express / HKE and additionally known by scores of other obtuse aliases), who was a little under 3 years old at the time. Silly Choonz has Sofia, now four, collabing with her dad for more coherent music, and even has a feature from Black Banshee, one of Russo's friends. Say what you will about Russo & co. (the consensus seems to be that the guy is a real asshole, and so are many of his buddies), but I think this is a cute, sweet way to encourage your kid's creative side and is also just plain interesting to hear. "Silliness" on Choonz is pretty good! I will genuinely be following Sofia's work. :)

ALT It's widely held that Pleasant Specter OST is not the soundtrack to a scrapped Dreamcast game, as its distributors claim. Outside of the Bandcamp and Dream Catalogue pages for Pleasant Specter and the equally-dubious Commercial Work 1993-2004 compilation, there's no trace of a Pleasant Specter or a SpecterSoft or a Yamato Kobayashi, at least as a musician and composer. The story of Pleasant Specter, then, is most likely fake. But isn't that sort of the point? Vaporwave exists as an intermediate between a past imagined in the future and a future imagined in the past, as a realm of ambiguous desires and meanings — things that might have existed, might not have, and the shifting, aching nostalgias we assign to them. "Vapor" as in the intangible, impermanent, almost-but-not-quite invisible. (We still don't know who actually created Pleasant Specter or Commercial Works, after all, though I've seen CVLTVRE implicated by way of synths sleuthing.) And even with the awareness that it probably

ALT I was so tuned out to this album that while listening I had a split second of "oh I'm bored, I should put on some music" before I remembered I was already listening to music. (Does it make me sound less like a douche to mention that I like jazz and classical despite my blind spots and also that I felt guilty and lame about finding this so boring?) I don't think this is a bad album — just not my speed, I guess? I think I was expecting progressive big band to mean progressive as in virtuosic, perhaps maximalist, maybe highly melodic, instead of progressive as in "incorporates elements of Western classical music." Ah, well. The quest to decode my taste in jazz and classical music advances.

ALT I first heard "Degenerar" back in 2014 when I spent all my free computer time at school trawling SoundCloud, back when they would feature indie tracks every now and then. (This is also how I found Heartsrevolution's "KISS," Uchu Nekoko and LovelySummerChan's cover of "Divine Hammer," Black Letters's "Roam," and probably more I can't think of right now.) While nothing else on Alkaloides reaches the high of "Degenerar," the self-titled doesn't disappoint. Alkaloides is a competent rock outfit no matter what style they're trying on in this somewhat eclectic album. The often-bittersweet, dream pop-inflected guitar work is the key. It's no surprise that they seem to be well-liked in and iconic to the Ecuadorian alternative world.

ALT I remember almost nothing about this movie. Most generic movie I've seen in a long time. If this is gonna be copaganda anyway (in the classical sense of manufacturing consent for extralegal police behavior, not just portraying cops in a positive light) can Chuck Norris actually do literally anything with the crazy scary ass police robot minitank we see for like 1 minute total please.

ALT No joke, I had way more thoughts about this film than I thought I would. I've been chipping away at a Letterbox review draft for like a week plus that I think I'm just gonna turn into an article. So stay tuned for that I guess?? lol

ALT Another 2 am Lyft home from a Valentine's night out shazam find (though I can't remember which track it was off Zatto that popped up in the driver's playlist). Good, mellow stuff that really enhances a late-night mood. "Tangerine" is my favorite song here.

ALT Some cool stuff on here, intersecting EBM and trance (outside the synthpop trappings of futurepop) in a toxic, passionate, gothic boys' love package. "Fester Love" is my favorite. I was surprised by the overt queerness in "New Vogue Children," where Kaya simultaneously calls for the unborn children he conceived in sodomy, hideous yet ugly, both to rise up and destroy the straight and ignorant, and to take their eternal rest against his chest, having had their wings broken or plucked — destroyed by society, or destined to never be born. I use a vague word like queer here purposely to evoke that twilight zone that seems to exists in Japanese culture between what would be defined in the West as male homosexuality and transfemininity, an area that Kaya seems to play within. Not unheard of within vkei, but still pleasantly surprising.