26.10.16 - pretty swung grooves for a sad girl
thoughts and recommendations re: music, games, yuri, and guitar tunings
it was basically the worst year of my life. i lost two of my best friends – one to a breakup, and one to death. i withered under an oppressive feeling of absence.
first, i lost my mind. after that, i lost the will to take care of myself. i'd enter sleepless mornings watching the sun rise from my balcony. what did i look like, walking in broken circles across the parking lot and muttering at the ground? i didn't want to know. i didn't reach out to anyone because i didn't want them to witness the extent of my dysfunction. i became paranoid and distant, even from myself.
the supermoon came and washed everything in an alien glow that never went away. loss reshaped the contours of life itself; it contorted the present into a cruel facsimile of the past. the furniture i used to share with my ex kept jumpscaring me in my new house, lurching out of the shadows like taxidermied animals. messages sat unopened. i realized that i was afraid to make friends in the event that they might someday up and vanish.
in spite of that, somehow, i made new friends anyway– both IRL and online, the latter of which is still extremely new to me. meeting girls on the internet rescued me from self-destruction. i'm grateful for the home i share with my housemates, and for my cat, witty. i'm grateful to be in bands.
i realized recently that there's still so much i want to do. i don't care if it's corny: i want to go on an aquarium date before i die. that, and i want to make something beautiful. i want to write romance that could actually make a girl cry. i want to put all the love i've received to good use.
also, speaking of making things – since i last posted anything here, bullet points published my personal essays about death stranding 2 (2025) and marathon (2026).
i think that about covers my past year and a half or so.
current rotations
(things i've liked / revisited within the past couple of months[^1] or so)
music:
new edition - heart break (1988)
janet jackson - control (1986)
bobby brown - don't be cruel (1988)
cindy - angel touch (1990)
B0YG1RL - 777 (2026)
plus-tech squeeze box - cartoom! (2004)
tricot - fudeki (2022)
ko t. c. - world of shadow (2026)
julie f the rulies - in fall, we fell in love (2026)
(freud ring) - black plastic sky (2023)
games:
odin sphere leifthrasir (2016)
mother 3 (2006)
dark cloud (2000)
dark cloud 2 (2002)
roman sands re:build (2026)
star wars: galactic racer (2026)
order of the sinking star (2026)
marathon (2026)
yuri manga:
yuri espoir (ongoing)
tabako toka suwanasou na kouhai (ongoing)
momoiro montage (ongoing)
haikei, arishi hi ni saku hanatachi e (ongoing)
tunings (low to high):
EAbEbAbBEb
F#ADF#AE
something i hadn't realized about janet jackson's music is how cruel it can be.
i had my friend ko over a couple of weeks ago to talk about music. i've been struggling with finishing some of my songs, and i figured they'd have some wisdom to offer. a poster of the album artwork for their latest release, world of shadow – which, incidentally, was mastered by my housemate, cleo – is pinned above my monitor as i type this. they're truly one-of-a-kind as both a composer and producer. every song of theirs harbors the birth of a tiny planet: a restless, garrulous microcosm of ideas coming to life. they make music that rewards close examination.
ko came over to discuss a demo i'd sent them that was very much inspired by the work of david gamson, who's best-known as the producer behind scritti politti's cupid & psyche '85, a record rich in impressionistic arrangements and melodies tessellated across multiple, twinkling synths. i'd seen ko perform a cover of cupid & psyche's "absolute" during one of their shows, so i knew they'd be a good person to ask for guidance.
here's exactly one minute of it (please ignore that it's called "top 10 savory characters," which is just a working title...maybe...):
they suggested that i experiment with channeling the sound of new jack swing – a term that i was embarrassed to admit was not in my vocabulary. to illustrate what they meant, they told me to put on "if it isn't love" by new edition. as the song was about to reach the chorus, they observed that the genre is characterized by an undercurrent of "darkness."
then i heard it, and i got what they meant. it's that darkness – the contrast between vivid textural synths and heavy, assertive basslines; the bitterness undergirding every use of the word "love"; the shadow cast by the neon glow, oozing from the back of the club. that's the sort of feeling i'm after these days. i'm still quite heartbroken, after all.
so i've been listening to a lot of new jack swing lately. i'm certain "if it isn't love" will come to define my memory of this past summer, as will janet jackson's "what have you done for me lately," which is home to one of the deadliest earworms i've ever encountered.
the song dominates its listeners. it takes its time casting its hypnotic spell on you – what have you done for her lately? you begin to wonder, the rhythm coaxing you into a trancelike obeisance – before it suddenly, without warning, engulfs you in a divine sweetness. the song's bridge is its central deception. it's an excruciatingly beautiful piece of music. then inverted chords arrive to shatter the illusion; the section never recurs.
that's what i mean when i say janet jackson's music can be cruel. though maybe i've just been reading too much yuri with BDSM in it. (i'm no less obsessed with shuukura than i was about a year ago.)
on the subject of making music: i'll often leave my guitar in an alternate tuning for long periods of time, mostly out of laziness but also as a way to discover new chords progressions and voicings. as a result, a specific tuning may come to dominate my memories of distinct eras in my life.
i've always wanted to share my tunings with other guitarists in case they end up being generative in a similar way. (i also just think it'd be personally rewarding to have a consistent record of what tunings i've used and when.)
lately, my guitar has mostly been tuned to EAbEbAbBEb, which i discovered in 2018; i recorded the songs "i die by the fucking stone" and "slow power!" using it.
F#ADF#AE is the tuning i used to write a much more recent set of songs, including the one demoed above. it took me a while to admit to myself that vocal dysphoria has been preventing me from releasing any music over the past couple of years. i might start voice training soon.
there's honestly a lot more i want to say about a lot of the stuff i mention up there, but this is already getting pretty long, so i'll save some of it for future blogging. here are some truncated thoughts:
meeting the band julie f the rulies was, in many ways, life-changing. i wrote a few hundred words about it but decided to save them for a dedicated post. nevertheless, i still wanted to recommend their recently released LP, in fall, we fell in love, and to urge you to catch them during their ongoing tour from LA to seattle. i wept during their set at the moroccan lounge last year.
i've also been listening to (freud ring)'s black plastic sky, a set of three songs written by friend, jack, who has been one of my favorite songwriters since we met in college; his use of the guitar as a vehicle for writing complex harmonies has always been an inspiration to me.
i've been playing a lot of things, too. i never thought speedrunning service work for wealthy ghouls could ever be enjoyable – especially not after working as a food runner for a restaurant that mainly served operagoers – but roman sands re:build proved me wrong. (i really need to play the paratopic remix.) dark cloud and its sequel, ps2-era action-RPGs with a strong emphasis on city-building, are great examples of level-5 bangers (e.g. jeanne d'arc) that completely flew under my radar growing up.
odin sphere leifthrasir is probably one of my favorite games of all time. i say that a lot, though...
i didn't expect to be hooked by galactic racer. one of the things i've always appreciated about star wars is its imagination of a galaxy running on technology that's always on the brink of disrepair. whether built for podracing or dogfighting, star wars' vehicles rattle while ridden as if held together with loose screws. every pilot is icarus, defiantly holding their waxen wings to the flame.
galactic racer is stunningly effective at capturing the thrill of pushing a machine to its extreme limitations. its risk-reward systems constantly dare you to up the ante; engage the ramjet for too long and your flimsy soapbox racer spontaneously combusts. it's also a game that lets you obliterate the loathsome ben quadinaros by ramming him against a jagged rock wall.
i have more thoughts on racing games, adrenaline, asynchronous competition, and making friends online, but i should save it for a dedicated post...it has a lot to do with yuri, as well...like most things...
speaking of which, i'm still sort of reeling after watching kamiina botan fully blossoms when drunk, which to date is the only yuri anime adaptation i've seen that gives new, meaningful dimension to the source material. (i'm pretty much a manga purist otherwise, though i make exceptions for the light novel versions of otherside picnic and shuukura.)
at first, i described kamiina botan to friends as "a series about the beauty inherent to the sight of a woman indulging herself," which i've come to understand is only partly true. it's also an homage to the ambiguity and romance of intoxication itself, to the unspoken feelings that blossom only in silence. when a character's cheeks are rosy in kamiina botan, it could be due to a number of things, including embarrassment, arousal, shock – or maybe it's simply tipsiness. watching it reminds you that to yearn is to be alive.
it's the reason i've started longing to sip a cocktail at a bar so much as of late, though i can hardly afford to do that regularly. (then again, i can't really afford to keep bleaching my hair at a salon but i keep doing that, too.) i've never quite had a regular relationship to a neighborhood bar, but there are a couple of candidates within walking distance. i like walking at night, even if i get cat-called now. one time a guy tried to hit on me by fabricating a bike accident right in front of me.
come to think of it, the sight of kanade gujou smoking a cigarette in kamiina botan is probably what drew me to tabako toka suwanasou na kouhai. i've been blessed to receive some pretty exotic cigarettes when bumming some lately, including a mint mojito-flavored one (which is from i think a korean brand?).
what can i say? i'm easily influenced by women. i try to do pretty much everything they tell me to do.
i'm excited to catch up on the official translation of yuri espoir, which is currently somewhere between my third- and seventh-favorite yuri manga of all time (i struggle with committing to ranked lists 😔), though something in latest volume will likely devastate me. haikei, arishi hi ni saku hanatachi e is structurally similar as a metatextual series with multiple pairings and tonal twists. momoiro montage is a fun one about an art school student who specializes in erotica.
what else? i have an idea for a work of serialized interactive fiction that might be my dream project: something with a structure that would let me write whatever i want and at a flexible cadence. the only problem is that it's yuri, and i'm still wrapping my head around how to write romance. (that's part of why i wanted to revisit yuri espoir, which is essentially a love letter to the art of writing, observing, and living yuri itself.) i'm pretty worried about money, but i never want to stop making art. i'm trying not to be so absent. i want to post more things like this. i think it's good for my bothersome little brain.
anyways, send me recommendations for new jack swing, or yuri manga, or anything, really. if you live in LA, let me know if you want to go on a walk sometime.
<3
pao
[^1]: ideally i'll be doing this at least once a month, so this one might run a little long...