093: nothing but precision engineered ennui
Hullo.
It's 2019. As it's 2019, I plan to be more sensible, and not do throwaway joke introductions. No, really. Okay, maybe just this once. As well as the new books out today, plus an update of everything I'm up to in 2019 in terms of comics and my traditional tracks of 2018. And no jokes, not ever again.
Contents!
What Now
What Soon
What Then
What I Have Been Up To Recently, Hope You Had A Lovely Time
Byyyyeeee!!!
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New books! Firstly...
DIE 2 is out today, as is the second printing of DIE 1 (Or “DIE 1 2” as I like to call it, just because I like how it sounds. “DIE ONE TWO”). Last issue was the somewhat stately introduction of the concept, the characters and the tone. This is where we put the meat on the skeleton, and then rip the meat off the skeleton. Clayton said this was the most disturbing book he’d ever worked on, and this guy letters Redlands. The dance between what is Dark Horror and what is Fantasy continues. This issue gives you a lot.
Anyway – the preview is here, and you can follow DIE news here. You can get it from digital here or your local shop.
Also, Star Wars 59 where THE ESCAPE starts to uncover Hubin’s secrets and Hubin starts to uncover our heroes’. Preview here.
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Okay. This is an update of all my projects that have been announced, and the codenamed secret projects.
DIE
In terms of going forward, this is my big personal epic. It’s ongoing with a planned end, and should be about half as long as WicDiv. Also, with my current plans, it’s also the only thing on this list I’ll be working on in 2020. Clearly, plans can change there, not least me pushing stuff until next year. Stephanie’s drawn to issue 5, and she’s just working on the cover for the trade before moving onto the second arc. The trade will drop in June, and it’s called FANTASY HEARTREAKER. There’s some pre-order links here.
THE WICKED + THE DIVINE
Ends in 2019. Issue 45, which should drop in June. The final trade is presently planned for August. We’ve got a month gap in the middle of the arc (March) when the penultimate trade is dropped. Issue 41 is out next week, and Jamie is at work on 42. I’ve written a draft to 44, but am leaving the final issue for as long as possible to let it stew around. Saying goodbye is difficult. I also have a few dismounting writing exercises I want to do – the “Are you sure, Kieron?” one is doing writer notes on the whole playlist. Possibly just a word for some of them, but in terms of saying goodbye, I suspect I may need it. No update I can give about TV stuff, but I will say it’s interesting times. We’re also hoping to get some unusual merch out at some point this year. Fingers crossed.
Oh – team WicDiv will be at Emerald City Comic Con (March 14-17). Do come say Hi.
STAR WARS
I have three issues left to write in THE SCOURGING OF SHU-TORUN. That’s issue 67, the end of my story, and I’ll be off. No present plans to write anything else in Star Wars – I suspect I’ve said all I’ve wanted to about these characters in comics. At least in this period, anyway.
PETER CANNON: THUNDERBOLT
The final-cut off for orders was this Monday, and it’s out on January 30th. Three issues written in the opening arc, and it’s just one of my favourite pure Superhero comics I’ve ever done – Caspar, Hassan and Mary have done astounding things. It’s up there with Young Avengers in terms of being a pure burst of possibility. There’s been quite a bit of chat around the book this week – it’s spoilery, but you can google for it if you want it. Oh – and Warren wrote a little about it in his newsletter.
UBER: INVASION
Four issues left in Uber. I’ve no news when the next issue will be, and as soon as I know, I’ll mention something in here. I have to chat to Avatar in the near future, so hopefully it’ll be a news update sooner rather than later. The release will be a while off – I’ve yet to write the issue, Daniel is off drawing a Crossed mini, and it’ll have to go through the solicitation system. There’s a possibility that the final year may be released as two trades, but I’ll update you on that too.
MODDED
All written. Two issues of Cinema Purgatorio to come out before Modded ends. I suspect it’ll all be collected in a trade. It is enormously silly, and I can’t believe I’ve got to write this. I mean, the next issue is the Rainbow Islands homage. Rainbow Islands. It could only be more in-jokey if I had made it about Gravity Force 2.
PROJECT OH CAROLINA
Unannounced Mini for later in this year. Issue 1 is written, issue 2 by the end of the month. Modern dark fantasy adventure fiction with an artist I’ve been enjoying since he entered the scene. This is a more pop book than I usually do as creator owned. It’s darker than Aphra, but will likely be filed closer to it than stuff like DIE or WicDiv.
THE LUDOCRATS
We actually have plans to progress on this. It’s been so long that we’re basically don’t want to say anything before it’s about to solicit, where we’ll explain everything. It may just sneak in as a 2019 release, but it’ll be the very end of the year. Early 2020 may be more likely.
PROJECT IT WASN’T ME
This is something I haven’t mentioned. I wrote the first issue of this mini as part of a fun larger project, but that’s been on hold, so I didn’t continue. As it’s showing life again, I went and re-read it, and was surprised it still holds up. Explicitly a Horror book, but very much the closest thing I’ve done to Phonogram since Phonogram. If Phonogram was a horror book rather than a horrible book, if you will. If this actually reanimates, it’ll be 2020 at the earliest, and more likely 2021.
I’ve been compiling my tracks of the years since the early 00s. It started in my journalist days, as a chunk of gleeful content for my readers. It became a key point of my ending a year. It also got a bit too big in my head, to the point where doing it well became paralysing. While there was one year in the mid-00s I didn’t do it until Glastonbury, in the 10s it was becoming harder to find the time to do it well.
A couple of years ago, I forgave myself. I would make no pretence of it being correct. I’ll just pull together a quick list of stuff, write some brief notes in a set time, and then post whatever I’ve got along with the playlist. Hell, it wouldn’t even have to be the traditional 40. It was never definitive anyway. It was just a quick pen portrait of what’s been moving me.
The rules remain the same – tracks released this year, unless I can work out a figleaf of an excuse why (“Single re-release” always worked. “Album release” was another.) I have frankly worried about this less this year. There’s at least one I haven’t even tried. One track per artist. If an artist did a lot of things I like, the single entry gets boosted in position.
My methodology is basically keeping a scratchlist of stuff which I bookmark to explore further. I did less of this than normal – there’s stuff in the list I haven’t given nearly enough time. I’ve just been playing it as writing this, before going into actually organising them in a list.
Which makes it sound like I’ve had a year when I’ve not been interested in music. That’s not true – the Top 20 and Top 10 are songs I’ve obsessed over as much as any year, if not more so. I can’t think of a year where a couple of songs have so tightly defined the two parts of me since 2002-3’s Solider Girl/Pretty Like Drugs.
Anyway. Playlist is here. In ascending if entirely arbitrary and underthought order of merit. I’m literally arranging this by cutting and pasting stuff, and throwing it up and down on vague vibe.
Right – I’ve got 40 minutes to write stuff in here and then I have to go and do other stuff. Let’s see what sort of commentary we can slice in.
40) If You Want Twee (You Got It) - Keith Top Of The Pops & His Minor UK Indie Celebrity All-Star Backing Band
The sing along climax of this is something that all pub-going comics creators in London can empathise with.
39) List of Demands (Reparations) -The Kills
38) Fight or Flight Club - Madge
37) Cockcrow - Aidan Moffat
36) Chequeless Reckless - FONTAINES D.C.
35) Die Young - Sylvan Esso
34) Boys - Lizzo
33) There’s a Honey - Pale Waves
32) Dark Shadows - EMA
31) Oom Sha La La - Haley Heynderickx
30) Stupid Things - Girl Ray
29) You’re So Cool - Jonathan Bree
28) I Love My Boyfriend - Princess Chelsea
27) thank u, next - Ariana Grande
26) Charcoal Baby - Blood Orange
25) Immaterial - SOPHIE
24) It’s Not Just Me Let’s Eat Grandma
23) Don’t You Know I’m In a Band Confidence Man
22) Sanctify - Years & Years
Tweeted at me by a friend with a “You’ll like this” and she was right. It’s very WicDiv, in the positive way.
21) Ricochet – ANOHNI
Conversely, I found this by following the artist, and it’s very WicDiv in the most apocalyptic way possible.
20) Honey – Robyn
Robyn had her Random Access Memories year, being a returning, hugely influential dance legend. But rather than going full Imperial Phase, Honey is a little bit of a retreat, a repositioning. It’s softer, kinder and its primary aim seems to mean less to those who love it. I mean that in a positive way. Carrying that kind of belief becomes a burden, and traps you. Honey sounds like Robyn setting herself free from that – however, does mean I’m more excited by what (if anything) she chooses to do next than it itself.
19) Music Is Worth Living For - Andrew W.K.
That Article, am I right?
18) Party For One - Carly Rae Jepsen
I didn’t listen to this properly until the week of my oddly regular DJ slot at Marioke in December. And then I listened to it, all week. The perfectly melodramatic pain flattened to a sugary coating over pop chocolate. No-one crushes like Carly Rae and no-one crushes on her.
17) Cicada - La Luz
I think seeing the all-girl surf-band was the only gig I went to this year. If you want to know where I am right now, you can tell some things by literally where I’m not. This is as effortlessly cool to make you hope Tarantino decides to get around to making a good movie again to use it.
16) Physical - Juliana Hatfield
Oh me, oh my. Juliana Hatfield (an artist who I have held no special interest or affection for) drops a album of covers of Olivia Newton-John (an artist who I have held no special interest or affection for) songs. And I’m all over it. This (and Xanadu) hits me exactly in the part of me which wanted to get an I, TONYA tattoo.
(I’ve been engaging with early childhood material this year, partially through the explorations of the POP MUSIC podcast and partially because I became so obsessed by Laura Branigan’s Gloria post-I, Tonya.)
15) Tumast – Imarhan
Pure Radio 6 discovery which had me dancing around my house exactly the moment the drums come in, and we go full groove.
14) Middle America - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
I’m listening to this as I head off a train in Sheffield and thinking about the quiet pleasure of Malkmus’ songwriting, and the limited array of adjectives you have to talk about it (I’ve deleted “lackadaisical” three times while writing this blurb) and then I he sings the line “Men are scum, I won’t deny”in a way that I’m scrambling for my phone to ensure it’s on this list.
13) In My View - Young Fathers
This is the highest rated song which I haven’t thought about intensely at some point in the year. It’s existed, I’ve loved it, and rested next to its curves and found a place in my life, and made it better. Still – it’s not pop music as furniture. It’s pop music as sculpture.
12) BB - Daphne & Celeste
2018 has been awful, but our mate Max Tundra and our ABSOLUTE HEROES Daphne & Celeste teamed up and do an album so at least it’s got that going for it.
11) Don’t Delete the Kisses - Charli XCX x Post Precious Remix Wolf Alice
This is a huge cheat. Wolf Alice snuck onto last year’s list at 40, but I hadn’t quite listened to the album enough. As such, it was the remix of Don’t Delete the Kisses which made me go back to Don’t Delete the Kisses and, hey, Wolf Alice. Don’t worry. I will never delete your kisses. Pencilcase Lipgazing ambience, and astounding.
10) The South Will Never Rise Again - Des Demonas
If it wasn’t for a certain pair of hand-claps further down the list, my single musical moment of the year is towards the end of this garage anti-racism juggernaut. The song’s taken over two-minutes informing us, repeatedly, that the South will never rise again, and then the Mysterians organ jumps an octive and the singer boredly barks out “Hah! Hah!” and you applaud.
9) Rhesus Negative - Blanck Mass
An even bigger cheat. Album in 2017, started obsessing over this towards the end of the year and (as useful evidence of how much I no longer follow the music press) only found out it’s a Fuckbuttons solo project when someone shouted at from the audience at Eastercon to tell me. I should have guessed, as this is the black carapace-d steroidal younger brother to Surf Solar. If you threw me money to make a 40k movie, this would be my soundtrack to Tyranids tearing us all asunder.
8) This Is America - Childish Gambino
Too late to have a hot take. This is a hell of a thing.
7) All The Stars - Kendrick Lamar (with SZA)
Black Panther has many merits, but when this came on over the credits I just felt lifted up. Not superheroic, but superpowered, touched by this ineffable grace.
6) I/m Not Here [Missing Face] - The Twilight Sad
Yes, I still wear overcoats and walk through the rain, why do you ask? That said, I actually got lost in a graveyard while listening to this, which seems a little on the nose.
5) Make Me Feel - Janelle Monáe
Janelle had a huge year, and this was as a huge as it gets, and perhaps is kept from higher places due to the time I played it twice while DJing and the crowd wasn’t QUITE up for it. You can see why I was so hubristic. This is both dressed up and casual bisexual anthemic glee.
4) Suck the Blood from My Wound - Ezra Furman
I actually did have tickets to see Ezra, but they cancelled, and rescheduled, and then I realised I had an RPG to run that night, so couldn’t go. That I chose an RPG over Pop Music also says something about the year. But still – this was such a recorded, album experience. This opens it, with the Hefner-does-Springsteen thing, a road trip to nowhere, with anxiety in the gastank and a commitment to the story.
3) Girlfriend (feat. Dâm-Funk) - Christine and the Queens
I haven’t stopped just swelling to the opening statement “Chris” of this all year, and its just my queer-pop song of choice. Hell, it wasn’t until about six months of obsession that I realised abstractly it could be a song of straight-girl-singing-to-straight-boy. But why the hell would anyone think a stupid thing that? Listen to it. Desire, boundaries remixed, indignation, hope and everything. Just wow.
2) Samaritans - IDLES
Comrade Jim Rossignol and I have the same take on this: I just wish it was around when I was a teenager. This is the Pretty-Like-Drugs side version of me, and I’m glad this part has moved from performative nihilism to open heart surgery in a piss-floor club. Masculinity is a hell of a drug, and this is powered about that, about that and aims to destroy that. Contradictions are what all pop is about. This feels like progress. It feels up.
1) Nobody – Mitski
This doesn’t. If the aggressive side is stronger and more directed, the lighter Soldier Girl side is now nothing but precision engineered ennui. This sixties-French-film vignette of longing and loneliness, makes you suspect when the song tries to open the window to hear passersbys talk (to just hear someone talk!) it’ll find the window has no latch, and they’ll follow the glass upwards, realising it’s curving, and then we pull back and we see it’s in a glass jar.
And I fear we can all only aspire to do anything as perfect as the two hand-claps 1:42 in it.
Let’s talk a bit more about that. I’ve obsessed over how the song unfolds in that second verse, with the most valuable player being the drummer, who lightly sets a problem and resolves a problem. I mean, it’s been pointed out its similarity to the Cardigans’ fun-but-lightweight Lovefool. The trick then is to see why it’s not Lovefool, and much comes from the rhythm section adding complexities to the bittersweet sonically-ascending-but-emotionally-descending vocal line, all building towards the most earned key change of the year, which sounds simultaneously like flight and a scream.
“Nothing but precision engineered ennui|” is both what I love, much of what I am, and much of what I try to create. Or, at least, that’s what Mitski manages to convince me.
Playlist here.
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Work? It’s still early in the new year, with the deadlines yet to mash. I have a couple of tight ones to write around, but it should be fine. The key thing is getting more script to Stephanie, but I’ve broken the second arc to my satisfaction (and most of the rest of DIE too). This has been an interesting problem with DIE, actually – that I’ve been developing the RPG which recapitulates a hugely personalised first arc for the players has meant that I’ve been churning over that material endlessly. I’ve ran seven or so playtests of the game – which means there’s eight versions of the core DIE story I’ve participated in. As in, I’ve obsessed over the first part of a story so much that imagining DIE as anything other than that first part was tricky. I’ve done my Fellowship. How do I get to Return of The King?
But I’ve got something I’m happy with. It’s telling that I sent a playtest version of the DIE rules to some close friends just after midnight on January 1st (A tradition of mine – WicDiv 1, Ludocrats 1, WicDiv 18 and DIE 1 were all sent on January 1st of their years). Mark Sable is apparently going to run a test game this Friday, which will be the first game not ran by me. Clearly, I’m petrified. Of course, Mark is also heroic, because the current draft of the rules is (er) idiosyncratic. Which is, of course, why I need to playtest it.
I better stop – I have some DIE pages to write for 6 before my guests arrive this evening. I’m starting another DIE playtest with Alex Hern, Tom Armitage, Ram V and Dan Watters, which is the first time I’ve played with a room full of geezers. Hmm. Let’s see how that works.
Byyyyeeee!!!
Kieron Gillen
London
9.1.2018