“There’s nothing saccharine about unconditional love in a world that is coming apart at the seams,” Win Butler said in a statement. “WE need each other, in all of our imperfection.
‘Lookout Kid’ is a reminder, a lullaby for the end times, sung to my son, but for everyone… Trust your heart, trust your mind, trust your body, trust your soul. Shit is going to get worse before it gets better, but it always gets better, and no one’s perfect. Let me say it again. No one’s perfect.”
A gorgeous visual feast, Raya and the Last Dragon is a Disney adventure movie set in the mythical land of Kumandra. The nation, once united, is now divided into five kingdoms named after the part of the dragon-shaped river they reside in. Raya (Kelly Marie Tran) lives in Heart with her father (Daniel Dae Kim), the leader of Heart, who has trained her to be a disciplined, skilled, yet compassionate warrior. When an evil Druun spirit turns her father to stone – along with many other Kumandra residents, including its many magical dragons – Raya sets out to find the last surviving dragon, Sisu (Awkwafina). As a dragon, Sisu has the power to restore the magic contained within an enchanted gem, which the five kingdoms constantly wage war over. In turn, this gem can vanquish the Druun and bring back those turned to stone.
Raya’s exciting journey sees her travel to each of the five kingdoms, which offer beautiful visual contrasts. The film, directed by Don Hall and Carlos Lopéz Estrada, has a lot to say about cultural traditions and shared trauma. Raya also finds a new family during her travels, finding that even in the most regressive places, there are characters who can empathize with her. The Oscar-nominated film was animated by Rob Dressel and Adolph Lusinsky, whose artistic vision helps bring these vibrant characters to life. With a diverse array of settings, Raya and the Last Dragon is a surprising medley of colors, landscapes, and fantastical spectacles.
Teen Suicide, the project of songwriter Sam Ray, has returned with ‘coyote (2019-2022)’, their first new music in five years. Give it a listen below.
“I wrote ‘coyote (2015-2022)’ when we were driving through Ohio, or one of those big open nothingness states,” Ray explained in a statement. “The same simple, beautiful meaningless moments accrue meaning through repetition.” It’s very cool stuff and you can hear it below.
Angel Olsen has shared the title track from her forthcoming album Big Time. Following lead single ‘All the Good Times’, the song arrives with an accompanying video once again directed by Kimberly Stuckwisch with choreography from Monika Felice Smith. Watch and listen below.
Elaborating on the idea behind video, Stuckwisch said in a press release:
For ‘Big Time,’ we set out to celebrate how humans identify and to subvert the oldfashioned gender binary and societal/internalized gender roles of the past through choreography, color, and wardrobe. To exist outside strict definitions is powerful and often not given a place in cinema. This was our chance to hold a positive reflection in the space and to shout to the world that you are more than who you are told to be.
‘Big Time’ is what happens when we do not express our true identity but find freedom when we step out of the shadows into our most authentic selves. In the first rotation, the lighting is drab, the clothes are monochromatic, the dance is monotonous… gender-conforming roles present. However, with each rotation, something magical happens, both our cast and Angel begin to come alive, to feel free. We see the clothes brighten, the dance heightens, and the bar that was once devoid of emotion can barely contain the joy bursting out of each individual.
I am proud to say that over 80% of our cast and 50% of our crew identified as nonbinary and non-gender conforming.
Big Time is set for release on June 3 via Jagjaguwar.
TV Priest have shared a new single, ‘Limehouse Cut’, alongside an accompanying video. The track is taken from their upcoming LP My Other People, following previous entries ‘One Easy Thing’ and ‘Bury Me In My Shoes’. Check it out below.
“The song is about a feeling dislocated and displaced in an urban space you once felt you knew and ‘understood’, however it’s also a coming to terms with an idea that you never really ‘own‘ somewhere as infinitely regenerative as a city,” vocalist Charlie Drinkwater said of ‘Limehouse Cut’ in a statement. “It’s a bit of a psycho-geographical study, a little bit of pathos at my own mortality and smallness in the great tide of history. We loved the idea of something quite abstract, something that references landscape, feels mesmeric, melancholic, a little sinister but also quite beautiful.”
My Other People, the follow-up to TV Priest’s 2021 debut Uppers, is out June 17 via Sub Pop.
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs has released ‘Crosswalk’, the second single from his upcoming sophomore album When the Lights Go. Orlando Higginbottom announced the LP last month with the single ‘Blood in the Snow’. Listen to ‘Crosswalk’ below.
“When I finished this song the tone of the album started to make sense to me, at least what to keep and what to save for another time,” Higginbottom explained in a statement. “I think when people hear the whole thing there’s a chance that will come across.”
When the Lights Go will be released this July via his new imprint Nice Age.
Superorganism have shared a new song titled ‘crushed.zip’, the latest cut from their forthcoming album World Wide Pop. The track follows previous offerings ‘It’s Raining’ and ‘Teenager’. Check out its AEVA-directed visual below.
“It’s a musical journey through the anxieties and isolation that can arise from being an artist, it’s ultimately delicious though,” the group’s Harry said of ‘crushed.zip’ in a statement. Orono added: “I was thinking about Kanye and Elliott Smith a lot (which is most of the time). I wanted to do like a really depressing and personal song but with the most deliciously obnoxious pop packaging. Stuart Price’s production really elevated it to the next level.”
In a passage from ‘Quickening’, the seventh track off Welsh nurse-turned-indie-rock-bassist-turned-electronic-producer Kelly Lee Owens’ new album LP.8, she speaks over a soundscape of hushed whispers and electric crackling. “Because there is only one of you in your time, this expression is unique,” she articulates. “And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. It’s not your business to determine how good it is or how valuable or how it compares to others’ expressions. Your business is to keep it yours.” LP.8 explores a relationship between the self and artistic creation: a bold testimony in favour of independence and the potential it unlocks. Recorded over a short stint in Oslo, the album is the third record in Owens’ discography, following 2020’s Inner Song. And yet, she describes it as her eighth. For Owens, LP.8 is a leap forward across her artistic trajectory. It’s a rejection of linearity and a gesture embodying self-sufficiency. By subverting chronology, she seizes the reins of her art, pushing boundaries and blurring the distinction between herself and her body of work.
Born from a collaboration with Norwegian noise artist Lasse Marhaug, LP.8 begins in industrial rumbling. The core of ‘Release’, the first track, is a throbbing kick, an unrelenting and unchanging pounding that drowns the song in distorted bass. LP.8’s opening immediately marks a departure. Owens’ first two albums oozed with introspection conveyed over lush synths and danceable rhythms; her sounds suited both niche rave venues and crowded festivals alike. LP.8’s introductory eruption of harsh industrial sound ushers in a re-invention of Owens’ music. Yet it’s not pure violence. Mixed amongst the distortion, Owens’ voice repeats the word “release”. The word becomes part of the beat as a rhythmic element rather than a melodic one. The utterance of “release” denotes a catharsis: an opening up. She challenges us to find release through constrained and intense sounds.
Rumbly kicks continue through the tracklist into ‘Anadlu’, an ethereal, eight-minute song otherwise texturally opposed to everything in ‘Release’. It’s slow, with glimmering synth pads. Its lush gentleness is punctuated by the booming, delay-heavy kick. Owens’ voice sits between these two dissonant elements. Like with ‘Release’, Owens fixates on a single word. Here, it’s anadlu (Welsh for “to breathe”). She utters it with different tones – sometimes soothingly, other times with urgency – feeling out its syllables. Structurally, ‘Anadlu’ resembles ‘Release’. Both tracks are anchored by booming kicks and single-word vocal tracks. The textural details, however, distinguish them as radically distinct songs with polarised energies.
On ‘S.O 2’, Owens delves deeper into ambient depths. The song’s a re-imaging of ‘S.O’, the first track off Owens’ self-titled debut album. ‘S.O’ was a delicate tech house tune, with a grooving bassline. In ‘S.O 2’, Owens strips down the elements into a glacial ocean of synths. All drums and bass are abandoned and the melody becomes an airy, slowed-down whisper. The song transposes a track from her first album onto her new album, which is both her third and eighth. As such, LP.8 offers Owens an opportunity to re-write her body of work, claiming chronology as a product of her own agency.
As it moves forward, the album becomes even more stripped-back. On ‘Nana Piano’, Owens offers a minimalist piano piece. It’s a jarring turn away from the industrial pounding which characterises LP.8’s earliest moments. Yet at the end, everything comes full circle. On ‘Sonic 8’, Owens concludes LP.8 with a blistering howl of industrial noise. She repeats the phrase “this is an emergency,” ending everything on a note of desperation.
As a whole, the album is a disjointed hodgepodge of eclectic sounds and ideas which bounce off each other as much as they coalesce. Yet there’s a confidence in Owens’ work, revelling in its messiness. In its inconsistencies, LP.8 breathes like a living being: imperfect, inconsistent, always in flux. Despite the industrial noises which often populate the album, Owens’ music feels almost biological: a vivid self-portrait through sound. LP.8 suggests it’s not just an artist’s right to contain multitudes, to be incoherent, personal, esoteric, abrasive, or impulsive. It’s an imperative.
Megan Park, best known for her role in The Secret Life of the American Teenager, makes her directorial debut with this stunning YA drama starring Jenna Ortega, Maddie Ziegler, and her Secret Life co-star Shailene Woodley. The film dwells in the realm of simplicity, which allows Ortega to shine in her role as Vada, a teenager whose younger sister (Lumi Pollack) calls her at school when she gets her first period. The call prompts Vada to leave class and go to the bathroom, where she sees her classmate and social media influencer Mia (Ziegler) reapplying makeup. There’s some awkward tension between the girls, but the audience doesn’t have time to pick this apart when gunshots ring out through the hallways. The girls take cover in this terrifying moment, not knowing that this shared trauma will bring them closer over the coming months.
In the aftermath, Vada struggles to return to her daily routine and is encouraged by her mother (Julie Bowen) to see a therapist (Woodley). Vada and Mia start spending time together outside of school, trying to work through their trauma as nobody else in their lives seems to understand what they’re going through. In particular, Vada feels distanced from her sister, who feels she’s responsible for sending Vada out into the hallway during the shooting. Without being graphic, The Fallout manages to convey the characters’ grief, loss, and healing process in a believable, ruminative way. The simple but effective cinematography by Kristen Correll pairs brilliantly with Finneas O’Connell’s highly praised score. O’Connell and his sister Billie Eilish recently won an Oscar for their No Time To Die theme song, and have just released a song for Disney’s Turning Red.
Here are fifteen standout stills from The Fallout.
If gaming is a huge hobby of yours, then having a space in your home where you can enjoy it free from distractions is ideal. Whether you live in a small apartment or a larger house where you have the room available, you can create a suitable gaming space almost anywhere with the right tips. You may have seen people getting creative with making a space in their home for gaming in a large closet or transforming their basement into a gaming emporium. No matter what kind of space you have to work with, keep these tips in mind to create a great gaming room for yourself.
Lighting
One of the main things to consider when setting up your gaming space is the lighting. Whether you’re playing first-person shooter on a console or trying your luck at online gambling real money, good lighting is essential for you to be able to clearly keep track of what you are doing and reduce issues like eye strain and headaches. Ideally, you should place your desk near a window so that you have plenty of natural light. If there’s no window, for example, in a basement, use spotlights and strategically placed LED lights or lamps to create a bright, well-lit space.
Comfort
You want your gaming space to be somewhere that you can go to relax and enjoy your free time, so think about what you can add that will enhance your comfort levels. For example, if you have the room, you might want to consider including a mini-fridge so that you can keep your favorite beer, soft drink, or just water chilled and you can grab a drink whenever you like. Consider adding cushions, throws, a fan, and anything else you need to ensure the most comfortable gaming experience.
Colors
If you have free reign over decorating your gaming space, then the colors you’ll use will usually be down to personal preference. You might want to take inspiration from some of your favorite games or simply decorate in your favorite color. Don’t be afraid to do something out of the box like making patterns for a feature wall next to your desk with masking tape or even painting a gaming-related mural if you’re feeling extra artistic and creative.
Organization
Finally, one of the main factors to keep in mind when designing a gaming space is storage and organization. This is especially true if you are turning a small room into a gaming space as it can easily get cluttered, especially if you have a lot of stuff. Use accessories like monitor wall mounts to utilize as much space as possible and take advantage of vertical space by using tall shelves to store all your games. Consider getting cable boxes so that you can keep your cables neat and organized rather than tripping over them every time you go to play a game.
Whether you’ve got a small closet space or an entire basement to use for your gaming hobby, keep these tips in mind to create a gaming space you will love.
