We’ve all played a scratch card or 12 at some point in our lives. They’re easy and affordable options for those looking for a fun and instant way to gamble with minimal effort. What’s more, they provide some exciting opportunities to win real money.
Bingo scratch cards have been around for many years and are incredibly fast and easy games to enjoy, both in real life and at online casinos. This game format is also incredibly prevalent and accessible and ranked as the fifth most popular way to gamble in the UK. But let’s take a closer look at what are online bingo scratch cards and how they compare to their real-life counterparts.
Online versus regular bingo scratch cards
There are many similarities between online and regular bingo scratch cards, and a few differences. When we talk about what are online bingo scratch cards, we look at what makes these types of games so convenient, fun and attractive to new and seasoned players alike. We will also be comparing them to regular versions of the game to see why online bingo scratch cards may be the best option for players looking for fast rewards at the click of a mouse.
Using your mouse to scratch
With online versions of this game, your mouse is used to scratch the required places on the card (or your finger when using a device with touch capabilities) to show the result. Depending on the type of scratch card you’re playing online, you may need to scratch off the entire card or a specific area online, so make sure to check the instructions beforehand.
Opportunity to play for real money
Just like regular scratch cards, playing online provides the opportunity to win real money. Players need to join an online casino and make a deposit to play for real money. There are also options to play for free, which require no deposit but eliminate the opportunity to win. As scratch cards are typically games of chance, playing for free simply provides players with all the fun of scratch cards without any risk.
Online bingo scratch cards are more convenient
When playing a regular scratch card at home, you will need to return to the shop to claim any winnings. With online scratch cards, there is no need to leave the comfort of your home, as is the case with all virtual games. If you win by playing an online scratch card, you are instantly rewarded into your preferred account without any effort on your behalf.
Fun and easy games of chance
By law, a player’s chance of winning must be clearly stated on a real-life scratch card. When playing online, this is shown as the game’s return to player (RTP) percentages. While bingo scratch games are based on luck, the general rule of thumb is that the higher the RTP, the better your odds of winning are.
Potential to win big
It just takes one card at a price of just £1 to win smaller, more frequent amounts. Other times, players can walk away with six-figure rewards. This makes bingo scratch cards the perfect game for both low and high rollers. Some bingo scratch cards even feature progressive jackpots. And because all games are based on chance, there is no skill required, and anybody can win if luck is on your side.
Play anytime, anywhere
Like most online casino games like bingo slots, card and table games, and classic games, you can play online bingo scratch cards whenever the mood strikes, anytime and anywhere, from your desktop or mobile device. Games are optimised for smooth and seamless gaming on the move, adding to the convenience of your playing experience. Playing online means all your favourites games are accessible at the click of a mouse or the touch of a button.
Fun and dynamic themes
Scratch cards are famous for their fun and engaging themes, ranging from your favourite TV shows to sports, and more. Some online scratch cards even feature unique and niche themes to take your experience to the next level.
There are many reasons to give online bingo scratch cards a try the next time you’re online. These games are not only fun and affordable but offer some exciting winning opportunities that are instantly credited to your account. Players looking for new chances to win will be pleasantly surprised at what these types of games have to offer.
Bingo has always been one of my favorite games to play in person, but very few people actually play it online. Maybe they are uninformed about what goes into the game, or perhaps just too shy to play, but their loss. The environment is respectful and welcoming for players of all levels of experience.
In order to make sure that everyone has a great time when playing online bingo, I’ve put together this list of 7 unforgivable mistakes that people make when they play bingo online.
Don’t Know How to Play Bingo Online
People love to play online bingo by sitting at home. But if you do not know how to play bingo online, then it may be a big mistake that you make. You should read about the rules and the moves of bingo first. This can be a recreational activity that one can engage in alone or with oneself.
But the most important thing to remember when playing bingo online is that the game is played on high-quality software, so if you want to play bingo online, then read about it first before you start playing it.
Don’t Play Bingo Online for Real Money
If you are new to Bingo online games, you highly recommend that you play with real cash. This way, you will be able to have some fun while learning the basics of playing online bingo games.
If you want to test the online casino first, then play with free money, but if you are serious about playing bingo through the Internet, start with real cash. The great thing about bingo online is that you can play for free and win real money bingo.
Don’t Play on High-Quality Software
It’s important to know the safety and security of an online bingo site before you start playing. Check out reviews to see if it has a good reputation. It requires the essentials that it is necessary to have in order to play bingo online on the Internet. It should have great customer service, excellent software, and high payouts, which are important for playing bingo online.
A good sign of the best casino sites is when they offer high payouts and bonuses. The most important thing to keep an eye out for is how secure the software is. It should too provide customer support in case any problems arise while playing.
Don’t Read the Rules Carefully
Every game has some rules, and bingo is not an exception. The rules for bingo are different from site to site, so you should read the rules of every online casino before you start playing it.
It may be a very small mistake that you make, but it can put you on a losing streak which could be very embarrassing after the game is over. If you want to have a better chance of winning, then make sure you read the rules before you start playing.
Don’t Use a Strategy
Bingo is a game of luck and skills, and you should take advantage of both the parts while playing it. You have to keep your eyes out for any patterns that may give you a clue about where the balls will be falling in order to make sure that you will be able to get bingo before anyone else does.
The best way to play bingo without making any mistakes is by using a strategy that works for you. Even though you won’t fully understand the strategy, it will at least keep you off of the losing streak that you could be facing.
Don’t Memorize the Numbers
This is one mistake that I see very often. People tend to memorize numbers, and they even try to write them down before playing bingo online games. This is a big mistake because they cannot use those numbers when playing.
If you have to memorize the numbers, then the best way to do it is by writing them down on a piece of paper and keeping it with you in case they are needed. But for some people, keep the numbers in their heads; this works best when playing bingo online.
Don’t Play With Friends and Family
Playing bingo can be a great time to spend with your family and friends. Always play online with different friends. If not, your games may be too similar. You should try playing different games and go for new things that you haven’t done before so that it will be more exciting for everyone in the game.
If you have family members who love to play bingo online games, don’t make them uncomfortable by constantly asking for their phone number or email address. Just invite them to play with you online and keep the relationship in a normal way. If they want to contact you, they will probably do it discreetly sometime later on.
Don’t Compete With Your Friends
Another thing you should avoid while playing bingo online is competing with your friends or family members. This could make them feel uncomfortable and will put a bad feeling between you both. Instead of competing, try to raise the amount that you earn in the game so that everyone in the game can win something and have a great time.
Starting to Play Online Bingo without Preparing for it
Many people enjoy playing bingo. But in order to play bingo, you have to have a little training first. This is because if you do not have any experience playing bingo, you will not know what to do, resulting in a lot of mistakes.
If you want to play online bingo, then I strongly suggest that you start with a bingo training course. Furthermore, there are many different kinds of bingo schools for you to choose from. You can choose one according to your own experience and what you are looking for in a bingo training course.
Final Thought
Bingo is a great game to play because it can help you earn some extra cash while having fun. There are many different kinds of bingo, all of which are wonderful. Make sure that you know the basic rules of bingo; there are too many people who stink at bingo just because they don’t know the games and the rules. You should also not take it too seriously; make sure to have fun and relax while playing online Bingo games!
Hildegard is the project of singer-songwriter Helena Deland and multi-instrumentalist/producer Ouri, neither of whom are strangers to collaboration: before releasing her debut album Someone New, Deland notably teamed up with JPEGMAFIA (who called her the “Young Thug of indie rock”), while Ouri dropped a self-titled EP with Mind Bath in 2017. But with Hildegard, the Montreal artists allow themselves to get lost in an entrancing world full of possibilities: if there’s an air of mystery to their respective solo work, here their shared sensibilities collide and meld into one endlessly malleable piece. Each song on their debut self-titled LP, out now via section1, is named after the eight days they spent together in a studio, and the fluctuations in mood and tone are a reflection of their state of mind: there’s a nocturnal thrum and a pure magnetism to the electronic production, but Deland and Ouri are just as capable of commanding the shadowy, in-between spaces whose lingering glow can be just as hypnotic. Drawing inspiration from Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century nun, healer, and composer who became a symbol of nurturing strength and has influenced records by Grimes, Devendra Banhart, and countless others, the duo developed the visual and conceptual language for the project, opening the door to a realm where anything can happen.
We caught up with Hildegard’s Helena Deland and Ouri for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about how they formed the project, the process of making their debut album, and more.
What was your impression of each other when you first met?
Helena Deland: We met at a café – we had met in parties and social situations before so we were familiar, but I remember going for lunch and it being so funny and silly already.
Ouri: We exchanged music, it was super chill, super fluid.
Helena: And I remember not being stressed by it at all, which I feel like maybe I would be if… [laughs]
Ouri: Yes, me too. If I do a session with this artist I would be super stressed, like try to prepare stuff.
Helena: The lack of preparation was definitely rewarding in this situation.
You’d both collaborated with other artists in the past, but was there something that immediately struck you as different about working with each other?
Ouri: We just shifted roles all the time, resonating, exchanging ideas. It was just this constant ping pong of ideas all the time. Sometimes you have separate goals and it’s a bit more structured, and this felt very alive – minimal, but very much going in all directions.
How did the historical figure of Hildegard enter the conversation, and what does she mean to both of you?
Ouri: I was taking composition classes at university, and I discovered this composer, Hildegard, discovering the Canticles of Ecstasy, and I showed them to Helena because I thought they were super inspiring. They were less dark than all the other channts I was analyzing in my classes, and her figure just became so interesting, fascinating, so many aspects of her – all her ideas, her relationship to faith and female identity.
Helena: She seems to encompass so many different things, and it’s interesting because she’s such a rare woman to have survived the erasure of women in history in medieval times. And she seems to have had so many roles, like the healer, the visionary, the powerful head of an abbey. And wrote so much and had visions too, which I think is something that resonated with us in the context of this experience of inspiration which you can’t really plan. It’s very hard to describe and explain, and even the vocabulary I use to describe inspiration can quickly meld with more mystical vocabulary.
Was it something that came after you had spent these days in the studio?
Ouri: It was after. We really went to the studio with no intention, some club and pop common references that we shared in a playlist but nothing extremely deep. Eventually, after finishing the tracks we talked about names and stuff and we had a lot of very bad ideas, and then we started to go in the direction of Hildegard.
How do you see the relationship between the idea of Hildegard and your music?
Helena: I think she’s become very symbolic on a personal level for us. It is definitely like a hot projection spot because she was alive such a long time ago, and in such a diverse manner, that she’s kind of a malleable figure. We bring her up a lot in the environments that we try to create for ourselves. She’s so inspiring even in – this is a concept that’s definitely modern, but in a feminist approach, in an ecological approach, and it feels very pertinent these days to bring those values to the forefront.
Ouri: There’s also something – viriditas – encompassing a very strong and luxurious…
Helena: Life energy.
Ouri: Life energy that I think we tried to express in the music. Kind of vegetal but still very strong and unstoppable, like you cut the roots and it continues to grow.
What was the atmosphere in the studio like those eight days that you were recording?
Helena: I think every song kind of mirrors what it was like. The first night was very excited, very energetically charged. It was the evening, we were having a drink, smoking cigarettes on the balcony, just chatting, and we started making this track it just kind of fed into itself. And then that had a repercussion on how we felt the next day, which is very raw and vulnerable and a bit sad, maybe. I don’t want to reduce it to a hangover, but maybe it had something to do with what had happened the night before. [laugher] And then the next day was really silly. And yeah, it follows the chronology of discovering each other and our friendship. So every day feels very different, and it’s so interesting to have that document of that first collaboration.
That’s something I noticed as well, there’s this clear emotional progression throughout the album. And maybe that’s just me, but I felt like it’s a clear progression at first, but then it becomes just a little bit more ambiguous and hazy, around the fourth track. What do you think that’s a reflection of?
Helena: I think it’s kind of like a slump in the clearness of the first couple of days. There was definitely a slow down in rhythm, and the songs around the half of the record were worked on over more time. Like, we started the idea every day but then developed it to its final form over more time, and maybe it has less… instantaneity. And I feel day 8, the last day, it really wraps it back together and then it’s like back at this very vivid, clear message.
Do you mind sharing some of the strongest memories that come to mind when thinking of those eight days?
Helena: After ‘Jour 3’ – we had just written ‘Jour 1’, Jour 2’, ‘Jour 3’ – and I remember talking to my manager about it for the first time since we had started, and being like, “Oh, we wrote one song per day, and yesterday we wrote a song about… I think masturbation, and it’s like, really playful and fun.” [laughs] And then I remember becoming aware of how easy it had been and how inspiring it was to work together. Long evenings spent in the studio, finishing out one and biking up the hill and going to a party and just being so energized.
Ouri: I think for me it was ‘Jour 2’.
Helena: Yeah, that broke us open.
Ouri: Yeah, it was just ego death and changing roles with such as soft energy. I never experienced that before.
Helena: And that song is so mysterious to us still. It was kind of channeled without us even trying to summon it. And it’s kind of comforting, in a really existential way, that that could have happened.
I wanted to ask you about the lyric-writing process, because with the music it was so intuitive, so I was wondering if it was a similar situation with the lyrics.
Helena: Same thing, yeah. And it was kind of undiscussed. We would take turns going up to the mic and saying things, just kind of bouncing off each other. Day two is a good example, the first voice you hear is Ouri’s, and you wrote that just arriving at the mic saying that, which inspired what I say next.
Because the song titles are in French and you’re both native speakers, I was curious if you considered having the lyrics be in French, too.
Helena: Not really. I think our way of making music has been integrated by an English musical culture far more than the French one. And it’s hard to change that, because they’re so enmeshed, you know. If you’re used to writing lyrics in English, even though we speak in French between each other, for some reason it’s hard to take that language into the music.
Ouri: It creates dissociation in the experience and makes it less personal. It’s easier to step into some sort of universal mindset.
‘Jour 6’ is the only instrumental on the record. Do you remember the day you made that track?
Ouri: It was just a jam that we made. I think I was looking back into folders and I found this, and I was like, “That should be on the album.” It reflects perfectly the sixth day. [laughs]
Helena: It’s kind of when we had decided that every day was going to have, like, a jour. But we have come to love it, I think it makes so much sense in the pacing and it makes sense on its own. It’s a nice constraint to weave something out of every day we jammed and spent in the studio, just because it forces us to be less self-conscious and less paranoid, to some extent, and more like, “This is what happened.”
Ouri: I think we both really love instrumental music too.
Helena: Absolutely.
Ouri: We were just playing that day, you know, for hours on the synth and the piano. It’s always nice to just create instrumental music.
Were you listening to a lot of music together during those days?
Ouri: Yeah, we were partying, we were listening to music, or meditating…
Helena: [laughs] And it’s so fun to just – if we were friends and not collaborators, we would still exchange as much music because it’s so much part of what interests us. I remember my birthday was shortly after those eight days and we had just arrived at the place where my birthday was taking place, and you plugged in your iPhone and just played all the songs that we had.
Can you offer an indication of the sorts of things you were listening to and how they affected your headspace?
Helena: It’s not so much of a genre. The music that we like in common reflects what we make together in some indescribable way. There’s just atmospheres that we relate to both very strongly that kind of make it through in our own music, but it was all over the board, really, and it still is. But I remember with Bendik Giske, Ouri introduced me to this musician and I feel so deeply about it. We both share this intense attachment to some songs.
Ouri: I feel like I’m constantly in a love-and-hate relationship to electronic music, because this is where I started my own sound. And I feel like Helena brings me back to loving electronic music and just finding it fun.
I wanted to go back to the final track, which as you said before is kind of more instantaneous. To me, it also feels like the most direct expression of anger, which is something that permeates the whole record. Did you go in with the intention of ending the album on that note, or was it again inspired by the mood of that day?
Helena: That one is kind of an exception because we started with lyrics that I had written before. It was a way of trying to stimulate inspiration. I just sang the lyrics, and I remember we were both kind of tired by that point and a bit discouraged. But then I remember we both had our coats on our backs, ready to go take a break outside, and Ouri just stayed, sitting at the computer, looping voice moments for like 45 minutes. [laughs] Again, it wasn’t a decision before, but I think the anger it expresses is definitely part of what we share, unfortunately. And also fortunately, because we have each other to express it with.
How much did the project change shape after those days in the studio?
Helena: It became conceptual, with the visual, the name of the band – everything came after the music creation. But the music itself was pretty fleshed out by then.
Ouri: ‘Jour 1’, the first song, we reworked a little bit the structure not long ago, right before doing the final masters. But everything was kind of set in stone, like we changed and enhanced some songs, but the structure, the direction – it was anchored.
How much did the conceptual and visual side that came later affect the way you perceived the music?
Helena: The person we worked with is called Melissa Matos. She’s extremely rigorous and inspiring and goes deep into research to develop visual ideas, which definitely helped us understand what we were going to propose with this whole project. I think it’s going to be brought forward into future pieces of work.
Ouri: She just added a dimension. It’s as if we were in 2D and suddenly she just created something else. It made so much sense, we could never have thought about it. It was an essential pillar, but it didn’t change the perception of the songs, it just enhanced it.
Did you feel that that rigorousness came into contrast with the fluid approach that you had while making the songs?
Helena: Yeah, definitely. It balanced it out in a nice way. Our energy together is often super silly and we’re hard to tame – we’re very, like, childish together, I guess. And to have someone be like, “This is how it’s gonna work,” is actually super helpful.
Ouri: If we stayed in that unidimensional point of view, it wouldn’t have had the same depth, the same…
Helena: Reach.
Ouri: Yeah.
What future do you see for Hildegard as a project?
Helena: We already have so many new songs that we’re really excited to work on. We kind of go by bursts, like periods of time that we totally devote to that. We have a second album title and ideas about… [laughs] It’s probably gonna change a million times, but we’re very much thinking about it.
Ouri: It was a challenge, because the first day we were in the studio we made a track again like the first time, and after that it was completely different.
In what ways was it different?
Ouri: We have expectations, we have things that we like about working together, so instead of trying to discover and document what’s happening between us, sometimes I feel like we want to bring back the spirit that we had in the first album, which is not something that we should ever do.
Helena: Yeah. We’ve become more unrealistic. We had such a beginner’s mind the first time, we were just like, “Whatever happens, happens.” And it’s fun. And it hasn’t become not fun, it has only become more – there’s more layers of judgment within ourselves just because we know that we’re able to do it, so we expect to do it, so then if we don’t, ‘cause that day doesn’t work out, we’re disappointed. [laughs] And we become stressed…
Ouri: [laughs]
Helena: You know how it goes.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
“I’m your biggest fan,” the first line heard on Doomin’ Sun – the debut album by duo Bachelor – blooms with sincerity.The song, ‘Back of My Hand,’ is carried by upbeat rhythms and playful guitar hooks that are nonetheless draped in the bedroom aesthetics listeners have come to expect from the projects of members Melina Duterte (Jay Som) and Ellen Kempner (Palehound). The song could easily be mistaken as a surface-level telling of an adoring child fan, but it’s clear the duo are working on a deeper level. Lines like “Do I wanna be you or be your friеnd?”, delivered with sweet yet restless energy, make that clear.
As Bachelor, the duo work on this plane throughout the album, exploring relationships and love – and the pain that can come from them – from a perspective that’s all their own. They examine the similarities between love and friendship, and question if they’re mistaking one for another. The single verse of ‘Sand Angel’ blurs the lines between closeness and feeling suffocated, even trapped (“As you toss me, turn me/ And I’m sweatin’ through the sheets”). The duo up the ante on the sparse ‘Went Out Without You,’ where the twinkling and anxious guitar strums that run through the song reflect the uncomfortable dynamics of internalized insecurity (“I fear what would happen if you didn’t care”). Yet Bachelor play and sing through the song with a level of vulnerability that demands nothing but empathy.
And despite the occasional heaviness of its lyrics, Doomin’ Sun remains a cozy album at heart that also expands on the aesthetics that Duterte and Kempner are known for. ‘Anything At All’ plays like the duo’s take on a track by The Go! Team; the song slides from crunchy guitar lines to glistening guitar plucks, while the chorus is delivered with a teasing playfulness. Album highlight ‘Spin Out’ rumbles with layers of dreamscapes and hazy vocals that successfully evoke the song’s title. The strings and piano give the ballad ‘Aurora’ an extra layer of sentimentality that compliments Bachelor’s examination of a particular night with a friend (“Mid October, bored in North Conway/ Startin’ up a ball game”). Yet the verse’s final line – “And I took the joke too far again, again” – calls into question their relationship with their memory.
This isn’t the only track that puts particular moments under the microscope. The pop-punk-tinged ‘Stay in the Car’ is the loudest track on the album, and one that precisely captures how those in love dramatize the littlest moments (“Pop the trunk, slam my door, peel off/ Cloud of smokе while she just smokes”). Yet no matter the speed, Bachelor capture a very real truth: people can’t predict which moments are the ones that will stick with them.
UV-TV tap into something familiar yet consistently exciting. Since releasing their first demo in 2015, the New York City power trio, founded by songwriters Rose Vastola and Ian Bernacett in Gainesville, Florida, have developed their DIY punk sound by sharpening their songwriting and bringing more of their melodic and pop sensibilities into the fold. Their growth is palpable across their first two LPs, 2017’s Glass and 2019’s Happy, but the appeal remains largely the same: they might call to mind a number of late-‘80stoearly ‘90s influences, but the nostalgic pull of those reference points doesn’t matter nearly as much as the music itself, which is effortlessly catchy, often thrilling, and pretty much always solid.
Always seems to be the key word here, though UV-TV probably aren’t acknowledging that consistency by naming their third full-length album Always Something. It’s one of those rare albums that’s hard to build a narrative out of, which feels both refreshing and oddly comforting: the gist is that it’s their first LP to be completely written and recorded since the band’s relocation to New York, and the first with drummer Ian Rose as a full-time member. There’s also the fact that it was made against the backdrop of a global pandemic, with a press release stating that the band sought “to recreate the throbbing rhythms, pulsating vibrations and grinding monotony of the day-to-day hustle that existed before Covid.” Indeed, Always Something doesn’t offer a time capsule of early 2020 as much as it captures the sense of malaise and boredom that can pervade our lives beyond this period of imposed isolation.
There’s nothing listless about the way the album sounds though, as the band channels those feelings through kinetic and propulsive power pop. Rose’s drumming is crisp and flavourful throughout, but especially on tracks like ‘Wildflower’, ‘Back to Nowhere’, and ‘Superabound’. Vastola’s voice has an air of disaffection to it, but she’s capable of packing an impressive amount of nuance into her delivery when the song calls for it. Take ‘Plume’, one of the album’s most downbeat and languorous moments, a necessary breather right in the middle of the record; as heavy bass and lethargic acoustic guitar hang around the mix, Vastola carries the track with her affecting, earnest vocals, calling out, “I can’t take it all on my own.” A sweeping electric guitar punctuates the sense of loneliness before the song reaches a gigantic, devastating climax.
Always Something has plenty such moments of pure impact, from the hook-laden ‘Wildflower’ to the shoegaze frenzy of ‘Distant Lullaby’ and the infectious solos on ‘Back to Nowhere’. Even if it lacks some of the raw energy of the band’s previous allbums, it’s an irresistibly fun listen from start to finish, and the production brings a certain amount of richness to the already layered and dynamic performances. With nine tracks clocking in at less than half an hour, if there’s one thing that keeps the album from being remarkable, it’s that it isn’t really trying to be. There’s a pulse to these songs, but not always a ton of heart. Yet there’s always more personality and attitude to UV-TV’s music than almost any other guitar band coasting on those same influences, and that’s certainly something.
In the winter of 2018, Claire George decamped to the woods outside of her hometown in Seattle with the intention of teaching herself audio production and honing her skills as a songwriter. Inspired by the likes of Grimes, Austra, and Purity Ring, the Los Angeles-based artist came out of that retreat with her debut EP, 2018’s ethereal Bodies of Water. Three years later, she’s back with her debut album, The Land Beyond the Light, which sees her expanding her sound, overlaying her evocative vocals against more layers of organic instrumentation, including real bass and guitar, to reflect the very real feelings of grief that sit at the heart of the songs.
Originally conceived as a break-up record, the gravity of the project shifted significantly in the wake of the death of one of her friends and ex-boyfriends to substance abuse. Channeling personal tragedy through the cathartic pull of dance music is nothing new, but George grapples with themes of loss, mental illness, and addiction with bracing vulnerability and a depth of feeling that’s rare in the genre. From the wrenching ‘Northern Lights’ to the strangely comforting ‘Bag of Peaches’, the album flits between youthful memories of the past and the overwhelming weight of the present; George finds flickers of light in the midst of darkness not by concealing it, but by allowing space for both – even when they threaten to drown her out. These songs were written with very specific circumstances in mind, but now that the album is out, they can finally take on a new resonance: “Come on take my hand, I’ll help you out/ I swear I’ll pull you up, I’ll never let you down,” she sings on ‘The Promise’.
We caught up with Claire George for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about her songwriting journey, the events that influenced her debut album, and more.
I noticed you’ve cited a number of artists as some of yourbiggest inspirations, many of which are in the electronic and pop spheres, but at the end of the list you wrote,Fiona Apple (always and forever). Did she have a formative influence on you?
Yes. In fact, when I was like seven, my mom would listen to a lot of pop music when we were in the car and I heard a Fiona Apple song and I was like, “Mom, we have to go to the store and buy this CD.” And I remember going to the CD store, it was the first CD that I ever got, and she was one of the first concerts I went to in early high school. Her lyrics were just so impactful on me and her writing is so powerful and beautiful. And then, actually, during the pandemic I ended up being with my parents for part of the lockdown at the beginning, and her new album came out during that time. My mom doesn’t listen to a lot of new music, but we both got my AirPods, and we each took a pod and we were on a walk in the neighborhood. One of the most joyful moments in that time was getting to listen to the new album from her for the first time with my mom.
I almost can’t imagine listening to that album for the first time with someone else, just because of how raw and intense it is.
[laughs] It’s like, my mom and I, we’re like this [crosses fingers], we’re like twins. But yeah, very intense.
Has your relationship with these artists that had an impact on you early on changed at all, or affected the way you think about songwriting now?
What’s cool about her newest record is that she really took her time and did it in her own space, on her own terms. The way that she made this album was like, she could just record for hours and hours and hours, and what’s special about it is that it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t made in like a big recording studio. It hits just as hard, and that’s something that I, as a new-ish producer and writer, relative to my life – you realize that more of you comes through when you have that kind of time and space in your own head to write and work on stuff without the outside influence.
What role did music and songwriting play early on in your life?
I didn’t write my first song till I was 22, I think. I grew up playing piano classical piano but didn’t stick with it really. In high school I was kind of interested in it again but I never got into a songwriting area, and then in college I was just really into music – it was like the era of the music blog, and I loved curating and making playlists and finding new music and finding new artists and going to shows. But I didn’t actually allow myself to try to make music until after college.
Was there something in particular that drove you to make music?
I was living in San Francisco and I actually studied business in college, and accounting specifically. So I was working in consulting and studying for the CPA exam, which is like the accountant certification, and I was like, “I’m going crazy. I need to do something creative.” When I was little I wanted to be a singer, and then once I moved away – I went to college in LA but then I moved to San Francisco – it just felt like a fresh start and I was like, becoming an adult, I guess. I was like, “What do I want in my life?” And I was like, “I want to do something outside of just working,” and so I joined a band on Craigslist. [laughs] I just met these random people in San Francisco and started a band with them.
At what point did it go from like, “I need to do something creative or I’ll freak out,” to actually wanting to devote more of your time to it?
I think once we started playing shows, I was like, “Oh wow, I want to do this with my life.” Just the feeling of being on stage again and also creating something that was yours, creating something that you could share with other people, and getting that feedback loop after shows. The idea of going on tour and traveling around and meeting all these people, I just knew that was more what I wanted to do with my life.
I read that you went on a retreat around 2018 to flesh out your production skills and hone your songwriting. What led to that decision, and what did you learn from that experience?
Oh my gosh. [laughs] I had a lot of alone time. I was just going through a breakup at the time, the band was not getting along super well, and I was really interested in more electronic sounds. That was right when Grimes was becoming a big deal, and I was like, “I want to do what she’s doing, she can do the whole band herself and it can be the sounds that she wants.” Everything was kind of happening at once. And my parents are up in Seattle, and they don’t spend the winters at that house, so I was like, “I’m gonna go stay in the house by myself and take these classes and learn to produce on my own.” So I went up there and it was wild. I mean, I have never spent so much time alone – I was up there for like a year. But six or seven months of that I was completely by myself in the house that I grew up in. It’s kind of outside of the city and it’s a little bit woodsy, and there would be just days where I wouldn’t see other people, which is probably not healthy, in retrospect. I know myself now, and I’m like, “Okay, you need to be around people.” I do need some solitude when I’m writing, but the intensity of that was just so intense.
Luckily I was taking some production classes online, so I was really invested in that, but it taught me a lot and allowed me to produce my first body of work. But I also learned that I’ll just keep working on something forever and ever and ever, and so my process now is kind of like, I like to write with other people sometimes, but I like mostly to sketch out the ideas myself and then bring somebody on once I’ve hit a wall with that.
How long did you wait to start writing again after you released the first EP?
I was always kind of writing, but some of the songs, even on this record, are pieces of songs that I’ve had since I was living in San Francisco. I’m always trying to write, even as I was releasing this I’ve been trying to keep that going, because I find the longer you wait in between working on things, the more it feels difficult to get over that hurdle of like, you stop and start, and tapping into that.
From what I understand, the story of the album starts with ‘You Don’t Feel the Same’, which is also the opening track on the album and the first song that you wrote for it. When you first wrote the song, did you have any vision of what the album would be like?
Not at all. And honestly, every time I write a song I don’t even know if it’s going to be a part of a body of work. So I actually wrote this song – I was in this relationship, and it was the only song I wrote during the relationship. So there was basically like eight months to a year where I didn’t write a single song – I was working on things, but this is the only song that I wrote start to finish, which is indicative of the relationship. [laughs] I was reckoning with the end of the relationship, and right after I finished that song is when I went through this breakup. I was touring a lot during that time too, which is why I wasn’t writing as much. And that was like the beginning of the process of being like, “Now I have all these feelings coming up, I feel like I can pull something out of me.”
I went on a final tour right after that breakup, and I actually scheduled in a week back at my parents’ house where I wrote the first EP to kind of get my thoughts together and work on stuff, and then in the middle of that tour is when my other ex/friend of mine passed away. So it was like, “Oh, I’m not writing about this anymore, this breakup.” Obviously I didn’t get much writing done that week because I was just, like, crying. That’s kind of when everything else came together for this album, after that, and then we went into lockdown, which was – it was nice to be with my family during that time. I was really lucky to be able to spend time writing with them and just be with them and have a safe space.
Thank you for sharing that. For how long was it like, not just “I’m not writing about this,” but actually, “I’m not sure I can write at all”?
Yeah, I was such a hot mess. That was in November that that happened, and I was on tour and I was at home by myself for a week after that, just in bed basically. And I was really struggling. Really, really struggling. And there was one day in December where I worked on the song ‘Nosebleed Seats’, and then I kind of, like, couldn’t. I was in such a heavy place – and the breakup stuff, obviously I was really upset about that, but this kind of trumped everything and really overtook me. And I probably didn’t start writing until I took a two or three-month break, and then I would try to write but it was just too painful at the time – and still is, obviously, extremely painful. It wasn’t until March or April, I did a couple of sessions with friends, and that was actually helpful for me, because I was able to – when I was just by myself, it was too much for me, but when I had somebody helping with the production I was able to really go back into it.
The album really evokes this conflict between grief and gratitude that comes after loss, which I think also comes through in the contrast between the lyrics and the melodies. How did that personal conflict affect the songwriting process, in terms of figuring out like, “Which direction do I lean in, how do I evoke that”?
Yeah, exactly. And that’s why it’s so challenging, it’s like, “What is the appropriate world for these words to live in?” I’m putting a dance beat behind something very dark and a little bit like masking it in that in some songs. A lot of times when I’m like producing I’m just clicking around on a computer, but with ‘Northern Lights’ I was like, “I just need more movement here.” And I think that words actually come a little bit more easily when there’s a tactile motion to go with them. I wrote ‘Medellín’ on guitar at first, and it was just three chords, basically – it just allows for things to come out more subconsciously. That’s sort of how I worked with ‘Northern Lights’ and ‘Medellín’, like, I need to get on an instrument and shut your brain off, the thinking brain, and just let things come out.
With ‘Northern Lights’, something that really elevates the song is your vocal performance, which is just so striking and vulnerable. Do you remember recording vocals for this track?
That song, I originally tracked it in my bedroom, and was just going all out and like, it was super emotional. And then I was like, “Okay, I want to capture this but record it well.” I was trying to record in studios with people and it was during the pandemic, and I have one friend who has a studio in his house, and I was just like, “Hey, if I get tested a bunch of times and come over a few days in a row and quarantine and everything, can we just do it together?” So he and I tracked most of the vocals for the record in his house. And I remember that song in particular, I sat down in a chair and he had the door closed, and we were both just like, “Oh man, this is intense.” But I was able to get into a headspace and have the time to do vocal take after vocal take and just let it come out. And having him there was also really helpful, to have that feedback and to kind pick out the parts that worked best.
Something I wanted to ask you about is this concept of The Land Beyond the Light that gives the album its title. Could you expand a little bit on that?
I knew that the album was going to be really heavy, and there’s this part of me that wants the music have another side to it. And so I was like, “I’m gonna write a science fiction story that has a different ending to it, that has some hope.” It’s still not done, but I’ve written this story, and it’s like, these creatures that are connected to each other and live in the darkness, but then one of them ends up in this world of color and light. It’s just supposed to be, you know, the idea of hope and keeping the memories of the people we’ve lost after they’re gone and finding the color and the beauty there, and I wanted to have the outcome feel like another world that we could live in.
When did you start to envision this world?
I can’t really remember when I wanted to do this story. It’s something that I thought about early on, but when I was looking to find art to go with the album, I was just reading different artists’ blogs and exploring around the Internet, and I found Linda Westin had posted these images of these trees out in nature, and she would put these different lights on them. She’s a scientist and she studies the brain, and she was trying to emulate the way that neurons work. So when I first saw her artwork, it was visually striking but also just reminded me of my ex in the way that, you know, he’s from Alaska, and spent so much time in nature and worked in nature and was really into science and biology as well. So this just felt like a dedication to him. And when I was looking at the album art, I saw that image and I was like, “Oh, this is illuminating the brain, which is where your memories are, but also when you think about drugs, they affect the brain.” And when I saw that image, it kind of evoked a fantastical view of that, and that’s when I started to think about the story behind it and creating the world.
‘The Land Beyond the Light’ Cover Artwork
On ‘Medellín’, you refer to this idea of a “deeper quieting.” What does that mean to you?
We when someone is gone, we’re just left with the memories of them. And so it’s this strange feeling, because like, even after he passed away, I would dream about him a lot, and he was there and then I would wake up and he wasn’t there. And that’s like throughout the album, this angst of dealing with the grief of having somebody be present with you in this way, but they’re not fully there. And so, coming to terms with that and just experiencing that is so, um… It’s disruptive. And yeah, I just… I think I’m trying to remember this person and track down these memories and keep them in place in the song so that, you know, even if I talk about them or whatever I can tap into this feeling and still be – still have a piece of this person with me.
Have you listened to the album in full since it came out?
I don’t think I’ve listened to it in full in probably four months. I think it’s just difficult to go back and do the whole thing. I kind of want it to be for other people right now. I think making it was for me, and now it’s out in the world and I kind of want to feel what other people are experiencing from it.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Whether you’re hoping to break into the competitive world of entertainment journalism or just a die-hard gaming fan with a lot to say, simply being good at games is not enough. To review games of all stripes and to provide value to the community of players, you need to be able to write well and know what you’re talking about.
Reviewing games can be a great way to get more out of a hobby or to launch a highly successful career in the entertainment industry. Being able to write a solid game review that provides genuine value to the reader is often the first step. Here’s how to do it.
1. Consider the Essentials
First up, you need to note down what you’re actually going to discuss in your review. This essentially means the basic specs of the game that your audience will need to know about before they buy. Consider the graphics, sound quality, and any device compatibility issues as a starting point.
Then you can move on to discuss things like plot, controls, replay value, and customisability. After this, you can start to consider the bigger questions, such as where the game you are reviewing fits into the genre, or what a particular game’s release says about the wider industry.
2. Consider Your Audience
Next up, you need to narrow down your audience so that your review has maximum value. Understanding what your audience is looking for will help you avoid filler and focus on the things that matter. For example, a review for an online casino game would have a very different focus to a review for a multiplayer console game.
Online casino players will be looking to learn more about game features such as RTP, progressive jackpots, and slot paylines. To learn more about what such an audience is looking for, you should take the time to look at the site of a well-known online casino gaming platform like Mr Green, which features reviews from users that tell you a lot about what makes a good casino game.
3. Have a Unique Tone of Voice
It is not enough to simply lay out the features of a game. You need to bring a unique tone of voice to your review that tells your audience instantly why you are worth reading. Every successful reviewer has a unique perspective that they are able to bring to the table. Perhaps you have a dry sense of humour that you can apply to the games you review.
Perhaps you prefer to look at the bigger picture and consider how each game fits into a wider cultural canon or industry trend. Whatever your niche, make sure to flaunt it throughout your writing, as this is exactly what will keep your readers coming back for more. Finally, don’t forget to keep your criticisms strictly constructive – make sure to offer recommendations where games appear to have fallen short.
Knowing how to write a good review is more than just a career skill – it is also a way that you can contribute to your fellow community of gamers.
Lily Konigsberg is one-third of the tremendous art-punk trio Palberta. That band just released one of the year’s best albums yet, Palberta5000, but that still wasn’t enough for Konigsberg. The prolific and enigmatic artist has been posting solo material on Bandcamp throughout her time in Palberta, and this new compilation, the wryly titled The Best of Lily Konigsberg Right Now, collates some of her finest work while working alone. There are songs from 2018’s 4 picture tear, 2020’s It’s Just Like All the Clouds, and 2017’s Good Time Now, a split release with Andrea Schiavelli; there are songs that will be familiar to fans, as well as unreleased tracks and demos (‘Big Tall Grass’ and ‘Opening the Day’).
The entire compilation is a masterclass in fast and cheerful indie-pop, the sort that could have soundtracked a Mumblecore film or an early season episode of Girls. It’s quirky (just look at the name of some of the songs, such as ‘Waterfall Snake Juice’) but it’s also earnest (‘Summer in the City’), Konigsberg wonderfully capturing the excitement of being 20-something and trying to make it in the world. The New York singer-songwriter has spoken of her desire to write songs that get stuck in people’s heads for the rest of their lives and she mostly achieves this aim. Befitting of a member of Palberta, the 17 tracks are all memorable and light, endearingly infectious.
The first song, ‘Owe Me’, is the most overtly poppy, as it finds Konigsberg sounding like a Robyn acolyte. ‘To Hold It’, ‘At Best a #3’, ‘I Said’, and ‘Roses’ are then perfectly capsuled indie-pop (Frankie Cosmos would perhaps be too easy a comparison, but their stylistic similarities are evident). The production shows neat touches elsewhere. A cappella vocal loops carry ‘Rock and Sin’ before an attempt at electropop on’ It’s Just Like All the Clouds’ features a tetchy AutoTuned vocal. Bird noises fill the soothing and smooth ‘Talk to Me w. Birds’, while decadent horns splutter throughout ‘Good Time’.
Perhaps, given the success of Palberta’s latest album, Konigsberg envisions not having as much time for solo endeavours in the upcoming year or so; perhaps this is why she’s released this compilation just now. At the end of ‘Owe Me’, there’s a cute self-conscious moment: “And thank you all for coming to my show,” Konigsberg says as an imaginary audience claps, “If you didn’t know now you certainly know.” If this is The Best of Lily Konigsberg Right Now, I can’t wait to hear The Best of Lily Konigsberg Later.
Two years ago, black midi captured the attention of virtually everyone interested in rock music of the more adventurous variety with their ferocious, boundary-pushing debut, Schlagenheim. No matter how challenging their eclectic blend of freeform jazz, prog-rock, and post-punk could be, there was something undeniably exhilarating and raw about the way they presented it – even if one might have occasionally (and understandably) felt their music teetered on self-indulgence, it was almost impossible not to be captivated by its wild twists and turns. For all its uncompromising force, what Schlagenheim potentially lacked was not accessibility, but staying power; though it imprinted itself on your brain, that initial thrill diminished upon repeated listens. Cavalcade is different.
Make no mistake: the London art-rockers don’t sacrifice one bit of their chaotic ethos on their sophomore full-length, but their focus does shift significantly. Though as restless and unpredictable as its predecessor, Cavalcade shows a band willing to introduce more structure and atmosphere into their normally improvisational style, though it’s not its harmonic elements that stand out as much as the music’s intentionality and nuance. Their debut wasn’t entirely devoid of quieter, more composed moments, but compared to something like ‘Reggae’ or ‘Of Schlagenheim’, Cavalcade’s ‘Diamond Stuff’ seems less concerned with quickly ratcheting up tension or catching the listener off guard than the simple but delicate act of building mood. One of two songs fronted by bassist Cameron Picton, the second longest track on the album starts off with two minutes of spare acoustic guitar, each slight fluctuation in intensity adding to the song’s volatile, foreboding ambiance before gently rising to a cosmic, downright haunting outro.
The album’s other astonishing centerpiece, which comes right before ‘Diamond Stuff’ and is also led by Picton, is the deceptively titled ‘Slow’. As ominous as it is hyperactive, the track veers off in a dozen different directions, balancing technical precision with a propulsive edge and ultimately erupting in a whirlwind of frantic guitars and screeching saxophone. Opener ‘John L’ takes this approach to maddening extremes: it’s purposefully disorienting and dissonant, yet performed in such a way where the abrasion becomes infectious. The notable addition of piano and strings, as well a greater experimentation with space, hints at the heightened theatricality that defines the album. ‘John L’, for example, finds guitarist and frontman Geordie Greep embodying the cult leader that gives the song its title to eerie effect: “In all the world there’s no escape from this infernal din,” he declares. Though his delivery is bound to be no less divisive than it was on Schlagenheim, here it blends into the cacophony rather than serving as a distraction.
Cavalcade does have some unusually straightforward moments, but in “relentlessly trying to untie our knots, of rivers and roads that defy all sense,” as Greep sings on the gentle ‘Marlene Dietrich’, the music only becomes more complex and elusive. Even the orchestral coda at the end of the 10-minute closer, ‘Ascending Forth’, isn’t satisfying so much as it warrants a perplexed laugh (to say nothing of the song’s main double entendre). By adopting a more compositional and vaguely conceptual approach, black midi have only enhanced the absurdist sense of humour that has always pervaded their music. They’re also less lyrically clumsy than some of their post-punk peers, so none of it comes off as overly portentous or contrived. But there is still a mysterious aura surrounding the collective, one that’s reflected in the album’s knotty, ambiguous arrangements, and that near-cynical distance might eventually become tedious if it drags out to another album cycle. It remains to be seen, after this grand finale, whether they’ll offer a peek behind the curtain.
MMORPGs are known to be the pioneers of online games and since the very beginning of it all, this genre has managed to stay in popularity to this day. There are now more MMORPGs than one can possibly play and the competition to stay at the top of the table never seems to fade away.
And while there are plenty of titles to choose from, World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV remains to be one of the hot topics debate as to which title is better than the other.
So, in this short article, we are going to go over some of the main features from each of these titles that define the MMORPG genre and let you be the judge of it!
Quests
One of the things that define the MMORPG genre are the quests. While, both the WoW and FFXIV brings awesome new quests to the players, FFXIV seems to take it a bit higher with the storytelling and the narrative.
The quests to earn FFXIV Gil or polish your skills are more immersive in Final Fantasy XIV and require the players to be more invested in the game with all the beautifully laid cut-scenes to make you part of the quest. While, World of Warcraft is exceptional in coming up with some great quests, I think it somehow lacks the ability to make the player, a part of the quest.
Player vs Player
While World of Warcraft does have its own flaws when it comes to balancing and whatnot, it still remains to be one of the best titles when it comes to player vs player combat. WoW’s PVP combat system lets you be more creative in this regard while also being not-so-complex for the new players, or if you want to skip the “new player” phase, you can buy WoW account and start dominating right away.
Now, FFXIV still has a long run to go when it comes to PVP combat as they’ve made certain changes to it. But recently more players are coming in to join the PVP action as we hope to see something great from Square Enix.
Combat
Of course, the most important part of any MMORPG is the combat system. Now here, things get interesting as both of these titles have great combat system but the main difference that you’d see in both games is attack cool down. World of Warcraft has a very paced attack system which allows players to register more attacks.
While in FFXIV, there a higher cooldown timer which lets you be more strategic with your approach as it slows down attacks from sides and it is also comparatively more complex than the WoW’s battle system, so much so that sometimes you would end up needing help from professional players to get you through.
PVE Content
Many of the players have moved from WoW to FFXIV because of its mythic content, that is actually well developed and deep. And for some the singular fights with bosses are far more better than the hectic boss fights in World of Warcraft.
While, both these titles are truly different in what they offer to the players, there is certainly no title better than the other as both offer player with different MMO experience based on the player’s own preference, which is what it all boils down to at the end of the day.
