My Brightest Diamond

The session summary is running a little bit behind, so I thought I'd make a quick post concerning some of the music I've recently chosen. Last session, I opened our gig with a song from the band My Brightest Diamond. These guys are the real deal, and I can't stress enough how much I enjoy listening to their sounds. Here's a quick intro to the band via their website: "My Brightest Diamond is Shara Worden, granddaughter of an Epiphone-playing traveling evangelist, fathered by a National Accordion Champion, and mothered by a classical organist. Having a family of wanderers who migrated across the US every few years, the landscape and the musical influences were constantly changing. Spanish tangos, Sunday morning gospel, classical and jazz were the accompaniment to her home life. Her first song was recorded at age three and by age eight she was studying piano and performing in community musical productions. As a teenager in Michigan, Shara honed her musical prowess singing along to Whitney Houston music videos and Mariah Carey albums. When pop music wasn't enough, she enrolled in the music program at the University of North Texas, immersing herself in the songs of Purcell and Debussy. After college, she moved to New York City and fell in love with its cold winters and busy streets. She continued to study opera on the Upper West Side during the day, but at night she frequented downtown clubs such as Tonic, Knitting Factory, and The Living Room, catching performances by Antony and the Johnsons, Nina Nastasia, and Rebecca Moore. She began to spend less time sight-reading Mozart and more time de-tuning her Gibson electric guitar to play her own newly-written songs. Coaxed out of recital halls and onto the small stages of bars and clubs, Shara assembled a coterie of musicians to accompany her with bass and drums, music boxes, wine glasses, and wind chimes." I've embedded their amazingly surreal live cover of Led Zeppelin's No Quarter below, along with several other inspiring melodies. I hope you enjoy!

Nail's Theme Song

Alex (who plays Nails) called me the other day with a tiny revelation: he had found a potential song that fit his dark, dark character. I found the song on the good ole YouTube and thought it might prove useful to post it here. Pantera - Walk Gawd, this song brings back memories. Between this and Metallica's "Master of Puppets" you'd be hard-pressed to find a heavier song. Good choice, Alex. This song breathes Nails.

Touched by VAST

Simply put, "Touched" is a powerful song. It sparks a tribal flame with its chanting refrain. I’d like to take a moment and explain the significance of this song. Kindly observe the lyrics to the Healing Scar's theme song "Touched" by Vast: Touched, you say that I am too So much, of what you say is true I'll never find someone quite like you again I'll never find someone quite like you, like you The razors and the dying roses Plead I don't leave you alone The demi-gods and hungry ghosts Oh god, god knows I'm not at home I'll never find someone quite like you again I'll never find someone quite like you again I, I looked into your eyes and saw A world that does not exist I looked into your eyes and saw A world I wish I was in I'll never find someone quite as touched as you I'll never love someone quite the way That I loved you But what does this mean? I remember hearing this song for the first time (thanks to Jarrett) and thinking the melody was perfect but the lyrics were off. At first glance the song seems personal, a lover’s quest through love, rejection, and ultimately acceptance over their partner’s perfection. The Uratha do not display this feeling, or do they? After several more listenings I thought on the lyrics deeper and a connection was made. Allow me to attempt to explain. "Touched" is about dying love. And, if you twist its initial conveyances, “Touched” represents the relationship between the Forsaken and Mother Luna. The narrator is the Uratha, who long for the time before the gauntlet, before the death of Father Wolf. It is a twisted love, for as a parent she cursed her sons and daughters on the night of that kill. Her love is pure, but it is not kind. “The razors and the dying roses” represent the challenges each Werewolf must overcome: the Shadow, Incarnae, the Pure, even themselves. And the bit about “looking into her eyes”… as I experience this particular moment of the song I envision a wolf-form Uratha gazing at the night sky, staring into the full moon, the physical representation Luna. The world that Luna envisions does not exist, perhaps it never can. But, if we give in to doubt, if we allow ourselves to not believe (much like the Pure), we loose her love and then… everything.

Music Artist: Blockhead

I’m going to go out on a limb here and state that Blockhead is perhaps the greatest “mood” music I have ever had the pleasure of listening. My Werewolf players might recognize a song or two, as his stylings make up some of the background music I play during sessions. I have always believed that the sounds used during a session are as equally important as the story itself. Music is a wonderful spark to the imagination, often the necessary push for a player to leave our world to enter the World of Darkness or whatever game one might play. Great story elements can literally fall flat with players if the mood and setting are not in the right place. It is a careful game of "give and take" in which no Storyteller is perfect, but I pride myself in the thinking that I come pretty close to inspiring characters to play their best each session. Blockhead is not a conventional artist. Casual listeners might take his music and lump in into a techno section or perhaps the “pure moods, Enya, feel-good” category. It is synthetic by design but the output of his songs is hardly digitized. The closest artist I would even consider comparing him to is Moby, but even that is a stretch. He has a unique ability to take a harmlessly simple beat and twist it by breathing the surreal life of a city throughout. Blockhead actually finds insult to the mere claims of being a techno artist. In fact, he claims that his roots are in hip hop. At first I was surprised by this notion but the more I grew accustomed to his style the more it seemed to make sense. Like hip hop, his music is very raw and exposed. There's a simple beauty, and an equally harsh reality, to each of his songs. My personal favorite is "Insomniac Olympics." The song even hosts a fan-submitted "flash music video" of a gunfight gone wrong; the vid really hits the core feeling of the track. Most techno music is distorted; it is meant to immerse you in some robotic future that lies shrouded in fantasy. And while that style of music is great under certain circumstances, it does very little to encourage characterization in the WoD. Blockhead's music does quite the opposite; he puts the listener in the present-day streets, confronting a harsh world of drugs, sex, and sin. This is dark ambience at its best, an easy choice for a soundtrack to Werewolf the Forsaken or any other World of Darkness setting. "Insomniac Olympics" Music Video, via AlbinoBlackSheep. Blockhead’s Webpage, via NinjaTunes.

And So We RPG'ed

It's been a long time (almost a year) since I've roleplayed. THAT'S A LONG TIME. Honestly, I was dreadfully scared that I'd somehow lost the thrill of it all in my absence of gaming. Bow howdy, was I worried for nothing. Thanks to Adam, Alex, and Ben for kicking arse. Weaving stories is such a blast when characters are attuned to the world around them. And you guys most certainly were. I'm not sure how I'm going to post the happenings of each session as of yet. For now, I'm going to post a list of things I liked and disliked about our gaming processes. I might list a few nitpicks here and there; mostly complaints towards myself. Likes Creative Combat. I F'ing love it when people use the environment to their advantage. Not only does it liven the fighting, but it makes the scenes more believable. LARP/Table top transition. I really liked the pace of shifting between these two forms. And not once did I have to urge characters to do this, you folks knew when scenes dictated a storytelling form. That shows the signs of experienced players. Fluidity. Time wasted screwing around = ZERO. That was a very focused bit of playing. Dislikes Alex's CD player. It is the electronic bane of my existence. We'll have to work out something else in the future. Voice over narrations. That was my bad. I need to brush up on that a bit. Perhaps I'll write out certain key passages instead of going for the improv route. I really want certain scenes to hold a level of weight to them and I'm don't want to rob them of this. In case you're interested (probably not) here's the list of music I used. I am a dork and will provide a CD copy upon request, for the also dorky folk. Vast - Touched (3:58) Richard Gibbs - Are You Alive? (5:34) Richard Gibbs - Thousands Left Behind (2:15) Billy Corgan - Disconnected (3:47) Orbital - I Don't Know You People (7:47) The Cardigans - Erase/Rewind (3:36) Phillip Glass - Metamorphosis One (5:38) Gorillaz - White Light (2:08) Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy [Pappy Mix] (4:21) Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy [Mummy Mix] (4:24) Vast - Cello Song (4:36) Gorillaz - El Manana (3:50) Vast - Thrown Away (4:00) Billy Corgan - To Forgive For Nothing Less (3:58) Orbital - Know Where To Run (9:42) Vast - Don't Take Your Love Away (4:56) Vast - I Don't Have Anything (3:45)