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Sounds

A collection of 74 issues

The Geographies of Darkness

How Place Shapes Scene Or: Never mind the gatekeepers, I snuck in with the caterers The Smiths had it right: "I wear black on the outside, because black is how I feel on the inside." But what they didn't mention is how much easier that sentiment

Discovering the Gray Machinery

A Real-Time Encounter with Sicario The Perfect Bait A decade after its release, I finally caught up with Denis Villeneuve's Sicario—baited by a social media clip of tactical violence so precisely executed that viewers shared it as a masterclass in cinematic gunfights. We clicked hungrily for the

The Boo Radleys and Notes from Inside the Unlocked Door

Or: How a 1992 Song Became a Field Guide to Democratic Exhaustion In 1992, the Gulf War was a video game played out on television, Bill Clinton was on his way to winning back the White House, and the musical world was still scratching its head in the exhaust clouds

Soup Is Good Food (2025 Remaster)

Or: How Dead Kennedys Predicted the LinkedIn Economy In 1985, Jello Biafra and the Dead Kennedys released "Soup Is Good Food," a brutal prophecy about technological displacement and corporate cannibalism. Forty years later, as I scroll through LinkedIn watching professionals optimize themselves into algorithmic nutrients, I realize: the

From Costco Pizza to Cultural Inheritance in the Post-Late-Stage

On the impossibility of bartering for touring bands, the comfort of perpetual collapse, and how we learned to stop worrying and love the industrial cheese blend The Condiment Station as Cultural Theory We are living in the aftermath of late-stage capitalism, but the aftermath never ends. Like cartoon characters who&

Thank You, Sam

I remember stumbling across a CD by Black Tape For A Blue Girl at our college radio station back in the day — one jewel case among hundreds, but somehow the room seemed quieter when I held it. Time flows differently for independent musicians and label owners, and my mind still

The Archival Spell: Kate Bush and the Politics of Cultural Memory

I still dream of Orgonon. The line floats through Terry Gilliam's miniature movie, Kate Bush transformed into Peter Reich, Donald Sutherland towering as the persecuted scientist Wilhelm Reich. The cloudbusting machine—part Tesla coil, part Victorian fever dream—stretches toward the sky in a gesture of pure theatrical

The 2:45 Pop Song RPG

How we created a complete roleplaying game in an hour, and what it means for the future of tabletop design The Beatles Knew Something We Forgot In 1963, The Beatles released "Please Please Me" - a perfect two minute pop song that changed everything. No extended guitar solos,

The Leeward Side

I had a sheltered childhood. Kiss were demonic boogeymen, AC/DC were the devil's children, and Ozzy was the guy who pissed on the Alamo. At some point, like most suburban boys, a copy of Paranoid came into my possession. And... it was okay. The air raid sirens

PaRappa the Rapper Epistemology

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Viral Nature of Thought Introduction: The Driving Test Picture this: You're sitting in front of a wall of text from a historian on Facebook. It looks like news analysis, smells like civic engagement, but something feels... off. You&