I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: FALHA COMUM-“Film Do Mundo” (2019).

Every year Lars Gotrich publishes his list of favorite music in an NPR podcast called Viking’s Choice: The Year In The Loud And The Weird.  I always listen to these songs because I’ll never hear them anywhere else (he mostly seems to scour bandcamp for unknown music.

One that he especially liked was by this band Falha Comum, a duo from Brazil.

He says:

The Brazilian post-punks scaled down to a duo, but opened a festering third eye. The psychedelic noise receptors of a previous decade (think Raccoo-oo-oon and Gowns) run throughout Rakta’s Falha Comum, but in levels below, the sinister grooves and cackled reverb inhabit a life all their own with primal incantations to spirits unknown.

The album is like a few things and nothing else that I’ve heard.  There’s elements of krautrock–but not sterile and efficient, more groovy and cool, with a warm bass and seemingly wild, improvised vocals.

This particular song is 7 minutes long and opens with a spoken word section (presumably in Portuguese).  There are synths and screams behind the speaking and then everything starts pulsing as the vocals echo and echo.   The music–a simple repetitive drum and bass (I guess) line, keep a terrific groove going while on top, the high notes (vocals and other synths) skitter and flit about.

Midway through, the song goes through a phase shift–it sounds like it’s been transported somewhere else, and that’s when the bass gets cleaner and the vocals grow a bit more intense.  But the groove remains.

Somewhere around 6 minutes, the groove changes slightly–a brief shift in notes suddenly gives the song a brief moment of extra melody.  The following keyboard frenzy keeps it from getting too comfortably melodic though.

It’s an unexpectedly interesting and cool record.

[READ: Summer 2019] The Long Utopia

This was the fourth book in the Long Earth series.  I brought it along on vacation thinking it would be a fairly slow and leisurely read like the others—something I didn’t mind putting down and picking up a few days later.  But this book changed that pattern entirely.  It was fast paced and quite exciting and my favorite book of the series so far.

The previous book about the Long Mars seemed to be more than anything else, a distraction.  Not a lot happened, although there were some cool ideas in it.  The one big thing that book 3 did that effects book 4 is the cable/elevator thing—which I still don’t understand [see yesterday’s post about book 3].

This book also introduces a new concept in Stepping.  Typically Stepping is described as moving left or right, east or west through the Earths.  But suddenly, in this one world, it seemed like a person could move…north.  Into an entirely different world—night instead of day:  “No stars exactly, it was like he could see the whole galaxy…from outside.”

This book is set in 2052.  Protagonist Joshua Valiente:

will be 50 years old. He has been stepping for 35 years and has been all over the Long Earth.  But some things are still unsettling—things that he can feel in his bones or his head.

The reason for his feelings date back to 2036 in New Springfield.  Cassie Poulson had been digging a basement for her house when she hit some kind of opening.  Not a cave or anything natural, but some kind of manufactured tunnel or the like.  When she poked her head in,  what poked back was a humanoid metal beetle.  Obviously she freaked out and covered up the hole.

In 2052, in New Springfield a young boy and his dog discover the hole that Cassie tried to hide.  Nikos Irwin is less timid than Cassie was, so he explores the hole.  And he meets the metal beetle creature face to face.  He is obviously freaked.  Lots of beetles were closing in on him and then one of them stepped.  But you can’t step underground, everyone knows that. And yet it did.  And so Nikos tried to step as well.  He couldn’t go left or right, but he was able to go North,.

Three days later he was bringing his friends to the cellar to check it all out.

Unrelated for now, but having a huge impact later in the book was the birth of Stan Berg in 2040.  He seems unusually bright.  And we know from previous books that unusually bright kids are called the Next and might be super human.

But the most astonishing thing in this book is Lobsang.  He is back!  But he is…unwell.  Everything that he has experienced in the world, especially the burgeoning Next has made him question himself.  So much so that he feels the need to … expire.  And so, Sally Lindsay, Joshua, Sister Agnes and Shi-mi the cat as well as Nelson Azikiwe all gathered for Lobsang’s funeral in 2045.  What?  No!!!!  He was the best part of the stories.

One of the neatest tricks in this book was bringing Stepping back to the present/past.   Joshua never knew much about his family.  His mother died when she was very young and he knew virtually nothing about his father.  Nelson Azikiwe is an academic and loves to unpack a puzzle.  So he sets about finding Joshua’s father and Joshua’s past.  The authors have a ton of fun bringing Stepping to 1848.

Joshua’s ancestor Luis was able to naturally step form one world to the next.  He used this skill to make some money as the Great Elusivo—and easy way to change location without being seen.  He had been doing this for some time when a stranger approached him and seemed to know what he had been doing.  This was bad for Luis until the stranger revealed that he could do the same.

We also see Joshua’s son all grown up.  The boy was named Daniel Rodney but he was going by Rod now.  Those who have read previous books will remember that Rod was one of the Stepping phobics who was responsible for the nuclear detonation of Datum Madison.  Rod was related to Joshua’s wife Helen and their son’s middle name was a tribute to the fact that they left him on the Earth all those years ago.  But the fact that Dan was going by that name was something of a slap in the face to his parents-especially his father.

Rod was now a comber—he flew his plane from world to world with no real destination or job.  Rod and Joshua were off on a mission of sorts.  Joshua had a plan for his 50^th birthday and Rod was going to fly him thousands of Earths away for some alone time.  It was pleasant enough.  Until they started talking.

Then came the good news about Lobsang.  He wasn’t dead.  He was doing something different.  He and Sister Agnes were planning to start a new life on Earth West 1,217,756 or New Springfield.  Lobsang would be George and Agnes would be Agnes.  They were a married couple who had adopted a baby and wanted to start over.  Even though they were both AI, they were planning on removing their technology as much as possible.  They were going to age and feel the same physical and mental deterioration as people.  Lobsang wanted to start over and Agnes was happy to help him.

The story of Stan Berg comes to the fore in 2056 when he is sixteen.  He lives in Miami West 4 and the city is constructing a space elevator (the kind they found in the Long Mars). But funds have dried up and Stan is amusing himself by being smarter than everyone.  He can see several moves ahead in most games of chance and he easily beats everyone in cards.  He’s also a smart ass and the locals kind of hate him.  Except for his friend Rocky, who looks after him an tries to protect him.  It’s not long before Roberta Golding has brought some of her Next friends to Miami and has invited Stan to the Grange, the secret hideout of all Next people.

Stan is impressed by the Grange but he hates their superior attitude.  He dismisses all of the Next and wants noting to do with them—and perhaps for the first time, the Next are surprised by something.

Back in 1848, the Waltzers as they are known use their powers for good and quickly get invited to Windsor Castle for a meeting with Prince Albert.  The Prince is delighted with their abilities and decides he wants them spying for the home team rather than another team.  He dubs them The Knights of Discorporea.

By 1852 they were in the United States helping slaves make it through the Underground Railroad. (I loved this component of the backstory especially the appalled way they react to slavery).  Then they decide to take advantage of the Gold Rush.  Not by doing anything illegal, just following someone who has struck it rich and then going to the next Earth and grabbing the gold from there.

Back in New Springfield, Agnes could tell something was wrong.  She felt like she wasn’t getting enough rest—that the world was moving too quickly.  She couldn’t use any of her technology to find out what was happening—something that would have taken a fraction of a second with her AI–but with some help from Shi-mi she is able to construct a pendulum and determines that the earth is spinning faster than it used to.  It’s around this time that she sees that Nikos and some of the other boys are wearing silver bracelets.  The boys say they found them but these are too nice and too plentiful.  Then Nikos brings Agnes to see the beetles.

Soon enough the authorities are aware of what’s happening and they come to new Springfield to investigate.  The residents resent the intrusion but things are getting very serious indeed.  The Earth is completing its rotation in less than 20 hours.  And time is shrinking

Against his better judgement and much to Agnes consternation, Lobsang gets involved.  In a big way.

That’s when they learn that the beetles have a plan—a plan that can only result in the destruction of this earth—and which may affect the long Earth in its entirety.

The conclusion of this book is intense and beautiful and horrible and it involves the deaths of several characters.

I absolutely could not put this book down and it made me immediately want to start book five.