No Fidelity Winter '25

NO FIDELITY

winter ‘25

NO FIDELITY IS . . .

Nicky Pierce-Ralph, Ethan Kinsella, Percy Vermut, E “Truth” Whiteaker, Jimmy Carlson (squared), Stewie Goon, Sofia Durdag (ed.), Calla James Ruff, and the KRLX DJs who wrote in the Community Notebook

a note from the edz Well, that’s that! In making my last NoFi, I traveled through many emotions: fear (photoshop stop doing that), curiosity (wacup?), bemusement (krlx community notebook), and finally love and thankfulness (for No Fidelity). This magazine, and the people who write for it, contains so much passion, imagination, and thoughtfulness, and I cherished getting to combine it all together into twenty four pages. Even though I grieve my last issue as editor, I am so hopeful and excited for the future of No Fidelity! This magazine occupies a weird, special nook on this campus and I can’t wait to see how it grows and evolves with each passing term.

It all was/is/will be eternally, so beautiful!

[sofia durdag ‘25] If this is your first issue, welcome. NoFi is open to all students interested in or passionate about music and pop culture, and is open to all varieties of submissions.

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KRLX CONFESSES . . .

A LOT!

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dear olivia ho: i live to surprise you! i am tapping a fresh well of arrogance just for you. love love forever.

KRLX’s Gallery of Rogues!

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Stewie Goon’s Instagram Story Song Choices

by Stewie Goon

follow @stewie_goon on instagram

ART PIECE Homecoming Court, 2023 Photo, post-its on bookshelf

ACCOMPANYING SONG What a Fool Believes, by Self

“What seems to be Is always better than nothing Than nothing at all” Puppets, 2023 Paper, ink on AED manual

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Configuraciones Onduladas, by Juana Aguirre

“Cuesta abajo Tus líneas tendidas Configuraciones onduladas Onduladas ganas”

The Space Shuttle, 2024 Paper, ink + highlighter on Smithsonian card

La Estación Espacial, by Letelefono

“En nada vamos a volar Usando toda mi tecnología Y si me voy quedando cuando tú te adelantas Por favor espérame tras las sombras” Connection Card, 2023 Paper, pencil on church connection card

Good Morning, Captain, by Slint

“I'll make it up to you I'll make it up to you I miss you I miss you” 9

Seven Tenths, 2024 Paper, marker on sketchbook

Sleep Talk, by Crumb

“She’s moving in to your home with all her things”

Real Room, 2024 Digital Collage, paper and ink + photos

Templo, by Flores

“No, no debemos Deshacer todo lo bueno que pasó Lo que queda de nosotros Lo que queda de nosotros” 11

Songs I Listen to In Order to Cope with the Passage of Time and the Fact that All Things Change and Die by sofia durdag The earth is turning over and fresh shoots are growing. And this is a very good thing. But I hate change! I hate endings! I cling to the past until it molts into nostalgia and then I clutch it even tighter, until the nostalgia turns into something even worse that has no name. I mourn the end of each term, each year. I bury my head in the sand and cover my ears if I hear the slightest whisper of graduation graduation..

And yet change is barreling towards me like a train with cut brake lines. This very magazine marks the conclusion of a period in my life that I am kissing sweetly goodbye. But I’m grateful, I swear! I haven’t yet learned how to accept the passage of time gracefully, but I truly believe a good song can help a little. I listen to these songs and can feel the rusty hinges of my mind opening to accept all the new.

Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce — I discovered this song in high school, and so it reminds me that I am still one continuous person. My mother also loved Jim Croce when she was in college (like me!), and so it makes me think of her and less about graduating from college. It is also a lovely song about love and time and devotion, and I highly recommend it. It also features in a great scene in X Men: Days of Future Past.

You Make Me Feel Like Dancing by Leo Sayer — You can’t cry if you’re dancing and howling along to a 70s-style falsetto!

Pushing it Down and Praying by Lizzie McAlpine — A song bequeathed to me by my sister, who likes sad indie music! It makes me melancholy about other, pressing matters and thus distracts me from the endless battering of time against my mind and my body.

Lover, You Should’ve Come Over by Jeff Buckley — This song washes the inside of my brain out like a cold spring rain.

Jacob and the Stone by Emile Mosseri (from the Minari Soundtrack) — This song actually makes it worse, so only listen if you’re actually prepared to reckon fully with the sands of time slipping helplessly between your ham-fisted, mortal fingers.

Where’d All The Time Go? by Dr. Dog — I sobbed to this song when I was eighteen and driving to get a pedicure for my senior prom. I felt this boundless sadness that I was graduating, and that my youth was being rapidly sewn up, calcified. I feel this way all the time, at each new interval. And then I arrived at my pedicure with my friends and the lady didn’t make the footbath water warm at all.

my last page designed for no fidelity!

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What your favorite sludge metal band says about you by Jimmy Carlson Ah, sludge. The awkward, misunderstood child of hardcore punk and doom metal. Riffs like a bluesy brick wall. Drums more primitive than a stoned caveman. More bass than a pro shop, and any kind of vocals you want, as long as they’re equal parts furious and depressed (or just sound really stoned). Sludge metal has a core sound that is unlike any other, making it a distinct landmark in the great, muddy map of metal subgenres. It’s also incredibly diverse, sometimes sounding like doomed-out thrash metal, sometimes stuffed with folky melodicism, and sometimes barely more than a fuzzed-out drone. It’s quickly become one of my favorite subgenres of metal because of its ability to be heavy as fuck while still incorporating beautiful melodies, and connecting to real, visceral human emotions.

Anyway, I see a lot of this “what your favorite [genre/song/album/band] says about you” content floating around these days. It seems like people love when someone they don’t know fires some really reductive judgement of their personality and lifestyle at them based off some aspect of their music taste. Metalheads love to base their whole personality off their music, so it especially applies to them. Stereotypes run strong for every subgenre: thrash heads wear tight jeans and battle jackets, drink beer and scream “Slayer!” all day, black metal heads worship Satan and feel nothing but hatred despite living in the happiest countries on earth, the list goes on. People seem awkward when it comes to overgeneralizing about sludge though, like the typical sludge head is hard to picture. I’m here to fix that, because I’ve spent years reflecting on the vibes and stereotypes associated with the style. Without further ado, here are 20 sludge metal bands, and what it means for your personality if they’re your favorite: Acid Bath: You are the ultimate edgelord. Your ex put a cigarette out on you once and you’ve been chasing the feeling ever since. Every time “The Blue” comes on you fight the urge to text them how much you hate them. A couple drinks later you’re asking to have them back.

Mastodon: Either you’re new to sludge and just heard Leviathan for the first time, or you’re a prog nerd who listens through Crack The Skye on a daily basis.

Crowbar: Dieting, exercise, supplements, it all does nothing, you just keep getting fatter.

Eyehategod: You’re constantly angry at nothing in particular, and you can’t function until you’ve smoked a bowl and had two shower beers.

Torche: You’re a prog nerd like the Mastodon fan, but you really, really want to headbang. You can’t stand the sound of harsh vocals, it’s too scary!

Neurosis: You’re prone to suddenly disengage and stare at nothing for minutes on end. Your dreams are filled with fire and your intrusive thoughts are getting worse.

Harvey Milk: You poor thing. You’re in desperate need of a hug, some affirmations and a meal with more than three ingredients.

Dystopia: You’ve been fired from two separate McDonalds. Anyone who comes near you at the show leaves with a broken nose.

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Melvins: You exclusively drink IPAs from craft breweries no one’s heard of. You haven’t cut your hair in years. You’re always rambling about something you know is super profound, but no one understands a goddamn word you say.

Chat Pile: You are also always rambling, but everyone understands you and it freaks them the fuck out. You don’t smoke anymore because the last time you did, Scooby Doo materialized in your room and tried to remove your skin.

Down: You mostly listen to country, not that modern country bullshit either, the kind from when real men used to make real music. Now Phil Anselmo is the only real man left. When you get sick of people bitching about your confederate flag bumper sticker, you put on Pantera, and when you wind down after with a bit of weed, you put on Down.

Thou: The only thing blacker than your coffee is your soul. You’re the ex who the Acid Bath fan is obsessed with. Every time they text you, you put on “I Feel Nothing When You Cry” and headbang until your spine changes shape.

Corrosion of Conformity: You’re a simple lover of grunge and southern rock, and you had no idea these guys are technically a sludge metal band. The Down fan keeps trying to get you into them and Pantera, but they’re too edgy for you.

Admiral Angry: You scare me. You really do. Get help.

Megachurch: You never truly grew up from the time when you spent all your day watching meme compilations on your Mom’s iPad, which she gave you to watch Christian videos. The fact you even know about these guys is a testament to how deep your YouTube plunges have taken you. These days, your only remaining connection to the church are the unhinged samples on Megachurch 2: Judgement Day. Boris: You used to be a weeb, now you’re just a terminally online music nerd. 90% of your listening is shoegaze, midwest emo and field recordings.

Isis: You scoff at people who misinterpret the band name. Every night, you put on Panopticon, take an edible, and feel your body drift away through the aether. Your friends are sick of the crappy philosophical takes you keep spouting off at them.

Sumac: You cringe at your past Isis-loving self. Now you spend your every waking moment on shrooms listening to The Healer, and you believe you are the next Dalai Lama.

High on Fire: You used to listen exclusively to Big 4 thrash metal. Then you discovered weed.

Baroness: You find extreme beauty and sadness in everything around you. Back in the day, you used to be all about going hard, then you started to get softer every year. Miraculously, you’ve managed to find something beautiful in that too.

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Nine Introductory Classical Music Albums for the Unconverted

by Ethan Kinsella and E “Truth” Whiteaker Classical music has a unique place among the listening habits of our peers at Carleton—that is to say, hardly any at all. Most of our friends listen to a wide variety of music, from jazz to hip hop to ambient to your shoegaze heads, but anything broadly labeled as “classical” is often left out. Classical music belongs to its own tradition, but it is music just the same. If you can leave aside aesthetic prejudices, you may find that classical can be integrated into your listening habits just as well as any other type of music. As two classical appreciators, we have curated a list of albums for the absolute beginner to dip their toes into. No music theory knowledge or previous experience required! Simply look at the “if you like” section and the album cover and go from there! All of these pieces have our glowing recommendations, so when in doubt just pick one and rip it!

A note on formatting: for this article we outline albums, which sometimes include multiple pieces. We write album titles according to the most common method, generally according to this format: Composer: Title (Conductor/Ensemble)

Bach: Messe in H-Moll [Mass in B-Minor] (Peter Schreier/ New Bach Collegium Musicum Leipzig) If you like: wall of sound, backing vocals, or lush, layered textures J.S. Bach’s Mass in B-Minor is one of the most comprehensive works in music history—even though it was written over 275 years ago.

Across the nearly two-hour span of this work, Bach covers almost the entire emotional spectrum, from the fraught, gothic opening Kyrie to the nal Dona Nobis Pacem. Throughout, Bach’s remarkably modern musical language drives forward constantly and surprises, thrills, and overwhelms—as in the life-arming Cum Sancto Spiritu, which sounds like a gunshot before exploding into one of Bach’s most energetic passages. Heartfelt solo and duo arias throughout, meanwhile, bring the Mass back from the universal to the personal. You don’t need to be religious to appreciate this work: if you want one album which encompasses nearly everything classical music has to oer, look no further. —EK Mozart: The Last Six Symphonies (Bruno Walter/Columbia Symphony Orchestra) If you like: perfectly walking a tightrope, round pegs fitting into square holes, or French gardens I was finally sold on Mozart as a great composer by the idea that his music is in every way perfectly balanced. His last six symphonies are the best balancing act he ever performed, so effortless and inevitable in their structure that they might almost seem formulaic. Make no mistake: Mozart is always walking an impossible tightrope, intricately crafting rises and falls, negotiating contradictions. These are patient works— Mozart spends the first three minutes of the “Prague” Symphony just setting the mood, before gliding into the shimmering, sunlit main theme—but there is no filler at all. Despite their crystalline perfection, these are charming works, and they remain totally approachable for practically any listener. —EK 16

Beethoven: The Late Piano Sonatas (Pollini) If you like: existentialism, Frankenstein, or the personal in the political Beethoven is rightly remembered as a heart-on-sleeve, capital-R Romantic, and his music is broadly generalized as huge and grand and vastly emotive. As he grew older (and more deaf), Beethoven drew inwards, publishing a series of deeply personal, reflective works which nonetheless express something universal and broadly human. Each of the ve sonatas here is a self-contained universe: no. 30 evokes lost, nostalgic love like a wispy Monet, the “Hammerklavier” (no.

29) is a mood swing from frantic nervousness to dreamlike introspection and back, and no. 32, one of Beethoven’s final pieces, sounds like a farewell to life itself. All the while, Beethoven looks a hundred years into the future, foreshadowing minimalism, impressionism, and, notoriously in the final movement of no. 32, twentieth-century boogiewoogie, without ever stopping to catch his breath. —EK

Stravinsky: Le sacre du printemps [The Rite of Spring] (Stravinsky/Columbia Symphony Orchestra) If you like: feeling jittery after too much coffee, jagged post-punk, or getting so anxious you just yell Yes, The Rite of Spring is a benchmark for twentieth-century music; yes, it revolutionized rhythm in classical music; yes, it inspired a riot.

All of that is true. It also sounds a lot like the movie Uncut Gems feels—that is, like being tied to a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse.

Something bad is going to happen, and it’s only a matter of when it does. Stravinsky’s most famous ballet is charged with nervous energy, but it’s also eminently listenable: the opening bassoon solo, like a voice calling across a mist-capped pond, is somehow catchy, as is the barnstorming sacricial dance in Part 2. —EK

Stravinsky: Le sacre du printemps [The Rite of Spring] (Stravinsky/Columbia Symphony Orchestra) If you like: feeling jittery after too much coffee, jagged post-punk, or getting so anxious you just yell Yes, The Rite of Spring is a benchmark for twentieth-century music; yes, it revolutionized rhythm in classical music; yes, it inspired a riot. All of that is true. It also sounds a lot like the movie Uncut Gems feels—that is, like being tied to a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse. Something bad is going to happen, and it’s only a matter of when it does. Stravinsky’s most famous ballet is charged with nervous energy, but it’s also eminently listenable: the opening bassoon solo, like a voice calling across a mist-capped pond, is somehow catchy, as is the barnstorming sacricial dance in Part 2. —EK

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Messiaen: Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus (Yvonne Loriod) If you like: waiting for tea to steep, looking into your partner’s eyes, candle light There are no words to describe Messiaen’s combination of themes, transmuted in a sort of alchemic reaction to create two hours of keyboard witchcraft. Messiaen’s dissonance feels spiritually given; it is meticulously handled yet always somehow one of the most gorgeous things a piano can voice. Yvonne Loriod’s preternatural phrasing and ear for grand structure is perfect for Messiaen’s large scale passing of themes between movements and the internal importance of specic regards for the creation of the work. The Vingt Regards are an existential threat to the theme and variations form, but Messiaen’s oneof-one harmonic ideas set the precedent for a whole new generation of musical divinations. Specic recommendation for Regard 15, “Le baiser de l’Enfant-Jésus.” —EW

Missy Mazzoli: Dark with Excessive Bright - Concerto for Contrabass and String Orchestra (Maxime Bibeau/Australian Chamber Orchestra) If you like deep resonances, feeling vertical space, or fantastical worlds Her name may be Missy Mazzoli, but she does not miss. This contemporary composer combines minimalism, art-rock, and symphonic histories to create a totally unique tonal landscape that continues to shock me to this day. Mazzoli’s concerto setting allows the double bass, an instrument not normally considered to be lead, to rock the house and entrance the listener with hypnotic richness. Solo passages seamlessly transition into splashes of upper register violin and pounding rhythms; there is never a moment without life bursting through the recording. Mazzoli’s precise textural work highlights the beauty that classical music carries as well as written music’s continued relevance in a world outside of lm. —EW

Ethan Kinsella and E. “Truth” Whitaker are turbo-nerds, roommates in Lilac Hill, and seniors at Carleton College. Truth is known for their work on “To What End Shall Love Conquer?: Liebestode in Tristan und Isolde, Salome, and Bluebeard’s Castle,” the song “Moraea,” Paranoid Fiction, and The Cyber-Spiritual Order of Mechanical Hedonism. Kinsella is known for his work on “Urban Affordances: A Comparative Study of Jane Jacobs’s Greenwich Village and Venturi/Scott Brown’s Vegas Strip,” and for co-writing “Tweaker” by GELO. He has also listened to every Bach cantata, both forwards and in retrograde inversion.

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George Crumb: Black Angels & Music for a Summer Evening (Quatuor Hanson) If you like: noise, powerviolence, skramz, or abrasive soundscapes The Dark Land is Approaching. Black Angels is a work for electric string quartet written in response to the Vietnam War. Crumb organizes the piece into three sections—Departure, Absence, and Return—which take the listener through the depths of tonality into dissonant screams of anguish. Moments of true screeching chaos are met with somber reections, shouts of the human voice, maracas, glasses, and mallets. Crumb creates a unique atmosphere using extended, or non-traditional, techniques that make the strings sound like entirely dierent instruments. Black Angels stands as a testament to the ingenuity of classical music and how it can represent the challenges and horrors of modernity. —EW

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (Edo de Waart/Netherlands Radio Philharmonic) If you like: romantic melancholy, hypnagogic fantasies, or death by yearning Love is a sickness; love is confusion; it is the only thing that is real.

There is no denitive word on Tristan und Isolde, despite the plurality of scholarship it has inspired. Despite Wagner’s problematic legacy, Tristan remains a Rorschach test for the listener, impossible to reduce to a single interpretation. For instance, we might nd that Wagner’s story oers itself today to a feminist reading: Isolde’s agency is central in the story, even in the preceding action before the rst scene. Isolde determines the outcome of the story, materializing her romantic desire and choosing her own fate. Her nal aria over her lover’s lifeless body, the “Liebestod” (or lovedeath), remains one of the most poignant statements of bliss ever put on stage. Isolde’s divine example was heralded in opera as the new measure of a protagonist’s singing ability and created a model for future complex female leads.

Tristan und Isolde is perhaps the most important European work of art in the last two hundred years. Its lush, ethereal atmosphere inuenced practically every subsequent composer of note, as well as generations of painters, writers, architects, and philosophers, extending into the current day. Tristan and Isolde set a radical precedent for freeform melody, dissonant or non-tonal harmony, and psychological character interplay. Edo de Waart’s instrumental reduction gives the highlights in about an hour, though we of course recommend spending time with the full opera. (Can you tell we like this one?) —EK + EW

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Letter from a concerned metalhead to hardcore

Letter from a concerned metalhead to hardcore kids

by Jimmy Carlson

Dear hardcore kids, How are you? Are your bruises from the last show healing? Did you finally land that kickflip? You did? I’m so happy for you.

I just wanna start by saying that if you know me, you know that I love to mosh.

Take me to a show with some aggressive drums and heavy guitars, and I’ll wind up in the middle of the crowd running around and slamming shoulders with whoever’s down. I find something so natural and joyful about expressing myself to other people, friend or stranger, by semi-consensually physically colliding with them.

It’s like a kinetic chain reaction of joy and togetherness, and I frankly think less of rock concerts where I don’t experience it.

I also really enjoy hardcore. There will always be a special place in my heart for fancy metal music, but sometimes I want to drop all the musical bells and whistles and take a direct shot of the rawest rage there is to the cranium. No music does it better. Nails, Soul Glo and Knocked Loose (a bit of metal in that one, sorry) are my favorites btw. You also can’t deny that neither hardcore nor metal would be anywhere near as interesting without the influence of the other.

It feels like they’re two sides of the same coin, right up until I go to one of your shows.

I’m no connoisseur of live hardcore (which is why I’m writing this letter), but I’ve been to two serious hardcore shows now, and I gotta say that I just. don’t. get it. It’s been the same story both times. The first of five opening bands is playing, and I’m enjoying the beatdown music. There’s a little space right in front of the band, and I want to go in and throw some elbows. I’m about to go for it, but someone else has a different idea. He runs in and starts spinning around and waving his arms as fast as possible, gaze held fast to the ground just in front of him, like he’s eight and attacking his older brother, but he’s only hitting air. He’s back into the crowd in ten seconds, but the pit stays wide open. A minute later, two or three others go in, each claiming a chunk of the floor for their private fight against the air, throwing in as many special little spins and flourishes as they can in 15 seconds, and then they’re out again. Already a fundamental disconnect from the communal pushfests that I’m used to, but the real kicker (pun intended) comes soon after.

The first opener is done, and the next is starting. I’m excited. People almost always mosh harder after each opener. I make sure I’m right next to the pit so I don’t miss out. The guitars are chugging, the drums are pounding, the vocalist is divulging their criminal record. Awesome. A few people rush in to the pit, they’re flailing arms, kicks are coming out now, a couple spin moves, then BAM! I can’t help but grunt in pain as I feel the foot connect with my pelvis. The kicker disengages without making eye contact and goes to the other side to hit more people. What the hell? I step back and watch the same few people continue to bash everyone who doesn’t move away. When they’re taking a break, the arm-wavers and two-steppers step in to assault the air. This carries on for the rest of the show, with not a single instance of the slam-dancing that I know and love.

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Look, I’m trying my best to understand you guys. I know hardcore is its own culture, and that it likes doing things its own way. As far as I can tell, people have been dancing like this for decades. Some people clearly like it, and more importantly, many more people are willing to tolerate it. But like, how is this ok? In a crowd of like 50 people, you’ve got about five who want to hit other people, and the rest are feeling unsafe. Why do the crowdkillers get to assault people who are just standing still and trying to enjoy the show? Why don’t they hit each other instead? Because they’re worried the other person might hit back? How fucking stupid is that? Take your anger out on someone who wants to take their anger out on you! Feel a little danger yourself instead of inflicting it on a bystander, and you might have more fun in the process!

Lemme take a step back and acknowledge my perspective. I’ve been in a lot of mosh pits at metal shows. I learned a code at my very first standing-room metal show (shout out Sabaton) and it’s held up at every show I’ve been to since. 1. If you’re in the pit, someone might run into you. 2. Slamming, pushing, maybe grappling are the acceptable ways to engage. 3. If someone gets knocked down, you stop immediately and help them up. 4. You don’t hit people not in the pit, not on purpose.

If someone breaks rule #4, they suck and you make them stop. Clearly crowdkilling is not cool at a metal show, yet it happens all the time in hardcore. I’m not trying to put a stop to this tradition, but I need answers. Is there some silent agreement that if you’re next to the pit, you might get hit? Then why do people next to the pit look so bothered by it? Do hardcore fans also hate crowdkillers? Then why don’t you stop them? Am I just going to shitty shows? Please, send me a letter or something explaining this.

I’m not done. My other problem with hardcore moshing is that it feels performative. There’s such a specific set of moves that people do in the pit, you need to be in the know to even participate. When I went into a hardcore pit and started just headbanging, I felt so deeply alone, I left immediately. Instead of a space for people to gather, do whatever the hell they want, get knocked around and have a good time, it’s a space to show off for a little bit and then leave. It’s like built-in gatekeeping. I thought punk was all about no barrier to entry, raw energy valued over form, but this is the opposite. So my second question for the hardcore moshers is, is it really fun to do the old two-step and spin attack for ten seconds and then leave? If so, why?

My apologies if I stepped over some sort of gatekept line by writing this. I really tried to be fair. Please don’t kick me in the pelvis again. Please.

Sincerely, A Concerned Metalhead 21

by Percy Vermut

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Like it or not, hyperpop is certainly back in a big way. It’s back in a different form than its predecessors; a little less jumpy, a little more grunge. And with a lot more to say. Jane Remover is one such artist who is redefining the genre and pushing the boundaries of music and what hyperpop “can” be. Her music talks about desire, identity, their intersections, and the issues that come with being in the public eye. As a trans hyperpop artist, she is surrounded with peers of similar experiences.

There is an undeniable and absolutely fantastic presence of trans women in the hyperpop scene right now, and they’re taking it by storm.

You might be wondering why exactly there is such a large overlap between the trans community and this more subversive, weirder music genre. Well first things first, I would encourage you to put down this magazine for a second and cue up some saoirse dream. Now that you’ve done that, I want to draw some parallels between the two subjects I brought up a second ago. At this moment in the United States, being trans is quite difficult. Let alone the societal associations with our community, the very government itself has taken issue with our existence. As a result, merely the act of existing is a form of sticking it to “The Man”. if existence is an act of rebellion within itself, creation is another step above that.

Hyperpop as a genre provides several modes for this resistant self expression. As a genre itself, it’s subversive and far from the norm of what pop music is “supposed” to sound like- and artists like Jane Remover and underscores are pushing that even further with the ways that they manipulate and further the sound. One of the marks of the genre is the vocals—high pitched and computer manipulated, the distinctive singing style provides an avenue for trans people to change their voice to how they want to sound.

It might not seem like an obvious overlap in the venn diagram, but both circles subvert expectations and boundaries placed upon them with creativity and passion.

Now that I’ve gotten on my soap box, here are my top 4 trans hyperpop artists:

1. Jane Remover (personal fave!!!) a. recommended track: Magic I Want U 2. underscores a. recommended track: Cops and robbers 3. saoirse dream a. catherine never broke again 4. 100 gecs (ofc,,..) a. Hollywood Baby

Songs I Listen to While Driving Through Rural Tasmania and How They Make Me Feel

by Calla James Ruff “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac. Adventurous. Excited by the intense sunlight and unfearful of burns. Too cool for that. Do I move here?

“She’s a Rainbow” by the Rolling Stones. Oh-so-optimistic. Where are we going? I’m so excited!! Look at all the colors!! Have you seen this big sky in front of you?? The landscape of yellowy greens and reddish greens and deep ochres and can you tell this is an art trip? I want to draw it all, right now.

“The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel. Far from home. Wanderous. A smidge homesick, overly romanticizing the recent past. A little ungrounded, but at least we’ve got each other every place we go.

“The Suburbs” by Arcade Fire. Deep longing for KRLX at 2 in the morning. The feeling of immortality you can only experience at age 20 in a dark room full of loud music and confessional grati. I need to write my name somewhere on this island…

“Babel” by Mumford and Sons. Holy shit the world is big. Why the fuck do I live in Northeld, Minnesota.

“Float On” by Modest Mouse. Onward and upward! There are lakes to be seen and mountains to hu and pu our way up. We’re staying in a pub this week! Things will be alright.

“This Is Home” by Cavetown. I miss my friends on campus so much. Are they okay without me? Life is so hard without your best friend around.

“Asc. Scorpio” by Oracle Sisters. I should buy a bus and live out my van life dreams here in the willywacks of Tasmania. My cat and I will run from deadly snakes and make friends with the pademelons and currawongs we meet. We’ll get snow in the winter and brutally sunburnt in the summer and have no money. When can I start?

“The Adults Are Talking” by The Strokes. The speed at which we moved all our bags from one bus to another via duel bag brigade.

“Books” by Caamp. What better way is there to make friends than to get thrown into the wilderness on a big ol’ adventure with them? I’ll remember those leeches forever…

“British Bombs” by Declan McKenna. I’m tired. We’re seven hours into hiking and drawing up a mountain. We’re coming into the last 3 kilometers and have no idea what that means. The wombat under the boardwalk is fueling our last push up the hill.

“Bury My Lovely” by October Project. Fuck buses, I want to be driving way too fast through these mountains from one coast to the other. Let me scream along while nearly painting myself on the surface of this winding road. The ants will eat me, and the echidnas will eat the ants, and it will be exactly as it should.

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