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Vote for Locust Lecture’s Top 7 Albums of 2023

The Locust Lecture Top 7 Albums of the year voting returns, as it does every year, to provide the true best of the best.

You check out the list of things we played this year, pick the seven things you like the most, and send it to us before the end of the year (the 31st of December). Ballots sent to us once it is 2024 will not be included. We will tabulate the votes, and proclaim the winners for the first show of the new year.

Submit your ballot through the ancient magicks of Google Forms.

Vote for Locust Lecture’s Top 7 Albums of 2022

The Locust Lecture Top 7 Albums of the year voting returns, as it does every year, to provide the true best of the best.

You check out the list of things we played this year, pick the seven things you like the most, and send it to us before the end of the year (the 31st of December). Observe the power of our continued Google Forms usage!

Ballots sent to us once it is 2023 according to our email will not be included. We will tabulate the votes, and proclaim the winners for the first show of the new year.

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Vote for Locust Lecture’s Top 7 Albums of 2021

The Locust Lecture Top 7 Albums of the year voting returns, as it does every year, to provide the true best of the best.

You check out the list of things we played this year, pick the seven things you like the most, and send it to us before the end of the year (the 31st of December). This year, we’re shifting from sending us emails to a form to fill out.

Ballots sent to us once it is 2021 according to our email will not be included. We will tabulate the votes, and proclaim the winners on the first show of the new year.

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Vote for Locust Lecture’s Top 7 Albums of 2020

There is only ever one list that really matters: the Locust Lecture Top 7 Albums of the year. As it is every year, you can help us choose the best of the best.

Check out the list of things we played this year, pick the seven things you like the most, and email it to us before the end of the year (the 31st of December). Ballots sent to us once it is 2021 according to our email will not be included. We will tabulate the votes, and proclaim the winners on the first show of the new year.

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Vote for Locust Lecture’s Top 7 Albums of 2019

Lots of places are putting out their lists of best things for the year. Luckily you can vote for the only list that really matters: the Locust Lecture Top 7 Albums of 2019.

Gaze into the list below of things we played this year, pick the seven things you like the most, and email it to us before the end of the year (the 31st of December). Ballots that our email declare as being from 2020 will be deleted. We will tabulate the votes, and unveil the math based winners on the first show of the new year.

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Vote for Locust Lecture’s Top 7 Albums of 2018

2018 was a fantastic year for music. Which of the plethora of fantastic releases we played is the best? You can let us know. Below is the list of albums that we played. Send us a ranked list of the best seven, and then send it to locustlecture@gmail.com. We need to receive your email before the end of December 31st in our time zone. If the timestamp we see says it was sent late, we will throw your ballot out. We will use the math-powered to democracy to determine the winners

Artist Album
16Pad Noise Terrorist Eunoia
A Tomba Oberta Cadàvers al riu
Abysmal Torment The Misanthrope
Accidental Tones Desolation
Ape Vermin Sonic Monolith
Autoclav1.1 makeshift splint
Bambara Shadow On Everything
Baptists Beacon of Faith
Barry Center Betrayal
Benoit Master
Blackthorne Blackthorne
Blood Folke III
Bong-Ra Antediluvian
Cement Tea Grey Sky
Cement Tea Deadly Waves
Cleric Retrocausal
Config.sys Digital Mayhem
Control Blood Will Rain
Control • Geneviève Pasquier • Kommando Cold War, Hot Love
Convulsing Grievous
Cute Heels Grounded and Lifted
Daughters You Won’t Get What You Want
DEAD WAY ENLIGHTENMENT Ω
Death Engine Place Noire
Deathbell With The Beyond
Deflector Juice
Dirk Geiger Dreams Die Quietly
Discomfort Fear
distortion six ferocious
Domenico Petrosino S P L T T R
EFF DST Out of Body
End.User Resurface
EOD Named
Fórn Rites of Despair
Funeral Mist Hekatomb
Geomatic Transcommunication
Glacial Tomb Glacial Tomb
GRRRMBA Embodiment
Hellcreator A Journey Into The Mind
High Tension Purge
Hot Snakes Jericho Sirens
Hypnoskull The Manichaean Consciousness
Imperial Triumphant Vile Luxury
Inexorum Lore of the Lakes
Inner Suffering Slow Dance On The Ashes Of Failure
Iron Gag Malingering
Iszoloscope All is Immensity and Chaos
Jérôme Chassagnard Sea
JK Flesh New Horizon
KEN mode Loved
KHADLUB Folktales
kindohm decera
KPT Sequel
KPT Fluid Bonded / Disarm
L/F/D/M Fast Feelings
LDX / ROE LDX / ROE
Lingouf Loup vert
Machinefabriek Engel
Manoid Truth
maŕa without you
Maschinenkrieger KR52 vs. Disraptor Riot
Matter Primitive Forms
Merkabah Million Miles
Michael Idehall Prophecies of the Storm
Michael Idehall Aion Reborn
Mind.Divided Lacrimae Rerum
Minors Atrophy
Mnemonic Aversionen
Monolith Falling Dreams
Monolog Indemnity And Oblivion
N8STROM2618 No Signal Input
Nadir The Sixth Extinction
Natura Est Natura Est
nebulo Stin Treex
Nervewrecker Murmur
Nigredo Flesh Torn – Spirit Pierced
No Pnum
NO FUNERAL Mankind is Carrion, Fit for Nothing
Noise Trail Immersion Symbology of Shelter
Nordvargr feat. Trepaneringsritualen Metempsychosis
Ontal Ikari
Orphx Learn to Suffer
Philipp Münch Greyscale
Pig Destroyer Head Cage
Portrayal of Guilt Let Pain Be Your Guide
Protocol_Violation Request
Radiant Knife Science Fiction
Raksu Raksu
rhgt l a t e x e s
Salt Invisible
Secret Cutter Quantum Eraser
Shani Broner Black Black Banana
Signalstoerung S
Snowbeasts Nocturnal
Solypsis Solypsis-Devisor
Somatic Responses Pattern Finding
Somatic Responses Recurring Dream
Somatic Responses Quktch
Subskan Drawback
Sulaco The Prize
Sumac Love In Shadow
Sunk Loose Threads
Sylvgheist Maelstrom Norillag
Synapscape Still
The [Law-Rah] Collective Innovation
The Canyon Observer Nøll
The Gnome Stillness
The Order of Apollyon Moriah
The Outside Agency The Legacy of Cain / I Saw My Grave
The Outside Agency & Ophidian Return of the Silence
The Soft Moon Criminal
The Space Where She Was How to Play Dead
Thou Rhea Sylvia
Thou Magus
Tomb Mold Manor Of Infinite Forms
Tor Too Happy
Torn Shore Reduced
Totakeke Telematic
Unbirth Fleshforged Columns Of Deceit
Unhuman Control
V/A Form Of Hands 18
Valentin Mase Military Lies
Void Ritual Death Is Peace
Wake Misery Rites
Warp and Weft Patience
Wetware Automatic Drawing
White Boy Scream Remains
Worry A Celebration Of Suffering
Yaporigami One Sound Extinguisher
Yellow Hyper Balls REQ
Zeal & Ardor Stranger Fruit
ZEIT Δεῖμος // Φόβος

Vote for Locust Lecture’s Top 7 Albums of 2017

The time has come to vote on the best in evil music. Look through this list of albums that we played and put together your ranking of the best seven and send it to locustlecture@gmail.com before the end of the year (this means before the end of December 31st). If our email says it was sent in 2018, we are obligated to hit delete. All ballots will be run through our great tabulation system, and the mathematically superior albums will be proclaimed the winners.

 

Artist Album
_whtspce Pale Cocoon
‡Starvingpoet§ Dissonant Sibilants
Aleph Coiled
All Pigs Must Die Hostage Animal
Ancient Methods The First Siren
Autoclav1.1 & Displacer Spacetime
Bary Center How Do You See Yourself
Belief Defect Decadent Yet Depraved
Blanck Mass World Eater
Blush Response Infinite Density
Bullshit Market x Pollux EP
Celeste Infidèle(s)
Cement Tea Cement Tea
Chelsea Wolfe Hiss Spun
Cloud Rat / Disrotted Cloud Rat / Disrotted – Split LP
Comity A Long, Eternal Fall
Converge The Dusk In Us
Cormorant Diaspora
Cosmic Reef Temple Age of the Spaceborn
Coughdust Worldwrench
Cowards Still
Delete Muscovite
Demonic Death Judge Seaweed
Displacer The Face You Deserve
Distortion Six Fierce
EFF DST Blackout
Emptyset Borders
Empusae Lueur
Enduser Enter To Exit
Ex Eye Ex Eye
False Hunger
Fizzarum Frisson
Fleshmeadow Umbra
Fleshpress Hulluuden Muuri
FRAIL HANDS Frail Hands
Fucking Cowards V
Full of Hell Trumpeting Ecstasy
Full of Hell & Nails Full of Hell & Nails Split 7″
Gidge LNLNN
Gigan Undulating Waves Of Rainbiotic Iridescence
God Mother Vilseledd
Greyhound Ground
Gutslit Amputheatre
Haggatha V
Harpon Béji
HECQ Chansons de Geste
Helpless Debt
Hexis Tando Ashanti
Hexis XII
Hitoshi Kojima Twisted
Hundred Visions Brutal Pueblo
Huron Inside Information
Hymn Perish
Hypnoskull Die 4. Generation
Igorrr Savage Sinusoid
Imminent, Synapscape The Humanoid Problem
Immolation Atonement
Jason Tibi Buried
Kaibun Gloomy Alice and Sinister Jack
L’Effondras Les Flavescences
Last Days of S.E.X. Sabotage Normality
Melania . Rimorsum
METZ Strange Peace
Mirland Mechanic
Mono No Aware Oto
Monolog Conveyor
Mother Moon Bathed In False Light
Nebulo Zellige
New Frames Resistance Through Rituals
Ontal Amass
Oudeis Opus
Pharmakon Contact
Phasenmensch & ICD-10 Divinity/Unity/Nothingness
Philipp Munch Post Elysium
Pygmalion Supersymmetry
Pyrrhon What Passes For Survival
r.roo shilly-shally
Regurgitate Life Obliteration Of The Self
Ruetz Melanoma
S S S S There Is No Us
S.K.E.T. Capitalism – Continuing Crisis
SaturmZlide Human Art Engines
SB-Six Trajectories EP
Semiomime Close Ones
Shackles Lifeless Paradise
Singing In The Brain Singing In The Brain
Sloth Herder No Pity, No Sunrise
Slow V – Oceans
Slund The Call Of Agony
Somatic Responses Dark Machines
Somatic Responses Pattern Seeking
Stondar Stondar
Sunless Urraca
Sutrah Dunes
Svart Crown Abreaction
Teethgrinder Nihilism
The Blight Meditations On Insignificance
The Great Machine Love
The Heads Are Zeros The Heads Are Zeros
Theory Red Book EP
Tomohiko Sagae Sensory Deprivation
Tsygun Тлен
Twinesuns The Empire Never Ended
Ulcerate Shrines of Paralysis
Unearthly Trance Stalking the Ghost
Unsane Sterilize
Uranium Club All Of Them Naturals
Usnea Portals into Futility
V/A Forms of Hands 17
VMO Catastrophic Anonymous
Watchcries Wraith
Wiegedood De Doden Hebben Het Goed II
Yards Excitation Thresholds

Fancy Social Media Policy Update

Being on the internet is hard sometimes. Running an internet business is even harder, because not only do you have to deal with all the horrific corollaries to the John Gabriel Greater Internet Dickwad Theory, but your livelihood can depend on how you navigate the pit traps and cesspools of online living. As an online business with minimal income, we rely on free social tools like Twitter, Facebook and others to promote our shows and connect with our audience.

Unfortunately, social media platforms have become a haven for truly toxic behavior. Harassment, white supremacy, violence and hatred, to name just a few examples. Obviously none of this is new to the social media era, but platforms like Twitter, Facebook and others have allowed and amplified groups whose only goal in life seems to be the tearing down of decency and the common good.  And for too long, the owners of those platforms have refused to make appropriate and necessary efforts to combat these groups, either out of a sense of unthinking devotion to a twisted form of free speech fetishism or a cynical unwillingness to court controversy out of fear of lost profits.

We at Fancy Pants Gangsters believe firmly and strongly in the first amendment. We don’t believe in government controls on speech. But corporations are not government and as such have no restrictions on policing their own community of users beyond what they themselves feel necessary and right. The only entity in control of Twitter is Twitter, same with Facebook, Instagram and others. We feel that inaction in the face of obvious and counterable evil is the same as association with that evil. And we at Fancy Pants Gangsters are not interested in association with these evils.

So today we will begin voluntarily ending our usage of and association with those social media platforms that we feel are putting insufficient effort into combating the evil within the communities that they have built and maintain. We are beginning with Twitter, in part because we feel that the mechanisms for policing it are stronger and quicker to implement. The accounts of all Fancy Pants Gangsters shows will cease being updated beyond a single update pointing back to this post. This will continue until such time as we believe that Twitter is making a good faith effort to building policies designed to intelligently and constructively combat the poison on its platform and actively begins to enforce those policies. We will also expand this to other platforms as we make judgements and find ways to extricate ourselves from them.

We understand that this is a very low stakes protest. Our influence in the social world is minimal; Twitter will not reel from our absence. And this is not a call for people to abandon Twitter or social media. We also know that these tools are powerful with respect to organizing resistance and making change so we do not begrudge others who continue to use it. We hope that we can find a way to use these tools in the future, both to connect with our fans and promote our little shows. But we can not in good conscience continue to use a tool whose creators choose to run so inappropriately.

If you would like to reach out to your favorite shows, you can click on the email link on each show page or email me directly at evan@fancypantsgangsters.com. Thank you for your continued support.

Redshift Reflections – Season 1 Episode 3: The Narration

Redshift Reflections gives our producer Evan a chance to talk about the making of each episode of Redshift. A behind the scenes look at the stories, the voices, and the questionable science behind our audio series.

When we did our first open submission period, one of the first things we received was the short story version of The Narration and I knew immediately that it had to be part of our first season. The concept of a group of people in a diner where they slowly discover they are being narrated seemed ripped right out of Twilight Zone and doing it as an audio drama was a no-brainer. Drew Chial’s story was full of character, from the main foursome to the seen-it-all-before waitress, and with the environment playing such a huge role, it was a great opportunity to really go nuts with the sound design and take advantage of the audio format. Probably moreso than the original Kickstarter pilot, this episode was the thing I was most excited to work on going into our first season.

Listening back on the episode (and the season in general), I’m almost upset that we didn’t hold onto it for our second season. We were still fairly new at this thing, having only really done 2 episodes (the pilot being done so scattershot that it doesn’t really count) as an entire cast. This was the first episode with Paul Christian (who played clueless hottie Sam) and of the rest of the cast, only Amanda Milbradt had had a significant role before that (as DD in Good Service). And poor Pam Torgrimson, getting thrust into a role where she is probably 60% of the spoken dialogue and having to play 2 versions of herself with very different speaking styles. The cast was incredibly gracious to put this into my hands, and I’m still very happy with the episode, but I think with another season under our belts, with more time to really gel as an cast and for me to improve as a director and sound designer, that this would have been something truly magical.

The Narration is essentially a bottle episode, with the cast trapped in the flooding diner, and any student of TV knows that bottle episodes are all about slamming characters together and watching them connect…or fall apart. So it’s funny to me that this episode was the one where we continued the bonding that we did during Behold The Rusted Hills and really grew as a group of actors, not just a bunch of friends putting on a show. That’s important too, obviously, but watching a group of mostly amateur folks (only Matt Allex had any non-Redshift performance experience at that point) start to talk to each other like fellow actors, helping each other out, playing off on another in character, it was very exciting to watch.

I mentioned in my post about Behold The Rusted Hills about how one of our rules was “no godly narrator”. Obviously we broke that rule with The Narration, but the biggest revelation to me was how much having a narrator didn’t help things. Skipping the narration in general was a way to stretch the writing, to keep the focus on the characters and not just blast exposition at the listener. Having a narrator felt like a cheat, that is, until we did it. Any benefit you have as a writer to including a narrator in terms of setting up plot is obliterated by how much doing narration can turn your dynamic audio drama into a rather staid audiobook. Nothing wrong with audio books, and there are some very lively audiobooks out there, but that wasn’t what we wanted to make.

The Narration continues to be a great episode, ambitious and fun to listen to. It utilized the audio drama format in a really interesting way, and I’m super proud to have done it (much like every other episode). Like most of Season 1, I’d like to take another crack at it, but it’s still the one I send to people when they ask “What is Redshift?”

Photo Credit: Rob Cartwright

The Page One Panel One Project

Every comic script starts with four simple words. Page One Panel One. These four words have started some of the greatest adventures ever read yet they remain behind the scenes, usually reserved for those creating the stories or people interested in how comic books are put together. They are four extremely important words that are both at the same time terrifying and exciting to write down because what follows in the panel description needs to draw the reader in immediately and make them need to turn to Page 2.

Welcome the the Page One Panel One Project, a new blog series to go alongside Panels & Pizza. A few times a month I plan on going over some of the most famous opening panels in comics. Or my favorites. Or your favorites as I plan on recruiting some friends along the way. Heck, there’s going to be some podcasting involved with this as well because I need to podcast and not do anything else with my time like, oh, raise my daughter or pay the bills. Oh wow, the lights just flickered. That can’t be good. If you have any suggestions for posts you would like to see, please send them to me at pizza@fancypantsgangsters.com

Page One Panel One kicks off with one of my absolute favorite opening pages of all-time, from Uncanny X-Men 168 (written by Chris Claremont, illustrated by Paul Smith, inked by Bob Wiacek, lettered by Tom Orzechowski, colored by Glynis Wein, edited by Louise Jones, and helmed by Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter. Published my Marvel Comics in April 1983). You know this one, folks, say with me, loud and proud:

PROFESSOR XAVIER IS A JERK!

Professor X is a Jerk!

Oh that Kitty Pryde. She’s all of 14 and feisty. She’s been demoted to the New Mutants (gasp) after having just been to outer space with the X-men fighting the Brood and palling around with the Starjammers. How would you like to go from the A Squad to the B Squad? And Bill Sienkiewicz hasn’t started illustrating the book you were getting shipped off to yet. I’d call Chuck a jerk too. At least it’s not Excalibur, Kitty. That’s still a few years off…

I’m also extremely partial to Kitty because she was a major first crush for me. Mostly because I was 12 when I started reading the X-Men and she was 16 at that point and an “older woman” was enticing to a kid who hadn’t kissed a girl yet. And she was in Excalibur by this point so I guess Excalibur ain’t that bad, even if the Cross-Time Caper was originally only going to be a 6-parter and wound up seeming to never end, much like this sentence. And, Alan Davis drew her with the amazing hair and, well, I can pinpoint the moment in my life where I started noticing hair on the opposite sex.

The opening page of this book is pretty much what this issue is remembered most for. There’s mostly a ton of set up for future story lines. The X-Men are just coming down from being in space for an extended period of time. Wolverine is off to Canada. Prof. X is attempting to learn how to walk again in his new clone body. Hey, you try getting a Brood Queen egg out of someone and see how well you do. Nightcrawler is getting all Burt Reynolds (or is it a 70s era Stan Lee joke) with Amanda Sefton.

BAMF!

And, Scott Summers is off catching up with my personal favorite romantic partner of his, Lee Forrester. Who raided Ms. Duke’s shorts drawer from the looks of it. Also Paul Smith draws Cyclops eerily similar to how John Romita Jr. would portray Matt Murdock when he was working on Daredevil. Just a neat aside that I had never noticed before.

Who wears short shorts?

The cover to Uncanny 168 shows Kitty in peril, and it’s a very cool callback to both the covers of Uncanny X-Men 141 and Uncanny X-Men 143.

Much like Uncanny 143, Kitty faces off against an unknown, dangerous foe in the tunnels underneath Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Unlike in issue 143, Kitty isn’t alone. Lockheed, her pet dragon (Lord, this doesn’t make sense to anybody that doesn’t read comics), is there to help her fight some alien critters that last showed up in Uncanny 154 (thank you editor asterisk caption!) and had left behind some eggs. Kitty fights them off, with a little help from Colossus, and Lockheed eats the remaining unhatched eggs. He was hungry, the narrator kept telling us how hungry he was. What a nice coincidence that there were thousands of unhatched alien babies waiting to be space dragon chow.

Kitty proves herself to Professor X and he grants her a probationary period back on the X-Men. Which seems very silly seeing she’s been an X-Man for like two years already. But hey, the books begins with a temper tantrum and ends with Kitty kinda getting what she wanted.

This issue is the calm before the next storm that would see one-time villain Rogue join the team, Kitty becoming Shadowcat and learning how to be a ninja (it was the 80s, ninjas were a thing, ask Michael Dudikoff), and the X-Men traveling off to Japan for Wolverine’s wedding to Mariko Yashida.

Oh, and maybe I lied about the Page One Panel One being the most remembered bit of this book. The last page introduces one Madeline Pryor into Scott Summer’s life and well, if you read the Inferno crossover five years later you know how well that turned out.

What could go wrong?

Thanks for reading. See you on Page 2!
Adam