Mafiascum.net

tris. caled f witch. sleepy krew (youll be like "oh i dont know enough songs to do this." i dont care). hell books. mcmenno. cheetory6. chevre. shaft.ed. psyche. if zoraster is looking at this he doesn't need me to tell him that i would inevitably find his submissions very funny. any and all unmentioned monthly music thread and song game regulars. daisy buchanan. anix

plenty of people should still send me songs even if you are not listed here, especially if you feel as though you have some distant handle on the sort of music i like or just like recommending things. you should only not send me songs if you are only doing it to, like, be a problem, or propagandize opposition to the reunification of korea/ireland/carolina

your score for each category primarily gets determined by two concepts: 7 points for how much i like the song* (categories 1 and 2 are deliberately placed to help you think through this) and 3 points for Categorical Fittance (or "catfit" for short), i.e. how well i think it embodies the category i laid out. provisionally i might award further points for a particularly brilliant or obliquely effective catfit, or maybe just extra points for a song i really like.

my familiarity with the song also affects the score. in particular, if it is totally unfamiliar, i will give it 0.8 extra points, with a sliding scale down to 0 points for something i definitely know. additionally, i will place hard caps on the possible enjoyment points of something i am already Epically Familiar with - if you submit something from one of these albums or something in this thread, you will most likely not get more than 3 points worth of enjoyment. i would say i'm -very- familiar with most of those artists, so like don't expect to get more than 0 unfamiliarity points even if you are submitting a B-side or something. i dunno. oh also don't just resubmit the example songs.

your submissions should make it easy for me to anonymize who submitted each song - check the submission guidelines to see how that works. i will also be playing song game with each of the submissions - if i correctly guess that you submitted your song after listening, you'll be deducted 0.1 point. yes this is an absolutely trivial amount.

i will drop the lowest score you get, which means . otherwise, all your scores are added up, and then those are the final standings. you also get 2.0/1.5/1.0 bonus points for being 1st/2nd/3rd.

i will try to process categories on a weekly or biweekly basis, meaning that the results of the game get dished out over the course of about 3 months. wow! i'll do a big dramatic playing of each category in discord, as well as posting the results here.

*Warning: Extreme nit and Unbridled grit appears in the following footnote. so usually i rate things out of 5, except also something like 95% of music fits in the range of 3-5 under my usual measure, so i am opting to blow that range up to 4 instead of 2. so like if i would usually give something a 3.3, that becomes a 3.6 because that .3 above the 3 gets twice as big

you can send me things via mafiascum PM, or discord, or whatever. mafiascum is ideal bc there's no video previews. ideally it is in the form:

1. [youtube link]
2. [youtube link]
3. i am skipping this category
4. [soundcloud link]
...

i will be trying to keep it a secret from myself who submitted which song until the reveals happen. youtube links are great, because i can't see the name of the song in your dm and remember that you sent it. anything that has that characteristic and can be played by the rythm bot in discord. don't worry about region restrictions for the youtube links. i love bandcamp but those links would be a problem for this.

you can think of shorter songs as being a courtesy to me. i reserve the right to not finish excessively long songs that don't really work for me

feel free to update submisisons before the deadline

in this category, quite simply, the catfit points just amplify the enjoyment points. so i'll try to help you figure out what songs i like!

these are my favorite albums. these are my favorite songs. (dont submit those exact ones.)

i like songs that are experimental, or artsy, or present me with something i haven't experienced before. here is a song that did that recently. heres another

i like songs that make interesting use of electronics, especially when they result in a distinctly human feeling. this song does that. (NOISE WARNING) this song does that too.

i like songs that feel like they have a lot of moving parts. this song does. this song does too.

i like songs that are emotive. here's a song that's very tense and sorrowful. here's a song that's very loving.

i like songs that are either very active or rather sparse. here's an active song. here's a more sparse song.

i like pop music

theres a lot of different stuff i like but theres still a few sorts of music i tend to dislike. pop punk, regular punk, post-punk, pre-punk, "emo", nu metal, edm?, the great trifecta of british 70s rock music (david bowie, pink floyd, queen), annoying man singers, things that are accompanied by a video of anime girls singing the song. each of these things has exceptions though and i'm always excited when they spring up.

examples:

• beach bunny - blame game (pop punk?)
  
• sparks - this town aint big enough for the both of us (this is like queen)
  
• baths - yeoman (theoretically annoying male vocalist).

send something that strongly sounds like it's got something going on that you don't understand. maybe an inside joke that only exists between the band members and a small amount of their twitter followers, or some undergirding musical structure that is doomed to go over your head, some lyrics that clearly mean something but are also indecipherable, an instrumentation that seems like it's provoking an emotion that's not installed in your brain.

examps:

• cocteau twins - pitch the baby
  
• dean blunt & inga copeland - 11
  
• neurosis & jarboe - within
  
• boards of canada - telepath

i like when theres two singers in a song. especially when they work well with each other. send me a pair of vocalists that have really good chemistry. (your song can have more than two vocalists in it, generally i will be judging based on how well two vocalists work together. the vocalists can also be the same person recording themself multiple times)

xamples:

• fleetwood mac - i dont wanna know
  
• cocts - iceblink luck
  
• 무키무키만만수 - 내가 고백을 하면 깜짝 놀랄거야

theres these two pictures of cats from online.



i want you to send me a song that is evocative of ONE OF THESE CATS. i want to listen to your song while looking at the two cat pictures and think "ohh yes, it's that one on the left." OR "that cat on the right would like this song."

left cat examples:

• boards of canada - smokes quantity
  
• duster - i'm lost (NOT due to the album cover)

right cat examples:

• boards of canada - you could feel the sky
  
• mitski - two slow dancers

good music usually makes my minds eye run rampant. some songs in particular do a good job of painting this picture of a place, a teeming city, a vast landscape, a gathering of people - either by describing them well, or featuring a swath of instrumentation that is coded with a broadness of feeling, or some other magic thing. send me a song like that

ex's:

• joanna newsom - sapokanikan
  
• mary lattimore - chop on the climbout
  
• jamie xx & romy - loud places

send me a song with some good drumming in it. oh you don't pay attention to drums in your music? tough break. you should start doing that. drum machinery is fine, but i strongly prefer something with an actual drum sort of sound rather than a general beat for this category. i really like it when they open and close the hi hat.

• big thief - strange
  
• weather report - cucumber slumber
  
• led zeppelin fool in the rain

give me something lethargic, a song that feels like it wants to summon more energy but is unable to. something that is slower that has feelings of physical wear, like textural imperfections in the instruments.

zamples:

• duster - copernicus crater
  
• my bloody valentine - to here knows when
  
• slauson malone - the wake pt 3 & 2 (see pages 87, 58 and 48)