NoFi Fall '23

No Fidelity is . . .

Ethan Whiteaker, Stewie Goon, Billy Bratton, Max Votruba, Jimmy Carlson, Sofia Durdag (ed.)

Adiana Contreras, Tabitha Jones

A note from the eds:

This is my very first issue as editor of No Fidelity! Looking back on past editor’s notes, I think all of my predecessors felt a special responsibility to the magazine that I feel now. We all recognized that No Fidelity provides something important to Carleton, and wanted the magazine to endure. They also, evidently, felt the responsibility to make a Table of Contents, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how, so this issue will be an unpredictable wonderland of content, a new surprise waiting with each turn of a page. No Fidelity is serious and chaotic and ever-changing, and the magazine owes it all to our bravehearted contributors. Also KRLX 88.1 FM is doing a 24-hour radiothon on November 15th to support Carleton Mututal Aid. Every $500 dollars, something bizarre and terrifying will happen, so be sure to donate! And don’t forget to read the notice board ad---No Fidelity has decided to become a coporatist shill and start accepting advertisements! NoFi is not only a magazine but a music imprint, so if you make music, join the next release winter term!!

If this is your first issue, welcome. NoFi is open to all students interested in or passionate about music, art, pop culture and welcomes all varieties of submissions. Email durdags@carleton.edu with questions, inquiries, etc. [sofia durdag ‘25]

Grindcore… with Emotions? My Experiences with

Cloud Rat

by Jimmy Carlson

Ah, grindcore. The word alone is enough to summon a tingle of joy deep in my spine. Many an afternoon have I spent, ensconced in bliss, imbibing its soothing tones through my earholes. Just kidding. My relationship with grindcore is much more uneasy than that, mostly because of how hard it can be to listen to.

More than any other style of music barring harsh noise, I find that grindcore is singularly focused around sounding like a shit tornado. From black metal to death metal, from hardcore to powerviolence, nothing else quite takes the cake for making me want to take out my earbuds and go meditate in the arb to cleanse myself. “But Jimmy!,” I hear no one ask, “what kinds of genres came together to make such an abrasive sound?” Well, dear reader, here is a history lesson.

Grindcore’s alienating brutality had its origins in the early 80s, when hardcore punk bands like Deep Wound and Siege decided that hardcore punk was too easy to listen to. In order to create a style further from music and closer to white noise, they shortened their songs, increased the harshness of their vocals while decreasing their intelligibility, and made as many sounds as possible in the least amount of time. Bands like Napalm Death, Repulsion (shoutout to their album Horrified), Terrorizer, and Carcass later took that grindy sound and mixed it with the evil, chaotic sound of the emerging death metal scene, and grindcore was born. Bands have taken the sound of grindcore in many different directions from that original template, and some of them have brought the genre to greater and greater levels of abrasiveness and noise.

a

typical grindcore show

The reason that grindcore is so goddamn painful in comparison to other music genres, particularly those under the metal umbrella, is that it has all the distortion, heaviness, and brutality of extreme metal, but does not go for the satisfying song structures, complex instrumentals, or neck-liberating grooves that give metal its appeal.

That said, grindcore is still technically music (even though some of its artists might disagree; the below image is very popular in grindcore), and all music has infinite potential for variety. There is grindcore out there that leans a bit more into its punk energy and makes some attempt to be catchy, especially from the genre’s early years (this is the stuff that I tend to enjoy).

Grindcore’s notes and rhythms (and lyrics) do lean toward the simplicity and rawness that help make hardcore punk music catchy and compelling, but these aspects so concentrated and distorted that they only contribute to the insanity. It’s not punk, and it’s not metal. Most of the time, it’s just angry.

Most grindcore talks about political hypocrisy, oppression, or really badly wanting to kill someone, but some grindcore talks about personal issues, sometimes. Some grindcore even lets in some wiggle room for cogent thoughts and touching human emotions. As far as I know, there is one grindcore band that that has done this better than any other.

Cloud Rat

Cloud Rat formed at a party in 2009 when guitarist Rorik Brooks and vocalist Madison Marshall thought it would be really funny if they made a grindcore band together. Two years later they released their first EP, and today they are one of the most respected artists in the scene.

Part of this success is due to their adamant and prolific work ethic, with their five albums and twelve split releases with other groups (it’s a grindcore thing, you wouldn’t understand) since their debut. The larger part, however, comes from their creative and effective songwriting capabilities. Since their inception, Cloud Rat have had a knack for crafting brutal grindcore songs that incorporate touches of other genres without disturbing their flow or power. This assimilation is so complete that it’s often hard to tell what influences the band is drawing from at any one moment (at least for me).

Their current record label Artoffact Records has made an attempt to classify them, saying they are “predominantly seated in the grindcore and hardcore punk genres,” and “have regularly experimented with elements of doom, black metal, noise, goth, shoegaze, grunge, trip-hop, progressive rock/ metal, industrial, acoustic, and jazz” (artoffact.com, 2019 I think). This jargon is all well and good, but what it boils down to in practice is that the band’s way of playing grindcore takes their music in complex emotional directions, oftentimes making the pain, grief, horror, rage, etc. expressed in the music feel more powerful than it would otherwise. This has been true even from the band’s earliest releases, but the way in which they’ve pulled it off has changed over time. Cloud Rat’s output started off with raw, nearunblemished grindcore in their 2010 self-titled EP, as well as their two split releases from the same year.

The band’s mosh-pit-inducing rage is clearest here (check out their 2011 compilation Fever Dreams for the best example of this), but even then they managed to push in profound moments of harmony (melody, even) and deep sadness, evoking the image of someone driven to madness by grief, rather than someone driven to violence by anger.

On later splits and albums, they experimented with different sounds to different extents and effects to tweak their existing balance of heaviness, speed, and feeling. On 2015’s Qliphoth, they made a commitment to atmosphere by adding electronicist Brandon Hill to their lineup. Cloud Rat had always incorporated samples and effects to some extent in their music, but with Hill’s arrival, these elements became more abundant. This allowed the band to add a more pervasive sense of mystery and humanity to their music, and to give the audience some space when they wanted to. The best example of this style of Cloud Rat’s music came in 2019’s Pollinator, and the band also released a bonus album in the same year that wasn’t grindcore at all, but rather 37 minutes of darkwave (I use that genre name because the internet told me to).

In 2022, they released their most recent record, Threshold, which feels thicker and crunchier than even their heaviest releases previously, and feels more chaotic too, creating an experience that is very dynamic, but makes the emotions harder to access. Personally, I still see Cloud Rat’s music as too intense to serve as background music for really anything unless I’m desperately craving an anxious sort of pandemonium in my ears, but I also can’t think of many bands that create such an organic sense of grief and rage as they do. I find that there’s a difference between bands that can write songs about a particular feeling and bands that can put it directly into sound, and some of Cloud Rat’s work goes into the latter category for me. So yeah, check it out.

photography by billy bratton

An Ode to Iris by Ethan Whitaker

A fragmented picture of a memory, illusory paintings of something you’d rather forget, and an uneasy feeling of regret. “Iris,” written by Wayne Shorter and played by Miles Davis’ second great quintet on the album E.S.P., represents all of these things to me with its non-directional harmony and opportunities for partial and total resolution. Throughout the piece, a performer must ask themselves if now is the right time to play something at peace with itself or if they need to remain in a dissonant landscape to better represent their ideas. Shorter’s magnificent melody and harmonic foundation lay excellent footsteps for Herbie Hancock to follow as well as for Miles Davis to croon over. While taking this piece at face value is cause enough for an article on its beauty, I want to get into the depths of what Wayne Shorter aspires to create.

Iris operates as two eight-bar segments with an ambiguous tonal center but long moments of held notes at the end of melodic fragments. These two portions operate on a minimal level as a iv - i general formation, but Shorter lays many chords throughout the two sections that only relate to the melody. It is in this manner that the song’s harmony is non-functional; that is, not dependent on traditional formal relationships between chords. This creates an impressionistic effect that follows the performers from the melody into the solo section. The inserted chords into the general iv - i form, while some may have formal understandings, create washes of colors that a performer can challenge and twist to their own feelings. This is an aspect of the song that I wanted to duplicate with my own song that I wrote.

In a sort of ode to Iris, I wrote my own jazz melody with some non-functional harmony around a general IV - I structure. My tune, named Moraea, is in 5/4 in hopes to generate even more space for people to explore a given chord sound amongst the melody line. I used held notes to induce a melancholic feeling at the end of phrases, and I allowed for dissonances to be even more apparent in my piece, notably on the Cdim7 chord. I copied one other part of Iris though, which is the ending harmony. I used a tritone substitution with variation on the V chord of Gbmaj, or Db7, to get to a G7 sound that I modified to have a #11. I moved this chord to minor, and finally “resolved” on a Gmaj7#11 sound. This creates a false sense of resolution while still ending on a Gb, the I chord as I understand it. This helps the song move to the IV chord, a major third away from G, which is common root motion. I have added a copy of the lead sheet, in treble clef, in aspiring for someone to perform it. If you perform it, want a different lead sheet, have any ideas, or just want to talk to me about it, please email me. I’d love to hear how it makes you feel and how you understand it.

Please Ask Me About Ask Me Tomorrow

by Sofia Durdag

I’m not quite sure how, but three Brits in 1996 made the perfect alt-country album. Mojave 3’s Ask Me Tomorrow is a melancholy western epic, reminiscent of lonely cowboys and dreamy shoegaze music. Ask Me Tomorrow is determinedly sad, for that I adore it. The album opens with “Love Songs on the Radio”. The lyrics are barely intelligible, but they don’t really have to be. It’s gentle and wistful, full of hazy slide guitars and the whispery vocals of Rachel Goswell. There’s something sun-drenched and sorrowful about it, like empty desert sands. It imbues me with a strange, ghostly strength as I walk to my hated 1a in Hasenstab. This is the first Mojave 3 song I listened to, and it is my favorite.

“Sarah” comes next, a worthy addition to the list of best songs that are just women’s names. “Lonesome fools/build lonesome walls,” Neil Halsted sings,

“To hide behind/and cry behind,” a lyric that would not sound out of place in Buck Owens song from 1963. Country music from the fifties and sixties loves to talk about fools and the things that they do! However, this song tips more to the alt side of alt-country, with the piano carrying most of the melody and no slide guitars. :( On we go to “Tomorrow’s Taken” and the slide guitars have returned. :) This song has a slightly quicker tempo, and Rachel Goswell returns on vocals. The sound is pleasantly sad and gentle, so it’s easy to miss the truly dark story the stong is telling. Some lyrics include: “I’ll take another shot and think about you/’cause a bottle of wine is all I have to hold” and “I’m sorry to hold your hand/but I miss you and your life.”

Mojave 3’s 1996 debut album

The song paints a picture of a scorned, drunken lover staring up at a full moon on a dark night, caught between missing and despising their lost love.

“Candle Song 3” comes next, and is especially fascinating as it’s technically a CHRISTMAS SONG. It opens with the lyric “It’s Christmas again/so we lit the candles”. Is lighting candles even a Christmas tradition? We won’t ever know, because this song is in fact a slowly unfolding disaster about being irrevocably bound to another person, even as the relationship inevitably decays. Over plinking guitars with the slightest hint of a Christmassy duet, Neil and Rachel describe a relationship so intimate it has become confining, “Standing so close/I can’t see you at all”, and repeating “Chained to my lover/as she’s chained to me” until it takes on a slightly sinister air. Perhaps a mediation on America’s obsession with Christmas.

The next two songs “You’re Beautiful” and “Where is the Love” pair nicely together as two songs that share similar DNA with wildly different results. “You’re Beautiful” has a cosmic, otherworldly lyrical motif, while “Where is the Love” is firmly grounded, slightly gossipy and keeps mentioning people named Jennifer and Cathy. These two are the least western, dusty-cowboy-boots-feeling out of the whole album. I hate to say it, but “After All” is my least favorite song on the album. It has a violin, which should make it excellent, but all it does is play whole notes. But thankfully, we get right back into gear with “Pictures” with some lazy-dazy guitars, a twinkling piano and a folksy melody that reminds me of “Homeward Bound” by Simon and Garfunkel. This is a beautifully mopey song sung by a cheating partner to his spurned lover, asking them to imagine him sad, cold and lonely so they’ll take him back.

“Mercy” is the album closer and provides a satisfying contrast to “Love Songs on the Radio” with a colder, more urgent feel created by a stronger drum line and a wailing guitar solo right near the end. There are no steel guitars, :( and loud, desperate vocals rather than the relaxed, slightly mumbly stuff we’ve gotten used to. “Your life is like a song,” Neil says, “And you’re living like a fool.” The album ends with the feel of a driving rainstorm, breaking the summer heat of the Wild Wild West.

the band

tier list by Max Votruba and art by Billy Bratton

Dearest People of the World,

I am writing to you in a state of anger and in a state of despair: I COULDN’T GO TO THE FIRST AVENUE TV GIRL CONCERT BECAUSE OF DUMB-STUPID MANDATORY PROJECT WORK. WHO KNOWS WHEN THEY WILL TOUR AGAIN AND I ALSO LOST OUT ON A FREE TICKET PROCURED AFTER THE SHOW SOLD OUT. AHHHHH.

But what good is a curse if it’s not a blessing in disguise?

For one, Dearest People of the World, I’m not actually the biggest TV Girl fan. I like them! Nothing crazy! Brad Petering is a tweaker!

The next morning I spoke to a TV Girl fan in the breakfast line, saying something along the lines of: “TV Girl released a new album last night, it was pretty terrible.” Which it is. Which is why missing these songs live won’t haunt me.

During my second run through of the album, I wrote down my thoughts on each song, thoughts full of a lot of visceral hate. However, my third pass through this album has come with a sort of peace with the album’s attempted concept, prompting me to shift each review.

For two, it was at some time some night long long long ago (June 30th, midnightish), that I was lying on a bottom bunk in Hackensack during my week as a camp counselor, unable to sleep for some reason (one of my campers had been staring at me for hours “watching me sleep”, as she did every night). My earbuds were in, and upon opening Spotify, my dashboard informed me that a new TV Girl album just dropped.

A recently released religious-themed album for my yearly stint as church camp staff; How topical! I immediately gave it a cheeky little listen.

This album’s concept isn’t new, but TV Girl has never been revolutionary. Their songs are derivative and repetitive, but that’s what creates the consistency that I enjoy. This album strays from that consistency, which is part of my issue, but I also feel it falls flat at what it attempts. While the songs have grown on me, I can still confidently say that this is the worst TV Girl album.

With that, Dearest People of the World, the following are my reconciled opinions of each song on Grapes Upon the Vine.

Grapes on the Vine album cover

I’ll Be Faithful, 5/10: One of the guitar strums in the loop is WACK. I can’t tell if it’s dragging slightly or just weird like that, but either way, it drives me monkey bananas. The first bit of ascending ooh and ahh sampling is done well, and the piano part with the echoed “I’ll be faithful” go crazy hard, will admit. I like the lil bongos too. Overall, the groove forgives the more annoying singing sampling towards the and off-sounding guitar loop. Redeemable!

All The Way Through, 4/10: The rhythm of the verse vocals is in a constant perpetual struggle with the beat; it is also extremely obvious throughout that this man cannot sing. Not enough novelty in the beat to counteract the gospel aspects, fostering an end result that’s more fit for palm Sunday, especially with the speech sampling towards the end. I love the rising oos, but they’re not enough of a saving grace. Jammy, but just a little bit too churchy.

Hang On, 3/10: The whole song is just unrelieved tension. The fact that the constant desire for the song to pick up is “alleviated” solely through an eventual addition of electronic kick and snare and no other drop is crazy; go girl! give us nothing! Say hang on 20 times! I don’t like the piano style, it’s too country gospel for my taste, and I’m also not a fan of the steel guitar parts. While I do appreciate him mentioning that his face is ugly, this one’s still a solid

Shame, 3/10: More country gospel-esque piano; reminds me too much of playing Nothing But The Blood on the piano at an old people’s church (the clapping augments that). Vocals more reminiscent of old TV girl, but missing that classic ambient groove. The repeated “it’s a shame” is done relatively well and the lyrics are good, but the sound is too churchy with nothing standing out, making it another overall PASS.

One of These Mornings, 1/10: Showed this one to my brother in the car on the way to work to exhibit how TV girl fell off and the disgusted face he made just about sums it up. Vocals again seeming to fight the beat and his voice makes my skin crawl. I understand what is being attempted, but I am not liking the execution.

The Night Time, 3/10: Eh. The beat and vocals sound more like classic TV girl except for MORE GOSPEL SAMPLING THAT I DON’T LIKE. The lyrical concept is also more classic TV girl, but overall there’s too much gospel singing in the song for my taste, ruining the groove. There was a lot more potential in this song, but I feel it wasn’t reached.

Big Black Void, 1/10: There is absolutely nothing counteracting the country gospel in this song, making it just church music. Not super interested in listening to hymns recreationally, especially with this guy’s voice at the forefront (that lil bit of reverb ain’t helping you pal). Therefore, it’s a no from me.

Fire, 6/10: Mites roused and SNACKING on the synth. The bouncy synth/guitar combo and little alien noises in the back provide a juxtaposition to the gospel samples that make the album’s attempted concept work much better here than everywhere else in the album. He shouldn’t be attempting that high of notes, the “just wish we had time” is too rushed, and the song goes on a tidge too long, but it gets an add to the ‘ol TV girl playlist and is a solid favorite off the album.

99.5, 6/10: FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY A TV GIRL-SOUNDING SONG. Groovy throughout, mites jigging and prancing and the like. Gospel aspects are wonderfully absent until a bit near the end, and that perfect TV girl piano layering and ambient drive synth are BACK. Confidently added to the TV girl playlist and a confident favorite off the album.

Grapes Upon the Vine, 4/10:

High voices in the beginning are really really beautiful; fan of the beat, the melody is very pretty, and its TV GIRL SOUNDING AGAIN! I was so happy UNTIL OF COURSE: GOSPEL SAMPLING. I can’t quite get past the old lady’s yelling, which is sad because I loved the song otherwise it’s so pretty and classic TV girl sounding. Devastating loss.

Heaven Over our Heads, 1/10:

What is there even to say. It has a solid groove, but yet again, the sampling makes itw basically unlistenable for me. ESPECIALLY the one little yell, it sounds like the “oooh my God” soundboard byte. AND THEN ANOTHER LOOPED CLIPPING YELL SECTION ARE YOU KIDDING ME. I can’t get behind it, though I appreciate him mentioning that he is stupid!

much love, adiana contreras <3

the 5 best songs from In the End it Always Does, The Japanese House, 2023

by Tabitha Jones

“In verse 2, the singer references the album title, singing ‘Putting off the end ‘cause in the end, it always does’ I feel like a lot of us are guilty of this when it comes to endings - we avoid hard conversations because we don’t want to acknowledge what’s coming, but that doesn’t stop it - it just makes it messier and leaves us with more things to wonder about… In the chorus, the ‘surely someone’s gonna save me now’ line stuck out to me - this irrational expectation that there’s going to be some incredible intervention in your actions if they do get too crazy, and the subsequent idea that no one telling you what’s wrong means that nothing is. The last big part of it is the verse that starts “I miss my dog,” because I was imagining myself listening to this song next year, meeting new people but also being a bit more uncomfortable and a bit more alone at the start, and I knew I’d find that phrase - and the few lines following it - incredibly relatable.”

- Unedited excerpt from my journal detailing my initial reaction to “Sunshine Baby” on May 19, 2023

In the End It Always Does is the 2nd studio album from indie artist The Japanese House, a British indie pop artist whose actual name is Amber Bain. It was released in June of this year, is 45 minutes long, and contains noteworthy features by MUNA and Matty Healy. The cover art features a simple hand drawn blue crayon loop, with an arrow on it.

The album’s opening track sets the tone for the album quite well, but isn’t particularly extraordinary by itself. However, track two, “Touching Yourself”, is one of the catchiest songs on the album. The verses keep up the slight repetition that characterizes the album, but the chorus breaks out into more complex descriptions of the relationship being described, and how “You think it’s different, but it’s always the same” - which nicely ties it into the title and overall theme of the album, which has to do with stagnancy in an unbalanced or deteriorating relationship. The refrain is both the catchy part and the tragic part - Bain sings, “Know I shouldn’t need it, but I want affection / Know I shouldn’t want it, but I need attention / Know I shouldn’t say it, but I had to mention”, explaining how they don’t want to cause an upset in this long distance relationship, but its’ not working out for them emotionally. These lines stuck out to me partly because of the creative wording, and partly because of how simply the feelings are presented. I instantly resonated with it - maybe because I was at the dwindling end of a distance thing at the time of the album’s release?

The third track, “Sad to Breathe”, is much more of a lullaby, where the singer truly considers their feelings about the relationship and its dysfunctionality, and poses a question about continuing it. The most repeated line of the song describes how “ it’s sad to breathe the air when you’re not there,” which could easily refer to either the distance or the post break-up. It’s clarified with the bridge’s question of “Do I chase the train you’re ridin’ on / Or sit back and wait as it goes past?” Obviously, chasing the train of someone who is using it to physically leave you is both impossible and self-destructive - but the alternative, sitting back, is presented almost as a non-option - as if not to chase after that person, even if you know there’s no hope, is the real impossibility. Sonically, the track picks up after a few verses, getting faster and more electronic, and also featuring some background vocals from George Daniel, drummer of The 1975.

“Over There” deals with the aftermath of a relationship - Bain remarks on their ex picking up their stuff, “It’s almost like you lived here” - a testament to the experience of associating a person with a place, even of associating a person with your home. The idea of “driving past the airfield / flying by a memory” is relatable to any listeners, regardless of proximity to an airfield - the airfield could be the cvs parking lot spot where you had lunch together, or a drawer or stuff you organized together, or a trail you walked together. The song maintains the slower and sadder pace of the first half of the album, and doesn’t necessarily have the most unique sound.

[album review continues on page 22]

The pace really picks up with track 5, “Morning Pages” (featuring MUNA), which is undoubtedly one of the best 2-3 songs on the album. It’s more upbeat (despite lyrical content) and Bain and Katie Gavin have nice harmonies. It acts as the would-be thesis of the album, truly simplifying the main concept with the lines “You can see how it ends and you wish that you couldn’t, uh-huh / ‘Cause it always comes back to her / You always come back to her”. What does the title of the album even mean? What always ends? Is it that relationship or is it all of them? Are feelings destined to expire? Bain doesn’t have a clear answer to the problem of It Always Ending - the only insight provided is that “She says, ‘Try to enjoy it as long as it lasts’”. It’s as good advice as any.

The track “Sunshine Baby” is fairly popular within the artist’s discography, and also within my brain - maybe to the extent of it being my favorite on the album. Beyond that, it is the would-be title track, and it features some quite good backing vocals by Matty Healy, say what you will of him. As my previous section may have implied, a lot of this is due to personal connection. Sonically and lyrically, the song stuck out to me the first time I heard it as a long time favorite. It’s strange to look back on my reaction from May - this was a few weeks after I committed to Carleton, and a lot has changed. I still stand by my resonance with that “surely someone’s gonna save me now” line, but knowing people less well, I think I am being more proactive about knowing when I actually need to initiate and reach out for help.

In terms of the other quotes… I find it bittersweet that the version of myself that existed in May couldn’t bring themself to quote the full line, “I miss my dog and I miss falling in love” because I was unwilling to accept that the latter was something I would lose. You go into a relationship knowing when it’s going to end, and even though you subconsciously know it, you lie to yourself for months - to the point where you refuse to put language to the fear of the end that you know is coming - because the singer is right, sometimes you are just “putting off the end, ‘cause in the end it always does”. But it goes a few ways - yes, Bain acknowledges that these things always end, whether it be friendships or romantic relationships, but they also mention earlier in the track “everything is cyclical”. The feeling of not knowing what’s right goes away, and missing your dog comes and goes, and hopefully the missing of being in love will fade.

If you enjoyed any of these, other good songs in their discography include “Lilo”, “saw you in a dream”, “Maybe You’re the Reason”, and “faraway”.

Fall 2023 Albums from the Community

Appaloosa Bones - Gregory Alan Isakov

Girl with Fish - Feeble Little Horse

World Music - Goat

Once Twice Melody - Beach House

Live Through This - Hole

Riley! - Riley!

Born to Die - Lana Del Rey

Atlanta Millionaire Club - Faye Webster