Sentences that immediately precede financial ruin: so a friend of mine has been getting me into Magic: The Gathering lately. Unfortunately, since I am trying to finish a novel in around two weeks, I haven’t had much time to play or explore the mechanics. Instead, I have taken to exploring the fandom and its history through YouTube. This is what brought me to the Rhystic Studies video Red Deck Wins, which reactivated my dormant obsession with skateboarding.

During the lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic in New York, I bought a skateboard. Like a lot of people, I had grown up with Tony Hawk Pro Skater, wishing I knew how to ride like Hawk or Rodney Mullen. But what had really invigorated my love of skateboarding—and would ultimately be the reason why I could never be a great or even good skater—were the antics of skateboarder Ali Boulala.

The Flip skateboarding tape Sorry was something I watched over and over and over in high school, and the highlight for me was always Boulala’s part. He skated around France as if the entire country was his, often doing reckless, dangerous stunts on various pieces of public architecture. The most famous was his failed attempt to jump 25 stairs in Lyon, which ended when he kicked his board away mid attempt and landed on both of his feet. He couldn’t skate for two months after that. In order to be a good skateboarder, you just can’t be afraid of getting hurt, even hurt badly. I am not that kind of person—I do fear physical pain.

Red Deck Wins is all about the dominance of classic mono-red Magic decks. The conceit is simple—as long as you can last until the fourth turn, you can just dominate your opponent with cheap cards. It’s high risk and high reward, relying on perseverance and stamina to hurtle you towards an explosive ending. You can see where the comparison to skateboarding comes in, and the video also namedrops one of my favorite bands, PUP, whose vocalist Stefan Babcock famously blew out his vocal chords in the lead up to their second album The Dream Is Over. But what it makes me think about is the delusional level of self confidence one needs to have to get anything creative done, ever.

Red Deck Wins opens with a clip of skateboarder Aaron Homoki successfully completing the 25 stair jump in 2015 that Boulala failed to complete in 2002. I ended up watching the video from Thrasher that documented his attempts. It’s fascinating—what I keep lingering on is his second to last attempt.

After tearing his MCL on his first attempt, Homoki went back the following year to try again, only to be kicked out by the police. They allowed him one hour to attempt the trick the next morning, and Homoki puts everything into it. He breaks a couple boards, he hurts himself a little bit, and on the second to last attempt he successfully lands at the bottom—he just doesn’t roll away.

“Oh my god, I can do it though,” he says to himself as gets back on his board and climbs back up the stairs. “I can do it.”

I think this is the only way you can ever achieve anything—to commit so hard that even under the risk of incredible injury, to just know, in your gut, that you can do this. It has been the only thing that has motivated me to keep writing, even after losing my job and trying to build myself back up from that. I just know I can do it. There’s no rational belief system behind that, it’s just something I have to believe, because if I didn’t I would just completely fall apart. It’s not that I’m not afraid of the pain. I just can’t let it stop me.

Starting Aftermath was also something I’d consider high risk, high reward, as is writing a novel on as tight of a deadline as I am. You’re probably not going to break any bones doing these things, but you can still absolutely eat shit, fall flat on your face, fail utterly. But as Rhystic Studies says in Red Deck Wins, it’s the risk that makes it an utter thrill.

“I used to think the red deck was cheap, dumb and simplistic. But the older I get the more I understand the attitude of those who play with mountains and a grip full of fire,” he says. “This one’s for those who go all in.”

This is a four year old YouTube video with 940k views—I know I’m late to the party. But it’s also been a long time since I’ve felt so moved by a YouTube video, and I’ve certainly never thought Magic: The Gathering would be a topic that could make me feel so utterly affirmed for the often downright stupid choices I’ve made in this life. Right now I’m freefalling, in the air between the first and 25th step. I don’t know if I’ll land. The impact could really hurt me. But I’m not afraid. I know I can do it.

Mississippi’s attorney general announced Monday that the police shooting of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley in June “was justified.” “Today, the Office of the Attorney General announced it has completed the review of a June 14, 2026, incident in Senatobia involving one officer with the Senatobia Police Department,” the statement from the office of Mississippi’s attorney general, Lynn Fitch, said.

Source

Here we go again. Just as the political pendulum swings in its favor, the political left risks torpedoing its newfound opportunities with “purity tests” that it seems like few are pure enough to pass. Can the left avoid this trap, and build real power in the Democratic Party? Or will we keep on making the same old mistakes?

After 20,000 dead children in Gaza, Americans are starting to question their unblinking allegiance to Israel. Democrats who not long ago were making videos for AIPAC are now disavowing it. Israel’s decision to kill a thousand people during the ceasefire has made some doubt the durability of the ceasefire. All in all, the young protesters who were kicked out of their universities for protesting this genocide should take a moment to congratulate themselves on this win, as they sit in class at a community college or wherever.

Yet the left’s purists risk pushing this controversy too far. As Democrats turn towards the 2028 presidential race, there is little upside in demonizing those who were slower to turn on Israel than others. We must acknowledge that just as it was difficult for Palestinian families to see their children crushed under rubble, so too was it difficult for Joe Biden’s foreign policy advisors to handle the stress of being so fed up with Netanyahu’s hijinks that they nearly considered not sending him as many weapons. For every family in Gaza angry that they are being bombed, there is an IDF soldier angry that someone yelled at them while they were on vacation. There is pain on both sides.

Zohran Mamdani is the left’s greatest political achievement. Yet even he can find himself on the wrong side of purity tests. As we speak, his own political base is demanding that he fire Jessica Tisch, the head of the NYPD. These socialist, abolitionist activists seem to feel that even after getting one of their allies elected as mayor, they should still continue urging him to take steps to align his policies with their own goals and beliefs.

Give it a rest!

Ever wonder why the Democrats can’t seem to wield power as ruthlessly as Republicans can? Two words: purity tests. Once you take a look around, you start to see them everywhere. “Oh, we shouldn’t be deregulating crypto as our personal staff members and family directly cash in!” “Oh, we should be trying to regulate AI even if it means that all the rich AI donors will give money to the other side!” “Oh, when we regain power we should prosecute the many crimes of corruption that are currently being committed, rather than allowing the nation to heal!” This all-too-familiar “circular firing squad” of leftists is quick to take aim at anyone on their own side perceived as being “impure” just because they are directly employed by the ruthless business interests that our party is purportedly interested in reining in.

Ultimately, the left always finds itself marginalized because it is hostile to the concept of a Big Tent Party. Their hostility persists despite the fact that a big tent sounds fun and welcoming, like a visit to the circus. Right? Who hates the circus?

Sadly: the left. As you would imagine, few people want to visit a circus if they have to pass a purity test at the entryway. Rather than seeking to help Democrats expand the map, leftists often allow their own strident beliefs to push potential allies away. We can forget that coastal cultural values may seem like “common sense” in Brooklyn and Berkeley, but not in middle America. Perhaps it would serve the self-righteous denizens of the left well to practice being a bit more welcoming themselves?

Try this: “Hello, welcome to the Democratic Party’s Big Tent. We are happy to have you! This is a welcoming atmosphere. If you hate trans people and want to kick them out of the military and fire them from their jobs and deny them medical care and public accommodations and persecute them, that does not make us ‘enemies.’ It makes us a Big Tent. And in the middle of that tent? A belief in middle class prosperity.”

“If you are ‘pro-life’ and want to deny women the right to make their own choices about their own bodies, that does not makes us ‘political opponents.’ We are all here, in this big tent, cheering on a modest increase in health insurance tax credits.”

See how good unity feels? The path to electoral success is paved by flexibility on distracting “culture war” issues like human rights, in order to form an unstoppable alliance for tax cuts on Americans earning less than $400,000 per year. Serious political people understand this. Serious people are in the Big Tent. The leftists who stand outside and scream about the fact that the tent was erected by subcontracted off-the-books immigrant laborers being paid less than minimum wage will have to take comfort in their own purity while the rest of us do the business of governing.

The saddest part of the left’s purity tests is that they end up harming the very people they are supposed to help. “Radicals” wedded to their own perfect ideology often miss this. Those of us who reject such purity tests in the name of expanding the tent are the ones who get the satisfaction of going up to the fired trans teacher, or the red state teenager forced to have a baby she didn’t want, or the wailing mother of a bombed child in Gaza, and say to them: “We just want you to know that your pet issue is so important that we were able to trade it away in exchange for our agenda of affordability.”

Don’t thank us. Just try to learn something from those of us who live in the real world. Without us, the left would soon find that all of its political opponents had migrated to the other party, while the Democratic Party itself was transformed into a blinkered institution that only fights for things that are “good.”

Is that what you want?

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• Related reading: How to Think About Politics Without Wanting to Kill Yourself; Don’t Make Your Voters Step Over Dead Bodies; Go Ahead and Use AI. It Will Only Help Me Dominate You.

• Yesterday, I did a live chat with Reed Galen about oligarchy, politics, and democracy, and you can watch it here, if you are into that sort of thing.

• We also talked about independent media. INDEPENDENT MEDIA IN AMERICA IS BOTH INDISPENSABLE AND A HARD FUCKING WAY TO MAKE A STEADY LIVING. If you have been reading How Things Work for a while for free, and you enjoy it, and you have maybe at one time or another mused on the idea of supporting us: Now is the time. Please take a quick second to click the button below to become a a paid subscriber. It’s affordable for you and it is the only thing that keeps this place alive. Thank you all for being here.

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Today’s post is the 300th on be the future! I published my first essay here way back in 2019, a time when everyone thought things were the worst they could ever get. My husband Jamie has supported this outlet and my work from the very beginning. They helped me celebrate be the future's 300th post the same we celebrated the 200th and 100th post before it: by co-writing a film essay!

For our first essay, we wrote about the provocative film Born in Flames. In our second essay, we analyzed the phenomenal Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Today we bring you a collaborative post about one of my all-time favorite films: Salt of the Earth (1954).

this is a collaborative post: concepts and words by Jamie Martinez and josh martinez.

It's known as the only blacklisted film in American history. It was one of the very first independent films made without major studio support. Its director, producer, and screenwriter were all blacklisted for their ties to communism. It's a film from a time when support for labor unions was high, in a year where more than 5 million people went on strike. It's based on the true story of a strike that lasted 2 years, starring many of the people who lived it. It’s a feminist and communist film with a largely Mexican American cast. Salt of the Earth is a story of one town's struggle against the company that owned everything around them.

Salt of the Earth is a dramatic retelling of the Empire Zinc Company strike of 1950. The film centers Esperanza Quintero, the protagonist played by Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas. Esperanza and her family live in a New Mexico town that locals used to call San Marcos but is now named Zinc Town. Esperanza is pregnant with her third child. Ramón, her husband, has worked in the town's zinc mine for 18 years. Esperanza narrates, "The land the mine is on used to belong to my husband’s grandfather. Now it belongs to the company." That company, Delaware Zinc, Inc., owns this mine and others in the area. The company also owns the miners' homes: as Esperanza says, "the house is not ours, but the flowers are." Delaware Zinc runs all the stores in town, including the one that leases an expensive radio to Ramón. But the Quintero home, unlike the ones where the Anglo miners live, lacks a bathroom and running water. The opening credits roll as Esperanza chops wood and heats water—her back bending from the work—to do laundry in the yard.

On Esperanza's name day, Ramón faces a close call at the mine and is nearly injured. Cost-cutting at this mine, worked but not led by Mexican American miners, is not as safe as Anglo-worked mines in the area. The mining union begins to organize a protest against these unsafe conditions. Though the wives urge them to add sanitation to their list of demands, the men deem it unimportant. Soon, another injury at the mine leads the men of the union to call a strike. Over the next 2 years, the company makes several attempts to break the strike. They invoke the Taft-Hartley Act to prevent the union from picketing or face arrest. This Act made it illegal for unions to strike unless they could prove they had no communist members.

The women of the town argue that they are not union members: they can hold the picket line without breaking the law. They take up the protest signs the very next day. Day after day, the women endure harassment, tear gas, and retaliation. Nothing breaks the line until the sheriff arrests the entire group. The women take their protest to the jail, singing together in protest about the conditions they’re in. By the end, the company moves to evict the Quinteros from their home. This is the final straw. As hired men begin to remove their belongings, everyone in town begins to surround the home. People step in to carry their belongings back inside faster than the goons can carry them out. Having thrown everything they can think of at this community, the mine company backs off. The workers and their families had finally won.

Only Rosaura Revueltas and a few white actors had prior acting experience. The original plan for the film itself was to cast a full ensemble of actors. But many of the actors fled the production, fearing the end of their careers if they worked on a blacklisted film. Mine workers from the Empire strike took many of the roles, including Juan Chacón, a union leader, who played Ramón. The united states even deported Revueltas during filming. Director Herbert Biberman shot her remaining scenes near her home in Mexico City. In an ironic twist, Hollywood unions forbade their members from working on the film. They too feared the film's ties to communism and the backlash they might face. Even after its release, few theaters in the united states were willing to risk screening it.

The film is more than a morality play made by blacklisted Communists and union workers. It's a story of resistance against struggles that feel impossible. It challenges the popular beliefs of the era around race, feminism, and colonization. Here are some of the themes that resonate with us even today.

the struggle to share power

Mexican Americans often received worse pay and living conditions compared to Anglo workers. This too was the case at the Empire Zinc Company: Mexican Americans at that time could only work jobs in the mine itself. Most of the Anglo workers, in contrast, had opportunities to work in the office on the surface. The Mexican Americans had to build their own homes while the company built homes for Anglo families. These homes, built on company land, meant that each family paid rent for a house they built themselves. The homes also lacked indoor plumbing, unlike the homes where the Anglos lived.

The film and the real-life events are both set around 40 years after New Mexico became a state. Given the ancestry of most of its residents, the u.s. federal government resisted granting statehood. They viewed New Mexico’s Indigenous Mexican culture as too dissimilar to the country as a whole. New Mexico passed Jim Crow-style laws to target communities that had lived there before u.s. colonization. Similar laws also targeted Black and Asian residents of the new state. These laws were part of a century of pressure to segregate New Mexico led by former Texans who had moved there.

The version of Zinc Town in the film is not too dissimilar from company towns still found around the world. In the film, Ramón's grandfather once owned the land on which Zinc Town now stood. It's unclear what, if any, benefit Ramón's family received from this land transfer. Two generations later, the Quinteros struggle to make ends meet on that same land. The state and business interests work hand in hand to suppress the people who still live there.

This tradition of company towns still exists in the present day. Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, owned by Disney, are a type of company town made for high-level employees. SpaceX incorporated its own town, Starbase, in South Texas earlier this decade. A SpaceX vice president became its first mayor. Like in the mining days, companies are free to bypass some environmental and labor laws in towns they own.

Colonization does not occur without a concept of race. The american empire began with the theft of land and of bodies stolen for enslavement. Motivating these acts is the false belief that the Anglo body is superior, or worth more, than the bodies of other people. Salt of the Earth asks us to consider why only some people can have their needs met without struggle. An Anglo miner can move up and out of this mine in ways that Mexican American miners cannot. There was no ladder of success for them, only the knowledge that there were two separate ladders.

In the film, a group of men try to break the strike by running past the picket line. The company has offered them temporary jobs at the mine; to take one of these jobs is to become a “scab.” These strike breakers are another way the company holds onto their power with none of the risk. As soon as Ramón and a few men run to intercept the scabs, the sheriff can move in to arrest them. We learn that one of the strike breakers is a man named Sebastian. The fact that Sebastian is also Mexican American shocks Ramón enough to spit on him. Sebastian cries that he has a family to feed, just like Ramón does. Why is one family's needs worth more than another? The company put these men in conflict with each other on purpose. It disrupts the conflict both men, together, should have with the company. The scene between these men offers a valuable reminder. We fight each other when we could be working together against the ones who oppress us both.

the struggle for solidarity

The remedy to injustice, the film teaches us, is solidarity. The miners' solidarity as union members is a potent form of power. In a pivotal moment of the film, Delaware Zinc and state agents join forces to break the strike once and for all. Instead, the union and the townsfolk stand united. Union members from other towns and industries also show up to help push back against this power.

And when pushed, the representatives of the mine can't honor the union's demands on their own. They have to contact the New York office, back east, before they can concede the fight. It's interesting that they had free reign to do whatever it took to break the workers. They were free to jail people, to jeopardize their family's lives, even make them all homeless. But these leaders felt powerless to end the rampant racial discrimination at the mine they oversaw. They could not meet the strikers' demands without getting out-of-state approval first.

We learn this lesson another way through the interactions between men and women. When the film begins, it's clear that the other union members, even the bosses, see Ramón as a leader within the group. The company tries to break the strike with threats of arrest or lost income for the union members. Esperanza and the other wives step in to protest on their behalf. The wives want an equal say in the conditions under which they live. Their concerns about sanitation affect the wellbeing of the whole family. We would argue that those concerns are as important as the safety conditions within the mine. But here again, the company pits the two leaders of each household against each other.

The wives join the strike through a clever loophole, something we the viewer can admire. But this inversion of gender roles does not sit well with Ramón and his comrades. With women on the picket line, it falls to the men to perform the domestic labor needed at home. Ramón refuses to accept the strength of the movement because women are the ones leading it. There's no doubt he loves his wife, but society conditions him to be the sole provider of the household. We witness his influence diminish during the course of the movie.

Towards the end of the film, Ramón’s frustration with the situation gets the best of him. In a particularly powerful scene, he approaches Esperanza with anger. His jealousy with her power and his role within the home getting the best of him, he demands that she steps down. What comes next from Esperanza is likely the best known monologue from the film:

The Anglo bosses look down on you and you hate them for it. “Stay in your place, you dirty Mexican.” That’s what they tell you. But why must you say to me: “Stay in your place”? Do you feel better having someone lower than you?

Whose neck shall I stand on to make me feel superior? And what will I get out of it? I don’t want anything lower than what I am. I am low enough already. I want to rise and to push everything upwards as I go! And if you can’t understand this, you are a fool, because you can’t win this strike without me.

Esperanza comes to understand the true fight they have before them. They work in unsafe conditions to live in a rented house without plumbing on land that should be theirs. Only solidarity and equality, even and especially within the home, can change any of that. Ramón ignored the struggles that Esperanza faced in her own domestic responsibilities. Instead of supporting her, seeing their causes as united, he saw her as an obstacle. Her own demand for agency is what prevents him from returning to a status quo that did not serve either of them. She wants him to be a peer to her; he doesn't realize that's also what he needs from her. In his frustration, as he prepares to strike her, she says with defiance: “That would be the old way. Never try it on me again.”

propaganda or resistance?

The director of Salt of the Earth is Herbert Biberman, a member of the communist party as of the mid-1940s. He refused to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee about his membership in the american communist party. He received a 6-month jail sentence and a blacklisting from Hollywood. To make Salt of the Earth, Biberman formed a team of other blacklisted professionals. The International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter workers gave support to make the film. This union had refused to purge suspected communists from their member rolls. As a result, their parent union, the Congress of the International Order (CIO), cut them off.

The film is a strong example of agitprop. This is a term used in the Soviet Union to describe propaganda that promotes communism. While the film doesn't have an explicit pro-Soviet message, its point is clear: all people must work together if they are to have their needs met. This idea was (and still is) dangerous in the post-war and cold-war eras of u.s. politics. This made the film near-impossible to screen in this country for several decades.

Salt of the Earth is plain with its politics. It's worth considering more recent films that have a somewhat left-leaning bent. In 2026, the Hollywood studio system is once again consolidating itself. The original "Big 5" studios became 7, then 6 in the 1980s. Another merger in 2019 led to another era of 5 major studios in Hollywood. The Skydance merger that took place this year brings that number even lower—to just 4 major studios. An industry run by four billion-dollar companies might not fund, much less promote, a radical story of worker’s rights and labor organizing.

To be fair, we do still see late-stage-capitalist films about class divides or racism. But very few of those movies address the history and dangers of worker uprisings within the u.s. Filmmakers might get away with stories that focus on uprisings and strikes in the 1960s to 1980s. In recent years, the last two films made by director Boots Riley are subversive critiques of race, capitalism, and worker exploitation. But the worlds in these films are full of fantastical imagery and zany environments. The message in these films may be lost when compared to the realities and limitations we face in the real world.

the struggle continues

Though there's much to find relevant here, the struggle on screen still feels small at times. On-screen and off, the Mexican American workers found very few white allies to join their fight. It's clear that this failure of imagination among the Anglo workers is due in no small part to race. Perhaps many of them thought, "why should I put my own job on the line?" It's possible that, like Sebastian, their first priority was to put food on their own family's table. Why risk more?

In hindsight, many of the conditions those miners faced are still with us today. Their descendants now toil in gig worker jobs or dangerous warehouse work. We give our bodies and livelihoods to billionaires, whether by employment or endowment. We saddle ourselves with debt trying to make ends meet. What if, instead, every miner decided their working conditions didn’t have to be dangerous at all? What if they could achieve a higher standard for all workers, if only they all stood together?

Today, very few of us toil in the mines that these brave Mexican Americans endured. But our struggles are bound together with them, if only we're all brave enough to notice.

Salt of the Earth is available to watch for free on Kanopy and youtube. It's worth your time to explore this film's messages and their relevance today.

Hi everyone,

I’m back once again, as the Autumn starts to settle in (in this hemisphere at least) with the next in this series of posts about the inspirations that have proved foundational for Signet City as a project.

This month, I wanted to focus on the musical inspirations for the game, as they have been as much part of the project as the visuals or the literature.

Perhaps you remember hearing the track above in Signet City’s cinematic trailer, or perhaps you knew it already. For as long as this project has been a possibility I have wanted to announce it with a song. This is because so much of what Signet City feeds off is the tone, mood and history of music, primarily British and Irish Post-punk. Choosing this track, from the amazing band SPRINTS, was a hard choice. I had a long shortlist of tracks from years of looking, but in the end the narrative qualities, the sync between the lyrics and my game’s themes, and the energy of Karla Chubb’s delivery made this the ideal track.

For me it made sense to announce the musical identity of the game as much as its visual identity with this trailer, but SPRINTS are just the opener to what is a massively musical influence on Signet City.

I’m going to pick three key songs and six albums, to start your listening journey through Signet City. Once again I’ll break them into three categories, with three recommendations in each. The music below is not necessarily exactly what Signet City will sound like, that will be up to Eli Rainsberry, the amazing composer whose work I’ll be sharing more of with you soon. It’s more a collection of what has echoed in my head and my headphones as I have imagined and built this world.

80s INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS

Exercise One | Joy Division

I could have picked countless Joy Division songs, Day of the Lords, Disorder, Atrocity Exhibition, there are so many incredible tracks in such a small discography. But for me Exercise One points to the rich experimental side of the iconic band, and the way they brought the difficulty and disorder of the era into their songs. They may have been post-punk by genre, rather than industrial, but Exercise One conjures a bleak landscape of desensitized people, while still pulsing with a radical and exciting energy. This combination of melancholy and anger is one I hope to evoke in Signet City, as well as Joy Division’s aesthetics more widely. It is also Joy Division's wider connection to experimental work that has been important to me throughout my life, from the work of J.G. Ballard to Franz Kafka, both of which have their own unique influences on Signet City.

Albums:

The Unacceptable Face of Freedom | Test Dept. - Industrial experimentalism that captures the energy and anger of the era. An incredibly powerful and provocative collection of aural collages.

Prophecy + Progress: UK Electronics 1978 - 1990 | Peripheral Minimal - A fantastic compilation of electronic post-punk and industrial experiments, they conjure another reality of harsh pulses and haunting signals.

NEW POST-PUNK

Feeling Fades | The Murder Capital

No song was closer to being in the Signet City announce trailer than Feeling Fades, which was just beaten to the punch by the SPRINTS. A growling rallying cry from the Dublin band, it has the pulsing pace that makes post-punk such a listenable genre, layered with the poetic vision of a city in crisis or collapse. I love the vocals on this track, with James McGovern rhythmic delivery driving the percussion rather than the other way around. I never tire of the expansive feeling this song gives me, as if I was flying above a monochrome skyline of decaying masonry.

Albums:

Dogrel | Fontaines D.C. - The debut album of another Dublin band, and perhaps the kings of the post-punk revival. There’s a poetic simplicity to this record that later records replace with rich sophistication. You might notice another influence, T.S. Eliot’s preludes, making an appearance in the track Too Real. A marker of frontman Grian Chatten’s literary aspirations.

The Garden | Carla Dal Forno - A gorgeous EP from a deeply undervalued artist, Dal Forno conjures a minimal post-punk mood from simple ingredients, with both a gorgeous attention to detail in her electronics and a stark emotional resonance in her lyrics.

AMBIENT CITYSCAPES

Desert Exile | Love Theme

Few songs draw me away to another place like those of Love Theme, and its creator Alex Zhang Hungtai. Layering cinematic saxophones with gritty electronic samples, there’s a beautiful contrast that seems to evoke both wind, clouds, water and the emerging artificial patterns of urban growth. The entirety of Love Theme’s single album seems to draw me away from this world towards the city I am imagining, emerging from monochrome mist and salt. One of my favorite tracks to write to, with a sound unlike anything else.

Albums:

Dark Pool | Black Rain - More cyberpunk than fungalpunk (Black Rain worked on both a Neuromancer audiobook soundtrack in the 90s) the layered dark electronica and filmic samples of this album always take me to a rain-spattered city, at the edge of a failed future.

Beat | Bowery Electric - Maybe it’s the cover with its concrete overpass, but this album has always felt like a journey to me, its triphop beats like the predictable roadside punctuation of telephone and electricity poles.

That’s it for another month, I hope you’ll give some of the above a listen and let me know what you enjoy.

I’ve really enjoyed exploring the influences on the project in great detail, and I hope it has helped you all discover some new influences of your own along the way.

I’ll be back next month for one final influences newsletter, covering the games that have inspired Signet City, before shifting gears a little bit to talk more directly about the game.

Have a great month, and speak soon!

Gareth