Dark Fiction - Quantum Agitation

Quantum Agitation

By Casey Douglass

Lunfar crackled and fizzed as the stray transition particles jumped from his negatively charged body to the positive conference room around him. He blinked.

Singed bodies littered the large wood conference table, their limbs shrunken, the tang of fried blood cloying and enveloping the room in a shroud.

Lunfar looked down at the distorter gun in his hand. The nub on the end glowed red.

‘Status report Lunfar,’ a voice crackled in his ear piece.

‘Assignment completed.’

‘Full awareness?’

‘Negative. After event appraisal only.’

‘Confirmed. Return when your translocater has charged.’

‘Affirmative.’

Lunfar heard the link click into silence. A small melody chimed in his other ear. The translocater was ready. He looked at the scene around him and sighed. You got one like this about three times in ten. They always disappointed him the most. Not that he was a fan of killing. Quants like him kept the timeline clean and running on a better course for the Society. He didn’t fully understand the science but knew that they harnessed quantum events to burrow through time and space. The trouble with this is that every now and then, your body arrives a few seconds ahead of your full mental faculties. This isn’t that dangerous to a trained unit, but it still often left the Quant standing bemused surrounded by a ‘job well done’ with no memory of doing it. He sniffed.

He twisted his head to the right and craned his neck to the right until it cracked. The melody sounded again and he blipped out of existence.

THE END

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Dark Music Review – I Put A Time Bomb In Your Submarine

Written by Casey Douglass

It’s always nice when I get pointed in the direction of a style of music that is unfamiliar to me. I don’t like my music tastes to stagnate, but on the other hand, it makes putting my feelings into words that much harder, not to mention stretching my music knowledge as I try to identify how something was done. Bearsuit Records’ I Put A Time Bomb In Your Submarine is an album that falls firmly into this category, my only known point of entry my previous experience of one of the artist’s previous work (Utu Lautturi’s excellent album Nielu).

I Put A Time Bomb In Your Submarine is a compilation of remixes from various artists that could easily fall into any number of genre labels, from experimental and electronic to pop and rock. There are commonalities though. Many of the tracks feature airy vocals and short, sharp sound samples that give the sensation of listening to sound snippets masterfully stitched together to give the tracks a certain feeling of rhythm and flow (Circus Juice is one track that comes to mind for this). Many tracks make great use of ambient sound samples too, which adds another pleasing layer to things. The tracks that do feature vocals do so in a pop-like, hook-laden way that finds the words worming their way into your mind.

This will be another album review in which I don’t analyse each track, partly due to 22 being too many to make this feasible. There were a couple of stand-out tracks that I really liked though.

The first is Doll, and is track one on the album (or Anata Wa Sukkari Tsukarete Shimai - Doll (Senji Niban Remix) to give it it’s full label). The distorted, radio-like vocals and la-la-la-la-la-la mixed with the infectious beat make this an ear-worming track if ever I’ve heard one.

The next one that I really liked the feel of was A Shout Away (Harold Nono/Hidekazu Wakabayashi - A Shout Away (Stricknice Remix)). I think the mixture of relaxed piano, variety of vocals and the sound samples used all make this a pleasing track to listen to, with plenty for the mind to focus on amongst the many layers. The beat is good too!

The other track I wanted to mention by name is Circus Juice (Whizz Kid - Circus Juice (0Point1 Remix)), which I already mentioned above. The sound snatches and instrument variety just make it a lovely and eccentric track to listen to and I really appreciate that in a track.

The tracks that I haven’t mentioned all have things to like about them too of course, but these three caught my ear.

As a whole, I Put A Time Bomb In Your Submarine is a great value proposition, and gives the listener a great range of music to listen to and enjoy. I’m not wholly sure it is quite my thing, so I am not going to award it a review score, but I enjoyed my time with it and think it is well worth checking out for any fan of the electronic remix type genres of music.

You can visit the I Put A Time Bomb In Your Submarine page on Bandcamp here.

I was given a free copy of the album to review.

Album Title: I Put A Time Bomb In Your Submarine

Artists: Various

Label: Bearsuit Records

Release Date: 6^th December 2014

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