Under the Weather

Susannah Mandel's short fiction and poetry have appeared or are coming up in Shimmer, Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit, Sybil's Garage, Peter Parasol, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and the anthologies Escape Clause and Quantum Genre on the Planet of the Arts, among other venues. She was born in California, grew up near Boston, and has since lived in Philadelphia and the north of France. Her flash fiction appears regularly at the Daily Cabal. A nonfiction piece confessing to her lifelong passion for apples appeared in the anthology Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, published by the MIT Press in 2007.

Under the Weather:

Record Reviews from a Warmer World

by Susannah Mandel

Riddle Sieve, Rain Shadow: Both cooler and darker than Sunshower, the omnipresent party hit of two summers past, Rain Shadow marks a return to their roots for the Birmingham-based moodmizzle group. This understated rubba speaks to the kind of afternoon when everything just feels scorching and awful, even with the Lens on at full, and you want to sit under a Traditional English Drizzle and have a bit of a mope. (We’ve never seen a real Drizzle, either, but we’ve heard your Grandpa go on.) At 2B/W, the Wind Scale rating is low enough that you can play it outdoors in a clearance zone as small as 3x3x3m — no need to check with the neighbours! Knowing the band, expect a creepy surprise or two to manifest out of the fog.

Nymph Load, Warm Occlusion: The ladies (and gent) of NL are at it again, this time putting out a wet and sensuous late-summer experience. Plenty of cheap but sultry exoticism here, with a tinkly backing and high humidity index bringing the smells and bells of that South Asian monsoon holiday you never got around to taking. Probably best enjoyed in the Weather Room; at 3M/XX you could take it outside without drowning the zinnias, but the Moist Succubi are better in private. (We know, no subtlety at all, but what would a Nymph Load jam be without them?)

The Thousand Natural Shocks, Intertropical Convergence Zone: This one will be big. The long-awaited magnum opus from the masters of symphonic-system mayhem, ICZ promises to wreak chaos, equatorial-style, in cloud ballrooms across the nation when it finally drops this weekend. We could tell you all about it, but we don’t like to tease. So we’ll just say that you’re going to love it. Violently, tornadically, hurricane-force. Pull any strings you need to get into a riding party: this is one you can’t play at home without shorting the systems and probably your lungs — that 19V rating is there for a reason. Bring your waterproof, and hold on to your skin…

SOUNDTRACK

First published in the Daily Cabal, May 18, 2009 under the title "May 18th's Under the Weather: Record Reviews from a Warmer World".

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