Weekend Reads (May 3): Satoshi Kon, 4AD Records, Rave Music, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Recommended weekend reading material for May 3, 2025.
Every week, I compile a list of articles in order to give subscribers like you something interesting and thought-provoking to read over the weekend.
Animation Obsessive continues to be one of the best sources for animation-related new, coverage, and analysis. Recently, they published a deep dive into Satoshi Kon’s detailed sketches and storyboards for 2001’s excellent Millennium Actress.
Editing is a different process in animation than it is in live-action movies, though. Like Kon once said, “In the case of animation, editing is done first.” It happens at the storyboard stage.
Millennium Actress (2001) is one of Kon’s most ambitious experiments in cutting apart and reassembling time, space and story. He took on the task of storyboarding the thing himself — over 400 pages, usually with five drawings per page. The final product sticks close to this first pass.
Which is to say that Kon, in some ways, conjured Millennium Actress out of thin air and put it down on paper.
Sadly, Kon died in 2010 from pancreatic cancer, but he left behind one of the most creative and distinctive bodies of work in the history of anime, including Paprika, Millennium Actress, and the TV series Paranoia Agent.
If you get a chance, I highly recommend watching Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist, a 2021 documentary that, among other things, reveals just how well-respected he was by other filmmakers.
Remember those “You wouldn’t steal a car” ads that the Motion Picture Association of America released back in the ’00s to convince people to stop pirating movies? Turns out, they used a pirated font. Oh the irony…
Melissa Lewis, a reporter at the Center for Investigative Reporting, noticed Fonts in Use’s identification, and she remembered that noted “computer person” Parker Higgins had been digging into the “very similar (font) Xband Rough.” Lewis contacted van Rossum, who confirmed that Xband Rough was a clone of FF Confidential. “It’s just been around forever and is ubiquitous,” Lewis writes.
Picking up on these inquiries, a tinkerer going by the handle “Rib” then dug into a PDF from the anti-piracy campaign’s archived website. A tool called FontForge indicated that the notable “spray-painted” font used in the PDF was, in fact, XBand Rough.
Back in February, Trump promised “a Golden Age in Arts and Culture” for America. That remains to be seen, but the relationship between America’s government and its artists has always been fraught and complicated.
After the Civil War, the Second Industrial Revolution facilitated massive concentrations of wealth, in what became known as the the Gilded Age. Private arts funding soared during this period, with some titans of industry, such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, seeing it as their duty to build museums, theaters and libraries for the public. The heavy reliance on private funding for the arts troubled some Americans, who feared these institutions would become too exposed to the whims of the wealthy.
[…]
Efforts to fund the arts expanded with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, as the country was reeling from the Great Depression. From 1935 to 1943, the Works Progress Administration provided jobs with stable wages for artists through the Federal Art Project. However, Congress famously terminated the program in response to a 1937 production of “The Revolt of the Beavers,” which conservative politicians denounced for containing overt Marxist themes.
Via TLDR Design.
Very few labels possess an aesthetic as established and iconic as 4AD Records did back in the ’80s, and Simon Coates picks a handful of essential records that helped to define the classic “4AD sound,” including Dead Can Dance’s self-titled 1984 debut.
As with the Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance had an extraordinary talent in Gerrard. Like Elizabeth Fraser, she seemed to sing in tongues, her voice serving as an expression of emotion beyond language. She also plays the yangqin, a Chinese dulcimer, while Perry leads a team of skilled musicians on a soaring album. Dead Can Dance doesn’t just introduce the band — it reveals an entire world. The record laid the foundation for a body of work that would grow only more expansive and mythic in the years ahead.
One album that I would add to any list of classic 4AD titles is Sleeps with the Fishes, a collaboration between Clan of Xymox’s Pieter Nooten and guitarist/producer Michael Brook. Released in 1987, it easily ranks up there with This Mortal Coil’s It’ll End in Tears and Filigree & Shadow as far as moody, atmospheric masterpieces go.
Andy Cush canceled his Spotify subscription last year, and doesn’t regret it one bit. In fact, his enjoyment and appreciation of music has only increased.
Music just sounds better when you’re not streaming it. Not only because the audio quality is often literally higher, but because you’re forging a connection with what you’re hearing that’s strengthened by your choices, your commitment, your active participation — and, if you bought it at a shop or the merch table at a show, by the lasting imprint of those in-person interactions, however brief they might have been. Spotify can do a lot of things, but it can’t compete with that.
Writing for Bandcamp, Joe Muggs serves up a selection of ’90s rave music deep cuts that includes tracks by DJ Mayhem, The Sorcerer, and Soichi Terada.
What is rave music? It’s been many things to many people over the years, as the sounds of American cities got adopted by UK and European party people, then bounced back to the States and then on to the rest of the world. Almost by definition, the sound of rave was hybrid in nature. The tones, rhythms, and techniques of house and techno collided with those of hip-hop, industrial, dub, dancehall, and more as producers tried to squeeze the most impact out of brand-new and unfamiliar technology with the sole goal of keeping the party going.
Moby is one of the world’s most well-known electronic music producers, and he recently released hundreds of songs that can be used freely by filmmakers, musicians, students, influencers, and choreographers.
In 2005, internationally renowned musician and activist Moby launched mobygratis as a free music resource designed to empower creative projects by students, non-profits, indie filmmakers, musicians, producers, rappers, singers, animators, choreographers, songwriters, remixers, and more. Over the past two decades, this groundbreaking initiative has supported over 50,000 indie films and media projects, becoming a cornerstone for creatives in need of high-quality, royalty-free music.
The only limitation is that these songs can’t be used to promote right-wing causes or animal products. (Moby is an outspoken vegan and animal rights activist.)
The 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees have been announced. The list includes Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, The White Stripes, and Soundgarden.
Among the artists nominated this year that weren’t inducted are Oasis, Mariah Carey, Joy Division/New Order, Phish, Billy Idol, the Black Crowes, and Maná. Last year, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted Cher, A Tribe Called Quest, Dave Matthews Band, Mary J. Blige, Ozzy Osbourne, Kool & the Gang, Peter Frampton, and Foreigner.
The induction ceremony will occur on November 8 in Los Angeles and will stream live on Disney+.
Conservatives are fond of using Middle Eastern Christians as political props while, at the same time, embracing and promoting policies that lead to their harm, persecution, and death.
The devastation of Christian communities in the Middle East as a result of American policy is undeniable. Since America’s invasion of Iraq, the Christian population of Iraq plunged from 1.5 million to 150,000, according to a State Department report. The brutal Syrian civil war, in which the United States was involved indirectly, has decimated Christians there, causing nearly two-thirds to flee. Israel’s recent war, and American support for it, has continued this pattern. It has harmed and destroyed Christian communities in Palestine and Lebanon, some of the remaining places Middle Eastern Christians — the oldest Christian communities in the world — practice their religion in relative peace and security.
Back in 2021, a judge named Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple requiring apps to use only their payment methods was anticompetitive, and ordered the company to change their methods. They refused to comply and instead, employed some sketchy workarounds — and to put it mildly, Gonzalez Rogers is not happy.
Not only did Apple attempt to find ways to circumvent the injunction, but it fatally hid their discussions from the judge. While Schiller gets credit from Gonzalez Rogers for sitting through the trial and reading the final decision, the judge suggests that his colleagues at Apple did not. Most troubling is the behavior of Apple’s Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, who the judge says “outright lied under oath” multiple times. She referred her ruling to the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco for possible criminal prosecution of Apple generally and Roman specifically.
With their marketing, design, and embrace of environmental and diversity efforts, Apple has spent decades propping themselves up as a Good Company and a force for good. While other tech companies get embroiled in controversy, Apple always seems to rise above the fray, to their great profit. But their deceptive and manipulative actions in response to Gonzalez Rogers’ original ruling really spoils that image.
Polygon has been one of my go-to sites for gaming and pop culture news and reviews. That may change, however, now that the site has been acquired by Valnet and hit by mass layoffs.
This sort of “media consolidation” is nothing new, and Valnet owns a slew of similar sites including CBR, Collider, and Screenrant. But Valnet, which was started by the same team that started porn sites like Brazzers and Pornhub, has been called a “sweatshop” where writes are forced to churn out articles for a pittance.
When Valnet takes over a fan site, the playbook is well established: employees are replaced by contractors, compensation plummets and writers who complain land on a blacklist that blocks them from working for Valnet sites altogether.
TheWrap spoke to 15 current and former contributors who said Valnet routinely exploits and discards writers while prioritizing mass quantity over quality to churn out mind-numbing SEO bait.
“Everyone is underpaid, overworked and really pretty — extremely — exploited,” a former Collider contributor told TheWrap.
It should come as no surprise that guys who got rich by exploiting women on porn sites would also try and get rich by exploiting writers.
Related: Valnet has since sued TheWrap for the above article, claiming that, among other things, it has caused Valnet CEO Hassan Youssef “tremendous emotional distress, affecting (among other things) his mood, temperament and his ability to sleep.”
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