John Carpenter was, without a doubt, the patron saint of arpeggiated epics “Really Deep Snow” is a pious tribute, if one is needed. Its vibe is certainly more Halloween (2018), though, a reincarnation of unholy terror as the anxiety of influence. It’s another almost 10-minute improv, whose main chords pay tribute to a psalm Lindstrøm heard in church as a child. The second track, “Really Deep Snow,” is anchored by a covetable Roland SH-101 and administered by various ARPs, Korgs, and Wurlitzers. A rumble about eight minutes in scared the devil out of my cats, but soon enough they were snoring again in a puddle of sun. “On a Clear Day I Can See You Forever” instead hopes for meaning through repetition, exploiting the precariousness of its electrical pulses as they stream through metal effects units. The genius of, for example, those old Boards of Canada interludes was how they dissipated before their mystery ran out. He dusted one off and explored what he could do with it in 10 minutes, then played it back in reverse while improvising on the Fender Rhodes a little perfuming with a Hammond through a wah-wah and some spring-reverbs, and, well, the sum of the parts is the sum of the track. One of them, a Memorymoog, as it happens, forms the foundation of the new album’s title track. Clearly he’s mastered his machinery: On a Clear Day I Can See You Forever arrives in the wake of his performance at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, commissioned on the occasion of the art space’s 50th anniversary and conscripting untold riches to procure some 30 hard-to-source synthesizers and drum machines. Tracks like “Closing Shot,” “Blinded by the LEDs,” and of course the deathless “I Feel Space” demonstrated a command of form and function. Over the course of his 16-year-career he’s floated to the front of the third-wave analog revival, lifting the wow and flutter of predecessors like Stereolab and Faze Action and sending them into a Scandinavian disco jam-band dimension. None of this is Hans-Peter Lindstrøm’s fault. They are fetish objects at last, prized more for what they are than what they can do. They look great among the fiddle-leaf fig trees on your frenemy’s feed. Original Moogs are now incredibly expensive, both in terms of cost and the time it takes to learn to use and maintain them. Devotees turned the Moog, like relics of the houses of Korg, ARP, and Roland, into a status symbol.

Then a cult arose around these wooden boxes of wires. In a Hail Mary pass to stay solvent, Moog salesman David Van Koevering, a former evangelical preacher, repackaged a hundred or so unsold models as “Sanctuary Synthesizers,” added a bunch of pious patches, and sold the lot to Christian music makers. But it lacked touch sensitivity, which meant it basically just played loud, and its presets varied wildly users switching from machine to machine had to pray the strings didn’t sound like brass. The Memorymoog, in 1982, would be the last thing Moog made for decades, and it was a polyphonic powerhouse. Bigger companies made simpler, more powerful machines. Moog’s instruments were, in the end, whimsical and unwieldy. Conceding is a game-state action that doesn’t use the stack, so your other two opponents will have no time to stop you from winning the game once your partner-in-crime has scooped.But by the 1980s, the dream was fading. However, it does also raise some big ethical questions for the format.įollowing its reveal, many people have raised the point that, if you have a colluding player at the table, they could take a hit from one of your Assassins and then just concede the game. There are enough Assassins in the format, and enough ways to make them unblockable, that it could lead to some incredibly quick wins. Though it isn’t legal in Standard, Ramses, Assassin Lord will be an absolute fiend in Commander. We’ve also seen a lot of the box toppers you’ll find in booster boxes that have been made with Commander in mind. Slightly confusingly, Dominaria United’s preview season isn’t just including the Standard-legal cards you’ll find in booster packs. Whenever a player loses the game, if they were attacked this turn by an Assassin you controlled, you win the game.

Two generic, one blue, one black legendary creature – Human Assassin – 4/4:

One clear day