Kupop Metasilly: This Is Bat Country

[yukie]

SO LIKE WTF IS T.I.B.C.: A band comprised of six people--Aaron Virtue Park (vocals, theremin, violin, weirdness), Benjamin "Beejay" Jafri (vocals, keyboards, esoteric percussion), Sidonie Dumont (vocals, guitar), Zoe Daine (vocals, drummage), Victoria "Vicky" Greene (vocals, bass), Jeremiah "Jer" Greene (vocals, rhythm guitar), and occasionally too many bags of Haribo.

THAT IS A LOT OF PEOPLE: Yes it is, which is why we can't really play venues with tiny stages.

SO WHAT KIND OF MUSIC ARE WE TALKING HERE: Oldschool J-Rock meets Gothabilly meets Folkrock meets Nerdy ProgLOL meets IDKWTF. It's eclectic. The fans seem to like it, though. Even when the old-ass amp decides to temporarily die, and Asher raps nerdily.

WHO DO YOU LIKE TO PLAY WITH: Moonchild, Oceanic Megalith, The Darkest of Knights, Ars Arcana Drakonis, Piper, Release the Chiroptera You Fools, Eldritch Beyond, and Ghost Model T are all fabulous people and we love them yes we do.

HAVE YOU GOT A LABEL/PRODUCER/ETC: Thanks to the amazing people of Moonchild, yes we do.

WHO DOES ALL YOUR MIXING: Aaron and Jer, on their respective rigs. They also do VGM remixes. If you see anything by Ehifu Gravitywell that's them.

SO WHO COVERS THE FINANCES: For the most part, our fans! We livestream for album costs and charity donations, do pay-as-you-wish for b-sides and remixes and silliness, and so on--and we're massively grateful to all our donors, which is why our webpage has an ever-growing donor list. And yes, everybody is on there. Anonymous donors get included by date. We are lucky and our fans are generous and faboo.

ANY SWAG: Yes! T-shirts, hoodies, pendants, buttons, nifty bags, LED flashlights (with a red setting so as not to obliterate the night-vision), et cetera, all made and designed by us because whenever we have too much time on our hands we get crafty. Once we get rights and suchlike worked out, we might begin taking fan-submitted swag. Right now, we are not able to do so, but we're flattered and ecstatic that people love us enough to make swag for us!

...SO...WHAT DO YOU LIVESTREAM: Oh, almost everything. Jer likes to broadcast his fail at Shinobi Monogatari, Beejay and Aaron have this masochistic love of badly-coded games, Sidonie is our hardcore badass and all of our Belmondo Chronicle vids are hers (which you should know already, silly people), and most of all we really like running old Arcana Mundi dungeon raids and failing all over the floor. Sometimes we team up with Moonchild and then even more of us fail all over the floor, and sometimes we team up with Vicky and Jer's dad, Owain Eadland (a key member of the Verdant Sanctuary Foundation who work for better awareness of psionic and empathic disorders and better treatments for such--if we stream with him, the cash goes to V.S.F.), in which case we fail much less because he's really good at it.

ANYTHING ELSE BEFORE WE GO: We have a new album pending, so look for previews soon on yonder website. We love you all, and goodnight!

((some of this applies just as much to Benighted of course. XD))

Comments

[fakename]

I'm amused by the Belmundo Chronicles. (Dracula rumbling Belmundo dramatically? And the gameplay is all Devil May Cry acrobatics?)

I'm guessing the Verdant Sanctuary has a lot of plants? Or just green logos?

[yukie]

XD yeah, I expy a bunch of things if I'm working in GF's storyverse or my own, hee.

And Verdant Sanctuary places do tend to have a lot of plants. They're basically places you can go that do therapy to help strengthen mental wards/cope with hyper-empathy/stuff like that.

[fakename]

Ah - sounds neat. (Will'd approve.)

[yukie]

Yeah. Owain's a hyper-empath with somewhat wobbly wards on account of because he's youma/fae half-blooded and because the fae side of his family was stuffy in the upper echelons he didn't get proper training in the use of his mana as a kid, didn't know how to deal with the power fluctuation (hybrid kids tend to have power that moves in waves between--I guess vayu and prthvi is the best way to put it, fae/air and youma/earth, and while this isn't harmful as such it can really be hard to handle if you aren't taught what's up) so now he's got to learn a little at a time because adults are more set in habits etc.

There wasn't as much need for the Verdant Sanctuary stuff before, because the philosophical differences between youma and fae meant they didn't hook up much (though they did have friendships sometimes), but now that things are changing, it's more common.

Basically it's not a matter of 'well you SHOULD NEVER GET TOGETHER' but "okay, this is a different skill set we need to teach kids to use, and we should not be shaming them for it, dammit'. ^^

Vicky and Jer, fortunately, did get said training, so they can handle their occasional power 'eh?'. Jer does wear an amulet just in case, however, since he's very healy-inclined.

[fakename]

Aah - that makes sense. I suspect sanctuaries are also nice for sort of stress frazzled people. You don't need the shielding as much, but it's nice to know you don't need to worry about things?

[yukie]

Yeah. The safe house where Brenn stays in Benighted is actually partly funded by Verdant, which he's amused by when he finds out.

And I suspect they do run places like that, like sort of 'outpatient' calm zones for people who are stressed out the gills. (Sometimes these people turn out to have a latent empathy in which case they get taught how to work with it; sometimes they're just frazzled in which case they get lavender tea and books.)