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Robert Rackley

Orthodox Christian, aspiring minimalist and paper airplane mechanic.

The Spirits of Chaos

Addressing current events can feel a bit like grabbing a live wire these days. Hold on too tight or too long and you could be harmed. The ground under us is ever shifting and allegiances are volatile. In recognition of this, I'm sharing a homily that my priest,

California Afternoons

I came across Absent City while indulging in a recommendation from a friend. At times, and especially on the deliberate and wistful “California Afternoons,” the band sounds like imagining if Neil Halstead had gotten stuck between Mojave 3 and Slowdive. The video is a collage of vintage found footage from

Condor Sparks

This quote from Teresa of Ávila resonates strongly with me. Why is it that some days, even calamities just roll off your back and others, reading the slightest negativity in body language from a person with whom you are interacting can throw you off your game? What is different about

High Fidelity

Our fickle entertainment loyalities have us bouncing around the streaming landscape.

Babyland General

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, we celebrated Pascha a few weeks ago. I wondered how many of the parish faithful would be drawn to our middle-of-the-night celebration. It turns out, pretty much all of them. Even my friend, whose wife had twins earlier in the day, came to the Pascha

Notes From A Quiet Life

A new Washed Out video uses AI to promote the first single from a forthcoming album.

Into The Realm

I have mixed feelings about a band that does doom metal with this much conviction.

Into The Realm

Love Child (Never Meant To Be)

Bandcamp has a feature on Sonic Youth and Beat Happening contemporaries, Love Child. John Morrison, writing about the short-lived group, notes that their sound, while not pop-punk as we think of it, nevertheless was both pop and punk. Particularly on their early 7” singles, they have a shambling, amateurish sound

Love Child (Never Meant To Be)

Issue No. 4 — Pascha Protocol

Luxury beliefs, Pablo Neruda's influence, the danger of phone usage among teens, Ghost is building ActivityPub integration, the culture of distraction and the origin of 90s band names.

Your Analyst Was A Placekicker For The Falcons

Examining the attempts to replace religious observances with secular equivalents.