1 |
For Tracy Hyde |
"Subway Station Revelation" |
single |
Soccer usually has the tolerant virtue |
2 |
ayutthaya |
"I'll be there" |
Lighthouse |
of treating ties as normal. |
3 |
MindaRyn |
"Make Me Feel Better" |
single |
I approve of this willingness, underrated and underrepresented in sports, |
4 |
SennaRin |
"透明な惑星" |
最果て (Complete Edition) 6 |
to acknowledge that two competitors are about the same. |
5 |
Malcolm Mask McLaren |
"Snowflake" |
Snowflake +1 |
Human performance is subject to many contingencies. |
6 |
Eversolitude |
"Faint Afterimages" |
SLOWLYCOLLAPSE 4 |
Arbitrary microjudgment is an antiempathic dysfunction. |
7 |
HARUKATOMIYUKI |
"十字路に立つ" |
十字路に立つ +2 |
Sometimes the just resolution is to thank each other for your earnestly spent time |
8 |
B.O.L.T |
"Accent" |
single |
and walk away with love and grace. |
9 |
GANGDEMIC |
"RISE AGAIN" |
single |
The acceptance of ties and the stubborn refusal to inflate the point-economy of goals |
10 |
sly cat girl |
"LIFE" |
single |
also mean that a soccer game cannot normally transition directly between joy and agony. |
11 |
BABY-CRAYON~1361~ |
"Life goes on!" |
single |
You cannot go from winning to losing in a single moment. |
12 |
シャニムニ=パレード |
"エンドロール" |
single |
The score cannot change by more than 1 at a time. |
13 |
二口魔菜 Futakuchi Mana |
"Ignorance" |
single |
You must attempt to pass through the ambiguity of ties, |
14 |
Inferiority Complex |
"Wake Up" |
single |
and there you might still find yourself |
15 |
RedHook |
"Soju" |
single |
at the end. |
16 |
As Everything Unfolds |
"Blossom" |
Blossom +1 |
Elimination tournaments, of course, cannot abide this irresolution. |
17 |
Tiffany |
"Shadows" |
Shadows |
There must be a Champion, |
18 |
Brightstorm |
"Deep Higher Thoughts" |
single |
and as a result there must also be a decision-tree of some defined cardinality. |
19 |
Season of Ghosts |
"In Hubris" |
single |
Thus the usual insulation between joy and agony is stripped away. |
20 |
Oceandvst |
"Nme" |
single |
A single goal in a single tournament game can change the fate |
21 |
ODC |
"The Lie" |
single |
not only of the two teams playing that game, |
22 |
Ad Infinitum |
"Somewhere Better" |
Somewhere Better +1 |
but of others, innocently standing by, |
23 |
ILLUMISHADE |
"Elegy" |
Elegy +1 |
or playing in their own matches of incomplete agency, |
24 |
Thy Shade |
"Never Enough" |
single |
or standing in the center circle after doing everything under their own control, |
25 |
Circus of Fools |
"Head of Medusa" |
A Broadcast from GEN .0 |
waiting to be doomed or raptured |
26 |
Carved |
"Red Dwarf" |
Ares |
into the next round. |
27 |
Walk in Darkness |
"Ships to Atlantis" |
Leaves Rolling in Time |
It is tempting to believe that the possibility of joy justifies the risk of agony, |
28 |
Molllust |
"Uranus - The Butterfly and the Spider" |
Mother Universe |
and even more insidiously, that joy cannot exist without agony, |
29 |
Oceans |
"Hell Is Where The Heart Is" |
Hell Is Where The Heart Is |
that love and hate are subjective polarities imposed on an inevitable spectrum, |
30 |
Winter |
"Into The Void" |
Into The Void +2 |
inescapable except by obliteration. |
31 |
In The Woods... |
"We Sinful Converge" |
Diversum |
Distrust all such self-righteous dualities. |
32 |
Astral Experience |
"Reloj de Arena" |
single |
The cynical know that two wrongs can be counterposed |
33 |
ACME |
"Resisted temptation" |
Resisted temptation |
to offer a false choice of rights. |
34 |
Elder |
"Catastasis" |
Innate Passage |
Government, and every other social construct, ought to be a system of consensus and consent, |
35 |
Djevel |
"Afgrundsferd" |
Naa skrider natten sort |
not an exhausting fight to be the least-bad anti-hero. |
36 |
Violet Cold |
"Sülh" |
single |
We can see this in an occasional syzygy of circumstantial alignment, |
37 |
Zetra |
"Hopeless Odyssey" |
single |
when the fight is both meticulously photographed and |
38 |
Lykotonon |
"The Apocryphal Self" |
Promethean Pathology |
happily far away from us: |
39 |
Istårn |
"Dawn" |
Eschatology |
a far-foreign city under draconian quarantine; |
40 |
Monolithe |
"Voskhod" |
Kosmodrom |
a sand-glossed arena built by slave-tantamount labor; |
41 |
Marras |
"Kulkureita" |
single |
a bitter elective choice between cartoonish demagogueries; |
42 |
BRDigung |
"Niemals aufgewacht" |
Niemals aufgewacht +2 |
a border dispute 2km east or west of the middle of subjective nowhere. |
43 |
Seelenkraft |
"Besinnliche Zeit - Single Edit" |
single |
We congratulate ourselves for, largely, partly, |
44 |
Adventus |
"Fundirme Con el Viento" |
Saudade |
sublimating tribal hostility into sports, |
45 |
Despistaos |
"Estrella (feat. La La Love You)" |
single |
but of course this is still a ritual of choosing sacrifices: |
46 |
Verona |
"Cambiar Este Final" |
Giro Argumental |
tributes to give their ACLs instead of ours, |
47 |
Nunatak |
"Cierra al Salir" |
single |
their performative humiliation so that we can cheer or rage, |
48 |
December Avenue |
"Saksi Ang Langit" |
single |
their heraldic allegiance so that we are symbolically freed from rationalizing our own. |
49 |
The Differential |
"Enemy" |
Mindstorm |
Take a walk through a city where, today, there is no parade. |
50 |
KAMI WA SAIKORO WO FURANAI |
"キラキラ" |
single |
That is where you find us, really, |
51 |
Sub-Radio |
"Wait A Minute" |
single |
wearing headphones at a stop light and impatiently tapping the edge of the curb with a sole |
52 |
Reno & Rome |
"Miracle" |
single |
so casual strangers do not mistake our impatiently reluctant intersectional caution for sheepish compliance. |
53 |
Muse |
"Ghosts (How Can I Move On) [feat. Elisa]" |
Ghosts (How Can I Move On) [feat. Elisa] +1 |
How can we move on when everyone we hear still talks about how we must have become this way? |
54 |
Safree |
"Si vas a volver" |
ANCESTRAL 6 |
Unnecessary stadia are not the best things we have built together. |
55 |
Die Campbells |
"My Persoon" |
single |
The aliens, when they arrive, will not demand to see our World Cup brackets. |
56 |
The Sun |
"Tutto quel che ho" |
single |
The best spectacles end in shared curtain calls, not wrested trophies. |
57 |
Mina Harker |
"Findelkind" |
single |
Sports can be practiced as art, |
58 |
Purpleshoes |
"Hindi Na Sana" |
single |
but only if you care about human movement |
59 |
Mary Mortem |
"Darling, You Couldnt Even Imagine What I've Seen" |
single |
and token trajectories of bliss |
60 |
Nehl Aelin |
"In the Woods" |
Erase my Memory |
more than the reduction of victory. |
61 |
Aero Manyelo |
"Angimazi Ubabalo" |
single |
The modern World Cup works, |
62 |
Randomized Coffee |
"Mariama - Radio Edit" |
Mariama 3 |
at least better than its corrupt governance would augur, |
63 |
Lagxabha |
"Inkomo" |
Inkomo 5 |
because almost every country's best players have played with each other as well as against, |
64 |
UMNTUYENZIWA |
"Ngibhula Isihlangu" |
Ngibhula Isihlangu |
and because imaginary desert cities built by exploited migrant laborers |
65 |
Cevuzile |
"Iyangena Inja" |
Angikuncengile |
are temporarily overrun by exploited migrant revelers |
66 |
Udumakahle |
"Bafuna Sihlukane" |
S'qhuba Izinkomo |
who have to coexist after their teams, too, in turn are defeated. |
67 |
Mzansi Youth Choir |
"Rise" |
single |
Each decrement of the field increases the population of the neutral, and thus the global. |
68 |
Secret Archives of the Vatican |
"Daoine Sídhe" |
single |
By the end, no matter who is left, the rest of us are freed. |
69 |
Bjarla |
"Two Arrows" |
Bifröst |
And because any of us might lose, we are all united in anticipation. |
70 |
I Built the Sky |
"Push Play" |
single |
There is a champion, but at least they do not suffer a resulting burden of power. |
71 |
Outrun The Sunlight |
"Ambivalence 2.0" |
Ambivalence 2.0 +1 |
Thus ambivalence may be revised and refined. |
72 |
Dav Dralleon |
"Dark Gates Ov R'lyeh" |
Kthullu |
We do not leave ourselves in the arena. The game ends, and we go back: |
73 |
Patty Gurdy |
"Melodies Of Hope" |
single |
into cities that may still become real, |
74 |
Taylor Swift |
"Anti-Hero - Acoustic Version" |
single |
into countries whose midnights are the game's afternoons, |
75 |
First to Eleven |
"Tom Sawyer" |
single |
into invaded spaces that may again be witnessed, |
76 |
Falconshield |
"This Is War 8" |
This Is War 8 +1 |
into only wars that can be repeated in rhyme. |