Lmst

Cached US #KindleBookGiveaway on bsky: 10 copies of #TheFold (Books 1-3) by #NickAdams, over at https://bsky.app/profile/kithrup.bsky.social/post/3ma2e4xeosc2r

This week's edition of The Fold discusses the Oz ban on (some) social media companies allowing under-16s to access their platforms;

https://thespinoff.co.nz/media/02-12-2025/the-fold-australias-big-tech-revolution-rolls-on

On one level, I'm playing the world's smallest violin for the DataFarming platforms targeted. I'm also relieved that the ban doesn't seem to apply to fediverse services, and other not-for-profit online services that clearly could be put in the "social media" bucket if the politicians were so inclined.

(1/?)

#podcasts #TheSpinOff #TheFold

"... you have politics litigated on the platforms where young people are - everyone kind of is but particularly young people - and all the incentives of those platforms are to practice politics as this kind of bombthrowing exercise. Where the ... policy outcomes and how it might ultimately reach you feel a long way down the list, if they're on it at all."

#DuncanGreive, 2025

https://thespinoff.co.nz/podcasts/the-fold

They're not. The Algorithms do not care about policy.

(1/2)

#podcasts #TheSpinoff #TheFold

Antinoë – The Fold Review

By Tyme

As the whispering winds of winter begin to blow colder through my neck of the woods, a time of year when fires get cozier, quaffed beers get darker, and we here at AMG begin to rhapsodize on things missed and regale readers with things listed, I found myself still searching for a near-end-of-year something new. When I saw Antinoë’s Dark Essence Records debut, The Fold, blurbily described as ‘Neoclassical Folk meets melancholy Pop with a Metal attitude,’ I was intrigued. Descending from the mountains of Madrid, Antinoë is the passion project of pianist and vocalist Teresa Marraco. Launched in 2021, Antinoë’s 2023 release, Whispers from the Dark Past, offered a unique piano tribute to the 90s Norwegian black metal scene, with Marraco covering everything from Emperor’s “I Am the Black Wizards” to Mayhem’s “Life Eternal” and Dimmu Borgir’s “Mourning Palace.”1 Poised to challenge the very fluid boundaries of what metal can be, let’s see if The Fold has the warmth necessary to keep those wintery winds at bay.

Void of instrumental trappings associated with most traditional metal, Antinoë relies solely on Marraco’s beautifully resonant voice and her expansive piano compositions to weave stygian tapestries. Conceptually, The Fold navigates the odyssey of accepting death, inviting listeners to tread a path through the idiomatic depths of grief’s different stages, as it traces the process of ‘folding inward.’ From the outset, as cricket-song fades into “Night Falls,” with its delicately crafted, darkly haunting piano melody and celestial vocals, the track pulls at melancholy heartstrings, drawing you into Antinoë’s dark world and setting the stage for what’s to come. The Fold offers an immersive, piano-led experience, peppered with pummeled ivories that shift with metallic force beneath sustained choral harmonies (“The Devil’s Voice”), as wispy trails of folky, Enya-esque ambiance waft amid airy, Dead Can Dance-like atmospheres (“Når Du Dør”). Not unlike Darkher, Antinoë succeeds at tapping into inscrutable emotion by minimalist means, but where Maiven casts spells webbed in doom, Marraco’s magic leans more toward the black arts.

While Antinoë draws much of its ‘metal’ from lyrical themes that explore the dense nature of grief and death, that doesn’t mean The Fold is musically bereft of heavier fare. Death angels descend on Emperor wings with halos of Dimmu Borgir to hover over the opening chords of “Threshold,” heralding dark omens in a chorus of swarming harmonies, witchy laughter, and raspy breaths, all as Antinoë pounds and trills her way through octaves in true symphonic black metal fashion.2 Is it still just a girl and her piano? Yes, but it’s by far the ‘heaviest’ song on the album. Which gives way to the excellently murky pop of “Chaos in the Sky,” another album highlight that had my neck snapped to rapt attention when Marracos, in her smoky voice, opened with “Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck am I?” like some dark-alt Adele, creating another moment more metal than not.

Drenched in warmth, The Fold’s production captures the beauty of Antinoë’s neo-classical elegance and marries it perfectly to its atmospherically blackened weight, providing a full-on musical experience. Whether it’s the delicate last minute of “The Devil’s Voice,” which flirts with a “Lágnætti” melody, off the Sólstafir magnum opus Ottá, or the inquisitive, childlike mystery of the whispers and keys on “Flock,” to the somber dirge of vocals from “Light Bringer,” listening to Antinoë is to become utterly immersed. I have little to critique, so enamored am I by Antinoë’s ability to impart complex ideas in the simplest of terms. I suppose there’s a minute or two that Marraco could have shaved from the two instrumentals, but in all honesty, there’s not a minute of The Fold that I would cut or change.

One of the things I’ve always appreciated about AMG is its fearlessness in shedding light on bands that are categorically not metal. Case in point, among many, is Dolphin Whisperer’s review of Maud the Moth’s excellent The Distaff this year. Antinoë has recorded an emotional album for healing hearts, and as I look back on the last few years of losses I’ve experienced, I’m unsurprised by how impactful it’s been to me. I wasn’t expecting something of this caliber to come sweeping in so close to list season, but here we are. I’ll gladly wrap myself in a warm blanket next to a cozy fire, slip on my favorite pair of headphones, and sip a smoky porter while letting The Fold envelop me against the impending winter’s chill.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Dark Essence Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: November 21st, 2025

#2025 #40 #ambient #antinoe #darkher #deadCanDance #dimmuBorgir #emperor #enya #notMetal #nov25 #piano #review #spanishMetal #theFold

ANTINOË – The Fold
https://eternal-terror.com/?p=73987

RELEASE YEAR: 2025BAND URL: https://antinoe.bandcamp.com/

Far removed from the world of metal music yet infinitely darker, more haunting, and relentlessly bleaker is this mesmerizing output titled The Fold by the Spanish artist known as Antinoë, which is the solo vehicle of the immensely talented neo-classical pianist and vocalist Teresa Marraco. Although she does have black metal […]

#ambient #antinoë #baroquePop #classical #darkAmbient #DarkEssenceRecords #darkness #electronica #emotionalPower #folkMusic #longing #melancholy #mesmerizing #neoClassical #soundtrack #theFold

#sketch #drawing #character #mastoart #chinadress #thefold #color

No purpose, just sketching

"... I used to study medicine, I was training to be a doctor. But I couldn't actually afford my rent because it was London, so I had to work in marketing on the side. Then I started to really get into marketing to the point where I actually left medicine ..."

#AndrewTindall, System1, 2025

https://thespinoff.co.nz/media/02-09-2025/the-fold-myths-and-truths-in-modern-advertising

His job could have been saving people's lives, but instead it's persuading them they want stuff. That's heartbreaking.

(1/2)

#podcasts #TheSpinoff #TheFold #ReputationLaundering

Oh hey, the kindle version of @PeterClines ' novel #TheFold is only $1.99 right now on Amazon.

This book is very good and you should all go buy a copy. I've already read it but didn't have a copy of my own. Just bought one.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NDTS7NC/

#theFold

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