WordPress has reminded me that this month officially marks 14 years since this website launched. So happy birthday, Valley of Steel. Meanwhile the entire world continues to circle the drain more and more rapidly, but I guess we all need to take comfort in the little things wherever we can.
Like… huge recent news I wanted to make sure to share with you folks — specifically, U.S.-based folks. There are finally new seasons of The Great Pottery Throw Down available for us to watch! If you aren’t familiar with this former BBC, now Channel 4, competition show, you need to catch up! While the rest of the world was spending the 2020 pandemic obsessing over the Tiger King documentary, HBO MAX quietly released the first few seasons of a delightful series set in a pottery factory in Stoke-on-Trent, central England — essentially the clay and porcelain sibling to the more widely-known Great British Bake Off.
I was immediately hooked on these amateur potters’ magical creations, and especially on the show’s endearingly gentle and positive vibes: the judges have been known to tear up, even more than the contestants, with pride over some of the final products. I absolutely couldn’t get enough through five whole seasons, until suddenly the well dried up. Announcements for a sixth edition came in 2023, followed by a seventh the next year, but HBO was too busy flip-flopping on what to call their streaming app to bother adding any new content. So for the past few years I’ve had a sad, pottery-shaped void in my life — that is, until just a few weeks ago when I discovered that the whole run (so far) of the Throw Down, all the episodes that were on HBO but also the two newer missing seasons, are now streaming for free on Roku Channel!
I would’ve told you all sooner, but I was too excited about bingeing my way through the new episodes to find time to write anything. But now that I’ve completed the sixth and seventh finals, I didn’t want to wait any longer to spread the news. Go check it out ASAP! We have one of these doodads plugged into our tv, but you can access Roku Channel content through other devices like Firestick or Google TV or just stream through their website.
I realize this is starting to sound like a paid advertisement for Roku, but I promise it isn’t (although if they wanted to throw me some $$ I would not turn my nose up at it!) — I’m just a really big fan of this particular competition show and I think more people need to know about it. Which is pretty much my whole shtick here, although it’s usually music I’m sharing with you. OH! Speaking of which…
Various Artists – T4T2!: A Mutual Aid Compilation by Trans People for Trans People (T4T Productions, 15 August 2025)
T4T released our first compilation in 2024 (available on Mycorrhizal‘s bandcamp page) and it was so successful we decided to set up this page and do the compilation annually. All proceeds go to a trans related charity. This year (2025) we will be donating to The Trevor Project.
Twenty-seven tracks currently available for purchase, to support a great cause! Some of these names will sound familiar if you’ve checked out any of the other benefit compilations we’ve shared here over the past few years.
Tachanka, E.T., Mycorrhizal feat. Tumultuous Ruin, Deerbus, Lust Hag, Rhys Edwards, Movement, Ashenheart, Darkat Yuuyamihn, Candle Void, Psevdanor, Fear for the Flesh, Blood Nymph, Effluvium, Vanessa Funke, Alessa Gillepsie, Karnstein, Wyrmoon, Hiraeth, Fern Enley, Yuppie Supper, Venus-426, Winter’s Eve, Seditious Activity, Faminebow, The Ocassion, Doomed Life
The songs include sludgy doom, some electronic-tinged stuff, blackened metal, deathgrind, even a healthy dose of harsh noise. All can be found via the Bandcamp player below:
Valley of Steel 