Tag Archives: Everson Poe

Love Songs (2024 Compilation)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

Good afternoon // happy Friday, everyone!

It’s been an eventful month here at Valley of Steel HQ. After a full year of inactivity on the bird site, earlier this week I finally pulled the plug and deactivated my dozen-year-old Twitter account, which was pretty much the last remnant of my “social media” presence outside of lurking around a handful of Discords.

And on the subject of housekeeping-type news, the renewal for this website’s domain (valleyofsteel.net) is coming up later this month — and with the limited amount of activity I’ve had here in the past few years, I’ve been seriously considering discontinuing that registration. The website would remain, but it would revert back to its original address of https://valleyofsteel.wordpress.com. So you might want to update those bookmarks, just in case. I guess if anyone felt very strongly about the dot-net address sticking around, you could always go buy some shit through this Amazon affiliate link. I just don’t know if my heart is still in it enough, to keep dumping money just to keep a personalized domain name anymore.

But two things I can say for sure my heart IS still in — sharing good music with you folks who come here to read these words, and especially sharing things that are supposed to help other people. In a two birds / one stone situation, here’s a benefit compilation that came out last month, but which I just discovered yesterday (and which I just had to buy before I had even gotten halfway through listening)…

 

Mother Anxiety / Various Artists – Love Songs (26 July 2024)

 

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Please, Just Let Me Breathe (2023 Compilation)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

Welp, the terrible folks in positions of power across these United States (and all around the world) are still at it. Seems like every day we wake up to worse and worse news about increasingly-emboldened lawmakers coming up with more and more devious plots to take away people’s rights, especially LBGTQ+ people, and ESPECIALLY trans people.

It’s hard not to feel frustrated and helpless in the face of so much shittiness and — if we’re being honest — outright maliciousness and malevolence. But for what it’s worth, there are at least some good people out there trying to be helpful. People like Trans Lifeline, “run by and for trans people” to provide needed support for the community.

Also people like Food Desert Recordings, “supporting charities that uplift and empower maligned communities.” Today the digital label officially launches its third fundraising compilation, a gargantuan 27-track effort ranging from traditional heavy metal to post-metal, avant-garde black metal to dark ambient, harsh noise to trap metal. The artists, which include members of the trans community and allies, have donated tracks which in many cases are exclusive non-album singles or alternate versions you won’t find anywhere else. And all proceeds go to Trans Lifeline, which according to the label have totaled nearly $700 so far just from pre-orders.

Various Artists – Please, Just Let Me Breathe: A Compilation in Support of Trans Lifeline (Food Desert Recordings, 28 April 2023)

[[ Update 22 December 2023: if you’ve previously purchased and downloaded this compilation, please note that it has been altered. Unfortunately it has recently come to light that one of the contributing artists has been engaging in creepy, stalkery behaviors in their interactions with several people online. Therefore, this individual’s track has been jettisoned and replaced, as a statement that such actions are not to be tolerated. ]]

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