#trace elements

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Trace Elements: Conversations on the Project of Science Fiction and Fantasy

By Jo Walton and Ada Palmer.

[nzbookwyrm]

March 2026

[dustedmagazine]

Robert Poss — Drones, Songs, and Fairy Dust (Trace Elements)

Robert Poss is best known for his work with Band of Susans, a late 1980s-early 1990s guitar-centric no wave band that came up in the same general scene and time frame as Sonic Youth and Swans. Band of Susans went through a number of configurations, but it never had fewer than three guitarists at a time. Consider Poss the primer inter pares (or first among equals) in the band’s squalling wall of guitars.

Now a few decades and a handful of solo albums on, Poss is still fascinated by the possibilities of amplification and feedback, though perhaps in a more lyrical, less confrontational way than in his youth.

Poss has titled this album Drones, Songs, and Fairy Dust, and indeed, it includes all of the above. Though some tracks favor one element or the other, the lines are not always so sharply delineated. There are drones in the more structured songs, and often, the lilt of melody in even the abstract instrumentals. (I’ll leave discerning “fairy dust” to others.)

Listen, for instance, to the way “Skibbereen Drive” blasts out distorted guitar chords, then surrounds them in flickering wah tones, all the while maintaining a steady, anthemic march. Or how “Out of the Fairy Dust” floats a lucid melody over seething, shifting beds of timber, a folk song living in an ambient wash. “Skew Forest” is maybe the purest expression of feedback sculpture, but even this track follows a wandering narrative line. Poss is thinking hard about texture and atmosphere but not to the exclusion of a good hook.

In the same way, the song-like tracks coruscate with detuned blare, the wall of guitar distortion almost, but not quite, burying the vocals in “Secrets, Chapter and Verse.” “It’s Always Further Than It Seems” has the rough romanticism of post-punk turning into college rock—first run Burma and very early R.E.M. come to mind—but there’s a haze and roar even in this well-shaped song.

As an album, Songs, Drones and Fairy Dust runs a bit long, piling up the brief experiments and longer compositions as Poss tries out new things. You might not want to listen all the way through very often (or you might) but pick any point on this extensive collection and you’ll find some very compelling guitar sounds, bending subtly or overtly towards song.

Jennifer Kelly

[data-and-vision]

[fieriframes]

[A man cooking in a kitchen preparing food, caption: I'm working on the trace elements. - Anything else? - Yes.]

[exhaled-spirals]

« Let the form be a garden in wild wilderness, a hyacinth language, a turning in wind when marginal influences disrupt the flow. 

Build thought as a bee does, one concern at a time, a hexagonal symmetry deep in the structure or explore the foundation

of a derelict house, its cellarhole cracked by bracken and trees—with daffodils blooming alongside the door, and off in the woods, sometimes

a forsythia. And a carrion beetle to bury the mouse, the skeletal memories of things that are gone; or hidden, like antlers, deep in the pines

where branches are tossed,  a path to the edge of recorded time, that stops at a place where the language is lost. »

— Barbara Jordan, “This Poem” from Trace Elements

[medlabscience]

--> trace elements/metals and their biochemical effects on the human body

[eai-pixe-blog]

Properties of Fiber-Reinforced Plastic (FRP)

Fiber-reinforced plastics (FRP), also known as fiber-reinforced polymers, are a category of composite plastics specifically using fiber materials to mechanically augment the elasticity and strength of the plastic.

"Fiber-reinforced plastics (FRP), also known as fiber-reinforced polymers, are a category of composite plastics specifically using fiber materials to mechanically augment the elasticity and strength of the plastic. They consist of a polymer matrix – the original plastic which is usually tough but weak – which is blended with a reinforcing material to yield a final product with the desired material or mechanical properties." Who knew Fibre Reinforced Plastics had so many different uses 🤯 To read more check out https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=15875 ElementalAnalysis.Com