Earthshock 2: Special Low Frequency Version

Hello there, I've got this blog here under the alias of John Earthshock, so named because I make music as "Earthshock". You'll also occasionally find me called A.E. Pessimal or Glassworks elsewhere. I am Indigenous (Māori from New Zealand), aromantic-asexual, non-binary (they/he), a good quadruple threat of identities people wring their hands over.

I make niche experimental music for like 3 people to listen to. Much of it is electronic in some form. I use a guitar, no-input mixing board, guitar synthesizer, and a whole bunch of (mostly) free plugins in my DAW.

The arts aside I will also occasionally put various shitposts and musings up on here. I'm quite fond of SF, particularly mecha anime.

My Bandcamp (Pretty much all of the music I make gets put up here)

Biggest thing that sells it for me is how the Count sleeps: no blankets, fully clothed from head to toe, insanely high pillow elevation.

Man's got his sensory needs.

I've not read Dooku: Jedi Lost but I've heard a bit about how there's even more Dooku autism evidence there too.

CW: hate speech used in the first track

This EP involves destruction of hate speech through Indigenous noise, and further mutations of that noise into soundscapes.

I made this out of a sound art performance I did back in 2025. One track a live recording of the show, the other two musique concréte fabrications made from the raw material recorded.

Detailed album writeup is as follows:

There's all this hubbub about the (second) Gundam live-action movie and while I don't have the highest hopes for it, I do think they've got some hurdles in their way with the story and especially the mecha action. Gundam's got 18-metre behemoths and making really big mechs move in live-action with the agility that mobile suits have in the anime is very difficult to do naturally - see Pacific Rim 2's mech battles being floaty and weightless compared to the first movie making these enormous machines move with some serious weight to them. G-Saviour's plodding mobile suit movement with 3D models made on a direct-to-video budget warrants mention as Gundam's last attempt, which I'm quite sure the higher-ups very much want to avoid with the new movie.

However, there's another mecha anime that's mentioned in this post's title as being a good fit for a westernised live-action adaptation: Armoured Trooper Votoms. The armoured troopers themselves are only about four metres tall so they're more like hardsuits than full-on mecha. Picture the Hulkbuster from Age of Ultron, but make it a cheap dieselpunk armoured coffin mass-produced for a century-long space war and you get the armoured troopers.

That's much easier to render in live-action, and it's right up the alley of western sci-fi sensibilities, given stuff like Battletech or the walkers from Star Wars. Votoms feels like it could be a good grungy sci-fi action movie that'd be a respected cult classic at the very least.

I suppose my ultimate point is that Votoms as a show has very little that requires changing for a western live-action adaptation, both in terms of cultural adaptation and live-action adaptation.