Agriculture - Live on KEXP

 

Mr. Brown first put L.A.'s Agriculture on my radar, and while I've logged a couple evenings spinning their 2025 album, The Spiritual Sound, I'm not sure I actually "got it" until I saw this live performance on KEXP.

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NCBD:

A nice, easy week with two books I am very much looking forward to reading:

One issue left after this one, and I can't wait to see how David and Maria Lapham's Good As Dead shakes out in the end. Fairly ominous solicitation over on League of Comic Geeks: 

"The truth behind the Port Lindon disaster is revealed, but not everyone will survive to hear it."

Mystery, Crime and Suspense, the way only the Laphams can do it! I've loved having a new series from them, so much so that this might kick off a long-overdue Stray Bullets reread.

Apparently, Walsh and Tynion's Exquisite Corpses just got optioned for adaptation. Couldn't happen to a crazier, bloodier book. Already cinematic in scope, this one really kicks you in the face every month. Hold my beer while I put in my mouthguard, new issue

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Watch:

Last Thursday night, K and I hit our local theatre for the first showing of Nia Dacosta's 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. We were coming in hot off our first rewatch of Danny Boyle's preceding film, which we were both a little lukewarm on after our initial theatrical viewing back in July of 2025. 

Watching that first film again, I found I had warmed to it. Boyle is first and foremost an innovator, and I think my initial disconnect from the first chapter in his and Alex Garland's 28 Years Later trilogy had a lot to do with the visual language of the film, and not so much with the story. Jarring camera work, counterintuitive editing, stylized backgrounds and stock footage, and mixed-media injections all made for a unique but initially confusing undertaking. Having gotten that out of the way and acclimated to the expectation for these elements, the film played a lot better. 

And now we have this: a film so confident and viscerally affecting, not even the trailer takes away from it. 

I can't wait to see this one again on the big screen, and maybe more importantly, what a success like The Bone Temple will do to propel Dacosta's career into the stratosphere. 

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Playlist:

Muddy Waters - Electric Mud

David Lynch & Marek Zebrowski - Polish Night Music

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

Various - Twin Peaks (Music from the Limited Event Series)

John Zorn - IAO: Music in Sacred Light

Gylt - In 1,000 Agonies, I Exist

Deafheaven - New Bermuda

Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. 1: 𝝙𝝙

David Lynch - The Air is on Fire

Agriculture - The Spiritual Sound

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Card:

One Card from Thoth for today:

Who says you can't always get what you want? 

Seven Days of David Lynch Day 7: The Ghost of Love

From his final feature film, 2006's Inland Empire. More on the actual film below, but suffice it to say now that, after rewatching this on Sunday, this song definitely felt like the way to end this year's Seven Days of David Lynch. 

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Watch:

I've talked about this in these pages before, so I'll be brief in summing up my first viewing of Inland Empire, back in 2006 at Laemmle Sunset 5. 

I'd just moved to L.A. earlier that year, and I remember Chief of Police Bill Bratton had given a very firm order for police to not arrest anyone for smoking weed (Bratton was a fantastic chief of police and would have probably made a pretty good politician, had he the patience for the bullshit tied to that role. Alas, one of the things that made him a fantastic Chief was that he had no patience for any bullshit, least of all people harassing unlicensed street vendors or people smoking weed). 

My friend Chris and I smoked a hog leg standing pretty much in front of the theatre on Sunset, then went inside. When the film began, I became instantly immersed and did not regain lucidity until the unlikely use of a Beck song broke the spell. I'll never forget that moment; suddenly aware, I could not have told you whether I was forty minutes or four hours into the film, and the realization blew me away. I liken the experience to a complete cinematic freefall, and I've never been able to repeat that at home. 

I bought the Inland Empire DVD the day it came out in 2007, yet I've only logged maybe three successful complete viewings since. Part of this is because, for years, I could not accept that my stringent standards for viewing films had become compromised by aging and an early work schedule - I'd literally get high and turn this on repeatedly at like 11:00 PM or 12:00 AM and then wonder why I kept falling asleep. 

My most recent rewatch was back in January 2023, and it was probably my first successful attempt to sit through the entire film since that theatrical experience. I was left lukewarm; I loved the first forty or so minutes, but felt as though the "we shot without a full script" element really muddied the waters on the last, oh, two hours or so. This past Sunday, though, I really felt like I followed this film more than ever before. There are still some scenes that stretch both the narrative's cohesion and my patience, but that's my fault for applying preconceived notions about narrative to a film and filmmaker whose staunch refusal to settle for formulaic creation is what I love about him. 

I will say, I also watched the Disc 2 Bonus Features for the first time, and in the More Things That Happened feature - one hour fifteen minutes of deleted scenes that would have brought the film's run time up to over four hours - there are some scenes that I thought would have worked better in Inland Empire than some of Lynch went with for final cut. 

But who am I to tell David Lynch that? 

Yet, now I feel slightly obsessed. My viewing was Sunday, but I've been reading articles about the film online every day since. Here's where I'm at.

I can hold onto the narrative begun in Nikki and Derek's part of the film, but as Nikki begins to slip into Sue, I too begin to lose my ability to hold onto where her character's extremly frightening descent takes her. 

I'm going to take this opportunity to try and write a summary of Inland Empire, just to prove to myself I can.

Nikki Grace is an actress looking to make a comeback with an Oscar-worthy role. She lands one in Director Kingsley Stewart's film On High In Blue Tomorrows with hot young costar Devon Berk. Devon has a reputation as a lady killer, and upon meeting his new costar, begins to work his magic. As they settle into initial rehearsals, Kingsley reveals that the film's Producers have hidden something from them. On High is a remake of another, earlier film that was never finished because the two leads were murdered. This incident has lent the project the reputation of a "cursed" film. 

Nikki and Devon dismiss this story, just as they dismiss Nikki's powerful, Polish crimelord husband Piotrek's warnings that, should an affair occur between the two stars, the consequences would be "Dark and inescapable." Complicating matters is the plot of Blue Tomorrows - basically an affair between the two that would likewise trigger similar consequences from Nikki's character's husband. As Nikki begins to lose herself in her role, eventually becoming Sue, there's a deeper level to beware - has she become the girl from the Polish folktale?

Not bad. I think I'm at the tip of an iceberg with this one, so I may post more as I go along. I've always hoped one day I might suddenly become enraptured with this film that previously just left me scratching my head. Not that there's not more head scratching coming, but at least now it will be a dedicated scratching. The itch of a mystery, not soon resolved...

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Seven Days of David Lynch Day 6: Falling for Industrial Symphony No. 1

From the Lynch/Badalamenti-produced 1989 album Falling. A modern masterpiece, in my own humble opinion.

One of the tracks that doesn't appear in Lynch's cinematic work, but is just as beautiful and haunting as those we grew to love with Twin Peaks. 

I had this on disc in the 90s and finally upgraded to vinyl when Sacred Bones released it a few years ago. I've put the link HERE because even though it's currently sold out, there's a "Notify Me When Available" button, and although I'm not sure if Sacred Bones actually represses their releases, it's worth a shot.

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Watch:

It's taken me what? Twenty or so years to figure out I could search for and probably find David Lynch's Industrial Symphony #1 on YouTube. 

Special thanks to DinosaurVideoDV's channel for upscaling and uploading this to their awesome channel. Check 'em out HERE and give a follow if you dig.

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Read:

I broke out Chris Rodley's Lynch on Lynch and began rereading the Twin Peaks chapter. I was actually trying to remember what critical writing on FWWM I owned. I know I have issues of Wrapped in Plastic that analyze and pontificate on the film, but I really wanted to read something where Lynch himself speaks about the prequel. 

I'm always very grateful for Rodley's books (the Terry Gilliam one is also fantastic), because he's an interviewer with an agenda similar to my own, but also, he really knows how to put his subjects at ease. David Lynch speaks so casually in this book that he can sometimes digress into elements that, while they may not necessarily be relevant to the question at first glance, end up creating a much more satisfying read. Lynch is often like that in interviews, but the only other place I've ever 'heard' him sound so "off the cuff" is in his biography collaboration with Kristine McKenna.

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Playlist:

Julee Cruise - Floating Into the Night

Chrystabell & David Lynch - Cellophane Memories

Thought Gang, David Lynch & Angelo Badalamenti - Thought Gang

David Lynch & Marek Zebrowski - Polish Night Music

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Perturbator - I Am the Night

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks OST

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks FWWM OST

Radiohead - Kid A

Marilyn Manson - One Assassination Under God Chapter 1

Loathe - I Let It in and It Took Everything

Loathe - Gifted Every Strength (single)

Etta James - The Second Time Around 

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Card:

Playing with the Thoth a lot again over the weekend. 

• Knight of Wands

• 5 of Cups: Disappointment

• XIII: Death

"Be decisive, your feelings have changed, so act fast and make the change."

It's always said that the Death card may be the most misunderstood in the Tarot, but I'd say in Thoth, a lot of the 'negative' cards are also misinterpreted. It's our natural reaction to think of things like disappointment and failure as 'bad,' however, the Universe is indifferent, and in the grand scheme of things - the 'long game' of our lives - disappointments and failures are part of the ebb and flow that evolves us. 

This pull shows that clearly. Things have changed, but we tend to cling to what we know, even if it's gone south. Recognize this and be decisive, make a change and evolve. Easier said than done. 

I'm not entirely sure what this is alluding to in my own life, if anything. I've been looking at my recent obsessive workings with Thoth as development of an institutional language with the deck. I've always kind of had one, but that relationship appears to be deepening of late, and for that, I'm excited. In that way, I'm looking at this as a generalized 'story' that will help me further understand the deck overall, and these three cards in particular. 

Seven Days of David Lynch Day 5: Football Game

From 2011's Crazy Clown Time. 

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Watch:

Friday night I did something I've been meaning to do for some time: I brought the television and blu-ray player from upstairs down into the living room and set it up just below the tv there. Then I grabbed the disc with Twin Peaks: The Return from both the standalone BR set and the A-Z set and cued up 17 on the top screen and 18 on the bottom. 

It looked something like this:

Obviously, the pictures don't really do it justice, as I snapped them pretty haphazardly, as not to take away from the viewing experience. To talk about this further, I'm going to pilfer from a text thread I have going with my friend Chester Whelks.

Watching Twin Peaks: The Return episodes 17 and 18 simultaneously felt like it was going to shore some long-overlooked or half-formed theory about the series up into something definitive, but that didn’t happen. I can’t say I took a hell of a lot away from this other than the uniqueness of the experience itself, which is not to be undervalued. I haven't had something like this since The Flaming Lips' Zaireka, and I cherished it. That said, I was hoping for something really jaw-dropping, and that just did not happen. 

It is, however, considerably more difficult to watch two episodes at the same time and keep information from both coming in equally; I kept confusing events in the same episode as happening across both, which in and of itself might just say something about the validity of this interpretation. The fact that Episode 18 gets quiet when 17 is really going tells me there is probably more here and I just need to try the experiment again, but go in with specific ideas to watch for, instead of just careening through haphazardly.

There are quite a few instances of blocking, dialogue and conceptual juxtaposition that make me think this coupling is intentional. A lot of opening doors and traversing thresholds in sync between the two episodes that make me inclined to give this some credence to these being two parts of the same whole (or "two birds with one stone," in the show's vernacular). 

Being that The Return is an 18-episode series and thus perfect for “coupling,” I became interested in the idea of watching the entire series as 9 “couplets." I'm in the middle of a three-day weekend from work, so who knows...

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Seven Days of David Lynch Day 4: Thought Gang - Frank 2000

'Nuff said. 

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Seven Days of David Lynch Day 3: Polish Night Music

David Lynch and Marek Zebrowski's 2015 Polish Night Music is one of the most atmospheric albums I know of. Right from the start, I feel like I'm skirting the alleys of Łódź, passing dilapidated apartment buildings and ornate Gothic churches, only to be sucked into an ominous, failing machine. 

Abstract, yes, but I have Lynch himself to thank for those images. Łódź served as one of the filming locations for Inland Empire, and his lifelong obsession with industrial sounds and scenescapes is omnipotent in much of his work. 

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Watch:

I figured this would be a good time to compile a bunch of trailers released for David Lynch's films, starting with 1990's Wild At Heart. 

This film is so iconic, but it also skirts a line between deadly serious (Sailor beating a man's head open on the courthouse stairs) and completely hysterical (Thrash Metal band Powermad adding accompaniment to Sailor serenading Lula in the middle of a mosh pit). 

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Read:

Continuing with the Lynch-centric theme, I spent some time digging through my old issues of Wrapped in Plastic and found an article from the first issue I ever purchased - issue 17. The article in question was an interview with Twin Peaks writer Harley Peyton on the set of his film Keys to Tulsa. 

As usual, WIP braintrust Craig Miller and John Thorne conduct a fantastic interview, which becomes all the more entertaining as Eric Stoltz and James Spader drift in and out of it. In particular, I either had no idea or had just plain forgotten that Peyton wrote the screenplay for the cinematic adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero (a film I have yet to see, given how much I love the book).

It's been a very long time since I've seen Keys to Tulsa, may have to seek that out sometime soon...

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Playlist:

The Police - Synchronicity

Phil Manzanera - Listen Now

Midlake - The Courage of Others

Deftones - private music

YUNGBLUD - Idols

Drug Church - Prude

Fever Ray - Eponymous

David Lynch & Marek Zebrowski - Polish Night Music

Underworld - Lovely Broken Thing

Underworld - I'm a Big Sister, and I'm a Girl, and I'm a Princess, and This is My Horse

Underworld - 1992 - 2002 (Disc 2)

Zeni Geva and Steve Albini - All Right You Little Bastards

The Trapezoid & Six Ex - Cannibal Children of the West (single)

Shellac - To All Trains

David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time

Angelo Badalamenti & David Lynch - Twin Peaks Season 2 OST

Myrkur - M

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Seven of Pentacles

• XIX: The Sun

* King of Swords

"The solution to the problem taking up most of your time is practice."

I had the idea to start adding quotation marks to the pulls that come off sounding like I'm offering them to someone else. I guess the idea is I'm placing the quotes there so it's obvious (to me?) that this is the cards talking to me. Or something like that. I don't know.

Anyway, pretty direct message on this one. I'm not entirely sure what it applies to, other than writing, which I've not been doing. So a nod to get back on that train, or something else?

Seven Days of David Lynch Day 2: Harold's Theme (The Living Novel)

I have damn near every piece of Twin Peaks music with a proper release on vinyl now (most on CD as well) and that huge, $70 "ALL The music" digital release from back around 2011. I still need to acquire a copy of the "Season Two Soundtrack and More!" on wax, though. Here's one of my favorite tracks. 

For such a smaltzy, soap opera character, there's an awful lot around the Season One character Harold Smith - portrayed by Lenny Von Dohlen - that really works. His idea of the "Living Novel" is one of them. As does his theme, which I've always thought adds a perfect amount of danger to the scenes with him and Donna. 

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