New Music from Myrkur!!!

 

Not certain if this single heralds a new Myrkur album coming this year, but that'd be pretty cool. I just cracked out the first record recently and it left me wanting new music.

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NCBD:

Okay - there had better be an ocean of Sharkticons in this issue. Just sayin'. Among my favorite of all Transformers released, I love these bitey little fuckers. Maybe because they kind of remind me of the old B&W TMNT robot mousers, or maybe because they had their debut in my beloved Transformers '86 with no small fanfare. Seriously, the Quintesson/Sharkticon segments are among my favorites in that film. Cant' wait to see what kind of damage Kirkman unleashes with them here. 

Roadblock's food truck defense system? Not sure what's going on here, but I'll be happy to get my hands on another issue of Joe so soon after that brilliant final issue of Dreadnok War!

Ah - Phil Bram and J.G. Jones' Dust to Dust is finally back. I believe there is just one issue left after this, out March 4th. Definitely going to wait to read this until that drops, so I can sit down and read the entire story in one sitting. 

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Watch:

There's not much Marvel does anymore that I like, but this? I am all about this:

What a super WEIRD trailer, right? Excited to see some old faces return, and I'm really digging the storyline with Michael Gandolfini and that looks like it will continue to evolve this season. 

Also, according to IMDB, this looks to have already been picked up for a third season, so I guess the "Born Again" moniker is the overall title of the revamped show, not the name of a specific limited-series storyline, as I originally assumed.

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST

David Lynch & Angelo Badalamenti - Mulholland Drive OST

Blood Cultures - Skate Story: Vol. I

Sunn O))) - Glory Black (pre-release single)

Sunn O))) - Metta, Benevolence BBC6 Live: On the Invitation of Mary Anne Hobbs

BLUEBOB - Eponymous

The Veils - Total Depravity

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Nocturama

QOTSA - Songs for the Deaf

QOTSA - Eponymous

The Afghan Whigs - In Spades

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Card:

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

• Six of Cups

• Three of Swords

• Ace of Cups

"Finding an emotional center after trauma can only come through empathy."

Okay, I'll admit I'm really reaching with this one. I see this spread and I feel like it's talking to me, but the message is coming out muddled, thus the crappy interpretation above.

Is it enough to think this is a direct nod to my emotional state after seeing this earlier today?

New Music From Sunn O)))

 

From their upcoming self-titled album, out April 3rd on Sub Pop Records. Pre-order HERE.

I'm catching up on a bunch of new music released while I was in the throes of the back-to-back Bowie and Lynch tribute weeks. Not sure when Sunn O))) moved to Sub Pop, but it's weird not seeing their name with Southern Lord. Either way, I'm definitely in the market for a new record from these guys. I kind of check in on them every so often, with Grimm Robe Demos and 2009's Monoliths and Dimensions so far being the only ones I feel truly attached to. For me, it's all about the arranging Anderson and O'Malley add to their core concept of pitch-black drone metal, and "Glory Black" gives me hope that this album may incorporate some new ideas and instrumentation into the classic Sunn O))) sound.

 

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Watch:

We got hit with a "whopping" 2.5" of snow in Clarksville this weekend. I put that in quotes because, being from Chicago, 2.5" shouldn't really be that big of a deal. In a state that doesn't get very much snowfall, though, it is a big deal, and our town's effectively been shut down since Saturday. So K and I sat around and watched movies all weekend. One of those was a first for her and a second timer for me - Martin McDonagh's Seven Psychopaths.

When I watched this for the first time, back around 2014 or 2015, I didn't realize it was essentially McDonagh's version of Adaptation. I don't say that to take anything away from either film - both are brilliant. But where Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation is very 'heady,' Seven Psychopaths is manic and fun. Hilarious at times, really. The cast is a dream cast (Tom Waits!) and the juxtapositon of Los Angeles with Joshua Tree reminds me of an era of my life where I spent a lot of time driving back and forth between the two, staying out in the desert and really getting into a creative groove - which is all the main character in this film - Colin Ferrell's Martin - needs to do to solve all his problems. Well, not all his problems.

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Read:

I've mentioned my reticence to engage with Scott Snyder's Absolute Batman in these pages before; I've read three issues thus far - Daniel Warren Johnson's Annual, the Ark M special, and issue 16 of the ongoing Absolute Batman series. We've reviewed all of these on Drinking with Comics and my cohost Mike and I are pretty much in agreement - the writing's not great. There are some great ideas here, but also, the pull with this one is very much something I recognize as zeitgeist. Will I ever re-read them? Will the fascination outlast the fervor?

Conversely, I don't think I'd ever have considered reading Absolute Wonder Woman until I realized Hayden Sherman is doing the art. I've become a huge fan of this man's work over the last year. Titles Batman: Dark Patterns and the insanely creepy Into the Unbeing introduced and endeared me to Sherman's unique style, and when I saw he was drawing the Absolute version of Diana, I was intrigued.

This book is fantastic! Not your standard take on the character at all, which is great, because this is one of those DC icons that just does nothing for me. Here, Kelly Thomspon writes Diana in a manner that relies heavily on ancient Greek Mythology. Diana was taken from the Amazons at birth and given to Circe in Hell. Circe raised her, teaching her all of her Hecate-worshipping dark magick, and Diana rides the resurrected skeleton of the Pegasus instead of some invisible plane.

I can't stress enough how, despite this being a character I have never been able to take seriously before, Kelly Thompson has dashed those prejudices on the rocks. 

Best of all? Sherman gets to draw a lot of what I really love from him -giant, fleshy monsters! 

I won't be reading this monthly, but I'll definitely be following it in trade.

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Playlist:

David Lynch - The Air is on Fire

The Caretaker - An empty bliss beyond this world

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

PJ Harvey - Uh Huh Her

USSA - The Spoils

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

Saigon Blue Rain - Oko

Sunn O))) - Glory Black (pre-release single)

Mars Red Sky & Monkey3 - Monkeys on Mars EP

Chrystabell & David Lynch - This Train

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Card:

Putting aside Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot again today (which you can buy HERE) to work with my Thoth deck. That's really where my head and heart have been at. 

The Princess of Cups has always felt like a very gentle card to me. Nurturing in a way most other cards in this deck (or most decks) are not. There's an embrace here, reminding us of the importance of love and understanding, but there's also a nod to methodology and escaping the interior for a bit of the exterior once in a while. Princesses are a creative court, and this card tells me to nurture ideas as though they were loved ones. 

Brigitte Calls Me Baby - Slumber Party

 New music last week from Briggite Calls Me Baby. New album Irreversible is out March 11th, pre-order HERE. I'm assuming it's not a revisionist soundtrack for Gaspar Nöe's film of the same name.

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Read:

Seven days of David Lynch 2026 may be over, but my deep-dive into the man's work continues apace. My dalliance with Chris Rodley's Lynch on Lynch has turned into a full-on reread. First time since Mr. Brown gave me the book in the late 90s. I found this particular passage in the chapter on Lost Highway and thought it something good to hang onto, for inspiration in my own artistic process. Rodley has just brought up the CIBY2000 publicity for the film and mentioned how their description of Lost Highway as a, "psychogenic fugue" is right on the money. He and Lynch discuss this for a bit, then, when Rodley asks if Lynch or co-writer Barry Gifford had read up on the term while making the film, Lynch says the following:

"No, no, no, no. Certain things happen, ideas come along and they string themselves together and they form a whole and then a theme, or something becomes apparent - if you wanna look for it. But if you're true to these ideas you don't need to know. If you start off with a theme and say, "We're gonna amplify this theme," and then write a story about something, that to me is completely backwards. Then you've gotta force things to fit. The other way, you don't know what it is. It just comes together and then later you find out. But meanwhile you're falling in love with it. You just know somewhere that it's right for you."

Photo from the Idan Wizen gallery site. Visit HERE.

I have a feeling I'll be hanging out with David for quite a while this year. Talk about raw inspiration and a reminder of the magnitude and effect of Love in the world.

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Watch:

Two Fridays ago, right before I went careening off the David Lynch deep end, K and I finally watched Emerald Fennell's 2023 film Saltburn. I instantly fell in love with this one, and, while gauging others' reactions proves the film is quite polarizing, I'd recommend it, especially for anyone who's a Bret Easton Ellis fan.

I loved both Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi's performances in this film, and am now pretty psyched to see Fennell's upcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation. There's not much in the way of subtext here, but there are a few surprises. Also, this film has one of my favorite final scenes in recent memory - it literally had me smiling for about a week after my viewing.

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Playlist:

David Lynch & Alan Splet - Eraserhead OST

Brigitte Calls Me Baby - Slumber Party (single)

Briugitte Calls Me Baby - Impressively Average (single)

David Lynch - The Air is on Fire

David Lynch and Chrystabell - Cellphane Memories

David Lynch, Angelo Badalamenti and Thought Gang - Thought Gang

Fantömas - Suspended Animation

David Lynch - The Big Dream

Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles (II)

USSA - The Spoils

David Lynch & Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Music Archive

Gylt - In 1,000 Agonies, I Exist

Blut Aus Nord - Etheral Horizons

Slaughterhouse - Sick and Tired EP

Saigon Blue Rain - Oko

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Card:

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

• Six of Cups

• Nine of Swords

• XIV: Temerance (Art)

Emotions will heat up and hold me hostage if I do not practice my art. 

This is a reminder that some of the wilder emotional swings I'm experiencing these last few days are a result of not having done enough writing of late. Everything inside me suffers when I lapse from my craft. I become quick to anger, feel mostly useless and experience lethargy. Push forward!

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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