Ulver - Hollywood Babylon (haha)

I have no idea how to process the new Ulver record, Liminal Animals. The haunting atmospherics and Black Metal asides are gone in favor of... 80s keyboard lounge? What the absolute fuck? I played the entire record through with my jaw firmly agape, and then I hit track #6, "Hollywood Babylon," and thought, "this has to be a piss-take." But looking around online, I don't think it is.

Admittedly, there's a whole slew of Ulver's career I have no experience with, and reading around online a bit, Liminal Animals appears to be part of a long evolution. I made it all the way through the record, and while I still have trouble reconciling this being the same band that did 

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NCBD:

Small pull this week:

Once again, I seriously forgot about this book until seeing it pop up again. There have been a number of recent series that have kind of etched it into my brain that long-form is dead; the best books are those that get in and get out. Not to say the opposite isn't true, but when you take a book like The Walking Dead - possibly the last long-form series not Big Two I read and loved, it did not suffer from all the hiatus breaks. I really feel like that is killing some series for me. That said, I've hung in this long and enjoyed WTFPFH?, and I'm not going anywhere now. 

Apparently I got in on this one right at the end; Issue Five is the last solicited for the time being. I never did find issues 1-3, so I can only judge by last month's issue 4. I dig Cruel Universe, but maybe not as much as I do Epitaphs From the Abyss. 

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Watch:

Noirvember may be over, but K and I have been so impressed with the selection on the Criterion Channel that I renewed the subscription, and we continued our Noir playlist with Otto Preminger's 1944 masterpiece Laura. 

One of the main characters here is named Waldo Lydecker. If you're a Twin Peaks fan, you know my ears instantly perked up at this. Obviously, David Lynch and/or Mark Frost dig this film. Totally see why. What a fantastic Whodunit. There's a stubbornness to Dana Andrew's Detective Lt. Mark McPherson is extremely gratifying to witness as you go down the rabbit hole on this, ahem, "Who killed Laura" case. And for her own part, Gene Tierney's Laura is fantastic as the victim. Also, Vincent Price is almost unrecognizable as a kind of high-society infiltrating rube - his voice is the giveaway.

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Playlist:

Black Pyramid - The Paths of Time are Vast

Melvins - Tarantula Heart

Shellac - To All Trains

Various - Learn to Relax! A Tribute to Jehu

The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream

Venamoris & Dave Lombardo - Winter's Whisper (single)

Venamoris - Drown in Emotion

Ulver - Liminal Animals

Dreamkid - Eponymous

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Card:

Today's card for study is the Prince of Disks.

I don't have much in the ol' Grimoire for this one, and what I do have doesn't exactly add up. Let's look at what Crowley has to say... okay, that's a bit of astrological gobbledegook, too. Let me see if I can parse some of this down.

To start, both my own notes and A.C.'s start with "The Airy aspect of Earth." Okay, now my notes are becoming a little clearer; as I'd written, "Swords (Air) for pragmatism can be a bit of a cunt for matters pertaining to money and stability."

I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that I asked an intercontinental moving company for a Clarksville to Melbourne, Australia quote yesterday...

Consulting another text I sometimes use to interpret Thoth, Hajo Banzhaf and Brigitte Theler's Keywords for the Crowley Tarot, I see references to cycles, and that immediately makes sense; this card reminds us that we go through our micro versions of the planet's macro Seasons. The Bull is fertility and power. Cycles don't imply stability, and that gels with my comment above. The important thing here is to realize this card is a pinion card; it works best read in a chronology with other cards.