I have not thought about D'Nell or their 2005 Trip Hop/Soul Masterpiece 1st Magic in probably a decade. I ask myself, how is that possible? The moment I thought of it, out of the clear blue sky Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I sought it out, only to find it absent from Apple Music. It's apparently on Spotify, but I only sub to that around October to have access to my four-hour Halloween playlist, so instead, I had to resort to listening to it on youtube.
I hate doing that. I mean, FUCK ads, right?
Anyway, I'm sure the old burned disc I had is on one of the spindles of burned discs I've hung onto since the '00s. Will it still play? Doesn't matter, because I tracked down a vinyl copy of 1st Magic on Discogs and bought it. Shipping from Germany included, and it came to less than I've paid for some new, domestic records.
I cannot wait to get this on my turntable!
I know so little about D'Nell - my good friend Ray turned me onto them back circa 2006 or 2007, and it soundtracked the next five or so years of my life pretty heavily. Then... it just fell off my radar.
I can't explain the size of the smile on my face listening to this last night and again first thing this morning.
Such an amazing record.
Watch:
I'm too exhausted to explain what I know about Backrooms - I don't know so much more than I do - but after my friends Maddy and Kenta introduced me to this and Kane Pixels, in general, this time last year, I haven't thought that much about it.
Until now.
That book I'm currently reading? Coup de Grace? Really reminds me of this, so I've been thinking about it again. I need to carve out some time to sit down, smoke up, and just try and watch as much of this as I can. Also, there is some definite second-generation Hauntology going on in these. Analog ghost worlds, baby. Analog Ghost Worlds...
Playlist:
D'Nell - 1st Magic
United Future Organization - 3rd Perspective
Secret Chiefs 2 Traditionalists - La Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomimi
Calexico - More Cowboys In Sweden (Live)
Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1
Ethel Cain - Preacher's Daughter
The Body - I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer
Currently becoming re-fixated on Sunn O)))'s 2009 EPIC Monoliths and Dimensions.
This was my introduction to Sunn O))); I'd seen references to the band on the Freak Angels Whitechapel board (RIP) that had me curious, so I was primed. I was a subscriber to Wire magazine at the time, and their April 2009 issue had Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson on the cover for the release of Monoliths, so that was my inciting incident. The rest, as they say, is history. I've kept up with the band to a degree, but nothing I've heard by them has ever hit me as hard as the arranging on this one.
NCBD:
More excited about this week's pull list than any in a while; that could all drain away if Diamond continues to lag on actually getting the books still entrusted to their care into shops. I'm waiting on three books from the new year - What's the Furthest Place From Here #21, Barstow #2, and TMNT #6. I understand that the company is struggling, but come on.
Okay, enough bitchin' already. Let's get into this week's books!
LOVE this alternative cover for Batman: Dark Patterns issue 3. Chances are I won't be able to snag this, but that's okay, because the A Cover is pretty bad ass, too.. Really digging this book, though. Dan Watters drums up another really well-done series, with some truly crazy ideas that work definite elements of the Horror genre into a Batman comic (always my favorite Batman stories!)
Thundercracker and Skywarp - I love spending so much time with some of these Gen One characters again. Always dug all three of the original Decepticon planes, but Starscream usually gets all the screen time.
New book by Luther Strode/Spread scribe Justin Jordan. Looks like an occult-tinged, super violent revenge story. Here's the solicitation from League of Comic Geeks:
"Harley Creed is a bad man. He used to be worse. A violent ex-con with a string of brutal crimes in his past, he only wanted one thing when he finally walked free from prison: to leave Briar Falls, WV, behind and disappear forever. But Harley’s hometown has a strange way of swallowing people whole—call it a consequence of the low-level folk magic that has permeated its darker corners for generations. And now that Harley has returned, pent-up vengeance for his past crimes is about to come roaring back. Somebody has put a hex on him—and Harley has seven days before he dies in twisted, screaming agony. To reverse it, Harley must find and kill his unseen enemy before their curse can reap its terrible end. But in Briar Falls, there's no shortage of suspects—and Harley is coming for them all. If can't have peace, at least he can have revenge."
I haven't read a lot of Justin Jordan's work, which is an oversight on my part. I miss the guy's voice - Luther Strode is so very near and dear to my heart. Can't wait to give this a shot.
Part two of Zac Thompson's super weird, super creepy Science Horror Into the Unbeing! Been waiting for this one.
This, like all Z News, will be on hold at my shop in Chicago, so it'll be a minute. Just knowing this is out there waiting for me makes me smile, though.
Play:
A Metroidvania based on the Beast of Gevaudan? Sign me up!
Hitting Switch this summer. Read the full skinny over on Bloody Disgusting!
Playlist:
Tangerine Dream - Sorceror OST
Gazelle Twin - Fear Keeps Us Alive (Beak> Mix; single)
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• IX: The Hermit
• Nine of Swords
• Two of Pentacles
Isolation can seem like a good thing for perspective and concentration, however, it can lead to overwhelmingly destruction thoughts. If this occurs, confide in another.
As I wrote about last week, I'm really only now getting to know Exister, the late Luis Vasquez's final album. Go figure - the one that didn't make that big of an impression on me upon its first release has become my favorite.
Watch:
I finally got around to watching Jang Jae-hyun's Exhuma on Shudder. This was on quite a few "Best of 2024" lists I saw and I must say, that ranking is well deserved. Here's a trailer that happily tells you very little of what to expect.
This felt more like short, episodic premium television series stuck together into a film, a bit like Demián Rugna's Terrified, so that's not a bad thing. I really enjoyed Exhuma, although I ended up breaking it into two viewings. The sad state of my life at this time is it's pretty difficult to garner 134 minutes to sit still and watch a film. Sucks, but it's my current version of reality.
Highlly recommended.
Read:
I found a pretty interesting interview with Weird Fiction/Horror Author T.E.D. Klein. This man's work was all but lost, with beat-up paperbacks from the 80s/90s going for absurd amounts of money on auction sites, so until a few years ago, I'd only ever read "The Events at Poroth Farm" (1972). Thanks to PS Publishing/Drugstore Indian Press's diligence in bringing Klein's work back into print, I finally acquired and read The Ceremonies in 2022 and loved it. Still haven't gotten around to Dark Gods, however, that'll probably happen this year.
One beautiful piece of music I've often taken for granted.
Watch:
Friday night, I watched Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me on Joe Bob Brigg's The Last Drive-In Patreon. I'd seen this posted on the Patreon a while ago and had been saving it. Couldn't think of a better time; I'm two-thirds through my rewatch of Twin Peaks The Return and wanted to slow the roll on that. It's definitely gained momentum fast while watching, and I backed off to kind of savor it.
The original air date of this one was March 6, 1999, on Joe Bob's Last Call. One of the cool things about the Patreon is even though Joe Bob's old shows were basic cable and, therefore edited, the films they put up are the whole enchilada.
I can't say I agreed with most of JB's commentary on the film. However, it was '99, and Twin Peaks was a distant memory to pop culture at large (not to me and my friends; Brown, myself and two other friends would make our first sojourn to the Twin Peaks Fest (RIP) in Washington state a year later in 2000), so without a fresh rewatch of the series - which would have been somewhat hard to do unless you had the Worldvision VHS box set I'd had since it was released in 1993 for $99.95 (had to look the release date on that one up), you probably hadn't seen the series since it originally aired in 90/91 or perhaps when the Bravo network reaired it in 1993. So FWWM would make even less sense.
Read:
Speaking of surrealist Horrro, I finally got around to starting Sopia Ajram's Coup de Grâce.
Here's the description lifted directly from Goodreads:
A mindbending and visceral experimental horror about a young man trapped in an infinite Montreal subway station, perfect for readers of Mark Z. Danielewski and Susanna Clarke.
Don't remember where I first heard of this one, but I'm enjoying it so far, even though I'm still having a lot of trouble concentrating on prose at the moment.
Playlist:
Frank Black - Teenager of the Year
The Jesus Lizard - Down
Mr. Bungle - Disco Volante
Japandroids - Celebration Rock
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Loathe - I Let It In and It Took Everything
Flogging Molly - Float
Riccardo Muti - Verdi: Requiem & Cherubini: Requiem in C Minor
Wolves in the Throne Room - Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge EP
Wolves in the Throne Room - Diadem of 12 Stars
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Blut Aus Nord - The Mystical Beast of Rebellion
Boston Baroque, Conductor: Martin Pearlman - Chrubini: Requiem in C Minor
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
Earlier this week, I fell into a pretty hard jag listening to Testament's older records and it made me realize just how underrated these guys were, historically speaking. It definitely seems like their status has elevated with time, which is great
Watch:
K and I caught Heart Eyes at the local theatre last night, and while I've definitely grown a little weary of Michael Landon's 'quirky' tone, this is a super fun popcorn Slasher.
Heart Eyes is almost exactly 50% Romantic Comedy, 50% Slasher flick. That's a weird mix, but it mostly works. It's heavy on the 'cute' factor, which is where I occasionally lost my patience with the film, but mileage may vary. I think Josh Ruben's directing anchored this one from floating too far out into quirkyville.
I saw both of these bands live back in 2014 at the Summer Slaughter Fest at Hollywood's House of Blues. Both made a great impression, but it was Revocation that really hit. Cattle Decapitation was great, but my history with the band starts and stops with that show. Digging this collaboration between Revocation and C.D. singer Travis Ryan.
No word if this heralds a new Revocation album, but they're about due based on their past release schedule. This reminds me a bit of the Mastodon/Lamb of God collaboration a few months ago.
Watch:
I completely forgot about posting this trailer for Oz Perkins' The Monkey:
I LOVE this trailer! Man, Oz has really had some unbelievably cool marketing for these last two flicks, and I think it has A LOT to do with why these are so successful. So while blumhouse continues to be the trailer bane of the Horror Fan's existence, Neon has really risen to the occasion and will hopefully lead other distributors by example. There's no way The Monkey doesn't smash the box office, and this trailer has a lot to do with the hype.
Also, some pretty great full page inner front cover and back cover ads in the most recent Fango for this, too:
See? These are fantastic!
There's been such a 'vibe' for both The Monkey and LONGLEGS, and that vibe ads to the success. PLEASE let others learn this lesson. Don't make me NOT want to see your movie with the marketing for it (cough*blumhouse*cough).
A week or so ago, I saw a post on social media that alarmed me - Luis Vasquez, the singular voice of The Soft Moon, died a year ago! I had no idea...
When I realized I hadn't posted anything from this band since the day after seeing them live in 2018, I guess it makes sense that they were far enough off my radar that I missed the news of Vasquez's passing in January of 2024 and for, you know, the entire remainder of the year. I was in L.A. for the entirety of January 2024, but pulling last year's Moleskin off the shelf, I see that I spent January 18th at Santa Monica Brewworks with my good friend Chris. Looking at my post from that day, I didn't find a serendipitous dalliance with The Soft Moon's music, and scrolling through their discography, I realized I'd kind of tuned them out after 2018's Criminal. 2022's Exister only shows up three times in my daily playlists on this page.
It also makes sense that I never saw the short film "Stupid Child," a kind of tense noise interstitial for one of the tracks from Exister. This is possibly the most harrowing thing Vasquez had a hand in - the video to "Needs" is pretty fucked up, but I'd say this tops that easily.
Glad I got to see The Soft Moon live. Great band that had so much more in them. Fuckin' Fentanyl.
Watch:
K and I are currently rewatching Yellowjackets seasons one and two as prep for the new season starting on Valentine's Day. Rewatching, I realize there is so much of season two I somehow completely forgot.
K typically conks out earlier than I do, so after she falls asleep, I've been continuing my first rewatch of Twin Peaks: The Return since 2018.
I'd never watched The Return directly after the original series before, and honestly, I don't know that I'd do it this way again. There's such a marked difference between the two; every time I watch the original, I fall in love with it all over again, so to switch gears and jump headlong into the follow-up that is not really concerned with being a follow-up at all felt a bit jarring at first. In fact, after the first two episodes, I was starting to think I didn't like The Return. That feeling didn't last that long, though. By the time I got to episode three or four, my brain had caught up, and I had reemerged.
There's so much about The Return that I love, but first, I have to remind myself that this is 100% a creative vehicle for David Lynch - really his last large-scale vehicle - and he used it to shoot what many TP fans felt was idiosyncratic content that had nothing to do with the answers and resolutions they'd been hoping for since the second season finale aired on June 10, 1991. Lynch famously did things 100% on his own terms (except with Dune, and look how that turned out), and continuing what he'd started and begrudgingly lost control of nearly thirty years ago was definitely not on his "to do" list. I've definitely spent some time wondering what might have been had the show continued, and as usual, those contemplations only yield one result: Better to leave 'em wanting more than to overstay your welcome. Still...
So it took a bit to recalibrate myself coming into this rewatch of The Return, but now I'm 100% in. Friday night, I watched episodes seven and eight, and I was once again struck by (of course) episode eight's absolute grandeur. I woke up the next day wanting to read some critical writing on the series. Happily, I found some excellent articles.
First, this article HERE on the Wrong Answers blog, where Abigail Nussbaum makes some excellent points about what I have long felt is both the saddest and most remarkably compelling aspects of the series, namely how well it mirrors the disappointments of life. The lyrics to Eddie Vedder's contribution to The Return's soundtrack sums this up beautifully:
Next, Crypto-Kubrology's article on Medium reminded me of a theory I'd read about once before, shortly after the series aired. Namely, that episodes 17 and 18 may very well have been intended to be watched at the same time.
As a huge fan of The Flaming Lips' Zaireeka, this idea makes me giddy with anticipation, and while Zaireeka has become all but impossible for me to orchestrate listening to properly, 17 & 18 will simply require I muster the wherewithal to carry the tv in my office downstairs and set it up next to* the one in the living room. I have at least three Blu-Ray players, so no problem there.
White The Return may be unlike the original Twin Peaks in most ways, one thing the two series share is the ability to reward repeated viewings with ever more mystery.
*Although Cryto-Kubrology's screenshots make me wonder if the screens would be better served stacked as opposed to side-to-side, but I'll take what I can get.
Playlist:
The Veils - Asphodels
Frank Black - Teenager of the Year
Frank Black - Cult of Ray
Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
Sleep - Dopesmoker
High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings
Various - Twin Peaks: Music from the Limited Event Series
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• VI The Lovers
• Six of Pentacles
• King of Pentacles
Surface reads are always something I avoid, almost to the fact that sometimes I feel like I tend to resist instances where the cards attempt to convey something simply. I'll not make that mistake today. The Lovers is an obvious nod to K and I celebrating out 9th anniversary this past Saturday. Six of Pentacles is a reminder of the stability I have now, a goal I set and accomplished with no small degree of Will. And King of Pentacles is both a nod to giving more attention to everyday Earthly matters (Malkuth), and that I need to listen to more Sabbath; kinda slacking off lately.
You know you're getting up there when your favorite, most influential post-High School albums start turning 30. How is Teenager of the Year three decades young? I mean, seriously?
Last weekend, K and I drove up to Chicago for a few days. Saturday night I met up with a bunch of old friends and saw the first night of Black's Teenager of the Year 30th Anniversary show at the Metro. Mr. Brown was in attendance, and it felt like such a full circle moment - Brown was the friend who got me into so much of the most influential music of my twenties. In 1995, I'd gotten out of a three-year relationship begun in High School.
Watch:
Last Thursday, K and I had the distinct pleasure of catching Steven Soderbergh's new film Presence.
Not posting a trailer, partially because I haven't seen one and don't have the time to vet one of spoilers, partially because I LOVE the posters they've released for this film. Soderbergh is always a class act, and his film about a haunted house is exactly what you'd expect by being nothing you would expect.
This film blew me away, and I implore any even remotely interested parties to seek this one out while it's still on the big screen. Mind you, this isn't a movie you have to see on the big screen, like The Substance or Nosferatu. However, the camera flows across that massive screen in a way that just intoxicates. In a way, this isn't a "Horror" film in that Horror films generally unfold via events, and there are not a lot of events here. This is a character study of a family first and foremost. That said, when things get fucked up, they get really fucked up. Presence has one of the most disturbing concepts in it I've seen in some time.
NCBD Addendum:
I wasn't going to pick this new SIKTC: Book of Cutter one-shot up, but due to this rolling disaster that is Diamond Distribution, my take-aways from Rick's felt pretty light on Wednesday, and I admit, I was very curious to learn more about the SIKTC mythology, which this book pays off with in droves.
Loved it. More prose than graphic fiction, Book of Cutter really delves into the order of St. George's history while also advancing Maxine Slaughter as a soon-to-be major player in the ongoing SIKTC book. Reading this made me excited about the overall world-building in a way I haven't been since shortly after realizing I love the flagship book but not necessarily the ancillary titles. Might be time to revisit House of Slaughter...
So much music unfurled while I was doing David Lynch week and then in Chicago for three days. Shit, I haven't even mentioned the Frank Black Teenager of the Year 30th Anniversary I attended yet. I'll get to all that, but first - holy smokes! I'll tell you that, while I LOVE Infinite Granite, I was hoping that would prove a detour. I don't need the Deafheaven to only play brutal music, but to me, the mix they achieve on Ordinary Corrupt Human Love is perfect. Regardless of what we get on Lonely People With Power, out March 28th (pre-order HERE), "Magnolia" fills me with faith that, as my cousin Charles' friend Dave predicted, the band made Infinite Granite for them, and it had nothing to do with their overall ambitions/directions.
NCBD:
This is a new Rick Remender book. I've missed out on the last few he's released; hell, I've actually not read anything he's done since A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance, so I'm due. I tried the first issue of a few series since then and didn't really 'feel it,' so here's hoping The Seasons moves the needle.
Published through Remender's Giant Generator, I grabbed the first issue of Dust to Dust and dug it, so I'm coming back for more. Unfortunately, this Diamond bankruptcy is killing my shop, and I've already heard this is outstanding, much the same as the latest issue of What's the Furthest Place From Here has been for weeks now.
Also confirmed as delayed due to Diamond's BS. I'm still really on the fence with Mark Spears' Monsters, but I figure I'll round out the first four-issue arc and reassess after.
This is one I'll need a full re-read on once it's all out, but I've been enjoying the hell out of this second Last Ronin series. I've said it here before, but the dystopian Frank Miller-isms of this series really scratch an itch. An itch for when Frank Miller wasn't a douche bag.
This cover is the stuff from which dreams are made.
Watch:
I caught the trailer for Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk's Hell of a Summer on the big screen last week, and it kinda blew me away.
Yeah, it's more throwback, but I don't care. This looks fantastic.
Playlist:
Moon Wizard - Sirens
The Veils - Asphodels
Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire
Jim Williams - Possessor OST
Nothing - Guilty of Everything
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
Remember your Art (XIV in Thoth) when bogged down in Earthly matters. Enlightenment lies in balancing the two.
Full disclosure. While I am a NIN fan, I've never really been a fan of The Downward Spiral. That's unbelievable to some, and honestly, it's not for the best of reasons. Thanks to a friend's older brother, I found Pretty Hate Machine six months to a year before the Broken E.P. came out, and it was just such a different sound than anything I'd heard before that I was immediately obsessed. Broken's switch to guitar-driven industrial metal confused me, but the band still felt fresh and like it was "mine."
When "Closer" hit the radio two years later and suddenly every jock and cheerleader in school became a super fan, I got salty. Because of this, it took me years to ever give The Downward Spiral a fair listen. Cunty, but what can I say? Seeing a Geo Tracker full of football players ahead of me in a Taco Bell drive-through one Saturday night in 1994, "Closer" blaring while one 'round-the-waste flannelled Quarterback jumped up and down and screaming, "Nails, man! Nail!" just put me off.
After eventually going back later in life to try and reassess, I still found I didn't care too much about TDS. When David Lynch talked lovingly about the album in the March 6th, 1997 issue of Rolling Stone (dedicated to Lost Highway), I tried again.
Nothing (pun intended).
Eventually, I've come around to some of the record. However, both The Downward Spiral and its follow-up, The Fragile, are albums I never feel moved to listen to, and arguably the most famous song off TDS, "Hurt," has always been a particularly sore spot for me. "Hurt" sounds like a cheaper version of "Something I Can Never Have," still a masterpiece in my mind. "Hurt" has always struck me as egregiously sad, with the lyrics often evoking a one-upmanship technique. Sort of a proto-emo Madlib exercise, if you will. I'm not saying I'm right - I realize I am almost definitely wrong; that my bias stems from very much the wrong place; my high school, elitist "I liked that band first" mindset is bullshit. However, I feel how I feel. I continue to try, but nothing really moves the needle.
Until now.
Over the weekend in Chicago, I stopped in a record store and found this in the Bowie section.
I've had a hard time establishing what exactly this performance was. The cover says, "Live Radio Broadcast," however, from the little bit I've seen online, this appears to be a soundboard recording taken from a full live set of the '95 tour, where Bowie and NIN each do a set and overlap on several songs. The thing here is it sounds to me like, on "Hurt" for example, it's Bowie's band doing the song and Trent joining them (which seems to be backed up by the video I posted above). Maybe because of this, I LOVE this version of "Hurt." I mean LOVE. The track listing is spectacular, with the older Bowie songs being reworked with the Outside era's aesthetic; in particular, this makes "Look Back in Anger" and "The Man Who Sold the World" very interesting.
SIDE A:
Hello Spaceboy
Scary Monsters
Look Back in Anger
Wish (NIN)
AndyWarhol
SIDE B:
The Man Who Sold the World
Hurt
Terrible Lie
March of the Pigs
Closer
A word on the track order. Being a bootleg, I'm not sure if the compiler mixed in NIN's performance of "Wish" with an otherwise Bowie-centric side to further give the illusion of a completely unified performance; that was certainly my excited read upon first seeing this in the shop. Either way, I'm super psyched to have this and have already listened to it a number of times since returning home from my weekend in Chicago last night.
Watch:
Sasha Rainbow's Grafted is now on Shudder and, oh man, I cannot recommend this one enough!
I'm already thinking of this as 'this year's The Substance.' Although it's not quite as cinematically bombastic as Coralie Fargeat's film, Grafted is a super fun, super gorey Body Horror Film with a weirdo score by Lachlan Anderson and an outstanding visual aesthetic that visually works the film's metaphors into color palette, setting and design.
Playlist:
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
JD McPherson - Nite Owls
Miranda Sex Garden - Velvetine single
L.A. Witch - Eponymous
Crime Weekly - Rey Rivera (part 1)
Bandsplain - Talking Heads (part 1)
Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets - Indoor Safari
Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food
The Cactus Blossoms - Every Time I Think About You
Another new stand-alone track from The Jesus Lizard? Holy smokes - something's brewing.
Watch:
Yellowjackets season three is right around the corner, and we have a new trailer! One I almost didn't post because of their choice of music - come on folks, do we really want to bring back the 00s trailer trope of using *ahem* drowning pool's let the bodies hit the floor?
Very excited. Apparently, a lot of folks thought the second season dried the show out. I did not. Aside from the heartbreaking death I wish didn't happen (but 100% applaud the creators for having the stones to do so), I haven't a single complaint.
Playlist:
Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Season Two OST
Spoon - They Want My Soul
Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja
Bohren and der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission
Zeal & Ardor - GREIF
Black Sabbath - Vol. 4
Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Black Sabbath - Sabotage
Nothing - The Great Dismal
The Cactus Blossoms - Every Time I Think About You
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Seven of Cups
• IV: The Emperor
• Page of Swords
Emotional stakes at the hands of perceived oppressors trigger impetuous reactions. Don't give in to the pull of chaos. Breathe.
Very fitting for multiple reasons, some having to do with work, others the point that the main character in Black Gloves & Broken Hearts actually uses a mantra I learned from my good friend Missi.
From David Lynch and John Neff's 2001 BLUEBOB album, technically titled ƎU⅃ᗺᗷOᗷ, but I don't know a good way of typing that stylization outside of the clunky cut-and-paste from other websites, and then, see, you get comic sans or whatever that is.
One of my favorite albums ever, and "Mountains Falling" is probably my favorite track. There's something so eerie and beautiful about the guitar, about the entire song. Very compelling and wonderfully utilized in Mulholland Drive.
Tomorrow will bring us full circle on David Lynch's passing, and although technically the week-long celebration would end today, I'm extending it to Thursday for symmetry. That said, I wanted to start to get back into regular posting.
NCBD:
This week's pull list from Rick's Comic City:
And then there's last week's books, which I completely forgot to post. How is that possible? More on that in a second.
Okay, so yeah, how did I forget to post last week's books? Well, besides being so busy at work that I didn't even make it into the shop until Thursday night, and that was only to give myself some normalcy after spending the day with the news of David Lynch's passing? There's something else at work here, though.
I recently realized I no longer have a tent pole book. I like everything I'm reading, but there's nothing that I absolutely cannot wait to read. This is always a rough patch because the older I get and the more media changes, the more I become concerned that one of these patches might stick. That seems unlikely, but even if an indie book really grabs me at some point in the near future, chances are it will either be a limited series or will be released in seasons, with gaps in between. I miss having something that really drives me. There was Preacher, Stray Bullets, and The Walking Dead. Most recently, it was the Krakoa-era X-Men, and after that, I thought for sure the Energon Universe would carry the torch, but that's just not happening. With the exception of DWJ's Transformers, my favorite books last year were all indie titles that were published sporadically or as mini-series. Of everything I read, SIKTC comes closest, but goddamn, these hiatus intervals! Hahaha. I know JTIV is busy working on a lot of books people love - myself included - but that just means there's only sporadic consistency with all of his stories.
Watch:
I really just found myself wanting to hear David talk today. About anything. How cool, then, that I found this:
From the Simple Tom YouTube Channel, which I recommend you check out. The full video for this is in the description.
Playlist:
Man Man - Rabbit Habits
Man Man - Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between
Circle Jerks - Group Sex
The Halloween Scene - Pitch Black Manor
The Cure - Songs Of A Lost World
The Cure - The Head On the Door
David Bowie - Station to Station
David Bowie - John I'm Only Dancing (Sax Version; Single)
David Bowie - Low
David Bowie - Tonight
Raven Chacon - Los Subliminados (single)
Drug Church - Prude
David Lynch & John Neff - BLUEBOB
David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time
David Lynch & Marek Zebrowski - Polish Night Music
David Bowie - Reality
David Lynch - The Big Dream
Various Artists - Twin Peaks The Return: Limited Event Series OST
Various Artists - Twin Peaks The Return: Music From the Limited Event Series
David Bowie - Stage
Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me
Zeal & Ardor - GREIF
Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire
James Brown - Funky People Vol. 3
James Brown - Hell
Hemlocke Spings - going... going... Gone!
Rina Mushonga - Narcisc0 (single)
Jocelyn Montgomery & David Lynch - Lux Vixens: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen
Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Season Two OST
Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Knight of Cups
• XIV: Temperance (ART in Thoth)
• Ace of Pentacles
Couldn't be clearer. Emotional despondency at the loss of an Artistic influence should inspire a breakthrough in Process (the alignment of time and resources, both the Earthly realm of Pentacles). I'm planning on ending my period of obsessive mourning tomorrow with a full-on bounce back into Creative Fire
From Julee Cruise's 1989 album Floating Into the Night, co-written and produced by David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti. Nothing can compare to how this and As The World Spins are used in the original Twin Peaks series.
I just finished my rewatch of the original Twin Peaks and will be moving on to The Return (saving FWWM a bit further down the road, maybe right before the final two episodes of The Return; I should do it now, but it's too dark for me at the moment). Really looking forward to this; I only rewatched The Return once in full, back in 2018.
Jocelyn Montgomery transcends two very particular elements I love - David Lynch and Miranda Sex Garden - a band that could easily be described as Lynchian.
Published in 1991, MSG's debut record Madra consisted of Katherine Blake, Kelly McKusker and Montgomery performing acapella. Shortly after this, Jocelyn left the group and began working on solo material. The single "And Still" was the single collaboration between Montgomery, Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti that preceded the full album Lux Vixens. Lynch produced the album. and John Neff engineered.
From the 2015 album Polish Night Music, written and performed by David Lynch and Marek Zebrowski. You can practically see the manhole covers belching voluminous, silent vapor.
Listening to this the other night with a head full of smoke, I felt like the very air before me might open to reveal a portal to the pitch-black winter streets of Łódź.
It's hard to accurately encapsulate in language what David Lynch means to me. I discovered his work through Twin Peaks in 1990 when the pilot aired on ABC channel 7 Chicago as a Sunday night movie. I was instantly hooked. The show would prove to be unlike anything I'd ever seen. When I think about what seeing that pilot and the subsequent episodes did to me at the age of 14/15, I am not exaggerating when I say David Lynch exploded my world. Narratively, musically, aesthetically, and spiritually.
At 14, I was a suburban Chicago 80s stoner kid. I'd just become enamored with Anthrax through their album The Persistence of Time, and this was a catalyst for me to let the tide of 80s Thrash carry me out onto its tumultuous sea, for better or worse. I loved the imagery that came along with Metal - all the dark, weird and cosmic stuff. I thought Metal, comic books and Horror films like John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness were the only way into that dark tone that inspired all my teenage art - copious amounts of drawings, song lyrics, etc. The same tone that still inspires my art to this day. David Lynch showed me another way.
The idea that the elements he employed could cut so deeply into horrific metaphysics blew me away. Jazz. Small Town America. Lonley traffic lights, shadows, Douglas Firs... the woods proved the ultimate draw - I lived surrounded by the 70K acres of forest preserves covering the Cook County area. Twin Peaks proved such a palpable experience because I could literally walk down the street from my house and get lost in the woods. The Black Lodge felt close. So did mystery and excitement.
From there, I went back and found Blue Velvet - a film I watched for the first time on LSD. This was video store days, so it took me a while to track down Eraserhead. I had to go to a video store 22 minutes away when I finally got my driver's license and could explore more than the Fuckbuster down the street. After that, I watched everything as it came out, mostly in the theatre, the way Mr. Lynch intended. Lost Highway was a revelation I saw multiple times during its initial theatrical run. Mulholland Drive baffled me upon first viewing, then shored itself up as my favorite of his feature films over the three subsequent visits to the theatre that same week. Inland Empire proved a vertical free-fall unlike any other cinematic experience (one I've never been able to recreate at home with the DVD).
The images and soundscapes David Lynch created have accumulated over the last thirty-five years, becoming integral aspects of my personality, driven in deep and strengthened by the patina of time and recycling. I watch David Lynch's work often. I listen to his music more. There's a place in my brain I access through Lynch's work, a shadowy corridor that lets out at my unconscious, my adolescence, my understanding of what it means to be a good human, an artist, and a fan.
I woke up with this in my head this morning and had to post. Such a gorgeous song!
From Man Man's 2008 album Rabbit Habits, now a certified classic in my book. Check out Man Man's website HERE.
Watch:
It feels like a long time since I cared about anything Marvel has done on the large or small screen. I recently tried to pick up Secret Invasion, where I left off before the strike and just found I couldn't care less. This, however, has my blood up:
I'd previously read the new Marvel Daredevil continuity would eschew any connection to the previous Netflix series, but that does not seem to be the case. Also, holy cow, is that the White Tiger we see? Also, fucking awesome to have Bernthal return as Frank Castle. March 4th I know what I'll be watching!
Playlist:
Primus - Frizzle Fry
Rollins Band - The End of Silence
Mudhoney - March to Fuzz: Best Of and Rarities
Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja
Carpenter Brut - Blood Machines OST
Drug Church - Hygiene
Aidan Baker & Dead Neanderthals - Cast Down And Hunted
Carpenter Brut - Leather Terror
Card:
Today's card is the Queen of Cups:
The emotional aspect of emotion, so this is a card that often needs a qualifying pull. Deals with deep, emotional realms of the personality. Associated with Binah, the Mother. Can indicate finding answers in dreams and/or imagination.
As an addendum to Bowie Week, I discovered this Danny Lohner remix of Bring Me the Disco King last night and wanted to post it here. I'll say right away it's interesting, and I dig it, but I love the original version of the song so much that there's really no room in my life for this. Still, I view this site as equal parts personal journal and information dump and part open-source information for whoever stumbles across it, so I felt I needed to record this for posterity's sake.
The addition of John Frusciante's fragile guitar is a nice touch, and the video is cool in a very 00s kind of way.
Watch:
I rewatched Jeremy Kasten's 2007 remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis' Wizard of Gore. People give this movie a lot of shit because it's a 00s remake, and it's also very of its time; the 00s were just not an appealing cultural time. Also, it has the dubious distinction of having been released under the "Dimension Extreme" label, arguably a driving force in ruining 00s Horror.
This flick eschews a lot of that, though, by building its own little pastiche of a world. As a kind of mash-up of a splatter flick and a Noir, Kasten and writer Zach Chassler (working off the original script by Lewis) create a kind of fetish-hipster-Nor L.A. that's all cool reclaimed spaces and lofts. As Danny! and Tim from the long-dormant Double Murder Podcast observed when they paired this film with the original, people like this - and I think they especially meant Kip Pardue's Edmund Bigelow, a trust-funder who completely dismisses modernity for the look and accouterment of the 40s - don't actually exist. True, and it becomes a bit of an affectation for the film. That said, watching the "making of" featurette after the film for the first time last night, Kasten talks about how Costume Designer Carrie Grace (who also worked on HBO's Doom Patrol) worked to ensure every single person on camera has their own specific, individual look. This just makes me think, in that sad, tired way I used to think when I had some hope and positivity in looking at the world, "Yeah, wouldn't it be amazing if that's the world we lived in? Everyone was an individual."
Is this film misogynistic? Hmmm.... maybe? One could argue the woman - naked, scantily dressed, or being butchered - are mere objects to the film; however, Kasten was forward-thinking enough to cast members of the Suicide Girls as Montag's fodder. Suicide Girls, as I understood it at the time anyway, was a movement by which the participants created their personas and online images based on personal empowerment - the then-exploding internet's first artistic or 'tasteful nudes' movement that took the exploitation out of pornographers' hands and gave it back to the subjects themselves. So just utilizing these particular girls kind of thwarts any sweeping generalization about the filmmaker's motives or misguided M.O.
The world and artistic design in this film are part of my big draw to it. Also, it has a very Lynch-like narrative that I honestly think is fascinating. The idea that "Nothing is as it seems" may be oft-overused, but here, it is most appropriate. Also, both Crispin Glover as the titular Wizard and Brad Douriff as the cantankerous Dr. Chong. Douriff's performance, in particular, hums with a barely restrained malevolence that conjures Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth, sublimated under secrets and agendas. That's the entire movie - secrets and agendas, and when it all comes out in the wash, I'm always kind of blown away.
Read:
A couple of years ago, my good friend Jesus gave me Karl Klockars' Beer Lover's Chicago:
Knowing that I A) Love Beer, B) Hail from Chicago, and C) Haven't lived there for 16+ years, Jesus's prescience took a while for me to fully understand. This has been a 'bathroom' book for a while now, but lately, I find myself deeply interested in the stories of the breweries and taprooms contained in this book - hundreds of them. Chances are, they're not all still operational seven years after publication. That's the harsh reality and also possibly the reason I've become so interested in these stories. Any beer fan can attest to the shrinking shelf space at grocery and specialty stores alike as the "pre-mixed cocktails" craze gains steam. I want all these breweries to thrive, whether or not I ever get to sample their beers or not. I love a great beer-based success story.
Mr. Klockar has a pretty informative website as well, which you can find HERE.
