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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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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Seven Days of David Lynch Day 1: BLUEBOB - Blue Horse

 

This coming Friday marks the one-year anniversary of David Lynch's death. You know what follows in these pages. Starting Seven Days of David Lynch today, with a favorite from Lynch's collaboration with multi-instrumentalist/Producer John Neff, BLUEBOB.

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NCBD:

Big week, and I've already received a warning not to flip ahead in the finale for Dreadnok War, so I'm psyched. Let's get into it!

Creeping up on issue 30. Wow. Kirkman is building something great, and I'm here for it. 

Not a lot to say about the new creative team on TMNT so far. And that's not a bad thing by any means. The art is insanely good, and the writing feels like we're building to go somewhere interesting, so I'm just sitting back and waiting. Which, with the turtles, is always fun.

The one non-80s IP this week, and I'm happy as hell to have the respite. I love Jeff Lemire's Minor Arcana!

So weird that such a large part of my monthly pull is now centered on the toy properties I loved as a kid (and still love, let's face it). 

Whatever happens in this one, I have a feeling it's BIG! Great way to end Dreadnok War, which has really served as a revitalization for the Energon Universe's version of the Joes for me. 

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Playlist:

David Bowie - A Reality Tour (Live)

Faith No More - Album of the Year

Peeping Tom - Eponymous

David Bowie - Low

David Bowie - Reality

Helmet - Aftertaste

IDLES - CRAWLER

Agriculture - The Spiritual Sound

Blood Incantation - Absolute Everywhere

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Card:

Just one card from Thoth today. I've been pulling at least one a night, independent of my Hand of Doom spreads. I've felt a reconnection to this deck of late, and I can feel myself growing into it in an even more substantial way than before, which is saying something, because I've now had this one for over twenty years. 

• Prince of Cups: Today, especially, don't undervalue pragmatism when dealing with Earthly matters. Vague, but I'll take it. There's also the intimation of making a decision and acting on it quickly. 

David Bowie/Brian Eno - Moss Garden

 

After an unexpected trip to Chicago for a funeral this past weekend, I've been so slammed at work I've barely had a chance to think of posting here. I couldn't miss closing Bowie Week 2026 with one of my favorite tracks from 1977's collaboration with Brian Eno, Low. Of the three albums in Bowie and Eno's "Berlin Trilogy," I'm pretty sure this one is my favorite. 

Ten years since he left us, and the world has done nothing but disintegrate. 

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Hallo Spaceboy

 

From 1995's Outside. Or rather, this is a remix of the song on Outside. A remix that leans heavily into 90s electronica and really makes it work. I mean, I prefer the album version, but this is definitely a cut above what a lot of other established artists were doing to keep up with 'the new sound' at the time.

Also, is that Pet Shop Boys' singer, Neil Tennant, singing on this track? 

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Watch:

Last Thursday, I saw Johannes Roberts' latest film, Primate. Can't recommend it enough, but it's not for the faint of heart, that's for sure. The Horror Vision did a spoiler-free review:

We're only two weeks into the year and I already have one film I feel pretty strongly about as far as a "Best of 2026." Always a good sign.

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Playlist:

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

Helmet - Aftertaste

Coleman Hawkins - Wrapped Tight

Tamir Hendelman - I Saw Three Ships (single)

David Bowie - Heroes

Chicago Underground Quartet - Good Days (For Lee Anne; single)

Carepenter Brut - Leather Temple (single)

Johnny Griffin - The Cat

David Bowie - Reality Live

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Card:

Setting aside Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot 9which you can buy HERE) to work with Thoth for today's card.

Control desires. Or maybe, don't control them? I think one of the things I've taken away from this card over the years is a juxtaposition with Chaos Magick's edict not to let the lust of result hamper the chances of achieving what you want. This is pertinent in everything, although I didn't have anything specific in mind at the time I drew, so I'll be reflecting on this card all day today.

David Bowie Interview 1999

 

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David Bowie on the Making of Outside

10 years ago today. 

As the years have gone on, 1995's Outside has become one of my favorite albums, period, Bowie or not. Raiding the David Bowie YouTube channel over the last few days, I've found some gold.

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David Bowie - Breaking Glass Live 1983

Thanks to the Mr. Screaming YouTube channel for adding this and a metric shit ton of awesome Bowie stuff. Definitely check out his channel HERE if you dig this.

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Watch:

This is how you market a Horror movie!

A24's Undertone already has some praise, but personally, I don't want to know anything else about this one until I have my arse in a seat at the theatre. 

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Playlist:

This Movie Saved My Life Podcast - Best of 2025

Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power

Deafheaven - Infinite Granite

Young Widows - Power Sucker

Hangman's Chair - Saddiction

Netherlands - Vapors

IDLES - CRAWLER

Ritual Howls - Ruin

Sylosis - The New Flesh (pre-release singles)

Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves

David Bowie - Low

David Bowie - Heroes

David Bowie - Lodger

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

Helmet - Aftertaste

Deadguy - Near-Death Travel Services

Slow Crush - Thirst

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Card:

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

• XIII: Death

• XVIII: The Moon

• Two of Wands

Sacrifices made in the full knowledge of the desire. Two is stronger than one. 

Cryptic, but I think I get it. Not discussing it "out loud" at this time, but I think this pertains to a creative project I want to do this year. I think I need to declare it. 

Tony Visconti on the Making of Blackstar

I thought I'd try and do a little something different this year and post some non-music videos for David Bowie week. Here's legendary Producer and David's long-time collaborator Tony Visconti talking about the making of Blackstar. 

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Let's Spend the Night Together (Because They Will Kill You)

This coming Saturday, January 10th, marks the tenth anniversary of David Bowie's passing. I usually begin 7 Days of Bowie on the anniversary, but this year, I'd like to start it a little early. So here we go. We miss you, Starman!

It struck me again the other day just what a weird, awesome cover this one is. From his 1973 album Aladdin Sane, 

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NCBD:

2026 is starting out light. Not a complaint, that's for sure! I've been trimming back my pull list at Rick's, trying to stick with essentials. There will always be new books that catch my eye, and I'll almost always give them a try, as that's how I often find my favorite books (see the Drinking with Comics "Best of" for 2024 and 2025, where last-minute chances end up near the top of my year-end list). At the same time, I tend to overbuy, and I'm becoming increasingly neurotic when it comes to space. I have a short box and a half of stuff I want to get rid of but am not 100% sure the best way to do so, and I've spent several recent nights just sitting in my office/nerd dungeon* reflecting on how to improve use of the space for all my 'things.'

First world problems, fo sho.

Here are this week's books:

The first issue of Batman/Green Arrow/The Question: Arcadia either suffered from a skosh of awkward story compression, or I'm just missing a lot of assumed historical knowledge, being that I have zero experience with two of the three characters here. Still, this harkens back to the late 80s prestige-format DC books, so I'm hanging in. 

Not sure if this is the end of the second arc or the entire series. I'm pretty sure there must still be at least one more mini-series to go. Either way, Stokoe's art continues to blow me away on every page.

I'm still fighting a zeitgeist urge to get into this Absolute Batman. It's been pretty easy to avoid the regular series because the one issue I've read was not great. That said, there are some pretty interesting things going on in this "Universe," so I've been cherry picking a few titles. 

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Watch:

I only needed to make it 38 seconds into this trailer to know I was in. You can only watch it on youtube, but here's a poster and the embed should take you directly there:

Kirill Sokolov's They Will Kill You looks fantastic! I am absolutely psyched for this one, which comes out three days after my 50th birthday! Woo-hoo!!

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Playlist:

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

Mountain Realm - Frostfall

David Bowie - Low

David Bowie - Aladdin Sane

Ghost - Impera

David Bowie - The Man Who Sold the World

Kildren - December (single)

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

The Jesus Lizard - I'm Tired of Being Your Mother (single)

The Jesus Lizard - Down

Helmet - Aftertaste

Spoon - Girls Can Tell

Spoon - Kill the Moonlight

Self - Niceness (single)

Self - Porno, Mint & Grime

Metallica - Ride the Lightning

Denison/Kimball Trio - Plays  the Music of Walls in the City

The Besnard Lakes - ....Are the Ghost Nation

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Card:

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

• Knight of Swords

• Seven of Pentacles

• Three of Pentacles

The Creative Will often needs to stagnate in order to prosper. 

That definitely fits. Yesterday was the first writing session I had in a week; whenever I blow a weekend without a creative outlet, it feels gross, and now that's kind of morphed into a long, slog of 'blah.' Up late writing this on Monday night, I don't feel like doing much of anything: writing, watching, nothing but listening to David Bowie. That's the only agenda I had that kept me from turning in. So I'm listening to The Man Who Sold the World for the first time in a couple years and writing this and I'm not really sure what I'll do when I reach the end of this sentence.

Steve Moore - Cinematic Horror: Whispers from the Well

Steve Moore released a new album last week that I only discovered last night by accident. Cinematic Horror: Whispers from the Well is a deep dive into sonic spectral hauntings as only Steve Moore can provide. I'm not really sure what the deal with this album is or how to purchase it. Published by Sonoton Music, you can access it on the usual streamers or on their site HERE. It's not on Moore's Bandcamp, and I can't find anything written about it, so I'm not sure if these are completely new compositions or if this might be a culling of Moore's work from previous OSTs I am not familiar with. I have all his Joe Begos stuff and a large chunk of Zombi in my library, but looking over his credits, there's a lot more I can't wait to get to know, starting with this.

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Watch:

I saw a poster for Mark Fischbach's Iron Lung recently, and was surprised when I saw the trailer:  

Major Panos Cosmatos vibes off this, so I'll definitely be catching it in the theatre when it opens on January 3oth. Even more absurd - after typing that last sentence, I picked up my phone and went to order tickets only to find that almost the entire Thursday 1/29-1/30 screenings are sold out. Clearly, I am behind on this...

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Playlist:

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

Imperial Triumphant - Imprints of Man

Imperial Triumphant - Goldstar

The National - High Violet

The National - I Am Easy to Find

The Besnard Lakes - ...are the Ghost Nation

Meg Myers - Sorry

Deftones - private music

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Card:

Taking a break from Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot (which you can buy HERE), as my Tarot work independent of these pages has led me back around to Crowley/Harris' Thoth deck:

• 0: The Fool

• 10 of Cups - Saitey

• 7 of Cups - Debauch

Beginning again can lead to fulfillment, but be sure to see where to stop.

Not really sure where this applies - work maybe. 

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

More fabulous Dungeon Synth from Mountain Realm, distributed by Cryo Crypt Records. I LOVE this one - there's something about the synth tones employed that induces a wonderfully dreamy lethargy in me. You can grab the digital for $5 over on Bandcamp. Perfect for what I've been reading (below). 

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Watch:

Well, Stranger Things is over. I feel like, overall, Season Four is still my favorite. Five had some ups and downs for me, but I think a lot of that had to do with the release schedule. 

Those first four episodes Netflix dropped around Thanksgiving blew me away - especially the very end of four. Then the three we got last week... I feel like the creators had to slow things down to address a lot of dangling character threads that probably could have been woven more evenly throughout the entire season. And those Christmas episodes could have easily been one long episode instead of three. But the finale made up for it. Not necessarily the Vecna-related stuff, which was fine. What the Duffers did REALLY well, though, was all the after-the-final-battle stuff. K and I sobbed, and it felt great. 

We're recording a full-spoiler discussion on the final four episodes this weekend, so that will go up next week. In the meantime, here's our discussion of Season Five, episodes 1-3.

Overall, I really loved the entire series. Totally worth the hype. 

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Read:

I blew through the second book in Nathan Ballingrud's Lunar Gothic Trilogy, Cathedral of the Drowned, and I can honestly say this was the best novel I read in 2025.

Ballingrud's marriage of Horror, Weird Fiction and Science Fiction/Fantasy is seamless and unparalleled, primarily because, over the course of his career, he has honed his prose into a tight and ethereal style that so confidently conjures abstractions he can put you anywhere he can imagine. This novel continues the story begun in 2024's Crypt of the Moon Spider, advancing the race of sentient but eerily quiet Moon Spiders and further exploring the bizarre, reality-shifting properties of their webbing. Ballingrud takes us from the horrors of the Moon to a burgeoning gang war in Red Hook, New York, to Jupiter's Io moon, all teeming with life, gore and questions of what it means to exist as a sentient being. 

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Playlist:

Radiohead - OK Computer

PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love

Idles - Crawler

Willie Nelson - Oh What a Beautiful World: The Songs of Rodney Crowell

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads

Year-End Maintenance

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

Ulver - Neverland

Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain

U2 - War

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Card:

One Card for 2026 pulled on NYE:

I've been studying the Thoth deck again for the last few weeks, so I felt it only right to do my New Year Pull with that. This is a definite nod to take the high view; avoid knee-jerk reactions and try to see things from a macro perspective. Use insight, intellect and Will, not emotion. 

Idling in the Basement

 

I recently mentioned to an old friend I reconnected with that, while I LOVE Idles' 2018 album, Joy as an Act of Resistance, I've had a tough time getting into anything since. Not because I don't like what I've heard; I know myself and I call this the "PJ Harvey Syndrome." I adore PJ Harvey, but I fall so hard for an album at a time that it becomes difficult for me to acclimate to any of her other works beyond that album for usually years at a time. It started with about five years of To Bring You My Love, grew to include Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea for about another seven years, then finally let in Uh Huh Her. And that's about where I am with Ms. Harvey - I'm overdue for sure.

Back to Idles, David mentioned I should start with Idles From the Basement concert on YouTube, and I'll be gotdamned if he wasn't exactly right. Thinking this is the album that opens these guys' post-Joy work up for me. I had not realized just how much they'd developed as a band - watching this, it's difficult not to make comparisons to Birthday Party-to-Bad Seeds Cave and crew, especially while watching Guitarist Mark Bowen alternate between a whole slew of different instruments a la Warren Ellis. 

I'll be starting the day off with 2021's Crawler, so here's to the hearty exploration of sound and fury!

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NCBD:

Nothing on my pull list at Rick's today, so how about instead I post the latest Drinking with Comics, where Shin and I rattle off our top five list for 2025!

I went straight to the top five comics published this year; Mike did a little something different. When all is said and done, I think there's a lot of great stuff out there, and this is definitely meant to encourage folks who are looking for something new. 

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Watch:

K and I finally got around to Luca Guadagnino's latest film, After the Hunt, last night. As usual, this man excels in filmmaking.

The tension is profound. The acting is superb, and while I admit that I've spent most of my life running from post-Flatliners Julia Roberts, she is exceptional here. The film says so much with a bombastic nuance that leaves you breathless by the end, and I actually think it helped me come to a conclusion about our society that, while it's not a good thing, is definitely appreciated as a warning. 

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Playlist:

Kate Bush - The Dreaming

White Reaper - Only Slightly Empty

Gylt - I Will Commit a Holy Crime: Tandem

Orville Peck - Appaloosa

Netherlands - Vapors

Slow Crush - Thirst

Teenage Wrist - Chrome Neon Jesus

HEALTH - Conflict DLC

Mondo Decay - Nun Gun

Fever Ray - 

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The First Born Son is Dead

The Cure - Pornography

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

Ethel Cain - Perverts

Ildes - From the Basement

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Card:

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

• XVI: The Tower

• Seven of Cups

• Six of Wands

Do not let massive emotional change poison the creative urge.