Your Black Star

 

I haven't listened to Your Black Star in a pretty damn long time, and although I have absolutely no idea what put them back on my radar, yesterday, I'm glad it happened. I love this band's 2006 record Sound from the Ground; this came out the same year I moved from Chicago to L.A. My ex-wife was a music journalist, and back in those days, we'd have CDs arriving in the mail all the time. A lot of stuff from small, completely independent labels. Not all of it was good, but boy did I find some gems that way. Young Widows, These Arms Are Snakes, and Your Black Star were top of the list. 

Listening again, I realized that while I'd always recognized The Cure's influence on these guys, it wasn't until diving back in that I realized how much this opening track is influenced by the title track to Pornography, arguably my favorite Cure record. Listen to those pounding drums, the way the bass comes in and the 'static' guitar. Gorgeous.

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31 Days of Halloween:

I didn't get a chance to post the last two days, so here's the end tally for 2023's 31 Days of Halloween:

1) When Evil Lurks/VHS 85/Adam Chaplin

2) Tales From the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 6 "Collection Complete"

3) VHS

4) All You Need is Death

5) Slashers (2001)

6) The Beyond/Phenomena

7) The Convent

8) Evil Dead 2

9) The Autopsy of Jane Doe

10) Totally Killer

11) Ritual (Joko Anwar)/The Final Terror/Grave Robbers

12) Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (w/Joe Bob)

13) Never Hike Alone/Never Hike in the Snow/Never Hike Alone 2

14) Puppetman

15) Creepshow Season 4 Episode 1

16) Return of the Living Dead

17) Don't Look Now

18) When Evil Lurks

19) Barbarian

20) Demons 2/All Hallows Eve

21) May

22) Let's Scare Jessica To Death

23) The Birds/30 Coins Ssn 1 Ep 1

24) 30 Coins Ssn 1 Ep 2/The Church

25) Elvira Mistress of the Dark

26) To Kako (Evil)/To Kako: Stin epohi ton iroon

27) Tourist Trap (w/ Joe Bob)/Totally Killer

28) Amusement

29) The Rocky Horror Picture Show/There's Nothing Out There

30) Planet Terror/Arsenic and Old Lace/George A. Romero's Bruiser/976-Evil

31) Halloween 78 (w/ Joe Bob)/Flatliners 91/Night of the Living Dead

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Watch:

How has it been twelve years since I watched Robert Rodriguez's Machete? This might be one of the best action movies ever.

This flick is such a rip-roaring good time, and watching it again last night made me realize I'ver never seen the sequel, Machete Kills. Time to remedy that.

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Playlist:

The Misfits - Static Age

Halloween Spotify Playlist

Wytch Finger - The Dance EP

Skinny Puppy - Remission

Ministry - The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste

Umberto - Prophecy of the Black Widow

The Misfits - Collection I

The Sisters of Mercy - Floodland

Boy Harsher - Careful

Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets (98 Edition)

Ghost Cop - One Weird Trick

Your Black Star - Sound from the Ground

Deftones - Gore

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Talk About the Weather

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Card:

Just one card from my Thoth deck for today. 

Yeah, that's an understatement. The endeavor to move my folks from South Suburban Chicago to Clarksville was almost complete, and then... thwarted at the last minute by an inspection. That's not the change denoted here; this generalized pull is really just reminding me that although my preoccupation with the move has me blinded to it at the moment, there's a lot of change on the horizon. That's a pretty surface-level reading, especially when using the Thoth deck, but that's all I've got. I fried.

Jehnny Beth - I'm The Man

 

I have a very push/pull with this video. Two days ago my good friend Jacob sent me a link to Jehnny Beth's debut record, To Love is to Live. You may remember her from Savages, whose 2013 debut Silence Yourself still resounds as one of my favorite records of the previous decade. Savages' follow-up Adore Life came out in 2016 and just kind of left me flat. I go back to it every now and again, but the 'a-ha' moment has never come. Still, I hold out hope that one day it might. 

So too, my first couple of attempts at listening to To Love is to Live were completely unsuccessful. I put the record away, went about my business, and came back to it later for a fresh perspective. This time, I perused the track listing before jumping in from the beginning, as I am most often wont to do, and decided to start with the fifth track on the record, "A Place Above", simply because the listing said featuring Cillian Murphy, and I was curious what that would sound like. You can actually hear that track in the video above for track six, "I'm The Man", as it serves as something of a prologue to the song. I'm happy to report, from this track on, the album opened to me in a way that very much made me appreciate Ms. Beth in a way I don't think I have before. The video above, directed by Anthony Byrne, is gorgeously shot and lit, even if the theatrics themselves that comprise the narrative of the video's run time leave me a little harumphed. 

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Watch:

If you've listened to any of the recent episodes of The Horror Vision - we've been weekly for a month or two now - you'll have heard me talk about Eibon Press's four-issue comics expansion/adaptation of Lucio Fulci's The Beyond. I loved the book, and immediately ordered the trade paperback collection The Gates of Hell, which does for Fulci's City of the Living Dead what the aforementioned comic did for The Beyond. There's a big picture here, and it excites the F*CK out of me. One of the things that converted me to such a huge fan of Fulci's Gates of Hell Trilogy is the mythos, the larger picture that can be glimpsed beneath the films. It reminds me of HP Lovecraft's mythos, and I think Eibon Press is breaking serious ground by going in and fleshing it out. 

After talking about this on our show, Eibon Press founder Sean Lewis hit me up online. There will be an interview coming up down the road, but before that, some more reviews, as he sent review copies of a lot of other Eibon books with my Gates of Hell trade. 

First up was House By the Cemetery, three issues that further my favorite Fulci film in ways that directly connect it to the other two movies in the series. Next, that Gates of Hell trade is calling my name, so first, K and I re-watched City of the Living Dead last night.

Easily the poorest of the three films in this cycle, the comic will only be able to improve the story, for which there is only the barest hint of in the film. Don't get me wrong, I still dig it, but even that clipped, nightmare logic that makes The Beyond work so well kind of fails here, as we move from scene to scene with a pretty transparent disregard for anything but the gore and atmosphere. 

Interestingly, while this is the weakest of the three Gates of Hell flicks as far as story is concerned, City contains the best FX in any of these: Bob's drill-through-the-head death scene doesn't suffer from the usual tail-end let down present in most of these movies, where you can see how the actor is replaced by a close-up of the model. Below, compare Bob's death with the infamous 'gut-spewing' scene from this same movie, where you can clearly see the actress replaced by a dummy (again, not badmouthing here, just saying).

I should add, these are some especially gross-out clips (okay, really just the second one), so press play at your own risk:

 

 

Anyway, as I said, Eibon press's Gates of Hell comic can only improve on this one, so I can't wait to dig in later today.

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Playlist:

Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA

Me and That Man - Songs of Love and Death

Queens of the Stone Age - ... Like Clockwork

Curtis Harding - Face Your Fear

Venue - One Without a Second

Deafheaven - 10 Years Gone

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Card:

Twos are often an indication of balance, I can't help feeling that is a spot-on assessment of the morning so far. 

Two's also indicate cycles, shorter cycles, and I feel a few loops closing in the near future. This is good, as I seem to constantly be opening more of them.

2019: April 9th - Some Helms Alee to Start this Rainy Day

More rain - yes!

I walked 5 miles around Spokane yesterday, partially in the rain. It was fucking glorious. This city feels to me like the image of Seattle told through Everybody Loves Our Town, and all stories my mind made from the images put there by Nevermind and Houdini and Superfuzz BigMuff, back when listening to music was my only means of exploring a larger world (i.e. High School). Gentrification encroaches, slowly pushes out the artists and the addled, so that you see people in suits checking into hotels next door to which are convenience stores overrun by homeless criminals with backpacks full of poison for sale. The rain looks like it's falling even when it doesn't, and the damp is almost a caress. Stone and brick buildings everywhere, shuttered shops a genuine lack of strip malls and plazas (god I hate that word), and the city seems besieged by either trees or mountains, depending on which direction you look. All in all, it is an amazing place to fall in love with a new album, and this Sleepwalking Sailors record by Helms Alee is just doing it for me right now.

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Apparently, Young Widows are at Roadburn Festival this year, performing Old Wounds in its entirety. Wow. There are no festivals I would like to attend on Earth except Roadburn. Check out this year's art. Love it like I do? Maarten Donders is your man! I can't wait until Jonathan Grimm does one of these. It's so going to happen.

Playlist from 4/08:

Young Widows - Old Wounds
Helm Alee - Sleepwalking Sailors

Card of the day:

Two big changes taking place at the moment - handing the book of to Missi and starting on Ciazarn, and spending a week working in Spokane, so I'll read this at a general, face value.

2018: July 2nd

Dug out the first John Frusciante solo album yesterday. Hadn't listened to it in some time. Say what you want about the performance/production, but there is something so psychologically intimate about this one. The story that he was basically found living in his own squalor when he recorded this on a four-track is legendary by now, and I no longer even remember if it's true or what the specifics are, but there's some raw shit here, and some of it is genius.

Playlist from yesterday was short:

Underworld - 1992-2002 (disc 2)
Underworld - Beaucoup Fish
Deadsy - Commencement
John Frusciante - Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt

Card of the day:

And... the only constant is change.

2018: June 9th

Well, Stranger Fruit by Zeal and Ardor is shaping up to be the best album I hear this year; pretty sure this is one of those albums that each song will take a turn rotating in as my favorite. Well done lads (and lady), can't wait to see you at the f*&king ROXY in October. Moving up.

Playlist from 6/08/18:

Ghost - Popestar E.P.
Lauryn Hill - MTV Unplugged 2.0
Underworld - 1992-2002 (disc 2)
Underworld/Iggy Pop - Bells and Circles
Ghost - Prequelle
Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous E.P.
Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit

Card for the day:

Hmm...