Showing posts with label 8 of Wands Swiftness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 8 of Wands Swiftness. Show all posts

Monday, December 21, 2020

Featherweight

 

In the quiet moments of my day - which admittedly are fleeting - I am still entirely under the spell of Fleet Foxes' newest record Shore. While I've heard this band before - specifically, in 2009 my cousin Charles came out for a visit and introduced them to me with the previous year's Eponymous debut - I've never really listened to them in anything but a passive capacity. Why then, do I feel as though Robin Pecknold's voice hits me like that of an old friend? Someone I've really spent some time listening to, reflecting on, and being moved by? While my memory has absolutely proven to be complete shite the older I've got (who knew all those fears about constant and gratuitous pot use would actually yield these results?), and it's possible I spent more time in the late 00s listening to this band than I remember, it seems more likely that first trip Charles and I took around San Pedro's Portuguese Bend on a ridiculously peaceful and serene July day where he first played the band for me really cemented itself in my emotional epicentre. Although I'd moved from Chicago to LALALand three years prior at that point, when you consider how the momentum of daily life makes it pass in a blur, I remember I still felt like a relatively new transplant at that point, and the first visit from one of my favorite people on Earth no doubt combined with the music to make a photographic impression that is retriggered by the sound of Pecknold's voice here, over a decade down the road. 

Pretty cool.




Watch:

I finally got around to watching Antonio Campos's cinematic adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock's novel The Devil All the Time. I really liked it. Instead of attempting to stuff Pollock's novel into a conventional three-act movie, Campos and his brother Paul, who wrote the screenplay, really allowed the film to go on a more literary journey. 


The Devil All the Time sprawls over the course of two generations, weaving together multiple people's stories and how they all coalesce around the death and depravity of the twisted impulses of humanity as reflected through the misleading light of religion when not tempered with intelligence and common decency.

Yeah. The more things change...




Playlist:

Code Orange - Underneath
Willie Nelson and Leon Russell - One for the Road
Mr. Bungle - The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny
Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit Vol. 1
The Doves - The Universal Want
Anthrax - Spreading The Disease
Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
Jehnny Beth - To Love is to Live
Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA
Fleet Floxes - Shore




Card:

 

In a fairly superficial way, I find it interesting that the card I draw for this post is the 8 of Wands Swiftness when I post Fleet Foxes as the music and the first words of the second song on that album are "For Richard Swift."

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Crash into Eternity

 

I was super happy to finally get a copy of Criterion's recently released Blu Ray for David Cronenberg's Crash. Not only has the film become my second favorite Cronenberg just in the two years since I first saw it at 2018's Beyondfest Cronenberg retrospective, but Howard Shore's score is probably my favorite of his music for Cronenberg's films. Here's the title theme, some of the sickest guitar I have ever heard. 




Watch:

 

I guess I won't be getting rid of my Disney + sub any time soon... Wow. Just wow. The mind reels at what we could get from a What If? series down the road. Some of my favorites from the comic series - which I didn't buy regularly but always picked up if one of the 'What If' scenarios spoke to my particular Marvel series proclivities:






We're not really in a position with the MCU to see this kind of stuff happen, but then again, who is to say that the What If? show will only stick to variations of what the MCU has done so far?




Read:

In preparation of the upcoming final issue of Rick Remender and Jerome Opena's Seven to Eternity, I've just completed a re-read of the series to date. Next? The final issue of Gideon Falls lands this Wednesday, and as such, I have begun to work my way back through that series. 


Creepy AF, and featuring some of my favorite art EVER, I'm super psyched to be taking this trip again just in time for the end of the story.



Playlist:

Joseph Deluca - Evil Dead 2
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA
Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery
Radiohead - Kid A
Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full
Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher
Meg Myers - Sorry
Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - Hollywood (pre-release single)
La Hell Gang - Thru Me Again
Howard Shore - Crash OST
Cynic - Kindly Bent to Free us
The Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once
Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God
Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA
Zeal and Ardor - Wake of a Nation EP
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
Loathe - I Let It in and It Took Everything
Deafheaven - 10 Years Gone
 



Card:

8 of Wands - Swiftness. Eights always move on from the stoic, sturdy Netzach (7s) to a transient moment of swift action and/or decisiveness.

Time to switch gears again. My beta reader has finished Murder Virus, I have all her suggestions and edits logged and, mostly, completed. Now I need to pursue the cover art I want and get this fucker ready to publish by the end of January.

Friday, June 26, 2020

Isolation: Day 106 New Uniform



Killer track from the upcoming album Shame, out September 11th on Sacred Bones. Pre-order HERE.

**

Today is the day! The first three episodes of Doom Patrol Season 2 drop today, with the remaining six to follow weekly from here out. Season One was easily my favorite show of 2019, and thus I'm expecting a similar reaction to Season Two. Will the show draw more madness from Grant Morrison's infamous run? The Scissormen? Albert Hoffman's Bicycle? Mr. Nobody for President? I can't wait to find out.



Speaking of Grant Morrison, the wonderful folks over at Sequart have released Patrick Meaney's Our Sentence is Up: Seeing Grant Morrison's Invisibles. I snatched a copy on Kindle for a meager $3.99, and even after only glancing through it, I can tell you this volume is worth about ten times that much.


It's been quite some time since I last read The Invisibles, and while I have experienced an increasing pull toward re-engaging with it, at the moment, that seems like a misstep.


**

Playlist:

Various Artists - The Void OST
Powerman 5000 - Black Lipstick (pre-release single)
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
C-Building Kids - Shitting in the Urinal
Uniform - Delco (pre-release single)
The Birthday Party - Live 1981-82
Helms Alee - Sleepwalking Sailors
Apparat - Soundtracks: Dämonen
Perez - Les vacancies continent (single)
The Knife - Deep Cuts
The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
The Knife - Silent Shout

**

Card:


Catharsis and the end of confusion. Globally? I doubt that. Personally, speaking from a mindful perspective at the moment,  I don't feel confused per se, unless I broaden that perspective to my place in the world in its current state. Several plates I had spinning are in limbo, leaving a vague sense of, "Well, is that still a thing?" In that regard, an epiphany of any proportion would be most welcome.

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

2019: April 17th - New Earth Track!




From the forthcoming album Full Upon Her Burning Lips, out May 24th on the frankly at-this-point unbelievable Sargent House. Pre-order physical HERE and digital HERE.

**

First day back in LALALand was a doozy. All the cliches: traffic, meetings, yuppies, hipsters, douche bags. I suppose this all seems exacerbated by the fact that I want to live in North Bend! All in due time. Talk about life goals.

**

NCBD today, and I'm so behind I don't even want to know what comes out today. I haven't been able to get into the shop in at least a month - yeah, I blog about what's coming out but my schedule has prevented me from stopping in so all that great stuff is just accruing into a massive bomb that is going to explode in my wallet, creating a black hole that will empty it.

**

Playlist from 4/16:

Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Brand New - God and the Devil are Raging Inside Me
Skating Polly - Queen for a Day (Audiotree Live)
Algiers - Underside of Power
Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog
Helms Alee - Sleepwalking Sailors

Card of the day:


This is telling me to continue to focus, as I did yesterday, on honing one of two stories to send into an open submission I've been waiting to see for a while. Information flowing quickly, which definitely means not to stall or overthink it, even if I am overhauling one of the two stories completely. Then I can dip back into Ciazarn.

Friday, November 2, 2018

2018: November 2nd - New Windhand Video for Red Cloud



Apparently this new Windhand video dropped on Halloween but I missed it. Here now, I present Red Cloud for your viewing pleasure. Great that they basically made a Hammer Horror short for it.

With all the spins I'm clocking on Eternal Return since it's release last month, I came to an interesting revelation. While definitely having their own sound, Windhand's sound could be elevator pitched as Carly Simon singing over early 90s Melvins. Not accurate, but I think it gets you there. As an interesting side note, I never really cared for Carly Simon before, but now I think I dig her.

If you live in Los Angeles, David Lucarelli's brilliant Dr. Zomba's Ghost Show, an old-time theatre experience is back for its final show this Saturday. I caught this a few months back during Fringe Fest - very much worth seeing. You can get tickets HERE and check out the trailer below:



And here's a clip of David talking about the origins and ideas behind Dr. Zomba's on Drinking with Comics:



Playlist from 11/01:

Weeknight - Post Everything
The Misfits - Static Age
The Final Cut - Consumed
Ennio Morricone - Black Belly of the Tarantula OST

Card of the day:


Well well well. Two days in a row, eh? I don't have time to dig deeper at the moment, however I pulled a clarification card and received this:

Swift action toward goal. This feels ambiguous at the moment, or maybe I'm just having trouble betting up my brain on the cusp of a three-day work weekend that starts eight days in a row. For now, I'll take it as a prompt to accelerate my work on making the book materialize, and leave it at that.

Friday, September 21, 2018

2018: September 21st



I first came to know this track as Canon, on 2009's Domkirk record. That was my first Sunn O))) album; I saw it advertised in an issue of Wire and immediately knew it was something I had to own. Yesterday I went searching through the band's catalogue on Apple Music to dive into some of the albums I don't know. 2015's Kanon was one of them. I was stoked to rediscover the track in studio form. There's something about it that, to continue the purple prose metaphor from yesterday, sounds like you're staring into the abyss. A lot of Sunn O))) stuff is like that, but this one especially. Listening to it during the second of a surprise, 3-day FDA inspection at work, I realized the band's music relaxes me, almost feels like a form of meditation. It was a valuable epiphany.

Talk about an effective trailer. Watch this in the dark, with headphones on and tell me you don't get chills.



It's difficult for most filmmakers to create and sustain a truly scary tone for 80 minutes, imagine if this show does it for multiple episodes? Getting my hopes up? Maybe. But you never know.

Playlist from yesterday:

Lake Trout - Another One Lost
Avenged Sevenfold - Eponymous
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Sunn O))) - The Grimm Robe Demos
Sunn O))) - Kanon
Earth - Primitive and Deadly

Card of the day:


From the Grimoire: "Rapid, clear communication. Ending of confusion. Divine or otherworldly communication.  A swift action toward goal; decisiveness." Not sure what this concerns yet, but I'll keep my head up.