Abby Sage - The Rot

 

Abby Sage just climbed a little bit higher in my esteem when I saw the thumbnail for this one. WTF? Hot on the heels of seeing Robert Morgan, this grabbed me. Sage's predilection for larger-than-life, terrifying dolls and her generally dour delivery add a spot of Thomas Ligotti to her unique brand of smoky pop that seems to have more in common with the quaalude lounge life of the late 60s/70s than any modern female singer beyond maybe Beth Gibbons. 

I'm really loving seeing where Abby Sage's career has gone and look forward to seeing just how far it will go. I think far. 

The Rot is the title track from Ms. Sage's debut album, which you can link to HERE.

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Watch:

Despite the initial anticipation the trailer for Ryan Stevens Harris' Moon Garden created in me when it first dropped a little over a year ago, I totally forgot about this one. Imagine my excitement when I found out the film had finally dropped on Shudder earlier this week:

Reading over that post I made last February (linked in the text above), I am happy to see that all my initial expectations were not only met but totally blown away. Moon Garden is definitely a throwback to films like The Neverending Story and Labyrinth, but also an exciting visual amalgamation of a lot of fantasy ideas that really only get cross-bred in novels because of the less than 1:1 ratio that accompanies attempting to bring the dark, effervescent folds of the imagination into the visual form. Guess what? Somehow Harris does it; I feel like this is possibly the most "pure imagination translation" I've ever seen. It's just... so much, and all of it works together to create an experience that is both harrowing and life-affirming. Can't recommend this one enough. 

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Playlist:

John Carpenter - Lost Themes II

Witchfinder - Forgotten Mansion

Witchfinder - Hazy Rites

Blut Aus Nord - The Work Which Transforms God

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

Dean Hurley - The Library of the Occult: Flower

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves

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Card:

A quick one-card pull for the weekend:

Six of Cups: Pleasure. Emotional Balance. I think this is something I've been having issues with, especially on the weekend. There are a lot of 'existential stressors' pressing in on me of late, no one's fault but my own mind. Still, that doesn't change the fact that they affect my weekends the most - the time when I have the most time to sit and think. A nice reminder then, to fill the well and keep the perspective balanced. Not easy to do in 2024, but it is possible if you actively manage the shit you're putting in your head. 

Abby Sage - Obstruction

 

Abby Sage dropped a new single earlier in the week, and as usual, it's pure bliss. I really don't know much about Ms. Sage, other than the handful of singles she's released over the last couple years have all been excellent. "Obstruction" is the latest and an advance from her first long player, The Rot, due out March 1 on Nettwork - which looks to be a very different label than it was back when I was familiar with it. Pre-order the digital album HERE. As far as I could find, there is no physical copy pre-order at the moment. Either way, I am very much looking forward to this one.

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Watch:

Two nights ago I "rewatched" Christopher Ganz's 2006 cinematic adaptation of Silent Hill. Here's the trailer Scream Factory used when they released their edition:

I say "rewatched" because, although I know I watched this back circa 2017/2018, I found that other than the beginning and end, I remembered very little of this one. I'm wondering if this was one of those times I had a "forty-minute blink." Very possible. I remember liking the film, but not much else, so this was an especially crisp viewing, and I very much dug the experience in a way I know was lost to me on that previous attempt. 

I am unfamiliar with the games, so take that into account as I say that visually, I feel like Silent Hill is the culmination of many of the mid-to-late 90s aesthetics that were introduced into popular culture with the NIN "Happiness in Slavery" video and that accompanying video 'album' it was released on. The twisted, barbed wire, industrial rot of the 90s, the fallout from the posh-n-clean dream of the 80s. All of it really works quite wonderfully in this film, and although some of the CG doesn’t quite hold up, I would argue most of it fairs considerably better than a lot of computer FX we saw in Horror at the time.

 

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Read:

New Drinking with Comics went up last night.

I really can't recommend Where the Body Was enough. Another fine fantastic original HC GN from Brubaker & Phillips.

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Playlist:

Turnstile - GLOW ON

Black Flag - Everything Went Black

Tamaryn - The Waves

Justin Hamline - A New Age of Ruin

Feuerbahn - The Fire Dance EP

Fvnerals - Let the Earth Be Silent

Sleaford Mods - Nudge It (single)

Various - January 2024 Playlist

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Card:

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

• Seven of Cups 

• King of Cups 

• Eight of Cups

First, yes, I have shuffled these cards quite a bit. It's weird how this is a new deck to me, and it continues to behave that way. I feel like it's not so much that the cards aren't shuffled, but that it feels like it needs to yell in order to get my attention. Inherent in its DNA, being that it's all about, well, turning the amp up to eleven?

I'm reading this in a different chronology today. Starting in the center but moving directly to the right, we have a path through the Sephiroth - Victory to Splendor. This is a viable path for working through the states of the mental architecture inside ourselves. The King of Cups then tells me to come ready to hone emotion with Intellect, that will be the method by which I reach those states.

Is this a nod to heading back to work? A lot of the issues there are resolved, as most of the problems are no longer with the company. There is one conflict I anticipate, however, I don't see it being quite so difficult. Maybe. Or, this is a strategy. I've said I want to be a bit less social with my time there; I want to see my friends, but I don't want to go out every night for the next three weeks. I'd really like to spend some time working on the book, using the change in environment to my advantage. Perhaps if I combat the emotional need to be social with the intellectual need to write - well, saying it like that, it all kind of makes sense, doesn't it?

Abby Sage - Smoke Break

 

I love love love this song! A random dalliance with NPR this past Saturday introduced me to Abby Sage's Smoke Break, and since, I have been unable to get it out of my mind. This appears to be a single, as with the other tracks I've found on Apple Music by Ms. Sage, so I'll be following her and can't wait until she releases a full album!

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Watch:

 

I went back into a bix box theatre this past Saturday and saw David Bruckner's The Night House. An all-around good experience (We hit a matinee, so there were about five folks other than us there), and the movie was outstanding. A SUPER slow burn, to use a somewhat tired term, The Night House trusts its audience enough not to over-explain everything. This one's sure to spark some "What the fuck?" conversations in all the right ways. There's also a certain logic to its mechanisms that really drives home the fact that Bruckner and screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski are exactly the right folks to be working on the new iteration of Clive Barker's Hellraiser.

Rebecca Hall and Barry's Sarah Goldberg turn in great performances, and the story goes places you're never gonna see coming, always an added plus.
 

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Playlist:

The Plimsouls - Everywhere All At Once

Etta James - Eponymous

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full 

The Jesus Lizard - Liar

White Lung - Eponymous

White Lung - Paradise

The Joy Formidable - Into the Blue

Deafheaven - Infinite Granite

Yola - Stand For Myself

Zeal and Ardor - Calloway (Single)

Boy Harsher - Careful

CCR - Bayou Country

David Bowie - A Reality Tour (Live)

Nicholas Elert - The Stylist OST

Abby Sage - Smoke Break (Single)

Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit

Deafheaven - New Bermuda

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Card:

Strength in what you know. Words of wisdom Lloyd, words of wisdom. I could use them. Short story is driving me CRAZY.,