A New Night, An Old Theme Song

 

Ian Lynch's All You Need is Death Soundtrack/Score hasn't left the side of my office turntable since it arrived. This one haunts me on a regular basis. Yesterday, the first song on the second side especially hit me, possibly because it's been a few months since I last watched Paul Duane's fantastic film and the cinematic associations have weakened compared to the mental ones I've made with the music. This gets me thinking about THIS post over on Heaven Is An Incubator. Man, talk about hitting it right on the head. 

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Watch:

The older you get, the tougher it is to just be a person. I don't mean existing gets more difficult - though our bodies and our society definitely make that the case - I mean just operating inside the framework you've spent your life building out as "you." I've had a tough couple of weeks mentally as my job is absorbed and transmogrified inside a hollow corporate entity, and one of the things that brought me back from an emotional brink is Mke Clattenburg's Trailer Park Boys.

I know, I didn't expect any of this, either.

A lot of the 'healing' I find in this show comes right up front with the opening credits. If a more soothing, peaceful intro than Blain Morris's for TPB exists, I haven't heard it. Twin Peaks would be close, but that also carries with it a sense of foreboding. Morris's is pure grace, and it always brings my heart rate down a couple notches.  Maybe this is because it reminds me of the time that I discovered the show, shortly after moving to L.A. in 2006, an era I now look back at forlornly as just before the post-apocalyptic era we live in today began.*

And of course, this theme song is the perfect precursor to whatever idiocy lies in wait on the other side of its final note. These characters are, in my opinion, one of the funniest comedies in existence. There's a lot that's over-the-top, but there's even more nuance that it's taken multiple viewings to catch. Julian's perpetual drink is, to me, Shakespearean in its design and continued execution, as is Ricky's inability to 'use his words' properly. 

Don't even get me started on Conky or Sebastian Bach. 

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*Of course, I recognize that, as a middle-class, white male, the world has been shit for so many other people for so long and that I'm just morning my own personal apocalypse. Doesn't make it hurt any less, though. 

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Read:

Two chapters into Prof. John Trafton's Movie-Made Los Angeles and I am fascinated. This is easily the most academic long-form piece I've read in a very long time, and while it took my brain a few sittings to adjust, once it clicked, I found myself fascinated by all the behind-the-scenes history of Southern California that those of us boring in the late Twentieth Century take for granted as just always having "been that way." In particular, John's use of the palimpsest metaphor of Southern California in general, and Los Angeles in particular, is so graceful and spot-on that it makes me wonder what other cultural histories we've erased or submerged with modernity.

Movie-Made Los Angeles is published by Wayne State Press. I picked mine up at the wonderful Sky Light Books in L.A.'s Los Feliz neighborhood, but you can order this anywhere you order books. Also, and I've said this before and will no doubt repeat ad infinitum, check out some of John's essays over on his website HERE.

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Playlist:

Valkyrie - Fear

The Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me

Barry Adamson - Cut To Black

Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death OST

The Used - The Ocean of the Sky

Trailer Punk Podcast - Nervous Gender Reloaded

OLOMUHD - The Absurd Silence of a Mute World

Deafheaven - Ten Years Gone

Man or Astroman? - Deafcon 5...4...3....2...1

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity

Deafheaven - Sunbather

The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium

Deafheaven - New Bermuda

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Card:

One Card from my original Thoth Deck for today. 

Avoiding activity - is this a reference to the fact that it's nearly 100 degrees outside and I feel like doing nothing but reading all day, or is this a reference to me being too lackadaisical about the situation at work? 

All You Need is Lankum

 

As I reference below, my days have been filled with elemtns of Folklore of late, and one of the musical accompaniments for this is Dublin's band Lankum. One of the things about Paul Duane's All You Need Is Death that struck me during the screening at last year's Beyondfest was the score by composer Ian Lynch. Last week when Invada Records put the score up for pre-order (HERE), it led me to discover Lynch's band Lankum. I've been listening to their most recent album False Lankum ever since. A feast for the ears, you can listen to and purchase the record directly from the band over on their Bandcamp HERE. Really cool stuff, perfect for the thunderstorms we've had on an almost nightly basis of late. 

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Watch:

Over on The Horror Vision, we had the chance to interview Writer/Director Paul Duane last week. Mr. Duane's latest film, All You Need is Death was one of the highlights of 2023's Beyondfest, and after re-watching it now that it's available on VOD, we were all very excited to pick his brain about the film, Folk Horror, Documentaries, you name it.

Mr. Duane is a gracious man, and his film a marvel that will no doubt stand at or near the best of the year when I compile my list in December. Very much looking forward to seeing what else he does, as he teases a bit of what he's working on in the episode.

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Read:

We recorded a new episode of The Horror Vision Presents: Sticks & Stones, our Folk Horror sub-show that had been dormant after two episodes Ray and I did in early 2022. Folk Horror is a huge topic, and had proved difficult for us to get a handle on after the veritable explosion of new films in the sub-genre back late 2021/2022. The purpose of this episode, then, was to use two films at the opposite ends of the Folk Horror spectrum to define what Folk Horror is to us and how we would cover it going forward. One of the two films we chose was Djordje Kadijevic's Leptirica, AKA The She-Butterfly. 

After watching this film for what was my third time, I found myself interested in reading the story upon which it is based, Milovan Gilsic's After Ninety Years. There is a fairly recently published translated version by James Lyon available on Kindle for a pawltry $4.99, so I went ahead and ordered it.

Not sure when I'll get around to actually reading this, as the stack for the year just continues to grow. Still, it's nice to have it close at hand for when I do. This Serbo-Bosnian Vampire folklore is fascinating, especially when you consider it not only pre-dates Bram Stoker's Dracula, but also served to inform aspects of F.W. Murnau, which I won't elaborate on here, as Professor John Trafton delivers a bit of show-stopping information during the course of this upcoming Sticks & Stones episode, so keep an eye out of that.

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Playlist:

High on Fire - De Vermis Mysteriis 

Gary Moore - Still Got the Blues

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Robot God - Portal Within

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - PetroDragonic Apocalypse

Opeth - My Arms Your Hearse

Motörhead - 1916

Black Sky Giant - The Red Chariot

Mountain Realm - Frostfall

Lankum - False Lankum

Sunn O))) - Domkirke

Godflesh - Purge

John Carpenter - Lost Themes IV

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Card:

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

• Knight of Swords

• Ten of Wands

• Ten of Cups

Earthly matter abound, distractions from more intellectual pursuits should be minimized until such time as I can clear some bandwidth for them. 

NIB for NCBD before FCBD

'Nuff said.

 

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NCBD:

I've spent a bunch of time tightening up my Pull list for the coming months, and I'm happy to say I'm all right jumping off so many titles. The books that really move me these days are Kirkman's Energon Universe titles, anything Brubaker and Phillips or Lemire and Sorrentino do, and a few titles beyond. There's always the chance I'll find something interesting on the wall at the shop, or that my erstwhile AMHL cohost Chris might shoot me a message about something I'd missed altogether, but for the most part, I'm feeling a distance from monthly comics again, and that's fine. Here's this week's Pull, complete with two FCBD editions that won't be available until Saturday.

 

The FCBD special for the aforementioned Energon Universe, and I can say I am excited as all hell to see Megatron on the cover. The idea that such a massive character has only been glimpsed once so far—and not even in his normal book—blows me away. Kirkman and crew have plotted these titles meticulously and, in doing so, raised expectations to a crescendo. Is now the time when those expectations pay off? I doubt it, but we'll see.

Possibly the last regular-continuity TMNT title I'll be reading for some time, if that's indeed what this book is. I know there's some occurrence of a character called The Night Watcher somewhere in the past continuity, but I am unfamiliar with or forgetful. Maybe the late 90s iteration that was written by Gary Carlson? 

WTFPFH? returns! Glad to have this one back, as the snarky approach to mystery, mayhem and the apocalypse is exactly the kind of thing I'm in the mood for at the moment. Something about Spring puts me in the mood for Indie comics. 

One more after this. As I said last week, and probably the week before, I'm really just counting the days to see this era through to the end, especially after seeing THIS. Good lord - all this wonderful potential, thrown away for a return to the status quo the X-Books drove into the ground for the better part of five decades. Ugh. They're even going with a design that harkens back to that horrible cover layout from the mid-to-late 90s. 

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Watch:

Paul Duane's All You Need Is Death just hit VOD and, of course, I rented it and watched it twice over the last few days. 

After the screening at last year's Beyondfest - hosted at the Los Feliz 3 theatre - this film left a deep impression on me and I'd harbored an itch to return to it again ever since. I can tell you the film is even more gratifying in its ambiguity; there's so much here, such a deep dive into a subculture that both does and doesn't really exist, that I kind of feel like I'm uncovering something that shouldn't be seen while watching this one. Also, Ian Lynch's score is OUTSTANDING. 

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Playlist:

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Robot God - Portal Within

Gary Moore - Still Got the Blues

The Damned - Night of the Living Damned

White Zombie - Astro-Creep 2000

Jim Williams - Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched OST

Alice in Chains - Eponymous

Lankum - False Lankum

Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death OST

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Card:

For this first day of May, I felt a pull back to an older deck, and picked up my beloved Thoth for the first time in a while (this one gets more difficult to satisfactorily photograph every day, as the cards are worn and bent with use and love):

• Ace of Cups

• Three of Disks: Work

• Nine of Cups: Happiness

I also felt the urge to break out Crowley's definitive text on the deck, The Book of the Thoth and do some actual reading for today's interpretation.

One of the interpretations of the Minor Arcana or "pip" cards I've strayed from in recent years is how they relate to the Sephirotic Tree of Life. The sephiroth are something I consider when I really dig in, but I'm realizing I've strayed in keeping them as part of the mental mechanisms I utilize to "Divine on the Go," a terrible turn of phrase, but an accurate one, as I'm usually busy and in a time-crunch when it comes to these daily pulls. Thumbing through The Book of Thoth and landing on the Three of Disks first, I'm immediately reminded of Binah's association with the 'Threes." Binah, the great mother, strengthened here by Mars, we see the transmutation of water to a solid strong enough to support a three-sided structure. 

Take that with the Ace of Cups, which is instantly an "Emotional Breakthrough" signifier for me, always has been, almost to a fault. Going deeper with the book, however, I'm reminded this Cup is the counterpart to the Ace of Wands: the first represents the feminine aspect of the sexes, the second the male. The Ace of Cups also relates strongly to the Moon, and the idea of hidden energies formulating new realities.

Round all that out with the Nine of Cups, which would be the Yesod of the Sephiroth. Nine is also the number of the Moon, so we have a lot of Moon here. Checking my Moon tracker, I see we are in the Third Corner of Waning; this moon is 23 days old. I'm stepping off on a huge tangent, but I find that funny, that my inclination to pick up not just Crowley's deck but his treatise on it, as 23 is possibly the most famous number ascribed to the mid-twentieth century Magician-cum-Charlatan. 

The Nine of Cups also forecasts culmination and success—Crowley uses the word "perfection," but I will not—so my interpretation centers around the idea that this spread is a way of assuring me that inner tensions that begin at the office and meander through my household are on their way to a more stable status quo. That's kind of a little from a lot, but distilling this stuff down is the job.

Man Man Week: The Fog or China

From their 2004 debut, The Man in the Blue Turban With a Face, we have yet another example of how versatile this group is. I love the elements they draw from Tin Pan Alley and 50s Doo Wop, fusing them with something all their own.

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Watch:

Paul Duane's All You Need is Death proved to be one of the highlights of this past year's Beyondfest lineup, and now it's finally being released worldwide. I can vouch for this trailer - it does not give away the movie. 

 

Having seen the film, I can tell you to try your best to see it on the big screen. Duane's approach to Horror thrives on an almost subconscious, microcosmic level while also employing some really big, frightening images. This combination works so well on the big screen, with a professional theatre audio system, especially in regard to Ian Lynch's score, which I can only hope someone releases on vinyl.

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Read:

I've been pretty scattered lately and have not been very successful in reading. I'm chipping along at Malcolm Devlin's Then I Woke Up, which is excellent, but my attention's compass is wonky, pulled from due North by all manner of interfering metals. That said, I recently picked up the missing issues of two early 00s comic series I've been dying to dive into.

First, Mike Baron and Mike Norton's The Night Club, which I'd been missing the final issue of since I picked up the series back in 2005:

Next, from right around the same time, Keith Griffen's Tag.

I'm using the image of the Deluxe Edition Boom! eventually published, however, I was interested in the original issues, as I had two of the three. There was a subsequent series, Tag: Cursed, that I haven't read, but the first two issues of this first one always stayed with me. Ostensibly a zombie story, Tag is a pretty interesting take on what was even a bloated subgenre back in 2005, only two years after The Walking Dead comic started, the same year George Romero returned for a fourth time to his original continuity with Land of the Dead. Tag presupposes an infection you can pass by tagging another person. The pull quote on the top of issue two says it all:

Very much looking forward to reading both of these once I get my head on straight again. 

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Playlist:

All Hell - The Howl (single)

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muukalainen Puhuu

Waste of Space Orchestra - Syntheosis

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Glasgow Eyes

Man Man - The Man in the Blue Turban

Lustmord - Much Unseen Is Also Here

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Also, Grimm recently launched a Kickstarter for his new deck, The FaeBound Tarot, which you can marvel at and acquire HERE.

One card today, because I haven't touched the deck in a while and wanted a generalized, "this is the 48 year of your life" kind of reading.

I went with the lighting I'm working in at the moment, too. It felt appropriate. Knowledge above salvation. Sounds great.

New Music from Mars Red Sky!

From the upcoming album Dawn of the Dusk, out December 8th on MRS and Vicious Circle. For whatever reason, I can't seem to find a link to pre-order the physical media, but I'm sure that will arrive before the record's release. In the meantime, digging this new track.

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31 Days of Halloween:

My friends and I had the absolute privilege of rounding our 2023 Beyondfest out with a double feature at the lovely Los Feliz 3. 

First up, Documentarian Paul Duane's first narrative film, All You Need is Death. Please believe me when I say this one was revelatory! 

If you search go HERE, you'll see the inception of my stated fascination with "British Occult Films" - this is what I was using to discuss what has essentially become branded as modern entries in the resurgence of Folk Horror. Back when I was seeking out films like The Droving, Without Name, and the like in the wake of seeing Ben Wheatley's Kill List, Folk Horror hadn't yet become a household word, so English or UK Occult. Regardless of genre tags, these films were entries in a much more nuanced attempt to use the pre-Christian origins of modern society as the soil from which to mine Horrors born of folklore and the swirls mists of the pre-English, pre-industrialization world. That is very much the impetus for Duane's All You Need is Death, which explores the world of people who collect ancient folk songs. There's no trailer for this one yet, as in talking to Mr. Duane after the film he stated XYZ Films is releasing All You Need Is Death to the U.S. in mid-March. I'll definitely be watching for it, so when more info becomes available, I will post it here. In the meantime, here's a poster:

Next up was the new remaster of Maurice Devereaux's 2001 game show parody Slashers. This is one Terror Vision is putting out on BluRay in a couple of months. I couldn't find a trailer I could report, so here's the opening sequence:

This is a fun little gem from the early 00s and also, a movie my good friend Dennis had recommended to me over and over back when we'd hang out once or twice a week and watch flicks. I never saw it back then, and it had actually been on my mind about a week before Beyondfest announced this screening; fortuitous indeed.

The tally for 31 Days of Halloween so far:

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

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Read:

I'm still slogging through Clive Barker's The Scarlet Gospels; truth be told, I haven't had much chance to read since I've been in LaLaLand, but there's also not a lot of excitement for me to finish the final 80% of the book. That said, I saw my A Most Horrible Library cohost Chris Saunders the other night, and as he always does, Chris gifted me a small handful of books he found thrifting. I'm mailing most back home to Tennessee so I don't have to weigh my luggage down with them, however, one that I'm keeping out in case I have some time and can't bring myself to return to the Gospels is this old gem: 

Originally published in 1990 and edited by Steve Niles long before he hit it big with 30 Days of Night,  I've seen this one around for years. I might have even had a copy at some point. Either way, what a great line-up of authors for one Anthology. Pretty excited to dig into this. 

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Playlist:

Led Zeppelin - Get the Led Out Playlist

Spotlights - Seance EP

Mars Red Sky - Dawn of the Dusk (pre-release singles)

Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Data Doom

The Damned - Evil Spirits

Wire - Pink Flag

Pigface - Notes From the Underground

Gang of Four - Entertainment!

Drug Church - Hygiene

Gang of Four - Songs of the Free

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Talk About the Weather

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Card:

Sometimes, what looks like defeat is actually a breakthrough (if you're wise enough to see that). Not entirely certain what this is in reference to. I'm tempted to read everything as being about work at the moment, but that's just because I'm on-site in person and a little baffled by the manner in which things are changing. I guess we'll leave it at that.