I saw this new Aphex Twin single dropped a few days ago, but it actually took me a minute to build up the desire to hit play. I haven't loved much of what Richard James has done over the last two decades, so I was tentative to re-engage with new Aphex Twin music. Turns out, all my fears were for naught, as I love this track; it reminds me - in spirit - of I Care Because You Do, which I used to lay alone, high, listening to in my room in my early 20s, a rich but isolatory experience to say the least.
Watch:
A trailer for Satanic Hispanics dropped yesterday - I've been waiting for this one since I missed out on scoring tickets for the screening at last year's Beyondfest:
Ever since I first saw The Convent in 2003, I've been a pretty huge Mike Mendez fan, and while I don't love everything he does as much as I love The Convent, I count him as a favorite Director. Also, thanks once again to Beyondfest, around 2013 I was introduced to GiGi Saul Guerrero's short film El Gigante. I've mentioned this one here before, and even though it's no longer currently streaming on Shudder, it's 100% worth looking up. Think OG Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Luchador wrestling and that will put you in the ballpark. It's awesome, and ever since seeing that, Guerrero is another Director I follow. Her and Mendez's involvement in this Anthology puts it at the top of my "I want this right bloody now" list, so waiting nearly a year has been difficult.
Playlist:
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III (Saturnian Poetry)
I think I'm going to need a heaping dose of sonic autopsy from Electric Wizard to wake my ass up today. K and I went and got our Boosters yesterday, and in line with all the other iterations of this, it knocked me on my ass, so I didn't sleep all that well, and I'm struggling to get through work today.
Any band that names a song (or part of a song) after Weird Tales are gods in my book.
Watch:
That which I have been waiting for has finally arrived:
Since Heavenisanincubator turned me on to Joe Begos' ultra-violent SciFi mind-fuck Almost Human many years ago, I've been a fan. I corralled a bunch of friends to go see Begos' follow-up Mind's Eye at Beyondfest in 2015 and repeated that in 2019 for the Bliss/VFW double-header. Knowing Christmas Bloody Christmas would land this year, it reigned as my #1 "Gotta get tickets" film for this year's Beyondfest, but Murphy's Law dictated that the viewing occurred on the same night I'd bought tickets to see Zeal and Ardor. I don't regret the choice, however, it's been ribbing me ever since. Now that the trailer is here, I'm even more excited to see Begos' latest film. He just delivers the kind of violent trash (I mean that as a compliment, of course) that puts me back to the world of my childhood, and his visual and musical aesthetic aligns very much with my own.
With the line "in theatres everywhere" attached to the film and the fact that I just saw Damien Leone's Terrifier 2 at the Regal in town, I'm hoping CBC lands here, too. If not, I've been plotting where I might have to drive to see it. Because oh yes, I will drive to see this.
Read:
Here's another NCBD addendum. On a lark, I picked up the first issue of Specs, published by BOOM studios, created by David M. Booher and Chris Shehan.
Very solid first issue. Obviously, the cover gives off They Live vibes, but that's not really the case. The set-up is the two main characters get a hold of wish-granting Specs that turn their life upside down and by the looks of it, there will be fallout. I dug this issue enough that I'll definitely be coming back for more.
Playlist:
Opeth - Watershed
Electric Wizard - Dopethrone
The Neverly Boys - The Dark Side of Everything
Card:
From the Grimoire: "Let things develop before making another move." Loud and clear.
As is my custom, here's Opeth's Dirge for November to initiate our Day of the Dead.
I'm not quite sure how Opeth became my official band of the month November, but it happened. I'll be digging into the band's back catalogue all month, and Blackwater Park is always where I start that particular journey.
31 Days of Halloween:
10/1 - Trick 'r Treat
10/2 - Barbarian
10/3 - Hellraiser ('84)
10/4 - Phenomena
10/5 - Hellraiser (2022)
10/6 - The Dark Backward
10/7 - Sick/The Beyond
10/8 - Werewolf By Night
10/9 - Something in the Dirt
10/10 - Let the Right One In Episode 1/Lux Aeterna
10/16 - Spider Baby/101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments/Night's End/Behemoth
10/17 - Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/18 - Random Acts of Violence/Two Witches/Let the Right One In Episode 2
10/19 - Footprints on the Moon/976-EVIL
10/20 - Alison's Birthday/Tone Deaf
10/21 - Elviria's Haunted Hills/Popcorn
10/22 - Resolution
10/23 - The Endless
10/24 - VHS 99
10/25 - Tigers Are Not Afraid
10/26 - Bliss
10/27 - Deadstream/Host
10/28 - The Convent
10/29 - Lot 36 (GDT's CoC ep. 1)/George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead 3D/Return of the Living Dead
10/30 - Lords of Salem
10/31 - 31/Treehouse of Horror XXXIII/Hocus Pocus/Night of the Living Dead (68)
That's a wrap on yet another 31 Days of Halloween. Of course, my love of Horror movies doesn't stop there - I'm actually taking K to see Smile this evening - but there's a TON of non-Horror I need to get to, and November/December is typically the time of year when I get psyched for the, ahem, 'Prestige' pictures the studios release, and that carries over into my daily life as well.
Read:
Still inspired by seeing Lucio Fulci's The Beyond: The Composer's Cut at Beyondfest last month, I returned home from Los Angeles and began re-reading Eibon Press's outstanding The Beyond series, where Stephen Romano and Pat Carbajal adapt and explore Lucio Fulci's masterpiece:
I've been wanting to do this re-read for some time, as it will dovetail nicely with me finally ordering a copy of the recently released Escape From The Beyond #1.
I very much dig Romano's extrapolation of the over-story Fulci thinly draped across his three "Gates of Hell" films, and can't wait to see where he takes the sequel, now firmly new territory. The previous books from Eibon - The Beyond,The Gates of Hell, and House By the Cemetery - are all adaptations with flourishes that hint at being further advanced in this new series.
Whether by intention or after sight, Fulci built an extremely ripe mythos with these three films, and it's awesome to see so talented a creator as Romano - who clearly loves the material - do what the master himself never got the chance to do.
Bring it all together.
There will, of course, be those who say the ending of The Beyond is perfect and shouldn't be messed with. To that, I'd say I agree with the first half; if someone were to remake or plan a film sequel, I'd be a lot more trepidacious. Swapping mediums gives Romano and now artist Jeff Zurnow an unlimited bag of visual tricks, so let's see what they do with it. If you don't end up liking it, these books need not affect the film at all. But imagine the possibilities; we've all wondered what happens after John and Liza end up in Schweik's painting...
John Carpenter - Lost Themes III: Alive After Death
Card:
Being that November 1st is, in some manner of speaking, the beginning of my new year, I wanted to make this pull pretty comprehensive. To that end, I began with the Raven Tarot:
I see this as denoting a return on the investments of my time/energy on various projects.
Next, to move beyond the general scope, I wanted to pull a spread using Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, (which you can buy HERE.)
Ace of Cups and Swords both imply breakthroughs, with the addition of the Eight of Cups telling the breakthroughs may come in the form of recognizing my errors and thus, correcting them. Again, this all seems to point to my current project.
Wow, I am in a weird headspace this morning. Woke up earlier than needed and went right to looking this album up on Apple Music. I've had hair rock on the mind for the last few days. This goes back to that Recontextualizing the 80s idea I was posting about here a few years ago. Some of this stuff from the Sunset Strip sound of the 80s is definitely best left forgotten, but some of it has a place in history. Or at least in my history, I guess.
I never owned Cinderella's Long Cold Winter, but a friend in the neighborhood did, and I can remember hanging out at his house and popping it into the stereo more than a couple times. Other favorites at the time (off the top of my head) would have included Metallica's ...And Justice for All, ICE T's Power, GnR's Lies, and NWA's Straight Outta Compton. This was really at the start of my getting into music in a 'beyond the radio' way, and this neighbor was loaded and, in the way of a lot of rich folk a bit clueless, so he tended to buy tapes and CDs rather haphazardly (I didn't have a CD player yet, so he was my first exposure to the format).
I still have no idea why or how he chose to pick up a Cinderella album in the first place, this really wasn't his sound, but it was that anomaly factor that made me first pluck it from a pile of CDs and put it in the more than ample stereo. Over the course of a couple of weeks, Long Cold Winter became a go-to when hanging out at his house and listening to music, but that friendship dissolved shortly thereafter and he was lost to the waves of time. I haven't heard the album since.
Once you get past Tom Keifer's throat-singing, this record has a pretty cool sound. The title track still stands as a damn good example of that 80s rock/blues sound that, in my opinion, was perfected on Gary Moore's Still Got the Blues for You, and it's this quality, as well as the ripping slide guitar sprinkled here and there, that elevates Long Cold Winter above your standard 80s Hair Rock sound, although Cinderella does that to varying degrees of palatability throughout the rest of the record, as well.
Watch:
Joe Bob Briggs gave us the best of his Holiday specials he's done in some time last Friday with the Joe Bob Put a Spell on you, where he paired the Gore-cut of Tammy and the T-Rex with Anna Biller's The Love Witch.
I was fortunate enough to catch the premiere of Vinegar Syndrome's release of the long-lost Gore-cut of Tammy at Beyondfest 2019 - the film actually followed an in-person presentation of Joe Bob doing his How Rednecks Saved Hollywood lecture. Both were fantastic, and it was cool to see the two together again.
The Love Witch is one of the first movies K and I actively waited on the VOD premiere for back in the early phase of our relationship, due to a great LA Weekly article that talked about the absolute care and detail Ms. Biller put into making the film.
Playlist:
Deafheaven - Sunbather
Deafheaven - 10 Years Gone
Jim Jarmusch and Jozef Van Wissem - The Mystery of Heaven
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Damn the Torpedoes
Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits
Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
Daniel Pemberton - Motherless Brooklyn OST
Lard - The Last Temptation of Reid
Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction
Teenage Wrist - Earth is a Black Hole
Helmet - Meantime
John Carpenter - Lost Themes III Alive After Death
Zombi - 2020
The Bangles - Different Light
Card:
Coincidentally, as I draw from my Thoth Deck, I reflect on the fact that one of the things I most love about The Love Witch is there is a room in the film painted with the colors of the deck.
Hammering away with increased gusto but an edge of carelessness that can bring the whole damn thing down around your ears. Ease back and keep a keen eye. This is totally a nod that I'm overworking myself and need to take tonight to chill out. Science and Will must be strategic (to a degree), and still possessed of mindfullness.
I've been digging into Revocation's back catalogue on my writing sessions, and this FNM cover popped up at the end of 2011's Chaos of Forms. Great album, great cover! My writing music has been an example of the pendulum effect I complain about everywhere else in life; if I told you to consider Revocation and Lustmord as two nodes on the graph, you'd get the idea, yeah? It makes for some interesting ideas, one of which pretty much just changed the entire course of the third act for the better! Now I'm chasing that down and preparing for the final edit, which seems a bit like the ghost house that I relentless walk toward but never achieve. I have faith, though. Faith, and a killer work ethic. And music like this to keep me properly motivated (That and gallons and gallons of coffee, which I think is starting to fuck with my nervous system).
**
Bandcamp did another Artist Relief day this past Friday. I snagged the new, Digital Cocksure EP and a vinyl copy of their 2014 debut T.V.M.A.L.S.V., along with a copy of a single the Living Nudes released a while ago. I paid more for all three than asked for, because, while I didn't have a lot of money to throw at all the independent artists I love, I had some, and wanted to make it go as far as possible for the artists, not my collection.
So much new music this past week because of the Bandcamp relief, it was hard to narrow things down. I think I did pretty good, though.
**
After missing it at last year's Beyondfest, I finally got around to watching Travis Stevens' Girl on the Third Floor. I dug this one quite a bit; reminded me a lot of a kind of cross between American Horror Story and The Shining.
Dark Sky films can pretty much do no wrong in my eyes.
**
Playlist:
Revocation: Chaos of Forms
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Wasteland
Cocksure - T.V.M.A.L.S.V.
Blut Aus Nord - The Mystical Beast of Rebellion
Void King - Barren Dominion
Man Man - Dream Hunting in the In-Between
Perturbator - Dangerous Days
Lustmord - Hobart
Klangkarussell & GIVVEN - Ghostkeeper
During a pretty lucrative writing session yesterday I leaned on White Lung for momentum, and in doing so, inadvertently discovered Priests. Great band! The lyrics to 'Appropriate' - the lead song on 2017's Nothing Feels Natural are so insightful they hurt!
**
I sat down and watched Stuart Gordon's Stuck, a film that had been on my list for years, and which until recently I had completely forgotten was Gordon's. Really dark, sometimes funny, overall great. Read my small Letterbxd review HERE.
I'd never noticed it before, and maybe it's not true of Gordon's more phantasmagorical works, but this one really reminded me of Larry Cohen's work. I might try to squeeze in one of his films today, you know, since we have all this bloody time on our hands.
**
Beyondfest's Twitter account has been a bastion in this trying time. Earlier today they tweeted out the link to American Cinematheque Chief Projectionist Ben Tucker essentially giving a tour of the Egyptian's Projection Booth. I've been meaning to join the American Cinematheque for years, and I think now is when I will finally pull the trigger on that.
**
Playlist:
Wire - Pink Flag
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Soundgarden - Bad Motorfinger
Seefeel - Fracture/Tied (Single)
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
The Obsessed - Lunar Womb
Slayer - Live Undead/Haunting the Chapel
White Lung - Eponymous
White Lung - Sorry
Priests - Nothing Feels Natural
Ennio Morricone - The Thing OST
**
Card:
Again. From the Grimoire, "...skill and/or wisdom..." because I'm finally making real headway on what I'm working on.
Last night I had the absolute pleasure of seeing the 1993 movie Freaked at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Freaked is a film I don't think I had ever even heard of before a few weeks ago, when I caught sight of the screening via Beyondfest's Twitter. Even though I didn't know the film, I saw them tweet that Paul Leary would be present "with his guitar" and bought two tickets immediately.
Turns out, that was a very good thing...
Written by Alex Winter, Tim Burns, and Tom Stern, and directed by Winter and Stern, Freaked is an absolute marvel of practical FX, courtesy of Screaming Mad George, Alterian FX and XFX. The movie is an testament to a Hollywood that no longer exists. Costing Thirteen Million and boasting a cast that includes but is not limited to Winter, Brooke Shields, William Sadler, Gibby Haynes (yes, that Gibby Haynes), John Hawkes, Randy Quaid, an uncredited Keanu Reeves, and so many more, Freaked is absolute madness. And since this was a Beyondfest event, there was, of course, special guests.
The evening began in Peter Seychelle's comfortable study...
No, wait.
The evening began with Burns, Stern, and Winter explaining how Freaked grew out of their MTV show Idiot Box. From there, they played a first pass at a conceptual Rock n Roll Horror Movie they had attempted to spin out of the show, a feature-length film that, well, in their words, "Was basically The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with the Butthole Surfers as the cannibal hillbilly family."
The footage was, of course, as insane as that might lead you to believe. They began with this clip from Idiot Box, to clear up a joke at the beginning of the film:
Then moved to the aforementioned Rock n Roll Horror Film, Entering Texas:
From there Freaked played, with a stop motion "Holo Rollins" Henry Rollins discount "hologram" set in time to sing with Freaked, the Rollins/Blind Idiot God title song that plays over David Daniels' brilliant hand-animated title sequence title sequence. During the film, Paul Leary did indeed take the stage several times to play live guitar over key "freak out" sequences.
By this time, I considered my investment to have already paid off ten-fold.
After the film the special guests took the stage and Burns, Stern, and Winter were joined by Catherine Hardwicke, John Hawkes, composer Kevin Kiner, the real Henry Rollins, Lee Arenberg, Megan Ward, and FX maestros Bill Corso, Tony Gardner, and I think Jim Eustermann, although by the time we got to the three FX gurus, things were a bit of a blur.
Every time I get frustrated with living in LaLa Land, something like this happens and I am reminded why I absolutely love living in this city. Special thanks to Beyondfest, Mondo/DeathWaltz, and @troniks on Twitter, who provided the beautiful 35mm print of the film. A wonderful night all around. Oh, and all that wonderful Idiot Box and early Winter/Burns/Stern footage comes from turdburglar27's wonderful youtube channel where you too, can watch Entering Texas.
Song:
While I was at the Egyptian last night witnessing early 90s Cinematic Magic, the Melvins played a pop up LaLa Land Gallery. Here's Inky Psyops and Printed Schemes, a song I am not familiar with at all, courtesy of Baby Gorilla, whose channel is always chock full o' great live music.
**
Playlist:
Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST
Steve Moore - Bliss OST
93MillionMilesFromTheSun - Towards the Light
Mol - Jord
Godflesh - Hymns
Zonal - Wrecked
Butthole Surfers - Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac
Card:
The Air of Water, a reminder to temper emotion with intellect, not always an easy thing to do.
From the soundtrack to Joe Begos' Bliss, a film that I absolutely had a blast with on the big screen at the Egyptian last Saturday night. Producer/Editor/Actor Josh Ethier posted a link to the Spotify playlist, and various tracks from that will probably be popping up here for the next few days because it is loaded with great stuff that really fleshed out the aesthetic of the film and helps re-live it.
**
31 Days of Horror:
10/01: House of 1000 Corpses/31
10/02: Lords of Chaos
10/03: Creepshow Ep 2/Tales from the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 1
10/04: IT Chapter 2, AHS 1984 Ep. 3
10/05: Bliss/VFW
10/06: Halloween III: Season of the Witch/Night of the Creeps/The Fog
10/07: Halloween 2018
10/08: Hell House, LLC
Hell House, LLC was a very nice surprise. I really dug this one; while K liked it but feels most found footage movies feel like re-treads because the original Blair Witch did it already and did it better. I agree to a point, but there's something about the MO of a found footage flick that seems to lend itself to making genuinely scary moments - when handled correctly. Hell House, LLC has a couple of deep, sustained moments of, "What the fuck, ah!" horror, my favorite of which became hard to watch as one of the characters, when faced with inexplicable entities directly in front of their face, chose to pull the covers over their heads and, I guess, hope for it to go away.
I would post the trailer, but it really doesn't do it justice. My advice? If you're interested, turn off all the lights in your home and watch in the dark.
**
Playlist from 10/08:
Type Negative - Life is Killing Me
Various - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST
Perturbator - New Model
Dr. John - Gris Gris
How to Destroy Angels - Welcome to Oblivion
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
A Place to Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
John Carpenter - Lost Theme II
John Carpenter - Prince of Darkness OST
**
Card of the day:
Change is a'coming. Isn't that always the case? I'm reading this more as the thirteen and reference to Thanatos Energy, Death Energy, which is to say transformative energy.
I've been in full October mode, and of course, that means lots of Type O Negative. This song, the final track on their final album before Peter Steele's death, really hit me this morning. Released in 2007, I've always really liked Dead Again, but I never quite warmed up to it as much as Life Is Killing Me, their previous and my favorite of their albums (I just take Bloody Kisses out of the running for that - it's perfect and stands on its own in a timeless continuum of awesome). Last year at this time, however, I felt myself coming around a bit more, and this year, well, I may now consider it the band's best album (again, eschewing BK). The song structures and arrangements are fascinating and far from obvious; listen to the soft countermelody Josh plays on the climax of this track - I feel like one in a million rock keyboardists would write something like that there.
That said, this increased infatuation with Dead Again is what makes hearing Steele sing "All Hail and Farewell to me..." at the end of the song so emotional - I'm willing to bet the reason Dead Again took me so long to fall completely in love with is I'm a bit of a saver. In other words, living with the knowledge that this was their final album (I had a hunch even before Steele passed), I believe I saved this album to have one last record to fall in love with over the years. Now that this love has come to pass, I'm sad. But only so sad, because none of Type O's record ever get old.
**
The second episode of Shudder's Creepshow aired last night. Fantastic! There's a ton of schlock here, but that's how it's supposed to be. I especially liked "The Finger," with DJ Qualls. Breaking the fourth wall doesn't often work, but it did here. As a complementary flavor, K and I followed Creepshow with the first episode of the first season of HBO's Tales from the Crypt. Unlike many of my contemporaries, I didn't see much of this show back in the late 80s/early 90s when it aired. This episode, The Man Who Was Death, proved relevant in several ways. First, William Sadler is one of the stars of Joe Begos' VFW, which we'll be seeing tomorrow night at Beyondfest, and two, Sadler's out-of-work executioner narrates this episode by continuously breaking the fourth wall. A great double-feature in a weekend that will be filled with double and triple features!
**
31 Days of Horror:
10/01: House of 1000 Corpses/31
10/02: Lords of Chaos
10/03: Creepshow Ep 2/Tales from the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 1
**
Playlist from 10/03:
Type O Negative - Dead Again
Various - Lords of Chaos Soundtrack (Playlist)
Sisters of Mercy - Floodland
Miranda Sex Garden - Suspiria
Neon Kross - Darkness Falls
Claudio Simonetti and Fabio Pignatelli - Phenomena OST
**
Card of the day:
Taking this as a nod that spending yesterday after work catching up on sleep instead of working was the correct plan of action. I feel revived, refreshed, and ready to continue outlining Shadow Play Book Two!
A couple of years ago at Beyondfest, my good friend Missi and I went to a free screening of Jaron Henrie-McCrea's wonderful film The Gateway (previously titled Curtains), we were treated to not only the main feature - which I've just discovered is included with Prime and is definitely worth your time - but also a short feature titled El Gigante by Luchagore Productions. I believe I've posted about El Gigante here before, but I wanted to again because in their latest email update, Shudder announced El Gigante is coming to their platform this month!
Also, the latest in the Hulu/Blumhouse Into the Dark series, Culture Shock, is a Luchagore release, so congratulations to them for scoring so high profile a gig. Here's the trailer:
**
Finished Stranger Things 3 and it is by far my favorite season of the series. Loved the ending, loved the new additions to the cast, and absolutely loved the monster - probably my favorite monster ever. Well done, Duffer Brothers and crew, can't wait for Season 4!
**
Playlist from yesterday:
John Carpenter - Lost Themes II
**
Card of the day:
Lots of sixes, which implies stability. Which feels accurate. Lots of work ahead of me though, so now I have to kick it into hyperdrive.
