Lee Cronin's The Mummy

From their 2013 masterpiece Tomorrow's Harvest, which, to my ears, plays like the sweetest soundtrack to an 80s Horror film that never existed. 

All this talk of the upcoming album has me excited to dip back into all the BOC music I love, and I love this one the most. 

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Watch:

After swearing off Lee Cronin's The Mummy for almost two weeks, I ended up seeing it last Thursday, and I actually really liked it. I hate the trailer and pretty much every single piece of art released for the film, which was a large part of why I swore the film off to begin with, but here's something that's not too obnoxious:

To crib directly from my Letterbxd review: 

"Lee Cronin suffers from publicity that seems bent on ruining his films. The trailers take the weakest, most trite scenes from his films and blow them up as if they were the entire movie. It happened with Evil Dead Rise, "Mommy's with the maggots now," and it happened with The Mummy, "Don't worry, grandma, it's fun to be dead." 

Both of those scenes are cringe-inducing in my opinion. Especially when they've been forced down our throats for months on end at the theatres. But against all the odds, The Mummy actually turned out to be fun and pretty intense at times. Kinda “Evil Dead Exorcist.” In fact, I almost wish it could have just been another Evil Dead flick, so they could have shaved 30 minutes of setup.

Jack Reynor did a great job. His performance buoyed some of the more goofy stuff. He sold me on his grief, anger and frustration. And Natalie Grace… I didn’t care for the makeup they used for her, but she did a really good job. Creepy movements. Nightmare fuel."

Seeing and liking The Mummy (for the most part) put me in mind to revisit Cronin's Evil Dead Rise for probably the third time since I bought the Blu-Ray. And at least a year has passed since my most recent viewing, and two since the movie came out, I find that, as I originally suspected, I can honestly say I really like this one. None of the things about it that bugged me at the time it came out still do, except, of course, I really wish the trailer hadn't ruined some of the imagery centered around Lily, as trying to see it with new eyes definitely makes me think it would have been far more effective had it not been ruined by that same inundation The Mummy just suffered. 

Also, EDR has probably the best opening of any Evil Dead film to date. Just my opinion, but it's pretty freaking epic.

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - Christmas Bloody Christmas

Electric Youth & Pilot Priest - Come True OST

Radiohead - Kid A

Telefon Tel Aviv - Immoliate Yourself

sElf - Gizmodgery

Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd - Animals

Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar

Big Business - Here Come the Waterworks

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta

sunn O))) - Pyroclasts

Blackbraid - Blackbraid II

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

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Card:

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

• King of Cups

• Knight of Wands

• King of Wands

That's a lot of masculine energy. Let's look at some overviews here:

King of Cups - Emotional upheaval or conflict

Knight of Cups - Controlling those emotions with Will

King of Wands - Sometimes, to get control, aggression is required.

Being smart enough to recognize when my emotions are getting the best of me, and being strong enough to prevent my response to those emotions from getting out of control. 

Total work pull. People piss me off all the time, and sometimes I get worked up enough where I want to say something. Here's the reminder not to say something. Grin and bear it. Stay dressed in the fatigues of the enemy. They pay your bills.

New Music from Boards of Canada!!!

A few years ago, the IG account bocpages began posting about hints that Boards of Canada were preparing to release their first record since 2013's Tomorrow's Harvest. I didn't get my hopes up, but I've been trying to keep my eyes peeled for more news. Slowly this faded from my radar, and my hopes went silent until last week when brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin dropped the eerie "Tape 05." No word on a date or pre-order yet, but my eyes are not straying far until they appear. 

I am a huge fan of Tomorrow's Harvest. I know a number of old-school BOC fans who didn't like the 2013 album, but for me, well, it's my favorite in their catalog. That's not an embellishment or an easy choice because all their music is fantastic, but Harvest feels the most like an '80s horror score, and for that, it wears the crown. 

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Watch:

RZA's debut film One Spoon of Chocolate played at Beyond Chicago a few weeks back, but it conflicted with other plans, so now I'm anxiously waiting for this to roll out in theatres. I'm assuming that the "Quentin Tarantino Presents" banner pretty much ensures that it will. 

I expect this flick to be every bit as bombastic as one would expect from RZA. 

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Walk:

Two Wednesdays ago, Mr. Brown and I got to hang out with a very old friend. This was the first time the three of us had been together in the same room since the late 90s. When you're fifty and you hang out with your old friends, funny things happen. Mortality comes up, but also, the past. You just can't get away from it. None of us have ever been the kind of guys to sit around reliving our "glory days" because, honestly, the glory days are still happening in my book. Still, there were good times and some pretty crazy adventures, and it comes up. A reminder of who we were to better appreciate who we are, I guess. Or something like that. One of the things that came up from the past is a place I haven't seen or really even thought much about in the last thirty years, except, I dreamt about it recently, so it was fresh on my mind.

As teenagers and then young adults, we spent a lot of time up to no good, hanging out in the Cook County Forest Preserves. When we were just out of High School, we found something incredible in the woods surrounding the Cal Sag canal. I'm not going to say exactly where this was, and it doesn't really matter anymore, as you'll read in a moment. But out there in the middle of the woods, away from even a noticeable path, we discovered a place colloquially known as Stonehenge. This place consisted of a circular clearing with a flagstone floor and a slightly raised dais in a half-circle upon which sat flagstone thrones. 

Thrones. Exactly zero BS here. Some enterprising stoners before us had built this place as a communal space, a liminal gathering spot of the locals cool enough to be let in on the secret.

Unfortunately, Stonehenge is gone. Long gone. Destroyed, I stood in the center of that dias and saw nothing but piles of rubble. My guess is the Forest Preserve patrol destroyed it to dissuade folks from hanging out in the middle of the woods at night. 

Regardless, the fact that the three of us sought it out, actually did the trek and problem-solved our way into this now nearly unreachable place, well, it made for something special. So I guess it didn't really matter what shape Stonehenge was in, after all. It was more about the shape we were in as decades-long friends who could have just as easily sat in a bar or around a tv. Instead, we chased a dream.

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Playlist:

Steeve Moore - VFW OST

Blackbraid - Celestial Womb EP

Flying Lotus - 1983

Massive Attack & Tom Waits - Boots on the Ground (single)

Fozy Shazaan - Dark Blue Night

A SOMBER FUNERAL - Since You Left These Shores

Nine Inch Noize

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

White Noise - White Noise 90s Minutes

Anthrax - Spreading the Disease

Megadeth - So far, So Good... So What?

Pestilence - Consuming Impulse

Flying Lotus - Yasuke

Gylt - I Will Commit A Holy Crime Random: Tandem

Gylt - In 1,000 Agonies, I Exist

Drug Church - Prude

Melvins & Napalm Death - Savage Imperial Death March

Anthrax - Persistence of Time

Deftones - Diamond Eyes

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Card:

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

• Seven of Pentacles

• Five of Cups

• XIII: Death

Completing a long-running goal leads to emotional disruption, which in turn leads to a complete overhaul in what is deemed important. Disrupt success and learn from it, rethink goals and grow into something new.

Another on-the-nose writing prompt. I have to stop looking at what I'm working on as being the thing I think that it is and allow it to become the thing it is meant to be. 

Hinton Hollow Headphase

 

Flew home from Chicago yesterday after a post-house buying week where I tried like hell to relax. I mostly succeeded, thanks to all my dear friends who were more than happy to drive to my folks' place in the woods of Palos Park and sit on the patio for hours on end.

I'm using Boards of Canada's Dayvan Cowboy today because Boards are on of my two most commonly used airplane soundtracks - the other is Burial - and in spite of the fact that I usually use either the In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country EP or Geogaddi as flight-long loops in my earbuds, yesterday I went with 2005's Campfire Headphase because I know it the least. And I realized at once that I know it better than I realize. Dayvan is Probably my favorite track. The guitar on this album is incredible, and I always mistakenly think is performed by Bibio, whose style is extremely similar. Either way, this record is fantastic, as are all the BOC outputs, and it helped make my flight smooth and a partial extension of my relaxation (as much as one can relax on a plane).

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Read:

Well, I blew through most of Donnie Goodman's The Razorblades In My Head on the trip, read a shit ton of comics I bought at Rick's Comic City in Clarksville (soon to be my new shop, I'm happy to say. Great store, SUPER awesome, friendly people), and took a trepidatious cue from Warren Ellis' most recent newsletter and picked up Will Carver's Hinton Hollow Death Trip on Kindle for $0.99. 

I read it in three days.

I suspect this will be the best book I read in 2022. It is dark and disturbing, but not in the ways I initially feared. But it's also one of the most human books I've read in some time, and it ended up making me want to be a better person. Not that I don't always want to be a better person, because this is literally a goal I think about on daily basis. However, it's something I think about after I've made stupid comments like, "Fuck that guy for not using a turn signal, if I were going to be a serial killer, those are the people I'd kill," and the like. And really, while there's nothing wrong with venting, c'mon. Also, and this has been hovering on my consciousness for decades, ever since I first tried it in 2001, but I think I'm going to stop eating meat for a while. I'm not going to go completely 'full-hilt' on Vegetarianism, however, meat bothers me. It always has, or at least since my early twenties. Morrissey's right - meat most certainly is murder, and it's one of the most fucked up elements of our modern culture I can think of. But I am programmed, from the youngest of ages. This is not my parents' fault, it's just what happens with systemic issues that people are born into generations after being installed. Sure, earlier versions of humans might not have had a choice - or really, maybe they did. It's not like plants didn't grow while early humans were spearing bores on the planes - but once we had agricultural systems in place for producing substitutes, well, why didn't we switch?

It doesn't matter. There's no way I'm going to say, "I'm never going to have a hamburger again," because I fucking love hamburgers, and in fact, am thinking about eating one right now. But I won't. While we were in Tennessee, something entirely different prompted me to declare I'm giving up "plated meat" dishes, which I only occasionally eat anyway. But we're heading to the store today for a post-trip restock, and we're thinking about picking up some of the Impossible stuff, to try and use it in some recipes K makes where the dish isn't dependent on the meat's flavor or texture. I'm hoping it works, as it's not only the principle issues of eating meat that is prompting me but goddamn if I didn't eat more red meat in the last three weeks than I have in probably a year, and I'm feeling it.

Also, yes, Carver's book had a little something to do with it. The man identifies himself on his Twitter profile as "Drinker. Non-preachy Vegan" and I'd agree with that. But his ideals come through in Hinton Hollow Death Trip, and they affected me for sure. In a good way.

I'll keep you posted. 

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Watch:

Bloody Disgusting had a pretty big Upcoming Horror Movies for July trailer dump last week. Here's one that caught my eye:

 

I'm not 100% on this one, as there are a few things in the trailer that give me concern, chief among them being that, although as a lifelong Lovecraft fan, I'm a sucker for anything with his name attached. This also means I am literally a sucker because adding HPL is an easy way to market a bad movie. Still, the goat-head silhouette effect seen near the end of the trailer makes me hopeful (despite also being a sucker for goats in Horror).

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Playlist:

No way to list it all. Here are some of the staples, along with some new stuff:

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

RHCP - Blood Sugar Sex Magik

Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain

Sleep - Volume One

Karma to Burn - V

Billy Idol - The Roadside E.P.

CCR - Bayou Country

Sleep - The Sciences

Orville Peck - Bronco

Witchcraft - Legend 

The Sword - Age of Winters

Mars Red Sky - Eponymous

Baroness - Gold & Grey

The Company Band - Eponymous

Ween - a couple recent live shows, all curated by Mr. Brown. It appears the boys are digging deep into their back catalogue that included "Cornbread Red" and a couple from Craters of the Sac.

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Card:

The first thing I did upon returning home was pull out Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot for a reading:

A call to relax and enjoy, but also a warning about intoxication and the indulgences it can bring. This feels prescient, simply because my plans for today are "Pack and Drink."

John Carpenter's The Thing OST - Sterilization (Ennio Morricone)

You ever wanted to know where Boards of Canada came from, here it is. WaxWork put out a fabulous remaster of The Thing earlier this year and it is proving to be my most listened to record of the year.

Boards of Canada - Nothing is Real

Ain't that the truth. I'm not entirely sure where I go when this song comes on, but its both far, far away and more intimately close than most other songs inspire. The womb-like recreation of tactile sound has long been Boards of Canada's specialty, however 2014's Tomorrow's Harvest and this track in particular bring their strange musical nirvana ever closer to fruition. I listen to this a lot on airplanes.

Boards of Canada - Palace Posy (Tomorrow's Harvest)

Last week I completely forgot that the new Boards of Canada had come out. Well, scratch that, what I'd completely forgot was that June 18th had come and gone. Where the hell did June go? Anyway thanks to my good friend Jacob I received a copy over the weekend and pretty much haven't stopped listening to it since. If anything can derail a Godflesh binge, it's new Boards of Canada.

Palace Posy is one of my favorite tracks. There's something regal about the way it moves, but also a bit dancy. Also, it reminds me a bit of Badly Drawn Boy, but I'm not sure what track (and I only know two records' worth of his music). Welcome to the Overground maybe?

BoC - In a Beautiful Place out in the Country

New Boards of Canada - Cold Earth

Via Exclaim.ca via Pitchfork: New Boards of Canada (reportedly) that was premiered before Squarepusher's set last night (Sunday, 5/26/13) at the Movement Electronic Music Festival in Detroit.

I can't wait for this record. BoC have figured heavily into my listening habits ever since they really hooked me back in the early oughts, and this year especially I've been going through jags of drowning myself in Geogaddi & 2000's ep "In a Beautiful Place out in the Country" - they're fantastic writing music.

Boards of Canada - Mystery Solved

Mucho thanks to Brooklyn Vegan, Pitchfork and all the other great sites that did the research on this night and day and have made me very happy by confirming the following: The new Boards of Canada album is titled Tomorrow's Harvest and will be released June 11th on Warp.

Now, how awesome is this? That mystery string of numbers all those articles I've been linking to since this thing started (699742628315717228936557813386519225)? It's the password to get you into Boards of Canada's new website, here. However I warn you, I was unable to cut and paste that massive string of numbers into the Dos prompt opening page for the site, so write that shit down on paper or toggle some windows, cuz no one's memory is that good.

Awesome. Here's some old school BoC to celebrate. June 11th is just around the damn corner people, get excited!!!

Secret Board of Canada Links and... an album title???

They're set to private, so I couldn't embed them here, but follow these links: One and Two and you'll hear more of Boards of Canada fucking with us. I'm hearing complaints but I'm LOVING this; someone has found a way to bring the mystery back to album releases {props again to QOTSA on their recent weirdness as well, but this is out-mystiquing them BIG TIME at this point}. And speaking album releases, the speculation at present is the new record may be named Cosecha. What? Where'd that come from? Read all about the research going on to keep on top of this stuff on Exclaim! - it's fascinating!

New Boards of Canada Snippets?

How bad do we all want a new Boards of Canada album that we're willing to scrutinize little tidbits like this? Seriously though, I'm loving that guys like BOC and QOTSA are bringing back the mystery of album releasing in the age of the internet where everyone knows everything right away.

Boards of Canada Mystery Snippet

It's not much as far as actuallygiving us an idea what the new Boards of Canada will sound like (well, you can tell it sounds like BOC, but you know what I mean), however the mystery they're mixing up with it is juicy junior. Reaaal juicy. Read the full explanation/story on mxdwn here. And before you say it, I know of at least one website that utilized the "New BOC" thing as a April Fool's day joke, but according to the article I linked above, WARP has confirmed this is the real deal.

Boards of Canada - Gyroscope

Watching Sinister for the 2nd time in a week made me have to post this. I loved the film anyway, but first time through the fact that out of nowhere one of my favorite BOC songs popped up was a wonderful little surprise that endeared it and the filmmakers to me forever.