I realized recently that I never posted anything from Gylt's latest album, In 1000 Agonies I Exist. You can grab this over on the band's Bandcamp page. Both this and 2024's I Will Commit A Holy Crime: Tandem are fantastic records that infiltrated my regular rotation last year after my trip back home to L.A., when friends first played these guys for me. I would very much like to see Gylt live at some point.
Watch:
I caught the late show for Damian McCarthy's Hokum last Thursday night. I've been all but salivating for this one. Here's the 'final' trailer, released last week.
So how was it? Did I get what I wanted? Oh my god, yes!
Hokum is an excellent ghost story, and it's about haunted people as much as it is about a haunted place. The locations, as with all McCarthy's films, are gorgeous beyond compare. There are some legitimately frightening sequences here. One in particular, involving a circle around a four-poster bed, was the first example of a filmmaker creating a sustained sequence of fear in years.
That's my favorite, and it is rare. It's just really difficult to scare an adult with a ghost or monster movie when just living in this world means we operate with a low-grade level of sustained fear 24/7. But McCarthy pulls it off beautifully.
There are also some really great jump scares here. One in particular really got me.
Playlist:
John Cale - Fear
John Cale - Slow Dazzle
The Dream Syndicate - The Days of Wine and Roses
Portishead - Third
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
The Soft Moon - Criminal
The Misfits - Walk Among Us
Electric Youth and Pilot Priest - Come True OST
Corrosion of Conformity - Good God/Baad Man
Frank Black and the Catholics - One More Road for the Hit
Metallica - Ride the Lightning
Beach House - Bloom
Ghost - Ceremony and Devotion
NIN - The Slip
Gylt - I Will Commit a Holy Crime: Tandem
Slow Crush - Thirst
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• XV: The Devil
• Eight of Cups
• King of Wands
Adhering to your own dogma will drain your vitality, so have the presence of mind to recognize your own bullshit and subvert it.
Direct reference to a new project I've dubbed Film50.
