In a Smiths mood this morning. Sometimes Morrissey's biting observations and poetic turns of phrase just hit the spot intellectually, to say nothing of Marr, Rourke and Joyce's music, which transports me to a very specific place in my head, more feeling than thought. That's why this group worked so well for the time it did - Morrissey anchors you while the music compels the soul to soar.
Of course, to enjoy any of this, I've had to maintain my ignorance of what an unbelievable twat Morrissey has become over the years.
Watch:
Browsing the Just Added on Shudder, I followed a hunch - a hunch that all Irish Horror Films are fantastic - and clicked on Billy O'Brien's 2005 Isolation.
I could not find a serviceable trailer, and also, I think the less you know about this one going in, the better you are. Believe me, however, when I tell you that my hunch continues to prove correct because Isolation is fantastic. A taut little creature feature with notes of The Thing and Alien, only set on an Irish farm.
Read:
Completely off the cuff, I began re-reading Alan Campbell's brilliant Deepgate Codex trilogy over the weekend. About a third of the way through the first book, Scar Night (2006), these have a special place in my heart, and I am ashamed to say I never finished the trilogy by reading that final book.
Back when I first moved to LaLaLand in 2006, I was working at a Borders bookstore as an inventory supervisor. Myspace was the thing at the time, and through its messaging, author Alan Campbell - then relatively unknown, as Scar Night was his first novel coming off the success of having helped write the Grand Theft Auto game - messaged me. Seeing that I was a pretty vocal champion of China Mieville's work at the time (still am), Campbell reached out to tell me about his book, which is set in the city of Deepgate - a city that hangs from chains suspended above a bottomless pit.
No way I wasn't going to read that!
I bought the book when it came out in Hardcover, and continued to buy Campbell's books as they were released in that manner. By the time book three came out, though, I was probably in the middle of something with a completely different tone, and it wasn't the time to reread the first two and go into number three.
And the years lapsed...
Back around 2019, I picked up and plowed through the first two books of Campbell's subsequent series, The Gravedigger Chronicles. These were immediately among my favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels ever - we're still waiting on that third book though, and from time to time the thought that we may never see it (the Author, who is not active on social media, has stated that the third book in the series is finished, however, the publishing deal he had went south and the book remains, well, suspended by metaphorical chains above the abyss that was once the publishing industry). That particular sadness darkened my door this past week, and thus, I grabbed the Deepgate Codex with the intention of loving it so much again that the power of that love might somehow aetherically find Mr. Campbell and transmute into a resolution for that final book.
And yes, Scar Night is just as good as I remember. Maybe better. And no, aetherically is not a word. Well, not until now.
Playlist:
Lustmord - The Others
Fvunerals - Let The Earth Be Silent
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Wasteland
Karl Casey - XX
Battle Tapes - Sweatshop Boys EP
Final Light - Eponymous
Ager Sonus - Book of the Black Earth
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
Special Interest - Endure
Motörhead - Ace of Spades
Anthrax - Attack of the Killers B's
Aerosmith - Pump
Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
Talking Heads - Fear of Music
Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark
Made Out of Babies - The Ruiner
The Jesus Lizard - Goat
Thou - Rhea Sylvia
David Bowie - Black Tie White Noise
Silent - Modern Hate
Melvins & Lustmord - Pigs of the Roman Empire
Metallica - Hardwired...
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
A reminder that balance is what supports harmony, and balance is not achieved by the narratives about others we sometimes tell ourselves repeatedly. I've 100% done just this, and it's not without a breakthrough of Will that I will be able to smooth things over.
