Somewhere back in 2017, my good friend and Horror Vision cohost Ray turned me on to Nabihah Iqbal's album Weighing of the Heart. This one blew me away, and I've been following her ever since, waiting for a new album. A few years ago Nabihah spoke on social media about how the studio space she had been using to record that follow-up was broken into and, if memory serves, all her music and equipment was either stolen or trashed.
My heart broke, but nearly as much as it must have for her.
Now, in spite of the adversity, Dreamer is poised to drop on April 28th courtesy of Ninja Tune, and you can pre-order it HERE. Also, it appears she is touring the U.S., and I am going to try like hell to make it to the Empty Bottle show in Chicago on June 7th, so check those dates by you!
NCBD:
A super light NCBD this week, which is great, as it makes up for all the damn action figures I ordered last week! Hahaha. Here's my single, solitary pick:
I find it interesting to note that, according to the five-issue paradigm SIKTC has demonstrated on all previous trade collections, this new issue would be the fifth and final issue in Volume 5. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean the end of the current storyline; in fact, I'm all but positive that won't be the case. Remember - the Archer's Peak storyline lasted for three trades, and now that the action has shifted to Tribulation, New Mexico, things feel way too involved for everything to pan out this early. That said, it's also interesting to note that, over on League of Geeks, where there should be a button to see the next issue in the series, there is not one. I am by no means suggesting this is the end of the series, but Tynion and crew are definitely playing close to their chest, which, considering how visceral this series is, and how absolutely none of the characters feel safe, may be interpreted in a number of alarming ways.
Playlist:
Spotlights - Seance EP
The Darts - Snake Oil
Le Butcherettes - A Raw Youth
Savages - Silence Yourself
The Cure - Wish
dan le sac Vs Scroobius Pip - Angles
Nabihah Iqbal - Dreamer (pre-release singles)
Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R
Blank Mass - Animated Violence Mild
Ministry - Animositisomina
Card:
Thoth is calling me back again:
This card 100% describes the feelings I've been having the last few days. I managed to force myself out to sit at my writing spot yesterday. Very little actual writing was accomplished, but as a wise man once told me, even if you don't write anything, you sit there for the duration and stare at the screen - it's more than a lot of people manage. Hopefully, today will be better.
A couple years ago, Mr. Brown clued me into the greatness of Dr. John when he sent Gris Gris my way for Halloween. Since, every so often, he'll recommend an album. Two weekends ago he introduced me to 2012's Locked Down, where The Black Keys are his band.
This is the same treatment the Keys have done for other aging icons, but combined with Dr. John, Locked Down struck me immediately. A perfect combination, this, and The Getaway is my favorite song (so far). The coda on this one is fantastic; one of the best guitar solos I've heard in some time.
Watch:
Watching this final season of Servant has finally made me dig out my DVD copy of Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla to show K Toby Kebbler's first break-out role (that I was aware of, anyway).
This one does not disappoint. Face-paced and twisty in that way Guy Ritchie's flicks are when he's on, I put this one right under Snatch as my favorite. And Kebbell is awesome- that pencil scene at the Subways gig! Oh man, I feel that every time I watch this.
Read:
I did a full, deep-dive, note-taking re-read of James Tynion IV's Department of Truth this weekend, and I can definitively tell you that no comic has stirred me up like this since first reading Grant Morrison's Invisibles back around the turn of the century.
The ideas in this book are massive; Tynion has found a way to wrap everything from Alt-Right Conspiracy to Big Foot into an insanely compelling package that feels a lot like things we've seen before and loved cut with something brand new. My elevator pitch would be "Grant Morrison writes the X-Files" and there is zero hyperbole in that. Conspiracy Theories are fun, but ultimately I've never been a person who cannot refuse them just on some innate mental survival instinct; yes, I think 911 was probably an inside job, or some facet of our own government pulled the trigger on JFK, but it would do me no good to obsess over it, so I do not. This book is a super-intelligent way of working with a lot of that stuff in a fictional environment.
Also, Martin Simmonds's art is absolutely breathtaking and helps the book feel a lot like the old-school Vertigo titles I love so much.
Playlist:
Dr. John - Locked Down
Pixies - Surfer Rosa
Pixies - Doggerel
Metallica - Hardwired
Faetooth - Remnants of the Vessel
Clouds Taste Satanic - Tales of Demonic Possession
Ghostland Observatory - Paparazzi Lightning
Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
White Hex - Gold Nights
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
Think things through and don't be distracted by splendor.
I rewatched Nicolas Winding Refn's 2016 The Neon Demon yesterday and was once again completely blown away by it. The visual textures are sleek and beautiful while remaining as soulless as the industry they house in the story. This is perfect for Julian Winding's throbbing, minimalist techno (not calling it EDM, sorry).
Watch:
Interestingly enough, not a day after I read an article about Huesera: The Bone Woman in the latest issue of Fangoria, the trailer dropped:
The first feature from writer/director Michelle Garza Cervera and distributed by the delightful XYZ Films; I'm kind of chomping at the bit to see this one. Something about the mythology at play here really fascinates me.
Read:
Last week I doubled down on my James Tynion reading and picked up the first four trades of Department of Truth. This is research for an upcoming deep-dive Butcher and I are doing for The Horror Vision; the project began as a lay-everything-out for Tynion's Something is Killing the Children mythology; only before we could get going, The Book of Slaughter dropped and kind of answered everything we were going to attempt to draw conclusions on. However, knowing the overall premise of Dept. of Truth, I began to realize the real deep-dive is seeing how these two connect because I am almost certain that they do.
We'll obviously get more into it on the show, which will hopefully drop in about two weeks, but for now let me just point out that in SIKTC, the thing that manifests the monsters is belief, and the titular Department in DOT's entire job is managing belief in conspiracies because the big secret of the world is that if enough people believe in something, it becomes reality.
There's a layer to my enjoyment of DOT I hadn't anticipated, and that's that it looks and reads almost exactly like a late 80s/early 90s Vertigo title. I'm still picking away at the first couple trades of Peter Milligan and Chris Bacchalo's Shade The Changing Man from 1990-1991, and there are so many similarities, it's unreal. Add to that the Bill Sienkiewicz-like art from Martin Simmonds, and I've realized this is a book I should have been reading from the beginning. Better late than never, though.
Playlist:
David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time
Metallica - Hardwired... To Self-Destruct
Various Artists - Twin Peaks (Limited Event Series Soundtrack)
Metallica - 72 Seasons (pre-release singles)
The Police - Synchronicity
David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Freaks)
Off! - Free LSD
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
Katatonia - Sky Void of Stars
Cliff Martinez - The Neon Demon OST
Final Light - Eponymous
Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch - An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil
Special Interest - Endure
Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction
Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
A strenuous emotional sacrifice to achieve a goal. (that's a crappy reading, but I'm short on time)
One of my favorite tracks on Ghost's Impera, an album where I love every track. Is it madness to say this is my second favorite of their records (behind Infestissumam)? I don't care. I love this record.
So, after packing all day last Saturday, and loading all day Sunday, my good friend Keller and made it from LaLaLand to Clarksville, TN in a day and a half! It was awesome. We left immediately after packing (he helped a bit near the end, but I wanted him crisp to drive first-shift, knowing I would be exhausted. My Horror Vision Brother King Butcher and our friends Maddie and Kenta really threw down with us on the move - no easy task when you realize that K's Mom pretty much had, once again, not packed much of anything before day-of). Keller drove from 11:00 PM Sunday, 7/31, until around 7:00 AM the following day. We stopped at a gas station in Flagstaff, AZ, and accidentally hit the skirt of the truck on the concrete bumper guarding the pumps.
Thank god for that bumper.
This is a 20-Foot uHaul truck, and as you might imagine, there's a learning curve. However, everything was ultimately fine because we paid $199 for uHaul's Safemove insurance. SO worth it, and honestly, we were already paying close to $7000 for the truck - it would have been half the price if we trekked over the border into Nevada, however, the monetary benefits would not have outweighed the sanity benefits of picking that truck up down the street from our house.
So my first driving shift began about 7:40 AM (we hit a McDeath's near the gas station for a breakfast sandwich and COFFEE). I'd come to peace with going back to eating meat the week before - that's something I'll hopefully correct again soon, and while I try to avoid McDeath, you really have little choices on the roads between states, so again, I accepted the circumstances for what they were. That shift lasted fourteen hours - I was on fire! Seriously, I did not want to relinquish the vehicle. It was as though I had tapped into something. I've read and thought a lot about the hypnogogic states long drives induce, but this was something even more powerful. I've always thought there is Magick in this country, in the sheer size and what that does to our consciousness as we traverse it, and I think that's what Keller and I tapped into while driving.
So shifts:
Keller: 11:00 PM-7:00 AM
Shawn: 7:40 AM-9:00 PM (time shift puts us at local time ~11:00 PM
Keller: 11:30 PM-3:00 PM
..
I-24 kind of divides Clarksville into two textures. Where we stayed last month with my parents was West of the 24, closer to Fort Campbell, and it has a bit more of a hodge-podge feel. Still nice, but it's a lot of strip malls with Vape stores and Payday loans shops. East of the Highway is decidedly crisper. It's mostly new developments, new stores, etc. When K and I rolled into town with my folks at the end of June, we entered the city through the West side and honestly, it knocked our expectations down a few pegs. After getting priced out of the Murfreesboro/Lavergne/Smyrna area by Angeleno homeowners, seeing this side of Clarksville felt a little like a defeat. When our Realtor eventually explained the divide and showed us around the East side, we felt a lot better, hence why we bought the house that we did. However, as the old saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so I carried an almost unconscious, background anxiety around with me through the sale, inspections, packing, etc. When Keller and I drove in, Siri had us go a totally different way, using the 31, which is essentially a long, scenic surface street. A bit stressful with a 20-Foot truck, but it totally did the trick. All my low-level disappointment evaporated. I fucking LOVE it here. K and I sat outside on our back porch last night and watched a lightning storm.
Watch:
We haven't had the internet, and we haven't had any time to watch anything, but if all goes well, tonight we'll be digging into some of what we missed. Here's where I'm planning on starting:
And, of course:
While I've been fairly skeptical about what feels like the nearly impossible feat of adapting Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, I am hearing nothing but good things from people I know. Of course, it remains to be seen how I feel about it - as Sandman is one of my all-time favorite and most influential comics, but my mind is open.
Read:
Finally going to start reading James Tynion's Something Is Killing the Children, thanks to Gerald at the Comic Bug, who sold me a set of the first five issues with David Mack covers for half-price as a going-away gift. Look at these:
So far, I'm in. Issue One is a FANTASTIC set-up.
I'm glad I waited to start this (although for investment purposes, I wish I had that first-printing #1). Tynion's 3-issue The Closet just wrapped this past week, and it cinched him as one of my favorite current writers in comics, so I have a nice big run of SIKTC ahead of me to look forward to.
Playlist:
Orville Peck - Bronco
Ghost - Impera
Goatsnake - Black Age Blues
Zombi - 2020
Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman
Adia Victoria - A Southern Gothic
Calexico - The Black Light
Fleet Foxes - Shore
Ella Fitzgerald - Best of, Vol. II
The Bangles - Different Light
Anthrax - Worship Music
Cults - Static
ZZ Top - Eliminator
Billy Idol - The Roadside EP
Deafheaven - Ten Years Gone
The Contours & Dennis Edwards - Motown Rarities 1965-1968
SOD - Speak English or Die
Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
The first pull here was done on Wednesday, August 3rd 2022. The second night in the new house. K didn't arrive until the following night, so this was Keller and I hanging out after a second hard day of unloading. I had procured some Mushrooms from a friend back in LaLaLand and saved them for this trip, so when we knocked off for the evening, we opened fresh beers and ate about 2 grams each.
First, yes. I shuffled.
The fact that I laid down 13, 12 and 11 is crazy to me. I read this as the sacrifices I endured (saving $, dealing with all the difficulties of moving your life across country) to perform a massive life-changing ritual (the drive), rewards me. And I'm feeling that reward. Everyone loves this house: Keller couldn't get over it, Kirsten loves it, her Mom loves it, and Sweetie loves it. Oh, and I love it.
One of my favorite songs on an album that is 75% favorite songs. The guitar on this album - and this song in particular - is, in my opinion, the heights calibre hard rock guitar can reach. It sounds so rich and fuzzy, yet retains fantastic definition.
And, of course, great vocal lines, too.
Watch:
Bill Hader's Barry returned a few weeks ago and I only just found out. Over the weekend, K and I caught up and were pretty surprised by the tone of this third season:
One of this show's strengths is the way it balances its inherent darkness with some of the funniest shit I've ever seen. Part of that's the cast - Hader's fantastic, Anthony Carrigan (NoHo Hank) is brilliant pretty much every time he's on the screen, and Stephen Root is always gold. This season, the humor has, thus far, been seriously downplayed and we've been presented with a super dark take on the characters - especially Barry. Again, that comingling of tones has always been the strength of the show. Barry does not shy away from the reality of the concept: a hitman's a pretty dark protagonist.
But it works.
Really not sure where this show is ultimately headed, which is always a good thing.
Read:
I spent a large part of the weekend relaxing and catching up on my comics. Here's what I read:
So nice to finally sit and read this one all the way through, start to finish, in one tight sitting. The Last Ronin totally delivers that old school 80s Frank Miller dystopian aesthetic, while retaining and drawing from the original, B&W Mirage series. Gorgeous art - the design of everything we see in this dystopian world is gorgeous, and visually seems the natural evolution of the original book's Manhattan.
I'd dropped off reading James Tynion IV's The Nice House On The Lake monthly, simply because I lost a lot after its hiatus. sitting down and reading 1-8 in a sitting really took some time, and that just goes to show what a meaty story Tynion's telling here. Very cool story that's essentially a zombie-less update on Romero's Dawn of the Dead (in a way it is! Think about it!)
Playlist:
(Lone) Wolf & Cub - May You See Only Sky
Bexley - Lost in the Moment EP
Cypress Hill - III: Temples of Boom
Jerry Cantrell - Brighten
Calexico - The Black Light
Joseph Bishara - Malignant OST
Mike Doughty - Live at Ken's House
Calexico - Even My Sure Things Fall Through
Card:
A Conservative approach to an infuriating problem will serve me better than, say, a hammer beating. Loud and Clear.
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