Floating into the Night Reissued!

 

I'm sure I've posted this here at some point in the past, but it felt like the right thing to do this morning. From The Ravenonettes PERFECT 2011 album Raven in the Grave, this has long been one of my favorite songs by the band. That guitar just breaks my heart in the best way possible!!!

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Watch:

Sacred Bones just announced a new edition of Julee Cruise's 1989 album Floating Into the Night, her collaboration album with Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch. If you know the record, you know it's HUGE for Twin Peaks fans, as several of the tracks here went on to populate the soundtrack to the original two seasons of Twin Peaks. To promote the re-release, Sacred Bones produced this charming little video:

 

You can order a copy HERE; I was able to snag the Pink and Black Galaxy Vinyl, although I am uncertain if I qualified for the poster. Either way, I'm happy as hell to finally have this on wax without having to pay for an original pressing on eBay.

 

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NCBD Addendum:

On a lark, I picked up the first issue of Bliss on Tap Publishing's new series Killing Hope. I was not disappointed.

Written by Josh Barbee and Maloney, with art by Alex Cormack, who I was familiar with from 2020's Aquatic Horror mini-series Sea of Sorrow, Killing Hope starts out as a thriller then veers into what I'm guessing is going to be full-on Horror territory. It's a woman on the run from seemingly unstoppable forces, and I can't wait to read more!

Bliss on Tap is new to me, but a quick gander at their website shows they've got quite a few titles under their belt, with seemingly something for everybody.

 

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Playlist:

Blut Aus Nord - 777: Cosmosophy

Principles of Geometry - Lazare

Roxy Music - Eponymous

Colors of the Dark Podcast - Episode 61: The Boogeyman

Chamber of Screams, Clement Panchout & Mxxn - Murder House (Original Puppet Combo Soundtrack)

The Sword - Warp Riders

Faetooth - Remnants of the Vessel

M83 - Saturdays = Youth

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Card:

• Ace of Disks 

• Two of Swords: Peace

• Prince of Swords - The airy aspect of Air, or conflict with intellect

Resolving issues with spending money leads to further resolution of internal conflict. I think this is a tit-for-tat response to my current state of continual distraction. The internet is both a powerful tool and a siren that calls me away from my work on a regular basis. Fighting this over the last couple days has led to a huge breakthrough in my work. I was stuck on a final act, but I believe I now have it well underway and it's better than I first imagined!

 

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7 Days of Badalamenti: Day 6 - She Would Die For Love

 

"She Would Die For Love," from Julee Cruise's 1993 album The Voice of Love, produced by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch. The instrumental version earned considerably more momentum as the opening credit sequence soundtrack the year before in Lynch's much-maligned prequel film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The the latter is the version I am more familiar, and taken, with, but both have their merits.

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Cast:

This morning The Horror Vision launches a new spin-off podcast, The Horror Vision Presents: Elements of Horror. This is a project that brings in my good friend Missi, as well as the other THV folks when they're able. My 2022 Wrapped from our hosting platform Anchor shows The Horror Vision created more content this past year than 77% of our contemporaries, and that felt good. This new show is something I'd been wanting to do for a while: a place where we could talk non-genre flicks that contain Horror Elements. And oh, what a list we have so far! The first episode is on Jim Jarmusch's beautiful, beautiful film Only Lovers Left Alive, but from here we have some films I cannot wait to talk about. Here's a small tease:

Ryan Gosling's Lost River

Nicholas Verso's Boys in Trees

Adam Rifkin's The Dark Backward

David Lynch's Lost Highway

And a whole lot more beyond those. That's just scratching the surface! The first episode is now on all streaming platforms - you can even hit play up on the little Spotify widget in the upper right-hand corner of this page. 

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Watch:

Saturday night I caught Lorcan Finnegan's new film, Nocebo:

Another solid film from Finnegan, who popped onto my radar with his Without Name. 

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Read:

I finishe Irvine Welsh's The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs last night in one Heruclean jaunt of reading that lasted most of the evening and well into the small hours of the night. Just like the first time I read it, back in 2006 upon its release, I could not put those last two hundred pages down. Having only gotten back into reading Welsh after a self-imposed hiatus (his voice tends to affect my own writing, and I wanted to steer clear of that for most of the projects I've been on for the last decade), I'm temped to say this is Welsh's best behind Glue, which will most likely always remain my favorite. Secrets is fantastic though, and creates such unrelenting pathos for all the characters through rotating first-person accounts from nearly the entire cast, that when you reach the last act, well, it's fraught with tension. He sets up several really great "gotta-sees," and balances them in such an expert way that you often lose sight of one for whichever is currently "on screen," only to have Welsh juggle them in front of you again and immediately re-ignite your curiosity for what's been in the background for several chapters. 

Really great book. Now, I'm feeling that void of having just finished a great book and really wanting to jump into one of Welsh's newer books that I haven't read. Not sure that will happen before the end of the year, so I will most likely pick Will Carver's Psycopaths Anonymous back up. 

I began it directly after I finished Hinton Hollow Death Trip and quickly realized my genre interests had shifted a bit. From what I did read, there's a definite Fight Club influence here, although not in an egregious way. I loved HHDT, so I'm very much looking forward to more Carver!

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Playlist:

Zombi - Shape Shift

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

Lustmord - Dark Matter

Beach House - Depression Cherry

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

Rodney Crowell - Christmas Everywhere

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

More on the money front, which has been an open loop for a while. I need to square this CC bill soon, before the no-interest period runs out, but hidden costs continue to keep the balance level. This is nothing dire, but it would definitely be nice to be at 0 by year's end. 

Julee Cruise - The Orbiting Beatnik

Circa its release in 2002, Mr. Brown gifted me a copy of Julee Cruise's The Art of Being a Girl. This is Cruise's third album and her first since 1993's second collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch, The Voice of Love. The sound of this one is all over the place in the best possible way, and I would argue slots in perfectly with that early 00s 'electronica' sound that eventually became ubiquitous. The light, almost mystical sound of this particular track always takes me places, in keeping with all of Cruise's previous work. What we see here and in the subsequent album My Secret Life, her 2011 collaboration with former Dee-Lite DJ Dimitry is an artist who is never content having one sound. Cruise knew her strengths, and she knew how to suss out the best partners to help that sound evolve.

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Play:

I'm still playing The Game Kitchen's Blasphemy, and I've made a vow not to buy any new games until I finish it. I don't have a hell of a lot of time for games, but Blasphemy is addictive enough that, considering it's the first video game I've played in probably close to 30 years, I do find myself enmeshed when I pick it up. Because of this, I'm close. Close enough to figure that by the time Rose-Engine's Signals hits Switch on October 27th, I should be ready to embark on its gorgeously horrific journey, made evident with this trailer:

Thanks to Bloody Disgusting for introducing me to this one, as I'd not heard of it before. You can read their article HERE.

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Watch:

I re-watched Summer of 84 last night for the third time, and I have to say, especially with this viewing following Stranger Things' amazing fourth season (part 1), I love this film even more. HERE is a link to the brief Letterbxd review I did last night that kind of sums up my feeling about the film, and in case you're unfamiliar, here's the trailer:

Afterward, K and I threw on Shudder TV and stumbled into Peter Carter's Rituals, a film I've been wanting to watch since just before it hit Shudder. Again, you can read my brief review HERE.

Very solid film, and as I say in the review, I'll need another viewing to fully 'get' it.

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Playlist:

King Dude and Julee Cruise - Sing Each Other's Songs For You

M83 - Saturdays = Youth

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Various - Twin Peaks (Music from the Limited Event Series)

Brand New - Science Fiction

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank, Vol. 1

Metallica - Ride the Lightning

Blut Aus Nord - Dismarmonium: Undreamable Abysses

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Card:

Page of Cups again, eh? Interesting that, in only three recorded readings so far with this deck, two of them are the same. I take this to mean that I really didn't pay close enough attention the first time I drew this card, two days ago. I'll also admit at this point that, since I am solely used to using the Crowley/Harris Thoth deck, I am not used to having Pages as part of the Court Cards.

Crowley famously reinterpreted quite a few aspects of the traditional Tarot for his deck. We can sum up his Court Cards as such:

Being that Grimm's Bound Tarot utilizes the traditional paradigm, I have not yet developed that ease with which my mind should read the Page as Princess, but in today's reading, I may have received such a solid example of interpretation factoring immediately into real life, that hopefully, the lesson will persevere. 

From the grimoire:

The Earthy aspect of Water; Dreams can become Reality.

I literally woke up this morning after dreaming about officiating my Sister's wedding in less than a week and found my brain immediately transcribing the dream into what has now, several hours later, become the foundation for my speech. So I literally turned my dream into Reality. I'm assuming my first pull of this card the other day was the first indication - amidst my mounting anxiety at not having started the speech - that I needed to listen to the dreams of the event I've been having. I did not heed the first instruction, so the cards gave me the same recommendation a second time.

You can buy a set of these amazing cards on Grimm's site HERE. 

Julee Cruise Sings King Dude

 From the Split Single Sing Each Other's Songs for You, on which King Dude does a very sedate but ultimately charming version Rockin' Back Inside My Heart.

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Watch:

Continuing on that Netflix Trailer dump from a few days ago:

 

"From the creators of Dark." That's all I needed to know to get excited about 1899, which I feel like I've been waiting on for a really long time.

 

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Read:

One of the things I've been meaning to do for a couple years now is to begin re-reading Wrapped in Plastic magazine. This was a Twin Peaks/David Lynch-focused magazine published from roughly 1992 to 2005 by Craig Miller and John Thorne. In the wake of Julee Cruise's death, I decided to pull out issue 61, which has Cruise on the cover and chronicles the 2002 Twin Peaks Fest, which she attended as a guest.

In doing this, I realized that the first issue Cruise appeared in, October 1993's issue 7, was one of the early issues that came out before I knew about the magazine. My collection runs issue 16 through the final issue, June 2005's issue 75, with a reprint of issue #1. I never made it around to filling in those gaps, and obviously, with Cruise's death, the going eBay price is, for the moment, astronomical. That said, issue 7 has a gorgeous cover, and I wanted to post it here:

Wrapped in Plastic was a HUGE part of my life for about ten or eleven years, and I flip through the issues often, however, I haven't really read one in ages.

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Playlist:

Julee Cruise - Falling

Julee Cruise - The Voice of Love

Julee Cruise - The Art of Being a Girl

Kate Bush - The Dreaming

Ghost - Impera

Battle Tapes - Sweatshop Boys EP

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Mike Doughty - Live At Ken's House

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Card:

Dipping once again in Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot for today's reading:

My general definition of the Four of Swords is based on Crowley and Freida Harris' Thoth, which subtitles the card as Truce. That said, I've decided I am not going to look at the Bound Tarot in the 'learned tradition of tarot, but in a more personal interpretation. 

Decisions that hang heavy over your head: this card evokes a tough decision that will open the door for indecision to immobilize you. I'm not sure if this has to do with something coming up at work, or our impending trip to Tennessee in about a week's time, when we will begin looking for our new home. Our pre-approval came back as a win yesterday, so with that out of the way, we really just have to get there and try and find something. By the looks of what we're seeing online, our new focus in Clarksville may mean we have to decide between several places, all of which seem fantastic. I can see how that would be a crippling decision.

(Obviously, most if not all of the homes we're seeing now as available on our Real Estate Agent's portal are going to be under contract before we get there, however, what we are seeing is an indication that there are a lot of places that will tug at our heart strings.)

You can buy a set of these amazing cards on Grimm's site HERE. 

R.I.P. Julee Cruise

 Talk about bad news to wake up to. Julee Cruise's voice and visage has been a part of my inner world ever since the night Twin Peaks Season Two Episode 14 aired; losing her to suicide at 65 feels a bit like a seismic shifting of my personal history's plates. The old world is definitely slipping away. In keeping with my recent M.O., thus beginneth Julee Cruise week.

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Watch:

Amidst a lot of discussion about the "Whole Season at Once" business model beginning to fail (see the cancellation of Archive 81), Netflix dropped a handful of great trailers the other day, as if to remind us of their potency.

We'll see. However, any reservations I have about their adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Sandman - arguably one of the greatest comics of ALL TIME, this trailer has me salivating for August:

Wow. I mean... I am almost speechless. Here's to hoping it's as good as it looks; Locke and Key looked pretty good when the first trailer dropped, as well, but I quickly forgot everything about Season One due to a lot of the changes and found myself thinking I should just re-read the series the next time I want to visit Lovecraft (not bloody Matheson!).

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Read:

This past Wednesday, Zeb Wells and John Romita, Jr.'s Amazing Spider-Man #3 hit the stands. This is Legacy issue #897. I've Liked this series so far, but this issue... Jesus. This is the best Spider-Man comic I've read in... well, a long time. 

There's a visceral pulse to this one that I definitely did not expect; watching Tombstone - a character I've loved since his introduction back in the 80s, circa Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man issue #139 - beat the living daylights out of a defenseless Spider-Man really affected me, as did his childhood origin.  I was really only planning to read this book until #900, but if Wells keeps this up, I'm not going anywhere.

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Playlist:

Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust

Mike Doughty - Live at Ken's House

Kate Bush - The Dreaming

Windhand - Split EP

Carpenter Brut - Leather Terror

Orville Peck - Pony

Pixies - There's a Moon On (pre-release single)

Kensonlovers - Keep Rolling (single)

Grand Duchy - Petite Fours

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Card:

A nice warning about the gathering slothfulness I've been so afraid of for a while now. I'm not writing enough. I need to remedy that.