Pixies - Dregs of Wine

 

This one had me with the opening spoken word segment, dipped a bit, then picked way back up at about 2:20. It's been really interesting watching the Pixies pick back up and add to their legacy. I'd still REALLY like another Frank Black, Black Francis, or Catholics album (that'd be my #1 want), but Pixies have continued to evolve. Most bands like this just swim in circles and relive their glory days. Not these guys (and gal). 

The new album Doggerel is out on September 30th; pre-order HERE.

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NCBD:

Kind of a big week for NCBD. Here's my planned haul:

Not sure I'll be keeping up with this new Alien series; I dropped off the previous one after the first story arc, figured I'd grab the #1 and reassess. 

This new Ghost Rider title is really hot and cold with me. None of the issues have been bad, but a few were spectacular. Wolvie guest-starring so soon isn't really a good sign in my book, but both titles share Ben Percy as a writer, so maybe that's all it is. Either way, c'mon Ghost Rider - "Thrill Me."

I LOVED that last week, Gerry Duggan had the opportunity to write an X-Men issue that didn't solely deal with Judgement Day, which, as I suspected, is beginning to wear on me. I'm hoping the same for this lastest issue of Immortal X-Men. I'd really like the Sebastian Shaw issue to deal with Shaw's place in the bigger picture of Krakoan politics.

Still having lots of fun with this Moon Knight series. 

And talk about lots of fun. This one is just fantastic (pun intended).

This wins "Cover of the month" award, for sure. 

Tried and true, that's IDW's TMNT. 

Of the two books I began simultaneously earlier in the year that bear more than a little resemblance to one another - A Town Called Terror and West of Sundown - West of has ended. Or at least, the first arc has. I enjoyed that book, but I'm not 100% I'll be back if it returns. The same can be said of this one; it's not bad, I'm just not convinced. We'll see; this issue is most likely ending the first arc, so I'll do a re-read and make a decision then.

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Read:

With a surprising number of "Gloryhole Horror" flicks hitting streaming lately (2, but still, that's quite a bit considering the subject matter, eh?), The Horror Vision held a very Special episode: our Glorious Gloryhole Death Match. One of the unexpected joys of doing that episode (there really were no others), was discovering the H.P. Lovecraft/Hazel Heald novella Out of the Aeons, which has never been in any Lovecraft collection I have previously owned. I took a brief respite from Sandy Macnair's Carspotting to read about the origins of Ghat (see Glorious, the winner by far of the aforementioned death match) in the Cthulhu Mythos. 

Out of the Aeons is available on Kindle for $0.99. First published in 1935 in Weird Tales, I'm really having trouble believing I'd never heard of this one before. 

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Playlist:

Revolting Cocks - Linger Fickin' Good

The Cure - Carnage Visors

The Cure - Faith

The Verve - Eponymous EP

Type O Negative - October Rust

Type O Negative - World Coming Down

High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings

Godflesh - Post Self

Godflesh - Pure

Type O Negative - Origin of the Feces

The Afghan Whigs - In Spades

The Afghan Whigs - Gentlemen

The Afghan Whigs - 1965

The Twilight Singers - Blackberry Belle

Calexico - Garden Ruin

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry

The Afghan Whigs - Do the Beast

Idles - Joy As An Act of Resistance

Ginger Wildheart - The Year of the Fanclub

Miss Piss - Self-Surgery

Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spin

Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss

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Card:

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

Everything this morning is about approaching things with balance, adaptability, understanding and a keen eye. So something needs a closer look it would seem...

The Twilight Singers - Live with Me/Where Did You Sleep Last Night

 

A wonder live rendition of the opening track from the Twilight Singers' 2006 EP A Stitch in Time, which as a bonus, flawlessly morphs into a cover of Lead Belly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night." 

I got chills at the end when Dulli yells, "Mark Lanegan ladies and gentlemen!"

It's been quite some time since I doubled down on any Twilight Singers. This EP and the corresponding album Powder Burns also released in 2006, along with Lanegan's 2004 Bubblegum were intricate daily rituals for much of my life during the mid-to-late 00s. They're also slightly synonymous with drugs - no surprise there. To me, these records so perfectly capture the fabric of my mental life at that time, it brings back a huge rush of thoughts, feelings and ideas that are otherwise haphazardly placed in a closet at the back of my psyche. It's good to take that stuff out and brush it off every once in a while.

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Read:

I'd been trying to read the works of T.E.D. Klein for the better part of a decade, but until very recently, everything was out of print. I eventually found the story "The Events at Poroth Farm" in a Kindle-only "Megapack" of the Cthulhu Mythos. The story has fuck all to do with Lovecraft, but hell, forty stories for $0.99, I'll take it.

This is the kind of thing that flits in and out of my radar, so months go by where I get busy obsessing over other things, then something puts the enigmatic Klein back in my thoughts and I look around on Kindle and eBay again. The holy grail of his work would appear to be the 1985 novel Dark Gods, which goes for upwards of $40 for a Mass Market Paperback on eBay. It's only a matter of time until someone puts Klein's stuff back in print...

And now that is exactly what is happening. Two recent purchases I've made:

This first volume is a novel. A reprint of Klein's 1984 novel The Ceremonies, also long out of print. I snatched up a paperback copy of this the second I saw it hit Amazon, however, I will say, the binding looks like it will split and fall apart before I'm finished reading this one. Maybe I'm wrong, but when you have a 400+ pages book and its binding is barely an eight of an inch thick, well, that's usually a pretty crappy edition. 

And here's one from Pickman's Press I just saw this morning on Kindle. I grabbed the digital right away for this collection of short stories, poems and an interview. "Poroth Farm" is included here, which is nice, as are what looks like an essay on Arthur Machen's "The House of Souls", a story I recently short-listed when I picked up a Complete Works volume of Machen's work. So far, I'm three stories in, and can already tell you, "Well-Connected" is already worth the $5.99 I paid for this one. Fantastic story.

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Playlist:

Mark Lanegan Band - Bubblegum

Mark Lanegan Band - Blues Funeral

Post Stardom Depression - Prime Time Looks A Lot Like Amateur Night

QOTSA - Lullabies to Paralyze

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Card:

Looking for answers, but something remains obscured.

Isolation: Day 137

Mr. Brown had to remind me several times to look up Low Cut Connie, and when I finally did, I understood and became extremely thankful for his persistence. So far, 2015's Hi Honey is all I know, but MAN is it a fantastic album. This is a tie for my favorite track - so far - with Royal Screw, which I might just post here tomorrow.

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As of yesterday, my short story Pentagram Girls is available to read for free on Wattpad, just follow the widget below:



If you dig the story, you can follow the widgets to the left to order the book - I have a 'quarantine special' of $.99 for the Kindle copy running now, so that's a pretty great deal, if I do say so myself. Also, that fantastic cover art is from my good friend and often co-conspirator Jonathan Grimm. If you dig his art, check out his site HERE.

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Playlist:

Primus - Frizzle Fry
Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey
The Smiths - Louder Than Bombs
The Blues Brothers - Briefcase Full of Blues
Orville Peck - Pony
Baroness - Gold and Grey
Nothing - Guilty of Everything
Joy Division - Closer
Black Sabbath - Sabotage
Dead Swords - Enders

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Card:

I keep getting this card because I shake my head like I understand and heed the advice contained therein, then turn around and do the exact opposite.

Isolation: Day 16 - The Return of Joe Bob Briggs!

Man, this could not come at a better time! I cannot wait for weekly event viewing with Mr. Briggs.

**

I've been on a reading tear. I finished my re-read of Inferno, the mini series that ran through all the X-books in 1989. I even through in the What If...? Issue that contemplated what would have happened had the X-Folks lost to S'ym and Madelyne Pryor. Mr. Sinister remains my favorite X-Villain, however, it's unfortunate that Mr. Claremont never had the opportunity to fully explore his backstory. I know subsequent X-writers did, however, I don't know that I'd ever be interested in reading beyond Claremont's X-Men again. Louise Simonson works well writing X-Factor inside Claremont's domain, and I don't want to belittle what she did, but really, she began as Claremont's editor on the books, so it makes sense that when he had to hand the reins of one book over to someone, it would be her. And Ms. Simonson's contributions are fantastic. I even like a bit of what Fabian Nicezia added closer to the end of Claremont's tenure, but most of what other creators did at that time grew organically out of the seeds Claremont had laid. Who knows? Maybe I'll find the one of those Sinister-related trades on sale for Kindle at some point and take a chance. I know they took him back to the Victorian era - an immediate 'Pro' for me, however, the subsequent convolution of all things X after Claremont and the editorial insistence on 'Status Quo' just makes me want to pretend the characters were part of a finite series. (Although Morrison's stands on its own as a three-volume masterpiece, and I suspect that may be just about up for re-read as well).

Possibly my favorite splash in the entire series

Next up was the complete Alien/Predator/Prometheus Fire and Stone saga, which was pretty awesome. 

One of my favorite elements of this was when the construct Elden - similar model to Bishop or David from the films - is injected with the Engineer's Life Accelerant "Black Goo" and begins an evolutionary journey that sees him become something almost as monstrous and distressing as the Xenomorphs themselves. Check this out:

More wonderful Nightmare fuel from the Alien Universe!

Next, the first installment of Warren Ellis' 2016 serial novel Normal, which I've had since its release and which I've just realized, is now only available as the collected novel. So, apparently in order to continue, I'll just have to pick that up, which is no problem, as it's readily available on Kindle:

Although I won't be doing the rest of Normal just yet, as reading the first part awakened in me a rabid desire to re-read Charles Stross' Atrocity Archives, which I believe I first read back in... 2007 or 2008, and which has perpetually been on my mind since setting up a Feedly account a few months ago and following Stross' blog (HERE).

If you're unfamiliar with Stross, his Laundry Files books follow an employee in the IT department of a company that deals with Necromantic Arts and Lovecraftian Elder Gods the way Silicon Valley companies deal with Technology. It's fascinating, and I'd been meaning to re-enter Stross world for sometime. I'm only a few pages into this re-read, but I may do more of the series afterward.

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Playlist:

The Birthday Party - Mutiny/The Bad Seed EP
Fenn - Epoch
Balthazar - Fever
Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Tinderbox
Tennis System - Lovesick
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Various Artists - The Void OST
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1
NIN - Ghosts V: Together
Rammstein - Eponymous

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No Card.

Chelsea Wolfe - Highway

Always a good day when there's a new Chelsea Wolfe video. One of my favorite artists insofar as how she puts imagery to her music; there's always a visual representation of the hollow loneliness that permeates her songs. Not sad loneliness, but the kind you feel when you're out in the desert, dwarfed by the environment around you, and isolated from other humans.

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Kindle had a Dark Horse comics sale yesterday (it may still be in effect), and for $6.99 I picked up the Alien/Predator/Prometheus Fire and Stone collection. I've heard great stuff about this series, so I'm psyched to jump in, as while I enjoyed by recent viewing of Alien: Covenant for what it is, I would have definitely preferred if they didn't kill all the Engineers off between movies. I've said it many times now, as much as I love Aliens, the films are frustrating for sure, and nothing is more frustrating then their propensity in killing the most interesting characters OFF SCREEN.

Also in that sale, I scored the first Masters of the Universe Mini Comics collection for $5.00. This is pure nostalgia, pleasure reading. These comics are literally primordial Shawn, as I had MotU figures from the time of their initial release, and the accompanying mini comics were among the first comics I ever read, and thus are at least partially responsible for my continued love of the medium.

Also, my Uncanny X-Men re-read continues at a steady pace; I'm now up to Inferno, but I'm going to back track first and re-read the 1984 Magik mini-series first, as events in that series set-up the story that eventually culimates during Inferno. Also, and I'm putting this in print finally, my all-time favorite X-villains are by far Mr. Sinister, S'ym, and N'astirh.

Unbeatable when drawn by my X-Men dream-team of Silvestri and Green.

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Playlist:

Orville Peck - Pony
The Jesus Lizard - Lash EP
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Luciferian Towers
... And You Will Know Us By the Trail of the Dead - X: The Godless Void and Other Stories
The Jesus Lizard - Liar
Belong - October Language
Testament - The Gathering
Allagaeon - Apoptopsis
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Somnium Nox - Apocrypha EP
The Soft Moon - Deeper
U2 - War

It Never Rains in Southern California

It gives me infinite pleasure to have finished Season Three of Veronica Mars last night - the episode ends with this song - and wake up to find it POURING. Because, like the man sings, it literally never rains in Southern California.

Next: Veronica Mars the movie, then Season 4! WU-HU!

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Couple movies I watched recently:



Nothing revelatory, but an entertaining watch, to be sure. I really liked the way they used a huge red herring out of the gate and then totally dropped it. Also, the faux choking gag that results from this made me laugh out loud. Letterbxd



I LOVE this movie so very much. Letterboxd.



I LOVE Brad Anderson's films. Most of them, anyway. Transiberian owns a very special place in my heart, as does Session 9 and The Machinist, though to a lesser degree. IN my opinion, Trans is his masterpiece thus far - although there's a few I didn't see in the last few years and one I didn't care for at all, Vanishing on Seventh Street. Letterbxd.

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I never thought I'd say it, but after reading Gideon the Ninth on a kindle, then moving on to Warren Ellis' Dead Pig Collector (finished, fantastic), and Autumn Christian's Girl Like A Bomb (in the middle of, also great) on it as well, I am in love with the digital reading format. I bought the Kindle version of the Injection Omnibus by Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey - I have all the issues at home, but wanted to be able to carry the entire thing around with me all the time, as it is a source of endless inspiration at the moment, even though I've been pretty spotty on actually getting any writing done the last few days. Those weekend shifts at work kill me this time of year, and I've generally just been tired and obsessed with finishing V. Mars.

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Playlist:

Orville Peck - Pony
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
Beth Gibbons and the Polish National Radio Symphony - Henry Górecki - Symphony No. 3
New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
Canyons - Barrie (single)
Caterina Barbieri - Ecstatic Computation
Blood Red Shoes - Get Tragic
Spotlights - Love and Decay
The Soft Moon - Criminal
The Smiths - Meat is Murder
Meg Myers - Sorry
Blackwater Holylight - Veils of Winter
Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell
Meg Myers - Take Me to the Disco
Perturbator - Dangerous Days
(Sandy) Alex G - House of Sugar

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No card today.