New Meg Myers! Her stuff is getting weirder, but she still delivers those pulse-pounding hooks.
Watch:
Oh shit, I forgot ALL about this:
No release date yet, but the announcement says "Soon."
Dollar Bin:
I don't know much about Micronauts, other than it was a toy property from just before my era - before the era where cartoons and I always came across stray figures and playsets at garage sales in the early 80s and wondered what they were (same with Shogun Warriors). Last year though, when Chris Saunders and I interviewed comic artist legend Kelley Jones, he mentioned he started at marvel on the Micronauts book.
I have developed a bit of a phantom nostalgia for toys and comics from just before my era, and finding these in the ol' dollar bin proved impossible to pass up. This falls in line with the weird, TSR, Hobby-Shop genre of SciFi and Horror that I feel existed as a kind of 'quiet zeitgeist' in the early 80s - a pop culture texture that has been mined and revitalized by Stranger Things perfectly. Anyway, I'm hoping to find more Micronauts, or maybe snag some on eBay. I'd like to read a solid run of a handful of consecutive issues, just to get a feel.
Also, they're written by Bill Mantlo, and I've really come to see him as a kind of underappreciated genius in that Hobby Shop Sci-Fi thing.
Playlist:
Ozzy Osbourne - Ordinary Man
Jerry Cantrell - Brighten
Mike Doughty - Live At Ken's House
Prince - Sign O' The Times
Testament - The New Order
Sparks - Hello Young Lovers
Mr. Bungle - The Night They Came Home
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
The Raveonettes - Raven in the Grave
Goatsnake - Black Age Blues
Card:
Once again, the ways of peace are strong in me, even in the midst of adversity.
I'll admit, I love the song, but don't plan on watching the video. As she gets more clout behind her, and Still, any new music from Meg Myers is a welcome, joyous thing these days. Her aesthetic, instrumentation, production, and of course, songwriting, are top-notch and always hit me super hard, reminds me a bit of how Garbage hit me the first time I snagged my kid really listened to them.
Watch:
After renting Come True on Prime last night, Anthony Scott Burns just became one of my favorite directors. I can't recommend this one enough - imagine Dreamscape married with Beyond the Black Rainbow and that will get you in the ballpark, but Burns' style is all his own, and it's fucking glorious. I just posted the trailer a day or so ago, so here's what will no doubt live on as an ICONIC track from the soundtrack by Electric Youth and Pilot Priest:
Upon finishing the film, I immediately shot over to Waxwork Records and pre-ordered on gorgeous Cyan Blue with Red and Yellow Splatter vinyl:
I will be 100% shocked if Come True doesn't end up in my top five movies of 2021. I cannot wait to buy this film on Blu Ray.
Playlist:
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree
Radiohead - OK Computer
Meg Myers - Sorry
Mastodon - Once More 'Round The Sun
Ministry - Psalm 69
QOTSA - Villains
Sam Cooke - One Night Stand! Live At the Harlem Square Club, 1963
The Pogues - Rum Sodomy and the Lash
The Replacements - Tim
The Raveonettes - In and Out of Control
SOD - Speak English or Die
Soul Coughing - Irresistible Bliss
Cake - Fashion Nugget
Electric Youth - Breathing OST (For a lost film)
Electric Youth - Come True OST
Dream Division - Beyond the Mirror's Image
Card:
Three of Disks - Too much work of late, it's left me unable to function in my non-work life, so I'll take this as a nod that the hard times are over and things will even back out.
New Meg Myers? Yes! Wow, Ms. Myers music just keeps getting more lush and interesting. This is obviously very produced, almost to the point that it sounds like a pop queen's record, except her song writing continues along a track that puts her as a natural heir to the lineage that Kate Bush began and Tori Amos continued. Image that: a pop Kate Bush. Actually, as luck would have it, we don't have to imagine it, because here it is.
Pre-order the new album out November 11th on Sumerian Records HERE.
News:
Being that I run a small business, really a micro business at this point, I'll always use this space to promote what The Horror Vision/THV Press is up to. Most recently, I've branched out into THV as a boutique record label. That's right. There is some new music on the horizon, but first up, I've finally taken steps to get the albums I did with Darkness Brings the Cold onto streaming platforms. First up, Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank, Vol. 1 is now on all streaming platforms. Here's a link to Apple Musicand I've updated the widgets on the right hand side of this page with a Spotify widget.
Watch:
Thursday night was a HUGE event viewing night for K and I. We started with the Raised By Wolves Season One Finale. This is now one of my favorite shows going, as it is absolutely unlike anything I have ever seen before. Also, I once again have a teeny tiny sneaking suspicion this may end up tying into the Prometheus/Alien Universe. It doesn't matter if it does or not - hell, at this point, I'd overall probably rather it didn't. But either way, I love this show. Here's the opening credit sequence, with music by Ben Frost, who I am thrilled to see moving on from scoring Netflix's Dark to something as high profile as this.
After Raised By Wolves, we changed it up and did the South Park Pandemic Special. South Park is often hit or miss with me, and I'm not a die hard. Season 19 - the introduction of PC Principal was one of the most genius satires I've ever seen, and this special is right up near it. Maybe I just really needed to laugh, but there was one scene that I honestly believe made me laugh harder than I have ever laughed before. It felt GOOD.
Here's the opening musical number, I Love You Social Distancing, which I guess could kind of be a theme song for this blog:
31 Days of Halloween:
Also over the last two nights, we started our 31 Days of Halloween ritual, month-long viewing. This year, I thought I'd work in as many short films as I could, and as such, it occurred to me to finally take care of a little unfinished business.
I've watched The October Society's Tales of Halloween several times now and never taken to it, and just seems completely insane to me because I love pretty much every director who had a hand in making this anthology. So to kick the first two nights off this year, we began taking one or two shorts a night, as kind of a throwback to old school theater experiences, where cartoons or serialized pulp adventures would precede the feature. First up then was David Parker's Sweet Tooth on Thursday, with Adam Gierasch's Trick and my favorite thus far, Darren Lynn Bousman's The Night Billy Raised Hell.
Moving on to features, we capped Thursday with George Waggner's original, 1941 The Wolf Man. A perfect film to kick off this year's October viewing, especially with a full moon that night (and another coming on the 31st; oh 2020, what sights you have to show us).
Friday was a half day from work, and I continued the 31 Days with an afternoon viewing of Stuart Gordon's From Beyond. I had no idea this was coming to Shudder, so the moment I saw it in the Just Added section, I hit play. This one is even better than I remembered it - first and only viewing was quite some time ago - like maybe 20 years. From Beyond is a practical FX extravaganza, and Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree, and Ted Sorel act their asses off!
Next, HULU premiered their new series Monsterland on Friday. I know I've talked about this in these pages ad nauseam, but now that it's here, I'm overjoyed. Monsterland is, of course, an adaptation of Nathan Ballingrud's first collection of short stories, North American Lake Monsters. I've been waiting for this one since I got to meet Babak Anvari, the Director of Annapurna Pictures' first adaptation of Mr. Ballingrud's novella The Visible Filth, 2019's Wounds, at Scream Fest last year.During my brief discourse with Mr. Anvari - super nice chap, btw - we geeked out over Ballingrud's writing and he excitedly mentioned this series was en route.
The first episode, Port Fourchon, Louisiana, adapts the first story in the book, You Go Where it Takes You. I really think Bloody Disgusting/Fangoria writer Megan Navarro drove the proverbial nail in the palm when she wrote of the show, "... cuts straight to the heart of the human condition and at its ugliest and most hopeless. It's not the monsters that provide the horror here, but humanity." (Full article HERE). This is definitely a downbeat, philosophically reflection on humanity and the corners we like to paint ourselves into.
Let's start the count:
1) The Wolf Man
2) From Beyond/Monsterland: Port Fourchon, Louisiana
Playlist:
Deftones - Ohms
Deftones - Diamond Eyes
Sepultura - Quadra
Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (digipak)
The Sisters of Mercy - Floodland
Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST
Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank, Vol. 1
Also, I spent a lot of time updating my All Hallows Playlist and adding it to Spotify. Here's a link:
Five days ago: in the car, a cover of Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill comes on KROQ and mildly annoys me. I erroneously dismiss it as another 'Of Monsters and Men' type band covering a song I adore.
One day ago: I hear the same Kate Bush cover on the radio that is always on at work. Normally tuned exclusively to KXLU, lately, the dial has been set to KROQ. I relive the experience in the car from a few days before, walk out and Shazam the track, realizing as I stand there with my phone in my hand that I actually like the cover.
Fifteen minutes ago: I wake up early, set up to stretch and see that I ear-marked the artist in question, Meg Myers', 2014 Make A Shadow EP on Apple Music. I download the tracks, lay out a yoga mat and hit play. While attempting to stretch out incredibly sore hamstring muscles, the first track starts and I melt.
This is amazing. Full salvo - this hits me hard.
Five minutes ago: I start this post, a newly minted Meg Myers fan.
**
It's time again for...
For the first time in years yesterday, I listened to Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too by the New Radicals. This was a huge album for me in the early 2000s, but perhaps because of that fact, it feels as though it belongs to that era. In this on-going obsession with recontextualizing the 00s, I listened to the album in one straight shot at work and experienced it in a deeply emotional way. Which was very, um, cathartic, I guess. Weird to experience a strong emotional response to music in an office with other people around, but it's kind of a different office aesthetic than most people have, so it worked.
I followed the one album Greg Alexander recorded as New Radicals with a song that often surprises people when it pops up on my iPod in a public forum. I know nothing about Michelle Branch and I'm not the biggest Carlos Santana fan, especially the album I'm about to reference here. However, this song, written by Alexander, sounds like it belongs on that one New Radicals album. I love it. When Ms. Branch hits those "tell my whhhyyyy" parts, it does to my soul exactly what Alexander's voice does on album opener Mother We Just Can't Get Enough, and it feels very, very good.
**
Finished the second season of Veronica Mars, and we're now a quarter of the way through the third. I've seen all these before, but my memory sucks, so while I remember how the main season arcs sweep, I don't completely remember how they get to where they're going. That was certainly the case with the climax of Season Two, where I remembered who had blown up the bus, but not why. I also didn't remember just how damn dark that Season Two finale gets, or how dark Season Three's main story is. Is this why the show ultimately disintegrated in the ratings that propelled it through its initial lifespan and subsequent following?
Chomping at the bit to revisit the movie - which I remember nothing about - and to get to the new Season on Hulu.
**
The new episode of The Horror Visionis up. Movie of the episode is James Gunn's wonderful 2006 gross-out Slither, but the conversation goes all over the place, from Jennifer Kent's Babadook follow-up The Nightengale, to AHS 1984's conclusion (no spoilers), to Clive Barker's Nightbreed. Oh, and our Classic Corner is Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
Doing the movies-on-silent-in-the-background-while-I-write thing again, and it seems to be working well for inspiration. Recent features:
**
Playlist:
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
Soundgarden - Down On the Upside
St. Germaine - Tourist
New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
Federale - No Justice
Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturian Poetry
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. II: Philosophy of Beyond
Telephone Tel Aviv - Immolate Yourself
**
Card:
Which I associate with a very good friend who I spoke to immediately after pulling the card - coincidentally, not by design - who experienced a 6.4 Earthquake in Tirana. Stay safe, brother.
