ƎU⅃ᗺᗷOᗷ - Moutains Falling

From David Lynch and John Neff's 2001 BLUEBOB album, technically titled ƎU⅃ᗺᗷOᗷ, but I don't know a good way of typing that stylization outside of the clunky cut-and-paste from other websites, and then, see, you get comic sans or whatever that is. 

One of my favorite albums ever, and "Mountains Falling" is probably my favorite track. There's something so eerie and beautiful about the guitar, about the entire song. Very compelling and wonderfully utilized in Mulholland Drive. 

Tomorrow will bring us full circle on David Lynch's passing, and although technically the week-long celebration would end today, I'm extending it to Thursday for symmetry. That said, I wanted to start to get back into regular posting.

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NCBD:

This week's pull list from Rick's Comic City:

And then there's last week's books, which I completely forgot to post. How is that possible? More on that in a second.

Okay, so yeah, how did I forget to post last week's books? Well, besides being so busy at work that I didn't even make it into the shop until Thursday night, and that was only to give myself some normalcy after spending the day with the news of David Lynch's passing? There's something else at work here, though.

I recently realized I no longer have a tent pole book. I like everything I'm reading, but there's nothing that I absolutely cannot wait to read. This is always a rough patch because the older I get and the more media changes, the more I become concerned that one of these patches might stick. That seems unlikely, but even if an indie book really grabs me at some point in the near future, chances are it will either be a limited series or will be released in seasons, with gaps in between. I miss having something that really drives me. There was Preacher,  Stray Bullets, and The Walking Dead. Most recently, it was the Krakoa-era X-Men, and after that, I thought for sure the Energon Universe would carry the torch, but that's just not happening. With the exception of DWJ's Transformers, my favorite books last year were all indie titles that were published sporadically or as mini-series. Of everything I read, SIKTC comes closest, but goddamn, these hiatus intervals! Hahaha. I know JTIV is busy working on a lot of books people love - myself included - but that just means there's only sporadic consistency with all of his stories.

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Watch:

I really just found myself wanting to hear David talk today. About anything. How cool, then, that I found this:

 

From the Simple Tom YouTube Channel, which I recommend you check out. The full video for this is in the description.

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Playlist:

Man Man - Rabbit Habits

Man Man - Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between

Circle Jerks - Group Sex

The Halloween Scene - Pitch Black Manor

The Cure - Songs Of A Lost World

The Cure - The Head On the Door

David Bowie - Station to Station

David Bowie - John I'm Only Dancing (Sax Version; Single)

David Bowie - Low

David Bowie - Tonight

Raven Chacon - Los Subliminados (single)

Drug Church - Prude

David Lynch & John Neff - BLUEBOB

David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time

David Lynch & Marek Zebrowski - Polish Night Music

David Bowie - Reality

David Lynch - The Big Dream

Various Artists - Twin Peaks The Return: Limited Event Series OST

Various Artists - Twin Peaks The Return: Music From the Limited Event Series

David Bowie - Stage

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

Zeal & Ardor - GREIF

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

James Brown - Funky People Vol. 3

James Brown - Hell

Hemlocke Spings - going... going... Gone!

Rina Mushonga - Narcisc0 (single)

Jocelyn Montgomery & David Lynch - Lux Vixens: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Season Two OST

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Knight of Cups

• XIV: Temperance (ART in Thoth)

• Ace of Pentacles

Couldn't be clearer. Emotional despondency at the loss of an Artistic influence should inspire a breakthrough in Process (the alignment of time and resources, both the Earthly realm of Pentacles). I'm planning on ending my period of obsessive mourning tomorrow with a full-on bounce back into Creative Fire

Some Thoughts on Messiah of Evil

 

Fell back into Chicago's super underrated industrial grindcore masters Plague Bringer yesterday. This band should be so much more well-known in the metal/industrial community than they are. There's literally nothing I can think of that batters me like this album does. From the drawing of breath that opens the first track, I smile and prepare to be undone.

While looking around on their Bandcamp for any sign of recent activity (none), I discovered that in 2017 they released this "Lara Flynn Bringer' shirt and now I am extremely sad that it's sold out, there are none I could find on ebay or etsy, and I'm shit out of luck acquiring one. 

Maybe Plague Bringer will resurface and do another run of it. Maybe. In the meantime, if you dig this kind of sonic madness, PB's Bandcamp is HERE.

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Watch:

 

After hearing about Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz's 1973 underrated Horror film Messiah of Evil for the first time back on the old Shockwaves podcast a couple years ago, I started to look around for where to watch the film. The title alone had me, along with the fact that I couldn't remember ever hearing of it before. Back when I was cutting my teeth and really getting into the genre twenty years ago, the two friends who indoctrinated my interest and made it an obsession both had extensive film collections, so the fact that, between the two of them, I don't think either ever mentioned it surprised me. Turns out that's because the film wasn't released on DVD until 2009. That brief mention on Shockwaves sent me into a tizzy trying to track down a streaming service that featured the film. No dice, until two years ago I found it on Prime.

Score, I thought. Only no, no score at all. I started the film and turned it off after only a few minutes because, whatever source the streaming giant culled the film from, the picture quality was unwatchable. Maybe my relatively recent conversion to the Cult of Blu Ray at the time - something I swore for years I would never do - had spoiled me. I've become a bit of a stickler for clean picture transfers, and this one wasn't even what I'd call weak. It was awful. This prejudice is not a bad thing at all, I realize now, except that, for Messiah of Evil, it meant I would have to wait.

Fast forward to last week when I fired up Shudder and found that not only had they added Messiah of Evil, but the picture quality is gorgeous! So after a few false starts over the last five days or so, I finally watched the film last night. I was not disappointed. 

First, I don't know if it's just the similarities between Phillan Bishops's electronic score for the film and Carl Zittrer's for another under-seen film from the 70s I adore, Bob Clark's inimitable Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, but Messiah of Evil's score made me warm to the film immediately. Add to that the fantastic settings - most especially our heroine Arletty's missing father's home on the beach, the design behind which was created by artists Jack Fisk and Joan Mocine, the former of which would go on to work with David Lynch on Mulholland Drive and Paul Thomas Anderson on There Will Be Blood and The Master, and I could not take my eyes off the screen. If you read this blog, you'll know how important both Lynch and PTA are to me, so you can imagine what a harmonic charge I felt realizing there was precedent here that fit with my own personal film aesthetic.

There is not a lot of information about Messiah of Evil out there on the internet. However, in regard to the design and look of the film, I found what I feel is the holy grail over on Dr. John Trafton's website. His article Messiah of Evil: Film and the Influence of L.A. Pop Art absolutely blew me away. Mr. Trafton's wealth of knowledge on not only Los Angeles' history, but Film, Pop Art and the overall social fabric of the City of Angeles post-1940 makes for fantastic reading. I can't recommend this enough, whether you want a deep-dive into Messiah of Evil, or just an interesting read that focuses on Art can influence Cinema; you can find the article HERE.

Messiah of Evil has a real work-with-what we have vibe; Katz and Huyck smartly use a lot of California's most attractive and, when shot right, surreal asset: the beach. The sound of the waves is nearly omnipresent here, and if you've ever stayed in a town where that is indeed the major sonic background, you'll know it makes for a heightened, slightly surreal experience. The constant sound of the ocean seems to work in contrast to the everyday world we humans have made for ourselves, especially here in LaLaLand where commerce is god. This makes sense when you think about it; the ocean has always been a transcendent experience for me because to sit on the beach and quietly listen to the waves, you're literally sitting on the edge of humanity's world, listening to the planet breathe. In other words, this is one of the few experiences available to us where humanity is dwarfed by the larger organism that birthed us: the Earth. 

It's worth mentioning that this oceanic setting firmly establishes Messiah of Evil in a sub-genre I have recently become quite enamored with, the aptly named Seaside Horror. I guess I've always been mildly aware of the feel of this genre-within-a-genre, however, it wasn't until Joe Bob Briggs showed both Dead and Buried and Humanoids from the Deep on his Last Drive-In double feature this past season that I fell in love with both and gained an understanding of the Seaside Horror aesthetic as a style for which many filmmakers have contributed entries. The idea of a double or triple feature with Messiah and either or both of these films, or John Carpenter's The Fog or even Dan Gildark's Cthulhu makes me nearly giddy with excitement. Hell, perhaps I should look into organizing a Seaside Horror Marathon?

Finally, another aspect of this film I found fit its tone perfectly was the Night of the Living Dead references in regard to its ghouls. Messiah seems to split the difference between zombies and vampires, which is cool because I don't know how much of either creature I need to see again at the moment. Mr. Trafton talks at length about this in the piece I linked to above, so I'll just implore you to go read what he has to say, while I wrap up this rather lengthy post and get on with working on the sequel to Shadow Play.

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Playlist:

Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous (pre-release singles)

Exposé - Greatest Hits

Chicago - 25 or 6 to 4 (single)

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Jethro Tull - Benefit

The Smiths - The Queen is Dead

Peter Gabriel - So

Slope - Street Heat

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Windhand - Soma

Van Halen - Eponymous

U2 - War

Talking Heads - Fear of Music

Mannequin Pussy - Perfect EP

Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest

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Card:

 

In some respects, I have been listening to my own personal dogma and not to my intuition. This is a nice reminder to be aware of that. We all need help thinking outside the paradigms we draw up for ourselves. 

Every Little Star

I still just absolutely adore everything about this song. 

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Watch:

New Russian creature feature Superdeep looks pretty promising:

 

Hit Shudder on June 17th.

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Playlist:

Lustmord - Heresy

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

Swans - The Seer

Led Zeppelin - Presence

Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs

PM Dawn - Set Adrift on Memory Bliss (radio edit single)

Various - The Best of Northern Soul

David Bowie - The Next Day

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

K's 70s Playlist

Corpse Eater: Satanic Misery Live for the Dead

Dream Division - Beyond the Mirror's Image

PJ Harvey - Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea

Joy Division - Closer 

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - Confessions of a Knife

Pigface - Live in Chicago 2019

Type O Negative - World Coming Down

David Lynch & John Neff - Mountains Falling

From the BLUEBOB album that David Lynch did with John Neff, also featured on the ST to Mulholland Drive. There's a journey in this song that pulls me right up and out of myself.