If This and Yes, Onslaught

From My Bloody Valentine's 2013 album, m b v, which I cracked out yesterday and realized isn't quite as pointless as I'd considered it for the last 13 years or so. 

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Watch:

Adam Wingard earned a place on my watchlist with You're Next. Since, I've not liked or seen most of what he's done, but he's still on that list. That's how much I dig You're Next. His new flick Onslaught hit theaters last night and K and I hit our local Regal for the mayhem.

Fantastic flick. Doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it's got a gnarly score that runs a gamut from 80s Carpenter vibes to Industrial, with a soundtrack that backs that up (Godflesh!). Co-written with Wingard's regular writing partner Simon Barrett, and as with their other flicks, aka The Guest, You're Next, etc, Onslaught makes some very interesting choices insofar as the way it tells its story, and I very much appreciated the fresh beats in a scenario we've definitely seen before. 

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Read:

Prompted by reading the first issue of Sean Murphy's new series, The Last Driver, which is laid out in landscape orientation instead of the typical comic book portrait, I dug out the two issues of JH Williams III and W. Haden Blackman's Echolands that I picked up back in 2021 shortly before I left LA. 

Probably because of the move, I never picked up issues 3-6 of Echolands and just kind of forgot about the series altogether. It's very easy to lose two issues of a comic in all the short boxes I have. Find them I did, however, and very quickly sought out the remaining issues on eBay. They arrived this week, and I had a chance to sit down and read the series to date (there's more coming!) over the course of Wednesday night/Thursday morning. I could not be more pleased I finally hunted these down!

Williams art is, as always, beyond belief. This rivals even Promethea, which still ranks as possibly the greatest visual storytelling I've ever seen. This? If for no other reason than how Williams incorporates the landscape format, might take the crown. The page directly above is an example of an issue where he tells two parallel stories simultaneously. It's just unreal. 

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Playlist:

The Besnard Lakes - Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO 

Joseph Bishara - Malignant OST

John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies - Cathedral

Carlos Rafael Rivera - They Will Kill You OST

My Bloody Valentine - m b v

Roughly Enforcing Nostalgia - Front Door Doxologies

Pigface - Fook

Holy Fawn - Dimensional Bleed

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Card:

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

• Ten of Wands

• Three of Cups

* Ace of Pentacles

Use a new idea to get around blockage and save some time and frustration. Total writing nod. Love it. 

Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Kill Your Television

STILL waiting for my vinyl copy of MBV's first album in twenty-something years. STILL haven't listened to the digital tracks yet, as I'm holding out for my first listen to be an analog experience given that the band went so far out of their way to avoid digital (obviously you can't fully avoid digital, but you can read about it here). In the interim I ration my exposure to Loveless, but today I just had to get a spin on that one through. And at some point it made me think of Neds. Man, I miss Neds. Great, great band

My Conundrum with the New MBV

image courtesy of walrusmusicblog.com

So I just ordered the vinyl package for the new My Bloody Valentine album. Said package came with the 180 gram vinyl, CD and the digital DL. So the tracks are in my possession, and I'm dying to listen to them, HOWEVER, here's my conundrum.

From the MBV website:

"This vinyl album has been recorded as an analogue album. It was recorded on 2 inch 24 track analogue tape and mixed onto half inch analogue tape and mastered with no digital processing involved. The vinyl is a true analogue cut, i.e. it hasn't been put through a digital process during the cutting process unlike over 90% of all vinyl available today."

Okay, so do I go ahead and listen to the tracks as digital entities, or do I wait (the vinyl/CD's aren't being shipped until the 22nd due to manufacturing) and let such a beautiful and meticulous record find my ears the first time the way it was meant to? It's been fairly easy avoiding the tracks thus far on youtube and pitchfork and whatnot (which is why I've nto posted any here), but now that they're on my computer?

I'm going to attempt to wait, but brothers and sisters, as they say in hell, it ain't gonna be easy!