Moving is hard. I mean, like, REALLY hard. But it's one of those things in life you just have to do, so I put my head down, charge through night after night packing (endless, endless) and drink. But maybe beer isn't enough...
New Afghan Whigs! How Do You Burn is out September 9th (My Mom's birthday!). Pre-order your copy HERE.
Watch:
Over the last few years, I've actually become quite a fan of the John Wick flicks. Sure, Part III wasn't quite up to snuff with the first two, but you can tell every shot of this series is executed in a way that lovingly expresses a weird, violent beauty. Now, part IV:
On my birthday, no less. Will it live up to the others? Well, with Keanu, Ian McShane, and Lance Reddick returning, it will at the very least scratch the itch the other entries in the series instigated.
Read:
When I did my NCBD post this week, I forgot about the new Daniel Warren Johnson book I didn't even realize was out.
I have no idea what this book is about, and I don't give a toss about wrestling, but it's DWJ and in picking up the first issue on Butcher's recommendation, of course, it's f*&king GORGEOUS. I don't know what it is exactly about Johnson's art that connects with me so much, but I feel like he definitely grew up with similar influences, and those influences come through in everything he does, whether it's Beta Ray Bill or this.
Acceleration. No shit. Tearing the house apart, going through every single thing we own. Convincing a family member to get rid of things that sat in a storage space for 40 years. And I'm driving out of LaLaLand NEXT SUNDAY!!! So yeah, things are moving really fast.
I've had a feeling this would happen eventually. Previously, even before I discovered Me and That Man, I tried on several occasions to find what it was about Behemoth that people had become so fanatical about. Unlike Frontman and Brainspring Nergal's more recent project, I just could never relate to it. Behemoth always left me cold, and not in a good way. Friday morning, however, a random algorithmic playlist by Apple Music rotated "Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel" through my ears and suddenly, I got it.
I've only consumed 2014's highly lauded The Satanist thus far, but the momentum behind that first go-through is enough to have me chomping at the bit for more. Behemoth has a very specific sound, or at least that's how I hear it and why I ended up falling into it so hard. It has a lot to do with the way the bass guitar is played, recorded, and mixed in relation to everything else, but moving out from there, the guitars, drums, vocals, and other accompanying instrumentation feel very much arranged or composed, as opposed to assembled by more conventional means.
Watch:
Wow. Not only did I find this small peak into Orville Peck's life fascinating, but Alfred Marroquín's direction is as beautiful and moving as Peck's narration. I've avoided watching or learning too much about Peck's life, as I think his enigmatic persona compliments the deserted Lynchian Highway of his music. Marroquin balanced exactly the right amount of 'behind the curtain' with spectacle here, and this short Doc is all the better for it.
Playlist:
Behemoth - The Satanist
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis
David Bowie - Live Nassau Coliseum '76
Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA
Anthrax - Among the Living
Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits
Card:
Motivation and Drive, which feels spot-on as several projects ramp up here, at the end of what feels like a top-heavy year, as far as productiveness is concerned. There's a feeling of acceleration as we head into the new year, almost an unruliness. Looking at the Prince of Wands, reading the almost out-of-control momentum on the card's face, I'm reminded that recklessness can negate ambition quite easily.
It's been a minute since I last broke out the House of Pain. Not sure what inspired it, exactly, but damn! I miss 90s Hip Hop.
**
The sixth episode of the Borrasca podcast dropped Monday. I didn't get a chance to listen until yesterday, and wow! Best episode yet. This one was chilling in its stoicism.
Only two episodes left. I'm all in.
**
Playlist:
Miranda Sex Garden - Fairytales of Slavery
The Chameleons UK - Strange Times
Lustmord - The Dark Places of the Earth
Helms Alee - Sleepwalking Sailors
Code Orange - Underneath
Slipknot - We Are Not Your Kind
Skinny Puppy - Bites
Crystal Castles - (II)
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.
Beginning the first of three days off with some Etta:
It's nice to wake up leisurely, lay in bed with the one you Love and read. I finished Han King's The Vegetarian - ranked it with four out of five stars on Goodreads. The prose itself was outstanding, especially in the third section of the book, which is sort of three short stories with characters that thread them together into a novel. I would be curious to read more by Han King, and perhaps I will do so, however, my to-read pile is currently out of control. For now I'm going to duck back into Thomas Ligotti's Songs of a Dead Dreamer/Grimscribe, which I started at the beginning of the year while I was in Chicago and, truthfully, am finding a little difficult to stick through. My one book from last year that still lingers at 25 % read is, similarly, Ramsey Campbell's Alone with the Horrors. It's not short story anthologies I have an issue sticking with per say, but instead the tone of both Ligotti and Campbell's work. No, they're not "Too Dark", there's just something in each that leaves me a bit flat. Perhaps my expectations for Ligotti were a tad high - this is the first of his works I've read, and knowing he was a major influence on True Detective Ssn 1 excited the hell out of me. I loved that season and - despite hating the ending - its tone is one of my favorites ever, and it's not that I expected or even wanted Ligotti's work to be similar, but I wasn't expecting the slightly truncated manner in which he sometimes works. I'm half way through Songs of a Dead Dreamer and although the first few stories hit me very hard, as I go deeper I feel a certain unfinished or rushed quality to some of them, the best example of which is The Lost Art of Twilight, which felt extremely rushed, as if the author had no idea how to pay-off what he had so carefully set up. Maybe I'm simply missing something, or maybe not, this is merely my perception at this point.
So if I'm going to pick at Ligotti's short stories over the course of the next few months, using one or two as palate cleansers between longer works, I need something as my next main read. Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel is on deck, however K gifted me a copy of this little gem last night for our two-year anniversary and I'm already chomping at the bit to go through it, even though it will inevitably lead to that to-read pile growing exponentially.
"There are simply too many books to read, whatever shall I do?" This, ladies and germs, is the definition of First World Problems. We live amazing lives folks, don't take them for granted.
Play list from yesterday:
Swans - Glowing Man
ttt (Crosses) - Eponymous
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
Godflesh - A World Lit Only by Fire
The Kills - Midnight Boom
Drove up to Hollywood last night and attended a limited screening of Robert Mockler's Like Me. I posted the trailer a few days ago but here it is again; I loved this flick. The characters are hard to like but the journey they take is one big dig on social media culture - or lack thereof - and the method by which the film is assembled is gorgeous, reminding me of Harmony Korine for sure. To me that's a good thing. And of course Larry Fessenden is in it, and I generally like everything he is associated with.
Card of the day:
This one shows up inverted; I've never placed a lot of weight on card inversion, especially in single card draws. There's something to be said for their interpretation when they're juxtaposed with other cards in a spread, but alone, it's kind of just the card to me.
There's nothing in my Grimoire about this one so what do we know? Well, this is the Airy-aspect of Fire; look at the movement in the card - rushing forward, so we're talking motivation, movement, doing. Interesting then that I'm intent on doing nothing but relaxing for the next three days. Well, that's not entirely true, we have some social events planned, and I had wanted to write each day, even if just to do these posts and get in my daily words, which could totally be the aspect of the weekend that I brush off. So I'll interpret drawing this card as sound advice not to do that.
