Sefven Days of Steve: Day 7

We bring Seven Days Celebrating Steve Albini's career with a track from what is, in my opinion, one of the greatest production statements in Independent Rock history. Really, The Jesus Lizard's Goat, Liar and Down are all neck and neck for that honor, all produced by Albini. 

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NCBD:

Pretty robust week, considering how I've downsized. Here we go:

I could have sworn this book ended with issue five, but here we are at #6, and the end isn't for another month yet. 

Love this cover. Feels like this book was on a little hiatus, glad to have it back. 

This Untold Destiny of the Foot Clan book is proving to be considerably better than I originally anticipated. LOVING the art by Mateus Santolouco, so I'm here for that, at the very least. But I'm really interested in seeing where this Casey-Jones-with-the-bad-guys subplot goes, and overall, I dig seeing a continuation of The Foot's story without Shredder. 

I'll just eat my words and say this now: so far, I love this book. I'm still not hip to ANYTHING Marvel has done with Aliens in comic form, but this? This is a really cool "What If" continuation of Cameron's Aliens.

So checked out on these. Last issue of this series, which means it should just be two issues to go before I can get out of the X-books altogether. 

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Watch:

The first teaser trailer for Francis Ford Coppola's upcoming Megalopolis dropped earlier in the week. 

This is as far as I'll be going with trailers on this one. This film is slowly creeping into the role of one of my most anticipated films of the year. To read some of what FFC has said about this, I think this could be one of his greatest films (after Dracula and Apocalypse Now, of course).

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Playlist:

Various - The Void OST

Graveyard - Lights Out

Yerusalem - The Sublime

Lustmord - Much Unseen Is Also Here

Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death OST

Adam Egypt Mortimer - The Obelisk

Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She

Amigo the Devil - Everything is Fine

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Card:

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

• IV: The Emperor

• Knight of Pentacles

• Ace of Cups

Action; approach Earthly concerns with Intelligence, and an emotional breakthrough will follow. That's a bit fortune cookie vague for a reading, but I'm spent. 

Seven Days of Steve: Day 6

For these final two days of Steve Albini celebration, I wanted to highlight a few of the albums that his production made him sort of an extension of the band. So we start with Pigface's debut album, Gub, released thirty-three years ago next Tuesday. If I remember my history correctly, that's Albini tweaking knobs and creating those whirling synthesizer tones on the track. 

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Watch:

A short teaser for David Cronenberg's upcoming film The Shrouds recently dropped. It tells us nothing, and I'm fine with that. 

This ends up being superfluous, as there's nothing that can make me more excited to see David Cronenberg's new film more than the fact that it's David Cronenberg's new film. Still, I like to post stuff like this here for posterity's sake. Here's a synopsis:

"The Shrouds” centers on Karsh, 50, a prominent businessman. Inconsolable since the death of his wife, he invents GraveTech, a revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor their dear departed in their shrouds. One night, multiple graves, including that of Karsh’s wife, are desecrated. Karsh sets out to track down the perpetrators."

Cronenberg's previous film, Crimes of the Future, turned a lot of long-time fans off, but I found it thrilling. One of the only truly transgressive feeling Cinema viewings I've had in a long, long time. 

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Playlist:

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - Nell' ora blu

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper

Bossk - .4

Pigface - Gub

Big Black - Songs About Fucking

Robot God - Portal Within

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Card:

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

• Five of Swords

• Queen of Swords

• Seven of Swords

What's with the three-card suits the last two days? Weird. Not the best picture I've taken, but I find the white of this Bound deck makes it a bit tougher for me to photograph. Anyway...

Swords are all about Air, Intellect and, in a practical sense, relationships. Fives are Conflict, Queen Emotion and Seven's completion (Netzach - Victory!). In other words let passion guide the argument to a solution, or, perhaps more pragmatically, if they won't listen, scream at them. 

Seven Days of Steve: Day 5

Big Black's Songs About Fucking stands with early Ministry as one of the stalwarts of the Chicago Indie Sound of the 80s. While it's easy to draw comparisons to Industrial music because of the drum machine, Albini's vocals help it remain not so committed to any one genre. It's some important DNA, though, and a perfect record from start to finish.

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Watch:

It had easily been 25 years since my first and only viewing of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13. The film popped up on Prime recently,* and Saturday night, I fired it up and remained rivetted throughout the entire run time.

When I first watched this back in my 20s, I know I dug it, but this was one I never really sought out to add to the collection, and now I just can't understand why. Despite immediate tendencies to embellish and decry this as my new favorite Carpenter film, Assault on Precinct 13 definitely jumps up into that upper echelon on his work, along with Halloween, The Thing and Prince of Darkness. 

This one is raw! There's a scene that dropped my jaw (you know the one). Not that JC can't be brutal, but holy smoke muffins! And through the entire siege portion of the film, there is definitely that 'the calm before the storm' eeriness that percolates through Halloween, as well. The scene where the station receives the "Cholo" is just creepy A.F.

*I feel like amazon has been listening to me through the apps on my phone and actually sought to rectify my major gripe, namely that along with commercials in all their original programming now, most movies have migrated over to freevee. FUCK freevee.

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Read:

Took some time this weekend to re-read James Tynion IV and Joshua Hixson's The Deviant before diving into the newest issue that came out this past Wednesday.

Reading this again, I have to say that The Deviant strikes me as possibly one of the creepiest psychological nightmare mind-fuck series ever published in comics. Five out of Nine issues notched and if this is going where I think it's going (but not necessarily how it's going to get there), Michael and Randall's stories are becoming more and more entwined, not just with each other, but with the Horrors of loneliness and social isolation that seem to have created a world of sad, deadly men. 

Michael is telling us everything point blank; we're just not listening. It feels like this is exactly what it would be like to know a killer. I can say this because I knew one in my teens, and while looking back on his behavior with adult eyes after the fact, it becomes clear the signs were there all along; he wasn't steeped in killing the way a serial killer like the killer in The Deviant is. 

You don't need to have had that experience, though. Tynion and Hixon's tale unfolds in such a character-driven way that we're drawn into their world and their lives. You can imagine being in Michael's boyfriend's shoes, the signs that are literally all over the place, but how do you put that together? How do you learn to distrust and fear people you love enough to properly interpret these silently telegraphed confessions?

We'll see.

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Playlist:

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - Nell' ora blu

Big Black - Songs About Fucking

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - Blood Lust

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper

The Jesus Lizard - Down

Steven Sanchez - Angel Face

Amy Winehouse - Back to Black

Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death OST

Tim Hecker - Infinity Pool OST

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Moon Wizard - Sirens

Alice in Chains - Sap

Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies

Gold Class - Drum

Etta James - 

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - Give the People What They Want

Chuck Berry - Berry on Top

Various - Romantic Night in Playlist

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Card:

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

I had a hankering for Grimm's Bound Tarot, so I broke that out for today's Pull.

• Page  (Princess) of Pentacles

• Two of Pentacles

• Seven of Pentacles

Interesting. The first day back with this deck in months, and my entire Pull is Pentacles? Money has been on my mind - for both good and hesitant reasons. It's good right now, but I feel as though there is a shoe hanging above a drop of about 1000 feet. The Page/Princess indicates security, the Two partnership and the Seven Completion. That bodes pretty well, but I'm still feeling things out as I go along. 

Seven Days of Steve: Day 4

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Seven Days of Steve: Day 3

1000 Hurts was the first Shellac album I bought, and the one-two of "Prayer to God" and "Squirrel Song" really explains the band's style: light and dark, baby.

I keep feeling like I want to write more about Albini's passing, but I just don't have it in me to say anything that doesn't sound trite other than this sucks. 

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Seven Days of Steve: Day 2

Mr. Brown sent me a link to this live performance in 1986 the other night, shortly after we touched base about Albini's death. The performance speaks for itself.

 

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Watch:

As much as I dug on Moritz Mohr's Boy Kills World the other night, what really set my heart a flutter was seeing a trailer for Nikhil Nagesh Bhat's Kill beforehand. I'm posting it here for posterity's sake, but my advice is do not watch it; as excited as I am to spread the word about this awesome, awesome film, the trailer just gives too much.

 

I saw this on opening night of 2023's Beyondfest and was completely blown away. Ever since I've been hoping Bhat's unflinching action flick would get a national US rollout, and it looks like that is indeed the case. 

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Read:

I caught and inadvertent book recommendation from Stephen King and Joe Hill on Twitter the other day, and I'm stoked to finish up Stephen Graham Jones' Indian Lake Trilogy and move onto this one. 

While completely unfamiliar with Keith Rosson, the description for this one grabbed me right away. I LOVE anything that deals with a Hand of Glory. Here's part of the blurb from the Publisher:

When leg-breaker Hutch Holtz rolls up to a rundown apartment complex in Portland, Oregon, to collect overdue drug money, a severed hand is the last thing he expects to find stashed in the client’s refrigerator. Hutch quickly realizes that the hand induces uncontrollable madness: Anyone in its proximity is overcome with a boundless compulsion for violence. Within hours, catastrophic forces are set into motion: Dark-op government agents who have been desperately hunting for the hand are on Hutch’s tail, more of the city’s residents fall under its brutal influence, and suddenly all of Portland stands at the precipice of disaster. . . 

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Playlist:

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Final Light - Eponymous

Pigface - Gub

Shellac - Excellent Italian Greyhound

The Jesus Lizard - Down

The Jesus Lizard - Liar

Big Black - Live at CBGBs 7.13.86

Warning - Watching From A Distance

Witch Finder - Forgotten Mansion

Soviet Soviet - Endless

Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger

Crispin Hellion Glover - The Big Problem

Big Black - The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape

John Carpenter - Lost Themes IV: Noir

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Card:

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

• XI: Justice (Lust in Thoth)

• XVII: The Star

• Knight of Cups

I thirst for something more. I see it in the online lives of people who I admire, and I want that for myself. The trick is not to fall too hard for the illusion of other people's lives. Everyone has successes and failures. The Star reminds me that, from the grimoire, "Create unto and within yourself a Universe, shaped of your strengths and built on your accomplishments as a foundation." The Knight of Cups, or the Will of Emotions/Firey aspect of Water, further clarifies that the aforementioned Lust can seem like it is deserved (Justice), but that's emotion talking. Nothing is deserved, it is earned. 

RIP Steve Albini

 

This one hurts. I'm starting Seven Days of Steve today, but don't have anything else to say. 

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