David Bowie/Brian Eno - Neuköln Remastered

 

Being that David Bowie was not only born but also took his exit from our Planet on this week, I'm doing another edition of David Bowie Week! For today's post, I pulled the remastered version of "Neuköln," originally published on 1977's collaboration with Brian Eno, Heroes. I LOVE the arranging on this one, especially Bowie's Sax. Some interesting tonal ideas.

Heroes is a great album, but it could almost be pragmatically divided into two different playlists, one for the 'songs' and the other for the instrumental suites like "Neuköln." Such a haunting atmosphere to these passages, while the songs draw on a lot of the musical ideas/subsequent tropes being formed in the late 70s. Likewise, the Eastern influence of the instrumentals and overall world themes (

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A few days ago I fired up Shudder.TV to see what was playing and caught Writer/Director Liam Gavin's 2017 film A Dark Song. Here's a trailer:

I caught this once before, maybe three or four years ago. I really dug it at the time, and it totally holds up upon second viewing. Mr. Gavin clearly knows his way around the Occult, or at least he researched the hell out of this film. Also, I may be off base, but feel like I detect some Warren Ellis influence here. Maybe I'm just running an unconscious parallel to Ellis and Mike Wolfer's Gravel series from the 00's - also kind of a Mercenary Magician, although in Gravel's case, Combat Magician would be a better description.

Wow. I just realized how much I miss Gravel.

How has it already been almost twenty years since this and Doktor Sleepless? 

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Playlist:

Screaming Females - Desire Pathway

Fever Ray - Radical Romantics

David Bowie - Heroes

Marilyn Manson - We Are Chaos

Run the Jewels - RTJ4

Wayfarer - American Gothic

The Afghan Whigs - How Do You Burn?

The Afghan Whigs - In Spades

The Afghan Whigs - Do The Beast

Damone - Out of the Attic

Yawning Balch - Volume I

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Card:

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

• VI - The Lovers - Influence or inspiration

• Ace of Wands - Essence inception

• III - The Empress - Fruitfulness

The big pinion in the interpretation for today is choosing to read The Empress as Fruitfulness, an association I often forget or disregard altogether. It fits in with all the other ideas attached to this card, though, and it shows here that I need a little something new to get back on track writing. Being away from home for so long, it would be damn easy to fall out of the habit of writing. Not gonna happen, however, I think I need to lean into a new idea briefly in order to get my momentum back up. I haven't written since Friday. I brought a nice microphone with me so I could record myself reading the current version of Black Gloves and Broken Hearts, a part of the process that can be cumbersome, but that is also one of the most beneficial elements of my edit strategy. So while I'll be doing that at night, I think I'll take some time this afternoon to start up a new Nosleep story I've had percolating in the back of my brain. My first, fairly successful three-part serial on Nosleep, I Got a Deal On My New House Because Someone Committed Suicide in the Garage really inspired me, as I feel like it's some of the best short-form writing I've done to date, and I've been wanting to kind of re-create that. Sure, the Nosleep Community is fantastic, and provides instant validation to writers if they take to your story, which might sound lame at first, but that validation can be used as fuel for stepping up projects.

Sonar Deceit

 

Thanks once again to Mr. Brown, I once again found an album that has immediately made my entire life better. The Damned's 2018 Evil Spirits is so good it's helped keep me afloat while I suffer from mild insomnia this first week in L.A. The Damned is a band I missed altogether when I was younger. Hell, it wasn't until sometime around 10 years ago that Mr. Brown came out to visit me, we hit Amoeba, and he picked up a three-disc set that included the first album, Damned Damned Damned, and I'm not really sure what else. This is the only Damned I knew until Sunday when, on the way to Cold Waves in Mr. Brown's car, he popped this in. I was blown away from the opening track, "Standing on the Edge of Tomorrow," all the way through to the last track, and I've listened to it almost every day since, sometimes multiple times. "Sonar Deceit" is, I believe, my favorite track, but the entire album is just so damn good, pun intended. The thing that

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I had two nights to just kind of chill in my hotel room, despite the fact that doing so was exactly what I didn't want to happen (for a fairly heavy account of my pontifications walking the street of West L.A./Santa Monica, check out the most recent Every Day (Is Halloween) newsletter, which you can sub to HERE and comes complete with a playlist). I'm okay, though, and despite suffering from mild insomnia this last week, I'm maintaining and actually welcomed the respite. Here's what I watched while vegging in bed, NOT sleeping:

First up, Jeff Lieberman's 1977 weirdo slasher(?) Blue Sunshine. Here's the trailer:

 

This one is such a strange film; there's a fairly large scope to Blue Sunshine that kind of peters out at the end, but I love it nonetheless. The opening has stayed with me since the first time I watched it. Blue Sunshine is available on Blu-Ray from the fine folks at Film Centrix. 

 Next, I caught Mark Rosman's The House on Sorority Row on Shudder TV:

 

Not great, but then, it doesn't try to be. The House on Sorority Row knows exactly what it is - a film made to cash in on the early 80s Slasher craze, and in those terms, it does its job in a pretty entertaining way. There are elements of this that I really like to think were lifted from Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1966 film Diabolique, and that actually makes me like Sorority Row more than I probably should. 

Finally, in anticipation of seeing Demián Rugna's new film When Evil Lurks tomorrow at Beyondfest, I rewatched his 2017 film Terrified.

Another film that sets up a larger incident than it resolves, I dig this film quite a  bit but have never understood the proclamations that it's one of the scariest films of all time.  Terrified definitely hits a bunch of the "scariest scenarios ever" checklist (something under the bed you're sleeping in; dead child back from the grave, malevolent spirits watching you while you sleep, etc.), but I guess because I've seen all those before, it doesn't move the fear needle. That's not a criticism because most movies don't scare me. Not because I'm tough, but, you know, it's 2023 - we've seen a lot scarier shit in the real world. Still, a great film I recommend to all. 

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Playlist:

T. Rex - The Slider

Fvnerals - Let the Earth Be Silent

Bell Witch - Future's Shadow Part 1: The Clandestine Gate

Joy Division - Substance 1977-1980

The Damned - Evil Spirits

Witchskull - The Serpent Tide

Godflesh - Purge

Dio - The Last In Line

Various - Every Day (Is Halloween) Playlist #7

The Damned - Phantasmagoria

Nerver & Chat Pile - Brothers in Christ split EP

Chat Pile - God's Country

IDLES - Joy as an Act of Rebellion

Wytch Finger - The Dance EP

FFS - Eponymous

Screaming Females - Desire Pathway

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Card:

I'm on the road, so all my Pulls will be from my mini Thoth deck for the next two weeks. Not a bad thing, but wanted to put up a reminder that Grimm's new Tarot Deck, The Hand of Doom Tarot, is both gorgeous and live on Kickstarter until Tuesday, October 3rd. Here's the LINK.

• Six of Swords: Science

• Five of Swords: Defeat

• Three of Disks: Work

Wow. Really easy to read this one: The changes I'm trying to inspire being back at work on-site are just not going to happen and are not worth fighting about. That actually takes a lot of stress off me. 

Fear Factory - God Eater

 

From the new album Re-Industrialized. My good friend and cohost on The Horror Vision Butcher mentioned the new Fear Factory was getting pretty favorable reviews. 

Honestly, I've never had a huge attachment to this band, however, two things about them stand out to me: back in 1993, Mr. Brown and I went to Chicago's Riviera Theatre to see Sepultura on the Chaos A.D. tour. Openers were Fudge Tunnel - who we were familiar with through their debut Hate Songs in E Minor - and two bands we'd never heard of, Clutch and Fear Factory. Fear Factory would have been touring for their first major label album, Soul of a New Machine. I remember seeing their name and laughing. We joked a lot that night in the lead-up to the show: "Ooh, Fear Factory. Is that where they make the fear?" 

After Fear Factory took the stage, we stopped making fun. 

These guys blew the fucking doors off the Riv. Demanufacture came out two years later, and at first listen, you could tell it was a seminal album. It sounded so unique, the industrial beats, the chanting vocals laid atop BCB's vitriolic snarl. The overly compressed and gated guitar sound (fresh at the time, but would quickly overstay its welcome once it became a standard across the genre and birthed the metal hybrid that distinguished itself with an umlaut. 

Butcher's fervor for the new record intrigued me. What would this sound like to someone with no real connection outside of one album, tenuous at best over time?

Listening again the other night at two-something in the morning, I remembered Demanufacture for what it is - a game changer in metal production, one that inspired some great new bands and a lot of shitty ones. The same can be said for Faith No More, Helmet, and probably a few other bands I love. I wouldn't say I love FF, but I dig them enough to give the new album a chance. \

First impression was good, but weird hearing a different voice - Milo Silvestro apparently replaced Burton C. Bell after 2021's Aggression Continuum. This is a milieu and the associated drama that never found my ears. But segueing into Re-Industrialized, some tracks definitely caught my fancy. Two days later, the same tracks persist, but more of the album has opened up to me as well. The one above, but also of note is a really kick-ass track that shares a name with William Gibson's Difference Engine novel and the atmospheric dithering of "Human Augmentation," my favorite track so far simply because it's less a song and more the sonic habitation of a melting Cyber Punk city somewhere in the distant future, or forgotten past.

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Since we had a stamped concrete patio put in as an extension of our back porch, it's become difficult for me to want to do anything with my nights other than sit outside with K and the cats and just enjoy the summer. Last night we were treated to a lightning storm that was out of this world. Saturday, we just sat outside, listened to music and soaked up the night. That went late, and when we finally came in, I was pretty tired. I fired up Shudder on habit, always curious as to what's playing on Shudder TV, and when I saw Cold Hell was only two minutes and some change in, I cracked another Sierra Nevada Summer Fest and settled in for what has become my second favorite Neo Giallo after Knife + Heart. I know I've talked about Cold Hell here before, like I know I've posted the trailer, but here we go again:

 

Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, with fantastic performances by everyone involved, Cold Hell is a relentless game of Cat-and-Mouse that always keeps my pulse jacked and my brain totally engaged, even though I've seen it enough in the last five years to know it by heart. Violetta Schurawlow's Özge is the most badass female protagonist I know, easily sailing over Sharni Vinson's Erin from You're Next - who is by no means not awesome, she just doesn't have the kickboxing prowess and surging fury that Schurawlow brings to the table while she fights for her life against a killer she accidentally witnessed murder her neighbor. The "Car Scene" in this flick is a straight redline of adrenaline, and it fires me up every time.

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Playlist:

Forhist - Eponymous

Fear Factory - Demanufacture

Witchskull - The Serpent Tide

Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley

Ministry - The Land of Rape and Honey

Baroness - Last Word (pre-release single)

QOTSA - In Times New Roman

Fear Factory - Re-Industrialized

Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat

Led Zeppelin - In Through the Out Door

Ween - The Mollusk

Drug Church - Hygiene

The Watson Twins - Holler

Alice in Chains - Sap EP

Tom Waits - Raindogs

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST

Soul Coughing - Ruby Vroom

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Card:

• VI - The Lovers

• Prince of Wands - Here, I'm reading this very pointedly as applying Intellect to the Creative Process

• Princess of Wands - Likewise, applying Earthly Understanding to the Creative Process

Normally I might be tempted to read that Princess in a very different way, however, I spent a large chunk of my writing time yesterday working up a timeline and a family history for some of the major characters in the new novel - which I missed completing the first draft by last Tuesday, however, which I entered the final "act" on yesterday. Add in The Lovers, and we get this in the Grimoire:

"Finally - Man!!! As Amoeba he splits his opposite and humanity is born!"

I'm assuming I culled that from either Crowley or Moore, but I compiled the bulk of this tome a long time ago, so I'm not really sure. I know some came from contemplation of the cards, the above-mentioned sources - as well as others - and more than a few Mugwort or Mushroom experiences, so who knows?

The point, of course, is that while that sentence is not the only thing on the page for Trump VI, it is what spoke to me in this moment, because through all of the Intellect and Earthly application to Will, I feel as though I have further honed and developed the characters - who happen to be familial and are, in fact, quite purposely opposites of one another.

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Rainbow Eyes!!!

I was sick as fuck with COVID all weekend, so when I wasn't attempting to finish setting up my office, I mostly spent laid out on the couch. Saturday night Ray, Anthony and I did a new episode of The Horror Vision - that's it in the corner on the handy little Spotify widget - a review/reaction to Prey, which I have watched twice now and loved. Being that it'd been so long since we did an episode, we had planned to cover a lot more than Prey, but as the night wore on, I felt increasingly like shit, and eventually had to call it, immediately passing out on the couch (not sleeping in our bed so as to try and prevent spreading Captain Tripps to K, who so far has been lucky enough to not show any symptoms). I woke up around 1:15 AM and, restless from the body aches - easily the worst part of this - I opened a beer and dialed up Shudder TV. The Slashics channel was showing Rocktober Blood, a movie I'd heard of but never actually saw. I caught the film right at the final act, which is essentially one enormous concert, where the fictional band plays four songs. 

All of those songs are awesome.

This is total 80s Hard Rock, but I don't care, this hit the fucking spot! Now, do I go back and watch the rest of the flick from the beginning? Not sure yet. But I definitely want to track down the soundtrack.

In looking online for the vinyl, I saw that Lunaris Records put out a new edition back in 2016, and it fetches a pretty penny on Discogs. Damn. What are the chances this gets a repress? Until then, I guess it's youtube.

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Rocktober Blood left me in the mood for 80s Trash Cinema, so I followed it up with my first-ever viewing of Joseph Zito's 1981 Slasher flick The Prowler*:

 

Seeing that this one had recently returned to Shudder, I chose to watch it on the 2018 Joe Bob Briggs' Original Marathon. A somewhat perplexing film in that it spends A LOT of time roaming around looking for the killer in a pretty ineffectual and, frankly, time-wasting manner, I still enjoyed it overall. Plus, Thom Bray is in it, and I've long been a fan of him. Also, Tom Savini's effects are fantastic. And I suppose now I'm set in a tone for a while, because last night, I continued the 80s bender with... The OCTAGON!!!

 

I first saw this way back in the mid-80s. I was obsessed with Ninjas due to Larry Hama's G.I.Joe comic, so when I stumbled across the final act of The Octagon on WGN Channel 9's movie of the day, I was blown away! A Chuck Norris movie that looked like it had actually taken some of the Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow storyline from Hama's opus and filmed it! 

Rewatching The Octagon last night, it didn't disappoint. This is by no means a "good" movie, but it's fun as hell. It's interesting how watching it now, I can see how Norris or Director Eric Karson - likely both - had ambitions for the film beyond the standard Martial Arts action movie fair. The film spends the first 2/3rds of its runtime slowly laying out and drawing us (via Chuck) into what is supposed to be an intricate story of international espionage. It doesn't completely work, however, I found it quite endearing that in order to give the audience intermittent doses of what they came for, it sets up a B-story early on that focuses on a bunch of nameless recruits at a Ninja Training Camp. So as the Norris-Mystery story meanders its often perplexing path, we continually cut away to the camp for low doses of Martial Arts fighting. 

Pretty slick.

The ending did not disappoint, and overall, although I'm not a huge fan of the Martial Arts Action Genre, this one really hit the spot. Also, the weird echoing voiceovers Norris does that serve as us hearing his character's inner monologue sound SO MUCH like the Central Scrutinizer from Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage album, that I found myself smiling every time I heard it.

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* Seeing that William Lustig's Blue Underground did a 4K Blu Ray of The Prowler a few years back, I was hoping to find a trailer for that. No dice. 

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Playlist:

Johnny Hates Jazz - Shattered Dreams (single)

U.S. Girls - Half Free

Corrosion of Conformity - No Cross No Crown

The Contours and Dennis Edwards - Motown Rarities 1965-1968

Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies EP

Amigo The Devil - Born Against

Man or Astro-Man? - 1000X

Man or Astro-Man? - Your Weight on the Moon

Man or Astro-Man? - Defcon 5...4...3...2...1

Man or Astro-Man? - Experiment Zero

Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh

Soundgarden - Superunknown

Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears

Various - Joe Begos' Bliss Soundtrack Playlist

Various - Roctober Blood OST

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Card:

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

Sometimes the solutions we come up with for our problems are short-sighted and end up causing a bigger pain in the end. It may be good to listen to someone else for a change. 

Julee Cruise - The Orbiting Beatnik

Circa its release in 2002, Mr. Brown gifted me a copy of Julee Cruise's The Art of Being a Girl. This is Cruise's third album and her first since 1993's second collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch, The Voice of Love. The sound of this one is all over the place in the best possible way, and I would argue slots in perfectly with that early 00s 'electronica' sound that eventually became ubiquitous. The light, almost mystical sound of this particular track always takes me places, in keeping with all of Cruise's previous work. What we see here and in the subsequent album My Secret Life, her 2011 collaboration with former Dee-Lite DJ Dimitry is an artist who is never content having one sound. Cruise knew her strengths, and she knew how to suss out the best partners to help that sound evolve.

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Play:

I'm still playing The Game Kitchen's Blasphemy, and I've made a vow not to buy any new games until I finish it. I don't have a hell of a lot of time for games, but Blasphemy is addictive enough that, considering it's the first video game I've played in probably close to 30 years, I do find myself enmeshed when I pick it up. Because of this, I'm close. Close enough to figure that by the time Rose-Engine's Signals hits Switch on October 27th, I should be ready to embark on its gorgeously horrific journey, made evident with this trailer:

Thanks to Bloody Disgusting for introducing me to this one, as I'd not heard of it before. You can read their article HERE.

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I re-watched Summer of 84 last night for the third time, and I have to say, especially with this viewing following Stranger Things' amazing fourth season (part 1), I love this film even more. HERE is a link to the brief Letterbxd review I did last night that kind of sums up my feeling about the film, and in case you're unfamiliar, here's the trailer:

Afterward, K and I threw on Shudder TV and stumbled into Peter Carter's Rituals, a film I've been wanting to watch since just before it hit Shudder. Again, you can read my brief review HERE.

Very solid film, and as I say in the review, I'll need another viewing to fully 'get' it.

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Playlist:

King Dude and Julee Cruise - Sing Each Other's Songs For You

M83 - Saturdays = Youth

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

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

Brand New - Science Fiction

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank, Vol. 1

Metallica - Ride the Lightning

Blut Aus Nord - Dismarmonium: Undreamable Abysses

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Card:

Page of Cups again, eh? Interesting that, in only three recorded readings so far with this deck, two of them are the same. I take this to mean that I really didn't pay close enough attention the first time I drew this card, two days ago. I'll also admit at this point that, since I am solely used to using the Crowley/Harris Thoth deck, I am not used to having Pages as part of the Court Cards.

Crowley famously reinterpreted quite a few aspects of the traditional Tarot for his deck. We can sum up his Court Cards as such:

Being that Grimm's Bound Tarot utilizes the traditional paradigm, I have not yet developed that ease with which my mind should read the Page as Princess, but in today's reading, I may have received such a solid example of interpretation factoring immediately into real life, that hopefully, the lesson will persevere. 

From the grimoire:

The Earthy aspect of Water; Dreams can become Reality.

I literally woke up this morning after dreaming about officiating my Sister's wedding in less than a week and found my brain immediately transcribing the dream into what has now, several hours later, become the foundation for my speech. So I literally turned my dream into Reality. I'm assuming my first pull of this card the other day was the first indication - amidst my mounting anxiety at not having started the speech - that I needed to listen to the dreams of the event I've been having. I did not heed the first instruction, so the cards gave me the same recommendation a second time.

You can buy a set of these amazing cards on Grimm's site HERE.