Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Primary Colours

From the 2009 album Primary Colours, which I pulled out yesterday and instantly regretted not having listened to in... a very long time. Fantastic record.

I don't know any other records by The Horrors, but this one is fantastic start to finish. These guys obviously got a big push marketing-wise in the wake of Interpol's success, but they are their own band. 

---

---

---

NCBD:

So what did Wheeljack find in issue 33? My guess: Dinobots!

Every issue of any Shaolin Cowboy series is a gift. Loving Staying A.I. Live.

I've literally been thinking about Of the Earth more days than not since reading issues 2 and 3 last month. I adore this book! Condon's "The Thing meets Blood Simple" is so spot on, and being that those are two of my all-time favorite films, this feels made for me.

One more after this and I'll need to re-read everything that came before. It has been a minute since The Nice House on the Lake was on my radar; looking back on the last few release dates shown on League of Comic Book Geeks, it appears this went bi-monthly after returning from its "mid-season" hiatus. That's fine; not giving anyone sh*t, just saying, October's final issue will be a good prompt to re-read both The Nice House By the Lake and this second act. A quick search tells me Tynion has not announced a third act, but I guess that will depend on how this current arc ends.

So, while I'm still digging this current chapter of ARAH, I have space constraints that are weighing on me a bit. I recently bought a new long box (I phased out all but two long boxes before my move from LA; took a tip from my friend Chris Saunders and switched everything to short boxes. Way more manageable. The two I did keep were out of necessity: TMNT and X-Men. There's easily a long box of both. Coming to the end of my TMNT box has a lot to do with why I just canceled the series from my pull. Now, I'm closing in on the end of my ARAH box (which admittedly also includes the IDW run; the Energon stuff is all in a short box) and I have to consider if I'm going to stop. 

Talk about first world problems.

---

---

---

Watch:

A few months back, Vinegar Syndrome ran a sale on Kim Stim's Blu-Ray edition of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2016 film Creepy, which I had never even heard of, let alone seen. I'm fairly new to Kurosawa's work, but what I've seen thus far - Cure, Chime and Cloud - have all blown me away, so I figured, what the hell? Let's give it a blind buy.

I cannot tell you how grateful I am that I did. This one really messed with me, in the best possible way. There is something so alien and yet relatable about Kurosawa's work that has really steeped into me over the viewing of these last four films, and I feel now as though I have to set out on a mission to see everything. There's a level of banality to Creepy that manages to create an unease that is slow, methodical and unexpected at times. The lighting in the Nishino house borders on what I think of as Cyber-Industrial-Gothic, with Tetsuo and Eraserhead immediately coming to mind. 

---

---

---

Playlist:

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies - Cathedral

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

Various - The (S)hit Factory Disc 2

Various - The (S)hit Factory Disc 3

Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets

Sepultura - Chaos A.D.

Mary Anne Hobbs Final BBC Broadcast: Burial and Kode 9 (Sept. 8, 2010)

The Horrors - Primary Colours

Pigface - Fook

Carpenter Brut - Leather Temple

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Shapes of Midnight (pre-release singles)

Lisa Bella Donna - Reach for the Light (single)

Mascara - Hla-11Tf (single)

---

---

---

Card:

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

• Eight of Swords

• XVI: The Tower

• Ace of Swords

A lot of strife, which can be a struggle, especially when paired with The Tower, a paradigm either in flux or ruling. This leads me to believe something I adhere to - probably a plot point in Shadow Play 2, or something I hold as an absolute with the characters- will change drastically. I'll resist it at first, then realize the change is needed.

New Music from The Horrors!

 

From the forthcoming album Night Life, out March 21st. Pre-order HERE. Been a minute since I caught up with The Horrors. In that time, according to this video, the singer turned into Alice Cooper. Pretty cool, just like the song.

---

---

---

31 Days of Halloween:

I woke up while it was still dark Wednesday morning. Couldn't fall back asleep, so I do what I always do in that situation - headed up into my office/nerd dungeon, flipped out the sofa bed and fired up Shudder TV. I can usually find something I've seen and then I just pass back out. At that time, , however, there wasn't really anything on Shudder TV, and I saw they'd added a metric shit-ton of flicks for October, so I chose The Houses October Built. Not the two made in 2014/2016. No, this is the original low-budget mockumentary-found footage film from 2011 that scored enough attention to get the filmmakers the dough to make those other flicks. I knew nothing about this franchise - I've never seen any of them. 

Man, I don't know if it was going in with low expectations or the middle-of-the-night thing, but this really stayed with me. There are those who will bemoan the ending, and yeah, there could have been more. However, I dug it. Reminded me of the end of the original Blair Witch Project, which is a film I like, so that's a good thing.

Also, got to see the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the big screen as part of the 50th Anniversary celebration. How awesome is that?

This flick is still, fifty years after its release and twenty-something years after my first viewing, completely unhinged, frightening, and, still feels dangerous. There are not many films that I'll watch that I can say that about. William Lustig's Maniac springs to mind. And honestly, that's one of the things I've grown to appreciate about Damien Leone's Terrifier series - the only modern films that don't cross my major lines but come close enough to remind me of that dangerous, transgressive feeling films like Maniac and TCM inspire in me (to this day).

Last night, I watched Loop Track on Shudder. This was one I saw added a few weeks back, but the name is off-putting, to say the least. Turns out, I really liked this one. 

I'd post the trailer, but after watching it just now, it gives away too much. I went in knowing fuck all, and I would suggest others do the same. Really tense psychological thriller that becomes something completely different in the third act and still manages to be fun. 

1) The Killing of a Sacred Deer

2) The Houses October Built (2011)/Texas Chainsaw Massacre (50th-anniversary theatrical screening)

3) Loop Track

---

---

---

Playlist:

Beastmilk - Climax

Fields of the Nephilim - The Nephilim

Gwar - Scumdogs of the Universe

Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death OST

Bauhaus - Gotham Live

Ritual Howls - Rendered Armor

Moon Wizard - Sirens

Hellbender - Side A

Misfits - Collection One

Miranda Sex Garden - Carnival of Souls

George Thoroughgood and the Destroyers - Greatest Hits

Deftones - B-Sides & Rarities

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

---

---

---

Card:

Today's card: 7 of Swords - Futility:

Sevens line up with Netzach on the Sephirotic Tree of Life, and thus, my initial reading always entails Victory. That said, one of my big take-aways from Crowley's The Book of Thoth is, "This card... suggests the policy of appeasement." In other words, compromise. So this is a Victory by compromise, which might not really feel like a Victory at all. 

And Speaking of Horror... More New Music from The Horrors

Via Brooklyn Vegan. So good to hear this new music from a band I had actually kind of lost track of for a while. There's a lot of new textures I getting from this new album thus far. Some Cold Wave elements fused to the bones of psyche-out, run through their Rough Trade/Factory influence, yet all tempered with some exemplary pop flourishes.

The Horrors - Changing the Rain

Speaking of The Horrors, how the heck did I ever miss this?

The Horrors w/ Thurston Moore

Also via Stereogum. New song performed live with Thurston Moore. The genuine thinking is this is from the forthcoming Horrors album, set to be released sometime in April.