I tend to go through an emotional resurgence with Twin Peaks in December and January, so I often miss Twin Peaks Day. This year, as the first year without David Lynch, I feel a particularly strong need to celebrate the holiday. So here's Angelo Badalamenti's "High School Swing" from the Twin Peaks: Season Two OST. This is really just a 'More Music from the Series' kind of thing, not solely music from Season Two. Still need to grab this one on vinyl, as it's the only outlier.
Also, Fright-Rags has this little doozy on special today:
Order here. I grabbed this AND this shirt, which kinda blows me away. You can check out their Twin Peaks items HERE.
Finally, I'm heading out to Eastside Bowl tonight (first time) for their Twin Peaks Day event. No idea what this will entail, but I'll report back and maybe share some pictures (maybe; I'm terrible about taking pictures).
One beautiful piece of music I've often taken for granted.
Watch:
Friday night, I watched Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me on Joe Bob Brigg's The Last Drive-In Patreon. I'd seen this posted on the Patreon a while ago and had been saving it. Couldn't think of a better time; I'm two-thirds through my rewatch of Twin Peaks The Return and wanted to slow the roll on that. It's definitely gained momentum fast while watching, and I backed off to kind of savor it.
The original air date of this one was March 6, 1999, on Joe Bob's Last Call. One of the cool things about the Patreon is even though Joe Bob's old shows were basic cable and, therefore edited, the films they put up are the whole enchilada.
I can't say I agreed with most of JB's commentary on the film. However, it was '99, and Twin Peaks was a distant memory to pop culture at large (not to me and my friends; Brown, myself and two other friends would make our first sojourn to the Twin Peaks Fest (RIP) in Washington state a year later in 2000), so without a fresh rewatch of the series - which would have been somewhat hard to do unless you had the Worldvision VHS box set I'd had since it was released in 1993 for $99.95 (had to look the release date on that one up), you probably hadn't seen the series since it originally aired in 90/91 or perhaps when the Bravo network reaired it in 1993. So FWWM would make even less sense.
Read:
Speaking of surrealist Horrro, I finally got around to starting Sopia Ajram's Coup de Grâce.
Here's the description lifted directly from Goodreads:
A mindbending and visceral experimental horror about a young man trapped in an infinite Montreal subway station, perfect for readers of Mark Z. Danielewski and Susanna Clarke.
Don't remember where I first heard of this one, but I'm enjoying it so far, even though I'm still having a lot of trouble concentrating on prose at the moment.
Playlist:
Frank Black - Teenager of the Year
The Jesus Lizard - Down
Mr. Bungle - Disco Volante
Japandroids - Celebration Rock
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Loathe - I Let It In and It Took Everything
Flogging Molly - Float
Riccardo Muti - Verdi: Requiem & Cherubini: Requiem in C Minor
Wolves in the Throne Room - Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge EP
Wolves in the Throne Room - Diadem of 12 Stars
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Blut Aus Nord - The Mystical Beast of Rebellion
Boston Baroque, Conductor: Martin Pearlman - Chrubini: Requiem in C Minor
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
A week or so ago, I saw a post on social media that alarmed me - Luis Vasquez, the singular voice of The Soft Moon, died a year ago! I had no idea...
When I realized I hadn't posted anything from this band since the day after seeing them live in 2018, I guess it makes sense that they were far enough off my radar that I missed the news of Vasquez's passing in January of 2024 and for, you know, the entire remainder of the year. I was in L.A. for the entirety of January 2024, but pulling last year's Moleskin off the shelf, I see that I spent January 18th at Santa Monica Brewworks with my good friend Chris. Looking at my post from that day, I didn't find a serendipitous dalliance with The Soft Moon's music, and scrolling through their discography, I realized I'd kind of tuned them out after 2018's Criminal. 2022's Exister only shows up three times in my daily playlists on this page.
It also makes sense that I never saw the short film "Stupid Child," a kind of tense noise interstitial for one of the tracks from Exister. This is possibly the most harrowing thing Vasquez had a hand in - the video to "Needs" is pretty fucked up, but I'd say this tops that easily.
Glad I got to see The Soft Moon live. Great band that had so much more in them. Fuckin' Fentanyl.
Watch:
K and I are currently rewatching Yellowjackets seasons one and two as prep for the new season starting on Valentine's Day. Rewatching, I realize there is so much of season two I somehow completely forgot.
K typically conks out earlier than I do, so after she falls asleep, I've been continuing my first rewatch of Twin Peaks: The Return since 2018.
I'd never watched The Return directly after the original series before, and honestly, I don't know that I'd do it this way again. There's such a marked difference between the two; every time I watch the original, I fall in love with it all over again, so to switch gears and jump headlong into the follow-up that is not really concerned with being a follow-up at all felt a bit jarring at first. In fact, after the first two episodes, I was starting to think I didn't like The Return. That feeling didn't last that long, though. By the time I got to episode three or four, my brain had caught up, and I had reemerged.
There's so much about The Return that I love, but first, I have to remind myself that this is 100% a creative vehicle for David Lynch - really his last large-scale vehicle - and he used it to shoot what many TP fans felt was idiosyncratic content that had nothing to do with the answers and resolutions they'd been hoping for since the second season finale aired on June 10, 1991. Lynch famously did things 100% on his own terms (except with Dune, and look how that turned out), and continuing what he'd started and begrudgingly lost control of nearly thirty years ago was definitely not on his "to do" list. I've definitely spent some time wondering what might have been had the show continued, and as usual, those contemplations only yield one result: Better to leave 'em wanting more than to overstay your welcome. Still...
So it took a bit to recalibrate myself coming into this rewatch of The Return, but now I'm 100% in. Friday night, I watched episodes seven and eight, and I was once again struck by (of course) episode eight's absolute grandeur. I woke up the next day wanting to read some critical writing on the series. Happily, I found some excellent articles.
First, this article HERE on the Wrong Answers blog, where Abigail Nussbaum makes some excellent points about what I have long felt is both the saddest and most remarkably compelling aspects of the series, namely how well it mirrors the disappointments of life. The lyrics to Eddie Vedder's contribution to The Return's soundtrack sums this up beautifully:
Next, Crypto-Kubrology's article on Medium reminded me of a theory I'd read about once before, shortly after the series aired. Namely, that episodes 17 and 18 may very well have been intended to be watched at the same time.
As a huge fan of The Flaming Lips' Zaireeka, this idea makes me giddy with anticipation, and while Zaireeka has become all but impossible for me to orchestrate listening to properly, 17 & 18 will simply require I muster the wherewithal to carry the tv in my office downstairs and set it up next to* the one in the living room. I have at least three Blu-Ray players, so no problem there.
White The Return may be unlike the original Twin Peaks in most ways, one thing the two series share is the ability to reward repeated viewings with ever more mystery.
*Although Cryto-Kubrology's screenshots make me wonder if the screens would be better served stacked as opposed to side-to-side, but I'll take what I can get.
Playlist:
The Veils - Asphodels
Frank Black - Teenager of the Year
Frank Black - Cult of Ray
Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
Sleep - Dopesmoker
High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings
Various - Twin Peaks: Music from the Limited Event Series
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• VI The Lovers
• Six of Pentacles
• King of Pentacles
Surface reads are always something I avoid, almost to the fact that sometimes I feel like I tend to resist instances where the cards attempt to convey something simply. I'll not make that mistake today. The Lovers is an obvious nod to K and I celebrating out 9th anniversary this past Saturday. Six of Pentacles is a reminder of the stability I have now, a goal I set and accomplished with no small degree of Will. And King of Pentacles is both a nod to giving more attention to everyday Earthly matters (Malkuth), and that I need to listen to more Sabbath; kinda slacking off lately.
From Julee Cruise's 1989 album Floating Into the Night, co-written and produced by David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti. Nothing can compare to how this and As The World Spins are used in the original Twin Peaks series.
My first re-watch of the original Twin Peaks since 2016 is digging up all kinds of deep memory and psychological stuff that has 1990/1991 fresh in my head again. I will never be able to overstate my gratitude that I found this show when I did, as a 15/16-year-old stoner; it changed me for all time, for all the better. This morning, while I sat on my porch drinking coffee and reading from Lynch's Room to Dream, I played several of the soundtracks on my turntable - I still have all the CDs, and I put up the $77 back in 2011 for the digital music archive Lynch released through his website - ALL the music from the series. Everything. Then Mondo put out Twin Peaks Season One, FWWM, and the two soundtracks from the 2017 series on vinyl a few years ago, and I grabbed them all.
So I get around to The Return's score and hit "Slow 30s Room," and immediately remember that, at some time in the not-so-distant past, I found this hour-long loop of the track on youtube.
Presto - here you go.
Also, Happy Birthday David Lynch!!!
Watch:
Since moving, I have fallen a bit behind on all the podcasts I listen to; my primary podcast time was in LaLaLand traffic, and being that I work from home now and pretty much listen to music all day, there's no equivalent time. So I have to make that time. To accomplish this, I've begun making a concentrated effort to set aside time, usually on Friday afternoons, specifically for podcats. In this way, I've knocked out a few of the Bret Easton Ellis show but not much else.
One podcast I am currently behind on is the brilliant Cinematic Void. Cinematic Void is a monthly cult film screening series in Los Angeles at L.A.'s American Cinematique Theatres, as well as a pretty damn great Podcast with online Cinemadness Screenings that showcase some of the best in Horror and Exploitation Cinema. For some time now, The Void has been hosting January Giallo screenings in L.A., and now it appears they have locations in both Massachuttes and Chicago, as well.
I don't think I've been to Chicago's Music Box since I saw Don Coscarelli's Bubba Ho-Tep premiere there back in 2002. I am heading into town next week, but unfortunately, I probably won't make a screening. I wanted to put the word out there, though, for all my Chicago folks. I can vouch for The Void's programming, so next year I will be all over this!
Read:
David Lynch and Kristine McKenna's Room to Dream is currently having an indelible effect on my mornings. This book puts me in such a good mood; it's remarkable. The book has led me back to my recent inclinations to begin meditating again, and this time, I think I'm going to attempt Transcendental Meditation, something I've always been intrigued with but felt self-conscious about.
When I began serious meditation back in my former life, circa 2014, I used an hour-long tone I constructed using fundamental principles of the Binaural Approach - something I'd learned about and messed around with long before it became a hokey product called binaural beats that populated the 'new age' section of music shops. Using a tone generator, I built a multi-layered mediation track in Pro-Tools and would take periods out of every day in totally random places to use it. For one regular spot I favored, I'd walk up to Olympic Blvd, just North of Bundy in L.A. There's a CBTL there, so I'd grab an Americano, then walk down Olympic to a bench-like ledge in front of an office building there, and with my headphones in, I would sit and meditate for 9 minutes. This is directly across from a bloodbath and beyond store and a block or so down from a Trader Joe's, so it's a high-traffic area. I always got an extra charge out of creating a little bit of novelty in the middle of this area where all these L.A. People tended to be so L.A.
Anyway, because I'd meditate anywhere back then, I avoided trying TM because making audible noise just seemed as though I'd be really calling attention to myself, which in turn would make me self-conscious, which would make it impossible for me to actually achieve any kind of meditative state. I no longer have any of those problems, and after things went a bit batty in 2015 (a story for another day), I have been reticent to use that old Pro Tools track. Thus, my impending return to Meditation will require something new. Reading Room to Dream, I think TM might be just the thing. First, though, I want to re-read Lynch's book on the subject, Catching The Big Fish.
Hearing the first-hand accounts of the people in Lynch's life talk about the change that TM produced in him when he first began practicing, I think this could be a very good tool to rid myself of some of the residual anger and frustration that I've fallen prey to lately, living with and helping to take care of an elderly person who just epitomizes a lot of the ignorance and blind consumer mindset I have such a hard time with in the human race.
Playlist:
The Police - Synchronicity
David Bowie - Outside
Talking Heads - Fear of Music
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Iggy Pop - The Idiot
Iggy Pop - Every Loser
Iggy Pop - Lust for Life
Final Light - Eponymous
Godflesh - Pure Live
Low Cut Connie - Get Out the Lotion
NIN - Hesitation Marks
David Bowie - The Buddha of Suburbia
U2 - War
G Love & Special Sauce - Yeah, It's That Easy
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
I love an easy Pull! An emotional breakthrough that will provide a solid foundation for moving forward with a sustainable degree of patience and cohesion.
I'm really falling hard into my first rewatch of the original Twin Peaks since before The Return aired, and as usual, it feels good to have everything Peaks seep out of the screen and into every aspect of my life. First and foremost is always the music, which tends to never stray far from my mind. This time, Angelo Badalamenti's passing really hit home, and I'm getting even deeper into the sonic space of the show than usual. This, of course, sent me digging.
I vaguely remember Xiu Xiu touring and then releasing their music of Twin Peaks project, but I'm not sure I'd heard any of it before. Full disclosure: I've never really gotten into this band. That said, I came across this recently and thought it was pretty cool.
Watch:
I finally sat down and watched Noah Baumbach's adaptation of Don Delillo's White Noise the other night. Turns out? It's my favorite non-genre film of 2022!
All the performances are fantastic, especially Adam Driver. Man, when I first saw this guy as Emo-Vadar, I never would have suspected what a great actor he has become. But between this and Jarmusch's Patterson from a few years ago, Driver just blows me away.
As far as adapting, it's been about a decade since I read White Noise, but a lot of it has stayed in my mind through the intervening years. Overall I loved it, especially how the cast delivers such obvious literary dialogue, which in lesser hands could have been obsequious and irritating. Robert Pattinson does a similar but not-quite-as-affective job with his Delillo dialogue in David Cronenberg's adaptation of Cosmopolis, and while that performance was instrumental in my accepting Patterson - at the time widely known as the 'sparkling vampire' - as a serious actor, it left the cinematic version of that book something I have yet to revisit.
I will revisit Baumbach's film often, and soon.
Read:
After succumbing to the Something is Killing the Children wave - worth it! - I've now caught up on the sister title, House of Slaughter.
Ostensibly an anthology series, the first five issues cover Erica Slaughter-adjacent Black Mask Aaron's past, while the subsequent six issues delve into one of the Scarlet masks, the young and precocious Edwin and his trials while afloat on a lake that he comes to suspect may house a Dragon.
This book is weird. I enjoyed the arc laid out in 1-5, but I'm going to have to reread 6-10. This story didn't come together for me. Whatever I was supposed to glean out of Edwin's insights and memories just didn't unravel into a satisfying conclusion, and I was left wondering if I'd missed something. Still, I enjoyed all ten so far, as well as last week's Book of Slaughter, which is kind of a clever way to get a lot of info text to us, cementing into factual lore a lot of what we've already pieced together about the politics of The Order of St. George. The new arc starts this month, and I'm looking forward to it despite any hangups I had on this most recent story.
Playlist:
Lustmord - Dark Matter
LCD Soundsystem - New Body Rhumba (single)
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food
Black Sabbath - Vol. 4
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
Emotional stability disrupted by a seemingly unending conflict will work itself out if I extend a hand. Hmm.
YES! I have been waiting for this for about five years now. Not sure how long it usually takes between records - it was The Veils' performance on David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return in 2017 that introduced them to me (despite Mr. Brown attempting to previous to that), so this will be my first new Veils' record since becoming a fan.
Wow. Right when I start my Twin Peaks re-watch, too. The Stars, they are aligning!
The new double album, "...AndOut of the Void Came Love" drops March 3rd; you can pre-order it now HERE.
Playlist:
Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Season Two and More
Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST
Card:
Continuing my three pulls for the new year, here's my card from Crowley and Harris' Thoth:
Typically, I read Aces in this deck as Breakthroughs and the fact that we're looking at a breakthrough in Disks reflects the fact that I received a completely unexpected 'extra' paycheck this year and was able to all but pay off the credit card that I used to help us move. This is a HUGE breakthrough, because now, as long as I'm diligent for a bit, I can finish these and then help K whittle down the big box hardware store card she got when we first moved. I can only imagine this Breakthrough should echo good things into the new year.
My good friend Amy posted a track by her nephew's new band on her socials the other day, and I was floored when I followed the link and hit play. Can't wait to hear more by Bedridden soon; this band rules! Buy the track and hit follow over on their Bandcamp HERE.
Watch:
Starting my first full rewatch of Twin Peaks since before 2017's The Return (which I've rewatched twice since it aired). This time, however, I am starting with Fire Walk With Me.
Watched it today; never fails to blow me away.
Playlist:
David Lynch and John Neff - BLUEBOB
Stan Getz - Focus
Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food
Made Out of Babies - The Ruiner
Lustmord - Hobart
Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST
Card:
For the first of my three New Year's Pulls, I used Missi's Raven Tarot for a single card to indicate where the new year will take me.
A paradigm shift! Good news. This leads me to believe I am on firm footing with the projects I am currently balancing. Let's revisit this for each of the next two days with my subsequent pulls.
Holy cow. The Twin Peaks Fest Facebook page is reporting another major David Lynch collaborator's death. Musician John Neff. This is insanely saddening, especially coming on the heels of Angelo Badalamenti's death AND the fact that I somehow missed the news that the One-Armed Man himself, Al Strobel also passed away recently. I can't find any information on Mr. Neff, but there is a lovely memorial over on Welcome to Twin Peaks.
Neff worked with Lynch on several projects in and around the Millennium; however, the stand out is undoubtedly their 2001 album BLUEBOB. Not only is this one of my all-time favorite albums, but it is also the album that propelled Lynch to go on and record Crazy Clown Time and The Big Dream. BLUEBOB was recently remastered and distributed by Solitude Records. You can buy the remastered album HERE. Despite the remaster, I am perfectly happy with my OG copy of the disc, and hope someone puts out a vinyl at some point.
Posted above, the track "Mountains Falling" is perhaps the best-known from the record, a sprawling soundtrack of dirge and decay used in Lynch's film Mulholland Drive.
Watch:
Let's talk a bit about Al Strobel. Mostly known for his dual role in Twin Peaks as Phillip Gerard, the traveling shoe salesman, and MIKE, the antithesis spirit to BOB; if there was one good thing that came out of Michael Anderson's refusal to take part in Twin Peaks: The Return, it's that the absence of Anderson's Little Man From Another Place left the door wide open for Strobel to have a lot more screen time. Essentially becoming the de facto coercing spirit in the Waiting Room, MIKE's interactions with the trapped Cooper create not only the impetus for a lot of Cooper/Dougie's arc in the film but also a large part of the mechanics behind the "Evolved" Red Room.
My favorite moments of Strobel's in the Twin Peaks canon, however, are in the second season of the original series. He is instrumental in the events leading up to the capture of BOB, and Strobel's portrayal of a man deprived of his "medicine" and the transformation that catalyzes is riveting, leading right up to this:
CHILLS to this day! Easily my favorite overall moment with Mr. Strobel. Absolute genius.
RIP Al Strobel - see You in the Sycamore Trees, sir!
Playlist:
Clint Mansell & Kevin Kiner - Doom Patrol Main Title Theme (single)
If there's a more iconic piece of music out there from the last forty years, I'm not sure what it is. Saving the greatest for last - although the show's iconic theme "falling" could be argued to hold that title - thus ends my seven-day observance/tribute to one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century. A heart-rending loss and, if you'll indulge in a moment of maudlin sentiment, a very large reminder that as we age and move toward our own outro from this reality, the icons we encounter and make a part of our own lives will leave and force us to remember that, yes, it is all deteriorating around us. We'll always have the man's music, but knowing he is gone feels a lot like when we lost Bowie - a large chunk has disappeared and left a hole in things.
But, as Dr. Jacoby might say, we carry on. Well, Major Briggs would probably say that. Jacoby would probably recommend doing some blow.
Watch:
After Christian Bale's performance in Amsterdam, he's back on my radar. Here's the trailer for his latest film, The Pale Blue Eye (great title!):
Not sure what to make of this yet, other than it is gorgeous. I really dug Scott Cooper's previous flick, Antlers, so while there's almost no chance this will be in a theatre anywhere near me, I will be waiting for its release on Netflix on January 6th.
Playlist:
Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Season One OST
††† - PERMANENT.RADIANT EP
Drug Church - Tawny EP
Exhalants - Atonement
Jamie Lidell - Multiply
Small Black - Cheap Dreams
Miranda Sex Garden - Suspiria
Mastodon - Hushed and Grim
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
Understanding what I want is the only way to achieve it. Sounds like a no-brainer, however, when applied to fiction writing, I can assure you, it is not.
Here Julee Cruise's haunting vocals and Angelo Badalamenti's equally compelling music provided the soundtrack to one of my favorite scenes from Twin Peaks, Season One: The hike to find Jacques Renault's cabin!
Watch:
To once again refer back to that Netflix trailer dump from last week; GDT and Panos Cosmatos working together as part of a GDT anthology series?
Sold! Also helming episodes are Jennifer Kent, David Prior, Guillermo Navarro, Keith Thomas, Catherine Hardwicke (on a thus-far untitled episode that has H.P. Lovecraft credited as a writer), Vincenzo Natali, and Ana Lily Amirpour!
Playlist:
Julee Cruise - The Art of Being A Girl
Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks...
Def Leppard - Hysteria
Angelo Badalamenti - Dark Space Low (Hour-long version HERE)
Yard Act - The Overload
Card:
The watery, or emotional aspect of our Earthly drives/desires/needs. This is a presumption since I won't be house hunting in Tennessee for about another week, but I think this is a good reminder that we have to temper our emotional drive to get the hell out of California with the pragmatic realities of actually doing this smartly and successfully.
Also, the Queen of Disks always reminds me to survey my 'Kingdom' and appreciate where I am and how I got there, especially the people in my life who have helped. If you're one of them - and you very well might be if you're reading this and I know you - thank you. You've helped bring me to this point in my life.
New video from Dance with the Dead, and it's really cool! I love the floating first-person perspective used to zoom along deserted, dilapidated forest roads and into old mine shafts. Very cool. Also, those shots are so alluring, I'd imagine it could be difficult to come up with something more narrative-like to compliment it, but a four-minute video of just that perspective stuff would definitely get old. Luckily, the creators knew exactly where to take this one. The "skeleton rave" is a bit goofy, but ultimately totally works for the song, and it gives us a destination for all those traveling shots.
Watch:
Since seeing it pop up on Shudder at the beginning of the month, I've really been wanting to rewatch Alexander Aja's 2003 High Tension. The problem with that particular film, however, is as much as I like everything about the first two acts, the twist or reveal at the onset of the third never worked for me.
Maybe I've just been looking for a reason to try the film again - I seem to watch it about every ten years, always hoping I feel different. That's never the case. However - I recently began listening to the Horror podcast The House That Screams, and I'll be damned if their most recent episode didn't change my view of the film's personality-warping twist.
The important thing is, I think, the idea one of the hosts expresses that the killer is not so much a secondary personality, as it is a personification of Marie's romantic (?) feelings for her friend Alex. Something about this just helped my acceptance of the film's outcome, I think probably because at the time of its release, there had already been so many films that imitated Fight Club's masterful maneuvering of character that any hint of it immediately killed a film for me. The only exception to that was Brad Anderson's The Machinist, and my acceptance of that one only came after a conversation with a friend where they explained their understanding of Ivan as a physical personification of Trevor's guilt. The House That Screams hosts (I'm new to the show and haven't heard enough to know exactly who is talking when) make a comparison to Leland Palmer/Bob. Now, while they don't suggest it's exactly the same scenario as Bob's "inhabiting spirit," I'd never thought of this angle before. That kind of surprises me, being what a huge Twin Peaks fan I am. But hearing it and making the earlier, perhaps more 1:1 comparison with The Machinist, I feel like I'm ready to watch the film again and see how it sits.
Read:
Re-reading Warren Ellis & Declan Shalvey's painfully short run on Moon Knight. Goddamn, I wish they'd stayed with it for at least twelve issues.
The good news, of course, was the relationship between Ellis and Shalvey that started here went on to give us three GLORIOUS volumes of Injection, and further went on to launch Shalvey as not only a top-tier artist but a pretty damn great writer as well. I'm still thinking about Bog Bodies after re-reading it middle of last year.
Playlist:
Ghost - Impera
Orville Peck - Bronco
The Cure - Faith
Greg Puciato - Lowered (single)
Tennis System - Technicolor Blind
Isobell Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Sunday at Devil Dirt.
Mad Season - Above
Revocation - The Outer Ones
Mark Lanegan - Bubblegum
Card:
Okay, I love this spread:
To see such a clear narrative offset by instructions that don't just make sense in the course of my current life, but in the course of the nature of the cards, is almost breathtaking.
Past = Princess of Swords: Confusion and chaos. This is my exact mindset of late. I'm fighting myself, my intuition, everything.
Present = Queen of Wands: Not a fan of this card, however, you look at that calming hand on top of the Lion and you get the picture. Reel it in, son. Tame your inner fires and FOCUS.
Future = Prince of Wands: Here's where the beauty emerges. These two cards are in sequence in the deck. One tells you to tame the Lion, the other shows it under your control, pulling you forward.
It's been a while since I've fallen headlong into The Veils. With Twin Perfect putting all this glorious Twin Peaks stuff into my head, this feels like the perfect time.
NCBD:
The slimmest NCBD in quite some time. I'll try not to complain, and instead allow my wallet to catch its breath.
There's nothing amazing about this book prequel to the new MOTU series on Netflix - which I enjoyed quite a bit - but it's fun. Also, with a four-issue runtime, I don't feel like it's a very big commitment. Also, that's a Bill Sienkiewicz variant cover right there. Pure Magick.
So glad The Silver Coin got picked up for more than the initially solicited four issues. This is easily in my top five comics of the year.
Listen:
Super excited to finally post this new episode of The Horror Vision, as we had Seattle University Professor of Film Studies John Trafton on to deep-dive Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck's criminally underseen 1973 Messiah of Evil. I learned a lot on this one, and from this film in general, and John is a veritable wellspring of film knowledge. Can't wait to have him back! Listen to the episode, and check out his website, which is chock full of fantastic information!
Discovering Black Mare last week has sent me into a spiral with Sera Timms music. Following my own advice and clicking on that Bandcamp link for 2020's Death Magick Mother, I sat completely transfixed by the record yesterday in the wee hours of the morning. This record has an extremely ethereal quality. I can hear Pornography-era Cure, Cocteau Twins, and contemporaries, L.A.-based Chasm, but the space created within the walls of this aural shrine are all Timms's own. Turning this one on feels like stepping into an hour-long fog bank. Through the obfuscation, you see outlines of landmarks you think you recognize, except they're all wrong, and give you an immediate impulse to be at the ready.
Watch:
A few weeks back, my cousin, Charles told me about the Youtube channel Twin Perfect's video, "Twin Peaks Actually Explained (No, Really)." I'd seen this floating around in my feed and ignored it. Despite the fact that I often create or take part in videos similar to this - well, NO video is similar to this one - I rarely watch them, and I certainly go out of my way to avoid any video that claims to explain any movies or shows I dig, most especially Peaks. However, Charles told me enough to get me interested, and if you'll recall, there was one other Twin Peaks Explanation video I took to heart a year or so ago - Wow Lynch Wow's "Was Mr. C Victorious?" This new video, then, wasn't exactly unprecedented. What was unprecedented was the fact that, after watching about the first twenty minutes of this 4 hour+ video, I truly believed in my heart of hearts that holy F'ing shite - this guy COMPLETELY EXPLAINS TWIN PEAKS. It's not what you think it's going to be, it's far better. I cannot recommend this one enough unless you do not want to have the show explained.
Seriously, without spoiling anything, when you get to the part about what the light shining on Laura Palmer's face at the end of FWWM means, you'll know if you're on board or not.
Playlist:
Black Mare - Death Magick Mother
Metallica - Seek and Destroy (single)
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Faith No More - The Real Thing
King Woman - Celestial Blues
Windhand - Eternal Return
Conan - Monnos
Guns N' Roses - ABSURD (wow, this is awful)
Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual
The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs - Original Series Soundtrack
Card:
Okay, so what am I battling here? I feel like most everything is in line.
From the hallucinatory reverberations of the sax that opens this track, to the seething keyboards that close it, here's an entry from the original Twin Peaks series first OST that often gets taken for granted. Plus, the Bookhouse Boys!
Watch:
A few nights back, K and I finally got around to watching the copy of Criterion's 40th Anniversary, 4K restoration of David Lynch's The Elephant Man. This proved to be a deeply emotional experience, not just because of the movie itself, which is an emotional juggernaut, but also because of Criterion's loving restoration of the film and DP Freddie Francis' realization of Lynch's glorious Black and White vision.
This is one of Lynch's films I had only seen twice before: once just after High School, a few years after I got into Twin Peaks' original airing, and once when I bought the DVD released in the early 00s. Neither viewing proved super memorable to me at the time, and now, I can't imagine why that would be.
Playlist:
ACDC - Highway to Hell
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - Carnage
Alan Vega - Saturn Strip
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree
David Lynch and Marek Zebrowski - Polish Night Music
Aphex Twin - Syro
John Carpenter - Lost Themes III: Alive After Death
Ilsa - Preyer
Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks OST
Card:
As the Firey aspect of Fire, we're doubling down on activity, aka actually getting some shit done. The pre-sale for Murder Virus is underway (I officially announced it on social media last night), and I'm taking a bit of a breather by editing a friend's first novel. Meanwhile, I'm reading up on Hassan I Sabbah and the Assassins, as well as the Tetragrammaton, both subjects that will inform the next two books of the Shadow Play series.
As a side note, if you're reading this and you pre-ordered Murder Virus back when I originally announced it here, please allow me to ask a favor of you. Go back in, cancel that order, and then re-order the book. Due to a printing error with the proofs I was sent, the early pre-orders will be getting an inferior edit of the book, thus I'm trying to catch the few that may have gotten through and get those folks squared away with the definitive version.
Calling it now: RTJ4 will be my album of the year. Everything surrounding this one is perfect. The digital form of the album dropped months early on Wednesday, June 3rd. The physical is still slated for September, so you know the boys saw the opportunity to issue their statement when it was most needed, in the midst of the Protests and Riots that surrounded George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. This particular song directly references Floyd's death, leading me to believe RTJ was recording lyrics up until only a few days or possibly even hours before they dropped the album. That is legendary in my eyes.
I've never been a huge fan of the previous three RTJ records. They're good, and I may grow to like them more in the wake of the impact 4 has made on me, but all my qualms are shattered here. The instrumentation and arrangements are amazing; bombastic, interesting, and weird. Catchy to boot. The lyrics, too, are a level up. As are their delivery, there's a new urgency on this album, one that I can only equate to Chuck D of Public Enemy fame, for my money still the best rapper ever.
**
I should offer a small explanation on my continued use of the "Isolation" moniker for these posts. While a large part of the rest of the world have shrugged off Science's warnings about the continued threat of COVID-19, I am not so cavalier. K and I will be continuing to practice isolation for months to come. Especially after the spike we're already seeing in local microcosmic environments, rising numbers it seems most of the population is content to ignore because they have, "had enough."
Whatever. Thin the population - it does nothing but help the planet and those who will remain.
**
New season of Dark arrives in just two short weeks. That means K and I have to re-watch seasons one and two soon. Nothing like the anticipation that comes from being invested in a series that is not only fantastic, but that has been finite and perfectly plotted from the jump.
**
Jesus, talk about watch list overload. Here's a trailer for the new season of Doom Patrol. Luckily, I won't have to waste my time and resubscribe to the DCU app, as I recently signed up for HBOMAX. That said, after subscribing I realized Max does not work on Firestick, so I have to figure something else out. Either way, this is a MUST.
**
I finished reading Laird Barron's Worse Angels (Fantastic) and Cliver Barker's Books of Blood Volume One, and now I'm on to a book my good friend Chris Saunders (DwC, The Horror Vision) gave me recently. Mark Frost's The List of 7. I've known about Frost's Arthur Conan Doyle novels since their publication in the early 90s thanks to Wrapped in Plastic magazine, the David Lynch/Twin Peaks magazine I subscribed to in the wake of discovering Twin Peaks as it aired. I always knew I'd get around to reading this and the sequel, 6 Messiahs - which Chris also gifted me - and now is as good a time as any.
Here's an awesome website entry about this book that I found while looking for a picture of the cover.
Chris's gifts came at a most opportune time, because the Al Jourgensen auto is proving difficult to get through. A lot closer to what I would expect from a Tommy Lee auto, all braggadocio and not a lot of believable substance at this point (granted, I'm still pretty early in the book). Of course, I expect sex and drugs from any rock star auto, but Al spends a lot of time jerking himself off - metaphorically, in the book there's plenty of random folks to do that for him - and I can't help juxtaposing this with Chris Connelly's auto Concrete, Invisible, Bulletproof, and Fried: My Life as a Revolting Cock, which I read well over ten years ago now, and which is both eloquent and humble. None of that in Uncle Al's early days thus far, and I can't help but wonder if his depiction of ages 13-16 is this filled with conquests and little else, what will the Ministry years be like? I'll get back to this eventually, but I'll probably have to ramp up my Ministry rotation in order to inspire myself to do so.
**
Playlist:
Alice Donut - Dry Humping the Cash Cow
David Bowie - Outside
Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
Flying Lotus - You're Dead
Flying Lotus - Flamagra
Jawbox - For Your Own
Old Tower - The Last Eidolon
Black Magic - Alastor
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
NIN - Ghosts VI: Locusts
Underworld - 1992-2012
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
Run the Jewels - RTJ3
Hi-Lo - Poseidon (single)
Kendrick Lamar - Damn.
Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
DAF - Die Kleinen Und Die Bösen
Amon Düüll II - Vive La Trance
Makaveli - The 7 Day Theory
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Black Sabbath - Eponymous
Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
Zombi - Breakthrough and Conquer (pre-release single)
Zombi - Earthscraper (pre-release single)
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
**
Card:
Explosion of energy/creativity. Fits perfectly, as over the last 48 hours, I have doubled down on finishing the book. By the end of the weekend, I'm hoping to be in a position to begin reading it aloud to K - one of my most important QC steps, as well as pass it off to two friends who I pay as beta readers. SOON.
I've never been clear if Rieflin actually played on this particular song - he was in the incarnation of the Cocks for this record - but his mention in this, the title track from the album Linger Ficken' Good, always makes me laugh.
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Last night K and I watched David Lynch's Wild at Heart. It's been a while since I've seen this one, and for some reason, there are a lot of details that I always forget, but overall, while not my favorite Lynch film by any stretch of the imagination, I still love this flick.
Note: In choosing a trailer to post, I opted for the original, unrestored version over the remastered, Shout Factory. I did this simply because I remember this trailer so vividly from television the year of its release, a time when I was in the throws of my initial introduction to David Lynch and the then-airing second season of Twin Peaks. Something about the grain and vague picture really authenticates the memory for me, so while I'd rather watch a restored version of the film, this trailer 'lights my fire' more than the glossy one.
After Wild at Heart, we did indeed begin a rewatch of Twin Peaks: The Return. This will only be the second time I've watched the series, and I'm excited and trepidatious with going back to it. One thing that I feel is definitely going to enhance this go-through is the fact that I'm also re-reading Mark Frost's Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, and watching some of the editorial/theory programming that popped up on youtube during and after The Return's initial broadcast run. Having access to information we did not during that initial run, I feel, will make a hell of a difference in accepting and understanding certain elements of the series that otherwise left me feeling a bit... unresolved. The most important video I've found for this is Wow Lynch Wow's brilliant examination of the Cooper/Mr. C connection. If you haven't seen this, dig into it before you go back to the series (or even if you just want to think about it after the fact). I am in complete and total agreement with this man's assessment here:
**
Playlist:
Man Man - Future Peg (Pre-release single)
Steve Moore - Frame Dragging EP
Led Zeppelin - I
From Straight Songs of Sorrow, the new Mark Lanegan out May 8th via Heavenly Recordings. Pre-order HERE. Apparently, this record is "closely aligned" with Lanegan's forthcoming memoir Sing Backwards and Weep, out April 28th. Pre-order that HERE or HERE.
I can't wait to read that book!
**
Over the weekend, in the interest of starting something new and mostly unknown, K and I started Netflix's Black Spot, which comes to the US via France.
Although highly derivative of Twin Peaks, Dark, and True Detective Ssn 1, I'm enjoying Black Spot quite a bit; it borrows heavily from all three aforementioned shows, but is definitely its own thing. I'd definitely recommend it for fans of those shows and thrillers in general. I've seen references now to both this and Dark as belonging to a genre being called "Into the Woods," and although genre splitting and tagging can become tiresome, I kinda dig that. Suffice it to say, Black Spot is creepy, extremely well lit and well shot, and the voice they've given to the forest is mysterious and exciting.
**
This happened last night and I am still unable to completely wrap my head around it:
Apparently, in honor of Relapse's 30th Anniversary, they chose people who pre-ordered records in the past few months and randomly awarded them these nifty golden tickets. What's it good for?
Whoah. I don't know that I've won anything since 1991, when I called Chicago's seminal Rock statin The Loop and won 10 free lawn tickets to see Guns n' Roses on their Use Your Illusions tour. Of course, I never got to cash those in, because two nights before that Chicago show, Axl jumped off the stage in Cincinnati, OH and clocked a dude with a camera, subsequently landing in jail.
One reason why I've always disliked Axl.
Anyway, looks like I have a lot of vinyl coming my way this year. Very cool. Thank you Relapse Records and Happy 30th Anniversary - here's to 130 more (at least)!
**
Playlist:
The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium
Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Digipak)
Mol - Jord
Various Artists - The Void (OSM)
Frederic Kooshmanian - Black Spot (OSM)
Me and That Man - Songs of Love and Death
Burzum - Filosofem
Grimes - Miss Anthropocene
Greg Dulli - Random Desire
Various Artists - Garage Rock (Compilation used in Black Spot)
Slayer - Show No Mercy
Nothing - Guilty of Everything
The Gutter Twins - Adorata
Chris Isaak - Heart Shaped World
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Wasteland
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper
**
Card:
I've done a few pulls over the last few days that haven't been logged here, almost all of which have been Swords. The Nine of Swords - Cruelty has followed me a bit. Swords is the Suit I know the least in the Tarot, and this card in particular is, at a glance, always tempting to fear based on face value. However, from the Grimoire:
"The airy nature of Intellect, it is difficult for Swords to rest. Rabid analyzation and thinking in general can produce a loop that one becomes trapped in, the ultimate revelation that Nothing really leads Anywhere and in the end, there is Nothing."
Now, juxtapose this with a clarification card I drew and an interpretation begins to take shape.
Reality is breaking a bit, as Chuck Wendig's Wanderers escalates into a pandemic that cuts a massive swathe through the human population. Oh, and the disease's origin? Bats.
Can you see how that would start to saturate my reality? Also, it was the day after I started reading this book that the first really scary images from China began to appear back in January, and since, well, the arc of the book has been so parallel to the arc of real life (except, thus far, we're on a MUCH smaller scale) that I've had a lot of time to reflect on everything. Interestingly enough, long periods of time reflecting on everything, on all of our existence, leads to the ultimate understanding that Nothing is at the heart of it. Humanity holds itself up by the bootstraps, and although there are more good than bad humans - I think - if things go ugly, it doesn't really matter for the overall organism of the Planet Earth. In fact, it might be better for Her if we were to largely die off. I hope not, because there's a lot of humans I really like - including myself. But then, it's one thing to have an objective view of an extinction event, it's quite another to be able to conduct yourself that way.
