Saturday, November 30, 2019
Grimes - My Name is Dark
New Grimes track! I reluctantly listened to this - while I'm chomping at the bit for the album and can't help but listen to every new track she drops, I'd really like to preserve the album experience. That said, I'm glad I hit play this one time (abstaining after until release day) because this is a fantastic track.
**
Finished Gideon the Ninth. Fantastic - four solid stars on Goodreads. Next up, Autumn Christian's Girl Like A Bomb, which I'm only a few pages into so far but am totally fascinated by. Sex has never been something I've shied away from in fiction, probably because so many of my favorite formative authors utilize it so well. It is a part of life, after all, and Irvine Welsh, Bret Easton Ellis, and Chuck Palahniuk - to name a few - all write it very well. However, if you look at the common denominator there - all men - you'll probably see what I see, namely the fact that it's pretty one-sided. Christian's book starts off with sex and carries on much the same for the first chapter. It's about a girl's mission to lose her virginity and the strange power she experiences in doing so. Not sure if this power is a metaphor or something extraordinary yet, but then, that's the gotta see of the book, so far, and it's nice to see sex from the female perspective.
Because Girl Like A Bomb is a shorter book, and because I needed some inspiration and Warren Ellis is always raw inspiration, I also bought and downloaded Dead Pig Collector, the novella I picked up a signed copy of earlier in the year but can't bring myself to actually handle in order to read. It was only $.99 on Kindle, so a second, digital copy is hardly extravagant. And of course, within two pages, I'm fascinated and anxious and inspired, all at once.
There are a couple Ellis novels or novellas I've been meaning to read for a few years now, and one I plan to re-read fairly soon, but I figure I'll space them out a bit. The man has a lot of comics I still need to get to as well. The very definition of prolific.
**
My only day off this week due to the on-call schedule, K and I blitzed through a good half-dozen episodes of Veronica Mars season 3 yesterday. Man! I remembered three as being the weakest season, but honestly, just past the half-way mark and I'm thinking it is actually the strongest. The Campus rape storyline is dark AF and I have to wonder if it helped make the show disappear during that original run, but it's the most engrossing storyline to date, and doesn't suffer from being strewn across an entire season, mixed in with the "Scooby-Doo", case of the week stories that pepper throughout. Unlike the Lilly Kane or Exploding Bus storylines, the Campus rape storyline is an omnipotent presence that nips at our casts' heels the entire length of its life, and as such, really creates an ongoing sense of anxiety that works well in a detective, beach-noir show.
We're super close to finishing season three, doing the movie and then finally getting to the new season, so my curiosity is almost at the point of being sated. I purposely know nothing about Hulu's season 4, and cannot wait to dive into it and see where all these familiar characters are in their lives, fifteen or so years later. And after that... the truth is out there. Mr. Brown and my X-Files playlist project begins...
**
Playlist:
Meg Myers - Sorry
Jenny Hval - The Practice of Love
New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour of the Bewilderbeast
Federale - No Justice
Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
The Forest Children - Kingdom Animalia
The Forest Children - Darkness Brings the Cold
Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone
Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
Radiohead - OK Computer
Dungen - Ta det lugnt
Muggs - Dust
Thievery Corporation - The Mirror Conspiracy
Twilight Singers - Twilight
Various Artists - Under Frustration Vol. 2
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Them Are Us Too - Remain
White Hex - Gold Nights
Sleaford Mods - English Tapas
**
Card:
I had to pull a clarifying card after coming up with the Eight of Swords - so some contrary experience will challenge a pre-established idea or ideal I carry with me? Good. It's always nice to get a fresh perspective.
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Pan's Labyrinthine Dreamscape
Five days ago: in the car, a cover of Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill comes on KROQ and mildly annoys me. I erroneously dismiss it as another 'Of Monsters and Men' type band covering a song I adore.
One day ago: I hear the same Kate Bush cover on the radio that is always on at work. Normally tuned exclusively to KXLU, lately, the dial has been set to KROQ. I relive the experience in the car from a few days before, walk out and Shazam the track, realizing as I stand there with my phone in my hand that I actually like the cover.
Fifteen minutes ago: I wake up early, set up to stretch and see that I ear-marked the artist in question, Meg Myers', 2014 Make A Shadow EP on Apple Music. I download the tracks, lay out a yoga mat and hit play. While attempting to stretch out incredibly sore hamstring muscles, the first track starts and I melt.
This is amazing. Full salvo - this hits me hard.
Five minutes ago: I start this post, a newly minted Meg Myers fan.
**
It's time again for...
For the first time in years yesterday, I listened to Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too by the New Radicals. This was a huge album for me in the early 2000s, but perhaps because of that fact, it feels as though it belongs to that era. In this on-going obsession with recontextualizing the 00s, I listened to the album in one straight shot at work and experienced it in a deeply emotional way. Which was very, um, cathartic, I guess. Weird to experience a strong emotional response to music in an office with other people around, but it's kind of a different office aesthetic than most people have, so it worked.
I followed the one album Greg Alexander recorded as New Radicals with a song that often surprises people when it pops up on my iPod in a public forum. I know nothing about Michelle Branch and I'm not the biggest Carlos Santana fan, especially the album I'm about to reference here. However, this song, written by Alexander, sounds like it belongs on that one New Radicals album. I love it. When Ms. Branch hits those "tell my whhhyyyy" parts, it does to my soul exactly what Alexander's voice does on album opener Mother We Just Can't Get Enough, and it feels very, very good.
**
Finished the second season of Veronica Mars, and we're now a quarter of the way through the third. I've seen all these before, but my memory sucks, so while I remember how the main season arcs sweep, I don't completely remember how they get to where they're going. That was certainly the case with the climax of Season Two, where I remembered who had blown up the bus, but not why. I also didn't remember just how damn dark that Season Two finale gets, or how dark Season Three's main story is. Is this why the show ultimately disintegrated in the ratings that propelled it through its initial lifespan and subsequent following?
Chomping at the bit to revisit the movie - which I remember nothing about - and to get to the new Season on Hulu.
**
The new episode of The Horror Vision is up. Movie of the episode is James Gunn's wonderful 2006 gross-out Slither, but the conversation goes all over the place, from Jennifer Kent's Babadook follow-up The Nightengale, to AHS 1984's conclusion (no spoilers), to Clive Barker's Nightbreed. Oh, and our Classic Corner is Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
The Horror Vision on Apple
The Horror Vision on Spotify
**
Doing the movies-on-silent-in-the-background-while-I-write thing again, and it seems to be working well for inspiration. Recent features:
**
Playlist:
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
Soundgarden - Down On the Upside
St. Germaine - Tourist
New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
Federale - No Justice
Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturian Poetry
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. II: Philosophy of Beyond
Telephone Tel Aviv - Immolate Yourself
**
Card:
Which I associate with a very good friend who I spoke to immediately after pulling the card - coincidentally, not by design - who experienced a 6.4 Earthquake in Tirana. Stay safe, brother.
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Writing Chamber 11.23.19
Because I'm spending the day with my phone in airplane mode so I can finally finish another of these short stories that have been haunting me for months, I'm revisiting a lot of the stuff that's trapped on my old iPod. Which, as it turns out, is extremely inspiring. Telephone Tel Aviv's album Immolate Yourself was an album I came to unexpectedly: sometime in the mid-00s a friend had given me a bunch of albums in MP3 form, so many in fact that it took me quite some time to work my way around to all of them. One day after work at the bookstore, I came home and hit "Shuffle" on the desktop computer before lying down for a nap. I woke up at some point with this album on, but the wake-up was half-hearted, and as I lie there drifting in and out of sleep, this record slowly endeared itself to me. It has, since then, been a portal back to the weird, twilight mindset of that experience.
**
Along with the old iPod selections, I'm playing a couple movies on silent in the background while I write. Today's choices:
**
With Tasmyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth winding down (it's SO freakin' good), I purchased and loaded Autumn Christian's Girl Like A Bomb in my 'on-deck' reading circle. I don't know much about the book or the author, but I LOVED Shadowmachine, Christian's entry into Robert S. Wilson's Ashes and Entropy anthology earlier in the year, and am excited to read more of her work.
What a cover. The font alone sells it.
**
Playlist:
Blackstar - David Bowie
A Storm in Heaven - The Verve
David Bowie - Diamond Dogs
Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Ministry - Psalm 69
Bohren and der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission
Bohren and der Club of Gore - Gore Motel
Friday, November 22, 2019
The Return of Squarepusher!
First album in something like five years drops on Warp Records, January 31st. Before that, however, and advance 12" titled Vortrack drops. Pre-order HERE.
**
After a slow start, Tasmyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth has me hooked. With only a little over the one hundred pages left, the story is developing into a spooky hybrid of Fantasy and Horror, although not in any way we normally associate with either genre. Sure, there's world-building, and some of that is what got in my way at the start, and I will confess I'm having trouble keeping track of who is who (although in the course of this particular story's The Old Dark House-style whodunnit? that doesn't trip up the story itself, just elements of comprehension).
Gideon the Ninth is apparently the first book in the three-book The Locked Tomb series, with the next book, Harrow the Ninth, up for pre-order on Amazon HERE.
**
Playlist:
David Bowie - Black Star
Belbury Poly - Mind How You Go
Burial - Untrue
Ennio Morricone - Black Belly of the Tarantula
**
Card:
Not going to comment on this at the moment, but I will if what I'm thinking pans out.
Thursday, November 21, 2019
David Bowie Ruled the 00s
I've been swimming in David Bowie's final album again; it's perfect for my headspace at the moment, which I can only describe as 'weird.'
Something kickstarted a full-blown, days-upon-days reverie for the 00s, which is the definition of the word weird because it largely feels like a decade of my life that didn't really end up belonging to me. Not that it belonged to anyone else, but... well, can ten years be a corridor? I've ruminated on the philosophical context/ramifications of Soundgarden's Room a Thousand Years Wide, now we're readjusting that concept to a more micro version. Whether a decade can be a hallway or not, I've stepped back into that - triggered, I think, by a huge Warren Ellis reading binge - and it's very interesting, this mix of my ongoing current headspace, reinforced daily by the world I've built, and these elements of my previous operating system. What will be the outcome? Not quite sure yet, but it's pleasurable to walk around in two personal eras at once (again, a micro version of Philip K. Dick's experience, but without the out of body stuff).
**
There's a couple new Horror Visions up, and one more to come this weekend. Topics of discussion range from Doctor Sleep to The Lighthouse to True Blood to Jennifer Kent's The Nightengale to, ah, turtle sex? The second oldest is a very tangental 'after dark' episode where we start out as a four-piece and become a three-piece whose conversation runs all the fuck over the place, but it's pretty cool to have captured and edited it to be, you know, coherent.
The Horror Vision on Apple
The Horror Vision on Spotify
The Horror Vision on Google Play
**
Yes, I too signed up for Disney +. I will be unsubscribing when The Mandalorian is finished for the season, but in the meantime, holy smokes do I LOVE this show. Now THIS is Star Wars; I actually consider this an apology to old school fans for that crap that's been in the theatre the last few years. And yes, I know this show was very specifically engineered to appease people like me: 40+ year olds who grew up with it and love the old, Sergio Leone approach. They've utilized so many characters that are based on my favorite action figures as a kid that there was no way this wasn't going to work for me. Contrived? Sure. Do I mind? Nope.
**
Weird Walk is a wonderful little 'zine published by some fascinating people over in Great Britain. I received my copy of issue number two after reading about it in Warren Ellis' newsletter a few weeks, and have so far had the pleasure of reading an interview with author Benjamin Myers about how the rural English landscape has influenced and inspired his writing. This seems like it fits right in with that 'Haunted', Hypnogogic aesthetic that, you guessed it, fits in with my current re-assessment of the 00s.
You can order Weird Walk and peruse their sight HERE.
**
Playlist:
David Bowie - Black Star
Clavicvla - Sepulchral Blessing
Greet Death - New Hell
Burial - Eponymous
Burial - Untrue
Federale - No Justice
Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone
The Cure - Carnage Visors
The Cure - Pornography
Black Pumas - Eponymous
Mayhem - Daemon
**
No card today, however, I wanted to note how exact my last two pulls were. Exact like in a creepy, "Tarot is never this on the nose" way.
Friday I pulled the Ten of Disks Wealth and received an unexpected Royalty check in the mail for my books. Three days later I pulled the Five of Cups Disappointment and received a notification that the submission I sent via FedEx to an anthology I adore failed to deliver and that I'd have to re-send it through the post office to get it there.
That's pretty accurate.
**
Yes, I too signed up for Disney +. I will be unsubscribing when The Mandalorian is finished for the season, but in the meantime, holy smokes do I LOVE this show. Now THIS is Star Wars; I actually consider this an apology to old school fans for that crap that's been in the theatre the last few years. And yes, I know this show was very specifically engineered to appease people like me: 40+ year olds who grew up with it and love the old, Sergio Leone approach. They've utilized so many characters that are based on my favorite action figures as a kid that there was no way this wasn't going to work for me. Contrived? Sure. Do I mind? Nope.
**
Weird Walk is a wonderful little 'zine published by some fascinating people over in Great Britain. I received my copy of issue number two after reading about it in Warren Ellis' newsletter a few weeks, and have so far had the pleasure of reading an interview with author Benjamin Myers about how the rural English landscape has influenced and inspired his writing. This seems like it fits right in with that 'Haunted', Hypnogogic aesthetic that, you guessed it, fits in with my current re-assessment of the 00s.
You can order Weird Walk and peruse their sight HERE.
**
Playlist:
David Bowie - Black Star
Clavicvla - Sepulchral Blessing
Greet Death - New Hell
Burial - Eponymous
Burial - Untrue
Federale - No Justice
Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone
The Cure - Carnage Visors
The Cure - Pornography
Black Pumas - Eponymous
Mayhem - Daemon
**
No card today, however, I wanted to note how exact my last two pulls were. Exact like in a creepy, "Tarot is never this on the nose" way.
Friday I pulled the Ten of Disks Wealth and received an unexpected Royalty check in the mail for my books. Three days later I pulled the Five of Cups Disappointment and received a notification that the submission I sent via FedEx to an anthology I adore failed to deliver and that I'd have to re-send it through the post office to get it there.
That's pretty accurate.
Friday, November 15, 2019
New Grimes and Release Date!
We now have a release date for the long-awaited next Grimes album. Miss Anthropocene will be out February 21st, and you can pre-order it HERE.
Being that I'm relatively new to her music - having really only been converted about four or five years ago - this will be the first new record Grimes has released that I've waited for. And I feel as though it has been a long wait.
**
Joe Begos' new film Bliss came out on Blu Ray/DVD this past Tuesday and I highly recommend you go out and pick this one up. I saw this at Beyondfest back in September and loved it, and upon re-watching it last night on Blu Ray, I found I enjoyed it, even more, a second time. Easily in my top top if not top five of the year:
And here's the awesome Spotify Soundtrack Mr. Begos put up to coincide with the release of the film.
**
Lo and behold, NCBD this week turned out to be a pretty big deal for me. It's been a while, but I left the shop with a couple new titles that I'm excited about supporting. I'm not thinking of backpaddling on easing off monthlies, but there were a few that were small press, so I'm paying it forward, in a manner of speaking.
And I'd completely forgotten there was a new Terry Moore series on the stands!
I don't really know anything about Five Years, but I'm fairly certain there are a couple of familiar faces on the cover to Issue #1.
**
This week's playlist:
Flying Lotus - You're Dead
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Timber Timbre - Eponymous
Snatch OST (playlist)
James Browns's Funky People Vol. 1
The Edgar Winter Group - Shock Treatment
Return of the Mack - Mark Morrison (single)
Revocation - The Outer Ones
Revocation - Teratogenesis EP
Final - Solaris
Arthur Ahbez - Gold
Barry Adamson - Stranger on the Sofa
Me and That Man - Songs of Love and Death
Flipper - Album
Hall and Oats - Greatest Hits
The Knife - Silent Shout
Billy Idol - Greatest Hits
Megadeth - Rust in Peace
Tyler Childers - Purgatory
Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone
The Nukes - Why Things Burn
Fields of the Nephilim - The Nephilim
Barry Adamson - As Above So Below
Tamaryn - The Waves
The Sword - Age of Winters
Sunn O))) - Life Metal
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Kode9 - Nothing
**
Card of the day:
Hoping this is good news pertaining to the submission I sent out yesterday afternoon.
Labels:
10 of Disks Weatlh,
2019,
Black Stars Above,
Bliss,
Five Years,
Grimes,
Joe Begos,
Miss Anthropocene,
NCBD,
New albums 2019,
Spotify Playlists,
Terry Moore,
The Plot,
Thoth,
Vault Comics
Saturday, November 9, 2019
Me and That Man - On The Road
Holy cow. A good friend sent me a link to this 2017 album Songs of Love and Death by Me and That Man. Dark, fuzzy, gothic country, this entire album is fantastic. I know nothing about this band, but this album hits a perfect harmonic with the new Federale and a few other albums I've had on heavy rotation lately, most of which I'll get to posting from in the next few days.
**
Last night K and I went to the theatre to see Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Stephen King's Doctor Sleep.
The best cinematic sequel ever.
Honestly, I miss spoke above, because Flanagan - who I now think might be the greatest living modern horror director - has made a film that is a sequel to both King's book and Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining, which are two very different entities. There's an article in the most recent Fangoria Magazine where Flanagan talks about how he approached this, and all I can say is, he hit it out of the park. Doctor Sleep is also a very tight adaptation of the novel, so it has the dual quality of feeling like a novel first, and a movie second. In other words, the three-act structure moviegoers have unconsciously come to expect is there, but in an over-arching way. The way the individual scenes are woven together, moving back and forth seamlessly between characters, events, and places, feels literary, as though you're plowing through sections or chapters in a book.
I loved Doctor Sleep when I read the novel back around the time it came out - many thanks to Mr. Brown for mailing me his copy just to be sure I read it, as our love for both King's book and Kubrick's film goes back a looooong way. And now I love the film. Win-win.
Playlist from 11/08:
Federale - No Justice
Billy Idol - Greatest Hits
Black Pumas - Eponymous
TVOTR - Return to Cookie Mountain
Revocation - Teratogenesis EP
Sunn O))) - Life Metal
John Coltrane - Coltrane's Sound
**
Card of the day:
Balance and harmony; coherence and the intuition of a guiding light. I think so. Tonight we're doing a Horror Vision taping and I'll be premiering the finished version of this story I've been working off-and-on for over a year now to five people by reading it out loud. As Cap'm says, Proof is in the Pudding.
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