Miami Horror - Holidays

Dance-pop perfection that will brighten your day. And the video's pretty freakin' funny as well. Zoidberg!!!

Miami Horror's Real Slow

Miami Horror's 2010 record Illumination was one of those albums that remained glued in my stereo for most of that year and well into the next. I posted the video to Holliday back then, will re-post it just because it is so damn awesome! We're talking Fever-era Kylie Minogue crossed with... more awesomeness. Not sure exactly how to compare it because it's very much their own thing. Anyway, apparently they have recently released a new single. Hopefully this will segue into a new record SOON!!!

The Cure Performing Burn for the First Time?

Is that right? They've never played this live before? So says mxdwn, the site that directed me to Spyterus's youtube recording - done apologetically with an iPhone but seriously, thank you Spyterus! It's not the best sound but the idea that we get to see this - if it is indeed the first time they've ever played it - is grand!

Burn is of course from the soundtrack to The Crow, a movie that I absolutely HATE. I don't like to talk negative on the ol' interwebs, but I mean I HATE it, primarily because James O'Barr's comic is one of the most beautiful, devastating things I've ever read and it was done no justice by being chewed into digestible superhero tripe by the studio machine and spat out bland, predictable and just plain silly garbage.

There is apparently a rumor that the new Crow project being bandied about Hollywood is a page-by-page translation of the book, but we'll see. Not sure if the masses that would show up expecting a guitar-totin' gothsicle walloping evil doers would be able to sit through something so emotionally bleak.

image courtesy of beyondhollywood.com

Geof Darrow's The Shaolin Cowboy

image courtesy of matrixfans.net

Wow did I dig this first issue of Dark Horse Comic's new Shaolin Cowboy mini series. Read about it in this week's Comic Column on Joup.

Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue Performing Classic "Where the Wild Roses Grow" Live in London!

Kudos to this fan for grabbing this distant yet still important footage. Have Cave and Minogue ever performed this live before? Apparently this will be used in the documentary Nick and the boys in the Seeds are focusing on currently, which you can read more about on mxdwn here.

And here's some floor footage I just found. Again, kudos to the person who posted this.

Secret Chiefs 3 - Personae: Halloween

So weird. My friend Mike at the best comic book shop in LA, The Comic Bug*just played me this track the other day and now here I find this video. The song is from the just-released Book of Souls: Folio A which you can order on the Web of Mimicry website here.

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* Interestingly enough one of my best friends in the world is also named Mike and happens to run the best comic shop in the greater Chicagoland area, Amazing Fantasy Books and Comics.

Black Lips Tour Doc

Oh! The Black Lips have a documentary about touring in the Middle East in 2012. Here's the trailer, read more about it on Brooklyn Vegan here.

Revocation - The Grip Tightens Video

I did not know about this video until just now! I found out about Revocation back in July when I saw them on the Summer Slaughter tour - I became an instant fan. If you're into metal at all go here and download their free Teratogenesis EP released via Scion AV. It is probably my most-listened to album of the year. This video made me laugh my ass off even if it does slightly obscure the really poignant topic of the song. More of Revocation's awesome music is available on their bandcamp here.

Terry Gilliam's Zero Theorem

I completely let this one slip from my radar after the initial announcement and poster release back in the spring. Terry Gilliam has made several of my all time favorite films, including Brazil, 12 Monkeys, Time Bandits and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Oh yeah, and a little film called Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Some people say his adherence to the dystopian future theme is a one-note on the piano scenario but I don't see it that way. I see it as a prophet (because Brazil is VERY prophetic from when it was released to what our world is like now) refining his vision as more and more information becomes available over time.

Can't wait for this.

The Deftones Cover Cocteau Twins' Wax and Wane

HOLY COW!!! Look what I found while perusing the youtubes for the previous post. I had no idea this existed.

Snowbird/Cocteau Twins

I didn't realize until just now that Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins was the Simon in Snowbird. Although I consider myself a huge fan of the Cocteau that I'm familiar with it is a somewhat limited vocabulary. I fell in love with Heaven or Las Vegas years ago, followed by Treasure and Victorialand. Then a year or two ago a friend burned me EVERYTHING else the band ever recorded and I've been slow to move through it because, well, I feel a skosh guilty about all that free music. My guilt has prevented me from really diving into the band's catalogue, however the one album I did que up and immediately become enamored with is Garlands. Wax and Wane is below - it's probably my favorite song off the album and a really good indication of the dark, ethereal and more than a little Cure-like tone of the record. When I eventually ante up and buy Garlands I suppose I'll move onto another one of their records. Not sure which first, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Mindful Cyborg Epsidoe 13

I've said it before and I'll say it again - if you're not reading Technoccult you are missing some of the most fascinating content on the net. I've not had the time to check out associated podcast Mindful Cyborg but that is (hopefully) going to change today.

The Neighbourhood - Afraid

Haven't turned this record in a while as I've been doing a lot of various metal to fit with the shorter days. The Neighbourhood's I Love You is still probably going to come in as my album of the year. And cool thing with this video? It's a different version of the song than is on the record!

Take that warning at the beginning of the video seriously, but it didn't seem to bother me and if you're a regular here you know about what that infamous David Lynch/NIN video did to me earlier in the year.

Woody Harrelson & Christian Bale in Out of the Furnace (via Latino Review)

Latino Review is BY FAR the best movie news site around and it is to their page I gleefully redirect you  now to learn more about this film, Out of the Furnace, which appears will be a high-level Oscar contender this year. I love a lot of different kinds of movies, but truth be told Oscar season, which we are now in the earliest weeks of, is my favorite. November and December - when a year is good and not suffering from Hollywood carrying tentpole seasons on for prolonged profit as they did in what I think was 2010 (or was it 2011? One year recently all we had was tentpoles up through years end if I remember correctly, with hardly an h'oeuvres tray worth of serious cinema) these are the months where my local cinema truly becomes a cathedral for me. Anyway, thus far we have12 Years a Slave, Captain Phillips, Gravity and All is Lost and then here comes news of this, a serious film with performances by two actors I really like but do not always appear in A level work. Just from this clip we see both Woody Harrelson and Christian Bale have a sort of gravity to their performance that registers as "this movie means business" - or at least it appears to by the clip. I'm intrigued and this may be the first film of 2013's Oscar season that I am really looking forward too.

††† (Crosses) - bi†ches brew

CHINO I LOVE YOU

The Forest Children/Darkness Brings the Cold Bandcamp

Yep, shameless self promotion. I recently tired of paying digital distributer tunecore and took all our old stuff that was up on itunes, putting it on bandcamp. This right here - I've always been extremely proud of this. Recorded it with very limited equipment and an even more limited budget. Turned out pretty good I think (I still can't believe how I got the hi hats to sound in track 3).

Eyedress - Nature Trips

I know NOTHING about Eyedress. However, go to where I first heard this, my favorite music blog Heaven is an Incubator and you can read all about it.

Beyond the Black Rainbow

I watched this last year sometime - if you've not seen the whole thing it's worth watching at least once. However I'm fairly certain that the trailer is better than the movie and serves as an easy way to scratch the particular visual/aural itch the film will lay eggs for in the back of your mind.

Can't wait to see what the director does next.

Ty Segall - The Man Man

The. Fucking. Bomb.

Banjo & Sullivan - I'm at Home Getting Hammered While She's Out Getting Nailed

Re-watched Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects last Saturday night. I've always really liked the film, but this time it really stuck with me. I'm pretty much not a fan of any of his other films besides this one and House of a Thousand Corpses, although I think he is an incredible filmmaker. I know that sounds contrarian, suffice it to say the man has a great eye and a wandering muse...

Most of the music in the film is pretty great. The final sequence even qualifies as the only instance where I've ever been completely blown away by Free Bird. By all rights setting any scene to the entirety of that gratuitous ode to being a womanizing jerk should be awful, but RZ killed it.

The actors all put in fantastic performances, especially Bill Moseley, who if I remember reading correctly was absolutely sickened by the scene where he introduces the handgun to Priscilla Barnes' panties. The entire Banjo and Sullivan cast was fantastic and it was very cool that the soundtrack fleshed out their stories with this clippin' little ditty that, listening to now, I wish I could have heard Ween cover live back in the day.

Louvin Brothers - Satan is REAL!!!

How do I not follow up that last post with this down home classic? Mr. Brown sent me the Light in the Attic re-issue of this last year and it is phenomenal!!!

Banned Exorcist Trailer from 1973 (via Bloody Disgusting)

The Exorcist (1973) Banned Trailer - More bloopers are a click away

Major props to the always awesome Bloody Disgusting for posting this. To me Friedkin's The Exorcist is still the scariest movie ever made. Interestingly enough though last year I purchased the "Version you've never seen before" DVD and it seemed like the editing was waaaaay different, to the point that the same palpable menace did not settle over the room as I watched it. Now, this could have been because I had several friends over for the viewing, although the viewing previous to that one saw myself and at least three friends sit in the dark and watch the film. That particular viewing I remember being too scared to even get up and answer the call of nature, for a time. I'll have to A and B the versions at some point.

Goblin - Opening to the Sighs

Clearly I am trying to hold onto that Halloween feeling for as long as possible. Music like this makes that possible.

Sophie Sees - A Short Film by Tricky

Not even sure how the hell I just found this. You can read more about the making of this on Tricky's website HERE. Some of the music is unreleased stuff.

Portal - Ω Curtain

This band is insane. I'm not a huge fan of their music - it's not bad but what I've heard doesn't necessarily jump out at me as exquisitely different. HOWEVER, everything visual about them more than makes up for that.

Oh yeah, and as far as I know, they pre-date Ghost:

David Bowie's Love is Lost

Released the day before Halloween this one was right on time as it is some spooky stuff. Bowie continues to amaze me even when I'm not in the throws of a Bowie-binge. I watched this with the sound low and Blut Aus Nord on in the background and it fit, what the hell does that say?

That Bowie can still go as dark as anybody out there.

Now, what the hell is this video that I found on Gigwise all about -

Sandman Overture

image courtesy of vertigocomics.com

This is so much better than I thought it could be - and I had pretty damn high hopes to begin with! Read my take in this week's Thee Comic Column on Joup!

Opeth - Dirge For November

Because it is now, insanely, November.

The Final Cut - A Dance for the Saints

Another Halloween-appropriate classic in my book.

Happy Halloween

My favorite Halloween song.

Hell Yeah New Mogwai!!!

No, not from Hoyt Axton for an early Christmas present, but from the awesome Scottish band! Via Brooklyn Vegan who has the new album's full track list and other essentials right HERE!

George A. Romero's Season of the Witch

Whoah! The previous post turned my train of thought to other 70's, witchy movie-related tunes and of course Donovon's Season of the Witch and its use in George A. Romero's largely unknown classic of the same name sprang to mind. When I popped over to the youtubes to look for said song imagine my surprise when I noticed that the entire freakin' movie was on there! Now, I don't own the rights and as usual I implore you to buy this is if you dig it, but it's up there and a lot of folks don't know about it and it's almost Halloween, so when you get a minute, sit down and thrill to the domestic witchery of a lost Romero gem!!!

Dead Man's Bones - In The Room Where You Sleep

This is a pretty freakin' creepy song as it is, even without my now associating it with James Wan's The Conjuring.

A friend turned me onto these guys briefly several years ago but they never made it into my rotation. Going to have to change that I think.

RIP Lou Reed

What more do you need to say about Lou Reed after listening to Metal Machine Music?

Nothing. Rest in Peace sir, rest in peace.

Black Breath - Heavy Breathing

My friends Chris and Tori are geniuses at unearthing good metal. It's not their only interests, but there's just a rare knack for curation that has brought me hours and hours of enjoyment. Case in point - about six months ago they burned me a spindle of CD's that I am still making my way through. Today, fresh from a week in Chicago where I hung with them for several days, I popped on another disc from that seemingly endless spindle (a good thing). Black Breath - Heavy Breathing grabbed me from the opening bellow and did not let go. Here's that opener, Black Sin (Spit on the Cross) followed by another track I really dug, Children of the Horn. As per my creed, what I dig I try to buy, so I'm planning ordering both Heavy Breathing (2010) and it's 2012 follow-up Sentenced to Life, both on the always fantastic Southern Lord Records.



Also I can't help but remark that I was not surprised to find that Black Breath are from Washington state. As I fall further and further down my current Laird Barron spiral a lot of disparate elements seem to be aligning across some kind of giant, Washington-flavored pentacle.

image courtesy of thestranger.com

Vintage Trouble

How the hell is this not the biggest band in the world? Seriously, I had never heard of these guys until my good friend Anthony (of Bittersweet & The B-Sides) told me about them yesterday. Said I'd fall in love the second I watched this clip.

He called that one.

Midlake - Antiphon review

Read my review of the new Midlake record Antiphon on Joup HERE.

New Blut Aus Nord - What Once Was... Liber III

Okay, it's obviously going to be a very metal sort of day. Cool, fits with my Midwest, October mindset. So about a week or two back Debemur Morti - possibly the best Black Metal label out there - sends out an email I read and haven't had a chance to get back to since. It was an update on new releases. One of those is the new Blut Aus Nord, What Once Was... Liber III. How does this band continue to put out this amount of great stuff? In '12 we not only had the final part of the 777 trilogy but also the second of the Liber... What Once Was series. And now there's the third Liber and it sounds - as all Nord does - just down right amazing. Follow the link back to the Debemur Morti bandcamp and get the entire digital album or pre-order the vinyl or CD - out Friday the 25th here.

image courtesy of http://www.nwnprod.com/

NEW HIGH ON FIRE!!!

Also via Invisible Oranges. What a great day this is turning out to be...

Sandrider - Godhead

Last week Invisible Oranges debuted "Gorgon", a new song by Seattle band Sandrider. I missed this, caught it with the Brooklyn Vegan re-post this morning when I woke up hung over and needing something get the sludgified blood of three days of Chicago food - beef sandwiches and pizza and hot dogs and Goose Island beer - moving first thing on a Tuesday. Not only did Gorgon do the trick before I'd even had any coffee, I moved around and found some other tracks that tell me A) this is an album that needs to be purchased IMMEDIATELY for my constant listening pleasure and B) this is going to be big.

Above is Sandrider playing a full set compliments of Seattle's KEXP - a fantastic radio station that has some great streaming available. However, I strongly recommend hitting either that IO or BV link above and hearing the studio version of Gorgon, along with all other pertinent information about Godhead, due 11/19 on Good to Die Records. Kinda feeling about Sandrider the way I felt about High on Fire and Trailer Hitch the first time I heard them back in the day...

Tomorrow...

The Conjuring on DVD

Evolution of a post - Tower of Silence

This began with me hitting up my favorite music blog Heavenisanincubator - something I haven't had the time to do in what feels like forever. Anyway, posted up top on the site was a link to Jezzebeam - a gloomy, experimental group I totally loved. This got me thinking of something I'd heard about recently from someone - I opened another window while Jezzebeam played and went to my second favorite music site, Brooklyn Vegan. I'm sitting in Chicago, drinking cup after cup of a really great Earl Grey tea, getting overly caffeinated and dealing with some personal stuff.

Anyway...

BV has a link up to info about the new album coming from Kauan - who like Jezzebeam I know absolutely nothing about. The album artwork grabbed me right away - case in point:

image courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan & Invisible Oranges.com

See? So I open another window and look Kauan up and find next to no additional information save for the original Invisible Oranges that the BV article references. Then what follows catches my eye and I'm both chilled and blown away. Perhaps it's all the Laird Barron I've been reading - his newest collection of short stories, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All is seriously the best short Horror fiction I've ever read - but while this report borders on the areas of human darkness I usually cannot traffic this is actually making my creativity really come on line. Good thing - about to attempt to pick-up some footage that should help me finish the second video by my long-distance music project The Forest Children. And it's some dark stuff, so this is the raw material to fan those flames.

Oderus Urungus Reads Goodnight Moon

Via Loud Wire. This is fantastic. Thank you to my friend John for throwing this up on his fb page.

Bauhaus - Stigmata Martyr + Linnea Quigley

Night of the Demons. The original. Best line, "I've never done it in a coffin before." This movie rules but it has seemed very had to come by the last few years. The one copy Netflix has is scratched and doesn't play (I've gotten it twice I think, both times unable to finish it). There's a remake that is - of course - unnecessary. This is the pure 80's horror sweet spot - written to be both funny and horrific. Makes a very nice companion piece to Return of the Living Dead, another film featuring arguably the greatest B-movie scream queen, Linnea Quigely. And of course, this is one of the most awesome songs ever recorded.

Goblin!!!

Claudio Simonetti and the Goblin crew are responsible for some of the greatest horror soundtracks of all time. Goblin surprised everyone by touring this year - first ever North American dates. And available at those gigs? A limited edition vinyl EP wherein they have re-recorded four classic pieces: Profondo Rosso (Deep Red), Roller (Non-ST track), Suspiria and Tenebre. I was unable to obtain tickets to the LA show but my good friends Chris and Tori attended the Chicago show (with Secret Chiefs opening!!!) and grabbed me a copy of the record! So psyched. Thanks guys.

Interview w/ the Creators of Indie comic RUIN

My interview with the creators of the RUIN comic, Darkersho and Ruben Rojas in this week's Thee Comic Column on Joup.

Bauhaus - Mask

A perfect October song. To me this is Bauhaus at, arguably, their creepiest.

Punisher Fan Film is Awesome and... not happening???

Wow. Unfortunately Marvel has put the kibosh on this. Go here and read, then see if you don't do as I did and tweet @Marvel immediately in Mr. Pecci's film's defense.

RUIN - Indenpendent Comic Kickstarter

My love of comics is a very deep and intense thing. I've been reading them since Larry Hama's GIJOE #49 - roughly the summer before I was in fourth grade or ~1986. Not all comics fit my "like" profile of course - I'm somewhat discerning when it comes to the area of tights and capes for instance. However, the beauty of today's comic climate is that the books and writing have matured with the audience and we now find not only amazingly sophisticated story tellers like Grant Morrison, Jonathan Hickman and Brian Michael Bendis writing superhero books for an equally sophisticated audience, but a wide variety of independent books that not only constantly break new ground in the medium itself but seed and influence big-budget Hollywood movies. Once thing I really try to do with my comic column on Joup.co is focus as much as possible on independent books that the Kickstarter platform has made possible in a way that was just never economically feasible before. I've begun to get emails from a lot of indie folks out there and I confess that lately I'm not always able to feature or even - in several unfortunate cases - respond to the creators because all the writing I do - which is at times almost unmanageable - is on top of my day job, which along with commute through LA traffic* eats up a considerable amount of my day. I try to respond to everyone and I'm getting better at it, but honestly I'd not anticipated the amount of interest.

Now, excuses aside...

The indie books I have begun to spotlight have been books like Ugli Studios Presents and Tension that have consisted of undeniably-constructed Kickstarters. Now another has caught my eye and it will be the focus of an upcoming issue of Thee Comic Column. That said I wanted to jump the gun and start getting the word out there as best I can because there are only thirty-six days left, so without further adieu I give you the Kickstarter video for ...RUIN, a post-apocalyptic, sci fi adventure that looks fantastic!

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*Still not as bad as Chicago traffic regardless of what anyone says