Trailer for Jodorowsky's "The Dance of Reality"

The new film by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Thanks to Ales Kot for tweeting this to our attention.

More Ian Rubbish, SNL Season Finale, 5/18/13

This is the first thing from SNL in decades that I really dig. I have no idea who the cast member is that plays him - I've obviously seen his name now a couple times but I just don't retain it because I'm wholly unfamiliar with the cast in general. And in Rubbish's case I'd like to keep it that way. I'm more interested at this point in seeing what this particular fiction suit does in the world at large, now that Ian Rubbish has come into a real world context by releasing a free ep (get it here) and being booked to open for the likes of Vampire Weekend in the Steve Buscemi-directed concert.

Parquet Courts - Full Performance

Found this while skulking around on the youtubes. Reminds me of old Tar and Robbers on High Street, maybe some old Sonic Youth and Fugazi thrown in for good measure. However, comparisons aside, Parquet Courts definitely have their own personality; the nice little, sometimes-smooth, sometimes jagged-and-dissonant guitar fills peppered in over perpetually bouncy rhythms. Occasional squalls of feedback and the poignantly accented backing vocals. I like.

Check out Parquet Courts' website here.

A Short Film for Savage's Album-Opening Track "Shut Up"

So thanks to my good friend Jacob I've finally acquired a copy of Savages' debut album Silence Yourself. From the first sound on the record, a sample that sounds like it is from an old movie playing on a tv in the room where one of the instruments is mic'd I knew that this would be a very important record to me. My rapidly escalating anticipation and joy were fed by immediate invocations of The Cure's Pornography, the title track off the 1982 album of the same name. I'm on my second spin in a row of Silence Yourself and it's everything I thought it would be. It's funny how a sound like what many of us refer to, for lack of a better term, as "Post Punk", often feels confined to a specific time and place, but can occasionally be re-created and what's more added to in a way that endears the new artist to fans of the old 'scene', while simultaneously adding to that scene. I guess that's a rambling way of saying this will go very nicely on the record shelf in my mind next to the aforementioned early Cure albums, Bauhaus, Joy Division and Gang of Four.

Skinny Puppy - Last Rights - Track 10 is Missing?

Speaking of Last Rights, I bought the record when I was in high school. I remember my Aunt Dottie gave me several Coconuts Record Store gift tokens that equalled quite a bit of $$ - might have been 3 $20 tokens. I bought 4 CD's - this was like '93. I came away with Slayer - Decade of Aggression, Pink Floyd - Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger (the SOMMS version), and Skinny Puppy - Last Rights. The other three albums were based on me already liking or at least having heard the groups before - the Skinny Puppy was based on A) the weird industrial Kid Matt Debore in high school who was a year older than me telling me that if I liked Pretty Hate Machine, the keyboards in Skinny Puppy would, "Make you feel like you're god" and B) the cover by I, Braineater:

The Skinny Puppy record scared me. To this day it still scares me, and that my friends, if rare. Usually something catches you offguard or unaware but you acclimate to it. That's only partially true of this record. I may have gotten to know it, gotten to love it, but I still sleep with one eye open around it. And for that I LOVE it.

One thing that always fascinated me about Last Rights was the tracks are numbered 1-9 and then 11. In the Liner notes there's a seemingly casual caption that states/asks, "Track 10 is Missing?". For years I assumed the track was somehow hidden on the album. This was the age of hidden tracks and backwards tracks; tracks hidden after hidden tracks and 12 minutes of crickets to get to the final track, so I just assumed... Remember there was both the They Might Be Giants album and the Course of Empire album that had hidden tracks before the first track on the album. You had to - if I'm remembering this correctly - pause the first track and then search backwards to get to the hidden track. Freakin' crazy!!!

Anyway, the internet is of course great for solving all these little mysteries, but it also robs us of the enigmas of those long gone pre-instant information eras. So here then, at last, is track 10. And here is the explanation, if you choose to read it. It's not that cool.

Skinny Puppy - Lust Chance

My favorite Skinny Puppy album (although I only know like three of them well).

This particular youtubes video: what the heck is up with 0:06-:010? It looks like it's going to be the album cover (brilliant! by I, Braineater) but then there's... that.

My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - A Daisy Chain for Satan (Acid & Flowers Mix)

There's a bunch of homemade "drug" videos for this on the youtubes, but really, nothing you can put visually to this does the hellish sonic landscape that they create with the music on this one justice.

This came out of nowhere, not even sure what the impetus for this is, but apparently the flavor of this Saturday night is the taste of metal filings - Industrial mix.