2019: June 19th - New Chelsea Wolfe!

Holy cow. I don't post in five days and everyone drops something new. What do I start with? Doesn't matter; what a great problem to have!

Chelsea Wolfe announced a new album and tour dates after dropping a new song. As always, Ms. Wolfe has kind of become the dark queen of my heart. I love the fluidity of her aesthetic, the fact that it meshes fine in shades of Desert acoustic, or lavish, droney Doom. Here's the album trailer:



**

Shadow Play Book One: Kim & Jessie is completed! I've ordered a few proofs of the paperback, and once I go through that and confirm everything is tip top, it will be available on Amazon, at The Comic Bug, and hopefully, shortly in Barnes & Noble and any other store that will carry me! Gotta start looking into getting into the Baker & Taylor system. It's all so exciting! What's even more exciting, though, is the cover art, courtesy of my good friend Jonathan Grimm:

Grimm is an amazing artist - he really hit the "Paperbacks from Hell" aesthetic without even being asked to. And folks, he is for hire! Contact him HERE for all your freelance needs. Seriously, he does it all.


**

South Park Season 19 is probably one of the most intelligent examples of social commentary ever. A joy, start to finish. I can't believe this show can continue to remain this relevant. Kudos the Parker and Stone.

**

Two episodes left on Doom Patrol Season One, which I'm now comfortable saying is my favorite comic book adaptation ever. Yep. Ever. I also began re-reading the Grant Morrison/Richard Case run from the late 80s/early 90s that a lot of this show is pulled from. I can't say I'd forgotten how brilliant the book is, but I had forgotten major arcs, so it's cool to revisit. And Branden Fraiser's Cliff Steele is awesome for many reason, but in particular, he reminds me SO MUCH of my good friend Mike Shin that it's uncanny. Speaking of Cliff, one of my favorite Cliff moments occurs at the tail end of the following clip:



Look at that gator jump!

**

Playlist from the last few days includes but probably wasn't limited to:

Henry Mancini - Charade OST
The Doors - Waiting for the Sun
Orville Peck - Pony
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Deftones - Gore
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years
Blur - 13
Blur - Eponymous
Blur - The Best of
Various - A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night OST
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
The Temptations - Psychedelic Shack
The Knife - Silent Shout

**

Card of the day:

Breakthrough!

2019: June 14th - Dr. Sleep Teaser

Holy. F*&k. This, this I can't wait for. IT chapter 2 is exciting, but Doctor Sleep directed by Mike Flanagan... words can't describe my anticipation. Which is a little unnerving, because I had a lot of anticipation for Pet Sematary, too, and look how that turned out. That said, I'm still inclined to think the problem with PS was the studio not allowing Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer make the movie they wanted to make, while Flanagan has such a solid, lengthy track record at this point, I'm sure he will be able to do what he wants, just as I'm sure what he wants to do is make a great Stephen King adaptation from a great Stephen King novel.

If you haven't read Doctor Sleep, do so. Now, if you're able. It's fantastic.

And thanks to Mr. Brown, for lending me his copy back when it came out, ensuring I had a chance to read it early on.

**

Hey, hey! That new Baroness dropped today. I'll be listening to it all morning, but tell ya what - this opening track freakin' rules!



**

Playlist the last few days:

Soul Coughing - Irresistible Bliss
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Ghost Cop - One Weird Trick
Marissa Nadler & Stephen Brodsky - Droneflower
Arthur Ahbez  Gold
King Woman - Doubt EP
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley
Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - Final Blindness 7"
Finitribe - Make It Internal
Orville Peck - Pony
Helmet - Aftertaste
Deftones - Koi No Yokan
Helmet - Size Matters
Helmet - Dead to the World
Odonis Odonis - Post Plague
Spotlights - Love and Decay

**

Card of the day:

Leaving behind the symmetry of the sixes and moving into uncharted - and possibly murky - waters. I'm reading this as caution going forward with the next project, as I have less than three hours of work remaining on Shadow Play before I order the proofs. It's been a hell of a battle to finalize this, and I'm still not convinced I won't be reading it again in full when the proof arrives. Either way, my time on Ciazarn is coming back around again, but where that should feel strong, I've got two shorts hanging on as loose ends. Should I begin with those, knock them out and then dive back into the Dust Bowl? Not sure.

2019: June 12th Marissa Nadler & Stephen Brodsky - For the Sun

Very cool video. That image at 1:15 is creepy as hell. I'd forgotten about this record, so thank you Sargent House for dropping this and reminding me!

**
Not a big day for NCBD today, but that's good. Fits with my existential crisis regarding stuff from earlier in the week. I am, however, really looking forward to the new issue of Gunning for Hits:

The back-matter in this book alone is worth the cost of the individual issues, as loaded into the music business both past and present as it is. Absolutely worth your time if you're a music fan.

**

Playlist from 6/11:

Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Jamiroquai - Return of the Space Cowboy
Orville Peck - Pony
St. Elsewhere - The Odd Couple
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Ghost Cop - One Weird Trick
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley

**

Card of the day:

I will be on the look out, as something I have planned is going to fall flat on its face. Being that I woke up at 2:00 AM this morning, I'd say that's my plans to work on the final edit later this afternoon. Not a total loss, as I used that extra time between waking so early and leaving for work to fix a particularly perplexing chapter.

2019: June 11th Orville Peck - Dead of Night

It's been a few days since I posted about Spotlights' new album Love and Decay, and in that time, another album Mr. Brown recently recommended to me shot into my top tier of my year as well. Orville Peck's Pony probably won't bump Spotlights from number one, but it will definitely occupy a spot in my favorite albums of the year. Pony is rich in tone and texture; the production is cinematic and windswept, an allusion to the vastness of Peck's interior space, his voice ringing out across dusty plains. And while there are a plethora of influences that serve as way stations along the album's winding route, Peck's own unique persona leaves quite the mark on the outlaw country crooner tableau forged long ago by his predecessors.

**

Over the weekend, as I was finally catching up with the comics I seem to stay perpetually behind on, I experienced a weird existential moment. Since downsizing my digs last year, space has been a continuous issue in my life. A lot of this is due to my obsessive need to make space where there is none; to arrange everything just right. Feng Shui became a marketing term for something I actually believe in, something Ben Horne perfectly encapsulates in Twin Peaks' Season Two when he tells Hank Jennings he believes there is a perfect way to organize the objects in any given space, an arrangement the benefits of which could be untold for those who dwell within that space (I'm paraphrasing; I couldn't find a clip). So my reading and subsequent filing of a few months worth of Punk's Not Dead and TMNT incited an initiative to reorganize things. This in turn spawned a project to make space in my long boxes (which I'm slowly switching out with short boxes because, you know, moving those goddamn things is a pain in the arse!), which caused me to start a pile of books to get rid of. And it was in weighing the suspect books in this context that made me look at each title and think, "I'm forty-three. Will I ever read this again in my lifetime?"

After a few minutes of this line of thinking, the concept really gained weight, creating an inescapable portal through which to view my own mortality. What's more, I began thinking about the space required to house all my comics and I wonder: why do I even do this? Will I ever re-read 100 issues of TMNT? Probably not. Of course, I want to read this stuff as it comes out because there's an excitement to that, and a community. I've always believed in and valued supporting what I love. That said, at what point does having this stuff merely turn into a slowly decaying echo in an enormous empty space?

Thoughts along these lines haunted me much of Sunday, and what's more, I've no real answer. There are books like Criminal and Gunning for Hits that offer so much awesome backwater content exclusive to their monthly installments that I feel 100% warranted buying them as ongoing periodicals. Also, these series tend to be short enough and good enough that re-reads will most likely remain regular occurrences (been meaning to re-read The Fade Out again for months now). And then there's the titles I literally can't wait to read every month: The Walking Dead, Gideon Falls, and A Walk Through Hell. Everything else I read is great, but can I do without it? Could I switch to buying digital collections as they come out? If I do that, what do I do with all my physical copies?

The sad thing is, there are no answers. At least not at the moment. Stayed tuned: I believe this brand of Existential Crisis will, for me, be ongoing.

**
Watchlist:

The Craft
The Dark Backward (three times in two days; there's a bigger post coming about this one)
About a quarter of an old Video Nasty called Nightmare, which I may or may not return to

**

Playlist from the last few days went something like this:

Grand Duchy - Petite Fours
Spotlights - Love & Decay
The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust
Hall and Oats - Essentials
Sigur Rós - Takk...
Van Morrison - Essentials
James - The Best of James
James - Laid
The Foundations - Eponymous
Orville Peck - Pony
The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper
The Monkees - Headquarters
Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
Canadian Rifle - Peaceful Death
Sigur Rós - Variations on Darkness
Henry Mancini - Charade OST

**

As if in answer to my diatribe above, perhaps I do need to adjust some things...

2019: June 8th Spotlights - Mountains Are Forever

Well, thanks to Mr. Brown, I found my album of the year. It's early, so this could conceivably change, but I pretty much always know my album of the year the moment I first hear it, and brothers and sisters - this is it! And to think, I'd never even heard of Spotlights before, a husband/wife duo whose new album Love & Decay is out now on Ipecac Records and can be streamed or purchased HERE.

Love & Decay feels a lot like the MBV album I wanted to hear when I ordered their loooong-awaited follow-up to Loveless back in 2013, the self-titled and unfortunately underwhelming eponymous record. I also hear Soundgarden, Deftones, and a lot of other bands I like in the sound of Spotlights, but never in a way that feels trite or repetitive. This leads me to declare for myself and like-minded music lovers a new classic and a band to follow and be excited for from here out! Always a great day when I can say that!

**

I've talked about Kristen Gorlitz's awesome horror comic The Empties in these pages before, and it's time to talk about it again because Kristen just launched the Kickstarter for issue #3! You can go to the Kickstarter page HERE to read more about it and support it; if you've read the first two issues of The Empties, you'll most likely be like me and not need any more convincing. So good!



**

I finally had the chance to watch the new Criterion Edition of David Lynch's Blue Velvet last night. Wow. Gorgeous transfer. This film never gets old for me; I enjoyed this viewing as much as or more than the countless others I've had since discovering this film back in the mid-90s. What I didn't expect  last night was my reaction to the 53 minutes of deleted scenes included as extras on the disc. I watched a few and really had a sense of inspiration in editing. I mean, you look at all the extra stuff Lynch filmed and you can practically see how making Blue Velvet helped him grow as a filmmaker over the course of its creation; all the Jeffery-at-college and Jeffrey-comes-home stuff that got cut would have, if included, very much weakened the film. The elegance to the progression of events in the version that Lynch released and we all love is so much more apparent and enjoyable after seeing the scenes he cut. And after waiting 20+ years to see this stuff - scenes we never thought we'd see back in the Wrapped in Plastic days - I found I could only watch about twenty minutes of them before I grew exhausted and decided to save the rest for a later date.



**

Playlist from 6/06:

Man or Astro-Man - Intravenous Television Continuum
Spotlights - Love & Decay

Playlist from 6/07:

Man or Astro-Man - Intravenous Television Continuum
Spotlights - Love & Decay
Los Amigos Invisibles - The New Sound of the Venezuelan Gozadera
Pelican - Nighttime Stoties
Bloody Hammers - Under Satan's Sun
Primus - Antipop

Card of the day:

Paradigm shift! Just in time for the next project.

2019: Blood Machines!

This morning I backed the Blood Machines Kickstarter, something I'd not heard of until two days ago. In a nutshell, Blood Machines is a soon-to-be film by French director Seth Ickerman that is based on a video he made for Carpenter Brut's song Turbo Killer back in 2016. You can read more about the evolution of this project and see some more nifty behind the scenes stuff HERE. Backing is officially over for this and the film is fully funded - and then some - so it looks as though this amazing project is going to see the light of day!

Here's the original video that sparked all this off:



**

Watchlist from the last two days:

First episode of AMC's Adaptation of Joe Hill's wonderful lovel NOS4A2. Did not like this at all, but I'll give it a chance. AMC is definitely one of those networks that won't really go all into a show until it's proven to have an audience.

Also, Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace, which I'm always shocked isn't discussed more as the obvious key influence to Dario Argento's Suspiria. Bava crafted a gorgeous Giallo with this film, and it very much satisfies every time I watch it. And the score! Why isn't this available on vinyl? Waxwork or Mondo - I'm looking at you guys. Someone give the music in this film a new great new edition!



Also, caught a bit of Dead Birds last night on Shudder.tv and now really want to go back and watch the entire thing.



**

Playlist from

Stereophonics - Just Enough Education to Perform
Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible 20
Sigur Rós - 22° Lunar Halo
Sigur Rós - Variations on Darkness
Sigur Rós - Takk
Sigur Rós - ( )
Man or Astro-Man - Intravenous Television Continuum

Playlist from 6/06:

Man or Astro-Man - Intravenous Television Continuum
Spotlights - Love & Decay
Golden - Eponymous
Ennio Morricone - Black Belly of the Tarantula OST
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

2019: June 5th Stereophonics - Mr. Writer

Wow. It has been a minute since I dug into Stereophonics. So long, in fact, that I'd forgotten how great this band is. And this particular track comes from a great album, too, although one that can be difficult for me to engage with, since it mentally and emotionally ties my thoughts back into The Yellow House, a band I was in that I loved, but that ended abruptly. That's tough; bands breaking up are a lot like couples breaking up. There becomes an entire subset of people and music and corridors of thought that you end up having to put to the side to avoid those messy little nerve triggers. With Stereophonics - and more specifically the album Just Enough Education to Perform, which I'm listening to for the first time in at least ten years as I type this - those triggers kick in on the second track, Lying in the Sun. I remember hearing this song for the first time after The Yellow House was already really up and running, playing shows and getting our name out there. I remember hearing this track and thinking, "Hey, that's a lot like what we're doing. Cool." It meant a lot at the time, to have a band that was successful in a way that we wanted to be, that had a similar aesthetic. Stereophonics weren't really all that big in this country, but at the time almost nothing worth hearing was. They had a solid fan base probably everywhere else in the world, and they were cool. That's what was largely missing from the 00s. Not many people were cool anymore; that aesthetic - which granted can go sideways real fast and make you look like a douche - was replaced mainly in the 00s with people yelling and screaming about their prozac, how messed up they were, and the like. Bands like Stereophonics and BRMC were cool.

My introduction to Stereophonics also dovetailed with my first trip abroad: I remember walking into the first hostel in Dublin in January 2002, and this video was playing on the tele. The track has always had the particular ability to spin me back in time to that exact moment, the way the air tasted, the electricity of being somewhere new. Which is always something to be experienced sparingly, so as not to wear out the Magick.

Hearing these tracks this morning, I'm blown away; the songs and my responses to them are a reminder that I am a completely different person today than I was during The Yellow House. Which is precisely how it should be, but it's interesting to step back every now again and remember.

**

NCBD! Very excited for these, especially The Walking Dead. If you're reading it, you know why!

Found out recently this series ends with a double-sized issue #30 in July, so this is the penultimate chapter! Expect even more insanity than we've had, which is really going to be saying something when all is said and done:

Despite initial confusion, I ended up loving the Lapham's Lodger series for IDW's Black Crown. And now, I'm excited to be back with the old gang again in Stray Bullets:

The start of a new, and apparently longer, arc. This book is aces. Read it:

**

About the time I posted yesterday's blog I realized I was sick as fuck and not going to work, so I spent June 4th confined to bed, where I finished Gemma Files' Experimental Film. A powerhouse; such a great novel. Creepy, well-written, and almost clinical in its plotting. I wondered if the climax would go as large as the plot teased, and if so how that would work. There's that moment where, depending on how supernatural or numinous a novel's plot has teased, Speculative or Weird Fiction has to make a decision to either go full-bore, bringing the 'monster' on camera or not. Ms. Files goes all the way with it, and she does such a fantastic job with it. Nothing seems ridiculous. That's the trick. You have to give the reader something they've never seen before and make them believe in it. And Experimental Film does that very well indeed.

**

Watchlist yesterday was another episode and a half of Doom Patrol. SO fun watching Cliff Steele kick nazi ass while Dead Kennedy's blare on the soundtrack. I can't recommend this show enough.

**

Playlist from 6/04:

Cat Rapes Dog - Maximum Overdrive
Tears for Fears - Songs From the Big Chair

**

Card of the day:

Remain open to the influence of the Universe. Pretty sure unexpectedly digging into old Brit rock and staying home from work (and feeling guilty about it) for the second day in a row are the direct manifestation of this draw. I've been sick or not feeling well (read: exhausted) since the 19th of May, and the recurrences from what seems a tiny bug are due, I think, to a lack of rest. So yesterday I didn't leave bed, save for about an hour where I sat in the living room and listened to two records while reading. Also, I didn't allow myself to write at all. I put all the anxiety and expectations and frustrations of this final edit under the bed for a day and just did nothing but read Gemma Files. Today, while once again planning to stay in bed, perhaps I will work on reading the book.