Isolation: Day 110 - New Emma Ruth Rundle!

Available July 3rd. Buy it on Bandcamp, and Ms. Rundle will receive all the proceeds, as 7/03/20 is another 'no fees' day for artists.


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It's been about five or six years since I last listened to The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, but I've been meaning to revisit it for some time now. I'm starting with Episode 37: The Shunned House, because honestly, this story came up elsewhere and I have no recollection of ever reading it.

This Lovecraft Amnesia isn't new; I began reading his work circa '92 or '93, when lyrical nods from Heavy Metal bands sent me in search of his work. At that time, it was nearly impossible to find Lovecraft's work in conventional bookstores - this predates Borders - and I ended up buying a copy of The Lurker At the Threshold at a local Record Swap store in Tinely Park, Il.

The shop had a kind of alternative press literary section, not very big at all and filled with titles like The Anarchist's Cookbook, and tomes written about the cinematic underground of Japan. Amidst those titles I came across Lurker, bought it, and promptly read it. It was't until years later I learned this was not a Lovecraft story proper - he'd helped initiate it - but was actually penned by his friend August Derleth, who functioned as a sort of understudy to H.P., eventually opening Arkham House Publishing after his mentor's death. Anyway, Del Rey began publishing cool paperback editions of Lovecraft's work shortly after that - the ones with the Michael Whelan covers - and that was how I initially read what I assumed was all Lovecraft's work. A lot of those stories didn't stick though, so that as years have passed, whenever I go back to them, it's always like I'm discovering them for the first time. After hearing a description of the climactic moments of The Shunned House though, I'm pretty sure I missed this one. I figured I'd brush up with the podcast, and dig into the story this weekend.

If you're a Lovecraft fan, The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast is absolutely worth your time. Also,  Chad Fifer and Chris Lackey's wonderful analytical conversations are both fascinating and oddly soothing, making them possibly my favorite podcast hosts ever.



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Playlist:

Miranda Sex Garden - Fairytales of Slavery
RY X - Unfurl
House of Pain - Same As It Ever Was
Orville Peck - Show Pony EP (pre-release tracks)
Andy Fosberry - Death Ship 2047
Ry X - Thunder (single)
Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST
Ritual Howls - Turkish Leather

Card:

The fiery aspect of Earth, which can be dangerous if not controlled. I think this is a warning in regards to the story I'm editing at the moment, which is giving me a bit of trouble, as it has off and on for well over a year now.

Isolation: Day 109

It's been a minute since I last broke out the House of Pain. Not sure what inspired it, exactly, but damn! I miss 90s Hip Hop.

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The sixth episode of the Borrasca podcast dropped Monday. I didn't get a chance to listen until yesterday, and wow! Best episode yet. This one was chilling in its stoicism.




Only two episodes left. I'm all in.

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Playlist:

Miranda Sex Garden - Fairytales of Slavery
The Chameleons UK - Strange Times
Lustmord - The Dark Places of the Earth
Helms Alee - Sleepwalking Sailors
Code Orange - Underneath
Slipknot - We Are Not Your Kind
Skinny Puppy - Bites
Crystal Castles - (II)

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Card:

Swift and strong. Needed to hear it today.

Isolation: Day 108 Miranda Sex Garden - Tonight

It's been quite some time since I pulled out Miranda Sex Garden's 2000 swan song Carnival of Souls. Last night, prompted by nothing in particular, I noticed its spine on my CD shelf and was moved to give it a spin.

Wow! I've missed this one. My go-to albums with MSG will always be Fiarytales of Slavery and Suspiria. That said, this one has a much more polished feel, but it really works, playing out as a perfect cap on their short-lived career.

And bonus track, because while looking for a video of this one to post, I found this:



This is the first live footage I've found of the band, and it definitely doesn't disappoint. I really wish I could have seen them live.

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What a NCBD we have this week! Holy cow am I excited! Why?

A 36-page One Shot, the proceeds go 100% to the comic stores selling it! That is awesome. Robert Kirkman can do no wrong in my eyes - he's helping out comic shops and giving us a new dose of one of my all-time favorite characters. Win win.

If that weren't enough:

The second issue of the new series following characters from Garth Ennis and Darrick Robertson's The Boys - with Russ Braun taking over penciling - Dear Becky looks as though it will reveal some interesting things about Butcher's character, while also giving us a glimpse into Wee Hughie's life twelve years after the events of the original series.

I picked up the first issue of this a while back and really liked it, so I'm glad to see the series continue. A weird little take on a horror story, plus, I really like supporting Action Lab. They are forever in my good graces after 2015's Night of the 80s Undead.

Over the weekend I just completed a re-read of The Plot 1-4, I can definitely say I LOVE this book. Ancestral Horror is a thing that needs to make a comeback. After the brief hiatus for the book, I'm psyched to get more answers and, I suppose, inevitably more questions.

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Playlist:

Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
Lustmord - The Dark Places of the Earth
Pale Dian - Narrow Birth
Atrium Carceri - Cellblock
Kohler Playlist: Week of 6/29/20
Kohler Playlist: Week of 4/27/20
White Zombie - La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol. 1
Ennio Morricone - The Thing OST
Miranda Sex Garden - Carnival of Souls

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Card:

"Inspired from Above." Not entirely sure how that applies, but when I think about this card now, I reflect on the fact that this is the highest mark in the cycle of cups, where emotional maturity helps understand the path through Malkuth, the world. There's a harmonic resonance that feels reassuring, even as much of what's outside my window feels like its falling apart, and many of this world's denizens appear to be anything but emotionally mature.

Isolation: Day 109 The Beach House Trailer

You had me at "Cosmic Body Horror." The Beach House one drops on Shudder July 9th. That means I'll have two days of anticipated premieres, as on the 10th, Relic hits VOD. These last few years have been such an amazing time to be a Horror fan, and despite a segue into real-life Horror, 2020 appears to continue the trend.


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Via Brooklyn Vegan (article HERE), the Sacramento Music Archive has made a Slayer concert from 1986 available on youtube. This is HUGE in my opinion; I saw Slayer a handful of time, but not before 1994's Divine Intervention, an album I pretty much despise based on what I feel are some pretty lackluster vocals. That said, my love of Slayer is primarily based on their two live albums - Live Undead and Decade of Aggression - both of which I consider among the finest live albums ever released. It's nice to hear something that kind of splits the span of those two records in half, as Live Undead was released in 1984 and DoA 1991. Admittedly not a huge temporal stretch, but in the evolution of arguably the greatest Thrash band of all time, an entire epoch of change spans the divide.



Thank you to the Sacramento Music Archive, whose website you can visit HERE.


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Playlist:

Andy Fosberry - Death Ship 2047
Van Halen - Eponymous
Phil Collins - Hello, I Must Be Going
Soundgarden - Down on the Upside
Soundgarden - Super Unknown
Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R
Cocksure - Operation C.O.C.K.S.U.R.E.


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Card:

A solid foundation is what I'm working with on this current short story. That's not the issue. Pulling all the elements together into a cohesive whole is.

Sunday Bandcamp - Andy Fosberry's Death Ship 2047

I wanted to do something new to break up the regular posts, which will continue under the 'isolation' banner for the foreseeable future because, yeah, COVID is back on the rise. No kidding, huh? I guess all those fucking idiots who thought they could just say, "This has gone on long enough," are realizing that you can't use god or cuntry to boss around a microorganism. I've started to think that maybe, just maybe, this is all going to be a good thing, and that the virus will wipe out all the stupid people. No disrespect to those who have died or gone through the trauma. Hell, I fully realize we're all at risk, but when I see footage of these Orange County and Florida town halls with people demanding their civic leaders relax the mask ordinances, so full of narcissistic and oft-times religious fervor, I understand that these are - hopefully - the people we will lose the most of.

We're probably not going to be that lucky, though.

Anyway, so here's the first installment of Sunday Bandcamp. Andy Fosberry has composed something of an 'extended universe' soundtrack to Paul W. S. Anderson's 1997 classic Event Horizon. I love this album, even if repeated viewings of the film have never quite lived up to the experience I had the first time I watched it, way back when. Event Horizon is still a classic and I love it, despite its flaws, and this OST slots in nicely with the tone and texture of space crazy Anderson achieves with his film.

You can buy Mr. Fosberry's album, titled Death Ship 2047 from the Spun Out of Control label's bandcamp HERE.

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Playlist:

Andy Fosberry - Death Ship 2047
David Bowie - Low
David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
The Paper Chase - God Bless Your Black Heart
Pale Dian - Narrow Birth
October Language - Belong
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
Gang of Four - Return the Gift (Disc 1)
Team Sleep - Eponymous

Isolation: Day 107

Full article on Bloody Disgusting, Legion looks like it will be one hell of a ride. I love the visual allusions to Evil Dead, I love the links to Shamanism and Sorcery, and, well, I guess I love everything about this trailer.

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Playlist:

C-Building Kids - Shitting in the Urinal
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough, Vol. 1
Belong - October Language
Psychetect - Extremism
Andy Fosberry - Death Ship 2047

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Channeling the Will to forge new goals. As usual, on the nose with my creative endeavors. The novel is finished, I'm palate cleansing with a short story, and then it's back to Shadow Play.


Speaking of writing, here's a situation I find myself in need of help with.

I'm running a poll on the Horror Amino at the moment, but I'll post my quandary here as well. Any readers who are able to post a reply with their opinion on this matter, it would be much appreciated. That said, I generally do not comment on other sites due to an aversion to elongating my online fingerprint, so I will absolutely understand if no one does.

Here's the deal:

The current title for the new novel is The Secret Life of Murder. I'm having doubts about that name, primarily based on friends' who read this back when it was finished in 2008 and didn't take to the title.

Some background:

This is not the second book in the Shadow Play trilogy, which is completely outlined. And when I say outlined, we're talking detailed to the point that the word count of the outline may very well rival or best the eventual word count on the actual novel. That said, I am refraining from actually writing Book Two until Book Three's outline is complete. Three was about 50% outlined as of February, however, two things made me push both of these back so that Book Two will now release in 2021 and Book Three 2022. Those two things were A) Realizing I would not be able to finish outlining Book Three and write Book Two this year, and B) the onset of COVID-19, Shelter-in-Place, and borderline mass hysteria seemed too in-line with The Secret Life of Murder, which follows a small group of characters trapped in Seattle, Washington as a "Murder Virus" the press has nicknamed MV-3 works its way through the population. MV-3 turns everyone infected into rampaging murder drones, and the resulting wave of chaos appears unstoppable. The virus is introduced into the population by way of a book written by a shadowy ex-hippy guru names Abremlin Harvest.

Being that this one was already finished but has sat for over a decade, the work I set out to do was fairly straight forward: I knew there would be a lot of grammatical/syntax issues I needed to edit,  because, simply put, I am a much better writer now than I was thirteen years ago. I also knew the timeline of events that make up the plot would need to be sharpened, and I wanted to work the emotions, situations, and socio-political elements occurring in our own world into the story, making it more parallel to what we've experienced so far in 2020. This was not difficult to do, although I did end up changing an entire layer of the final act to better reflect the character arc of the Earth, which figures in as a sort of character when you take into account that, much like I believe with COVID-19, the planet is employing the virus as a medicinal reaction to the overpopulation currently choking the life from it. Taking all this into account, I still feel as though The Secret Life of Murder is the best title, however, after living with this one for so long, I'm unsure if I feel that way because it is a good title, or if it just feels that way to me because it has stood as the uncontested 'placeholder' for it in my head for thirteen years.

The question then is, without having read this novel, is The Secret Life of Murder a title that you would scroll past on amazon or - if you're lucky enough to have one - the shelf of an actual book store. Is its not-so-subtle play on all those non-fiction books from the 00s (The Secret Life of Bees, The Secret Life of Lobsters, etc) cause for an eye roll? Or is it intriguing enough to make you want to at the very least read the synopsis?

Isolation: Day 106 New Uniform

Killer track from the upcoming album Shame, out September 11th on Sacred Bones. Pre-order HERE.

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Today is the day! The first three episodes of Doom Patrol Season 2 drop today, with the remaining six to follow weekly from here out. Season One was easily my favorite show of 2019, and thus I'm expecting a similar reaction to Season Two. Will the show draw more madness from Grant Morrison's infamous run? The Scissormen? Albert Hoffman's Bicycle? Mr. Nobody for President? I can't wait to find out.



Speaking of Grant Morrison, the wonderful folks over at Sequart have released Patrick Meaney's Our Sentence is Up: Seeing Grant Morrison's Invisibles. I snatched a copy on Kindle for a meager $3.99, and even after only glancing through it, I can tell you this volume is worth about ten times that much.

It's been quite some time since I last read The Invisibles, and while I have experienced an increasing pull toward re-engaging with it, at the moment, that seems like a misstep.


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Playlist:

Various Artists - The Void OST
Powerman 5000 - Black Lipstick (pre-release single)
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
C-Building Kids - Shitting in the Urinal
Uniform - Delco (pre-release single)
The Birthday Party - Live 1981-82
Helms Alee - Sleepwalking Sailors
Apparat - Soundtracks: Dämonen
Perez - Les vacancies continent (single)
The Knife - Deep Cuts
The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
The Knife - Silent Shout

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Card:

Catharsis and the end of confusion. Globally? I doubt that. Personally, speaking from a mindful perspective at the moment,  I don't feel confused per se, unless I broaden that perspective to my place in the world in its current state. Several plates I had spinning are in limbo, leaving a vague sense of, "Well, is that still a thing?" In that regard, an epiphany of any proportion would be most welcome.