Isolation: Day 203

Musick:

New Meg Myers? Yes! Wow, Ms. Myers music just keeps getting more lush and interesting. This is obviously very produced, almost to the point that it sounds like a pop queen's record, except her song writing continues along a track that puts her as a natural heir to the lineage that Kate Bush began and Tori Amos continued. Image that: a pop Kate Bush. Actually, as luck would have it, we don't have to imagine it, because here it is.

Pre-order the new album out November 11th on Sumerian Records HERE.
 

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News:

Being that I run a small business, really a micro business at this point, I'll always use this space to promote what The Horror Vision/THV Press is up to. Most recently, I've branched out into THV as a boutique record label. That's right. There is some new music on the horizon, but first up, I've finally taken steps to get the albums I did with Darkness Brings the Cold onto streaming platforms. First up, Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank, Vol. 1 is now on all streaming platforms. Here's a link to Apple Music and I've updated the widgets on the right hand side of this page with a Spotify widget.

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Watch:

Thursday night was a HUGE event viewing night for K and I. We started with the Raised By Wolves Season One Finale. This is now one of my favorite shows going, as it is absolutely unlike anything I have ever seen before. Also, I once again have a teeny tiny sneaking suspicion this may end up tying into the Prometheus/Alien Universe. It doesn't matter if it does or not - hell, at this point, I'd overall probably rather it didn't. But either way, I love this show. Here's the opening credit sequence, with music by Ben Frost, who I am thrilled to see moving on from scoring Netflix's Dark to something as high profile as this.

 

After Raised By Wolves, we changed it up and did the South Park Pandemic Special. South Park is often hit or miss with me, and I'm not a die hard. Season 19 - the introduction of PC Principal was one of the most genius satires I've ever seen, and this special is right up near it. Maybe I just really needed to laugh, but there was one scene that I honestly believe made me laugh harder than I have ever laughed before. It felt GOOD.

Here's the opening musical number, I Love You Social Distancing, which I guess could kind of be a theme song for this blog:

          

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31 Days of Halloween:

Also over the last two nights, we started our 31 Days of Halloween ritual, month-long viewing. This year, I thought I'd work in as many short films as I could, and as such, it occurred to me to finally take care of a little unfinished business. 

I've watched The October Society's Tales of Halloween several times now and never taken to it, and just seems completely insane to me because I love pretty much every director who had a hand in making this anthology. So to kick the first two nights off this year, we began taking one or two shorts a night, as kind of a throwback to old school theater experiences, where cartoons or serialized pulp adventures would precede the feature. First up then was David Parker's Sweet Tooth on Thursday, with Adam Gierasch's Trick and my favorite thus far, Darren Lynn Bousman's The Night Billy Raised Hell.

 

Moving on to features, we capped Thursday with George Waggner's original, 1941 The Wolf Man. A perfect film to kick off this year's October viewing, especially with a full moon that night (and another coming on the 31st; oh 2020, what sights you have to show us).

Friday was a half day from work, and I continued the 31 Days with an afternoon viewing of Stuart Gordon's From Beyond. I had no idea this was coming to Shudder, so the moment I saw it in the Just Added section, I hit play. This one is even better than I remembered it - first and only viewing was quite some time ago - like maybe 20 years. From Beyond is a practical FX extravaganza, and Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree, and Ted Sorel act their asses off! 

Next, HULU premiered their new series Monsterland on Friday. I know I've talked about this in these pages ad nauseam, but now that it's here, I'm overjoyed. Monsterland is, of course, an adaptation of Nathan Ballingrud's first collection of short stories, North American Lake Monsters. I've been waiting for this one since I got to meet Babak Anvari, the Director of Annapurna Pictures' first adaptation of Mr. Ballingrud's novella The Visible Filth, 2019's Wounds, at Scream Fest last year. During my brief discourse with Mr. Anvari  - super nice chap, btw - we geeked out over Ballingrud's writing and he excitedly mentioned this series was en route.

The first episode, Port Fourchon, Louisiana, adapts the first story in the book, You Go Where it Takes You. I really think Bloody Disgusting/Fangoria writer Megan Navarro drove the proverbial nail in the palm when she wrote of the show, "... cuts straight to the heart of the human condition and at its ugliest and most hopeless. It's not the monsters that provide the horror here, but humanity." (Full article HERE). This is definitely a downbeat, philosophically reflection on humanity and the corners we like to paint ourselves into.

Let's start the count:

1) The Wolf Man

2) From Beyond/Monsterland: Port Fourchon, Louisiana

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Playlist:

Deftones - Ohms 

Deftones - Diamond Eyes 

Sepultura - Quadra 

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (digipak) 

The Sisters of Mercy - Floodland 

Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST

Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank, Vol. 1

Also, I spent a lot of time updating my All Hallows Playlist and adding it to Spotify. Here's a link:

 

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Card:

Out with the old, in with the new. 

Isolation: Day 201- New Dame Fortune

Musick:

If you've been reading these pages long enough, you probably know that David Lucarelli is the author of both The Children's Vampire Hunting Brigade and Tinseltown comic series. He's also a friend. A jack of all trades, David recently brought back his band Dame Fortune with a brand new track, and after listening to it oh, maybe a dozen times the other day, I have to say, it's got a shit ton of swagger, awesome lyrics, and the kind of 1987, Sunset-strip bravado that catapulted a lot of hard rock bands to instant stardom back in the days of my youth. It's usually hard to reach me with that kind of sound, but call me crazy, Am I a Warrior rocks, and it's exactly what I needed to hear right now.

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Read

I picked up one new comic that was not on my list until I saw it on the shelves yesterday and I have to say, I have not spent $5.99 in a comic shop in quite some time that has brought me so much joy. What book is it I speak of?

This is a big, floppy, glossy volume of absolute joy that takes me back to how much I loved comics as a kid. The first (of three) stories inside is from the old Mirage TMNT, now colorized by Tom Smith's Scorpion Studios (new to me, but I love the name and they did a fantastic job). It tells the tale of Raphael's first encounter with Casey Jones. This is old school, and glorious because of it, and it set the stage for a fabulous reading experience, juxtaposed with two newer, IDW-era Raph stories (both also featuring Casey). Well worth a look.

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Playlist:

Electric Wizard - Let Us Prey

Deftones - Ohms

Deftones - Diamond Eyes

Kensonlovers - Keep Rolling

Blood Incantation - Hidden History of the Human Race

Mannequin Pussy - Patience

Bob Mould - Blue Hearts

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Card:

I don't feel nearly as grounded as drawing a three would suggest, however, per the Grimoire, "denotes upon appearance a situation to know yourself, what you want, and throw your self doubt away."

The War For Reality

Thanks to Heaven is an Incubator for retweeting this and bringing such an eloquent, albeit chilling, crystallization of current events to light. My prediction: with all the Reality bending already in place, it will not matter whether trump is reelected (although let's not let that stop us from tossing him out the door); we're going to see an increasing escalation in violence from both sides and within the next ten years the 50 states as we know them will change. I'm not sure what that's going to look like exactly, but I (once again) point to Greg Rucka and Michael Lark's Lazarus or the USIDENT of Richard Kelley's Southland Tales as possible examples. "Oh, but that's just silly. Those are science fiction," you say? Friend, we're already living in Sci Fi land. When someone can stand up and say "Day" when it's clearly "Night" and a large part of the population will believe him despite the empirical evidence of their senses, I say all bets are off.

Isolation: Day 200

Musick:

 
Well, we pulled the bandage off last night and finished Halt and Catch Fire. Easily one of the best shows I've ever experienced, and it really reminded me a lot of Six Feet Under, which K has never seen. We're going to move that one up the list, however, now is the time to really double-down on The Boys. I watched Season One last year without her, so this year I've been slowly rewatching that with her in preparation for moving into Season Two. Can't wait, even if the pop culture saturation point with it is riding an annoying level of saturation.

Rewatching Six Feet Under scares me a little bit. I loved the show, however, by the end it had very much changed the way I looked at Death in a tangible way, and with it, how I look at life. Not necessarily bad, but from about halfway through the second to last season, the show really gets heavy, and I'm not sure I can take the emotional beating until at least after November (and maybe not then, depending on how things go).

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NCBD

There's a number of great things out today:

The Boys: Dear Becky Issue 5, just in time for my engagement with the show. This book was obviously brought into existence to coincide with and capitalize on the show, however, I'm fine with that. Ennis is telling a story and flexing his absurdity muscles, so it's about what I would have expected. I don't love it, but I didn't love the entire comic series either - only the first six issues and the last year's worth, with the Butcher mini-series, included in that. Those were the facets of the saga I thought were fantastic. The rest had its high points but was a little too much of Ennis trying to out Preacher Preacher, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

I love this book, however, after reading 1-5 in a straight shot last month, there are some serious hinks to the writing. Usually, art will not make up for that in my book. With Mercy, the problems don't outweigh the good, especially with this art. It's fantastic.

Really digging this series so far, and meaning no disrespect whatsoever to Jacob Philips or Chris Condon, it fills the hole left by Criminal's end quite nicely.
 

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Playlist:

Deftones - Ohms 

Dame Fortune - Am I a Warrior (single) 

Molchat Doma - Etahzi

Not a heavy music day yesterday, because over on the Bret Easton Ellis podcast, Mr. Ellis has begun reading his newest novel in a serialized fashion. He hasn't given a title, and it wasn't until this newest episode - the first hour or so of which is the reading (followed by a fantastic interview with Hollywood Legacy Executive Peter Bart) - that Ellis even quantified that that's what he's doing - serializing his new novel. The story is a purported memoir, though at this stage I'm fairly certain it's about as much of a memoir as Lunar Park is. That's fine - Lunar is my second favorite novel of all time, right behind Gatsby, and I find Ellis' ability to sync real life with narrative both riveting and powerful. 

The book has to do with something terrible that happened to a teenage Bret Ellis and his close friends 1981 in Los Angeles, and how those events line up with a serial killer dubbed "The Trawler" who stalked LA at the time. Ellis has said everyone's names have been changed, and even the killer's nome de plume is made-up, although was bandied about early on in this larger than life horror's earliest days of activities.

I'm fascinated, and can't wait for more. You can click over to Ellis' Patreon HERE to sign up and get the podcasts. Worth every dime (roughly $3 a month I believe for the silver tier, which is what I have).

 

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Card:

New ideas, new journeys afoot.

Isolation: Day 199

Musick:

I spent the previous two nights re-watching the 1986 Transformers Animated Movie. The first night, I had it on and, halfway through, K came in and sat down. I was tired, wasn't able to finish, and was totally stoked when, last night, she professed a desire to watch the entire thing with me. 

I didn't realize it as a kid, but one of the things about the Transformers cartoon that I still love to this day is just how much the creators borrow from Jack-Kirby once the movie was released. The continuity's jump from mostly Earth-bound events to a lot of deep space locations all have a distinctly "Kirby-esque" feel, and Unicron, well, an obvious loving homage to one of Kirby's greatest celestial creations, Galactus. Which leads me to ask the question that now occurs to me for the first time: Who would win in a fight, Unicron or Galactus?

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Play:

Confession: I spent too much $$$ on some toys recently. I have certain weak spots, and I've psychoanalyzed myself enough to know that because as I was growing up, we didn't have a lot of money and I often couldn't have the figures or toys that I wanted, I've been more than willing to buy some of this stuff as an adult. Plus, the toy tech is so awesome now that all these figures look like they did in the comic or cartoon; gone is the edict that to make a toy 'playable' it can't look like it's supposed to. Case in point, the Hasbro Pulse website has been both a blessing and a curse since I recently discovered it. I've ordered a few of the new GIJoe: Classified figures - they all look amazing - but last week I upped my involvement by paying to get into the premium tier so I could grab these two little gems, both 'exclusives' at the virtual Pulsecon 2020 event:

The cost of all this wasn't too insane - a little over $100 - but seriously, it's like someone pulled the Quintesson Judgement Pit right of my 10-year old Shawn's cranium. I had NO control (this was also reflected by the Lust Card yesterday, I believe, but it was too much to go into for yesterday's post).

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Playlist:

Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me 

Fields of the Nephilim - The Nephilim 

Fields of the Nephilim - Elizium 

Deftones - Ohms 

The Smith - The Queen is Dead 

Arthur Ahbez - Gold

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Card:

The good ol' Princess of Disks pops up again. I feel as though I've seen this one a lot lately. Today, I get the impression this is intimating I need to look for practical solutions to a certain hink in my narrative for Shadow Play: Book Two.

Isolation: Day 198 - New Pixies!

Musick

Being that I'm more of a Frank Black/Black Francis fan than a Pixies fan - though that wasn't always the case and really, I love both so it's kind of splitting hairs - their ongoing reunion has been bittersweet to me. Bitter, because I would love to hear another Black Francis/Grand Duchy/Frank Black (with or without The Catholics), but instead most of the previous decade has been a continuous run of new Pixies material. Which is also great, although I've received each album in different degrees of infatuation. The first one back, Indie Cindy, is a perfect return. I love it absolutely. Head Carrier and Beneath the Eyrie have required a bit more of a loving curve, but thanks to Mr. Brown, I dig both - although I haven't had enough of a Pixies binge in a while to really get to know either album like I do the others. Now we have a new 12" and the first 'single' I absolutely LOVE. So bring it on guys (and gal), I'm ready for whatever you have coming. 

But I'd still love to get a new album from Mr. Black sometime soon.

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Read:

I finally made it around to reading The Autumnal #1 from Vault Comics. Written by Daniel Kraus, with art by Chris Shehan, this is another one of those books, like The Plot and Black Stars Above, that has helped define Vault as the destination for Indie Horror Comics.

Now, those are non-consecutive pages. I just wanted to give you a feel for the art and the characters, both of which I absolutely love so far. Kat Somerville and her daughter Sybil remind me a lot of people that would know the family from The Devil's Candy, another family set I adore. Maybe it's because I've chosen not to reproduce that I love seeing stoner families who love one another and set a good example.

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Playlist:

Deftones - Ohms 

Alice in Chains - Dirt 

Mastodon - Medium Rarities 

Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey

The Blues Brothers - Briefcase Full of Blues 

Black Pumas - Eponymous 

Mannequin Pussy - Patience 

Bob Mould - Blue Hearts 

Alice in Chains - Sap

Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies

Concrete Blonde - Eponymous

OGRE Sound - A Field Recordist's Guide to Summoning Lesser Demons

Portishead - Third 

The Devils Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Alice in Chains - Eponymous 

Pixies - Hear Me Out (single)

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Card:

Spontaneity and Enthusiasm. Two attributes to contemplate this week as I shift into the second Act of the second Shadow Play book.

Sunday Bandcamp - OGRE Sound - The Field Recordist's Guide to Summoning Lesser Demons

With a name like this, there was probably no way I wouldn't like this record, which I have heard of before but erroneously attributed to being one of the many musical projects of Nivek Ogre, which it is not. No, OGRE sound is the work of Robin Ogden. I fell sideways back into this album this morning through a story on Bandcamp about Ogden and Dallas Campbell's just released score for the classic George A. Romero film Night of the Living Dead. The article, written by J. Edward Keyes, can be read HERE and very much has me thinking that when I do my annual watch of NoTLD on Halloween, I'll be scoring it with this. 

But back to Lesser Demons. This is a super creepy, super inventive use of field recordings arranged for keyboard/synthesizer. Parts remind me of the Italian classic Ain Soph - Rituals album, other parts remind me of a nightmare, or the score to a seriously well-done cinematic nightmare, take your pick. Either way, wow.