While John Carpenter's 1995 film Village of the Damned is one of the few Carpenter movies I just cannot hang with (I've tried several times and never made it past the second act of the movie), this track by French Electroclash guru The Hacker sounds like sweet, dark candy; perfect for a dark and rainy Christmas Eve morning, my last in LaLaLand.
Taken from the album Reves Mecaniques, 2004 Different Recordings.
Watch:
I finally got around to watching Michael Sarnoski's PIG with Nicolas Cage. NOT what I expected AT ALL, and wonderful because of it. I loved seeing a movie take the piss out of this particular cultural milieu, and in such a strangely calming manner to boot.
Playlist:
Godflesh - Post Self
Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full
Ministry - Moral Hygiene
Yeruselem - The Sublime
Wolves in the Throne Room - Primordial Arcana
Converge and Chelsea Wolfe - Bloodmoon: I
Pike Vs the Automaton - Alien Slut Mom (pre-release single)
I'd not heard of this Algiers side project until Heaven is an Incubator posted his favorite albums of the year list (read it HERE. Seriously. READ IT). If you've seen my last couple years of "best of" lists, you know Algiers' first two records claimed my top album spots in the years they were released, and then 2020's There Is No Year fell flat for me. Well, Nun Gun is a return to form - in a way, since, you know, it's not the entire band. Take all the weird shit from those first two albums and leave out the soul and you have Nun Gun's Mondo Decay. I LOVE this record, and this song... this song is the stand-out track on an album of all stand-out tracks. SO fucking catchy, in the oddest possible way. The vocals remind me of Rockwell, which, surprisingly, is just a great thing.
Watch:
After re-watching the original, Bernard Rose Candyman the other night in preparation, K and I finally saw Nia DaCosta's Candyman.
Dubbed a 'spiritual sequel,' this Jordan Peele-produced entry in the Candyman mythos, this is one of the few examples of a sequel that makes the original better. The first Candyman (I've never seen two or three) focuses on a narrow width of a story that by the entire way it's handled you know is bigger. This sounds like it could be a flaw, but it's most definitely not. This unconventional approach is what I love about it. And now, three decades later, DaCosta's sequel then arrives to finally fill in all the background, and the way it does this is fantastic. The final image/dialogue is what really seals the deal, but the entire fill gloriously fulfills the original and its promise of one day telling us a much bigger story.
NCBD:
Let's see what's on tap for this penultimate NCBD for 2021:
Maw has had some of the gnarliest covers of the last few years. Here's to hoping I'm able to find this one.
The final issue of this Kang the Conqueror mini-series that will no doubt lead into the Timeless one-shot hitting shelves later this month. I'm fairly certain Marvel is positioning Kang to be the next Thanos-level big bad in the MCU, which is good news for those of us who adore the character. This series has been great, and while reading the previous issue, I was struck by just what a late 70s/early 80s/Bill Mantlo vibe this book has achieved.
Loving this Moon Knight series, and what's more, it's getting me pretty pumped for the forthcoming Disney+ show featuring Oscar Issac as ol' Moony himself.
I fell in love with this comic just as issue ten hit the stands, so this one is the first I've had to wait a full thirty for.
Wasnt' easy.
Like a lot of this Hickman-era X-Men stuff, I've re-read several of these issues a few times now, which is something I haven't done since I was a kid, re-reading books the same month I acquire them. But there's enough going on here that multiple 'viewings' really open the stories up.
If issue twelve of That Texas Blood was the end of the "1981" storyline, this must be a coda before the book goes back on seasonal hiatus. Go on and get your rest Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips - you've earned it, and I'll be waiting right here when you get back. This one has really turned out to be the sleeper hit of the year.
Playlist:
Godflesh - Post Self
Blut Aus Nord - Deus Salutis Meae
Kowloon Walled City - Piecework
Read Yellow - Radios Burn Faster
Card:
I'm feeling with an increasingly chaotic state of mind of late, and I know what I have to do, yet still, I resist. I'm not sure why the idea of meditation puts me off so much at the moment, but The Empress here definitely suggests I need to adopt some more nurturing practices again.
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' score for the upcoming film La Panthère Des Neiges (The Velvet Queen). You can pre-order the score from Invada Records HERE.
The film, which I'd never heard of before, is a documentary described as such:
"In the heart of the Tibetan highlands, an award-winning photographer guides a writer in his quest to document the infamously elusive snow leopard."
I couldn't really find a trailer, so I guess we'll just wait and see. Either way, new Cave/Ellis is always a good thing.
Watch:
Holy cow.
I Loved The Lighthouse, but I've found it doesn't possess the same re-watchability that The Witch does. I'm curious to see how this one plays. No matter what, we're witnessing the career of a true cinematic genius, IMO, this generation's Kubrick.
And please, take it easy - I'm not saying Eggers is as realized an artist as Kubrick, just that from where we began with him, he's clearly on a path to become a timelessly celebrated master.
Playlist:
Vanessa Williams - Dreamin'
Naked Raygun - Over the Overlords
Ministry - Moral Hygiene
Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me
Nun Gun - Mondo Decay
Belong - October Language
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - In Summer
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Felicia Atkinson - Un Hiver en plein été
Vienna Boys Choir - Christmas Favorites
Card:
Encouraging, especially since A) the company I work for was just sold to a huge surgical company (hopefully a good thing since we've been being passed around by private equity firms for the last decade, the end result of which took focus away from the employees), and B) while navigating a bunch of odd down moments at work while announcements happened and hands were shook I doubled down on NFT'ing.
As we come upon the end of the year and I prepare to commit my ten favorite albums to print, I realized that I completely forgot Arab Strap put out a record earlier in the year. This is, I think because when the album came out I was simply not in the headspace for the band. Yesterday, however, I fell headlong into an Arab Strap Vortex that lasted the entire day.
The song above was originally published on the OST for the cinematic adaptation to Irvine Welsh's TheAcid House, which, if memory serves, was the first Welsh book I ever read. I'm way overdue on a Welsh catch-up jag, but that's a post for a different time (I used to buy every book he published the day it came out, however, being that his writing influences my own, and the projects I've been working on for the last few years are not necessarily compatible with that particular voice, I've eschewed the last four novels the man has published).
Anyway, "I Still Miss You" is available on all streaming platforms via the 2016 eponymous compilation put out by record label Chemikal Underground.
I own the Acid House flick on DVD, and this prompts me to dig it out and put it at the top of the pile for rewatching after I mop up the rest of my year-end viewing for 2021.
Watch:
Thanks to my friend Jun and The Comic Bug, I attended a private screening of Spider-Man: No Way Home over the weekend and was BLOWN AWAY.
This is everything a Spider-man fan could want and more.
Playlist:
Dance with the Dead - Into the Abyss
Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark
Arab Strap - The Red Thread
Arab Strap - Mondays at the Hug and Pint
Arab Strap - Arab Strap
Arab Strap - The Week Never Starts Round Here
Card:
Directly referencing my experiments in the world of NFTs.
New Dance with the Dead on the horizon! The new album Driven to Madness is out on January 10th. No pre-order I can find yet, but I love the track.
Watch:
I finally made it around to watch Alex Winter's Zappa documentary last night. Really well-made flick that served as a fantastic refresher for me - I read Zappa's autobiography back in the mid-nineties and, while I found it endless endearing and fascinating, twenty-something years later, I just don't remember much about it. Enter Winter's doc and I feel like I have reconnected with a lot of what I learned to love about Frank Zappa. I'm no die-hard, however, the music by Zappa - and specifically The Mothers of Invention - that I like, I really like. And I like it even more when I hear the man who wrote it talk about the process and intention behind such unique, amazing music.
Playlist:
Nun Gun - Mondo Decay
Liars - The Apple Drop
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Damn the Torpedoes
The Police - Outlandos d'Amour
Windhand - Eternal Return
Chicano Batman - Invisible People
Zeal and Ardor - Devil is Fine
Miami Horror - Illumination
Zonal - Wrecked
Zonal - Eponymous (single)
Zombi - Shape Shift
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞
King Woman - Celestial Blues
Ghost of Vroom - Ghost of Vroom 1
The Police - Zenyatta Mondatta
David Bowie - Stage
Kadavar and Elder - Eldovar: A Story of Darkness and Light
Umberto - Prophecy of the Black Widow
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
Dance with the Dead - Driven to Madness (pre-release single)
Dance with the Dead - Into the Abyss
Card:
Hmm... possibly a nod toward a strange new venture that I have started in the world of NFTs? Too early to tell, but perhaps this is a suggestion I continue.
I totally missed the fact that Denmark's Møl released a new album earlier this year. I'm still fairly new to this band - my fellow Horror Vision host King Butcher turned me on to 2018's Jord two years ago, and though I played it quite a bit that year, the band kind of fell off my radar at some point. Well, this puts them right back in heavy rotation. Wow-what a fantastic blend of styles these guys have - the melodic is beautiful and uplifting and the heavy is fucking BRUTAL!
Pick up the new album Diorama digitally at Møl's Bandcamp or a physical copy from Nuclear Blast HERE.
Watch:
Somehow, I forgot to mention here that last Saturday night, K and I saw Aaron Sorkin's new film Being the Ricardos.
After the movie let out, I took to social media to proclaim this as most likely the best movie I'll see in 2021. I think that statement was a bit reactionary, but Being the Ricardos is absolutely on the short list for my favorite films of the year.
NCBD:
A decidedly light week for NCBD, here in the middle of December. Let's see what I'm getting into this time:
I really dug the first issue of Chip Zdarsky and Jacob Phillips' new Neo Noir Newburn, and I'm looking forward to more from this series. Reminds me a wee bit of Donald Westlake's Parker novels.
This book is creepy, super weird Cold War Conspiracy fiction that feels like it's about to explode into some crazy Horror and all that's fostering a lot of anticipation in my comic-loving heart.
Apparently, we're getting a much bigger, more ambitious collaboration from Lemire and Sorrentino over the next year or two, and if Primordial and Gideon Falls is any inkling of what they're capable of, that's damn good news.
More Lemire! With him pretty much doing everything on this one, Maze Book feels like an extremely personal vision, which of course makes reading it that much more enjoyable. For a creator to put this much of themselves into a project, it's just a joy to experience.
This book is super strange, super gorgeous, and has just been such a nice surprise for something I picked up the first issue for on a total lark.
Gorgeous holiday cover that playfully evokes the light/dark tone of the old school Turtles book, back in the B&W Explosion days of the 80s. The constant homages to the original series, the ongoing considerations the team that does this book pay to everything that came before this iteration, it all just makes this book the greatest reboot of all time.
Playlist:
Chelsea Wolfe and Converge - Blood Moon: I
Deadlife - City of Eternal Rain
sunnata - Climbing the Colossus
Boy Harsher - Careful
sunnata - Burning In Heaven, Melting on Earth
Ghost of Vroom - Ghost of Vroom 1
Calexico - Seasonal Shift
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞
Card:
Another new beginning, or am I just not seeing what's right in front of my face?
I had completely forgotten the Chelsea Wolfe/Converge collab album Bloodmoon: I dropped a few weeks back. Thankfully, Heaven is an Incubator just released his Top Twenty-Five records of 2021 and this was on it, reminding me to strap on the ear goggles and disappear into a place both wonderful and strange.
Watch:
After five episodes, I can absolutely assure you that Showtime's new series Yellowjackets is on the shortlist for my favorite shows of the year. It's not going to beat out Brand New Cherry Flavor, but I almost feel like I should remove that one from the running - it's unbeatable.
Yellowjackets seems to be on track to come pretty close, though. This show has me chomping at the bit for each successive episode, which drop weekly on Sundays.
Playlist:
Van Halen - 1984
White Lung - Paradise
White Zombie - Astro-Creep 2000
Deftones - Ohms
Calexico - Seasonal Shift
Godflesh - Streetcleaner
Blut Aus Nord - Codex Obscura Nomina
Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire
Blut Aus Nord - The Mystical Beast of Rebellion
Blut Aus Nord - The Work Which Transforms God
Møl - Diorama
Card:
The Airy aspect of Earth - note the bull and its rider, often interpreted as an 'energetic young man.' I have to wonder if there's a message there, or if the cards are mocking me this morning. I'm still struggling with a total lack of energy and the subsequent feelings that, at nearly 46, I'm just getting tired and old. Part of me reads that and immediately says, "Fuck you," to the part of myself that thinks that, and part of me wonders.
Recently, I've traced the start of this constant feeling of exhaustion to two things: 1) the loss of most of my staff at work, which means all my managerial duties take a backseat to near-constant physical work. None of this is super demanding work, but it's continuous over the course of several sustained hours. Add this to my penchant for only sleeping a little over five hours a night (most nights, with after-work naps increasing in frequency), and there's a definite factor. However, 2) I also can't ignore that the start of this exhaustion appears to match up with my relatively newfound love of fasting. I do 13-16 hour fasts almost every day, and while this almost completely alleviates the stomach issues I've had for most of my life, I also can't help but wonder if it's a contributing factor.
The good news is we're on a hiring kick at work, so hopefully, this will soon put me back in a place where I don't burn all my energy for the day by noon. I'm not the kind of manager who likes sitting at a desk for my entire day, but eight or nine hours of near-continuous physical strain sure as hell isn't doing me any good.
