I had no idea Julee Cruise did an album with Kid Congo Powers. Holy cow - what a fantastic pairing of musicians.
Watch:
Whoah:
Kudos to Shudder for putting this one out there. I've never been a rabid Gwar fan, as some of my friends, but I love them, and the one time I saw them live - Halloween (I think) circa 1999 (again, I think), they were awesome. Dave Brockie's death was a sucker punch from out of nowhere, but I've admired the band's perseverance and can't wait to see the band's history from start to present, as I have a lot of gaps in my knowledge of them.
NCBD:
Here's the haul; I've got a lot of reading to do before I head to the airport this afternoon:
The first issue of Moon Knight's turn at the Black, White & Blood series was fantastic, so I've really been looking forward to this second issue.
Love that cover; turns out it's more disturbing seeing The Corinthian's eye-mouths eat meat than the human eyes we're used to seeing them gorge on.
Really hoping this issue quells my reservations about where this one is going, because I like A Town Called Terror quite a bit so far.
I dig West of Sundown A LOT. There's a lot of Penny Dreadful influence, but not in a bad way.
I'm just loving the idea of setting this book primarily on Arrako, the former planet Mars. Also, I love both these damn covers, but that second one - I so want to see Storm and Brand go head-to-head.
And finally, the book I've been anticipating for months hits shelves this week:
With the success of Brubaker and Phillips' Reckless hardcover graphic novel series, I'm excited to see more creators go that route. And after the absolute creep-out of last month's Bone Orchard preview, I have super high expectations.
Here Julee Cruise's haunting vocals and Angelo Badalamenti's equally compelling music provided the soundtrack to one of my favorite scenes from Twin Peaks, Season One: The hike to find Jacques Renault's cabin!
Watch:
To once again refer back to that Netflix trailer dump from last week; GDT and Panos Cosmatos working together as part of a GDT anthology series?
Sold! Also helming episodes are Jennifer Kent, David Prior, Guillermo Navarro, Keith Thomas, Catherine Hardwicke (on a thus-far untitled episode that has H.P. Lovecraft credited as a writer), Vincenzo Natali, and Ana Lily Amirpour!
Playlist:
Julee Cruise - The Art of Being A Girl
Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks...
Def Leppard - Hysteria
Angelo Badalamenti - Dark Space Low (Hour-long version HERE)
Yard Act - The Overload
Card:
The watery, or emotional aspect of our Earthly drives/desires/needs. This is a presumption since I won't be house hunting in Tennessee for about another week, but I think this is a good reminder that we have to temper our emotional drive to get the hell out of California with the pragmatic realities of actually doing this smartly and successfully.
Also, the Queen of Disks always reminds me to survey my 'Kingdom' and appreciate where I am and how I got there, especially the people in my life who have helped. If you're one of them - and you very well might be if you're reading this and I know you - thank you. You've helped bring me to this point in my life.
Circa its release in 2002, Mr. Brown gifted me a copy of Julee Cruise's The Art of Being a Girl. This is Cruise's third album and her first since 1993's second collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch, The Voice of Love. The sound of this one is all over the place in the best possible way, and I would argue slots in perfectly with that early 00s 'electronica' sound that eventually became ubiquitous. The light, almost mystical sound of this particular track always takes me places, in keeping with all of Cruise's previous work. What we see here and in the subsequent album My Secret Life, her 2011 collaboration with former Dee-Lite DJ Dimitry is an artist who is never content having one sound. Cruise knew her strengths, and she knew how to suss out the best partners to help that sound evolve.
Play:
I'm still playing The Game Kitchen's Blasphemy, and I've made a vow not to buy any new games until I finish it. I don't have a hell of a lot of time for games, but Blasphemy is addictive enough that, considering it's the first video game I've played in probably close to 30 years, I do find myself enmeshed when I pick it up. Because of this, I'm close. Close enough to figure that by the time Rose-Engine's Signals hits Switch on October 27th, I should be ready to embark on its gorgeously horrific journey, made evident with this trailer:
Thanks to Bloody Disgusting for introducing me to this one, as I'd not heard of it before. You can read their article HERE.
Watch:
I re-watched Summer of 84 last night for the third time, and I have to say, especially with this viewing following Stranger Things' amazing fourth season (part 1), I love this film even more. HERE is a link to the brief Letterbxd review I did last night that kind of sums up my feeling about the film, and in case you're unfamiliar, here's the trailer:
Afterward, K and I threw on Shudder TV and stumbled into Peter Carter's Rituals, a film I've been wanting to watch since just before it hit Shudder. Again, you can read my brief review HERE.
Very solid film, and as I say in the review, I'll need another viewing to fully 'get' it.
Playlist:
King Dude and Julee Cruise - Sing Each Other's Songs For You
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Various - Twin Peaks (Music from the Limited Event Series)
Brand New - Science Fiction
Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery
Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank, Vol. 1
Metallica - Ride the Lightning
Blut Aus Nord - Dismarmonium: Undreamable Abysses
Card:
Page of Cups again, eh? Interesting that, in only three recorded readings so far with this deck, two of them are the same. I take this to mean that I really didn't pay close enough attention the first time I drew this card, two days ago. I'll also admit at this point that, since I am solely used to using the Crowley/Harris Thoth deck, I am not used to having Pages as part of the Court Cards.
Crowley famously reinterpreted quite a few aspects of the traditional Tarot for his deck. We can sum up his Court Cards as such:
Being that Grimm's Bound Tarot utilizes the traditional paradigm, I have not yet developed that ease with which my mind should read the Page as Princess, but in today's reading, I may have received such a solid example of interpretation factoring immediately into real life, that hopefully, the lesson will persevere.
From the grimoire:
The Earthy aspect of Water; Dreams can become Reality.
I literally woke up this morning after dreaming about officiating my Sister's wedding in less than a week and found my brain immediately transcribing the dream into what has now, several hours later, become the foundation for my speech. So I literally turned my dream into Reality. I'm assuming my first pull of this card the other day was the first indication - amidst my mounting anxiety at not having started the speech - that I needed to listen to the dreams of the event I've been having. I did not heed the first instruction, so the cards gave me the same recommendation a second time.
You can buy a set of these amazing cards on Grimm's site HERE.
From the Split Single Sing Each Other's Songs for You, on which King Dude does a very sedate but ultimately charming version Rockin' Back Inside My Heart.
Watch:
Continuing on that Netflix Trailer dump from a few days ago:
"From the creators of Dark." That's all I needed to know to get excited about 1899, which I feel like I've been waiting on for a really long time.
Read:
One of the things I've been meaning to do for a couple years now is to begin re-reading Wrapped in Plastic magazine. This was a Twin Peaks/David Lynch-focused magazine published from roughly 1992 to 2005 by Craig Miller and John Thorne. In the wake of Julee Cruise's death, I decided to pull out issue 61, which has Cruise on the cover and chronicles the 2002 Twin Peaks Fest, which she attended as a guest.
In doing this, I realized that the first issue Cruise appeared in, October 1993's issue 7, was one of the early issues that came out before I knew about the magazine. My collection runs issue 16 through the final issue, June 2005's issue 75, with a reprint of issue #1. I never made it around to filling in those gaps, and obviously, with Cruise's death, the going eBay price is, for the moment, astronomical. That said, issue 7 has a gorgeous cover, and I wanted to post it here:
Wrapped in Plastic was a HUGE part of my life for about ten or eleven years, and I flip through the issues often, however, I haven't really read one in ages.
Playlist:
Julee Cruise - Falling
Julee Cruise - The Voice of Love
Julee Cruise - The Art of Being a Girl
Kate Bush - The Dreaming
Ghost - Impera
Battle Tapes - Sweatshop Boys EP
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Mike Doughty - Live At Ken's House
Card:
Dipping once again in Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot for today's reading:
My general definition of the Four of Swords is based on Crowley and Freida Harris' Thoth, which subtitles the card as Truce. That said, I've decided I am not going to look at the Bound Tarot in the 'learned tradition of tarot, but in a more personal interpretation.
Decisions that hang heavy over your head: this card evokes a tough decision that will open the door for indecision to immobilize you. I'm not sure if this has to do with something coming up at work, or our impending trip to Tennessee in about a week's time, when we will begin looking for our new home. Our pre-approval came back as a win yesterday, so with that out of the way, we really just have to get there and try and find something. By the looks of what we're seeing online, our new focus in Clarksville may mean we have to decide between several places, all of which seem fantastic. I can see how that would be a crippling decision.
(Obviously, most if not all of the homes we're seeing now as available on our Real Estate Agent's portal are going to be under contract before we get there, however, what we are seeing is an indication that there are a lot of places that will tug at our heart strings.)
You can buy a set of these amazing cards on Grimm's site HERE.
Talk about bad news to wake up to. Julee Cruise's voice and visage has been a part of my inner world ever since the night Twin Peaks Season Two Episode 14 aired; losing her to suicide at 65 feels a bit like a seismic shifting of my personal history's plates. The old world is definitely slipping away. In keeping with my recent M.O., thus beginneth Julee Cruise week.
Watch:
Amidst a lot of discussion about the "Whole Season at Once" business model beginning to fail (see the cancellation of Archive 81), Netflix dropped a handful of great trailers the other day, as if to remind us of their potency.
We'll see. However, any reservations I have about their adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Sandman - arguably one of the greatest comics of ALL TIME, this trailer has me salivating for August:
Wow. I mean... I am almost speechless. Here's to hoping it's as good as it looks; Locke and Key looked pretty good when the first trailer dropped, as well, but I quickly forgot everything about Season One due to a lot of the changes and found myself thinking I should just re-read the series the next time I want to visit Lovecraft (not bloody Matheson!).
Read:
This past Wednesday, Zeb Wells and John Romita, Jr.'s Amazing Spider-Man #3 hit the stands. This is Legacy issue #897. I've Liked this series so far, but this issue... Jesus. This is the best Spider-Man comic I've read in... well, a long time.
There's a visceral pulse to this one that I definitely did not expect; watching Tombstone - a character I've loved since his introduction back in the 80s, circa Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man issue #139 - beat the living daylights out of a defenseless Spider-Man really affected me, as did his childhood origin. I was really only planning to read this book until #900, but if Wells keeps this up, I'm not going anywhere.
Playlist:
Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust
Mike Doughty - Live at Ken's House
Kate Bush - The Dreaming
Windhand - Split EP
Carpenter Brut - Leather Terror
Orville Peck - Pony
Pixies - There's a Moon On (pre-release single)
Kensonlovers - Keep Rolling (single)
Grand Duchy - Petite Fours
Card:
A nice warning about the gathering slothfulness I've been so afraid of for a while now. I'm not writing enough. I need to remedy that.
Pistols wise, I loved Danny Boyle's Pistol. I've watched every doc I know of, read and re-read Noel Monk's tour biography 12 Days on the Road (can't recommend that one enough), but none of that prevents me from adoring Boyle's spin. K and I even teared up at the end, and not for the reasons you'd think.
Watch:
I had not even heard of this film, but it looks fantastic.
Charlotte Colbert's first full-length film comes to us as a "Dario Argento Presents," and from the visuals, I can see why he would be involved. A lush, Gothic aesthetic with a British sentiment.
NCBD:
A decidedly light NCBD. Thankfully.
I've decided I'm continuing with this new iteration of ASM at least until the legacy issue #900 hits in a month or two. After that, we'll see. So far though, this has been a pretty great title.
That Texas Blood returns with the start of it's third story arc. If it's even half as good as the previous one, well, look at that cover. How could it not be?
The cover says it all - a Hulkified God of Thunder! Banner of War has proven a super fun, big-swings story and I'm hoping that as it comes in for a landing, it just gets crazier.
Playlist:
Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks...
Bauhaus - In the Flat Field
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - Confessions of a Knife
Tin Machine - Live at La Cigale, Paris, June 25th, 1989
