I believe Marty and Drexel promised live music week, so here's me making good with Sinéad O'Connor singing Pink Floyd's "Mother," in 1990.
Thursday, August 3, 2023
New Aphex Twin!!!
I saw this new Aphex Twin single dropped a few days ago, but it actually took me a minute to build up the desire to hit play. I haven't loved much of what Richard James has done over the last two decades, so I was tentative to re-engage with new Aphex Twin music. Turns out, all my fears were for naught, as I love this track; it reminds me - in spirit - of I Care Because You Do, which I used to lay alone, high, listening to in my room in my early 20s, a rich but isolatory experience to say the least.
Watch:
A trailer for Satanic Hispanics dropped yesterday - I've been waiting for this one since I missed out on scoring tickets for the screening at last year's Beyondfest:
Ever since I first saw The Convent in 2003, I've been a pretty huge Mike Mendez fan, and while I don't love everything he does as much as I love The Convent, I count him as a favorite Director. Also, thanks once again to Beyondfest, around 2013 I was introduced to GiGi Saul Guerrero's short film El Gigante. I've mentioned this one here before, and even though it's no longer currently streaming on Shudder, it's 100% worth looking up. Think OG Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Luchador wrestling and that will put you in the ballpark. It's awesome, and ever since seeing that, Guerrero is another Director I follow. Her and Mendez's involvement in this Anthology puts it at the top of my "I want this right bloody now" list, so waiting nearly a year has been difficult.
Playlist:
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III (Saturnian Poetry)
Blut Aus Nord/P.H.O.B.O.S - Triunity
Jim Williams - Possessor OST
Aphex Twin - Blackbox Life Recorder 2f (single)
Cristobal Tapia De Veer - Smile OST
Aphex Twin - I Care Because You Do
Metallica - 72 Seasons
Battle Tapes - Sweatshop Boys EP
Baroness - Last Word (pre-release single)
Tuesday, August 1, 2023
The Kills Live From The Basement!!!
"Mutha fucka must'a thought it was live music week. It ain't live music week, is it Marty?"
"Yeah, man. It's live music week."
Well, Marty and Drexel have spoken. It's live music week. Here's a nice, tight live set from The Kills, originally published on the From The Basement youtube channel, which you should definitely check out and subscribe to HERE.
After last week's Hellfire Gala, well, shit. I can't wait to see this. I'll admit, I did not expect the landscape of X to be so completely changed in just one issue. Looking at a lot of the books launching after this, I'm not super interested in how the X Bullpen is choosing to explore this new playing field, however, I maintain my hopes that the core books will continue to turn out awesome entries into this aptly named Fall of X saga on a monthly basis.
The final issue of TMNT's The Last Ronin: Lost Years. In comics, possible future spin-offs are pretty common, and in general, I'd say I'm a fan. That said, there's so much of this kind of story out there, it feels a little overdone these days, and I tend to stay away from them. In TMNT's case, I really feel like they did it right. I don't know if I need a constant line of these Last Ronin stories, but I'd definitely be up to revisit the world again at a future date.
A Thessaly one-shot written by James Tynion? Yeah, sure. I want that. Thessaly's always been a Sandman Universe character that fascinates me. She's brutal and sexy and seemingly has no fear, which always makes her showing up a bit fretful for the characters already in play in any given story. Since this ties into the current Nightmare Country storyline, I'm curious to see whose blood Thessaly spills. Also, curious to see her and The Corinthian interact, as I can't remember off the top of my head if that's ever happened before.
NCBD:
My picks for this week's NCBD:
Read:
I finished my re-read of Stephan Graham Jones's My Heart is a Chainsaw yesterday and immediately jumped into this year's sequel, Don't Fear the Reaper. It's funny - last year when Chainsaw came out, I was sick, home from work for a week, and read it in three days. This year, I'm not only working, but hammering out a novel, so I had to read it more piecemeal. Didn't affect the sheer joy the novel inspires in me, but I also wanted to state it out loud, so no one out there reading this thinks Chainsaw is anything but one of the greatest Horror novels since Pet Semetery.
Only a couple chapters in so far, and I already can feel I am standing at the precipice of a masterpiece. I don't know how I can love the sequel more - and I don't want to jinx it - but the broadening scope Jones starts laying out in Chapter Two: Dark South Mill has me positively giddy with excitement at where the novel will go.
Playlist:
Underworld - Beaucoup Fish
The Kills - Live From the Basement
Arctic Monkeys - The Car (thanks Josh!)
Goblin - 2013 Tour E.P.
Zombi - Shape Shift
Mammon XV - Woes and Winter's Breath
Silent - Modern Hate
Meg Myers - Sorry
Steely Dan - Aja
Calexico - The Black Light
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• IV: The Emperor
• V: The Hierophant
• Page of Cups
Decisiveness in the face of dogma and institutions we adhere to in our daily lives. In other words, decide against the grain of the life I've set up
Duration:
I've kind of messed up the days I'm doing this report, and this is a week old now, so I'll post the current report tomorrow.
Better. Not great, but better than last week, and I'm making leaps and bounds in the actual mechanics of the ending, which again is known, but not yet written. I've gone back through the entire novel, shoring things up, installing alignments that will hopefully carry me into a successful first draft of that ending.
Alice Donut - Mother of Christ Live
From Alice Donut's 1994 Live at CBGB's album Dry Humping the Cash Cow. Fantastic double-disc capture of Donut in their prime. Mr. Brown gifted me this on vinyl and a few years ago and from first listen, the recording and performance blew me away. I wish I would have seen Alice Donut live, but alas, that never happened. I don't know their discography nearly as well as I should, with a large part of my time with the band having been eaten up by a preoccupation that bordered on obsession for a while in the late 90s with their 1992 masterpiece The Untidy Suicides of Your Degenerate Children, which is start to finish, one of the best and most underrated albums of the 90s.
Watch:
I've been waiting for Stewart Thorndike's Bad Things to hit Shudder since reading an article in the most recent issue of Fangoria. I wasn't the biggest fan of Thorndike's 2014 film Lyle, but I definitely liked it and felt as though, my opinion aside, this was a director to watch.
This flick looks unnerving as hell, and all the references I keep seeing to Gayle Rankin's performance evoking Jack Torrance, well, sign me up.
Playlist:
Sigur Rós - Ágœtis Byrjun
Dungen - Ta Det Lugnt
Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
Alice Donut - Dry Humping the Cash Cow
The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast - S7E21: The Top of the Heap
Metallica - 72 Seasons
Odonis Odonis - Post Plague
Deftones - Koi No Yokan
Card:
• 0: The Fool
• XIII: Death
Lots of BIG influences are afoot today. Keeping my eyes open for signs to the contrary, but this seems to suggest a fork in the path; institution vs. change.
Sunday, July 30, 2023
Beaucoup Fish
I cracked out the Underworld the other day for a writing session and got to wondering where the seemingly found-sound sample at the beginning of Beaucoup Fish's track "Jumbo" came from. Leave it Reddit to supply an answer. From a Drowned in Sound interview with Karl Hyde from 2010, you can read all about it HERE (the specific reference to the sample is in the final paragraph of the interview).
Watch:
I have this list of things friends recommend to me. I always feel a bit bad, because it sometimes takes me years to get around to a lot of it. But I do try to get around to as much of it as I can. Case in point: it's gotta be three years since Mr. Brown recommended HBO's Painting with John, a short-episode show where Lounge Lizards co-founder and Jim Jarmusch regular John Lurie pontificates on everything from New York to sunsets to Barry White, all while working on his iconic watercolor paintings. Here's a trailer:I put this one last night when it was too late to start a movie, and K and I both kind of fell in love with the show. Lurie has fascinated me, ever since Mr. Brown gifted me No Pain For Cakes, the Lounge Lizards 1987 album that just hit me at the exact right time. Painting with John has kind of done exactly the same thing.
Playlist:
Jóhann Jóhannsson - Mandy OST
Haunt Me - Dying in Your Arms
Jed Kurzel - The Babadook OST
Jammes Luckett - May OST
Sandrider - Godhead
Metallica - 72 Seasons
Spotlights - Seance EP
A001 - Necro (single)
Brand New - Science Fiction
Underworld - Beaucoup Fish
Underworld - Riverrun Project
Godflesh - Purge
Secret Chiefs 3 - Le mani destre recise degli ultimi uomini
Naked Raygun - Over the Overlords
Etta James - Third Album
Low Cut Connie - Tough Cookies: Best of the Quarantine Broadcasts
Friday, July 28, 2023
Talk to Me
Another new Ghost of Vroom track dropped two days ago, and it's probably my second favorite from the pre-release singles for the upcoming album Ghost of Vroom 3, out September 1st on Mod y Vi Records. You can pre-order the vinyl from Doughty's website HERE.
Watch:
Last night K and I saw Talk to Me at the local theatre. I am still thinking about it. This was one of those films that afterward, I didn't come home, open a beer and throw something else on. I dug right into those articles in the new issue of Fangoria that I'd been saving.
Even if you're inundated with the marketing, I'm recommending you see Talk to Me and you see it in a theatre. The sound design is a large part of how effective the film's unease is - it's LOUD and SHARP and often pummels you in short, declarative bursts. No explosions - just visceral, meaty stabs of sound. The performances are all fantastic, and the overall manner in which the plot unfolds felt fresh to me.
The Philippous have created a Horror Prop that, in my opinion, has similar potential to Hellraiser's Lament Configuration, so we'll see if we get a sequel.
Read:
This morning I discovered that there's a new novel on the horizon from Jonathan Lethem, author of a couple books I adore, namely Motherless Brooklyn; Gun, Occasional Music, and Amnesia Moon. Not to mention his batshit crazy Omega the Unknown for Marvel back in the early 00s.
From the official Publisher's solicitation for the novel:
"On the streets of 1970s Brooklyn, a daily ritual goes down: the dance. Money is exchanged, belongings surrendered, power asserted. The promise of violence lies everywhere, a currency itself. For these children, Black, brown, and white, the street is a stage in shadow. And in the wings hide the other players: parents; cops; renovators; landlords; those who write the headlines, the histories, and the laws; those who award this neighborhood its name.
The rules appear obvious at first. But in memory's prism, criminals and victims may seem to trade places. The voices of the past may seem to rise and gather as if in harmony, then make war with one another. A street may seem to crack open and reveal what lies behind its glimmering facade. None who lived through it are ever permitted to forget. Written with kaleidoscopic verve and delirious wit, Brooklyn Crime Novel is a breathtaking tour de force by a writer at the top of his powers."
Brooklyn Crime Novel drops on October 3, and can be pre-ordered on Indiebound HERE or wherever books are sold.
Playlist:
Sigur Rós - Ágœtis Byrjun
Sandrider - Godhead
Sinéad O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
H6LLB6ND6R - Side A
Ghost of Vroom - Ghost of Vroom 3 (pre-release singles)
Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Zeal & Ardor - Eponymous
Card:
• Knight of Wands
• Six of Swords - Science
• XV The Devil
Will applied to Will, a strengthening of resolve and a healthy dose of knowledge - possibly from a less-than-ideal source or possibly even a dodgy source.
Because I didn't ask a specific question, I have to read this as applying to my current writing project. If you read these pages, you know that's how I usually do Tarot. The specific question thing always seems a bit... dodgy to me (look! The cards are already sussing things out). It works, for sure, but I've never seen Tarot as a mystifying oracle, i.e. Omnipotent third party. I mean, I don't know that anyone who seriously studies the cards looks at them that way, but that's something that's definitely in the air. that said, I've done a specific question or two lately and the resultant Pulls have been spot-on, so it does work. The thing is, that just means I already know the answer to the question, anyway...
How this relates to the current project? Not so sure yet. I'm thinking it has to do with the ending, which exists in a theoretical way, but doesn't quite have the steam behind it for the prose to manifest yet. Perhaps I need to carouse some other works of fiction to look for some kind of jumpstart phrase or idea?
Thursday, July 27, 2023
RIP Sinéad O'Connor
The most Punk Rock musician of the 80s and probably the 90s has passed away, and while I'm not a very active fan - I love her first two records, but they tend to emotionally destroy me, so they don't make it into regular rotation very often - I have long considered O'Connor one of the most important figures in modern music. Her passing feels like a death knell for music as a form of expression. Not the actual act of making and releasing it, but the philosophical aesthetics that go with it. Or, SHOULD go with it. Is there anyone today that would take the opportunity of a lifetime as a guest on the most watched pop culture tv show and use it to express their beliefs about the horrors being committed by major social institutions, all at the risk of destroying their career? I think not.
I'm glad I got to see that infamous SNL performance live, when it aired, as well as her performance earlier in the evening of This is the Last Day of Our Acquaintance, the song/performance that, to a 14-year-old metal head, affected me in a way I wasn't able to understand until I was considerably older.
RIP. As Kevin Smith would say, big bucket of win, Miss O'Connor. You traded your own stardom for the chance to make the world a better place. You are from a world that no longer exists.
Watch:
About a year ago, I fell down a rabbit hole reading about Sinéad O'Connor. One of the things I found that really increased my already weighty respect for O'Connor was that, in 1995 when Late Night TV Discussion Forum After Dark did an episode titled "Ireland: Sex and Celibacy, Church and State", O'Connor called into the show to join the discussion, then took a taxi to the studio and joined in person ten minutes before the end of the program.This just blows me away. This woman was the epitome of Punk Rock at a time when Punk rock was becoming a fashion statement.
Playlist:
Cristobal Tapia De Veer - Black Mirror: Black Museum OST
Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
Sinéad O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
Sinéad O'Connor - Lion and the Cobra
White Lung - Paradise
White Lung - Eponymous
Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Metallica - Lux Aeturna (single)
Blackbraid - Blackbraid II
Death Grips - No Love Deep Web
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