ƎU⅃ᗺᗷOᗷ - Moutains Falling

From David Lynch and John Neff's 2001 BLUEBOB album, technically titled ƎU⅃ᗺᗷOᗷ, but I don't know a good way of typing that stylization outside of the clunky cut-and-paste from other websites, and then, see, you get comic sans or whatever that is. 

One of my favorite albums ever, and "Mountains Falling" is probably my favorite track. There's something so eerie and beautiful about the guitar, about the entire song. Very compelling and wonderfully utilized in Mulholland Drive. 

Tomorrow will bring us full circle on David Lynch's passing, and although technically the week-long celebration would end today, I'm extending it to Thursday for symmetry. That said, I wanted to start to get back into regular posting.

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NCBD:

This week's pull list from Rick's Comic City:

And then there's last week's books, which I completely forgot to post. How is that possible? More on that in a second.

Okay, so yeah, how did I forget to post last week's books? Well, besides being so busy at work that I didn't even make it into the shop until Thursday night, and that was only to give myself some normalcy after spending the day with the news of David Lynch's passing? There's something else at work here, though.

I recently realized I no longer have a tent pole book. I like everything I'm reading, but there's nothing that I absolutely cannot wait to read. This is always a rough patch because the older I get and the more media changes, the more I become concerned that one of these patches might stick. That seems unlikely, but even if an indie book really grabs me at some point in the near future, chances are it will either be a limited series or will be released in seasons, with gaps in between. I miss having something that really drives me. There was Preacher,  Stray Bullets, and The Walking Dead. Most recently, it was the Krakoa-era X-Men, and after that, I thought for sure the Energon Universe would carry the torch, but that's just not happening. With the exception of DWJ's Transformers, my favorite books last year were all indie titles that were published sporadically or as mini-series. Of everything I read, SIKTC comes closest, but goddamn, these hiatus intervals! Hahaha. I know JTIV is busy working on a lot of books people love - myself included - but that just means there's only sporadic consistency with all of his stories.

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Watch:

I really just found myself wanting to hear David talk today. About anything. How cool, then, that I found this:

 

From the Simple Tom YouTube Channel, which I recommend you check out. The full video for this is in the description.

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Playlist:

Man Man - Rabbit Habits

Man Man - Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between

Circle Jerks - Group Sex

The Halloween Scene - Pitch Black Manor

The Cure - Songs Of A Lost World

The Cure - The Head On the Door

David Bowie - Station to Station

David Bowie - John I'm Only Dancing (Sax Version; Single)

David Bowie - Low

David Bowie - Tonight

Raven Chacon - Los Subliminados (single)

Drug Church - Prude

David Lynch & John Neff - BLUEBOB

David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time

David Lynch & Marek Zebrowski - Polish Night Music

David Bowie - Reality

David Lynch - The Big Dream

Various Artists - Twin Peaks The Return: Limited Event Series OST

Various Artists - Twin Peaks The Return: Music From the Limited Event Series

David Bowie - Stage

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

Zeal & Ardor - GREIF

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

James Brown - Funky People Vol. 3

James Brown - Hell

Hemlocke Spings - going... going... Gone!

Rina Mushonga - Narcisc0 (single)

Jocelyn Montgomery & David Lynch - Lux Vixens: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Season Two OST

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Knight of Cups

• XIV: Temperance (ART in Thoth)

• Ace of Pentacles

Couldn't be clearer. Emotional despondency at the loss of an Artistic influence should inspire a breakthrough in Process (the alignment of time and resources, both the Earthly realm of Pentacles). I'm planning on ending my period of obsessive mourning tomorrow with a full-on bounce back into Creative Fire

Rockin' Back Inside My Heart

From Julee Cruise's 1989 album Floating Into the Night, co-written and produced by David Lynch and  Angelo Badalamenti. Nothing can compare to how this and As The World Spins are used in the original Twin Peaks series. 

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Twin Peaks The Return

I still just can't get enough of this scene. 

I just finished my rewatch of the original Twin Peaks and will be moving on to The Return (saving FWWM a bit further down the road, maybe right before the final two episodes of The Return; I should do it now, but it's too dark for me at the moment). Really looking forward to this; I only rewatched The Return once in full, back in 2018. 

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Jocelyn Montgomery, Angelo Badalamenti & David Lynch - And Still

Jocelyn Montgomery transcends two very particular elements I love - David Lynch and Miranda Sex Garden - a band that could easily be described as Lynchian. 

Published in 1991, MSG's debut record Madra consisted of Katherine Blake, Kelly McKusker and Montgomery performing acapella. Shortly after this, Jocelyn left the group and began working on solo material. The single "And Still" was the single collaboration between Montgomery, Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti that preceded the full album Lux Vixens. Lynch produced the album. and John Neff engineered. 

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David Lynch - Wishin' Well

 Another of my favorite tracks from David Lynch's The Big Dream. I love the motion of this song, it's somehow spooky and playful.

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David Lynch & Marek Zebrowski - Night (City Back Street)

From the 2015 album Polish Night Music, written and performed by David Lynch and Marek Zebrowski. You can practically see the manhole covers belching voluminous, silent vapor.

Listening to this the other night with a head full of smoke, I felt like the very air before me might open to reveal a portal to the pitch-black winter streets of Łódź.

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David Lynch

It's hard to accurately encapsulate in language what David Lynch means to me. I discovered his work through Twin Peaks in 1990 when the pilot aired on ABC channel 7 Chicago as a Sunday night movie. I was instantly hooked. The show would prove to be unlike anything I'd ever seen. When I think about what seeing that pilot and the subsequent episodes did to me at the age of 14/15, I am not exaggerating when I say David Lynch exploded my world. Narratively, musically, aesthetically, and spiritually. 

At 14, I was a suburban Chicago 80s stoner kid. I'd just become enamored with Anthrax through their album The Persistence of Time, and this was a catalyst for me to let the tide of 80s Thrash carry me out onto its tumultuous sea, for better or worse. I loved the imagery that came along with Metal - all the dark, weird and cosmic stuff. I thought Metal, comic books and Horror films like John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness were the only way into that dark tone that inspired all my teenage art - copious amounts of drawings, song lyrics, etc. The same tone that still inspires my art to this day. David Lynch showed me another way. 

The idea that the elements he employed could cut so deeply into horrific metaphysics blew me away. Jazz. Small Town America. Lonley traffic lights, shadows, Douglas Firs... the woods proved the ultimate draw - I lived surrounded by the 70K acres of forest preserves covering the Cook County area. Twin Peaks proved such a palpable experience because I could literally walk down the street from my house and get lost in the woods. The Black Lodge felt close. So did mystery and excitement. 

From there, I went back and found Blue Velvet - a film I watched for the first time on LSD. This was video store days, so it took me a while to track down Eraserhead. I had to go to a video store 22 minutes away when I finally got my driver's license and could explore more than the Fuckbuster down the street. After that, I watched everything as it came out, mostly in the theatre, the way Mr. Lynch intended. Lost Highway was a revelation I saw multiple times during its initial theatrical run. Mulholland Drive baffled me upon first viewing, then shored itself up as my favorite of his feature films over the three subsequent visits to the theatre that same week. Inland Empire proved a vertical free-fall unlike any other cinematic experience (one I've never been able to recreate at home with the DVD). 

The images and soundscapes David Lynch created have accumulated over the last thirty-five years, becoming integral aspects of my personality, driven in deep and strengthened by the patina of time and recycling. I watch David Lynch's work often. I listen to his music more. There's a place in my brain I access through Lynch's work, a shadowy corridor that lets out at my unconscious, my adolescence, my understanding of what it means to be a good human, an artist, and a fan. 

Thank you, David Lynch.