10 years ago today.
As the years have gone on, 1995's Outside has become one of my favorite albums, period, Bowie or not. Raiding the David Bowie YouTube channel over the last few days, I've found some gold.
Saturday, January 10, 2026
Friday, January 9, 2026
David Bowie - Breaking Glass Live 1983
Watch:
This is how you market a Horror movie!
A24's Undertone already has some praise, but personally, I don't want to know anything else about this one until I have my arse in a seat at the theatre.
Playlist:
This Movie Saved My Life Podcast - Best of 2025
Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power
Deafheaven - Infinite Granite
Young Widows - Power Sucker
Hangman's Chair - Saddiction
Netherlands - Vapors
IDLES - CRAWLER
Ritual Howls - Ruin
Sylosis - The New Flesh (pre-release singles)
Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves
David Bowie - Low
David Bowie - Heroes
David Bowie - Lodger
Double Life - Indifferent Stars
Helmet - Aftertaste
Deadguy - Near-Death Travel Services
Slow Crush - Thirst
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• XIII: Death
• XVIII: The Moon
• Two of Wands
Sacrifices made in the full knowledge of the desire. Two is stronger than one.
Cryptic, but I think I get it. Not discussing it "out loud" at this time, but I think this pertains to a creative project I want to do this year. I think I need to declare it.
Thursday, January 8, 2026
Tony Visconti on the Making of Blackstar
I thought I'd try and do a little something different this year and post some non-music videos for David Bowie week. Here's legendary Producer and David's long-time collaborator Tony Visconti talking about the making of Blackstar.
Wednesday, January 7, 2026
Let's Spend the Night Together (Because They Will Kill You)
This coming Saturday, January 10th, marks the tenth anniversary of David Bowie's passing. I usually begin 7 Days of Bowie on the anniversary, but this year, I'd like to start it a little early. So here we go. We miss you, Starman!
It struck me again the other day just what a weird, awesome cover this one is. From his 1973 album Aladdin Sane,
NCBD:
2026 is starting out light. Not a complaint, that's for sure! I've been trimming back my pull list at Rick's, trying to stick with essentials. There will always be new books that catch my eye, and I'll almost always give them a try, as that's how I often find my favorite books (see the Drinking with Comics "Best of" for 2024 and 2025, where last-minute chances end up near the top of my year-end list). At the same time, I tend to overbuy, and I'm becoming increasingly neurotic when it comes to space. I have a short box and a half of stuff I want to get rid of but am not 100% sure the best way to do so, and I've spent several recent nights just sitting in my office/nerd dungeon* reflecting on how to improve use of the space for all my 'things.'
First world problems, fo sho.
Here are this week's books:
I'm still fighting a zeitgeist urge to get into this Absolute Batman. It's been pretty easy to avoid the regular series because the one issue I've read was not great. That said, there are some pretty interesting things going on in this "Universe," so I've been cherry picking a few titles.
Watch:
I only needed to make it 38 seconds into this trailer to know I was in. You can only watch it on youtube, but here's a poster and the embed should take you directly there:
Kirill Sokolov's They Will Kill You looks fantastic! I am absolutely psyched for this one, which comes out three days after my 50th birthday! Woo-hoo!!
Playlist:
Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow
Mountain Realm - Frostfall
David Bowie - Low
David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
Ghost - Impera
David Bowie - The Man Who Sold the World
Kildren - December (single)
Double Life - Indifferent Stars
The Jesus Lizard - I'm Tired of Being Your Mother (single)
The Jesus Lizard - Down
Helmet - Aftertaste
Spoon - Girls Can Tell
Spoon - Kill the Moonlight
Self - Niceness (single)
Self - Porno, Mint & Grime
Metallica - Ride the Lightning
Denison/Kimball Trio - Plays the Music of Walls in the City
The Besnard Lakes - ....Are the Ghost Nation
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Knight of Swords
• Seven of Pentacles
• Three of Pentacles
The Creative Will often needs to stagnate in order to prosper.
That definitely fits. Yesterday was the first writing session I had in a week; whenever I blow a weekend without a creative outlet, it feels gross, and now that's kind of morphed into a long, slog of 'blah.' Up late writing this on Monday night, I don't feel like doing much of anything: writing, watching, nothing but listening to David Bowie. That's the only agenda I had that kept me from turning in. So I'm listening to The Man Who Sold the World for the first time in a couple years and writing this and I'm not really sure what I'll do when I reach the end of this sentence.
Monday, January 5, 2026
Steve Moore - Cinematic Horror: Whispers from the Well
Steve Moore released a new album last week that I only discovered last night by accident. Cinematic Horror: Whispers from the Well is a deep dive into sonic spectral hauntings as only Steve Moore can provide. I'm not really sure what the deal with this album is or how to purchase it. Published by Sonoton Music, you can access it on the usual streamers or on their site HERE. It's not on Moore's Bandcamp, and I can't find anything written about it, so I'm not sure if these are completely new compositions or if this might be a culling of Moore's work from previous OSTs I am not familiar with. I have all his Joe Begos stuff and a large chunk of Zombi in my library, but looking over his credits, there's a lot more I can't wait to get to know, starting with this.
Watch:
I saw a poster for Mark Fischbach's Iron Lung recently, and was surprised when I saw the trailer:
Major Panos Cosmatos vibes off this, so I'll definitely be catching it in the theatre when it opens on January 3oth. Even more absurd - after typing that last sentence, I picked up my phone and went to order tickets only to find that almost the entire Thursday 1/29-1/30 screenings are sold out. Clearly, I am behind on this...
Playlist:
Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow
Imperial Triumphant - Imprints of Man
Imperial Triumphant - Goldstar
The National - High Violet
The National - I Am Easy to Find
The Besnard Lakes - ...are the Ghost Nation
Meg Myers - Sorry
Deftones - private music
Card:
Taking a break from Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot (which you can buy HERE), as my Tarot work independent of these pages has led me back around to Crowley/Harris' Thoth deck:
• 0: The Fool
• 10 of Cups - Saitey
• 7 of Cups - Debauch
Beginning again can lead to fulfillment, but be sure to see where to stop.
Not really sure where this applies - work maybe.
Friday, January 2, 2026
Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow
More fabulous Dungeon Synth from Mountain Realm, distributed by Cryo Crypt Records. I LOVE this one - there's something about the synth tones employed that induces a wonderfully dreamy lethargy in me. You can grab the digital for $5 over on Bandcamp. Perfect for what I've been reading (below).
Watch:
Well, Stranger Things is over. I feel like, overall, Season Four is still my favorite. Five had some ups and downs for me, but I think a lot of that had to do with the release schedule.
Those first four episodes Netflix dropped around Thanksgiving blew me away - especially the very end of four. Then the three we got last week... I feel like the creators had to slow things down to address a lot of dangling character threads that probably could have been woven more evenly throughout the entire season. And those Christmas episodes could have easily been one long episode instead of three. But the finale made up for it. Not necessarily the Vecna-related stuff, which was fine. What the Duffers did REALLY well, though, was all the after-the-final-battle stuff. K and I sobbed, and it felt great.
We're recording a full-spoiler discussion on the final four episodes this weekend, so that will go up next week. In the meantime, here's our discussion of Season Five, episodes 1-3.
Overall, I really loved the entire series. Totally worth the hype.
Read:
I blew through the second book in Nathan Ballingrud's Lunar Gothic Trilogy, Cathedral of the Drowned, and I can honestly say this was the best novel I read in 2025.
Ballingrud's marriage of Horror, Weird Fiction and Science Fiction/Fantasy is seamless and unparalleled, primarily because, over the course of his career, he has honed his prose into a tight and ethereal style that so confidently conjures abstractions he can put you anywhere he can imagine. This novel continues the story begun in 2024's Crypt of the Moon Spider, advancing the race of sentient but eerily quiet Moon Spiders and further exploring the bizarre, reality-shifting properties of their webbing. Ballingrud takes us from the horrors of the Moon to a burgeoning gang war in Red Hook, New York, to Jupiter's Io moon, all teeming with life, gore and questions of what it means to exist as a sentient being.
Playlist:
Radiohead - OK Computer
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
Idles - Crawler
Willie Nelson - Oh What a Beautiful World: The Songs of Rodney Crowell
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads
Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow
Ulver - Neverland
Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain
U2 - War
Card:
One Card for 2026 pulled on NYE:
I've been studying the Thoth deck again for the last few weeks, so I felt it only right to do my New Year Pull with that. This is a definite nod to take the high view; avoid knee-jerk reactions and try to see things from a macro perspective. Use insight, intellect and Will, not emotion.
Wednesday, December 31, 2025
Idling in the Basement
I recently mentioned to an old friend I reconnected with that, while I LOVE Idles' 2018 album, Joy as an Act of Resistance, I've had a tough time getting into anything since. Not because I don't like what I've heard; I know myself and I call this the "PJ Harvey Syndrome." I adore PJ Harvey, but I fall so hard for an album at a time that it becomes difficult for me to acclimate to any of her other works beyond that album for usually years at a time. It started with about five years of To Bring You My Love, grew to include Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea for about another seven years, then finally let in Uh Huh Her. And that's about where I am with Ms. Harvey - I'm overdue for sure.
Back to Idles, David mentioned I should start with Idles From the Basement concert on YouTube, and I'll be gotdamned if he wasn't exactly right. Thinking this is the album that opens these guys' post-Joy work up for me. I had not realized just how much they'd developed as a band - watching this, it's difficult not to make comparisons to Birthday Party-to-Bad Seeds Cave and crew, especially while watching Guitarist Mark Bowen alternate between a whole slew of different instruments a la Warren Ellis.
I'll be starting the day off with 2021's Crawler, so here's to the hearty exploration of sound and fury!
NCBD:
Nothing on my pull list at Rick's today, so how about instead I post the latest Drinking with Comics, where Shin and I rattle off our top five list for 2025!
I went straight to the top five comics published this year; Mike did a little something different. When all is said and done, I think there's a lot of great stuff out there, and this is definitely meant to encourage folks who are looking for something new.
Watch:
K and I finally got around to Luca Guadagnino's latest film, After the Hunt, last night. As usual, this man excels in filmmaking.
The tension is profound. The acting is superb, and while I admit that I've spent most of my life running from post-Flatliners Julia Roberts, she is exceptional here. The film says so much with a bombastic nuance that leaves you breathless by the end, and I actually think it helped me come to a conclusion about our society that, while it's not a good thing, is definitely appreciated as a warning.
Playlist:
Kate Bush - The Dreaming
White Reaper - Only Slightly Empty
Gylt - I Will Commit a Holy Crime: Tandem
Orville Peck - Appaloosa
Netherlands - Vapors
Slow Crush - Thirst
Teenage Wrist - Chrome Neon Jesus
HEALTH - Conflict DLC
Mondo Decay - Nun Gun
Fever Ray -
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The First Born Son is Dead
The Cure - Pornography
Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons
Ethel Cain - Perverts
Ildes - From the Basement
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• XVI: The Tower
• Seven of Cups
• Six of Wands
Do not let massive emotional change poison the creative urge.
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