2019: June 30th Orville Peck Live WFUV

For anyone doubting this man is the real deal. I get chills listening to this song, either studio or here, live in the WFUV studios. At this point, Pony is cresting Spotlights' Love and Decay for my album of the year spot. It's a tight race, and I'm bludgeoning my brain with both albums mercilessly, but Peck's sound holds infinite potential, and his spotlight falls on poetic obscurities the likes of which resonate with me in ways I do not even understand. I'm sure I can say the same about most of my favorite albums, but right now this feels infinitely more than that, if the sentiment makes any sense.

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Currently reading a story in Robert S. Wilson's Ashes and Entropy anthology entitled Red Stars/White Snow/Black Metal by Fiona Maeve Geist. I can't quite tell if it's the most brilliant story in the collection yet - it might be - but it's got me. A disgraced and discarded journalist receives a second chance in the form of an assignment that quickly becomes a bloody immersion into pocket European Black Metal-inspired death cults - or at least that's what I think is happening. Geist's prose is as delicious as it is pretension, which is not necessarily a bad thing, if it lands. It's one of the longer stories in the book, and my reading keeps getting hammered into bite-sized chunks due to my schedule, but so far, Geist goes on my 'Watch' list as someone I would very much like to read more from.

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K and I finished Dark Season 2 this morning. Brilliant. So complex, but not needlessly so, this season turned the Donnie Darko-meets-Twin Peaks analogy I've been using for the show on its ear. We're in an entirely new landscape by the end of the final episode, and knowing the next season is the last is a good feeling. I have no doubt that unlike previous shows with staggeringly complex storylines and character dynamics, Dark will stick this landing, because the creators already know how the story ends.

Very fucking important.

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K and I bought our tickets to see Midsomar this coming Wednesday night. We'll be accompanying my Horror Vision co-host Anthony and his girlfriend, so the plan is to record a brief, spoiler-free reaction to the movie for the podcast and put it up that night. So along with last night's episode - which should go up tomorrow - that'll be three episodes of The Horror Vision in just over a week! Wow. I haven't watched anything but the initial teaser for Ari Aster's follow-up to last year's magnificent Hereditary, but I'll leave the latest trailer here, just in case someone reading this hasn't heard about the film, which I expect to be fantastic:




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Playlist from 6/29:

Soul Coughing - Irresistible Bliss
Grimes - Visions
Thom Yorke - Anima
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
Beach House - 7
Curtis Harding - Fave Your Fear
The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre
Lovett - The Wind OST
L7 - Scatter the Rats.

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No card today.

2019: June 29th David J and Chrysta Bell - Bela Lugosi's Dead

I was not expecting to come across this in my youtube feed this morning. How utterly fantastic.

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Yesterday I watched Josh Lobo's film I Trapped the Devil. LOVED IT!!! Fantastic concept, fantastic execution, with outstanding performances by everyone involved. The film is available to rent on Amazon right now for $6.99. Absolutely worth it. Here's the trailer:



We're going to do another Horror Vision this evening and I've already slated this as the movie we'll be watching/reviewing, so that'll be up early next week. In the meantime, I will definitely be adding Mr. Lobo to my list of directors who I keep a close eye on. Also on the list, for reference, are Ti West, Joe Begos, Larry Fessenden, Paul Thomas Anderson, and, of course, David Lynch.

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Playlist from 6/28:

Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - Le mani destre recise degli ultimi uomini
Cocksure - Corporate_Sting
Windhand - Eternal Return
Various - A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
Lovett - The Wind OST
Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper
The Birthday Party - Mutiny/The Bad Seed

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Card of the day:

Card of the day: Beware delusions. I think this is a warning on my part to sift back through the insanely complicated story I outlined yesterday. It might be too complicated to actually pull off. But it might not be...

2019: June 28th - Oh Oblivion. Sweet, Sweet Oblivion

Very much in a Visions headspace this morning. I'm starting this post at... almost 2:00 AM, but probably won't post it until I wake up in the daylight. Running on fumes, as I've been up since 5AM, but I just returned from a night of catching up with a friend in Hollywood and now I want to get a rough idea for a story I had while driving home listening to Secret Chiefs 3 down on paper. I'm off today (Friday), so I'm having a few late night Sierra Nevadas, trying to suss out the skeleton to this thing I probably won't actually work on for some time. But I like to have a bunch of gestating concepts, so at some lull in the future (lull? When?), I can scroll through a list and pick something to hash out.

There's something magnificent about driving La Cienga between Stockard and Centinela late at night. It's as close to a secluded spot as you can get in LA proper, which is to say it's not very secluded at all, but it has a certain Between quality to it. Always inspires me.

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Next day now. Woke up and read another story in the Robert S. Wilson-edited Ashes and Entropy Anthology, this time Nate Southard's Ain't Much Pride. Wow. My favorite story so far, and that's saying something. This is turning out to be a fantastic collection. If you're interested, you can order it directly from Nightscape Press HERE.

I enjoyed Southard's Ain't Much Pride so much that I looked into his other work, and I'm really interested in his 2018 novel Porcelain:

"Comedian Jason Hawkes carries with him a mountain of emotional issues and an impressive drug habit. When he learns his high school sweetheart went on a shooting spree before turning the gun on herself, he returns home to confront a past that includes a drunken orgy in an abandoned factory and six close friends who never spoke to each other again. Something more sinister is at work than teenage hormones, however, and what Jason learns as he reconnects with his past will either fix him or shatter him further. And it could send an entire city into an abyss of lust-fueled horror.

SOLD! You can buy this one directly from Lethe Press HERE. I intend to.

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Playlist from 6/27:

Swans - To Be Kind
High on Fire - Electric Messiah
The Jesus Lizard - Lash EP
The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. I: △△
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. 2: Philosophy of Beyond pre-release singles
Primus - Frizzle Fry
Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - Le mani destre recise degli ultimi uomini
John Carpenter and Alan Howarth - Prince of Darkness OST
Grimes - Visions

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Card of the day:

Fives are always unstable. It's not really a bad thing, just a phase to move beyond. Fours are stable, but to avoid stagnation, you have to add something. This is good, but affects the balance of things. The goal is to keep adding, and that's kind of my thing right now. After a discussion with a friend, I'm thinking about postponing the release of Shadow Play until the first week in September. This is tough, because it's done, however, there's a lot of really good reasons to consider this. I just have to research them. So yeah, the stability of being finished and releasing it into the world - if you can call that stable - is thwarted by adding a new facet, which is essentially a very small, grassroots marketing initiative. Something I'm terrible at. But we're terrible at things until we do them enough to become good, or at least proficient at them. So yeah, I guess there's some instability/worry right now. It will pass.

2019: June 27th - New Dean Hurley Track!

Frequent collaborator with David Lynch, Dean Hurley's 2017 Anthology Resource Vol. 1 △△ is an eerie walk into another world, and I realize in talking about it now that I do not listen to it nearly enough. And now, Sacred Bones Records will release Hurley's Anthology Resource Vol. II: Philosphy of Beyond on July 12th. You can pre-order the record HERE. I absolutely LOVE this track, and am looking forward to sitting down and listening to the entire album as a whole.

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NCBD yesterday was sleight, but that's the way things are moving for me. Which is good; it's all by design. So what did I grab?

The final issue (?) of Punks Not Dead: London Calling. Haven't read it yet, but looks like this is the end of the story for the time being. Overall, really enjoyed this one.

I feel like I waited forever for this third and final issue of Damned. Gotta say, love the art in this book, but the story... not so much. Kinda feels a bit like Todd McFarlane's fourth Spiderman title waay back in the day - pretty to look at, but a story that really only supports the images. If it wasn't for my love of comics in Magazine Format, this would be going on eBay tonight. As it stands, it still might, somewhere down the road.

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Playlist from the previous few days:

Swans - To Be Kind
Shellac - The End of Radio
Grinderman - Eponymous
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Joy (Tracing Back the Radiance pre-release single)
Felicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Limpid As the Solitudes
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Zen Guerilla - Positronic Raygun
Zen Guerilla - Shadows on the Sun
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Bloody Hammers - Under Satan's Sun
Sunn O))) - Life Metal
Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
M83 - Knife + Heart OST
Malaria - Compiled 1981-1984
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource II: Philosophy of Beyond Pre-release Singles

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Card of the day:

This one is beyond me at the moment, but I still wanted to record it here, for posterity and future analysis.

2019: June 25th - New Skating Polly!

Possibly my favorite track by this band yet! There's the 90s thing, but there's something more. I really think Skating Polly will be a force to reckon with out in the larger world at large in six months to a year. In the meantime, I'm glad I'm able to watch it happen for them.

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New episode of The Horror Vision went up last night. If you saw it drop and had trouble downloading or streaming it, our apologies. I experienced a hard drive hiccup while mixing the track down in Premiere, which resulted in a track initially empty of audio save for the first few opening bars of the theme. I was able to troubleshoot and fix the problem inside of an hour, so all the horror goodness is now available.

You can find the episode on Apple, Spotify, and Google Play. Topics of discussion are Yann Gonzalez's gorgeous Knife + Heart, Vincente DiSanti's Studio-worthy F13 Fan Film Never Hike Alone, David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return, Robert S. Wilson's new horror anthology Ashes and Entropy 2. Oh yeah, and our movie reaction is to Greg McLean's Rogue, a gnarly giant crocodile flick from 2007.

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Playlist from 6/24:

Swans - To be Kind
Motörhead - Ace of Spades
Ministry - The Land of Rape and Honey
Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years
Trentmøller - In the Garden (Pre-release Single)
Shellac - The End of Radio

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Card of the day:

In the zone. I made little progress on reading my copy of the Shadow Play proof yesterday, but I expect today will go much better.

2019: June 24th - New Trentemøller!

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Finished Doom Patrol yesterday: absolutely outstanding! I really can't recommend this one enough. And last night, we began the long awaited second season of Netflix's Dark. This show is insanely complex, in a very good way. K and I just finished re-watching Season One a month or two ago in preparation for this season (I actually mistakenly thought it dropped in April, so we were well ahead of the curve), and I'm instantly feeling as though I need a brush-up on the cast. Luckily, there's a ton of character maps available online. I'm still saying there's just too many old, white guys with beards on this show, but that's a small criticism. Overall, I find the mental workout refreshing, and I'm so bitten by the mystery of it all, I'll gladly suffer some confusion.

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Playlist from 6/23:

Ministry - The Land of Rape and Honey
Lovett - The Wind OST
Various - A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night OST
Perturbator - New Model
Ella Fitzgerald - The Best of Ella, Vol. 2

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Card of the day:

Water in Air. The emotional aspect of Intellect. This comes in handy with my current approach to my writing.

2019: June 23rd Orville Peck - Hope to Die

Here's a video I've been meaning to post since Mr. Brown alerted me to its release late last week. Orville Peck's album Pony is neck and neck with Spotlights' Love and Decay for my favorite album of the year, and I have a feeling it will be that way all the way up until I post my annual year-end list at the end of December. Two amazing 2019 albums I found on the same day, that I have had to split my obsession with since. SUCH a great problem to have!

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Speaking of 'year's favorites,' I watched Yann Gonzalez's Knife + Heart on Shudder again Friday night. I'm really at a loss. This film is amazing in so many ways. The final scene, set to Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's Love's Refrain, is possibly the most beautiful juxtaposition of visual and aural imagery I've ever experienced; I've been haunted by it for days. Here's the track, which can be found on Cantu-Ledesma's EP In Summer, available on Apple Music or HERE:



I've slowly begun making my way through more of Cantu-Ledesma's work, and it is incredible, running in a range from eerie field recordings to hazy, ethereal synth drone like Love's Refrain.

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Playlist from the previous few days:

Motorhead - Eponymous
Motorhead - Ace of Spades
Public Image, Ltd - This is What You Want...
Felicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Limpid As the Solitudes
Alexis Georgopoulos and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Fragments of a Season
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Alone Together #6: Faceless Kiss/Blut Mood
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Love is a Stream
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Visiting This World
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - In Summer EP
M83 - Knife + Heart OST
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Canadian Rifle - Peaceful Death

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Card of the day:

Always nice to see this multiple times in one week. And it fits: I received the Proofs for Shadow Play Book One yesterday (their gorgeous but need a wee bit of tweaking), and when I sat down to work on Ciazarn yesterday for an admittedly abbreviated session, I absolutely experienced a breakthrough. I expect today will be HUGE for that story.