David Bowie/Brian Eno - Neuköln Remastered

 

Being that David Bowie was not only born but also took his exit from our Planet on this week, I'm doing another edition of David Bowie Week! For today's post, I pulled the remastered version of "Neuköln," originally published on 1977's collaboration with Brian Eno, Heroes. I LOVE the arranging on this one, especially Bowie's Sax. Some interesting tonal ideas.

Heroes is a great album, but it could almost be pragmatically divided into two different playlists, one for the 'songs' and the other for the instrumental suites like "Neuköln." Such a haunting atmosphere to these passages, while the songs draw on a lot of the musical ideas/subsequent tropes being formed in the late 70s. Likewise, the Eastern influence of the instrumentals and overall world themes (

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Watch:

A few days ago I fired up Shudder.TV to see what was playing and caught Writer/Director Liam Gavin's 2017 film A Dark Song. Here's a trailer:

I caught this once before, maybe three or four years ago. I really dug it at the time, and it totally holds up upon second viewing. Mr. Gavin clearly knows his way around the Occult, or at least he researched the hell out of this film. Also, I may be off base, but feel like I detect some Warren Ellis influence here. Maybe I'm just running an unconscious parallel to Ellis and Mike Wolfer's Gravel series from the 00's - also kind of a Mercenary Magician, although in Gravel's case, Combat Magician would be a better description.

Wow. I just realized how much I miss Gravel.

How has it already been almost twenty years since this and Doktor Sleepless? 

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Playlist:

Screaming Females - Desire Pathway

Fever Ray - Radical Romantics

David Bowie - Heroes

Marilyn Manson - We Are Chaos

Run the Jewels - RTJ4

Wayfarer - American Gothic

The Afghan Whigs - How Do You Burn?

The Afghan Whigs - In Spades

The Afghan Whigs - Do The Beast

Damone - Out of the Attic

Yawning Balch - Volume I

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Card:

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

• VI - The Lovers - Influence or inspiration

• Ace of Wands - Essence inception

• III - The Empress - Fruitfulness

The big pinion in the interpretation for today is choosing to read The Empress as Fruitfulness, an association I often forget or disregard altogether. It fits in with all the other ideas attached to this card, though, and it shows here that I need a little something new to get back on track writing. Being away from home for so long, it would be damn easy to fall out of the habit of writing. Not gonna happen, however, I think I need to lean into a new idea briefly in order to get my momentum back up. I haven't written since Friday. I brought a nice microphone with me so I could record myself reading the current version of Black Gloves and Broken Hearts, a part of the process that can be cumbersome, but that is also one of the most beneficial elements of my edit strategy. So while I'll be doing that at night, I think I'll take some time this afternoon to start up a new Nosleep story I've had percolating in the back of my brain. My first, fairly successful three-part serial on Nosleep, I Got a Deal On My New House Because Someone Committed Suicide in the Garage really inspired me, as I feel like it's some of the best short-form writing I've done to date, and I've been wanting to kind of re-create that. Sure, the Nosleep Community is fantastic, and provides instant validation to writers if they take to your story, which might sound lame at first, but that validation can be used as fuel for stepping up projects.

Happy Birthday David Bowie!!!

Earth misses You, Starman.

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Watch:

Thanks to some friends, I finally saw David Ayer's 2012 End of Watch.

This one had been on my list for a long time. I remember not really caring about it when it hit theatres, but over the intervening years, several people have told me End of Watch is fantastic. They are correct. I'm still thinking about this flick two days later. Great performances from Peña and Gyllenhaal, and a very realistic portrayal of L.A. 

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Play:

I finally beat Torture Star's Night At the Gates of Hell! I'd been stuck on the final series of stages, an awesome jungle last stand totally inspired by Lucio Fulci's Zombie, but haven't had a heck of a lot of time to play. Fixed that on my flight into L.A. on Friday. I actually beat the game as the plane was landing - that was pretty weird. 

The super cool thing about this game was, upon beating it, two more games opened up in the main menu. The first I moved on to is Evil in the House of Dr. Fleshenstein. Thanks to Mild Goth Daddy you can see some of this one here:

Really digging this game to, even if once again, I'm a bit stumped. I love the environments of Puppet Combo/Torture Star games so much, though, that I don't mind just being immersed in the game, even if I am repeating the same levels over a multitude of times. 

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Playlist:

Drive Like Yehu - Yank Crime

Twin Tribes - Ceremony

Your Black Star - Sound From the Ground

Chris Brokaw - Puritan

Baroness - Stone

Deftones - Saturday Night Wrist

Burial - Untrue

Boards of Canada - Music Has The Right to Children

Fear - Live For the Record

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Card:

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

No time to actually interpret this today. I have a feeling it will be like that for a while, but I'm going to try and go back later and look at this. 

Abby Sage - Obstruction

 

Abby Sage dropped a new single earlier in the week, and as usual, it's pure bliss. I really don't know much about Ms. Sage, other than the handful of singles she's released over the last couple years have all been excellent. "Obstruction" is the latest and an advance from her first long player, The Rot, due out March 1 on Nettwork - which looks to be a very different label than it was back when I was familiar with it. Pre-order the digital album HERE. As far as I could find, there is no physical copy pre-order at the moment. Either way, I am very much looking forward to this one.

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Watch:

Two nights ago I "rewatched" Christopher Ganz's 2006 cinematic adaptation of Silent Hill. Here's the trailer Scream Factory used when they released their edition:

I say "rewatched" because, although I know I watched this back circa 2017/2018, I found that other than the beginning and end, I remembered very little of this one. I'm wondering if this was one of those times I had a "forty-minute blink." Very possible. I remember liking the film, but not much else, so this was an especially crisp viewing, and I very much dug the experience in a way I know was lost to me on that previous attempt. 

I am unfamiliar with the games, so take that into account as I say that visually, I feel like Silent Hill is the culmination of many of the mid-to-late 90s aesthetics that were introduced into popular culture with the NIN "Happiness in Slavery" video and that accompanying video 'album' it was released on. The twisted, barbed wire, industrial rot of the 90s, the fallout from the posh-n-clean dream of the 80s. All of it really works quite wonderfully in this film, and although some of the CG doesn’t quite hold up, I would argue most of it fairs considerably better than a lot of computer FX we saw in Horror at the time.

 

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Read:

New Drinking with Comics went up last night.

I really can't recommend Where the Body Was enough. Another fine fantastic original HC GN from Brubaker & Phillips.

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Playlist:

Turnstile - GLOW ON

Black Flag - Everything Went Black

Tamaryn - The Waves

Justin Hamline - A New Age of Ruin

Feuerbahn - The Fire Dance EP

Fvnerals - Let the Earth Be Silent

Sleaford Mods - Nudge It (single)

Various - January 2024 Playlist

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Card:

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

• Seven of Cups 

• King of Cups 

• Eight of Cups

First, yes, I have shuffled these cards quite a bit. It's weird how this is a new deck to me, and it continues to behave that way. I feel like it's not so much that the cards aren't shuffled, but that it feels like it needs to yell in order to get my attention. Inherent in its DNA, being that it's all about, well, turning the amp up to eleven?

I'm reading this in a different chronology today. Starting in the center but moving directly to the right, we have a path through the Sephiroth - Victory to Splendor. This is a viable path for working through the states of the mental architecture inside ourselves. The King of Cups then tells me to come ready to hone emotion with Intellect, that will be the method by which I reach those states.

Is this a nod to heading back to work? A lot of the issues there are resolved, as most of the problems are no longer with the company. There is one conflict I anticipate, however, I don't see it being quite so difficult. Maybe. Or, this is a strategy. I've said I want to be a bit less social with my time there; I want to see my friends, but I don't want to go out every night for the next three weeks. I'd really like to spend some time working on the book, using the change in environment to my advantage. Perhaps if I combat the emotional need to be social with the intellectual need to write - well, saying it like that, it all kind of makes sense, doesn't it?

Jumping the Turnstile for January Giallo!

 

It's been a couple years since I checked in on Turnstile. About two and a half years, according to a quick metadata search on my posts here. At the time, a friend was photographing their L.A. shows regularly, and I hadn't really ventured past their 2016 album Nonstop Feeling, and I guess I kind of unfairly judged them on that record. Then, a few weeks ago while hanging out with my good friend Jacob, he mentioned their most recent album - from 2021, so just about when I was listening - GLOW ON was a recent favorite of his listening rotation. I made a note and only got around to actually listening a few days ago. All I can say is, I'm floored. Turnstile is so much more than I thought they were. Honestly, I'm not sure why I would have made such a dismissive assumption, but Jacob, thank you for setting me straight. This is one that is sure to be a mainstay while I'm walking the streets of L.A. for the next three weeks. 

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NCBD:

My Pull at Rick's Comic City was somewhat light this week. This is good, as I'll be in L.A. for the next three NCBDs. 

The new X books kick off this week with Fall of the House of X. I have the utmost faith in Gerry Duggan as a writer, but I was still not sure how I felt about the X-Books. This was a pretty solid first issue into whatever this "End of the Krakoan Era" will be. 

Issue one of Christopher Yost and Val Rodrigues' Unnatural Order was a book Chris introduced me to on last month's episode of A Most Horrible Library. Totally blew me away, and the second issue only strengthened that response. I am totally on board for wherever this one goes. 

 

Brubaker & Phillips' new graphic novel Where the Body Was hit last week and I picked up my copy yesterday.  As usual, I knew absolutely nothing about this one going in, and it proved to be fantastic.

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Watch:

Cinematic Void is doing January Giallo all across the U.S. this year, with screenings in L.A., NY, Chicago, Nashville and Salem, MA! Knowing I would be back in L.A for January, I snagged tickets for some friends and me to see a fantastic Michele Soavi double feature: 1978's Stage Fright and a film I've still not seen, 1994's Cemetery Man.

 

And the Chicago announcement, screenings at the historic Music Box:

 

SO happy that January Giallo is now a "thing" in multiple states. Long live The Void!!!

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Playlist:

Fugazi - Red Medicine

Drive Like Jehu - Yank Crime

Fugazi - End Hits

Spore - Eponymous

Turnstile - GLOW ON

Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun

Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch - An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil

Boy Harsher - Careful

Boy Harsher - Country Girl Uncut

U2 - War

The Cure - The Head on the Door

Various - The Crow OST

The Juan Maclean - Happy House Matthew Dear Vs Audion Remix

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Fugazi - Do You Like Me

 

From Fugazi's 1995 Red Medicine. I'm going through a bit of a Fugazi bender, only I've started at the end of their career. Arguably, this has always felt a bit like two bands to me, with this record being the crux. Fugazi had always harbored an experimental side, but I'll never forget Mr. Brown playing me this record upon its release and thinking, "They sound almost as much like Sonic Youth as they do Fugazi." Not to say anyone in the band's vocal approach ever changed, but the music become considerably more dissonant, distorted and, well, weird (see track 9 Version for the best example of that on this record). Anyway, it's going on 22 years since Fugazi went on hiatus. Wow.

 

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Watch:

Watched a couple of flicks over the long weekend. Here's a breakdown:

 

Letterboxd review HERE.

Letterboxd review HERE.

Letterboxd review HERE.

 

Letterboxd review HERE.

Letterbxd review HERE.

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Read:

Had a lazy New Year's Day with K. I ended up blowing through the last 150 pages or so of Jeff Vandermeer's Authority and beginning Acceptance, the third and final book in his Southern Reach Trilogy.

If you follow my Letterboxd link above for Alex Garland's adaptation of book one, Annihilation, you'll see that I mention watching the Blu-Ray extras for the film and seeing Garland talk about having to wrap his head around adapting that novel because it is so internal (those aren't Garland's words, I'm paraphrasing for simplicity's sake). Authority is even more an 'interior' novel, introducing the idea that the Psychologist character from the first novel was actually the Director of the Southern Reach Program, and after losing her during the events of Annihilation, Authority introduces and follows her replacement, the appropriately named Control, aka John Rodriguez, who is brought in under false pretenses to shore up the project, only to encounter hostile subordinates and a deepening mystery as to just why the Director went in on what she essentially had to know would be an ill-fated expedition.

Both these first two books in the series have been more intellectual than guttural, which incidentally makes for a great example of how Garland made his film, switching out the deepening paranoia and madness inherently easier to exhibit in a first-person novel than a film to extremely horrific body horror imagery (the 'snakes' in Mayer's stomach). Authority reads to me like a Horror/Espionage mashup; in fact, Authority reminded me a lot of Charles Stross' Laundry Files series.

On to the third and final book in the series now, and I really do not have any idea what to expect. Which is a fantastic way to go into the last volume of a series. One thing I did expect and thus far can confirm, Acceptance fills in some of the gaps left by previous volumes and is every bit as intellectually riveting as its predecessors. 

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Playlist:

Fugazi - Red Medicine

Fugazi - The Argument

Fugazi - End Hits

Fugazi - In On the Killtaker

Earthless - Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky

Wayfarer - American Gothic

The Bronx - IV

Best of 2023 Playlist

Julee Cruise - Floating Into the Night

Henry Mancini - Charade OST

U2 - War

Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch - Censor OST

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Card:

One card from Missi's Raven Deck to set the tone of the new year:

Knowledge is key for the coming year.

This feels like a huge affirmation to a concern that has been growing in me for some time. I feel as though my learning has stagnated, and might have taken with it some of my general 'knowledge base.' I've been left thinking I'm in too good a position, and perhaps need to find way to challenge myself a bit beyond thinking/writing on film/music/comics and literature. 

My Favorite Albums of 2023

I feel like I didn't get to spend as much time with my favorite albums in 2023 as I have in years past. Is time speeding up or slowing down? Does it matter? Ultimately, no. We're all locked into this journey for as long or as little as it takes. Or to put it another way by quoting a famous physicist/rockstar/brain surgeon - "No matter where you go, there you are." So here we are, and what follows is the list of my ten favorite albums released in 2023.

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Top Ten Albums 2023:

10) Fever Ray - Radical Romantics

Nothing else sounds like this. Fever Ray excels at burying catchy, almost poppish sensibilities inside an absurd musical architecture that transcends most of the musical tropes, instrumentation and methodologies of our lifetime. Also, it impresses the hell out of me that Karin Elisabeth Dreijer is able to use the sound of artificial Jamaican steel drums - a sound that I dislike to the very core of my being  - and evoke a positive response from me.

Buy Here.

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9) Baroness - Stone

Stone is the first record Baroness has released that hit me this hard as a whole. I always dig what this band does, however, usually their albums feel somewhat uneven to me. Not Stone. This has a lot to do with Lead Guitarist Gina Gleason's expanding presence on backup vocals, but it also, I think, has to do with this lineup coming into its own after big changes in the middle of the 2010s. Also, John Dyer Baizley continues to experiment with the parameters of his songwriting, and the rewards are plentiful, to say the least (see "Beneath the Rose" and "Choir.")

Buy Here.

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8) Bunsenburner - Rituals

This record is a gorgeous combination of everything I love, from Metal to Jazz to Twin Peaks to experimental. Founding member/principle songwriter Ben Krahl surrounds himself with musicians who help bring this ambitious project to life in a way that transcends genre expectations, something I don't stumble upon very often these days. 

Buy Here.

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7) Nabihah Iqbal - Dreamer

Just like Iqbal's previous record, 2017's The Weighing of the Heart, Dreamer is beautiful, ethereal and uncompromisingly optimistic. There is so much love and wonder in these songs, they make me feel hope in an age where that has become a nearly herculean effort. Appropriate album title, too, as I believe these ten tracks are indicative of the music one would expect from a gentle soul with the heart of a dreamer. 

Buy Here.

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6) Spotlights - Seance E.P.

Ghostly, haunting and at times, crushing, Spotlights followed this with an album that was slightly spoiled for me by the perfection of this E.P. 

Buy Here.

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5) ††† - Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete.

The follow-up to †††'s debut came nearly ten years after its release, and I think we're all the better for it. This album is such a perfect amalgam of the last ten years of music, with elements from every strain of electronic, rock, and even hip-hop spun together to make something new and nostalgic at the same time. What started as an, ahem, Witch House side project for Deftones frontman Chino Moreno has come to deserve a lot more consideration than is often granted to such a large band's 'side projects.' 

Buy Here.

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4) Fvnerals - Let the Earth Be Silent

Jet black nightmare fuel that helped me get to a certain mental place and stay there while crafting some fairly dark scenes in my current writing project. I know nothing of Fvunerals, but I'm here for whatever they do from here out. With this one, the cover really says it all.

Buy Here.

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3) Yawning Balch - Volumes 1 & 2

Cracking their debut into two separate volumes doesn't change the fact that, when I play all six tracks Yawning Balch released this year in chronological order, I hear one of the most imaginative, expressive instrumental statements I've heard in some time. I hear the desert and the inner SciFi landscape visiting it always excites in me. I hear the cosmic weirdness of pulp writers from one hundred years ago, and that feeling is rigorously supported by John McGill's cover art. I hear the Universe and everything light and dark contained therein. 

Reading into the band a bit, I found there is good reason for this seemingly chaotic list of associations. Yawning Balch is a collaborative project between ex-Fu Manchu guitarist Bob Balch and the desert prog band Yawning Man. I also found that these two volumes are taken from a single five-hour jam. That formula almost never works for me, but in this case, Yawning Balch take me somewhere usually only accessible by reading Clark Ashton Smith or eating mushrooms in Joshua Tree.

Buy Here.

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2) Blackbraid - Blackbraid II

An exquisitely crafted Black Metal album that follows its own internal logic as it moves from one track to the next, creating one long moment imbued with Native American ideologies, instrumental flavors and imagery. There is such power in this record, that it tends to pull me in for multiple successive listens at a time. Also, after Fvnerals, this was the album that helped me write the most in 2023.

Buy Here.

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1) Screaming Females - Desire Pathway

How perfect that Screaming Female's greatest album should be their last. Not to say I was glad to hear of the breakup, but really, talk about going out on top. Desire Pathway played a big part in my year as one of the albums that anchored me on my trips back to L.A., when I would walk around with this on my headphones. Some songs have super hooks (Ornament, Brass Bell), and some grow on you, but the entire thing combines to make the most perfect start-to-finish record of my 2023.

Buy Here.

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Honorable Mention:

Metallica's 72 Seasons. I still can't believe how much I like that record. 

Snake Oil for the Authoritarian Soul

 

From 2023's post-script collection of covers Snake Oil, here's Frank Black and the Catholics doing Bruce Springsteen's "I'm Going Down" and absolutely OWNING the song. Special thanks to Mr. Brown for lending me this in our most recent vinyl swap. Hot damn, I needed a fresh dose of Catholicism!!!

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Watch:

A couple nights ago, K and I went to see Sean Durkin's new film, The Iron Claw. This was completely off my radar, and I'm very grateful K suggested it.

Durkin's 2011 debut film, Mary Marcy May Marlene left an impression on me that has lasted long since my only viewing, shortly after it hit physical media. I've watched his name pop up here and there but hadn't actually seen anything else by him until now. Imagine my absolute joy to find out his work has paid off with a widely released film (thank you once again, A24!!!) that features some fairly notable actors. Zac Efron impressed the hell out of me with his physical dedication to taking on this role, as did The Bear's Jeremy Allen White, both of whom gave enormous performances. This one is a story for the heart, and I find it infinitely gratifying that the cultural detritus of previous eras are being reevaluated and recirculated in new contexts, helping unify the various cultural 'eras' of our time on this planet into something that helps us understand one another better. 

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Read:

Two nights ago I began reading Jeff Vandermeer's Authority, the sequel to Annihilation. Seventy or so pages in, this one hasn't inspired quite the same level of rabidity that book one did, however, there's a brilliant bridge built into the story from the first book and this one; something that promises things are going to get pretty insane pretty soon. 

Based on my difficulty finding images for this one's cover, I'm going to guess that this series didn't really receive the attention it deserves. This is super high concept Science Fiction/Horror that pushes into the spaces between the world as we understand it and really tries to pick apart the atomic structure of what humanity has built for itself. Not always the easiest read, as evidenced by the somewhat scuttling pace of the opening chapters of this book, there's a "clinicism" here that pushes how we take in and assimilate concepts through language. Reminds me a bit of China Meivile, specifically Embassytown and City and the City.

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Playlist:

Portishead - Third

Baroness - Stone

Frank Black and the Catholics - Snake Oil

Frank Black and the Catholics - Eponymous 

Various - Snatch Soundtrack Playlist

Blackbraid - Blackbraid II

Frank Black and the Catholics - If It Takes All Night (single)

The Bronx - IV

Exhalants - Atonement

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Card:

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

• King of Swords

• Ten of Wands

• Nine of Wands

Lots of phallic imagery today! The Airy aspect of Air indicates to me at this moment that I'm not smart enough for what is required of me in some situation at play that, in fact, may have already resolved itself.  Recognize the accomplishment and don't dwell on the afterbirth.