Night (Zola Jesus & Dean Hurley Remix

From Lost Themes.

Sunn 0))) - Domkirke

This morning's listening. I have this on vinyl back from when it hit limited release via Southern Lord circa 2008 or 09 but I was happy to find it online as a digital because this morning's writing session is all about headphones.

Ash vs. Evil Dead Teaser

I can't wait for this. That said, I also still want Fede Alvarez to do a part 2 in his end of the Evil Dead-verse. I want more Mia, and holding out that she and Ash will eventually team up.

AMY (Winehouse) Documentary Trailer

I found out about this upcoming doc on Amy Winehouse just yesterday and I have to say it felt like eerie prescience. Back to Black is never far from my mind and it was about a week ago that I pulled it of the shelf for the first time since probably November. I've always loved this record and as time has passed that love has matured in a way that - just the morning before my wife tagged me in a revelatory post on this film's existence - felt emotionally epic. Watching this today I have to say that the feeling deepens once again. If the film is even half as sophisticated and effective as the restraint and technique used to cut this promotional short is, well, we'll have a winner.

Directed by Asif Kapadia, produced by James Gay-Reese. Can't wait.

Thunderstorm

This makes me insanely happy. I miss rain...

Iska Dhaaf - General Malaise

Tommy from the ever diligent Heaven is an Incubator posted an amazing piece about SXSW today over on Joup. In it he covers a full week of SXSW happenings in the way that only someone who lives in Austin and has been attending the, ahem*, "festival" for a long time can. You won't see any "It" band blow jobs here; Tommy covers everything equally, spending as much time in the less publicized venues with the less hyped bands as he does with the hype monsters that deserve it.

Case in point: Iska Dhaaf. I'd never heard of them before. As I began going through the names of bands he lists and checking into them for myself I really hit a very particular frequency with these guys. This song is one of the reasons why. They're on bricklanerecords and are very much worth looking into, as this track is only the tip of the iceberg based on my research thus far.

Thanks Tommy!

*Sorry, haven't been, always wanted to go but about six months ago when, while applying for a place playing there I found I had to write an essay about what it would mean to me to play there, SXSW quickly became as eye rolling as Coachella to me. I've never been to either and although there's no way I'll ever do Coachella I would absolutely do SXSW - despite the "essay" thing - if I could hang out with Tommy.

Faith No More/Mr. Bungle Comic Book!

Mike Wellman, my good friend and co-host on Drinking with Comics, along with artist extraordinaire Matt Jacobs have a Faith No More/Mr. Bungle comic coming out in June. It's the history of the bands written from a "fan's eye view" and from what I've seen so far, this is a must for any Patton fan!

Birthday Music

Today is my birthday and because of that I took the day off work and am spending the day surrounded by my lovely wife and our three cats and MUSIC!

There are a couple albums that really say "Birthday" to me, not in a general, "Oh this is good to play on someone's birthday" way but in the way that for one reason or another they mean something to me about my day of reiteration.

Ween's Chocolate and Cheese:



Frank Blank and the Catholic's Pistolero:



Frank Black's self-titled post-Pixies debut:



And the sad one, well, the song I choose to represent it here, Ween's GOD WEEN SATAN Birthday Boy. I had to do a live one for this song. Had to:

Richard Adam Reynolds's Henchmen

Another great short by Richard Adam Reynolds and Waking Dream Studios, the fine folks who gave us the awesome Hellblazer fan film Soul Play.

Beneath the Panels: Nameless Issue #2

The second issue of Grant Morrison, Chris Burnham and Nathan Fairbairn's Nameless came out two weeks ago and I spent a pretty large amount of time going through it. There's not nearly as much material to "decode" in this one as Morrison comes clean with a lot, however as is always the case when researching anything with Occult ties, there are so many rabbit holes you end up falling through that, well, I think this installment of Beneath the Panels will add an extra sense of what is going on in the book. You can read it right now over on Joup.

Anticipation: Tales of Halloween

I realize I'm jumping the gun a bit, after all it is only March. However, after just now stumbling upon this impending release I find myself chomping at the bit for October! Lucky McKee? Neil Marshall? Joe Begos? Darren Lynn Bousman? And the topper - Mike Mendez? Auteur of The Convent, my all-time favorite indie horror flick and one of my favorite movies ever, period? SOLD! And when you consider that, holy crap, it's already March and the first three months of 2015 have already flown by, well then, I guess it's just as good as June then too. And if it's just as good as June, then we might as well call it September, and if it's September, October's right around the corner! Depressing that time flies that fast yes, but at least now we have something to salivate for in the meantime as life hits warp speed on another year. And while I didn't find anything cinches October as the month of release, chances are it's a safe bet.

Big Man Plans...

... the new collaboration between Eric Powell (The Goon) and Tim Wiesch, is the topic of discussion in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column, over on Joup. It's vertically challenged, nice and violent exploitation and, accordingly, a whole lotta fun!

Happy 17 Mr. Lebowsk... er, Dude!

Thanks to my cousin Jim for pointing out the fact that on this day in 1998 - 17 years ago - The Big Lebowski premiered. We had a viewing tonight in honor of the anniversary. Such an amazing movie. Some great music therein as well, from Kenny Rogers' totally out-of-character Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) to the Credence, to I Hate You by The Monks (which I'd never realized was in the film before) to this rustic little cover of one of my favorite Stones songs from my favorite Stones album, performed by Townes Van Zandt.

Dude, wherever you are seventeen years later, keep abiding sir!

Drinking w/ Comics issue #19

For issue 19 we filmed at Torrance, California's newest and best independent book store, The Book Frog! And, here's the kicker - the green wall we sat in front of was so perfect Joe.Baxter suggested we use it as a green screen. I think you may agree that it turned out wonderfully!

New Kaiser Chiefs

Mr. Brown sent this to me recently but in the deluge of email I've acquired in the last few days I didn't get to it until just now. Very nice. It's so interesting to me how something that I know for a fact would have sounded extremely dated to me ten years ago now sounds smooth and, if not fresh, apparent, as in this is exactly where we should be right now musically, as older decades cycle back through out consciousness from a different cultural perspective.

Adam Green's Digging up the Marrow & Joe Begos's Almost Human

Not only does Thomas Williams run the best damn music blog around, but he contributes A LOT to Joup, the online magazine my good friend Grez started a few years ago and I help run. One of Tommy's columns is Thank God for VOD, where he begins every entry with the acknowledgement that he isn't able to go to the theatre as much as he would like (same here) but VOD helps him see most of what he wants to. Of course, coupled with the difficulty heading out to the movies these days is the fact that a lot of the movies guys like Tommy and I want to see don't even open in more than one theatre in any given major population center, for a weekend at best, so VOD is a godsend. But I'm behind in my movies and I finally made it around to one Tommy wrote about last june, Joe Begos's directorial debut, Almost Human. I liked it a lot, it was a great nod to 80s sci fi horror, specifically as Tommy points out early Carpenter, and Begos crafted a very specific late night UPN tone - also as Tommy points out. I love the nostalgic approach when it's done right. And Almost Human is - there's definitely room for him to grow, but I got the same vibe from Almost Human as I did from Ti West's The Roost when it first came out, and if that's any indication, there's sure to be some great stuff following this debut.

Afterward watching the film, while researching Begos and the cast on IMDB, I stumbled across the trailer for Adam Green's new film Digging up the Marrow, and after watching it I am VERY interested. First, you had me at Ray Wise. Second, Green will forever get the benefit of the doubt from me because of Frozen. No, not the disney movie. I'm talking about the film where three college kids get stranded on a ski lift over a long weekend. Can you say traumatic?

Anyway, looking forward to seeing this quite a bit. And if you haven't given Almost Human a chance yet, you should. It's streaming on Netflix so that makes it even more accessible to most. Also, directly after I posted this I flipped over to Bloody Disgusting and found an article and pictures of Looper star Noah Segan on the set of Begos's follow-up to Almost Human, The Mind's Eye. Excited!

Beneath the Panels #4: Nameless and the Place of Fear

The new and final Beneath the Panels pertaining to Nameless #1 is up over on Joup. Issue #2 comes out this coming Wednesday, so this is a last minute wrap-up until we receive the next transmission from Morrison, Burnham and Fairbairn, courtesy of Image Comics.

The Chameleons - Swamp Thing

In late January my wife went to Austin, Texas for two weeks. During her absence I found myself somewhat in a state of disorder. My routines, namely work, commute, write, watch/read could all remain the same but my down time was eerily lonesome. I had our three cats, but they tend to exist in one of two modes - eating or sleeping - so although they were always present, there was a lack of conversation. During that time I listened to a lot of music, loading the old iPod with a number of records I had been meaning to get around to for some time and spent my days at work getting to know some new music. One of those records was The Chameleons' Strange Times. This was the first Chameleons I'd had the opportunity to delve into and it made a very strong impression very quickly.

One of the things I always find so interesting about the "Post Punk" era is the fact that many of the bands attributed to the genre sound a great deal to my ears the way the British New Wave of Comic creators in the 80's read/looked to my eyes/brain. Killing Joke sounds like 80s/90s Vertigo comics, so does Joy Division, The Smiths*... the list goes on. Upon first listen I found this was also the case with Strange Times, especially the track Swamp Thing, which whether my interpretation was a suggested planted by the title or merely some shared DNA with the book, reminds me so much of the tone of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run that I've pulled the trades I read a scant two years ago back out and am preparing to re-read. It's an eerie, sometimes defeated tone; an often emotionally overwhelming ode to the in between places we often fret to explore, and The Chameleons craft it very well, with a unique approach to arranging the standard rock instrumentation (guitars, bass, kit and keyboards) and a knack for open, verbose lyrics that somehow perfectly balance a line between ambiguity and precision.

NEW Faith No More - Superhero

May 19th cannot come fast enough!

I'm posting this track here for others, but full disclosure I am not listening to it. That won't be an easy pledge to keep, however I'm really looking forward to hearing all the new songs on the album in the context of the album. While I broke down and listened to Motherfucker - my wife bought me the 7" for Christmas - that's as far as I'm willing to go for now.

via Bloody Disgusting.

Faith No More!

Spider Gwen and the Inclusive Age

Art by Rodriguez & Renzi, Mod by @erinoutrageous

Let's talk Zeitgeist, shall we?

The Doors - Horse Latitudes

I somehow missed out on this song until just a few months ago. This is incredible - pure soundscape madness and a poem by Morrison I actually like! Listen to this in the right state of mind, it might take you to some pretty strange places.

Eagulls Cover Stone Roses

Mr. Brown forwarded this to me a while ago but I've been so busy and admittedly pretty flighty in my down time as a result so I'm just getting around to this now. Eagulls are fantastic, and although I'm not the world's biggest Stone Roses fan I am a fan, particularly of this song. So it's a match made in heaven really.

Beneath the Panels #3: Nameless and the Tree of Life

Beneath the Panels #3 is up on Joup. It continues my attempt to interpret and catalogue the Occult underpinnings of Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham's new comic Nameless. For this third installment dealing with issue #1 we get into some serious Qabalah, Tarot and media-tampering. This one's a doozy and it prompted a bit of an 'episode' last night after I ate a quarter slice of a pizza made with THC oil, tripped pretty hard and met what my brain at the time chose to dress in an Enochian persona but was apparently a fairly dark aspect of my own psyche. Whewwww... glad that's over, and here's another reminder to myself NOT to eat pot.

Sunn 0))) + Ulver

This has been out for some time, and I've dabbled a bit with it before, however it was not until this morning that I really gave Terrestrials a good, solid listen. After uneasy dreams of London I found myself awake at a ridiculous hour - ridiculous when faced with the reality that Saturday is one of the only two days I have to sleep in - and in the hazy, marine-layered morning air I found this collaboration between Sunn 0))) and atmospheric black metal liaison Ulver the perfect soundtrack to quietly sipping a pot of strong, black coffee and re-reading key sections of Richard Kieckhefer's Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century while researching the next chapter of my Beneath the Panels: Nameless series.

"... the rites contained in this compendium illustrate strikingly the links between magical practice and orthodox liturgy. The analogy I will use is that of a tapestry whose dislay side implies a reverse side; so too, a society that ascribes a high degree of power to ritual and its users will invite the development of unofficial and transgressive ritual, related in form to its official counterpart, however sharply it may differ in its uses."

-Richard Kieckhefer, page 3 of the introduction.

Love My Way - Cruel Black Dove

I lost track of Cruel Black Dove somewhere around 2012 but was recently reminded to look them back up - GREAT band. Their cover of The Psychedelic Furs' Love My Way was the first track I heard from them and, of course, when a band does such a fantastic job covering an 80s song this iconic, well, they get my attention. The Full Powers E.P. is well worth the $5 or so if you can download it from here (the link appears a bit wonky) and you can find a bunch of free downloads- including this cover - here on the band's website.

Black Mirror

This is seriously one of the most riveting 48 minutes of drama I have ever seen. All six episodes of the British Black Mirror are fabulous, but this first one really smacks you across the nose and announces the fact that the creators are NOT messing around when it comes to extrapolating the dark side of the tech curve. Black Mirror does for technology today what The Twilight Zone did for Nuclear proliferation in the 50s and 60s.

Black Sabbath live 1970

My good friend John Bickness sent this to me recently. I think there was footage from this on a VHS I had back in the day, The Black Sabbath Story or something like that. War Pigs with the original lyrics, pre-fringe John "Ozzy" Osbourne.

Ruleth thou dost!!!

Spring Trailer (Via Bloody Disgusting)

Romantic Lovecraftian Horror? I'm in.

Beneath the Panels #2: Nameless

Beginning with the second entry into this limited Beneath the Panels column I've begun in order to trace the Occult influences/ideas Grant Morrison has built into his new series Nameless I've moved the column over to Joup. The second installment which deals heavily with the Enochian undertones in this first issue just went up.

Grant Morrison & Chris Burnham's Nameless: Beneath the Panels #1

As I said in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column over on Joup, I've read Nameless #1 twice so far. Between reads I began digging around on the internet for some of the concepts Grant Morrison builds into the code that underlies the story begun in the book, and as such I've started to piece together some of what I think may be the initial ideas at work beneath the panels, so to speak.

Nameless #1 begins with a narrated series of atrocities taking place across the globe. The paneling on these first couple of pages is unique and, I'm betting, charged with some degree of subliminal meaning. After drawing them out and pondering them as distinct images by their own right I'm left with one observation and one theory.

The images, especially the first and third, bear strong resemblances to letters from the Hebrew alphabet, which is steeped in occult science and often used in the creation of 'spells'. However, despite the resemblance, after consulting a Hebrew dictionary I found myself unable to draw any direct comparisons. Stumped I thought about this some more and eventually came to a different conclusion about the shapes:

They are part of an elaborate sigil. If you are unfamiliar with sigil Magick - a concept Morrison has talked quite at length - go here and take the author's crash course.

Okay, moving out of the design aspect and into some of the direct references Morrison makes in Nameless #1, the first glaring one is during the aforementioned narrated atrocities on the very first page, we get another sigil-like image and four words:

The image is later defined by one of the characters as "the door to the anti-verse, the Gate of Az". If you google Gate of Az the search engine makes the assumption that you're abbreviating Arizona. However, if you do not search the phrase as you enter it, allowing instead the engine to use its intuitive functions you get three things, the aforementioned Arizona result, followed to more likely possibilities:

Gate of Azeroth

Gate of Hell, Azerbaijan

Here I began with the latter result, as it was something I was unfamiliar with. In a nutshell, there is a deposit of natural gas in the country of Turkmenistan known as the "Gate of Hell".

Once you reach the end of the issue you find there is definitely a parallel to be drawn in terms of what we find out this image represents in actual, physical terms to the story in Nameless. However, that's not it. Let's go back to the other search result and explore that a bit, shall we?

At first glance I misread Azeroth as Azathoth*. That is not the case; Azeroth is a setting in the World of Warcraft game. I don't think that has anything to do with what we're dealing with here. However, because Grant Morrison is as much a utilizer of pop culture in his Magick as he is occult code, this may be the point. It is not too much of a jump to consider that WoW's Azeroth derived its name from Azathoth, a character from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu cycle. Morrison has utilized some of Lovecraft's lore before, and there is an entire area of Magickal practice that treats Lovecraft's mythos as something of an operating system for ritual. In his story The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath, Lovecraft describes him as the following:

[O]utside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes

I have always drawn an indirect comparison between Azathoth and Choronzon, a demon that traces its origins back to Elizabethian magician/scholars John Dee and Edward Kelley. Choronzon's entry in Watkin's Dictionary of Magic is as follows, and when juxtaposed with the definition for Azathoth above fully illustrates the reasons for my theory:

In Enochian magic, the demon of chaos and guardian of the Abyss. Aleister Crowley described Choronzon as "the first and deadliest of all the powers of evil". This point notwithstanding, Crowley invoked Choronzon while experimenting with the so-called 30 Aethyrs in a magical ritual on the top of an Algerian mountain in December 1909.

There is a great visual recreation of Crowley's ritual with Victor Neuburg in Alan Moore and JH Williams, III's Promethea, specifically issue #20, where the characters are on a multiple issue long trek through the spheres of the Kabbalhistic Tree of Life and fall through Daath, the abyss. Here they encounter Choronzon and are torn to pieces. Bringing this back around to Nameless #1, the Abyss - or Daath - could be the "anti-verse" discussed in the final pages, where we learn the harbinger of this Gate of Az is an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and thus inevitably going to destroy it, or rip it to pieces, the same way Choronzon or Azathoth obliterate those who encounter them in their respective mythological contexts.

Okay, I've barely even scratched the surface of this first issue but this is proving to be a much bigger project than I originally thought it would be. I'll continue with more decoding of Nameless #1 in a few days, in the meantime here are a few links for further study of the ideas I've discussed thus far:

Choronzon

Tree of Life

Promethea #20: The Stars are but Thistles summary/annotations

...........

* Another possibility, although less likely, is Astaroth. A quick referral to The Goetia and you will find the following definition for Astaroth:

The twenty-ninth Spirit is Astaroth. He is a Mighty, Strong Duke, and appeareth in the Form of an hurtful Angel riding on an Infernal Beast like a Dragon, and carrying in his right hand a Viper. Thou must in no wise let him approach unto thee, lest he do thee damage by his Noisome Breath. Wherefore the Magician must hld the Magical Ring near his face, and that will defend him. He giveth true answers of things Past, Present and to Come, and can discover all Secrets. He will declare wittingly how the Spirits fell, if desired, and the reason of his own fall. He can make men wonderfully knowing in all Liberal Sciences. He ruleth 40 Legions of Spirits. His Seal is this, which wear thou as a Lamen before thee, or else he will not appear nor yet obey thee, etc.  

Protomartyr - Full Performance on Seattle's KEXP - Includes NEW Song!

I am completely obsessed with this band right now. And I'm talking obsessed in a way I haven't been obsessed with any band in a while. Under Color of Official Right is an unbelievable record - HIGHEST possible recommendation to at least check it out.

The songs:

The first, second and forth songs are all from the record mentioned above, which came out last year and which I've posted here before. The third song is, as you'll hear singer Joe Casey tell it, a new song. Kudos to KEXP for pimping this band so hard.

Tom Vek - Sherman (Animals in the Jungle)

Current musical addiction thanks to my good friend Amy. I've listened to this probably fifty times in the last week and have pretty much become a huge Tom Vek fan. The entire album this track appears on, 2014's "Luck" is start-to-finish awesome, and I highly recommend it.

Goodbye Marvel Universe Hello... Battleworld?

Although I recently decided to stop reading Marvel Comics on a monthly basis in an effort to grant my wallet a little bit of a break without having to stop supporting all the great creator-owned and indie books on the market, I'm still a Marvel fan and this week's big news really didn't leave me anything but optimistic. Well, except for the Battleworld moniker. My complete thoughts on the coming apocalypse in the MCU are the contents of this week's Thee Comic Column over on Joup.

Blut Aus Nord Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry

I completely forgot this came out!

Although I've been unable to track down a copy of the first chapter of Blut Aus Nord's Memoria Vetusta, the second one is neck and neck with the band's masterpiece The Work Which Transforms God as not only my favorite BAN album but my favorite black metal record of all time. Where TWWTG is a journey away from convention and an amazing example of what metal can be, Memoria Vetusta II, subtitled Dialogue with the Stars, is the height of perfection when it comes to the classic, regal black metal the likes of which was often hinted at and attempted by too many stalwart death metal bands of the 90s to mention. This third and apparently final chapter of the Memoria Vetusta cycle is a continuation in spirit and a stunning example of Vindsval's continued mastery of tone and technique, not too mention his wonderfully poignant disregard for what anyone else in the scene is doing/saying/making.

If you dig it buy it, and if you know where I can find a copy of the gatefold vinyl (sold out in their label Debemur-morti's online merch shop and virtually nonexistent anywhere else) please leave a comment and let me know!

Ant Man Trailer!

My Top Ten Albums of 2014

Tuneyards's Nikki-Nack is #1and Protomartyr and Jenny Lewis make an appearance. Read the full list over on Joup! Then go over and read Tommy's from Heaven is an Incubator, also on Joup!

Soundgarden - HIV Baby

Mr. Brown recently sent me the Soundgarden rarities Echo of Miles. Honestly, Soundgarden was one of my favorite bands back in the day and those albums, Badmotorfinger, Super Unknown and Down on the Upside will always be among my favorites of the 90s. When I get in the mood I usually tear into them for days. When King Animal came out two years ago I was resistant, mostly due to that awful song that wound up on The Avengers ST. Eventually I came around - I dig King Animal for what it is but I don't think I'll ever stop believing that the only real reason Soundgarden are back together is money. Anyway, regardless of all of that, Echo of Miles, a 50-song set spread over three discs, is fantastic! All truly rarities and mostly from back in the time when they were a fully functioning band, and an awesome one at that. This track, previously the B-Side to my all-time favorite SG track Room A Thousand Years Wide, is one standout on a fifty song set of, honestly, a lot of standouts.

And is it me, or did an awful lot of bands have songs about HIV or crack babies in the 90s? Perhaps someone needs to update this concept with "Bath salts baby" for the youth of today, hm?