Sunday, April 7, 2013

Bauhaus - Stigmata Martyr



This is still one of the most badass songs I've ever heard. In my quest to re-read/read Neil Gaiman's Sandman from the beginning through to the end Bauhaus just jumps off the music shelf. Along with Joy Division and The Cure, Tones on Tail and The Smiths (esp. Meat is Murder for Vol. 4 Seasons of Mist) Bauhaus is a perfect soundtrack for Neil Gaiman's lush dreamscape set on the outmost fringes of the old DCU.  I'm currently reading Vol. 5, A Game of You, one of the volumes I'd not read before (I started reading the book during it's initial run with The Kindly Ones, which I believe was either the second or third-to-last volume. Of course I went back and snagged Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll's House and Dream Country as they were published in trades and then left what was essentially the middle of the saga untouched on my "To buy and Read" list. However, I very much wait for the particular moods for music/film and comics/books to overtake me before I lock into them, i.e. I can't just pick up Sandman and start reading it anymore than I can just through on Bauhaus any old time. I have to be in that particular headspace. I've begun re-reading Sandman many times over the years, as those first three volumes are among my most read comics. However I can't always sustain the mood to go all the way through, not with all the bloody distractions of everyday life. I've also often hit the $$$ wall, starting it and making my way through the beginning volumes only to find I didn't quite have it in my budget to buy the three or four volumes I was missing. Recent bursday presents from my wife have solved that particular problem).

Whenever a comic or book strikes such a strong harmonic frequency with a particular band or album I always wonder if the author themselves - or in this case any of the awesome artists involved - listening to that same music at the time of creating. And if that is indeed the case, the fact that you can pick that up suggests to me that the author/artist's hands are literally transducing the energy in its audio wave form into energy in a visible form, like a microphone is a transducer that takes audio waves and changes them into the physical rearrangement of magnetic iron particles (on analog tape) or 1's and 0's in the digital domain?

Something to think about.

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