European Doom

 

While looking around online for a vinyl copy of Mars Red Sky's 2011 eponymous masterpiece, I stumbled on yet another absolutely outstanding French Doom/Stoner band I'd not heard of - Witchfinder. Taken from their 2019 album Hazy Rites, you can order a super sweet bundle of gorgeous vinyl from these guys via Mars Red Sky Big Cartel Shop HERE. You can also order the anniversary edition of that aforementioned MRS record. I've got a very nice mail day coming up in a few weeks.

I have to say, so far France is my favorite exporter of Metal. Between Blut Aus Nord, and now these two bands, I feel an epic, otherworldliness in the music made there the likes of which, I've not heard elsewhere. All three bands are among the most unique and creative in their particular 'genres,' and I love the idea of old-world European creepiness informing their approach, sound and aesthetic. Just looking at the album artwork for Witchfinder, and hearing the band's incorporation of pipe organ into the music definitely lends their sound a darker sound than a lot of other Stoner/Doom bands. 

 

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Read:

I finally re-started Alan Campbell's God of Clocks, the third and final entry into his Deepgate Codex series. 

I really wish I'd been able to roll right from the first two books into this one, but that trip to LaLaLand interrupted that - I didn't want to carry a Hardcover with me on the plane, or around in my backpack as I walked all over L.A. The joke was on me, of course, as my friend Chris ended up gifting me several books while I was there, one of which was that Hardcover edition of Stephen King's Fairy Tale I just talked about reading a few weeks ago.

I'll not lie - I love Campbell's writing, but it's proving difficult to switch back from King. There's just something so pragmatic about Stephen King's prose. Talk about 'every man.' Campbell reminds me A LOT of Mervyn Peake, and as such, it takes a bit more time to visualize his descriptions. Not a bad thing, and definitely a good exercise for the ol' attention span, which took a bit of a hit of late. Not a big deal; I'll knuckle down and use God of Clocks to readjust my concentration, and that will help with several more of the books I have coming up in the next few months, probably most notably, Nathan Ballingrud's The Strange, which I'm absolutely frothing at the mouth to read.

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Playlist:

Druids - Spirit Compass (EP)

Dorthia Cottrell - Death Folk Country

Ghost Bath - Moonlover

Fen - Epoch

Nabihah Iqbal - Dreamer

Bret Easton Ellis Podcast S7E10: Mr. Misery 

Cartoonist Kayfabe - X-Men 273

Cartoonist Kayfabe - Hellboy: Crooked Man

Projexploitation 3615 code Pére Noël (1989)/ Ep 14

Mars Red Sky & Queen of the Meadow - Eponymous (single)

Witchfinder - Hazy Rites

Witchfinder - Forgotten Mansion

Mars Red Sky - Eponymous

Ritual Caster - Gravity Cosmonaut

            

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

 

• Seven of Swords - Sephirothic Association is Netzach, which instantly conjures the word "Victory" for me.

• Eight of Swords - Sephirothic Association, Hod. Splendor. 

• King of Cups - or in Thoth-speak, Prince of Cups, the Intellectual aspects of Emotion, a conundrum if there ever was one. 

What's this all add up to? Well, I'd say having the two consecutive numbers in the same suit fall one right after the other implies Process, i.e. there's a formula. My creative juice runs best in an Ad Hoc, stream-of-consciousness that I've had to learn to wrangle, especially when it comes to Shadow Play Books 2 & 3, which I've outlined and am (trying) to write concurrently. Or rather, I was. That approach kind of became subsumed by those flaring, creative energies again, and things have become somewhat murky. I'm assuming this Pull is telling me to buckle it up tight, once again.

Pulling two consecutive cards like this, I think it's important to note that when you look at the Qabalistic Tree of Life, the path between these Netzach and Hod is the 27th Path, also known as The Tower Path, or in Crowley's words, "The Blasted Tower or House of God." This is a path where if you are ascending from the lower, Earthly realms, you must sacrifice, or learn to part with your ideas of the world, your "ego scaffolding" and begin to give yourself up to something higher. If you're descending, you must take the thrill and emotion of "Victory" and transmute it into something useful. In other words, the idea you think is great can only actually be experienced as great if you can wrestle it into a tangible form.

That's writing, to a "T."

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Nico Vega

 

My girlfriend's obsession with Nico Vega is really rubbing off on me. I don't know much about them other than they have since broken up, but both the albums K has introduced me to are outstanding! This track is from their self-titled 2009 album, the entirety of which is fantastic.

 

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Watch:

This looks difficult to watch in the best possible way:

 

I have to say, I've been pretty impressed with Lachlan Watson's acting since being introduced to them via The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and this looks like an even more committed performance than we've seen previously. Also, Director Jeffery A. Brown impressed the hell out of me in 2019 with The Beach House, so I'm definitely game to follow him on a new journey.

 

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Read:

I finished Iron Angel yesterday, the second book in Alan Campbell's Deepgate Codex. Since I'm going to be in LaLaLand for two weeks and don't feel the need to carry a hardcover book with me, I'm going to hold off on Book Three: God of Clocks until I return, opting instead to deep-dive a bunch of books on Elizabethian England for Shadow Play Book Two research. Waiting to read this one is going to be tough, as is waiting to crack into Jeremy Haun's Haunthology, which I received via my Kickstarter pledge a few days ago and did an unboxing video for over the weekend:

 

Seriously, this book is gorgeous; can't wait to read!

 

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Playlist:

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

The Veils - ... And Out of the Void Came Love

The Jeff Healey Band - Full Circle: The Live Anthology

The Teardrop Explodes - Kilimanjaro

Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun

Metallica - Hardwired

Nico Vega - Eponymous

Nothing - Guilty of Everything

Dr. John - Ske Dat De Dat

Leviathan the Feeling Serpent - Corpse Eater: Satanic Misery Live for the Dead

Jammes Luckett - May OST

Dexys Midnight Runners - It Was Like This
 

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

Traveling today. Clarity and Will lead to the completion of an "Earthly" matter, i.e. something to do with our house, I'm pretty sure. A tornado nearly missed us this past Friday, and I've discovered some things that need fixing - not sure if these issues existed before the winds felt like they were going to pull my office from off the top of the garage, but they have to be taken care of. This is not my strong suit, but I'm trying to become someone who can handle issues without hiring out simple 'handyman' work. The skill is definitely in my blood - my Father can fix anything. I just have to double-down when I return from LaLaLand and focus.

Faetooth - Remnants of the Vessel

Not entirely sure how I came to have Faetooth's 2022 album Remnants of the Vessel in my Apple Music, but I stumbled across it there the other day, and it provided a pretty big leap in my mood. Really cool, doomy, deathy album that doesn't sacrifice the downtrodden mood when it goes full-on death-growl heavy. The band hail from "The depths of Los Angeles" (love that) and the album was voted Spin Magazine's #1 album of the year? I'm shocked Spin has such good taste.

 

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Read:

I blew through Alan Campbell's Scar Night over the last week and started book 2 of his Deepgate Codex series on Sunday. I'd read Iron Angel sometime around 2010, so there's not too much I remember. 

Fifty pages in and it's a perfect follow-up to book one, which really fleshes out the world and adds a host of new characters who really up the stakes. We're outside Deepgate and moving into a bigger world, and I'm just as enraptured by Mr. Campbell's prose here as I was in Scar Night. This really is one of the best Fantasy series I've ever read, with just the right amount of Steam Punk influence, without trying to tick all those "Write a Steam Punk Novel" boxes that, while I admit I sometimes have a soft spot for, began to feel endlessly tiring around 2012. 

Also, I think the last time I read these, I had not yet read Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy and reading the Deepgate books now, I can very much appreciate the influence Peake's seminal series had on Campbell. That said, the influence is in no way overzealous, but rather hard-coded into the prose, which makes the experience of re-reading these ever more pleasant than before. 

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Watch:

Speaking of Steam Punk Fantasy, check out this trailer Bloody Disgusting posted about a few days ago:

 

Moon Garden looks like a film that will harken back to the Fantasy epics of my 80s youth - The Neverending Story, Legend, Etc. Totally blown away by the first half of this trailer, and then I turned it off so as not to see too much. Ryan Stevens Harris' new film can't come soon enough.

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Playlist:

Trombone Shorty - For True

Odonis Odonis - Spectrums

Wolfpack - Lycanthro Punk

Metallica - ... And Justice For All

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Deftones - White Pony

Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit Vol. 1

Fvnerals - Let The Earth Be Silent

Faetooth - Remnants of the Vessel

Feuerbahn - The Fire Dance EP

Television - Marquee Moon

Brainiac - The Predator Nominate

Kaiser Chiefs - I Predict A Riot

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

Some big ideas/influences here that all seem to shore up ideas about Emotional Conflict being the result of too much unfocused Will. Sounds about right; I'm in a really good routine working on the new book, and it has occurred to me previously that when I'm at a creative spike, I become overly sensitive. 

There Is A Light in the Bottomless Pit That Never Goes Out

In a Smiths mood this morning. Sometimes Morrissey's biting observations and poetic turns of phrase just hit the spot intellectually, to say nothing of Marr, Rourke and Joyce's music, which transports me to a very specific place in my head, more feeling than thought. That's why this group worked so well for the time it did - Morrissey anchors you while the music compels the soul to soar. 

Of course, to enjoy any of this, I've had to maintain my ignorance of what an unbelievable twat Morrissey has become over the years. 

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Watch:

Browsing the Just Added on Shudder, I followed a hunch - a hunch that all Irish Horror Films are fantastic - and clicked on Billy O'Brien's 2005 Isolation. 

I could not find a serviceable trailer, and also,  I think the less you know about this one going in, the better you are. Believe me, however, when I tell you that my hunch continues to prove correct because Isolation is fantastic. A taut little creature feature with notes of The Thing and Alien, only set on an Irish farm.

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Read:

Completely off the cuff, I began re-reading Alan Campbell's brilliant Deepgate Codex trilogy over the weekend. About a third of the way through the first book, Scar Night (2006), these have a special place in my heart, and I am ashamed to say I never finished the trilogy by reading that final book. 

Back when I first moved to LaLaLand in 2006, I was working at a Borders bookstore as an inventory supervisor. Myspace was the thing at the time, and through its messaging, author Alan Campbell - then relatively unknown, as Scar Night was his first novel coming off the success of having helped write the Grand Theft Auto game - messaged me. Seeing that I was a pretty vocal champion of China Mieville's work at the time (still am), Campbell reached out to tell me about his book, which is set in the city of Deepgate - a city that hangs from chains suspended above a bottomless pit.

No way I wasn't going to read that!

I bought the book when it came out in Hardcover, and continued to buy Campbell's books as they were released in that manner. By the time book three came out, though, I was probably in the middle of something with a completely different tone, and it wasn't the time to reread the first two and go into number three. 

And the years lapsed...

Back around 2019, I picked up and plowed through the first two books of Campbell's subsequent series, The Gravedigger Chronicles. These were immediately among my favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels ever - we're still waiting on that third book though, and from time to time the thought that we may never see it (the Author, who is not active on social media, has stated that the third book in the series is finished, however, the publishing deal he had went south and the book remains, well, suspended by metaphorical chains above the abyss that was once the publishing industry). That particular sadness darkened my door this past week, and thus, I grabbed the Deepgate Codex with the intention of loving it so much again that the power of that love might somehow aetherically find Mr. Campbell and transmute into a resolution for that final book. 

And yes, Scar Night is just as good as I remember. Maybe better. And no, aetherically is not a word. Well, not until now.

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Playlist:

Lustmord - The Others

Fvunerals - Let The Earth Be Silent

Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Wasteland

Karl Casey - XX

Battle Tapes - Sweatshop Boys EP

Final Light - Eponymous

Ager Sonus - Book of the Black Earth

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

Special Interest - Endure

Motörhead - Ace of Spades

Anthrax - Attack of the Killers B's

Aerosmith - Pump

Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Talking Heads - Fear of Music

Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark

Made Out of Babies - The Ruiner

The Jesus Lizard - Goat

Thou - Rhea Sylvia

David Bowie - Black Tie White Noise

Silent - Modern Hate

Melvins & Lustmord - Pigs of the Roman Empire

Metallica - Hardwired... 

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

A reminder that balance is what supports harmony, and balance is not achieved by the narratives about others we sometimes tell ourselves repeatedly. I've 100% done just this, and it's not without a breakthrough of Will that I will be able to smooth things over. 

2019: May 18th - New Mike Patton Project!

Many thanks to Mr. Brown for alerting me to this new Mike Patton project, a collaboration with historic Serge Gainsbourg collaborator Jeanne Claude-Vannier. You can pre-order the album from Ipecac Records HERE; Corpse Flower is scheduled to drop September 13th.


**

I finished Alan Campbell's The Art of Hunting this morning, and now I must HOWL at the fact that there is a third book completed and TOR baulked at publishing it! WTF! Mr. Campbell doesn't have very much of an internet presence to speak of - can't blame anyone on that philosophy - so, although two or three years ago there was an update on the possibility of him releasing the book digitally, there's been nothing since. Please! I need to read the third book NOW!

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Lacking a third volume of Campbell's Gravedigger Chronicles, I've moved into one of my two most anticipated books of the year: Nathan Ballingrud's Wounds: Six Stories From the Border of Hell. This is the collection that re-publishes Mr. Ballingrud's masterpiece of short, Weird fiction The Visible Filth that I have expounded on often in these pages since I discovered it in late 2015, and adds to it five other short stories that, if the first one is any indication - and I'm sure it is - are brilliant! Such a great time for lover's of dark fiction!

Wounds comes to us just slightly ahead of the first cinematic adaptation of Ballingrud's work, director  Babak Anvari's take on The Visible Filth, also titled Wounds. I believe the arrival of this one-two punch will be the opening salvo on the establishment of Ballingrud as a major force in the modern Horror Lexicon. And that makes me incredibly happy.

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Playlist from 5/16:

The Cure - Disintegration
Blackwater Holylight - Eponymous
Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Bauhaus - In the Flat Fields
Clint Mansell - Out of Blue OST
Blut Aus Nord - 777 Sect(s)
Melvins - Houdini
Helms Alee - Sleepwalking Sailors
Helms Alee - Noctiluca

Playlist from 5/17:

The Cure - Disintegration
Opeth - Blackwater Park
Beach House - 7
Lustmord - Songs of Gods and Demons
Melvins - Houdini
Melvins - (A) Senile Animal
Big Business - Here Come the Waterworks
Big Business - The Beast You Are

No card today.

2019: May 6th The Thirsty Crows - Anchors Up

I have not talked enough about The Thirsty Crows new album in these pages. Hangman's Noose, available from Batcave Records, is easily going to slip into my top five albums of the year. Over the last week or so, it has become one of those records I put on and end up listening to three or four times in a row; at fourteen songs/thirty-nine minutes, it's a perfect amount and yet not quite enough, so that by the time I reach the cover of Dramarama's Anything, Anything that finishes out the album, I'm ready for another full go-through. There's something epic about the way these guys approach Rockabilly; there's some great moments where the band members' love of metal comes through, and it blends perfectly with the 'billy aesthetic, so we get something both classic and refreshing. The mark of a great record, to be sure.

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I recently interrupted my read of Alan Campbell's The Art of Hunting to act as an HWA colleague's first reader on his debut novel from Cemetery Dance. I'll post more about that once the release is officially announced, but in the meantime, since finishing that book, I jumped back into the second installment of Alan Campbell's Ghostdigger Chronicles, and just like that, I've fallen in head over heels again.

I can't recommend these books enough; people who know my tastes in fantasy fiction know I have little tolerance for 'High Fantasy.' But Campbell's Gravedigger books take one of the major tropes of High Fantasy, the inclusion of Dragons, and ports it into a truly fascinating world. A world where an ancient, almost extinct and now imprisoned race of cosmic sorcerers long ago tainted the Oceans with a baffling poisonous agent known only as Brine, making it toxic to most life. Humans who are exposed to Brine stiffen and crack like stone; full submersion - 'the drowned' - stay alive indefinitely, but change in strange and horrifying ways. And the sea life mutate horribly as well, only coming to the surface fleetingly, so that all the new forms are not necessarily known or understood, enormous boogey men of the depths. Oh, and the dragons, those are humans the Entropic Sorcerers long ago twisted into these massive new forms. And they're all insane, as you would be after going through such a thing.

I'm really not giving you much about the books, but it would be very hard for me to do these novels justice in only a few short words. All I can say is The Art of Hunting is turning out to be thrilling, and insanely more imaginative than the first volume, Sea of Ghosts. I know a lot of other folks out there that have similar tastes to my own - and those who do like High Fantasy - would probably all love these books.

There's an Amazon Link to buy these HERE. However, they're out of print and pretty expensive, so if you need an easier option, try HERE.

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Playlist from 5/05:

The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose
White Zombie - Astro Creep 2000
James Brown - Black Cesar OST

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Card of the day:

Moving forward. Which I am, by leaving two stories somewhat hanging and going full hilt on Ciazarn. So that feels good, to get validation from the cards.

2019: March 18th: First Track from Final Cranberries Album

Wow. I didn't even know this was coming. I've never been a very active Cranberries fan, despite the fact that I loved their sound. Zombie and Dreams were HUGE parts of the musical landscape of my youth, but I never really followed through on their albums. Then, maybe ten years ago, I picked up Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We and experienced a brief fascination with the band again after the use of one of their songs in the movie, The Sound of My Voice. I had just fallen head over heels in love with The Smiths - another band I had previously only dabbled with -  and with their music floating through my head 24/7, I began to realize a lot of other bands were directly influenced by them, The Cranberries one of them.

When Dolores O'Riordan tragically passed away in 2018, an unexpected thing happened on Los Angeles radio - everybody began playing The Cranberries again. What's more, from what I gather in my little snippets of FM radio at work, they still play them. Often. This feels a bit like some sad triumph for a great band that kind of disappeared for years, only to resurface after tragedy. Fast forward to April 26th this year, and apparently we get the final album The Cranberries recorded with O'Riordan and then, that's it. This is the first single, and both the song and the video are emotional heavy weights in light of everything that's happened. A fitting tribute to the late O'Riordan, whose voice was really unlike anyone else's on Earth.



You can pre-order In The End HERE.

**

I received and began reading The Art of Hunting, the second book in Alan Campbell's Gravedigger Chronicles, and I can already tell I'm going to freak out when it's over, knowing there's a third volume finished that Tor won't publish. I can't express how high a regard I hold Campbell's writing in; I did when I read the Deepgate Codex, and the Gravedigger series feels like a serious level up from that, so in my mind, this is a fantastic example of expertly rendered world-building fantasy that does not succumb to "Tolkienism."

Yeah, I made that term up.

Anyway, thirty pages in, and The Art of Hunting has me as strongly as Sea of Ghosts did.

Playlist from 3/17:
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Wasteland
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Mind Control
The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash
The Pogues - If I Should Fall From Grace With God

Card of the day:

A lot of ending this morning. I'm reading this one at face value: I'll finish the reading of Shadow Play today. I had an excellent session yesterday, and I really can't stress what a game changer reading out loud has been for me. I'm finding the book very much on track, and hearing it out loud is helping iron out little inconsistencies in tone, syntax, grammar, and detail.

2019: March 2nd

I've been waiting for this documentary for a while now. Can't wait.

Hopefully going to the theatre to see this later today. I'm posting the trailer, but I haven't watched it; I want to go in blind, as I'd not even heard of it until K mentioned it two days ago.



Happy Birthday to one of my extraordinary co-hosts on The Horror Vision, Ray Larragoitiy.

It started strong, but around page 100, Alan Campbell's Sea of Ghosts became magnetic and I ca no longer put it down. The world Campbell has built, this drowned, imperial ghetto, soaked in the fall-out poverty of endless war and a desperate population, is both beautiful and affecting. There are scenes here that I visualize perfectly, in a way that makes me suspect I am seeing exactly what the author saw when he penned them. It's that vivid. HIGHLY recommended.

It's a real shame these books, the two Gravedigger Chronicles volumes Mr. Campbell published earlier this decade, didn't find their audience. I just ordered the second volume, The Art of Hunting, from a bookseller on Ebay. I worked at Borders for five years from 2006 to 2011. We received and sold all three main volumes of Campbell's Deepgate Codex series, but I remember we never received Sea of Ghosts in 2011 when it was originally published. Honestly, I'm not even certain the Gravedigger books were available in America. Tor is the publisher, and in crawling around online, trying to catch up with Campbell's been doing these last few years, I've seen on his facebook that apparently there is a third volume ready for print but Tor wouldn't invest in it because the first two volumes didn't sell well. To that I say, Did you fucking market them at all? Because as a fan, I've had to scratch and claw for every bit of information I've garnered about these books since their inception, and even on Amazon they fetch an insane aftermarket price. So no, I'd say you did not. I hold out hope someone will give this book and any future projects Mr. Campbell has up his sleeve a home, because he is an exceptional writer. This is the kind of Fantasy we need, not more Knights and Dragons.

Playlist from 2/28:

The Cure - Pornography
The Cure - Faith/Carnage Visors (Side B)
Deafheaven - Black Brick
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
Firewater - The Ponzi Scheme
Deafheaven - New Bermuda

Playlist from 3/01:
Wasted Theory - Warlords of the New Electric
Baroness - Purple
Ritual Howls - Turkish Leather
Budapest Festival Orchestra - Igor Stravinsky: The Firebird Suite
Budapest Festival Orchestra - Igor Stravinsky: Petrushka
Cocksure - K.K.E.P.
Firewater - The Ponzi Scheme
Deafheaven - Black Brick
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
Deafheaven - New Bermuda

Card of the day:

Epiphany. Good. I'm posting this, tearing Sea of Ghosts from my hands and digging in to work on my own book, which is coming along swimmingly.

2019: February 17th - New Perturbator!!!

New track from Perturbator, who had previously stated he was done with the synth wave thing. This is definitely something different, and I'm hoping only one facet of what will be a widely different adventure for the musician, who is perhaps just as equally ambitious as he is talented. A good thing, for sure.

As for pre-orders, there's nothing listed on either the Perturbator or Blood Music bandcamps yet, but when I find something, I'll be sure to post it here.

Back in 2006, Scottish write Alan Campbell messaged me on myspace - remember that? - and, having noticed I talked about the work of China Mieville a lot, asked if I'd heard of his debut novel, Scar Night. Set in a city that hangs on massive chains above a bottomless pit, I really didn't need to read any more than that to seek the book out. Thus, my love of Campbell's Deepgate Codex series was seeded. Four books and five years later, I saw an announcement for a new novel and series go up, Sea of Ghosts: the Gravedigger Chronicles, Book One. Only problem was, for years I could not seem to get the book in the U.S.

At some point Sea of Ghosts fell off my radar, and remained obscured to me for some time. Now, a few weeks ago, I finally ordered a copy and, having received it yesterday, began reading it. It's good to be swaddled in Campbell's lush, fantastical prose again.

There's not a lot of fantasy I like, primarily because, from my experience, most of the genre is made up of authors who love Tolkien and want only to write inside his tropes. Hence, no matter how many people I drive mad with my resolve, I will never read or watch Game of Thrones. I'm sure they are excellent, but Knights and Dragons are most assuredly not my thing. It's been done to death. Mieville's take on fantasy - where everything is his own creation -  is more my taste, and I'd add Campbell and Peter V. Brett as similar contemporaries. Campbell's Deepgate Codex plays with the textures and aesthetics of Steampunk, for example, but never feels the need to limit itself by those aesthetics, preferring instead to incorporate them into the author's own unique world-building ideologies. And with his undermining explorations of the tenants of religion, political power, and military intelligence, Alan Campbell's aesthetics always engage and expand my own imagination, and quite often make me smile. I'm excited as pie to be back in one of his worlds again.

Playlist from 2/16:

David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
David Bowie - Station to Station
Beastmilk - Climax
Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch - An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil
Red Rider - As Far As Siam
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Welcome to the Pleasuredome
Pink Floyd - Animals

Frankie Goes to Hollywood? You mean, like Relax? Yep. How did that happen? Well...

Two nights ago K and I watched Body Double for the first time. I LOVED this flick; possibly my favorite De Palma film, or at least right behind Carlito's Way. Body Double is early, macabre thriller De Palma, and its tone is compelling and unapologetic for turning the camera's eye on a protagonist that is as seedy as he is well-intentioned. In the film, there's a sequence that utilizes pretty much the entire track Relax, and seeing it I remembered encountering the LP Welcome to the Pleasuredome on the shelves of a thrift store back in the oughts. The album art and design was involved, and I remember thinking it looked as though this band I only knew the one track by - a track I liked very much - may have had ambitions on a level similar to groups like early Genesis, or Pink Floyd. I'm not sure why I didn't buy the record that day in the thrift, but I'd always meant to get around to listening to a full album by Frankie, partially just because I don't know that I've ever spoken to anyone else who had.

So, spurred on by Body Double - a film I really can't say enough good things about - I used the good ol' Apple Music to listen to Pleasuredome yesterday. Verdict? Hmmm... not sure. Ambitious? Yes. Nobly so? Maybe not. Bloated with its own regard? Probably.

I may get back around to re-engaging with Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Welcome to the Pleasuredome some day, but in the meantime I'll still crank Relax whenever I hear it. Like now:



Card of the day:

I'm hoping this points to being back to all cylinders, and not the fact that in order to finally extricate this damnable flu, I need the help of a trained professional. I'll know by the end of the day, I'm sure.