Vólan is a band from Moscow I'd never heard of until this morning when this live session from Audio Tree popped up on my youtube feed. Pretty awesome! You can hit their Bandcamp HERE for more music and merch!
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I'm a pretty big fan of Robert S. Wilson's Nightscape Press, and as such I backed their recent Kickstarter HERE. I'd actually meant to post about this earlier, but there's still twelve days left, and even fully funded, this is absolutely worth contributing to. Nightscape is a fantastic and fully independent publisher, and my hope is they will be around for many years to come.
Previously, I've mentioned Nightscape's brilliant Ashes and Entropy anthology - easily one of the best books I read last year. I also recently picked up Dark and Distant Voices, Nightscape's short story collection by Tim Waggoner. I'm only one story in - ALL my pleasure reading is on hold as I work on final edits of two different versions of my forthcoming novel (I'll explain that at some other point). The point is, Mr. Wilson runs a top shelf company who deserve our support.
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Playlist:
The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose
Aerosmith - Pump
Motörhead - 1916
Nirvana - Nevermind
Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey
The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
Urge Overkill - Saturation
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Because I'm spending the day with my phone in airplane mode so I can finally finish another of these short stories that have been haunting me for months, I'm revisiting a lot of the stuff that's trapped on my old iPod. Which, as it turns out, is extremely inspiring. Telephone Tel Aviv's album Immolate Yourself was an album I came to unexpectedly: sometime in the mid-00s a friend had given me a bunch of albums in MP3 form, so many in fact that it took me quite some time to work my way around to all of them. One day after work at the bookstore, I came home and hit "Shuffle" on the desktop computer before lying down for a nap. I woke up at some point with this album on, but the wake-up was half-hearted, and as I lie there drifting in and out of sleep, this record slowly endeared itself to me. It has, since then, been a portal back to the weird, twilight mindset of that experience.
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Along with the old iPod selections, I'm playing a couple movies on silent in the background while I write. Today's choices:
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With Tasmyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth winding down (it's SO freakin' good), I purchased and loaded Autumn Christian's Girl Like A Bomb in my 'on-deck' reading circle. I don't know much about the book or the author, but I LOVED Shadowmachine, Christian's entry into Robert S. Wilson's Ashes and Entropy anthology earlier in the year, and am excited to read more of her work.
What a cover. The font alone sells it.
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Playlist:
Blackstar - David Bowie
A Storm in Heaven - The Verve
David Bowie - Diamond Dogs
Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Ministry - Psalm 69
Bohren and der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission
Bohren and der Club of Gore - Gore Motel
I've been waiting this one for what feels like an eternity! Written by Grady "My Best Friend's Exorcism" Hendrix and directed by Chelsea Stardust, Satanic Panic is possibly my most eagerly anticipated film of the year. And now we finally have a trailer! This, along with Joe Begos' Bliss and a host of other films I can't quite bring to mind at the moment are all looking likely to play at Beyondfest this year, and I can't wait!
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Recently, I wrapped up Robert S. Wilson's Ashes and Entropy Anthology from Nightscape Press. The final story, I Can Give You Life, by Paul Michael Anderson finished the book perfectly, and - I think - ended up my favorite story in a book filled with stories that rabidly competed for that title. Either way, buy it HERE and read your goddamn hearts out; Anthologies do not get any better than this.
And now, of course, I need a new book to read. Luckily, I have one I've been chompin' at the bit to get to for months. Black Mountain, Laird Barron's second installment in the Isaiah Coleridge novels, and three chapters in I can't put this one down.
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Playlist from the last few days:
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Shake the Sheets
Motörhead - 1916
Aerosmith - Pump
Anthrax - Sound of White Noise
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper
U2 - War
Tool - Undertow
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Opeth - Blackwater Park
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Pusher Man (Single)
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Mind Control
Frank Sinatra - Moonlight Serenade
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Card of the day:
Okay, this one is definitely trying to tell me something, and I've been pretty lax on listening. A promotion at work and the first draft of Ciazarn has consumed most of my time. Today we're heading to Midsummer Scream, but I'm putting Crowley's Book of Thoth in my backpack so I can start digging into this one a little more earnestly.
I've been pretty excited for the new Shudder Creepshow series, and if this first trailer is any indication, it's going to be better than my expectations even. Not easy to do, when reviving something so iconic, but based on everything I've seen from the streaming service so far, they are 100% up to the task.
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New episode of The Horror Vision went up yesterday. This is a special 'Double-sized' edition, where Ray, Anthony, Tori, and myself tell our listeners a little bit about ourselves. After that, topics of discussion ended up revolving around Luca Guadagnino's 2018 Suspiria remake and the merit/non-merit of remakes in general. Finally, our movie of the episode reaction bit is on Matthew Holness' film Possum.
Continuing on into the heart of Robert S. Wilson's Ashes and Entropy anthology, I read John Langan's short, Breakwater earlier today. Fantastic short fiction; kind of a mash-up of the Crime and Horror genres, I blew through Breakwater at a pretty quick clip, and caught my breath when it ended. After a complicated relationship with Langan's novel The Fisherman, I'd been wanting to read something else by the man, and this story definitely pointed me in the direction of his newest collection, Sefira and Other Betrayals:
Look at that cover art - unnerving is an understatement for artist Santiago Caruso's image, more of which you can find on his website HERE. Mr. Langan's website is HERE and you can order a beautiful limited cloth edition of Sefira directly from Hippocampus Press HERE.
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Playlist from the last two days:
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Iggy Pop - The Idiot
High On Fire - Snakes of the Divine
Godflesh - Post Self
Crystal Castles - II
The Soft Moon - Criminal
The Soft Moon - Deeper
The Raveonettes - 2016 Atomized
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. II Philosophy of Beyond
Blur - 13
The Blues Brothers - Briefcase Full of Blues
Bavaria Buam - Live
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Card of the day:
Balance. I need this right now. Trying to balance my interests has put things out of whack, creatively.
I've been avoiding a lot of trailers of late, as I find they usually give too much of the movie away. I find the best viewing experiences are the most uninformed ones. That said, I'm glad I watched this IT Chapter Two final trailer, simply because after the disappointment of Pet Sematary, I needed something to remind me how good this IT adaptation has been. This looks fantastic, plus I don't really feel like the trailer gives too much away. September 6th is not that far away...
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As soon as I finished my re-read of Grant Morrison and Richard Case's Doom Patrol run, I jumped back into the Robert S. Wilson edited anthology Ashes and Entropy and read Autumn Christian's The Shadowmachine. Awesome story. Probably my favorite in the collection so far. There's an almost Neil Gaiman-esque approach to reality here, without the more baroque or 'flowery' aspects of Gaiman's writing (not a shot - I love Gaiman. I'm merely making distinctions). The story itself doesn't tread Gaiman territory, though; Christian spins a pretty terrifying tale of technological seduction and it's eerie as all hell. Based on this I've added her newest novel, Girl Like A Bomb, to my must-read list; it's available HERE.
Ashes and Entropy is turning out to be my favorite anthology in ages, and I can't recommend it enough. Available directly from Nightscape Press HERE.
Also, Nightscape Press has started an emergency GoFundMe anthology titled Horror For the Raices, where a $10 donation or more will get you an advance, uncorrected book copy of the anthology as soon as it's ready. The book is edited by Robert S. Wilson and Jennifer Wilson. Donate HERE.
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Playlist from 7/17:
Frank Black - Teenager of the Year
Jenny Hval - Blood Bitch
Adam Kesher - Local Girl (Hatchmatik Remix)
Beak> - L.A. Playback
M83 Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Track Back The Radiance
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.
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.
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.
A busy work schedule and the exhaustion that comes with being sick pretty much decimated my last few days; normally these would be two separate entries, but there are big things happening at my day job and I've been unable to take any time off, in spite of feeling like absolute crap. In that time, a lot has surfaced. The second track off Drab Majesty's forthcoming third album being one of the most eagerly anticipated (pre-order that record HERE if you haven't already).
The other most eagerly anticipated item that dropped was the first trailer for the ninth film by Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood:
Other than Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown, I've seen all of QT's films in the theatre. This is be no exception.
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The trade paperback for Nightscape Press's Ashes and Entropy recently won the This is Horror Award for Anthology of the year award; I'd missed the boat on this one until yesterday when I received an email about it going on sale in the Publisher's webstore. I ordered my copy as soon as I saw the contributing authors list and cannot wait to dig into the contents. And that cover!
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We're set to do another episode of The Horror Vision this coming Saturday, and in looking back at everything I've watched over the last month or so, I realized I really need to start a daily 'watchlist' section on these pages. So below is the first, which is really more of a catch-all for everything we've watched since Sunday. It's a lot, because as I mentioned above, K and I have both been sick since last Sunday, and although I've not missed any work, I've been leaving early and spending most of my time at home in bed, trying to beat this thing as quickly as possible.
Ozark, Season 1 episodes 1-5
Barry, Season 1 episodes 1-4
Prom Night - Ugh. Not good. (In retrospect, hoping this isn't one of the two features tomorrow on The Last Drive-In). CAM - Would have been in my top films of last year had I seen it sooner. Shades of Lost Highway Gerald's Game - A fantastic adaptation of a stellar Stephen King book. The end Lifetime'd it a bit for me, but totally excusable.
Pandorum -Not bad for Sci Fi horror, but suffers from early 00's spastic editing AND the most overdone twist ever. Seriously folks, what year was Fight Club? It's been done! Single White Female - I'd never seen this and it's one of K's favorites. Solid 90s Psychological thriller. Would make a great double-feature with Pacific Heights.
Playlist from 5/22:
The Raveonettes - In and Out of Control
The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
(Lone) Wolf and Cub - May You See Only Sky
Big Business - Here Come the Waterworks
Hall and Oats - Apple Music Essentials
The Cure - Disintegration
