Showing posts with label Barry Adamson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barry Adamson. Show all posts

Monday, March 18, 2024

New Music From Barry Adamson!!!

 

New music from Barry Adamson! Special thanks to Mr. Brown for giving me a heads-up on this, as I did not know it was coming. The new album, Cut to Black, is out May 17th on Lexer Music. Pre-order HERE. They come signed by Mr. Adamson, so that's an extra little thrill in and of itself. But this first single is fantastic, so I'm already excited.
 


Watch:

This year, K and I did our customary St Paddy's viewing of State of Grace on Saturday night. The film continues to captivate me, even after all these years, to the point that when it finished, I started it over again, only to quickly realize I was fairly inebriated and needed to go to bed. Still, the realization that no other film can follow this one was stunning, but not surprising in the least.


So that left Sunday, March 17th open for a similarly themed film. We chose the Cohen Brothers' 1990 Miller's Crossing

Hot damn is this a fantastic movie! I mean, I knew that already. I've seen this one several times, but not for close to ten years.

 

I remember I'd seen Miller's Crossing a time or two previous, but around 2010 I purchased a slim-line set of Cohen movies that contained this, Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Barton Fink and Blood Simple. I worked my way through re-watching these (Fink was the only one that, if memory serves, I had not seen previously), re-affirming my joy with each, but when I reached Miller's Crossing, I had someting of an epiphany. I had liked Miller's Crossing before, however, I believe I had not been open to its absolute mastery until this viewing. Within a week or two I scheduled a viewing with my California "Movie Night" crew, and upon seeing it again in such close proximity, Miller's Crossing blossomed even more in my eyes; this was surely the Cohen's masterpiece. Anyone who is a fan of Joel and Ethan's work knows what a tempting yet dangerous statement that is, because almost every one of their films feels like their masterpiece when viewed. Simply put, the Cohens have many masterpieces, so does it even which reigns supreme?

Not at all.

Yet, this most recent viewing has me flabbergasted by how much more nuance to the film there is than I'd previously interpreted, and I thought I was pretty in tune with the film then. The dialogue, the characters, the HUMOR! Damn if this isn't just about the funniest "non comedy" I've seen since.... well, probably since the last Cohen Bros. film I watched. They do kind of excel in that, as well.

Miller's Crossing and State of Grace - I would attempt to follow the first with the latter, but not the other way around, so I suppose I'll continue to reserve Phil Joanou's masterpiece for St. Paddy's day and allow for Tommy, Leo and Caspar to pop in and out of my life whenever they want.




Read:

I finished Taft 2012 and raise a thankful glass to my brother in literary adventures, Mr. Brown! FAN-tastic novel, and I can't thank him enough for his patience while it sat on my shelf for the last who knows how many damned years until I finally got around to reading it. Tooling around online, I found this NPR interview with the author, Jason Heller.

Can't recommend this one enough. 

Next up, Malcolm Devlin's 2022 Novel And Then I Woke Up, which my good friend and Horror Vision cohost Ray gifted me during a trip to L.A.'s Skyline Books, in the still unsoiled neighborhood of Los Feliz. 


I know nothing about this one, only that Ray recommended it so strongly he plunked down the cover price twice - once for his own library and once for mine, so I'm 100% on board. 

It is wonderful to have friends who read, who you can pass books back and forth to for discussion and discovery.




Playlist:

Steve Moore - Bliss OST
John Carpenter - Lost Themes
The Rolling Stones - It's Only Rock n Roll
The Rolling Stones - Goatshead Soup
20 Watt Tombstone - Wisco Disco
Bryce Miller - City Depths
Amigo the Devil - Yours Until the End of the War
Merrimack - Of Grace and Gravity
Deafheaven - Ordinary  Corrupt Human Love
CCR - Eponymous
Ruby the Hatchet - Fear is a Cruel Master
Ruby the Hatchet - Planetary Space Child 
The Damned - Evil Spirits
Funkadelic - Eponymous
The Bronx - IV
Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual
Orville Peck - Bronco
The Pogues - Rum Sodomy and the Lash
The Pogues - Red Roses for Me
Brigette Calls Me Baby
Amigo the Devil - Everything is Fine
United Future Organization - 3rd Perspective




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Also, Grimm recently launched a Kickstarter for his new deck, The FaeBound Tarot, which you can marvel at and acquire HERE.

Just one Card to start the week off. 


First and foremost, I ADORE Grimm's interpretation and design for Trump 18: The Moon. As a card for the day and, I guess, for the week, I'm reading it more inline with the interpretation that tackling an obstacle that might otherwise be easy to sidestep will lead to self discovery and improvement upon conqueroring. So as they say, let us go once more into the fray!!!

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Justin Hamline - A Veil For Three Sisters


Justin Hamline is a guy I know only through his Instagram profile and some interactions through that platform; a like-minded Horror/Synth/Punk fan, I no longer remember how I came across him, but we have similar interests and ended up following one another for a couple years before I realized he was also a pretty freakin' awesome musician. Apparently, he took a break for a while but came back recently and has been releasing material left and right. Next up for Justin is the soundtrack to a Giallo that only exists in his head - The House With Dead Leaves! This is the kind of project I love, a la Barry Adamson's first albums; not just music but the story that goes with it in the artist's mind. I'm really digging this stuff - here's the full track:


Really digging this and can't wait to hear the finished product. The House With Dead Leaves drops next Friday, and I have a feeling I'll be incorporating an edible and a nice block of time to just sit in front of my big-ass stereo speakers and take the journey Justin has mapped out for us. 




Watch:

There are two new Horror flicks coming to theatres this week, and I'm going to try and see them both!* Here's the trailer to Alan Cumming's Out of Darkness:

 

As usual, I watched about five seconds of this - just enough to see the set-up that the film takes place in 43, 000 BC, and I stopped it. That's enough to make me interested, and from here I'd just rather go in blind.




Read:

As I mentioned in this week's NCBD segment, I picked up the first issue of the new Ram V/Laurence Campbell Futuristic Neo Noir The One Hand yesterday purely on a lark. 


After reading it, I am super excited for this book. But not only this book, because there is a second, complimentary series by Dan Watters and Sumit Kumar coming on February 21st! 


The Six Fingers takes place in the same Blade Runner-esque Future metropolis, Neo Novna, and based on the title and what I know after reading issue one of The One Hand doesn't just tie in but possibly completes the story in the first book. 


Image is just killing it right now. There's an article Image has up on their website HERE that talks about this a little more in-depth. 




Playlist:

QOTSA - In Times New Roman
Raspberry Bulbs - Before the Age of Mirrors
Justin Hamline - A Veil for the Three Sisters (Un velo per tre sorelle) (single)
Windhand - Eternal Return
Donny Benét - The Don
Amigo the Devil - Your Until the War is Over (pre-release singles)
Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven (pre-release singles)
Mannequin Pussy - Patience
Mannequin Pussy - Romantic
T. Rex - The Slider




Card:

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


• King of Swords
• VIII: Strength
• IV: The Emperor

Man, I see a lot of that Tony Iommi King of Swords in this deck! Does that make Iommi my spirit animal?

I'll tell you right off the bat, what I see here on a very surface, "what do the illustrations tell me" way two things I've been thinking a lot about. Two things that used to be a big part of my life but no longer really are: Guitar and Magick. I've been feeling a tug back to picking up an instrument, but I have several unfinished writing projects at the moment (one very close to completion and release, one a few months out). This is the struggle - stay focused. So, while it would definitely be more in my current inclination to read this one as telling me to go ahead and follow that tug, I'm actually going to look at it a different way - have the strength to recognize that the King of Swords - in Thoth the Prince - is a card that, by Crowley's own interpretation, indicates lots of good ideas but an unstable purpose. That's why I'm seeing this so much! Finish the interpretation off with The Emperor's nod toward linear thinking, and I see that this is in no small voice telling me to figure my shit out, commit and finish. 

Monday, December 5, 2022

...Johnny One Note Here


As I mentioned here a few days ago, I recently finished Barry Adamson's autobiography, Up Above the City, Down Below the Stars. It's a fantastic read; a sometimes heartbreaking deep-dive into the origins of the Manchester Post-Punk movement. Thrilling not only because Adamson is such an engaging narrator, delivering the story of his life in a quasi-Noir tone that totally fits Manchester in this era (think of the Joy Division biopic Control), but also because he names and describes so much music - a lot of which I have never heard before. The track above is a perfect example; I knew nothing of the Tubby Hayes Quintet until Adamson describes hearing the Live at Spot's album (renamed Down in the Village if you seek it out on streaming) for the first time on his father's new record player. He describes the way the opening horn attack blew his mind, and sure enough, I had the same experience. That is some smoking horn to open a set with! 




Watch:

Before I left L.A., I actually had a chance to see a test screening of Cocaine Bear. I ended up not being able to make it, and now, after seeing the trailer, I wish I would have canceled whatever else I did and gone to this instead:


This. Looks. INSANE. I mean, in every great way a film can be insane, this looks as though it will check those boxes. 
 


Playlist:

Alan Haven - Image (single)
Kermit Ruffins - The Barbeque Swingers Live
Tubby Hayes Quintet - Down in the Village (Live at Ronny Scott's Club, London 1962)
Metallica - Lux Æturna
Metallica - Hardwired... To Self-Destruct
Metallica - ... And Justice For All
Blondie - Eponymous
Ruelle - Emerge
Drug Church - Tawny EP
Feuerbahn - The Fire Dance EP
Zola Jesus - Arkhon
Harry Nilsson - Without You (single)
T. Rex - The Slider
Roxy Music - Eponymous
Alice Cooper - Killer
Barry Adamson - Back to the Cat
Magazine - Real Life
Bret Easton Ellis Podcast S6E27
Low Cut Connie - Get Out the Lotion
Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell
The Knitters - Poor Little Creature on the Road
Magazine - Secondhand Daylight
Serge Gainsbourg - Historie de Melody Nelson
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
The Birthday Party - Hee-Haw
The Birthday Party - Pleasure Heads Must Burn (DVD)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Boatman's Call
Barry Adamson - Moss Side Story




Card:

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


Obscured influences come from a place of benevolence and should be accepted in order to further emotional security. Pretty broad scope, so I can't really pinpoint what this is addressing yet. But I'll keep my eyes open for obscured influences, of which there are no doubt many afoot in all of our lives. 

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Call Me, Bobby Fingers

 

I've never been the biggest Blondie fan, but I've also largely remained to everything but the singles. They've long been one of those bands I keep meaning to dig into the back catalogue, and just never remember. Well, between the OST for Paul Schrader's 1980 masterpiece American Gigolo, which I just watched for the first time a few months back and became enraptured with, and now the Showtime series of the same name, I've been inundated with "Call Me" off and on for weeks, and I have to say, it is a fantastic song. I always liked this one, but now I'm seeing something deeper. So, motivated by that, I've begun digging. So far though, nothing matches this one.




Watch:

Yes! Bobby Fingers has a new diorama video up!

 

Oh man, this guy is my hero. I haven''t watched this yet, but the subject matter for this, his second diarama video, is so in-line with his first, and both seem culled from the 80s pop culture detritus that I favor for fun-making. 
 


Read:

I finally began Barry Adamson's Autobiography, Up Above the City, Down Below the Stars this past weekend. Adamson earned a perpetual place in my heart with his albums Moss Side Tory, Soul Murder, and of course, As Above So Below. This was all after his work on the Lost Highway OST in 1997 put him and his album Oedipus Schmodipus brought him to the awareness of, well, of anyone paying attention to the kinds of music that Trent Reznor included on that Soundtrack.


As Above is still my all-time favorite by him, but I've followed Mr. Adamson's career ever since. I grabbed a copy of his first short film The Therapist back in 2011, and had the total joy of seeing him perform live, solo, at L.A.'s The Hotel Cafe in... I'm not even sure when. 




Beer:

Now that I'm officially into my first real winter in sixteen years -  I know the season doesn't officially start until December 21st, however, it's cold - my appetite for darker, thicker beers has returned full force. My palate would usually shift for a week here or there while in L.A., as nights did get down to the 40s on a regular basis, however, Tennessee is decidedly closer to what I grew up with. Already seeing the 30s and we're loving it. 

Anyway, while I still always have cans of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on hand, I've really been peppering in more Porters and Stouts on an almost daily basis. This is somewhat propelled by my neighbor Vincent, who I've befriended and who loves dark beer. He's brought me quite a few Crowlers from his (and now our) favorite Clarksville brewery Tennessee Valley Brewing, and to return the favor, while in Chicago recently, I picked up a sixer of something for him.


Three Floyds is one of those entities that 100% deserves all the hype and mania they fostered during the 00s. Every beer I've had by them has been insanely consistent in quality, and their aesthetic - kind of a Doom Metal/SciFi/ComicBook thing fits the beer perfectly. There's always an air of blue-collar debauchery that undercuts what, in my mind, are very high-brow concepts, and I love that. 




Playlist:

Metallica - Lux Æturna (pre-release single)
Blondie - Autoamerican
Various - American Gigolo OST (1980)
Zola Jesus - Arkhon
Mastodon - Hushed and Grim
Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Digipak)
H6LLB6ND6R - Side A




Card:

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


A slightly more ambitious pull today. The card that started this fell separate from the deck during shuffle, so I started there. An accomplishment of Will can make a Dream come true. A breakthrough with my Art will come via collaboration. Again, spot on! I've really become shocked that Grimm's Bound Tarot has essentially replaced the Thoth as my go-to deck. That seemed impossible; I'm not one to own a lot of decks. Sure, there are scores of amazing ones, but I have never owned a deck just because of how it looks - I've always struggled with reading and thus, felt it an imperative to limit the number I have to the ones that I use and bond with. That's been exactly Thoth and, later, Missi's Raven Deck of Major Arcana, which by definition, serves a different purpose altogether. Broader. But Grimm's deck has really become something I reach for multiple times a day, and I feel my readings and intuitions stoking again (I lost a lot after my Tarot debacle in 2015, which is described somewhere in these pages).

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Magazine - The Light Pours Out of Me



From their 2009 reunion circuit, live on Jools Holland. Barry Adamson back on bass! Awesome. For good measure, here's the cover version Ministry did of this song, from 2003's Animositisomina:



For the record, I love both versions, and the Magazine record this song originally appeared on, 1978's Real Life, is just a fantastic example of Post Punk.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Barry Adamson - If You Love Her



If you're not familiar with Barry Adamson, former bass player for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Nick Cave and the Cave Men, Magazine and for a short time the Buzzcockss, and you dig any measure of the stuff I toss out on this page, go get 1996's Oedipus Schmoedipus. An anthological record that features Adamson's jazz/noir musicality and style plus a number of great guests (Carla Bozulich, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker to name a few). If you're a David Lynch fan you'll recognize track number two on the record, it had a pretty memorable moment in Lost Highway. Mr. Adamson's soundtrack to Carol Morley's 'Dreams of a Life" which will be aired in the UK tonight, Feb 7th. Said ST can be purchased here on iTunes.



All of the man's albums are fantastic, especially my favorite, 1998's As Above So Below. Atticus Ross assisted with some of the programming and produced it and Flood's on hand for a couple of tracks as well. It's fantastic; a dark, jazzy descent into a noisy, ionic hell where the kiss of an angel waits mockingly just out of reach. Overdoing it? I don't think so. You don't know Barry.



Adamson's earliest records (Moss Side Tory, Soul Murder) are fascinating because they are soundtracks - complete with dialogue snippets - to movies that never existed outside Mr. Adamson's mind. The genius displayed therein put him on Trent Reznor's map back in the early 90's. Reznor used a few of Adamson's tracks and the influence of his MO to put together the Natural Born Killer's ST and then a few years later of course the aforementioned Lost Highway. Two years ago Adamson - a "Cinematic Soul" by his own admission, wrote, directed and released his first film - a 'novella' entitled The Therapist. The film is a heavily-influenced first film but it is good, strong in tone, and it points to even better things to come from this man whose work I love so much. A friend and I saw him live last year in an intimate show at LA's Hotel Bar. Just Barry, minimal accompaniment. It was awesome.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Mutiny In Heaven - Nick Cave & The Cavemen - La Edad de Oro, London 1984



Whoah, watched this and didn't realize at first that it had Barry Adamson on bass and backing vox.

"From slum-chuch to slum-church, ah spilt mah heart
To some fat cunt behind a screen... " - beautiful Mr. Cave.