Psyched to have Dusty Grave from Stellar Corpses and BAT on Drinking with Comics later tonight. Tune in around 9:30 PM PST for the show, which will be streaming live on our FB page. This little tune's been knocking around in my head for a few days, so I thought I'd throw it up here to pave the way for this evening.
Playlist from 8/22:
Fugazi - Steady Diet of Nothing
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
My Bloody Valentine - MBV
Various Artists - Twin Peaks Season 3 OST
Second Still - Equals EP
Chris Connelly - Artificial Madness
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
John Carpenter/Alan Howarth - Big Trouble in Little China OST
Playlist from 8/23:
Tennis System - Technicolour Blind
Radiohead - Kid A
Fear - Live... For the Record
Fugazi - Steady Diet of Nothing
Glenn Gould - Bach: Goldberg Variations
Second Still - Equals EP
John Carpenter/Alan Howarth - Big Trouble in Little China OST
Carl King - Guns A' Blazin' Suite
Cocksure - TVMALSV
The Carpenters - Greatest Hits
Card of the day:
Five breaks stability and causes at worst strife, at best competition. There's some strife in my life right now, but it's background radiation, throbbing in the distance, lighting up my brain for a moment or two here and there, and inspiring competition for sure. Which is good - DRIVING FORCE.
Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini
Fugazi - End Hits
High On Fire - Surrounded by Thieves
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
Mstislav Rostropovich - Various selections from The 1967 Carnegie Hall Marathon
New Author & Punisher up for Pre-order on Relapse Records HERE. This guy continues to baffle and amaze me with his post-apocalyptic insanity.
I have heard many good things about Channel Zero and it hits Shudder today, so I'm looking forward to that.
Not sure if I mentioned this before, but I recently started a re-watch of Deadwood, as K has never seen it and the news of the forthcoming movie caused quite a stir in me. I've begun re-watches before, but never made it very far. Thus, I've actually seen the first season enough to know a lot of it intimately. What's my favorite scene?
Al Swearengen may just be my favorite character ever. As dark as the show can be, it keeps a smile on my face almost the entire time.
New Sandman Universe #1 acquired and read, although it wasn't a very good read, rife with distractions as it was (my own fault). A good set-up for what is to come, which I must admit I'm still excited about. I've avoided this whole Doomsday Clock thing that has merged the Watchmen with the DCU proper - I'm not necessarily against the idea of the Watchmen being placed in the DCU, I just don't really care and have heard it's not very good. The Sandman Universe however, is apparently something I cannot ignore.
Playlist from 8/08/18:
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked for Death
Drab Majesty - The Demonstration
The Fixx - Reach the Beach
Card of the day:
So this is either me suffering from wishful thinking that Please Believe Me will be finished today - I just can't seem to nail the tone for the end of this but I am so close!!! - or it's a problem of over imagination, which could be gumming up the works on the ending. Either way, I have some work cut out for me today.
I am kind of becoming excited for the Sandman Universe comic line, despite absolutely hating the most recent Neil Gaimen Sandman series Overture. I have to give it another try, if for no other reason than JH Williams III's absolutely mind bending art.
The penultimate edition of my Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying is up HERE. Like last week, I didn't think I'd have one for today, as I've been so busy at work and have been nearing the completion of my short "Please Believe Me", however in the midst of my strange, heat-inspired sleep deprivation, I lay down for a nap yesterday after work and found myself once again unable to drift off. After about thirty rather frustrating minutes of this, I picked up the book I'm currently reading, Norman Mailer's The Deer Park, and read for a while. Prose like this always inspires me, and it wasn't long before I was up and seated at the desk in my writing nook. I put in my headphones, cued up Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's brilliant OST for The Social Network, and disappeared into my story for two hours. And this was the first session where I really nailed it. I mean, I'd been fretting over this story, because after several weeks of immersive work on it, I just wasn't nailing the tone I wanted. I didn't feel it coming together the way I'd felt all of the stories in A Collection of Desires come together, and as writing is a blind walk in a dark room - complete with a lot of bumping into things that smart - I was unsure if this one would ever get 'there.'
It's there.
I'm not all the way through it yet, but I'm halfway through a mostly polished piece, and hope to have it wrapped within the next few days.
Playlist from yesterday:
Kate Bush - The Dreaming
Rollins Band - The End of Silence
Jimmy Scott - Greatest Hits
Miranda Sex Garden - Fairytales of Slavery
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - The Social Network OST
Card of the day:
Ready for some financial breakthroughs, that's for sure.
Jesus. Friday, just in the nick O' time, eh? Here's a little Tom Vek to wake us up:
I've been having trouble sleeping, and when I wake up I feel - as I do now - as though my spirit was too far away from my body. Discombobulation. Whatever the case, it's making everything in my AM a chore. Also, waking up stupid has made me repeatedly unable to get my shit together long enough to do a pull with my beloved Thoth deck. That means I've been relying on my pocket-sized back-up deck, The Hanson-Roberts, more heavily than I would like. Nothing inherently wrong with the H-R deck, I just very much prefer the esoteric elegance of Lady Freida Harris' art over the H-R's, which is so 'classic tarot' that it's hard to hate but also a bit trite, if you ask me.
Playlist from 6/21:
David Bowie - Reality
Van Halen - Eponymous (Not the singles)
Tom Vek - Luck
Savages - Silence Yourself
The Rolling Stones - Let it Bleed
Revocation - Teratogenesis EP
Wrong - Feel Great
Perturbator - Dangerous Days
Card of the day:
Wealth, as in a comfortable surplus of Earthly attributes. Also, the implication that we have directed our energies positively in order to get here. Sounds like a good omen to me as I crest into writing the final chapter of the T12 book.
There is a melancholic air to this song that absolutely floors me. I love it SO much. Corniglia is a band that I happened across on LA's music treasure, KXLU, one morning on the drive to work, and in the two or three weeks since I just cannot stop listening to them. The album, self-titled, is easily in my top of the year. One of the things I like so much about this is, in some strange way, it reminds me of the vibe I had in my head in the early 2000s - a kind of delicious airiness that translated to a gray hopelessness as I graduated College: the future loomed before me, I buried a friend, and I felt more alone than ever. The new Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying is up HEREand while it would seem to glorify a somewhat frightening moment in my life, it actually very much illustrates the loneliness I felt at that time. 2001-2002 was dark, and although I had an awesome band (The Yellow House) and awesome friends (particularly at that time Brown, Tim, Sonny, Grez, Dennis and Dave), I was somewhat adrift on a mindset so bleak that it spurred me into frequent drug use and several bouts of totally vapid sex, both very much unlike me. And some how, I hear elements of that hear.
I'm digressing, or maybe I'm not.
My point is that music is the same as all art in that, to modify a famous saying, the beholder gets out of it what they put in. That is to say, there is often baggage you bring with you when hearing a new band, new song, new album, and that baggage - snippets of color or image associations, emotions, whatever form it takes - shapes how you hear that music and, ultimately, what it will mean to you. What's even more interesting is your interpretation could be light years away from what was happening in the artist's head at the time - it doesn't matter. Having also made music and talked to people who got something out of it that I had never anticipated or intended, I can tell you that just the idea that something you made could have such a multi-textural effect on another soul is rewarding beyond description. So, while Corniglia may not have intended the melancholy associations I ascribe to their sound, I'm sure they won't mind if there music drives me to stay awake long past when I should have my head down, trying to capture in words something they have made me feel with their song.
Playlist from Odin's Day, 6/20/18:
Danzig 6: Satan's Child
David Bowie - Hunky Dory
David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Freaks)
David Bowie - Reality
Nothing - Downward Years to Come
Various Artists - Reservoir Dogs OST
Corniglia - Eponymous
Card O' the day:
The Lovers again, and how it currently applies to my life is still escaping me. I need to make time to look further into this. Perhaps I will ask Missi.
Watched Evil Dead (2013) for about the fifth time last night, as K had never seen it. SO fucking good. Please Mr. Alvarez, make that sequel!!!
Playlist from 6/18:
Chasms - On the Legs of Love Purified
Wrong - Fee Great
Cocksure - TVMALSV
Beach House - 7
Nothing - Zero Day (single)
Them are Us Too -
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley
Card today:
The Emotional Aspect of Air. Wielding the Will with emotional maturity. Knowing when to back off and when to be assertive.
... and I'll be damned, it won't replace the original, but it looks like it could be a really good film on its own. I dig that they seemingly went out of their way to make it look and feel old school 70s Euro horror, or at least that's what I'm getting from this trailer. Reading the description, sounds like the plot got a tweak too, so that could further help make this new one its own thing. While I'm typically not in favor of remakes, a few great ones have come along that stand on their own. I'd say take for example Evil Dead 2013, but then we all know that's not a remake but, "another door the Necronomicon can open." Maybe there's some similar thread here.
Tom Yorke's score sounds great - I was kind of expecting noodley electro, I'm glad to see I've underestimated him.
Playlist from June 3rd:
Burzum - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss
Sleigh Bells - Tell 'Em (single)
Fen - Epoch
Ghost - Prequelle
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Card of the day:
Relying on my back-up deck today, as I left the house in too much of a hurry to pull from my beloved Thoth. Queen of Cups - more emotion than you can shake a stick at. Doesn't feel that way thus far. We'll see.
Holy cow! Chris Connelly has a new record that came out earlier this year. And of course, it's fantastic.
Highly recommended literature:
I started this yesterday. Fantastic book. The character of Stigoi is so hilariously based on a certain Chicago Black Metal Musician who, while I love his music, is known for doing the kind of bastard shit Strigoi does. This just makes me like the book even more than I already do, with its urban-decay-as-lifestyle that often proliferates internally inside self-obsessed musicians in cities like Chicago (I know, I'm from and was a musician there for ten years).
Speaking of which, let's combine several topics from today's post:
Playlist from yesterday:
Darkness Brings the Cold - Human Me
David Lynch & John Neff - Bluebob
USSA - Eponymous
Alice in Chains - B-sides
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
Neon Kross - Darkness Falls
Ghost Bath - Moon Lover
Blut Aus Nord - Memorial Vetusta II - Dialogue With the Stars
Card for the day is coming from my back-up deck, the mini Hanson-Roberts:
I don't like this deck nearly as much - nothing wrong with it, it's just not my cuppa. I like my Thoth, but I hurried out of the house this morning and forgot to pull - this deck is pocket-sized and was something I found, so it lives in my bag for moments like this. As for the pull itself, XIX coming in hot on the heels of XVII The Star (yesterday's pull) suggests that while yesterday's writing session was a bit convoluted (occulted, to force a slightly square peg into a circular hole for the sake of the metaphor), today's will be better, with revelations aplenty.
