Showing posts with label Mark Lanegan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark Lanegan. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Mark Lanegan and Chelsea Wolfe - Flatlands

 

I had to get one more Lanegan track in, because I don't think I'd ever realized he had a collaborattion with Chelsea Wolfe before.  




NCBD:

Here's my haul for another NCBD:


Again with the fantastic cover for Moon Knight


I might have missed picking up issue #3 of Newburn, so I'll have to remedy that as well.


James Tynion IV's The Nice House On The Lake returns after a small hiatus. This one has a lot that feels like it's being lost to me reading it as it drops, but I may make 


Hands down, the best cover of any X-Book since Powers/House. This is currently the only of the X-titles that I'm reading that still feels like Hickman's run, and this cover proves that 100%. 




Playlist:

The Gutter Twins - Adorata
Wham! - Everything She Wants (single)
George Michael - Faith
The Veils - Total Depravity
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads
Zombi - Digitalis
Author & Punisher - Women & Children
Yeruselem - The Sublime




Card:


Sevens are Netzach, and thus related to Strength. Which I feel like I've been pretty keen on exhibiting of late. Also, in Thoth, I tend to see this card as an indication that one idea will stand out among others, and prove itself useful if followed. Which helps with the current state of my writing, which is a big mess of peaks and valleys at the moment. Too many ideas, is kind of what I was thinking an hour or so before I pulled this one, so I'll take the advice.

Sunday, February 27, 2022

The Twilight Singers - Live with Me/Where Did You Sleep Last Night

 

A wonder live rendition of the opening track from the Twilight Singers' 2006 EP A Stitch in Time, which as a bonus, flawlessly morphs into a cover of Lead Belly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night." 

I got chills at the end when Dulli yells, "Mark Lanegan ladies and gentlemen!"

It's been quite some time since I doubled down on any Twilight Singers. This EP and the corresponding album Powder Burns also released in 2006, along with Lanegan's 2004 Bubblegum were intricate daily rituals for much of my life during the mid-to-late 00s. They're also slightly synonymous with drugs - no surprise there. To me, these records so perfectly capture the fabric of my mental life at that time, it brings back a huge rush of thoughts, feelings and ideas that are otherwise haphazardly placed in a closet at the back of my psyche. It's good to take that stuff out and brush it off every once in a while.




Read:

I'd been trying to read the works of T.E.D. Klein for the better part of a decade, but until very recently, everything was out of print. I eventually found the story "The Events at Poroth Farm" in a Kindle-only "Megapack" of the Cthulhu Mythos. The story has fuck all to do with Lovecraft, but hell, forty stories for $0.99, I'll take it.


This is the kind of thing that flits in and out of my radar, so months go by where I get busy obsessing over other things, then something puts the enigmatic Klein back in my thoughts and I look around on Kindle and eBay again. The holy grail of his work would appear to be the 1985 novel Dark Gods, which goes for upwards of $40 for a Mass Market Paperback on eBay. It's only a matter of time until someone puts Klein's stuff back in print...

And now that is exactly what is happening. Two recent purchases I've made:

This first volume is a novel. A reprint of Klein's 1984 novel The Ceremonies, also long out of print. I snatched up a paperback copy of this the second I saw it hit Amazon, however, I will say, the binding looks like it will split and fall apart before I'm finished reading this one. Maybe I'm wrong, but when you have a 400+ pages book and its binding is barely an eight of an inch thick, well, that's usually a pretty crappy edition. 


And here's one from Pickman's Press I just saw this morning on Kindle. I grabbed the digital right away for this collection of short stories, poems and an interview. "Poroth Farm" is included here, which is nice, as are what looks like an essay on Arthur Machen's "The House of Souls", a story I recently short-listed when I picked up a Complete Works volume of Machen's work. So far, I'm three stories in, and can already tell you, "Well-Connected" is already worth the $5.99 I paid for this one. Fantastic story.




Playlist:

Mark Lanegan Band - Bubblegum
Mark Lanegan Band - Blues Funeral
Post Stardom Depression - Prime Time Looks A Lot Like Amateur Night
QOTSA - Lullabies to Paralyze




Card:


Looking for answers, but something remains obscured.

Saturday, February 26, 2022

Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell - The Raven

 

I originally posted a track from this Lanegan/Isobel Campbell collaboration album back when it was released in 2010. That's over a decade ago. Trite "Time Flies" sentiments aside, I'm beginning to feel like we're lucky any of us are still here with the way the world has changed since then. Anyway, I love "The Raven" because it's just so damn cinematic. Also, there's a definite air of homage to Nick Cave here. That track from 2010 - "Who Built the Road" has more than a passing similarity to Cave's duet witih Kylie Minogue, "Where the While Roses Grow." Gentle bell chimes, hushed, breathy vocals, and an overall somber and reflective atmosphere to the album as a whole make this a late-night, dim-light album, and the juxtaposition of Isobel Campbell's voice with Lanegan's is just beautiful, especially when the strings swell beneath them.

You can still grab the complete record on digital over its Bandcamp page HERE.  The entire thing is fantastic, with styles ranging from this quasi Italian Western cinema to sultry Motown-esque soul, to quiet, contemplative ballads that meander through your mind and emotions like a slow-moving snake. SO good.


Also, file this in "Made my Day" -  how about this cover by Two Minutes To Late Night's Gwarsenio Hall? 


Super cool. 



Watch:

This one looks like it's going to be one helluva fun ride:


I love the Cheap Thrills-meets-You're Next vibes here.




Playlist:

Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God
Greg Puciato - Lowered (pre-release)
Allegaeon - DAMNUM
Curtis Harding - If Words Were Flowers
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan - Sunday at Devil Dirt
The Twilight Singers - A Stitch in Time EP
Warren G - Regulators (single)
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Silent - Modern Hate




Card:

I've been jumping back and forth between my two decks - The Raven and Thoth - in an effort to see if any of my recent pulls line up. So far, not really, but they definitely tell an over-arching story:


Change - don't struggle against it. I can't help but wonder if this is intentionally a dovetail with what I see as the beginning of a very tumultuous five years for the world as we know it.

Friday, February 25, 2022

Mark Lanegan Covers Alice in Chains

 

Alice in Chains' "Nutshell" has always been a devasting song to me anyway, but hearing Lanegan sing it a few days after learning of his passing, well... damn. That's about all I can say.  

Thanks to Mr. Brown for sending this one my way.




Listen:

New Greg Puciato record in June, and the lead single is f*&king fantastic!

 

I've become quite a fan of Reba Meyers over the last two years, and even though I didn't dig that new Code Orange single that dropped a few months back, I dearly want her making music in my life. Her presence her only makes this an even better song than it already is. Mirrorcell is out June 22nd on Puciato's own Federal Prisoner label, and you can pre-order it HERE.




Watch:

Serial killer stories are not my bag, however, THIS is fascinating:

 

K and I mainlined Netflix's The Sons of Sam over the last two nights and I have to say, I nearly fell down a rabbit hole. Here's a case that sits at the very heart of the "Satanic Panic" era of our country's history. Watching this put me on a precipice of re-reading Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Fatale, which definitely dovetails with that dark, post-60s vibe I find so fascinating.




Playlist:

Zombi - Digitalis
The Jesus Lizard - Liar
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Miss Machine
sElf - What a Fool Believes (single)
Firewater - The Ponzi Scheme
The Twilight Singers - A Stitch in Time EP
Greg Puciato - Lowered (pre-release single)




Card:

How perfect is this, what with all the Satanic Panic stuff I've ingested over the previous few days:


Take your influences where you find them, it's not wrong to follow your intuition.

Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Earth Featuring Mark Lanegan - A Serpent is Coming

 

From Earth's 2014 masterpiece Primitive and Deadly, featuring the late Mark Lanegan on vocals.
 


NCBD:

A pretty smashing Wednesday at the shop, if I do say so myself:


Fucking LOVE this cover. 

Deadly Class! Only a few more issues. I'm getting both excited and sad.


I would say I'm annoyed at how long this one has taken to come out, but when you look at the work involved, I think it's totally understandable. I mean, the detail on the cover - let alone on the pages inside - is almost mindboggling. 

Prince Robot? Me thinks I smell a flashback.


This was accidental. I heard that Beta Ray Bill appears in Donny Cates' Thor #22 and picked it up late last week. When I did, I realized that issue is part four of a storyline called "The God of Hammers". I grabbed the first part - Thor #19, but quickly realized there were no copies of 20 or 21. Apparently, they sold fast, and reprints of 20 hit this week with 21 following next. All this has really just primed me with hype for a comic I normally don't care anything about. 


I still love Two Moons, but resolved to wait to read this arc until it finishes, I was just missing too much going month-to-month. 


As long as this continues to be primarily about Moira and Mystique, I'm in. 




Read:



I was just about fed up with H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward when I arrived at the Fifth section of the book, V. A Nightmare and a Cataclysm. Here's an excerpt: 

"The next few rooms he tried were all abandoned, or filled only with crumbling boxes and ominous-looking leaden coffins; but impressed him deeply with the magnitude of Joseph Curwen’s original operations. He thought of the slaves and seamen who had disappeared, of the graves which had been violated in every part of the world, and of what that final raiding party must have seen; and then he decided it was better not to think any more. Once a great stone staircase mounted at his right, and he deduced that this must have reached to one of the Curwen outbuildings—perhaps the famous stone edifice with the high slit-like windows—provided the steps he had descended had led from the steep-roofed farmhouse. Suddenly the walls seemed to fall away ahead, and the stench and the wailing grew stronger. Willett saw that he had come upon a vast open space, so great that his torchlight would not carry across it; and as he advanced he encountered occasional stout pillars supporting the arches of the roof. After a time he reached a circle of pillars grouped like the monoliths of Stonehenge, with a large carved altar on a base of three steps in the centre; and so curious were the carvings on that altar that he approached to study them with his electric light. But when he saw what they were he shrank away shuddering, and did not stop to investigate the dark stains which discoloured the upper surface and had spread down the sides in occasional thin lines. Instead, he found the distant wall and traced it as it swept round in a gigantic circle perforated by occasional black doorways and indented by a myriad of shallow cells with iron gratings and wrist and ankle bonds on chains fastened to the stone of the concave rear masonry. These cells were empty, but still the horrible odour and the dismal moaning continued, more insistent now than ever, and seemingly varied at times by a sort of slippery thumping."


Subterranean exploration and Stygian catacombs are among my very favorite things- they tickle my imagination in a way I cannot express in words. This story went from being a massive chore laced with veins of Lovecraft's meandering prose and racist tendencies to being everything about his writing that made me fall in love with him in the first place, and I am very happy I stuck with it.




Playlist:

Chrome Canyon - Director
Ministry - The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste
Metallica - Kill 'Em All 
Curtis Harding - If Words Were Flowers
Mr. Bungle - The Night They Came Home
Mark Lanegan - Bubblegum
The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
Mark Lanegan - Straight Songs of Sorrow




Card:


This card is all about balance to me, and I pulled it right after texting with my friend Missi about finding balance. Her's is off today (this is Tuesday night), and so is mine. Between my lung issues and now an identity theft issue that came up last night, I definitely feel unmoored. But it's all about planting a solid foundation and using that to find a center of gravity. From there, things will unfold at a more controllable rate. 

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

RIP Mark Lanegan

 

Jesus. Wasn't expecting this yesterday. Talk about an iconic voice. Lanegan came to my attention the same way he did many people my age - via the Screaming Trees' "I Nearly Lost You" when it was featured on the seminal soundtrack album for Singles. I couldn't care less about the movie, but that soundtrack, it's one of the ages in my opinion. And "I Nearly Lost You" is one of the best tracks on an album of all great tracks. From there, I kind of got into the Trees, but I was always way more into Lanegan's solo and journeyman stuff he did after the band broke up. Personal favs have long been the work he did with Greg Duli on The Gutter Twins, his time in QOTSA, and of his 2004 solo record Bubblegum, which is another perfect album.

For an artist who left us such a wealth of material, I'm going to make him my featured artist for the remainder of the week (or the next 7 days, whichever comes first).

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Mark Lanegan sings Joy Division's Disorder for Charity


Posted on Peter Hook's youtube channel. Here's the verbiage:

"As part of Sweet Relief Musicians Fund's recent 'For The Crew' fundraising event, Hooky's son Jack teamed up with Mark Lanegan (Mark Lanegan Band/Screaming Trees), Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder and drummer Shane Graham for a special live version of the Joy Division classic 'Disorder'. All funds raised by this event went towards supporting out of work touring crews who have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Please consider making a donation if you are able to: https://givebutter.com/FORTHECREW

If you're in the US you can also text FORTHECREW to (202) 858-1233."


Watch:

I had yesterday off, so Tuesday night K and I had a bit of a marathon. Being that it was my birthday, I wanted to reconnect with what I've come to think of my 'power movies.' There are quite a few, but here's what I went with:

 

Followed by:

 

Rounded out by my second viewing of Ryan Gosling's gorgeous directorial debut in the last two months (with a third already scheduled):

This was a great night for me; it'd been longer than I realized since my last viewing of my favorite Horror film of the 00s. Kill List I'd only seen once before but it left such a huge impression on me I'd been planning a follow-up for years. Luckily, thanks to Anthony (Butcher) from The Horror Vision, I located a B-Region BR for $5 a few months ago, so now I can watch my favorite Ben Wheatley film whenever I want. And Lost River has just become one of my all-times. I seriously think about re-watching it every day. 

Every. Day.




Playlist:

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
Cocksure - TVMALSV
Etta James - Eponymous
Tennis System - Technicolour Blind
The Dead Milkmen - Welcome to the End of the World
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Abbatoir Blues
The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings
Genghis Tron - Dream Weapon 




Card:

I felt honored and ecstatic to do my first birthday pull from Missi's Raven Deck. I wasn't disappointed, either:

The presence of Boaz and Joachim are very positively charged images for me, one of the reasons this might be my favorite card from this deck. Plus, I've always considered a strong, mythical female presence as the closest thing to a supreme power in the cosmos of my life. Here, flanked by Soloman's pillars and a weird forest-derived rendition of the Tree of Life, I see nothing but the actualization of the processes I have put into place over the last several years. 

 

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Mark Lanegan - Skeleton Key



From Straight Songs of Sorrow, the new Mark Lanegan out May 8th via Heavenly Recordings. Pre-order HERE. Apparently, this record is "closely aligned" with Lanegan's forthcoming memoir Sing Backwards and Weep, out April 28th. Pre-order that HERE or HERE.

I can't wait to read that book!

**

Over the weekend, in the interest of starting something new and mostly unknown, K and I started Netflix's Black Spot, which comes to the US via France.


BLACK SPOT trailer season 1 vfsta from MEDIAWAN RIGHTS on Vimeo.

Although highly derivative of Twin Peaks, Dark, and True Detective Ssn 1, I'm enjoying Black Spot quite a bit; it borrows heavily from all three aforementioned shows, but is definitely its own thing. I'd definitely recommend it for fans of those shows and thrillers in general. I've seen references now to both this and Dark as belonging to a genre being called "Into the Woods," and although genre splitting and tagging can become tiresome, I kinda dig that. Suffice it to say, Black Spot is creepy, extremely well lit and well shot, and the voice they've given to the forest is mysterious and exciting.

**

This happened last night and I am still unable to completely wrap my head around it:

Apparently, in honor of Relapse's 30th Anniversary, they chose people who pre-ordered records in the past few months and randomly awarded them these nifty golden tickets. What's it good for?


Whoah. I don't know that I've won anything since 1991, when I called Chicago's seminal Rock statin The Loop and won 10 free lawn tickets to see Guns n' Roses on their Use Your Illusions tour. Of course, I never got to cash those in, because two nights before that Chicago show, Axl jumped off the stage in Cincinnati, OH and clocked a dude with a camera, subsequently landing in jail.

One reason why I've always disliked Axl.

Anyway, looks like I have a lot of vinyl coming my way this year. Very cool. Thank you Relapse Records and Happy 30th Anniversary - here's to 130 more (at least)!

**

Playlist:

The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium
Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Digipak)
Mol - Jord
Various Artists - The Void (OSM)
Frederic Kooshmanian - Black Spot (OSM)
Me and That Man - Songs of Love and Death
Burzum - Filosofem
Grimes - Miss Anthropocene
Greg Dulli - Random Desire
Various Artists - Garage Rock (Compilation used in Black Spot)
Slayer - Show No Mercy
Nothing - Guilty of Everything
The Gutter Twins - Adorata
Chris Isaak - Heart Shaped World
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Wasteland
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper

**

Card:


I've done a few pulls over the last few days that haven't been logged here, almost all of which have been Swords. The Nine of Swords - Cruelty has followed me a bit. Swords is the Suit I know the least in the Tarot, and this card in particular is, at a glance, always tempting to fear based on face value. However, from the Grimoire:

"The airy nature of Intellect, it is difficult for Swords to rest. Rabid analyzation and thinking in general can produce a loop that one becomes trapped in, the ultimate revelation that Nothing really leads Anywhere and in the end, there is Nothing."

Now, juxtapose this with a clarification card I drew and an interpretation begins to take shape.


Reality is breaking a bit, as Chuck Wendig's Wanderers escalates into a pandemic that cuts a massive swathe through the human population. Oh, and the disease's origin? Bats.

Can you see how that would start to saturate my reality? Also, it was the day after I started reading this book that the first really scary images from China began to appear back in January, and since, well, the arc of the book has been so parallel to the arc of real life (except, thus far, we're on a MUCH smaller scale) that I've had a lot of time to reflect on everything. Interestingly enough, long periods of time reflecting on everything, on all of our existence, leads to the ultimate understanding that Nothing is at the heart of it. Humanity holds itself up by the bootstraps, and although there are more good than bad humans - I think - if things go ugly, it doesn't really matter for the overall organism of the Planet Earth. In fact, it might be better for Her if we were to largely die off. I hope not, because there's a lot of humans I really like - including myself. But then, it's one thing to have an objective view of an extinction event, it's quite another to be able to conduct yourself that way.

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

2019: April 24th - New Mark Lanegan Band!



From the forthcoming record Somebody's Knocking, out October 18th on Heavenly Recordings, who have a wealth of information about the making of the album and some great quotes from Lanegan HERE. You can pre-order Somebody's Knocking HERE, though at this point it's only for digital. Hopefully when we get another track, there will be a vinyl link for pre-order as well.

Coincidentally, I dug Bubblegum out recently and played the hell out of it for a day or two. Such a great album. I didn't realize there was a new Lanegan Band record in the pipes. Excited.

**

The new Fangoria hits the shelves today. I have a copy on reserve at the Comic Bug, but after today I'm going to subscribe. There's a fantastic episode of the Shockwaves podcast from the last week or so with Fango editor-in-chief Phil Noble, where besides discussing all kinds of horror goodness, Noble talks about how, at this point, the revamped Fangoria is an expensive labor of love, and honestly, just spending the last few months with issue #2 I can see it. I make no bones about falling out of love with the previous incarnation of the magazine, which I thought Rue Morgue surpassed as the only 'need to read' horror zine on the stands some time in the early 00s. That said, Rue Morgue is still pretty damn cool, but Fangoria is back in a big way. Plus, between Fango and Ruck and Lark's Lazarus, I am LOVING the return of the prestige, quarterly format. So subscribing and supporting the mag at the source seems like the best thing to do if I want it to continue, which I do. You can subscribe too, if you click THIS link.



**

Playlist from 4/23:

Boy Harsher - Careful
Bauhaus - Vol. 1
Melvins - Houdini
Soundgarden - Super Unknown
Cocksure - K.K.E.P.
Cocksure - T.V.M.A.L.S.V.
Ritual Howls - Rendered Armor
John Carpenter & Alan Howarth - Prince of Darkness OST

No card today.