2018: August 27th

My favorite song of the year, thus far. And the entire album is, after an intense day of listening to almost nothing but, clocking in at #2 of the year, right behind Zeal and Ardor's Stranger Fruit. Another great year for music (if you know where to look).

Finished Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs. Solid four stars. I'm still irked by some of the pacing manipulations, but that's a small thing. The end speeds by and is excellently paced. I definitely learned a thing or two here. Next up:

Playlist from 8/26:

Etta James - Second Time Around
Louvin Brothers - Satan is Real (vinyl - thanks Mr. Brown!)
Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog
The Damage Manual - >1
David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
The Body - I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer

Card of the day:

And yeah, my lust of result is interfering in my work process. So I'm at my CBTL trying to fix that now.

2018: August 21st

Really diving into all the back catalogue material I'd missed from Chris Connelly lately. Some of these I'll be ordering on vinyl, like 2011's Artificial Madness. The album runs a gamut of industrial-influenced tunes to more melodic but still fuzzy numbers like this one. Such a gorgeous track.

About 200 pages into the Silence of the Lambs. It's been solid from the start, however some of the chapter stops are so forced in order to adhere to a 'page-turner' profile I've rolled an eye or two. Still, better short than over for this kind of book and the momentum it establishes early on. I can't wait to watch the movie again after I finish; it's been years, as despite my love of horror, the serial killer genre, especially when executed this well, is one that burrows too deep under my skin for me to partake of often.

NCBD tomorrow! Super excited for the return of Days of Hate and the second issue of Die! Die! Die! My recent re-read of Nameless stoked the flames of my Chris Burnham love, so this arrives just in time.

Playlist from 8/20:

Fugazi - Steady Diet of Nothing
Vaguess - Guilt Ring
The Body - I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer
Algiers - Eponymous
Chris Connelly - Artificial Madness
Shostakovich - Symphonies Nos. 5 And 9
Glenn Gould - Goldberg Variations

Card of the day:

Focus on Earthly, pragmatic considerations. Contemplation and fortification, exactly what I'm working on at the moment in terms of my writing. I'll have a big one in a month or two, and I am excited.

2018: August 10th - NEW HIGH ON FIRE

Fuck. Yes. They're not reinventing the wheel, and I don't care. Pre-order HERE from Napalm Records for an October 5th release.

Finished Dark Moon Books' excellent collection, Exploring Dark Short Fiction #2: A Primer to Kaaron Warren. Weeeelll worth your time. Jumped right into the first of two novels I'm reading for writing homework - Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. Excellent so far, not that I didn't expect exactly that. I'm going to read that and, ahem, James Patterson's Along Came A Spider, a book I'm not looking forward to as much, though I'm sure it will be a more than adequate page-turner. The idea here is for the three books Keller and I have planned to pen together, I'm looking at creating a fusion of the thriller, less-is-more page-turner style and more more literary leanings. I tend to avoid page-turners, so I'm reading what Keller has suggested are two examples of the style that are worth reading.

Playlist from yesterday:

Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini
Tennis System - Pain EP
The Body - I Have
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Mstislav Rostropovich - The 1967 Carnegie Hall Marathon (excerpts):
       Concerto for Violin & Cello in A Minor
       Suite for Cello & Chamber Orchestra
Christine - Sam Was Here OST
Christine - Brand New Furies
Goblin - Buio Omega

No card today.

New Swans Track - A Little God in My Hands

I'll admit, until 2012's The Seer I never had as strong an affection for a Swans record. Granted, there weren't a lot of their albums I knew, primarily because, and this may sound a little goofy, but at some point ten years ago or so I purchased the reissue of Cop/Young God/Greed/Holy Money and honestly, it scares me to this day. There is a malevolence that hangs over that record that really gets under my skin. I liken it to watching Silence of the Lambs - Lambs is an amazing piece of cinema that I love just for its craft, but the actual tone of the film - while perfect for the story - puts me in touch with one of the darker, more perverse nooks of the human psyche and I simply cannot go there very often. The same is true of SE7EN, which I love even more for its craft but which tends to absolutely demolish me, each one of my meager three viewings of that particular film sending me on a spiral of paranoid, hate and frustration that takes a few days to recover from. Now, the fact that filmmakers could do that to me with images and sound on celluloid either means I take movies waaaay too seriously or that they are extremely powerful examples of the art; I tend to interpret this as the latter but also know in my heart that it is actually more of a combination of both. The same is true of that early Swans stuff. I sought it out because I had read what an influence they were on Justin K. Broadrick and upon initial listening attempts to Cop/Young God/Greed/Holy Money I saw the influence, but I also caught a glimpse of a hell that seared my psyche and thus have only sporadically gone back to make new attempts at desensitizing myself enough to fully embrace those records.

And then there's the question if I should try to desensitize myself, but I'll leave that to a later day.

All that said Michael Gira and contributors have definitely refined the band with age. Despite my emotional handicap to the old music I've kept up on Swans as a cultural cornerstone and have ear marked the many iterations the group has gone through over the years. The Seer was a record that didn't make my best of list in 2012 because I didn't hear it until the very first days of 2013 and upon hearing it immediately thought that it would probably have ranked in at #2 on that just-published list at the time. The Seer is... all encompassing; a micro-verse in a record's form and something of a journey that I like taking on a somewhat regular basis. These are no longer the bowels of hell Swans take me to, merely some of the more... colorful suburbs of those fantastic realms.

According to the mighty Brooklyn Vegan Swans newest record, To Be Kind, is out on May 13th via Young God. I'll definitely not be waiting until January, 2015 to purchase it.