Isolation: Day 136

It was a real disappointment to learn that Shane Carruth - whose films Primer and Upstream Color are among the best films made in the last twenty years - is not a very cool person. I won't go into everything, but aside from numerous accounts of his assholery to everyday people, it appears that he may have made public certain aspects of his estranged relationship with director Amy Seimetz in a weird attempt to sabotage the release of her new film, She Dies Tomorrow. I'm not sure this is exactly what's going on, but regardless, I wanted to see this film before all this happened, now I'll be making it my Friday night watch next week when it drops on the 8th, just to help bump the film's numbers. Looks awesome, and seeing Jane Adams and Tunde Adebimpe from TVOTR is just too good to be true.

**

K and I caught up to the current episode of HBO's I'll Be Gone in the Dark last night. This show is a powerhouse of emotion and terror, and although I usually don't have the stomach or nerve for true crime - I prefer my horror to have at least a dash of supernatural so it doesn't color the world around me any darker than I already perceive it - this is one I would recommend to everyone. I've loved most of what Michelle McNamara's husband Patton Oswalt has done since someone turned me onto Feelin' Kinda Patton in the mid-00s. To see this side of his life, and the lengths Michelle McNamara went to hunting a decades-old killer, it's inspiring.



**

Playlist:

Primus - Frizzle Fry
Count Raven - Storm Warning
Angel Witch - '82 Revisited
Testament - Titans of Creation
Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey

**

Card:

Another pull from my beautiful new Raven Deck:

So I'll be paying more attention to my intuition.

New Swans Track!

New Swans! From the album Leaving Meaning, out October 25th; support a truly independent artist and pre-order a signed copy of the new album directly from Gira's Young God Records HERE.

Being that Swans founder/brainchild Michael Gira stated upon its release that 2016's The Glowing Man would be the final Swans album from my personal favorite incarnation of what is one of the longest-running, consistently changing bands ever, I am extremely curious to hear where this new album leads.

**

Friday night K and I saw Joker. I was on the fence with this one, but now that I've seen it there's no reason to even review my reservations. Joker is easily going to be in my top ten films of the year. Easily. If you have superhero/comic book franchise fatigue like I do, take it from me: don't let that keep you from seeing this one in the theaters. Nothing remotely 'comic book' about this film. The hype is real - annoying - but real. I'm the trailer below, but my advice is to not even watch that, just go see it. Wow. Phoenix is absolutely amazing. Makes me want to re-watch PTA's The Master, which I'll probably do in early November.

Oh, and I absolutely loved the juxtaposition/influence on Joker from Scorcese's King of Comedy, which I just watched again recently.



**

31 Days of Horror:

10/01: House of 1000 Corpses/31
10/02: Lords of Chaos
10/03: Creepshow Ep 2/Tales from the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 1
10/04: IT Chapter 2, AHS 1984 Ep. 3
10/05: Bliss/VFW
10/06: Halloween III: Season of the Witch/Night of the Creeps/The Fog
10/07: Halloween 2018
10/08: Hell House, LLC
10/09: Dance of the Dead (Tobe Hooper; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 3)
10/10: Creepshow Episode 3
10/11: Jenifer (Dario Argento; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 4)
10/12: Poltergeist/Phenomena

**

Playlist from the last few days:

Deftones - Koi No Yokan
1919 - The Complete Collection
Dr. John - Gris Gris
Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R
The Nukes - Why Things Burn
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F#A# (Infinity)
Various - Joker Soundtrack (Playlist)
Bauhaus - The Sky's Gone Out
Ritual Howls - Their Body
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Turn Pale - Kill the Lights

**

Card of the day:

Direct reference to an under-developed aspect of my outline for Shadow Play Book Two. Duly noted.

2019: January 8th - New Sharon Van Etten!

From her forthcoming album Remind Me Tomorrow, which Jagjaguwar drops on the 18th, same day as the new Thirsty Crows record. Pre-order HERE.

I've fallen back on Gang of Four's Return the Gift pretty hard. I know most folks do not agree with me on this, but I will take the 2012, re-recorded versions of all these classic Gang of Four songs over their originals any day. Part of this is probably because I discovered Gang of Four waaaaay after the fact - early 00s - and only ever knew the album That's Entertainment as one of their albums, i.e. a collection of songs fit together as an overall work, and never knew it that well to begin with. I don't want to belabor the point, but here's an A and B of my favorite song on an album that is pretty much full of "favorite songs."

1982:



And the 2012 version:



I didn't live and love with this original version - from the album Songs of the Free - so I don't have a horse in that race. I just think the up-tempo, almost Pop approach and the slamming recording of the '12 version is a much better representation of what the band seemed to be going for with the song.

The Arrow Video release of Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator contains a feature-length, making-of documentary titled Re-Animator Resurrectus. I can't recommend this supplemental feature enough! I've always loved Re-Animator as one of the stalwart classics of the Horror genre, and more specifically the 80s era of the Horror genre, but this doc has really given me an even deeper appreciation for the film. Somehow I never realized that Re-Animator was Gordon's Hollywood film. The doc talks to everyone: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Bruce Abbot, David Gale... everyone! And of course there's plenty of screen time with Gordon and Brian Yuzna, and a lot of frank discussion about how to adequately adapt  H.P. Lovecraft to film and make it work.

There's a bunch of other great interview extras on the disc (I have the one-disc version), and all of it really opened the film up for me. Can't wait to watch it again.

Playlist from 1/07:

Ben Frost - By the Throat
Nick Lowe - Jesus of Cool
Arctic Monkeys - No. 1 Party Anthem
Gang of Four - I Love a Man in Uniform (2012)
Foster the People - Life on the Nickel
Self - What a Fool Believes
Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
Barry Adamson - Oedipus Schmoedipus
U2 - War
Ben Frost - Aurora

Card of the day:

This, I believe, is a direct reference to the final pages of my book, which despite a somewhat frustrating session yesterday brought on by sheer exhaustion from a very physical day at work, is still coming along swimmingly.

2018: June 21st

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 HERE and 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.

2018: June 18th - New Music from Nothing

Wow! There's a new Nothing record coming soon.



Just realized that Season 5 of Orphan Black hit Prime - finally get to finish one of the best series I've seen.

Playlist from 6/17:
Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
Venue - Desireena
Guns and Roses - Appetite for Destruction
Cocksure - KKEP
Nothing - Guilty of Everything
Secret Chiefs 3 - Traditionalists -Le Mani DestreRecise Degli Ultimi Uomini

Card of the day:

Union. Duality. Harmony within. Uniting opposites or complimentary aspects. I'm not entirely sure how any of this applies to me currently; what I've listed is very surface reading, so I could dig a lot deeper. Not on a Monday, though.

2018: May 17th 6:59 AM

Yesterday I dug out Eagulls' second album, Ullages, for the first time in quite a while. I really liked the album when it came out, but it was somewhat the wrong time for me to fully invest in it - I was still riding too high on the frenetic burst of their debut, and the dour vibe, while glorious, was perhaps too much of a downer at the time. Enjoying sadness can be tricky, and definitely requires a particular mindset; without that mindset there is no enjoyment, only Zoul. I mean, there isn't a proper enjoyment, more of a sulking. For me at least.

I stuck to it though, and it helped me process the tracks in a different context when I saw the band live about a month after Ullages came out; the band absolutely killed it, and all the new songs sounded fantastic, intermixed with tracks from the first record to inject a bit of pep and throb amidst the otherwise seriously downtempo tone. Going back to the record now, after some time away and inherent expectations have faded, I'm falling into the sullen British craft of the record and it feels exquisite.

Playlist from yesterday:

Jamiroquai - Return of the Space Cowboy
Eagulls - Eponymous
The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium
Eagulls - Ullages
Nachtmystium - Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. 2
Nachtmystium - Silencing Machine

Card of the day:

From the Grimoire, "Overcoming opposites - attraction. Recognizing what belongs together - union."

Check. A confirmation that K and I need to carve out a little more time together, as of late it's been difficult, with her Mom fully moved in and my writing constantly. Her birthday is tomorrow, and I intend to make this a very special weekend.