Sunday, October 31, 2010

Afternoon???


Morning?

Afternoon?

The only reason I know its not night is the sun is out, otherwise who knows.

Hard to get the old brain working right now, I'm really just writing because I've found if I write first thing when I wake up I have an easier time doing it throughout the day. I know thats the kind of thing you always read in writing technique books, or teachers tell you and it seems like, well not necessarily like a falsohood, but it seems like it doesn't really add up. At least it always did to me. But yeah, either its become true as I've gotten older and matured as a writer (after all, writing is now my main source of artistic expression, being 3k miles away from all the people I used to make music with) or, more likely is that it has been true all along and I've just been too stubborn to see it.

I'm listening to Cypress Hill III: Temples of Boom. After I added the icon below and looked at the release date I was struck by a strange synchronicity. Released Halloween, '95. I got off work at 4AM last night/this morning and spent the following 4 hours working on one of my scripts and drinking Sierra Nevada, all the while listening to Alice In Chains eponymous final album, reveling in its dark and twisted glory. Guess what? Also released in 1995. That was a rich time creatively for the music industry in general. Grunge as a buzz word was dying, but the truly great bands that had gotten umbrella-ed under the term had evolved anyway. Alice was, in my opinion, the best of them. Alot of people didn't like the '3-legged dog album' but from the first time I heard it I was in love. I mean, Dirt is an undisputed masterpiece, but on that final album, the next album proper after Dirt, things had worsened for Layne Staley and you could hear the dark and twisted rings of his soul come through in the music. People I knew complained of his lack of effort with the lyrical content of the album (case in point always being 'Nothin' Song') but I have always thought they were great, really showing how his own path had gotten so disembodied and frightening, right down to the horrors of the simplest tasks of everyday life (and here I'll use others' bane, the aforementioned 'Nothin' Song' to illustrate. Fear of interacting with his cat to the point that he may kill it, whether maliciously or out of dazed neglect I don't know, but its fucking disturbing regardless).

Now, Temples of Boom is, to me, the Hill's Masterpiece. Fuck what the world calls goth, this is potentially more goth than what is grouped beneath that for the most part misleading label. Released on Halloween no less! What hip-hop artist does that? I mean, and this album was made to freak people out. And it works. At the time it came out I was smoking pot all the time and I remember the first time I listened to this it virtually left me physically ill. Disturbed. The tones and timbres are all dark and ethereal; haunting organs hang in the air like blood red velvet curtains, low end bass creeps like goblins stalking you in a rain-soaked alley, disonate piano chords strike and ebb, strike and ebb, like a knife brandished for murder. And then there's B-Real's stark, raw vocal attack. Intense, violent and frankly, unnerving. When he sings about having illusions and then goes into the violence of Boom Biddy Bye Bye you get the very real impression that this guy is living in a very different place then most others who rap about partyin' and violence - everyone else seems a bit too boisterous and outlined to be real. But B-Real, well, it sounds like the demons he exorcises and infects his listeners' world view with are indeed real, and just possibly waiting around the next corner...

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

"In a world where new genres unfold like the labrythine corridors of dreams...'

Really, I am losing my ability to even process the 'genre' aggregate machine that now inhabits most of our brains. New finds:

Cuddle Core? Sounds like Bjork singing for a Sesame Street-sponsored version of DDR:



Witch House, aka Ghost Wave, aka Chill Wave, aka Drag, aka whatever; I like some of this and am not completely against the idea of 'genre-izing' it with an atmosphere setting term like Witch House, but this proliferation of names is a bit hoighty-toighty for something that is essentially a bedroom-version of what My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult did before they took the suck pill (ie just after Confessions of a Knife, which is their masterpiece. I'll use a Salem track here because they seem to be the progenitors, even if all their stuff is starting to sound the same to me.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Burial & Kode9 Throw a Farewell Mix For Radio 1 Mainstay





http://www.mediafire.com/?t09r1c7swgxctpu

Mary Anne Hobbs, BBC Radio 1 herald of many of the experimental music we enjoy today as music rats broadcast for the final on Thursday, September 9th. For the broadcast Hobbs had the enigmatic Burial, enigma of the electronic world, and Scottish maestro Kode9 mix/remix tracks for about 35 minutes. Link above. Great stuff.

Cheers to a fellow music explorer.


Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Peter V. Brett's The Warded Man

What can I say, I'm a gluttonous reader. I read constantly, and while I am always looking for new authors to love (and when I find them I love the hell out of them and espouse their virtues to everyone that will listen) I do not woo easily. Since starting work at the bookstore I have become what I commonly refer to as a Fiction/Lit snob.

I love fiction, but mostly the kind of stuff that does not end up in a genre section.

I didn't mean for this to happen. Quite the contrary. I've always loved the idea of Science Fiction, Fantasy and especially Horror. Unfortunately though a lot of the stuff that ends up in those sections is written specifically to be in those sections. Target Market. So over the last couple years I've augmented my bouts of quantum physics and the Occult with David Foster Wallace, Alex Garland, Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk and more and more what I find in the Fiction/Lit section. I always buy the new China Mieville the day it comes out, and some customers have introduced me to authors such as Glenn Cook, but SciFi/Fantasy always seems so far away. And I was just about to begin re-reading Martin Amis' brilliant London Fields (for the first time in 10 years) the other day when into my store walked Peter V. Brett and his agent.

I didn't know Mr. Brett's work. When he came in and asked to sign copies of his new book I had no idea what The Desert Spear was at first. Then he asked the magic question and a conversation began between us.

Mr. Brett: "Do you read fantasy?"

Me: "Actually, I hate most fantasy."

Now, this is my knee-jerk response. I wasn't doing it to wind the man up, I just cannot mask the intolerance I hold for all of those wannabe Tolkiens that fill that damn section with all manner of the derivations of Tolkien's frankly over-rated formula. What formula, you ask?

1 Part dragons
1 Part Knights
1 Part Orcs/Giants/Elves
1 Part Chivalry

You get the idea.

No fucking thank you. And the whole Medieval thing... it's fine if it's sincere but somehow it always just feels like what is expected. And maybe that's my biggest beef with these genres - a lot of the authors working within them seem to write to the expectations of the genre fans. Like metal heads afraid to lose the double-bass kick drum or actually sing instead of screech and howl, genre writers can follow a formula and be safe because there's enough people who can't stop trying to relive the way they felt when they first read Tolkien.

Well, I am happy to say that as much of an arsehead as I may have come off as to Mr. Brett and his agent, he didn't give up on me. He told me his stuff was fantasy, apocalyptic to an end, but also not what I would call Tolkien-esque.

"In my books the end of the world is caused by demons."

Demons... I have to admit, he had me. This seemed like such a good idea. It has horrific potential, yet also a flair of the genre pomp. The struggles of the remaining few in a world otherwise dead, fighting to survive, forced back into the old ways, not remembering the age of science and progress. Sort of like Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which I read growing up and LOVE.

Mr. Brett and his agent were in a hurry, on their way to a con out of the states, but something about him really piqued my interest. Number one both were damn nice guys, and number two, as readers of this blog and more specifically my chud.com Opinionated Bastard blog will no doubt know, despite appearances I am not a pessimist. I'm always looking to Love something new. On their way out Mr. Brett handed me a copy of his first novel, The Warded Man (turns out once I saw the cover I remembered I'd sold all three of the HC's of The Desert Spear several days before and was waiting for a replenishment shipment) and as soon as I went to lunch I cracked that fucker open and you know what?

It's really, really good. Really.

Mr. Brett's world is dark and dangerous; feudal and tainted by humanity's desperate attempts to survive. It's hardworking and occasionally joyful but most of all it is difficult. Difficult because every night when the sun goes down demons rise from the bowels of the land and massacre every living thing they can get their talons on. And this isn't just a scenic setting. Nope. Mr. Brett uses the harsh realities of this world to shape some really well-written and memorable characters (Arlen!!!) and 160 pages in I LOVE THIS BOOK!!!

Sorry Martin Amis, Keith Talent and the boys will have to wait...

Sunday, August 22, 2010

"Something Trying To Tell You Someone..."


I'd been meaning to do it for quite some time, I even began several quickly-aborted attempts. However after burning through Grant Morrison's mind-bending run on the Batman titles recently I found myself in an interesting synesthetic-crossroads: my aural leanings coalesced with my thirst for more comics, more old school Vertigo comics and I found myself popping in Meat Is Murder by The Smiths and opening the first issue of Grant Morrison's Gothic storyline that ran waaay back in 1990 in then third monthly bat-book Legends of the Dark Knight. I had only recently begun to expect that these two works, both on the surface intended for different senses, would work together in a very symbiotic relationship. The Headmaster's Ritual a perfect audio-accompaniment to following a young Bruce Wayne into the hellish inner-workings of an upstate New York British-style private school, the echoes of Morrissey's musings on life and loss the perfect condiment for the unraveling of an ancient, heretical plot that would, in retrospect, seem far more Vertigo than regular DCU. After Gothic I needed more. Naturally I moved toward the place on my shelf where Morrison's award-winning Arkham Asylum sat. Then I stopped myself. I changed discs to The Queen Is Dead and cracked the spine of Neil Gaiman's Preludes and Nocturnes and vowed I wasn't coming up for air until I'd finally re-read the entire Sandman series, something I'd never done before. I wasn't sure what to expect exactly, this time through with The Smiths as my guide, but I knew I was bound to unearth even more fleeting associations and hidden messages, as I realized Sandman is most definitely the work of a Smiths fan.

...................

I'm relatively new to Smiths-obsession land. Not quite a year ago I tumbled head over heels into addiction after flirting with fandom for the better part of a decade but never quite moving beyond the admittedly lame, 'yeah, How Soon Is Now is great and everything else I've heard is pretty cool too...' Then I got it. I don't really know what exactly happened to cause me to 'get it', but I did. I'm sure it had something to do with the fact that I suddenly found myself around their music a lot more because new co-workers played them obsessively. But through repetition the tunes began to work their magick on me. I asked to rip a disc or two*. I received Meat Is Murder. I began to explore...

Also around this time a good friend of mine who had taken a leave of absence from work to deal with 'health issues' resurfaced – on his death bed. I clung to Morrissey and the boys for bitter support as my friend withered away, drifting in and out of contact with those who would eventually inform me of his death. I'd lost a lot of friends before, but something about this one... it was very difficult in what felt like a decidedly more profound way. I can remember the symbiotic relationship the lyrics to The Joke Isn't Funny Anymore's refrain developed to my own interaction with and interpretation of Death. The shimmering guitars and lilting bass drifted over the entrancing drums as Morrissey's voice echoed the perfect arrangement of langual dress for an archetypal human experience/fear/event. And somewhere in it all I thought of Neil Gaiman's Sandman and realized that I had heard this music before. That I had seen, as a third person voyeur, this magnificent sorrow somewhere else.

This was because Neil Gaiman had no doubt heard it too; been a massive fan most likely, as had Grant Morrison, maybe Jamie Delano – the old Vertigo crew. I realized that just as I had experienced a synesthetic-rush with The Cure and Joy Division when reading Sandman back in high school, or James O'Barr's The Crow, or Hellblazer, or Swamp Thing, the same was happening now with The Smiths as a new lens to reveal hidden facets to these stories from the post-Reagan/Thatcher era - the time of AIDS and Looming Nuclear Obliteration and MDMA. I was a kid in the 80's so I didn't quite get what was going on – for many years afterward the 80's was a decade best left in the past. This was because as a kid my associations with it were hyper color clothes and dana carvey, lisa lisa & cult jam and other such atrocities that I was exposed to as a pre-teen without an older sibling, left to establish my tastes on my own, sifting through the garbage spoon-fed to the masses on the radio and tv, until I was first able to pick up the trail that led me to any kind of an 'underground'. I didn't find The Smiths, or The Cure or any thing else like them until high school. My earliest underground was metallica and the satan-streaked roads of heavy metal, long since sullied and exposed for the douche baggery that it was (for the most part). But I eventually found this stuff and realistically it was because of its influence on comics and comics influence on me.

Because I had grown up with comics it was there that I did my first experimenting. Even while still imbibing the music of the masses I was slowly breaking away from the GIJOE and X-men components of my comic book taste, my mom often waiting outside Heroland comics in Worth, Illinois where some days I would spend over an hour browsing – looking for something new, something I'd not yet experienced. Vertigo as a housing apparatus for the darker tales was still a few years off and I remember titles like Watchman and Stray Toasters teasing me with dark, jagged art the likes of which I was not yet experienced enough to appreciate (fuck you rob liefield) but nonetheless still endlessly enthralled with. Not enthralled enough to fork out the $3.50 or whatever cover price the 'Prestige Format' books commanded then ($10 allowance? $5? I don't remember but it had to be stretched in that comic shop and as such risks were rarely taken in those days). In retrospect I believe it was a few years later when the Batman books first brought me into my appreciation of that darker, more urban tone that I am still obsessed with today. Around the release of that first Tim Burton Batman film DC really ramped up the output, leading up to the hullabaloo of the film with many one-shots and Prestige releases, many portraying an increasingly darker atmosphere for the character. You can say this began in 1986 with Frank Miller's classic Dark Knight Returns, but from there we received Batman: The Cult, Gotham By Gaslight, Morrison's Arkham Asylum and soon after (and to tie this back around to the beginning of the post) Morrison's Gothic, originally published in Legends of the Dark Knight issues 6-10.

This was a story I read monthly, and re-read over and over again for years. To this day I believe it is the best Batman story in existence as well as the template, in my own personality, that flipped the switch and suddenly made me understand something about the potential of comic books as a medium, not just superhero exploits or serialized adventures. Gothic is every bit the epic Gothic Romance it shadows; a literary work of visual art that takes one of the most iconic American superhero characters and transmutes him into an occult figure worthy of Marlowe, Blackwood, Chandler or William Hope Hodgson. Whats more, Klaus Janson's art was the perfect template for me to perceive comic art as something more than explosive, rippling perfection. There is a scratchiness to Janson's art, especially in Gothic, that serves to create a darker, more urban and horrific sense of ambiguity that allows the reader's own nightmarish associations of fear to creep in and finish the pictures for them. You don't need everything blue-lined and outlined and rendered shiny and perfect. Leave that to traditional comic narratives. Janson's art, like that of The Sandman's Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg and later Kelley Jones, is rough and dark because to a degree it carries with it that unfinished nature that helps it haunt you.

And that's what I found, last Autumn as my friend was dying and my own mortality seemed ever-so-much more impending, that The Smiths music does.

It haunts.

And suddenly I understood all of those Smiths and Morrissey obsessives - the people who only listened to The Smiths in High School (because a lot of them were probably exposed to it at developmentally difficult times by older siblings); the folks at the Morrissey conventions; the punks in 1989 that I just didn't understand as they popped Naked Raygun out of the cassette deck and fired up Louder Than Bombs. They were haunted.

And now I am too. And I have a lot of wonderfully creative people to thank for it. Thank You Neil Gaiman. Thank You Steven Patrick Morrissey. Thank you Robert Smith, Ian Curtis, Simon and Klaus Janson, John Ridgway and Jamie Delano and all of the other creators that established that beautifully dark world I can still evoke with the right combination of your music and pictures, words and melodies.

Most of all I am moved to say thank you to my mom and dad, for waiting so patiently all those evenings I spent hours investigating what else the comic shop had to offer besides Adamantium claws and Cobra Officers**.

..................

* I only had The Queen is Dead and Rank, which I'd purchased in the earlier part of the previous decade during the period of two ro three years where I worked an ongoing and fairly elaborate Magickal Ritual that entailed my buying two records a week as an offering to the Music Industry as a God, Egregore, whatever. The end result of that ritual is still, to some degree, in question.

** Not that there's anything wrong with Cobra.