One of the strangest things I've ever heard. Thanks to the Whitechapelian who posted this:



I remember this band as having that 'everybody walk the dinosaur' song in the late 80's. What happened?

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...

The Ocean Collective

Awesome fucking band from Germany. This video is amazing.

"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.

The Many Faces of Greg Duli

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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.

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...