Showing posts with label Transmissions After Zero. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Transmissions After Zero. Show all posts

Friday, February 17, 2023

Brainiac - Smothered Inside

 

Mr. Brown recently set me up with a vinyl copy of The Predator Nominate, a newly published "lost" demo from Dayton, Ohio legends Brainiac. If you don't know the Brainiac story, it's one of the saddest in 90s indie rock. A fantastic band cut down right as they began achieving the status they so greatly deserved when their vocalist/guitarist/keyboard/chief songwriter died in an automobile accident. Since the tragedy in 1997, members have gone on to start Enon, Model/Actress, Shesus, and probably about another dozen bands I'm forgetting at the moment. Recently, following the Transmissions after Zero documentary, those surviving members released a small cache of "Basement tapes," which appears to be book-ended by this, the EP that, if I understand it correctly, would have followed their final EP, Electroshock for President. Electroshock has always filled me with a great melancholy - hearing the direction the band was headed excites the mind to what would lie ahead. Now, we get a glimpse, and it's a pleasure to breeze through these nine tracks and think about how they might have heard if the band could have finished. 

 RIP Tim Taylor, alongside The Jesus Lizard, Brainiac was probably my favorite 90s band from that independent scene. 




Watch:



Super bummed to have finally got around to watching Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese's 1899 on Netflix, only to find out the streaming service canceled it.


Perhaps not quite as riveting as the creators' previous Netflix show Dark, which is just about the best time travel narrative I've ever encountered, 1899 had a lot of elements recognizable as having come from the same minds as Dark, but with a pretty grandiose SciFi leverage at its core. Big cliffhanger and we're getting nothing else. Remember when Netflix first started the streaming revolution and they said they'd bring back any popular canceled show from the last few years? Well, now they seem to cancel at the drop of a hat. I'm hoping many Odar and Friese do what Mike Flanagan did after NF canceled his Midnight Club and exit the company in search of a better deal elsewhere. 




Playlist:

Brainiac - The Predator Nominate
The Police - Outlandos D'Amour
Talking Heads - Fear of Music
Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
Iress - Prey
Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous
Carpenter Brut - Leather Terror
Code Orange - Underneath
David Bowie - Diamond Dogs
David Bowie - PinUps
Metallica - Kill 'Em All
Fvnerals - Let The Earth Be Silent
Telekinetic Yeti - Primordial
Kermit Ruffins and the Rebirth Brass Band - Throwback




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.


A slightly darker-than-normal shot, so apologies. In a bit of a hurry this morning as I pound black coffee and prepare to drive 6.5 hours up to a cabin in the woods where I will spend a blissfully intoxicated weekend with three of my oldest friends. Now, if one of them can just help me translate passages from this book I found at an old antique shop...

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Isolation: Day 116 - Transmissions After Zero



Over the weekend, I finally got a chance to check out the Brainiac Doc that's now streaming on Prime. Transmissions After Zero is a fantastic slice of Midwest, indie rock history. I'll never forget the day Mr. Brown first played me Brainiac's Bonsai Superstar. The vocals reminded me of a cross between Marilyn Manson and Adam Sandler's Excited Southerner character (NOTE: This was before Sandler had become an affront to good taste). The music too, especially the guitars, hit the sweet spot between melodic and completely angular and dissonant.



I love all Brainiac's records, and the death of Mr. Taylor was one of the most tragic moments of 90s music history. This doc 100% does both Taylor and the band's legacy justice.

**

Another flick I watched over this past weekend is Jason Lei Howden's Guns Akimbo. Howden has already earned a place in heaven for his 2015 Heavy Metal possession flick Deathgasm, and now this? Akimbo is freakin' nuts; the absolute heir to the Crank series' throne for meth-level madness. Samara Weaving can do no wrong in my eyes at the moment, and Radcliffe gives a great performance as Miles whose punishment for being a worthless internet troll is to have two guns bolted through his palms and made to play in an underground death match internet series. Sound insane? It is:



**

Playlist:

Lustmord - Hobart
Battle Tapes - Sweatshop Boys EP
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Zombi - Shape Shift
Brainiac - Smack Bunny Baby
Van Halen - Eponymous
Brainiac - Bonsai Superstar
Brainiac - Hissing Prigs in Static Courture

**

Card:


Everything needs time and consideration. This dovetails nicely with my early morning realization that the short story I've been wrestling with off and on for over a year now, isn't working out the way I want it to because I've been trying to shoehorn a 10K words at least into under 6K. Accepting this and re-approaching it from that perspective, things may turn out better.


Monday, January 21, 2019

2019: January 21st



A little Gordon Lightfoot to start out the day.

And then this! This is so close! I only just found out about this forthcoming documentary on the band Brainiac last month, but it feels like I've now been waiting for it forever.




Playlist from 1/19:

Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest
Plague Bringer - Life Songs in a Land of Death
Thou - Summit

Playlist from 1/20:

Calexico - Even My Sure Things Fall Through
Gordon Lightfoot - Gord's Gold

Card of the day:


The Airy aspect of Air, so the intellect of intellect, in a manner of speaking. Not sure how to apply this. The book is finished, and I've already read the first act to K. It feels GOOD. Little rough spots here and there, but nothing that can't be shored up as we go through it. I'll have to figure out if this card pertains to that, or the new project I've begun to brainstorm.