Over the span of a month, Adam Savage designed and built an accurate replica of the hedge maze architectural model from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. (h/t Yvan)
MA textile student Zsanett Szirmay’s project “Soundweaving” combines the borderlands of folk art, design and music by way of Hungarian and Transylvanian embroidery designs set to music. (h/t Lisa)
Ajuma – a grieving widow – is desperate to stop her recurring nightmares. In an effort to end them once and for all, she explores a forgotten fairytale remedy that leads her to unexpected discoveries. To Catch A Dream is The NEST Collective’s second fashion film project in collaboration with Chico Leco.
Fashion Week Fall 2015! Giles Deacon (top row) and dramatic dark lord Gareth Pugh (bottom row) are my current favorites. I am pretending Gareth Pugh was inspired by Garth Ennis’ CROSSED series. Heh.
Time for a trip to Tokyo! First on the agenda: the Tokyo Ghost Bar. Then we shall stay the night at the Godzilla hotel. Good times! すごい!
And the meek shall inherit Pawnee. I’ve not watched Parks and Rec for a while, but this article made me a little teary. I’m going to make it a point to binge on the last two seasons sometime soon. The meek and the farty, indeed.
For your weekend listening: A new playlist partially inspired by Daphne Du Maurier’s Novelette ‘The Birds’. Also, because I have somehow collected a lot of songs about birds.
Track list:
Red Bird, Arborea | A Common Bird, Jess Hill | Bird in the Snow, Haruko | Blue Bird, Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions | Bird of Prey, Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys | The Birds They Circle, Karen Elson | Bird in My Window, Roadkill Ghost Choir | sparrow falls, Woven Hand | Mockingbirds, Mark Lanegan | Flightless Bird, American Mouth Iron and Wine | Two Birds, Regina Spektor | The Arctic Tern, John Zainea and the Mania
A willy-nilly hodgepodge of current ear noises.
{title courtesy our favorite mean girl, Karl Lagerfeld}
Track list:
What Kind Of Man, Florence + The Machine | Peregrine, Leah Mason | Leaf Off The Cave, Jose Gonzalez | Mount The Air, The Unthanks | The Bird, Kathryn Joseph | Black Sun, Death Cab For Cutie | Natalie Prass, Bird of Prey | Make You Better, The Decemberists | Blackbirds (featuring Gretchen Peters), Ben Glover | “Back, Baby”, Jessica Pratt | Hide From The Sun, GOAT | Bowline, Snow Ghosts
From end of life celebrations, to fatalistic revelations, to mournful lamentations, there are myriad ways in which music gives death, and the dead, a voice. Songs of the sighs of a sorrowful widow, the heartfelt promises to a friend on their deathbed, the haunting whispers of a ghost to it’s murderer – music is one of the most profound ways we can express or respond to the end of life experience.
The following playlist is comprised of women who have constructed and composed aural memento mori in this regard. As humans, we occupy a unique place in the saga of mortality, and these women in particular offer illuminating perspectives on the subject as it relates to the afterlife, funerals & wakes, ancestral memories, etc.
There are, of course, songs not included here which you might have on your own personal “Death and the Maiden” playlist – there is so much fantastically beautiful, heartbreaking, music to choose from that taps into our experiences with death and dying, and so your results may vary! Music is intensely personal and so, this list reflects the author’s own experiences. Be sure to comment on the Death and the Maiden blog with your own suggestions or post a link to your personal playlist as well!
O Death Jen Titus // Waiting Around to Die The Be Good Tanyas // Born To Die Lana Del Rey // Harmonica Anna von Hausswolff // Cross Bones Style Cat Power // Wakes Nina Nastasia // Sleeping Dead Emily Jane White // Caleb Meyer Gillian Welch // Fancy Funeral Lucinda Williams // Long Ride Home Patty Griffin //Family Dar Williams // Buried in Teeth Mariee Sioux // The Dirt Mirel Wagner // Into Dust Mazzy Star // Herb Girls Of Birkenau Rasputina // Eulogy La Vampires & Zola Jesus // Gallows Cocorosie // A Lily For The Spectre Stephanie Dosen // White Fire Angel Olsen // Graveyard Feist // Suzanne & I Anna Calvi // Many Funerals Eisley // Happy Phantom Tori Amos
Look at these sassy beelzebroads! Though the imagery might lead you to believe this is a film about Hell’s Elite “cackling diabolically over the latest batch of the damned”, it is but a story of common gold diggers and larceny. (h/t Cabinet of Curiosities)
OSMO is an experiment in totally transforming the experience of an awkward public space into something of wonder and tranquility.
VIDEO LUST: moments of romantic obsession for video memories of the past. “…a plethora of horror, fantasy and sci-fi soundtracks that work magically together. This mix arrives right on time for Valentine’s Day and should be used to guide you in whatever direction your night takes on the 14th.” (via)
Adult Wednesday Adams vs. Catcallers. I love you, Adult Wednesday Adams. (via Jon)
“What Kind Of Man” the first video from Florence + The Machine’s new album, ‘How Big How Blue How Beautiful’. It is a heavy one; frighteningly intense and strangely cathartic, and brimming with that strange, dazzling energy unique to this lady. I think I love it.
I’ve a habit of constantly hunting down new music, new sounds, new treats for my ears. If I am not listening to something new, I feel like I am stagnating, suffocating. I suppose it’s not really fair to all the great old stuff I like (as in …older than last week) because I never listen to the same thing twice anymore! Oh well, there are worse problems to have.
So then: I don’t know about you, but I do love to share my obsessions with like-minded folks and kindred spirits, and as such I think I will regularly start to feature the new things on heavy rotation for me, in a once monthly (or whatever, don’t hold me to a schedule)
For Your Ears posting. Don’t expect lengthy reviews; I know what I like but it’s often difficult to articulate exactly why I like something, so you won’t find that here. Nonetheless, I hope that you will find something you enjoy!
More new stuff from The Twilight Sad, who sound like all the music I never listened to when I was younger.
Xunolm, Asleep in the Shattered Mirror. “…a perfect score for some rustbelt cyberpunk dystopia, or a futuristic zombie apocalypse. It’s both sterling shining chrome and crumbling decadence” (via forestpunk)
Dreamy folkstress Marissa Nadler covering Elliott Smith
A new solo project featuring some live sets from Eric Quach, one of my favorite drone artists.
New music from Atlanta’s Royal Thunder, whose second album, Crooked Doors, will be out in April.
“…briny doom-laden folktronica” from Snow Ghosts.
Transcend, from Ahimsa, released inDecember of 2014. Not sure what to say about it. It falls under post-rock. I like post-rock.
Stephan Mathieu’s Nachtstücke is a “limitless sonic aura” which “forges eveningness as a tangible, sensible thing”.
The Unthanks’ latest album is “filled to the brim with the epic, the grandiose, and the fairytale-esque.” (via forfolkssake)
After another one of their pals posts a stolen baby pic on Faeriebook, Moth Catfrost and Feathers Peppershimmer wonder if they will ever kidnap a human baby and replace it with a changeling, or if they are destined to be alone and unhated forever. (via Carissa)
Heilung is a new project between Kai Uwe Faust and Christopher Juul. Heilung is sounds from the northern european iron age and viking period, “using everything from running water, human bones, reconstructed swords and shields up to ancient frame drums and bronze rings in the songs.” The lyrics contain original texts from rune stones and preserved spear shafts, amulets and other artifacts. (via Jennifer)
If you enjoy the aesthetic appeal of animal antlers but hate the idea of taxidermy, Elkebana might be just the thing for you. The wall-mounted system relies on symmetrical sets of flowers or tree branches and gets its name from ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement.
Iceland to build first temple to Norse gods since Viking age “I don’t believe anyone believes in a one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet,” said Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, high priest of Ásatrúarfélagið, an association that promotes faith in the Norse gods. “We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology.” Well, that’s a bummer. But still, something else to visit on our next trip back!
Dead Dads and other Ugly Things. Ashley Tibbets talks about her dead dad and how we all have our “dead dads,” the things in our lives that are “decidedly unpretty, undesirable, imperfect, and that might make people feel uncomfortable. We all have our cross to bear and maybe life would be richer if we weren’t afraid to expose them, if we weren’t afraid to let others expose theirs.”
Jeff Bridges wants to help you fall asleep “The album is essentially Jeff Bridges, quietly, creakily musing on things like sleeping and waking, the irony of waking his wife up to record her for a tape that’s supposed to induce slumber, and whether or not people can meet in dreams.”
Monsters of Grok: Fake band tee shirts for histories biggest thinkers. So cool!
I’ve decided that 2015 is the year for literary inspired mixes (primarily ghost stories and weird tales, I imagine.) Earlier in the month we had Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla and today we have a playlist inspired by William Hope Hodgson’s The House on The Borderland.
Tracklist:
Black Arts, Dronny Darko | Call of the Exile, NIGHTBRINGER | Onyx Towers, Black Blight | Faces In The Fog, Electric Hell | pathways in the dark, blackantlers | Images of Dream and Death, Wretched Excess | Strange Summoning, Possessor | The Night Scene, Oscillopeisia |The Death, Sumokem | The Prophecy, Lamia Vox | Godhead Emanation., Metatron Omega | Surround the Fire, Muscle and Marrow | Qulielfi (29th Tunnel of Set), y3mk
Flowering Vines, Unwoman | The Pomegranate, Solitude Forest | Dulcinea, Redefine my pure faith | We Are As Ghosts, Friends of Alice Ivy | Under the Fate of the Blue Moon, JILL TRACY | Wake Up Wake Up, The Groundskeepers Daughter | Control Me, Kandle | Sisterblood, Burning Leaves | Tiny Wars and Quiet Storms, Alter der Ruine | Rosebuds, White Hex | FUTURE GHOSTS, Sidewalks and Skeletons | Carpe Nacht, Espectrostatic
Twin Peaks Gets ’80s Synth Soundtrack Reminiscent Of Blade Runner, Miami Vice And Escape From New York
Hide From The Sun is a trippy “Jodorowsky-esque take on Where The Wild Things Are”, from Swedish psych-rock band Goat and is both fantastic and groovy, in that order.
AR is the collective pseudonym of Autumn Richardson & Richard Skelton. “Diagrams for the Summoning of Wolves marks a stark shift in their response to environmental degradation. Their previous works (Wolf Notes, 2011; Succession, 2013) have expressed profound sadness at the ecological losses of the upland landscape of south-west Cumbria, where they have lived since 2011. They have observed the absence of deer, fell fox and wolf, whose names survive only in place-names. They have found the ghost forests of Furness in the buried pollen drifts of alder, birch and oak. The music, words and art they have created in response to these discoveries are forms of elegy, but they also offer glimmers of hope for a return…To play this music is to participate in its summoning – to become a node in a lattice of light.”
“His most personal album to date, The Summoner is based around the 5 stages of mourning and is made after a year of losing several close friends. Hard enough material to work on, he decided to add a 6th stage, entitled The Summoning to be able to arrive at the finalé, Acceptance.”
Precious Australian weirdies The No Frills Twins have released their debut single, “God Bless The Internet”. I am probably too old to love this as much as I do, but these two really seem to get it.
“No desire to meet real people
We chat once, no need for sequel
Quick and easy, cyber mateship
No attachments, use it, ditch it
Put my head down, put my screen up
Make it seem like at night I raise my red cup
Don’t tell me I’m wasting my youth
Got my headphones in to block out the truth “
The vision of the skinless man as a twisted modern-day fairytale, ‘He Took His Skin Off For Me’ is an adaptation of the original short story by award-winning writer Maria Hummer. Think Margaret Atwood meets David Cronenberg.
Forever Doomed includes essays and comics by Tenebrous Kate that take a tongue-in-cheek but loving look at the theme of doom. Includes the widely anticpated “Erotic Rites of
the Nazgûl.”
Mothmeister’s strange and surreal ‘Wounderland’– a weird and wonderful universe in which the creators portray anonymous, ugly masked creatures as “a reaction against the dominant exhibitionism of the selfie culture and beauty standards marketed by the mass media.”
