Author: noisepuncher_caiaav

De-scrambling white noise audio, visual and sometimes the other senses.

Categories
Uncategorized

Visual White Noise Theater: Show me the way to “After Blue Dirty Paradise” (2021)

A friend sent me a trailer to a movie. I am very skeptical about “newer” movies, so friends and family knowing my weird tastes will send me stuff, I mostly stick with the older stuff and the more unusual and interesting, better, but it just can’t be weird for weird’s sake. Sometimes I’ll watch a trailer and say “Fuck yeah! This proves good newer movies are out there.” Then I watch the film and I am let down, either its too artsy fartsy, its way up its own ass, its boring and/or stupid. I am very picky when it comes to what movies I like and sadly more modern movies have more hoops to jump through for me, and the biggest hoop is “too much CGI”. I do review more modern movies on this site just because I want to shine a light on films that show that the craft of film making isn’t dead. And one of those movies is “After Blue, Dirty Paradise”.

A French film directed by Bertrand Mandico who directed “Wild Boys” which I haven’t seen. This was another movie whose trailer hit me right on the chin, it screamed “1980’s neon Jodorowsky” and of course I didn’t find out until later that “After Blue Dirty Paradise” wasn’t gonna come out to the public until 2022 and that it was playing festivals only. I was pretty pissed off and “Nightstream” came to the rescue just like they had with “Mad God”. Boy oh boy talk about a mind fuck, without giving too much away I wasn’t too far of with my description, this has got “old school” written all over it with barely to no CGI at all, strange lighting, and “Legend” like Tangerine Dream music. Bertrand created his own self contained and world.

“After Blue Dirty Paradise” is a acid freaked, sci fi Western. At first this reminded me a lot of The Muse’s music video “Knights of Cydonia”. The movie takes place on the planet, After Blue, humans are escaping a destroyed earth and they find a planet that can sustain life. The atmosphere acts funny on humans, it makes them grow hair in places they normally don’t (no not there you perv), on women its mainly the neck but in men it makes the hair grow inside and ends up killing all the males, so all births are achieved with insemination. After Blue is a planet populated by women only, there is a very limited use of technology since the populace of After Blue blame technology for the destruction of earth, mainly they still have guns and rifles to hunt and kill each other with.

A teenage girl, played by the pixie, waifish Paula Luna whose nickname is “Toxic” and whose real name is Roxy, is on a beach playing with her friends when she encounters a woman buried up to her chin in sand. The other girls berate and make fun of her, even piss on her. The woman begs Toxic to let her go, Toxic digs her out and she comes out nude with one hairy hand and a rifle, she guns down the other girls. Toxic is hypnotized by the woman and aroused, then the woman runs away. What Toxic didn’t know was that this woman was Kate Bush, a notorious criminal and murderer, the rest of the women in their village make Toxic and her hair dresser mother, Zora, played by Elina Lowensohn who is in the awesome “Let the Corpses Tan” go out to find and kill Kate Bush for the crime of Toxic digging her up. After this a series of strange and surreal events happen, the wandering women looking to kill a fugitive, is a very old Western movie theme. This movie visually and story wise keeps it interesting, this was another movie I wasn’t disappointed in after seeing the trailer. Vinegar Syndrome in partnership with Altered Innocence has released “After Blue” on Blu Ray, link below (I did). At first I thought this movie was going to be preachy and I was hoping I wouldn’t roll my eyes and I didn’t. The message was put across with grace and smarts and if you want me to listen to you even though I might disagree with you, making your point in a interesting and creative way will open my ears. “After Blue Dirty Paradise” has different influences stamped all over it and but their put together so well it becomes its own thing.  One other thing, ZZ Top’s song “Planet of Woman” kept running through my head when I was watching this movie, they must’ve been looking into the future.

 

Here is the trailer for “After Blue Dirty Paradise”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0-HiNH6YXc

An interview with Bertrand Mandico, the director: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY3xK2CgrhI

You can get “After Blue” on Blu Ray right here: https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/after-blue-altered-innocence?_pos=2&_psq=After&_ss=e&_v=1.0

Categories
Uncategorized

White Noise on Paper: Look in the “Mirror Mirror 2” on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?

Comics anthologies are my thing, especially ones that are non traditional and feature various forms and styles of art, “Mirror Mirror 2” is one of those compilations, this is meant to be a “horror” compilation edited by Sean T. Collins and Julia Gfrorer. In the foreword Gretchen Alice Felker-Martin says “Great horror is the pursuit of meaning through defilement, a conscious and inquisitive violation of the mind, body, the beloved, the home; the concentric circles of security that comprise our lives. Great porn proceeds from a similar root, grappling with that which delights and with that which abases in the context of their inextricably. There is no division between the shame that ignites desire and the desire itself, just as there is no division between love and fear of death.”

Thus starts this anthology, all of it, unlike the other “Mirror Mirror” anthologies are in black and white. Again as with other compilations some pieces don’t evoke anything near horror, in fact, some pieces made me chuckle at the “try too hard” story lines, but there is pieces in here that are also bone chilling, overall its a beautiful book. 6″x 9″, flexibound in black Pantone offset with black gilded edges. The highlights are the castrating lesbian love affair in “Love” by Laura Lannes, Clive Barker (yes that one) summons his inner Stephen Gammell on his one pager “Dark Moon”, Lala Albert explores dark fairy eroticism in “Vespertine Odor”, Nicole Claveloux goes old school medieval with her silver and black paintings of erotic dark fantasies, Mou descends into the darkness of depraved self pleasure in “Empty Handed”, Uno Moralez uses 8 bit video game graphic art to show what happens when man’s idealized fantasy of women go awry in “Vitalya (I’m Fucking Tired of You)”.

Dame Darcey does the Gothic haunted castle thing brilliantly in “Meat Cake: Fire”, Johnny Negron does a cryptic and horrific poem form justice in “Perfect Beast I: Baton Sinister”, Trungles puts his own erotic spin on the old Beauty and the Beast story, reptilian style in “Shifts”, Al Columbia brings out his recurring characters Pim and Francine and strings them along in his 1930’s surrealistic horror cartoon world in a bunch of one pagers, Meaghan Garvey flirts with death in “Everytime”, Apolo Cacho runs through a weird beast like world in “Coatlicue”, and Josh Simmons does a day out with a son and mother who want to visit a cave and end up getting more than they bargained for in “The Cave”.

Over all its a solid comp with a different take and spin on what horror means, some of the pieces art wise and story wise don’t work and only elicit a shrug from me, the ones I listed above are gold. If your into unusual, underground comix you should dig into “Mirror Mirror 2”.

So where do you look in the “Mirror Mirror 2”? Go here, the company 2d cloud publishes this book, support them, when it looked like my copy was missing in the mail the owner of the company offered to send me another copy, free of charge, no questions asked, luckily it finally came: https://shop.2dcloud.com/products/mirror-mirror-2

Categories
Uncategorized

Visual White Noise Theater: One “Mad God” (2021)

Right when I saw the trailer for this it hit me right in my sweet spot, I was literally salivating with desire and pleasure. A whole movie of twisted stop motion, oh to the fucking yeah,  but when I saw the trailer I was wondering if it had already come out and searched around and realized, nope, it hadn’t and I’d probably have to wait a long fucking time before I’d see this or maybe not see it at all. SIGH. As we speak it is making its way through the festival circuit and then Nightstream came to the rescue. Luckily they are featuring some movies for streaming from festivals. I jumped all over “Mad God”. One hour and twenty minutes of awesomeness, a dark hellish world with stabs of heaven like brilliance.

Directed by Phil Tippett who did the effects for “Alien”, “Robocop 2”,  and “Jurassic Park” among a bunch of other movies, he started making this in 1988 while he was working on “Robocop 2”, after doing “Jurassic Park” he thought the art of stop motion was dead so he then shelved “Mad God” until the year 2000 when he really started working on the movie and just finished the movie not long ago. He worked on this project in between his other higher paying gigs, using volunteers and getting money through kickstarter. To sum things up, pretty much an assassin is sent by a pope like figure to “kill God”, as he descends in a weird ship into this post apocalyptic, hellish world that this god inhabits, he is shot at by cannons, and he lands in an area full of statues of different gods and faiths, not to mention brand name mascots of products.

Alot of what happens “Mad God” is metaphors. Some critics have described this as a movie length Tool music video but its more than that, I don’t want to give away too much. The world looks slimy, one crazy image after another gets thrown out at you  before you can fully recover from the last shock, in fact that is its major drawback, its almost sensory overload. Even taking that into consideration you’ll fall under its Bosch like nightmarish spell. This movie proves that art can be both beautiful and ugly at the same time.

In “Mad God” there is some live action actors filmed in stop motion style, like director Alex Cox and Niketa Roman, after “Mad God” ended my eyes were bulging out of my skull and my jaw was on the floor collecting flies. When and if this hits Blu Ray I am snapping it up. Full length stop motion movies are few and far between these days, getting this one from a special effects master is very rare treat, this is one I can’t wait to see again.

So where do you watch this? Well you can’t yet, unless you streamed it during its festival run.

Here is Phil’s web site where you can get the trailer and other info on the movie: https://www.madgodmovie.com/

Pretty cool vid on Phil designing his stop motion figures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLKxoo9hO84

Interview with Phil on “Mad God”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDVj0a9h8I4

Post Script: This is now on Shudder not on blu ray yet (cross my fingers) but you have to have a subscription, you know what to do *wink*wink*: https://www.shudder.com/movies/watch/mad-god/af7abd4d3ae6f0ad

Categories
Uncategorized

White Noise on Paper: Chow down on some “Kramers Ergot” 5-10

Ergot is a fungus that infects rye and other related plants, it is also closely related to the chemical composition of LSD and was prevalent during the middle ages, some speculate widespread Ergot poison helped contribute to the witch hunting hysteria of the time. Its apt that a comic compilation like this one has “Ergot” in its title, I think the editor, Sammy Harkham, made that title for his compilation of art and underground comics on purpose, who “Kramer” is besides the guy in “Seinfeld” I can’t figure out. “Kramers Ergot” is worth every wallet emptying penny, once these go out of print the price of used physical copies shoots into the stratosphere and I hate to say it digital masturbators, “Kramers Ergot” is meant to be enjoyed holding the actual thing and reading it, the experience isn’t the same as reading it on “Comixology”. “Kramers Ergot” was started by Sammy Harkham as a zine in 2000 under his own Avodah Books, issues 4 and 5 were published by Gingko Press, the issues 1-4 are very rare and way way WAY out of my price range, there is some prices I am not willing to pay, I have 5 to 10, out of those 5 is the weakest of the bunch but its still got good material, stand outs in 5 are M.L.E. (Mutant life Expectancy) by the great Matt Brinkman with Neil Burke coloring, the always talented Chris Ware with “My Life”, the always cryptic Helge Reumann and Xavier Robel’s alternate reality, dialogue free comics, Gabrielle Bell’s comic panels look like paintings, Kevin Huizeuga’s foray into theology with “Jeepers Jacobs”, Jorand Crane’s western ghost story “The Hand of Gold”, Leif Goldberg’s colorful insane paintings, Paper Rad’s Yellow Submarine type acid trip comic strip, Fabio Viscogliosi’s strange old time children’s book type illustrations in “Love or Leave a Dunce on Holiday”, J. Bradley Johnson’s “Brimming with Enthusiasm: A Selection of Early Comics” and Dan Zettwock’s head trip of a horror comic “The Ghost of Dragon Canoe”.

Kramers Ergot 5

Books 6 and 7 came out through Buenaventura Press. 6 is a huge improvement over 5, the highlights  in this one are the tale of a church haunted house in “Cross Fader” by Dan Zettwoch, reprints of underground Dutch artist Marc Smeets, intro by Chris Ware in “Passing Time”, the insane satire of action and kung fu movies with a psychological and metaphorical bent in “Ejector Seat Cadence” by Bald Eagles, the colorful and LSD haze inducing “Kramers Ergot Fuck You” by Paper Rad, Jerry Moriarty’s painted comic panels in “Sally’s Surprise”, vice cop corruption in “Pushing” by Chris C. Cilla, the Aztec high school dramedy in “Jaguar Street” by Matthew Thurber, reprints of Suiho Tagawa’s colorful Japanese war propaganda comics from “the Norakuro”, X rated Aesops fables from Fabio Viscogliosi in “Pornography for Beginners”, the fantasy water color stylings of Sherry Boyle in “The Porcelain Figurine” and the insane world of Elvis Studio by Helge Reumann and Xavier Robel.

 

7 is a killer, I’d say a literal killer because the thing is hardbound and the size of a old Sunday comic supplement from the 1930’s, i.e. giant and I even had a hard time flipping through the thing, you could easily use it as weapon to beat somebody to death. I had problems finding room for the thing, its in full color with glossy pages if you don’t lift it right you can get a hernia, however, staring at the giant pages will immerse you even deeper in the stories, now I know why my grandparents were nostalgic about their Sunday comics page. “Kramers Ergot” 7 appeared in 2008 at retail price of 125 bucks because of the cost of putting it together and publishing it, “Kramers Ergot” 7 killed Buenaventura Press. Alvin Buenaventura, the publisher went on to set up another company and ended up committing suicide in 2016, whether it was due to his company going under is speculation. The stand outs in 7 were Shary Boyle’s elephant fantasy “Grow Old”, Ted May’s Frankenstein space adventure in “Cradle of Frankenstein”, Daniel Clowes’ twisted noir “Sawdust”, CF’s weird ass fantasy “Crate Cauldron”, Kim Deitch’s tale of a beer bottle cap collector in”Sex, Drugs and Sweet Music”, Chris Ware’s tale of a girl with one leg in “Home”, the late great Richard Sala’s tale of chasing love in an interesting crowd of characters in “I Chase the Bright Elusive Butterfly of Love”, Rick Altergott’s continuing adventures of his mentally challenged hero in “Doofus”, Matt Brinkman’s animal/skull/reptilian hybrid one pager, Eric Haven’s otherworldly tale of a barfly and reptilian woman in “Reptilica”, Matt Thurber’s tale of Brian Eno in “Produce the Corpse”, Blex Bolex’s tale of an artist who is given a offer he can’t refuse in “Lost for Life”, Will Sweeney’s journey of mad scientists, hallucination machines and space in “Chatsworth Miasma”, Anna Somers bear hunt gone awry in “Lumberjack’s Widow”, Helge Reumann’s untitled story of his weird world with bearded men and weird deformed creatures who beat and shoot each other and Matt Groenings bunnies losing at the game of life in “Road to Success”.

 

 

 

  “Kramers Ergot” 8 went way down in size, to almost the size of a pocket book and was put out by Picture Box Press who has put out some bad ass books. It was a tan hardcover with partial gold foil and tangerine colored hexagons on its front, it reminded me of one of the books I’d pull off my grandpa’s walnut bookshelf when the dust jacket went missing, the contents of said book would normally be boring. The cover, simple design and color scheme screamed 1970’s, this next volume in typical fashion goes in a different direction, this time only some of the pages are glossy and some in color and starts with a boring fucking essay on how without gay people “camp” wouldn’t exist, half way through the preachy essay I skipped ahead for the comics. “Kramers Ergot” 8 doesn’t disappoint, Gary Panter roars into this weird and twisted future with his recurring character “Jimbo”, C.F. gets into strange love in “Warm Genetics House Test Pattern”, Takeshi Murata goes art pop culture funky with “Get Your Ass to Mars”, Johnny Ryan goes into outer space and gets slaughtered by aliens in “Mining Colony X7170”, Anya Davidson has a mean ass bitch kicking butt in “Barbarian Bitch”, Sammy Harkham, the editor of this shebang, contributes the weird and terrifying tale of spousal upheaval in “A Husband and Wife” and, last but not least, reprints of the deliciously evil Wanda from 1970’s era “Penthouse” magazine gets brought back to life in full color, I see a lot of the old Warren magazine artists of “Eerie”, “Creep” and “Vampirella” in Ron Embleton and Frederic Mullalley’s art work for “Oh, Wicked Wanda!”

“Kramers Ergot 9” switched publishers to Fantagraphics and switched size, this thing is the size of a telephone book, the other part of the title is “Evil Fully Determined”. This time the boring essay is dropped and the comics come on like a freight train. Highlights are Renee French’s bird abstract world in “Bjornstrand’s Elise”, Helge Reumann dives back into his strange mutant/lumberjack world in “Sexy Guns”, Anya Davidson channels Pagan Rome/Christian animosity in “Hypatia’s Last Hours”, Al Columbia has his recurring characters Pim And Francine do a one page nightmare appearance in “Night People” and does another color section on the aftermath of a party from hell from the 1930’s in “The Devil’s Mansion”, Al is a genius, problem is he very erratic in his output, Al was supposed to contribute a full page comic in the oversized 7 but couldn’t get anything done, people who know him say he is a “perfectionist” but that to me is another word for lazy and/or procrastinator. Tim Hensley channels old school cartooning into a story about a priest who gets in a “unholy” jam in “I Confess”, its all in a days work in “Police Work” by Adam Buttrick, Lale Westvind goes a on a space cannibal ritual retreat in “The Kanibul Ball”, Kim Deitch goes down memory lane in a zoo in “Shrine of the Monkey God”, suicide goes haywire in “Adieu Cruel World” by Baptiste Virote, Blobby Boys get violent towards infidelity in “Blobby Boys” by Alex Schubert, one criminal gets out of prison but wants to come “home” in “Comics and Gags” by Abraham Diaz, and Jonny Negron has one of his voluptuous vixens get felt up by a 1980’s action hero stereotype in his one pager.

“Kramers Ergot” 10 is a bigger volume not as big as the other one, this one was put out by Fantagraphics an affair goes off the rails in Dash Shaw’s “Police Woman”, Robert Crumb digs into knuckle dragging modern neanderthals in “The Ruff Tuff Cream Puffs”, Jason Murphy does abstract in “A Calamitous Exit”, Arouk Richard does the duck walk west in “Ducky Co Co”, C.F. goes crazy on “Liquid on Neutral”, Blutch does face melting action in “Angel Face”, Shary Flenniken trots out “Trots and Bonnie” and their sexual misadventures and satire of old comic strips that first appeared in “National Lampoon” magazine, Rick Altergott brings out his immortal and idiotic “Doofus” who klutzs and crashes  through his strip, editor Sammy Harkham spins a tale of old Hollywood in “Blood of the Virgin” it is the longest strip and worth the slog, Will Sweeney gets spacey in “The Embigening”, Helge Reumann’s weird world is great as usual in “Equalizers”, a full color reprint of the classic Frank King’s “Gasoline Alley”,  Kim Deitch tells about roaming with Spain and writing underground cartoons in the 1960’s in “If It’s Weird It Works”, and the always cryptic and awesome Lale Westvind with her half shark half lady in “Sarka”.

The “Kramers Ergot” volumes before 5 are too rich price wise for my blood, their heavily sought after collectors items. There is some prices I won’t pay and the prices for 1 through 4 I won’t pay for. “Kramers Ergot” with each volume keeps it interesting, editor Sammy Harkham mixes comic strips and art together seamlessly. Each volume has got its own personality and own flavor, from varying sizes to different artists and content. “Kramers Ergot” is something you can ingest and not see werewolves and want to hunt witches (maybe you will do that after reading these volumes anyways). I sure hope Mr. Harkham does more volumes.

So where do you ingest this ergot? Well go look on ebay and amazon, hate to be lazy but search these out, there is some of these that at reasonable prices, except for the oversized volume 7.

Volumes 1, 2, 8, 9, 10 are available online to digitally ingest here, if you want to be a millennial/zoomer pussy about it: https://comiconlinefree.net/comic/kramers-ergot

Categories
Uncategorized

Visual White Noise Theater: Going into “Phase IV” (1974)

There is a “solar event” and ants start killing people. That pretty much sums up the plot of “Phase IV” it isn’t an original plot, nothing new there but what is surrounding the movie is new and breaths life into a plot that was done to death. Visually stunning, and steeped in some New Age horse shit, this movie pleasantly surprised me, people I trust who have the same tastes as me said “Phase IV” would be up my alley when I asked them if it would make me laugh they shrugged and said “It might I don’t want to give away too much info”. I was given the specifics of the plot and kind of rolled my eyes, another killer insect movie but this didn’t turn out to be another killer insect movie, no this was a sci fi horror/art house film.

It was directed by graphic designer Saul Bass and was his one and only movie which is a damn shame besides directing a few educational short films and the awesome, The Quest, loosely based on a Ray Bradbury short story, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxqN0tGyLRI . He brought along his talent for visual flare to the film, sadly “Phase IV” tanked at the box office and “Mystery Science Theater 3000” (not a fan, don’t find their schtick funny, they fucking suck) skewered the movie relentlessly, because of the failure nobody would hire Saul Bass to direct another movie. Bass would continue to design company logos and posters and win awards, but lord knows what Saul would’ve come up with next if he were allowed to direct another feature.

Ken Middleham, a wildlife photographer, was the one that got the close up shots of the killer ants, interiors were filmed in England and exteriors in Kenya representing Arizona. Saul shot a different ending that showed what happened after the ant attack but the hippy dippy, visually stunning, New Age ending shocked even the coke jaded execs and they wanted it cut. That ending was thought to be lost but it was found in the Saul Bass Collection at the Academy Film Archive, it was cleaned up and showed at the film hipster haven Alamo Drafthouse, for a Saul Bass type festival in Austin, TX, the ending is available on Itunes Extras and 101 films in the UK did a special two disc release with the original ending included, that is out of print.

This film went from “failure” to cult success and one of my favorite new filmmakers, Panos Cosmatos, said this movie inspired his great “Beyond the Black Rainbow” and I can see the visual inspiration from “Phase IV” in this movie. Yeah fuck those not funny idiots on MST3, most of the movies they trash go on to become gems. If you want a visual experience get into “Phase IV” but the story isn’t original, its whats around it that is original.

To watch “Phase IV” with the cut ending go here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/7umrLJlCyjmH/

 

Categories
Uncategorized

White Noise Eardrum Buster: The Bloody “Baphometic Dawn/Unexamine-Against the World, Against Life” (2018) Full Tape

Awww whats that lovely sound? The sound of literal white noise, an explosion of screeching, whips, discordant guitars, drums like a machine gun and filthy dirty bass all bathed in the filth of Power Electronics. Its enough for the songs to get stuck in ones head and whistle them all day as a atomic red sun melts in the sky and blood bathes the street while people choke on their on guts. That sound is “Baphometic Dawn/Unexamine” the former being a raw black metal band that mixes noise into their “sound and the latter being a blackened filth noise artist, they decide to take these two things and mash them up into a lo fi orchestra of pain in “Against the World, Against Life”.

My favorite genre of music right now is avant garde/experimental black/death metal, the more weird it is the better. I like every genre of metal (except for “Nu Metal”), every genre of rock (except for “Soft Rock”) and every genre of noise. I’ve listened to so many genres and so many bands, its almost like how the tolerance for a drug a junkie takes goes up and the junkie has to take more to get a high, that is the same thing with me and music, I’ve heard it all and it needs to get weirder and weirder for me to find something different, new and exciting in it. The problem with a lot of avant garde/experimental metal bands is too many of them want to be Faith No More or Mr. Bungle but I’ve got news for bands like Ten Foot Ninja and Dog Fashion Disco, you aren’t Faith No More and/or Mr. Bungle. The black and death metal experimentalists don’t have that draw back, I especially love when bands will mix different genres that aren’t metal into their music but it can’t be forced and it has to be done right.  With the “Baphometic Dawn/Unexamine” tape the noise and raw black metal meld their genres into one, beautiful, dark, disgusting sound.

You pretty much get a pro orange tape which surprised me when I got the tape because the fold out was your typical low budget black metal xeroxed black and white cover art, normally with a release like that you get a recorded tape. On discogs it says that this release was limited to 50 copies but my “Baphometic Dawn/Unexamine” tape fold out says 45 out of 80. I got this bad boy off of Analog Worship, this is one site I can’t recommend enough if your a death/black/noise type music on vinyl and tape. Get this one if your into filthy blackened noise.

No physical copies left, but you can filthy up your ears here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/I7oyHS4KL9St/

Categories
Uncategorized

White Noise on Paper: Five, Four, Three, Two, One, “Zero Zero” comix.

I remember people being afraid of an apocalyptic event as the 1990’s was wrapping up, some said it would be a huge computer crash via Y2K (anybody remember that?) that would destroy all systems politically and economically, an environmental disaster that the Greens kept predicting every ten years like their religious counterparts with the book of Revelation etc. of course none of that happened some would argue in September 11th, 2001 was an end to our way of life and now that the Coof is running rampant it looks like the end could be at hand and is being used by unscrupulous, authoritarian scumbags to push their various control freak agendas. The underground comics anthology series “Zero Zero” played on those fears tangentially and manipulated them into absurd humor by various artists.

The editor was Kim Thompson who was an editor on other Fantagraphics publications. This comic anthology series lasted from 1995-2000 with 27 issues. Kim got the name “Zero Zero” from artist J.R. Williams who is another recurring artist in the series, originally J.R. was gonna call his own series “Zero Zero” but instead ended  up calling his comic “Crap” instead (insert joke here). Not only that, “Zero Zero” is another way of saying the year 2000 which evoked hope in some and fear in others, the comics themselves in between the covers, mostly black n’ white except for some two color pieces looks like it takes place in a post apocalyptic, nightmare world. In the forward to the first issue Kim says “That balance of the new and established, of penthouse art and gutter art, of quantity (page count for RAW, frequency for Weirdo) and quality remains elusive. ‘Zero Zero’ is but the latest attempt a few steps down that path.”

David N. Holzman’s woodcut comic “Big Head” from issue one, March/April 1995.

 

Also Kim shit on the then current trend of “autobiographical” comics started by Robert Crumb’s wife, Aline, when she was editor of “Weirdo” and shit balled into a crap avalanche by countless artists. Kim said in the same forward “Zero Zero’ will be something of a refuge for those who are sick unto death of the autobio comics trend, not to mention its the cousin the graphic/lecture rant, although I will let my defenses down for the occasionally extraordinary piece (this (first issue) issue’s Bukowski/Moriarity collaboration being a case in point, ‘Zero Zero’ is about fiction in comics form.” Now of course Kim would go on to not really hold that editorial position with David Collier’s comics which were rants/autobiography, Collier’s art style is very close to Crumb’s, and while the art was good I often found his pieces to get too self involved, preachy and up their own ass. Though I have to say Joe Sacco’s piece on himself and a couple of journalists confronting a dictator on Christmas at an orthodox service in Serbia was interesting, so was J. Backderf’s story on hanging out with the infamous serial killer Jeffery Dahmer in high school which was expanded into an award winning graphic novel and into a feature length movie but its very rare that an autobio comic is interesting to me.

Two color contents page with Sof’ Boy who is in a hilarious S n’ M themed strip March/April 1996.

There is a few strips that are serialized and their all good, chief among them the late and great Richard Sala with his very retro “The Chuckling Whatsit” which was later gathered in a graphic novel, Max White’s tale of greek/Christian mythology “Homunculus”, Kim Deitch’s obsession with old pop culture in both his “Molly O’ Dare” and “Search for Smilin’ Ed” pieces, Dave Cooper’s space age/futuristic put down of the man hating butch brigade in “Crumple”, Kaz and Timothy Georgarakis’ collab on “Meat Box” a comic that takes place in some absurd dadaesque/abstract world, Ted Stearn’s adventures of a Teddy Bear and his chicken friend in “Fuzz and Pluck” and David Mazzucchelli’s “Pop. 66” that takes place in some hellish town in Italy or Spain, not one of these serials bored me they were all entertaining and I couldn’t wait for the next episode in each issue.

Richard Sala’s “Chuckling Whatsit” serial started in issue 2.

Some of the names that show up are the old guard of the underground comix scene mixed with the new, you’ll get some nastiness from Mike Diana, Henriette Valium, Max Andersson, Glenn Head, Skip Williamson, Blanquet, P. Revess, Chris Ware etc. You get a bunch of different art styles which makes the anthology overall interesting. Some pieces don’t hit, some fucking nail it. While the series is mostly black and white there is Al Columbia two color sections and that was my whole reason for searching out this thing, because Al Columbia hits the ball and the park for my money, in issue 4 Al has the two color Fleischer toon inspired nightmare “I was Killing When Killing Wasn’t Cool” with his two recurring characters Seymour Sunshine the clown and Knishkebibble the Monkey Boy which was supposed to appear in his own “Biologic Show” comic issue 2 until he canceled the series and gave this to “Zero Zero” the title is a play on the song title “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool”. Ole’ Al has a inside cover color job in issue 8 called “He Didn’t Wake Up”, issue 15 back cover has Al’s depiction of “Walpurgisnacht” that will send every safe space crybaby running for their mama, God I loved the Un PC 1990’s! Issue 16 has Al’s two color dark fairy tale “Blood Clot Boy” a boy born of, what else, a blood clot who goes on twisted adventures, issue 20 Al steps up his art game in the two color nightmare featuring Sunshine and the Monkeyboy called “Amnesia” not to be mixed up with his grotesque animated movie poster collection from the 1930’s comic, “Amnesia”, in this one Al out does himself by using photo realistic backgrounds and with his characters layered on top of them, no wonder Al’s issues sold out real fast, he’d continue this new artistic direction in issue 26 which is considered the “last” issue with “Alfred the Great” a hinged mouth freak who can juggle anything with his tongue, of course this goes south really fast and then the wrap up issue 27 Al does the cover of a monkey in front of an unappetizing plate of meat and he does back cover featuring his other recurring character “Cheapie the Guinea Pig”, he said this will be a character he is gonna use in future comics but with Al its “I’ll believe it when I see it”. But Al’s work shouldn’t overshadow anybody else in this series, the whole damn series is interesting, I’d even go as far as to say almost better than the classic “Weirdo” and “RAW”.

Al Columbia’s “Amnesia” from issue 20.

On the back of every issue was the feature “The Signs of the Impending Apocalypse” which has comical and satirical depictions of apocalyptic scenes done by the likes of Daniel Clowes, Marky Ramone (yes that Ramone) among many many others. Kim said the back covers were to suggest a Jack Chick comic tract.

So “Zero Zero” isn’t a zero, every issue is regular comic book size but even with a majority of black and white pages this is one of my favorite comic anthologies, this is one I will pull out and read again and will sometimes pick up an issue and just thumb through it and revel in the weirdness of it all. You won’t be bored by it either, some stuff is tear jerker funny and some of it is messed up. If you want to find issues, good luck, try amazon, and remember there is a total of 27 issues and the Al Columbia ones especially come at a high price, I was lucky enough to find a whole set and I am too embarrassed to tell you how much I paid for it, I will never pay that much for anything again but I don’t regret one bank emptying penny of it either. “Zero Zero” is an embodiment of the alternative “comix” and zine culture that spread through the 1990’s, whacky, surreal, weird, slackeristic (I made that word up), cynical, maniacal etc. Set them gauges to “Zero Zero”.

Charles Burn’s cover for issue 8.

To at least read the first issue with the awesome Gary Panter cover go here: https://archive.org/details/zerozero1/mode/2up

Marc Arsenault talks about his experience working on “Zero Zero” as an art director, how it was like to work with editor Kim Thompson and owning his own comic and zine shop here: https://wowcool.com/zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero/

To find copies go on amazon, ebay, abebooks etc. Get prepared to dig into your wallet and have your paypal account scream and cry like a little bitch. Good luck.

Categories
Uncategorized

Visual White Noise Theater: Want to watch some “Strange Tales” (1986)

Most horror anthologies have this problem, either most of them suck with a couple of good ones, or if your lucky they’ll be mostly good ones with a smattering of bad ones, “Strange Tales” has total of six and out of those six, three are good and three are boring and/or stupid. The really good ones shine like diamonds in coal. Vidcrest, who put out the infamous “Mondo Cane” movies, a company that is still around and run by Robert Weinbach who is still alive put this thing together, he seemed to specialize in finding weird and unusual shorts and putting them together. At the time, the only way to get a hold of this collection was to get it on VHS, at first when I e mailed him he said he had no copies, then he e mailed me back and said he had found a VHS copy in storage, so I bought it. Watching this, I could tell most, if not all of these shorts were shot on Super 8 and most if not all were probably student films. I searched this one out when a buddy of mine sent me a list of live action/animated shorts, one of the shorts on this VHS, “Twilight Journey” got my attention. The problem is this VHS was recorded to EP mode which makes the picture look kind of shitty, its to jam more stuff on less tape, the picture is soft and fuzzy, sometimes you can’t see what is being filmed. So without further ado, here are the good and the bad of “Strange Tales”.

The first short, “The Visitant” is an OK short, a guy chases the ghost of his dead son through a cemetery which looks like the famous Forest Lawn Cemetery in Burbank, CA, me and my weird family used to have picnics there, many famous people from the Golden Age of Hollywood are buried (and turning over in their graves). As he is chasing his son, a zombie chases him with an axe and various dead people as well as an driver-less van try to run him down, he comes across his daughter who is cursing him for killing himself and his son in a drunk driving accident, the guy finds out he is in purgatory and now destined for hell. This one had some cool make up effects and was at least interesting.

The second short is called “Desire in a Public Dump” and I wasn’t too impressed with this one, though I gotta give it credit for not dragging on too long. When I watched this I figured this one was shot in the 1980’s like the rest of the shorts on the tape, but the whole look of the actors and actress and the whole feel screamed “1950’s” yes I found out that this short was shot in the 1950’s, it is very weird to have all the other shorts be filmed in the 1980’s and one lone one from the 1950’s. In this one a hobo stumbles on a picture of a redhead pin up who comes out of the picture and when he goes to kiss her he gets a pitchfork through his chest, the girl disappears from the picture and is replaced by a gorilla, a kid with a BB gun finds the picture and it ends there.

The third short is “A Day in the Life of Snidley Carmichael” stupid, boring and hated this fucking short. All it is is a guy spazzing out to opera music, running around like a fucking retard pretending to get shot. Not funny and a waste of this tape. Next.

The fourth short is by far the best and most interesting, “Twilight Journey” is a god damn trip and this is the reason why I searched this tape out. I wasn’t disappointed, a hybrid of live action and rotoscoped animation, this one is hard to peg, this is acid for people who never have or will drop acid. From what I can tell the story is about a kid whose mom is prostitute, she wears a pig mask I guess out of kinkiness, now this is where it gets confusing either the boy kills his mom while the John is asleep or the John kills her and sets the house on fire.

As the John runs away in his car he gets in an accident and dies, soon he is tumbling through animated space.

Soon he encounters weird shapes, pyramids and killer orcs, whoever did this put a lot of work into it, looks like the guy was probably inspired by Ralph Bakshi’s “Lord of the Rings, LSD and a lot of pot.

Looking for keys and a sword battle ensues, its marvelous and fantastic and worth the price of this video, I wasn’t as mad when this short met my expectations, it made it worth the three other boring shorts on this thing. My only gripe is the short ends abruptly, wish this had had a longer running time and Robert would’ve knocked the other boring fucking shorts off this thing.

The fifth short is “Crystal Quest”, I loved this one, this one follows a guy who is being chased by something or somebody on what looks like a different planet, he takes the crystal from the mouth of a stone monster then he is actually chased by a monster who corners him near an elevator.

As he pushes the button and the elevator the monster chasing him runs away and he thinks he scared the monster off until he turns around and sees a behemoth of a monster blocking the elevator.

He dives underneath the monster’s legs shuts the elevator and pushes the lobby button. He gets to the bottom and the door opens and you find out the “Crystal Quest” is a futuristic game show. I loved this one, the make up was good and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the people who worked on this student film went on to do special effects and make up on bigger projects. This one was goofy fun and the other good short in this collection and the last good one.

The sixth and most certainly last one is “Bus Bench” all I can say is “YAWN”, “Strange Tales” goes out on a huge whimper and not a bang. Some old lady sits on a bench while buses and people go by, she seems to be thinking about her past and her own daughter or something. This was boring, so bad I was looking at the clock thinking about other stuff I could be doing. On the back of the VHS box it says “Award winning shorts” yeah, Weinbach I highly doubt this. So all in all there was three good shorts and three boring shorts, so is this worth your clams? I’ll say this much “Twilight Journey” and “Crystal Quest” will make it worth the price, and you’ll want this if your a horror anthology completest.

So where do you pick this up? Well if you want a tape you’ll have to hound Robert you can go to his geocities looking web site here: http://vidcrest.net/catalog/order_list.html

He has a DVD version on his ebay page but talking with one of my friends who ordered a DVD its almost the same version as VHS: https://www.ebay.com/itm/114251165702?hash=item1a99e67006:g:9wUAAOSwwvpe3Af-

If you want a preview of what your gonna get go here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/4Gaa2Xbyq1FX/

Categories
Uncategorized

White Noise on Paper: Watching some “Highbone Theater” by Joe Daly

 I don’t make it a secret that I like comics that take different paths, all the overblown “stuperhero” stuff bores the hell out of me, its been done to death and every variation of some caped schmoo has been tried, granted I am sure there is people out there that will never get burned out on Batman, Iron Man and company, but for some reason I have this weird thing where if something is just overdone I lose complete interest in it. I like when people go in a different direction with the comics format which is the reason why I review mainly independent and underground “comix”. If somebody puts a new, fresh and different spin on the superhero comic than I will be interested, until then I will be reading stuff like “Highbone Theater” by Joe Daly.

Joe Daly mainly studied animation at Cape Town’s City Varsity college, and also put out the awesome “Dungeon Quest” lampooning RPG players and the equally good “Red Monkey Double Happiness Book”, with “Highbone Theater” Joe goes into stoner territory with his muscular, bearded main character, Palmer, who is a intellectual, plays the Chubush, reads books, smokes weed and has weird dreams about 9/11, his room mates are macho meatheads who hunt sharks, drink, party and screw anything and everything that moves. The art reminds me a lot of Robert Crumb’s stuff, the men are all barrel chested, with thick arms, and legs, big hands and feet, all the women are hour glass shaped with big asses. Through this all, Palmer has strange dreams that have him questioning reality itself and Palmer meets a strange man at the paper mill he works at named Billy Boy who thinks that there is people who live under the earth that manipulate events on the surface.

And the art goes from black and white when Palmer isn’t dreaming, to color when he is dreaming or high which makes me think that this is the artist’s way of saying the so called whacky dream world of Palmer is almost more real than the mundane day to day existence world.  Conspiracy theories, the occult and Gnosticism get twirled in this heady brew of a comic, the humor is absurd and sometimes I think gets lost in translation because of the different humor and culture of South Africa.

This book is thick and collects all of the “Highbone Theater” comics in one place at 572 pages in hardcover and put out by the awesome Fantagraphics, it seems that whatever Fantagraphics touch turns to fucking gold. If you want something different in your comics I highly recommend Joe Daly’s stoner opus, it will make your brain bleed, guaranteed.

So get out your joint, its always “4/20” here: https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/joe-daly/products/highbone-theater

Categories
Uncategorized

White Noise Eardrum Buster: Lost in the “Wrnlrd- Pentagon” CD, 2008

 I’ve listened to every genre of metal and rock, I’ve dived deep and the problem with that is I’ve heard it all and I grow bored of people who rehash the same shit in each genre. Now bands that I look for, especially now that I am older, are bands that branch out and create something new in their audio lab, instead of following a safe path of just playing straight up “thrash”, “grindcore”, “death metal”, “black metal”, “hard rock”, “indie rock” etc. they will take the other path that is overhung with dark trees and has a strange, unpredictable foreboding. Most bands balk and take the safe path playing the same retreaded riffs, with the same vocal styles, others like Mr. Bungle, Sunn O))), Spazztic Blurr etc. look at the foreboding path and yell “Challenge Accepted!” And Wrnlrd is one of those bands. And with “Pentagon” this one man weird metal machine goes deep into weird, acid trip territory and I love it.

First off, you get a really faded, silvery cover for the CD, almost haunting and wispy which actually describes the music contained within perfectly. The title “Pentagon” evokes images of the military and war but Wrnlrd sometimes to be going in a occult direction with the music, all one needs to do is look at the track titles and sub titles, names like “Annuit Coeptis”, “Death’s White City”, “Shaft of Ba’al”, “Awakening” and “V” not to mention track sub titles like “Maze of Light”, “Sun Wheel: Eye of Horns”, “Balefire: Temple of Briar”etc.

Now the music is stewed and brewed Black Metal, now I can hear the hipster traditionalist metal heads screaming their bitch heads off “THAT ISN’T METAL! MEH TRADITIONAL SONG STRUCTURE! WAH! WAH! WAH!” To those people I say “cry in a corner” these are the types of musical conservatives who piss in their black diapers when anybody tries anything different within a genre. Wrnlrd doesn’t give two fucks and does what he wants, according to an interview with Pitchfork (full disclosure, I fucking hate the hipsters at Pitchfork) he said: “I see ghosts of American music everywhere. I hear Dock Boggs in black metal, the droning banjo, voice like an earthquake. I hear Blind Lemon [Jefferson] pounding his feet on the floor, and I know he is my cousin… I think the essence of black metal is something that goes beyond geography and stylistic tradition, even beyond music.”

Apparently Wrnlrd played in a bluegrass band before his foray into avant garde black metal which explains the banjo plucking between tremolo strummed electric guitar, Wrnlrd experiments with different sounds, field recordings, echoing black metal, noise rock guitar screech, Sunn O))) type drones and dark ambient pieces. One can fall into this music and let their minds wander in it, devour it and savor it. There is no way I can do a “Bandwagon” feature on Wrnlrd because most of his releases in physical format are hard to find. He’s got his own bandcamp page but it doesn’t have “Pentagon” on it which is a damn shame. Granted the other stuff in his discography is equally as weird and different and highly recommended.

To listen to “Pentagon” in its entirety and you want to be swallowed by black droning muck go here, I flashed the alternate cover in the video also: https://www.bitchute.com/video/vfwC4g3MrD6G/

Here is Wrnlrd’s record label and bandcamp page without “Pentagon” the albums they have up are prime grade avant garde black metal, some of which I will get around to reviewing in the future: https://flingcosound.bandcamp.com/music