Feb 222020
 

 

I’m about to drive to Portland with friends to take in a mainly acoustic show by Austin Lunn (Panopticon), Aerial Ruin, and Mike Scheidt of Yob. That means I probably won’t have a SHADES OF BLACK column on Sunday, though I’ve already written a premiere for that day, so we won’t leave you completely lonesome tomorrow. As for today, I’ve resorted to the “Overflowing Streams” format because there are SO MANY new songs and videos I’ve been enjoying that I didn’t want to cut the list back, and don’t have time to write about them.

Almost everything here surfaced over the last 48 hours. Perhaps needless to say, there’s a lot of variety on offer. I don’t expect anyone (but me) to get a kick out of all this, but hopefully you’ll find at least one or two things to like. Continue reading »

Apr 142012
 

For reasons I explained yesterday, I haven’t been my usual upbeat self lately, and I’m still pretty down. NCS readers have been really understanding and sympathetic. Some of you have even sent me e-mails with links to videos and music, in hopes that they would prove to be distractions from my grief  . . . and they have been.

I’ve collected some of them in this post, in case  you might need some distractions, too. I’ve arranged them in order of increasing weirdness and depravity, with the finale being a NSFW video by a band of Finnish deviants named Turmion Kätilöt (pictured above). Nothing takes your mind off grief like depravity.

ITEM ONE

This item, and the next two, came my way from Ben C. (Church of the Riff). I liked his introductions so much I’m just going to steal them. Here’s his preface to Item One: “Meet Buck. He’s a deer, who’s dating a hunter’s daughter. It sounds tame, but this is seriously some Pixar quality shit.” And so it is.

You can probably guess where this one is headed, just from Ben’s description. The high points for me were the near-kiss in the tunnel, the hunter’s stoic bloodhound, and the final few seconds. There’s a metaphor in here. I think it’s a message about tolerance for interspecies love. What do you think? Continue reading »