Eclectic Method‘s montage of Hollywood’s vision of the future as seen through film.

I want to tell you something about the future. It will either be: A mind-bendingly awesome; utopian landscape where all of Earth’s problems have been resolved and technology and humanity have evolved to create harmony.

Or it might be a fucked-up dystopian nightmare. Where artificial intelligence has surpassed that of its creators. Or perhaps humans have ravaged the Earth to such a degree that it has gone into full revolt. Or a scarcity of resources has humans warring over water. It depends on which film you watch or what time of day you might have asked Stanley Kubrick’s opinion.

 
Via Boing Boing

 
Or something like that.

Rene Cantu a 26-year-old San Antonio man who says he suffered from bad luck claims his life changed for the better when he saw the face of Jesus burned into the tortilla of his breakfast burrito.

I like how he takes his own personal (burrito) Jesus with him when he buys his lotto tickets. I think I would do that too. Via KVUE TV:

“I’ve been having a lot of bad stuff happen to me,” said Cantu. “Ever since this happened it’s been good luck to me. Every time I take it to the store I get a Lotto and I win!”

He said it also reminds him of his blessed life.

“A little Savior watching over me,” said Cantu as he glanced at his tortilla wrapped in a fur blanket.  Cantu keeps it well preserved in a box, and even poured transparent glue over it to seal it.

“It brings me a lot of faith and hope and maybe I can bring people faith and hope, too,” he said.

 
Via Christian Nightmares, now accepting submissions at Christian Nightmares, Too. Tell of your Christian nightmare, why don’t you?

Graham Duff by Xavier Itter

We’re thrilled to present this ‘year end’ guest post from Graham Duff. Graham is the creator of Ideal, the cult hit dark comedy that ran for seven series on BBC Three. He is a well-known music fanatic and personally selected Ideal‘s eclectic soundtrack. Seen in a small role in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows films as a “Death Eater,” he recently co-wrote the BBC sitcom Hebburn with comedian Jason Cook. In 1992, Duff’s one-man stage show “Burroughs,” based on the life of William S. Burroughs won him a Brighton Festival award.
 

 
When industrial music pioneers Throbbing Gristle reformed in 2004, it was never going to be just a case of regurgitating their back catalogue. Their ‘comeback’ albums Part Two: The Endless Not and the largely instrumental Third Mind Movements proved that TG were still ahead of the pack.  But perhaps one of their most intriguing and unprecedented ideas was to rework Nico’s highly regarded 1970 album Desertshore in their own image.

However, in October 2010, bassist, violinist and vocalist Genesis P. Orridge quit the group at the start of series of European dates, leaving Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti – now operating as a reinvigorated trio under the name X-TG – to complete both the tour and the Desertshore project. Then, only a month later, Christopherson suddenly passed away. Tutti and Carter elected to continue with the album, incorporating both Sleazy’s initial recordings and an impressive array of guest vocalists.

Antony Hegerty, Marc Almond, Blixa Bargeld, visionary film director Gasper Noé and porn star turned actress and singer Sasha Grey all lend their vocal talents to this stunning collection. Hegerty’s unique voice is supremely suited to X-TG’s grand and spectral reimagining of “Janitor of Lunacy,” Marc Almond delivers a perfectly judged performance of “The Falconer,” one of Nico’s most beautiful songs. But it is Tutti herself, whose vocals - neutral yet achingly human - best capture Nico’s spirit. If her performance on “All That Is My Own,” with its opening squalls of guitar noise and pulsating electronic rhythm, is restrained and plaintive, then her interpretation of “My Only Child” is frankly heartbreaking.

With its stately packaging, sleeve notes and funereal aesthetic, this is clearly a commemoration of Christopherson’s life and work, as much as it’s a celebration of Nico’s legacy. Meanwhile, on The Final Report, what should have been a new beginning turns into a full stop. This is the music Christopherson was working on with Tutti and Carter after P.Orridge had fled. Highlights include the insistent brutalist throb of “In Accord” and the brief but detailed “Um Dum Dom” which pitches a heavily treated Christopherson spoken vocal into a chiming tick tock rhythm.

Either one of these releases could easily lay claim to being album of the year. But as a double album they are frankly unbeatable. No one could have predicted the story of one of modern music’s most innovative and influential groups would end like this. But then of course very little about TG was ever predictable.
 

 
Italian born, London based Mauro Remiddi delivers a flawless album of dreamy hauntological bedroom pop. Porcelain Raft’s debut is alive with subtle but insistent earworms. Remiddi’s vocals frequently sound genderless and on the fuzzy glide of “Unless You Speak From your Heart” or the gentle buzzing synth bubblebath of “Drifting In And Out,” Porcelain Raft come across like a more bleary and ragged Saint Etienne. There are some beautiful and subtle arrangements and the mood is often blissful. But there are moments of woozy self doubt and unease, which prevent this from descending into being just another postcoital soundtrack. In fact, there’s a real artfulness in the way Remiddi mixes gorgeous lulling melodies, with minute glitches and submerged dissonance.
 

 
Whilst recent releases have seen Hoop focussing on a more stripped back acoustic feel, The House That Jack Built sees an artist embracing the sonic possibilities of the studio. And it’s probably her most satisfying album thus far. Her ability to craft singular and unpredictable melodies remains undiminished and her world view is still pleasingly off kilter, yet the mood is often effortlessly uplifting. Neither overly polished nor overtly lo-fi, the album boasts some intricately structured arrangements which still retain some rough edges. Lyrically Hoop has always been keen to mix self examination with a wider range of topics than most, and the self-explanatory “Ode To Banksy” aside, these songs see her at her most enigmatic.
 

 
As if completing and delivering the X-TG double header wasn’t enough, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti also released this understated masterpiece earlier in the year. A collaboration with kindred spirit Nik Colk Void - guitarist and vocalist with the exceptionally fine post-industrial outfit Factory Floor – this set was recorded at the London’s Roundhouse for the 2011 Mute Records festival. Carter’s unmistakable churning rhythms provide the pulsing bedrock for Tutti and Void to explore the textural and percussive possibilities of their electric guitars. A largely instrumental excursion, this is a deeply entrancing album which not only easily sits amongst Carter Tutti’s strongest work, but also harks back to the majesty of Heathen Earth era Throbbing Gristle.
 

 
Bass man Wobble is a genuine maverick spirit. Sadly, much of his output over the last decade has tended towards a thoughtfully produced but strangely anonymous world music lite. Even the much longed for reunion with early Clash guitarist and former PIL sidekick Keith Levene only produced a patchy and frequently uninspired album and EP. It would seem that Wobble was saving up his best tunes and ideas for this far superior collaboration. Manchester’s Julie Campbell (aka Lone Lady) also seems to have been inspired by the project, as all her vocal lines here show a strength and grace which is sometimes lacking in her solo work. Levene makes a couple of guest appearances, most noticeably on “Phantasms Rise…” With its perfect balance of groove and dissonance, it’s a song which could have sat very easily on PIL’s Metal Box. But this is an album of light and shade and there’s even a hint of Supernature era Goldfrapp about the disco throb and sensual moan of album stand-out “Feel.”
 

 
This quiet, foggy, unassuming debut from a duo comprising Liz Harris of Grouper and Jesy Forentino of Tiny Vipers is way more than the sum of its parts. An expansive album (6 songs in 40 minutes), Foreign Body occasionally brings to mind Brian Eno and Robert Fripp’s early minimalist experiments on No Pussyfooting and Evening Star. Whilst its shimmering elegaic vocal lines suggest a female fronted Sigor Ros. This is definitely an album of one mood, and, with its gentle, contemplative drones, delicate ethereal guitar washes and half buried melodies this feels like modern devotional music. “Silent From Above” is as close as Mirroring get to a conventional song structure, but even here, a simple vocal and folk guitar figure is eventually submerged in spectral echoes and blissed out atmospherics.  The perfect early morning record.
 

 
One of the exciting things about Brooklyn based Laurel Halo is the way her music engages with the emotional, the physical and the intellectual aspects of sound. Previous releases under her King Felix alias have buried her vocals in the depths of the mix, but here they burst into the foreground. And it was clearly the right move. Her vocal lines are anything but route one and several melodies have a nicely warped feel. The range of structural approaches is deeply impressive too.  “Carcass” has a minimal euro-techno pulse, where “Years” would not sound out of place on the Philip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach. Halo also understands the power of brevity. Where many electronic artists like to stretch out, she keeps things lean and concise. The music frequently floats free into beatless space where synths create great melodic clouds of sound, but it’s her dextrously programmed rhythmic flourishes which underpin the album.
 

 
Dissonant, histrionic, morbid and claustrophobic are all words you will hear applied to this collection. Admittedly, these are all apposite descriptions of the most difficult album on this list, however, it’s also one of the year’s most rewarding listens. Scott’s increasingly oblique but vivid lyrics would appear to focus on geopolitical struggles and abuse of human rights. Meanwhile, his dynamic and genuinely experimental musical compositions are, at times, truly frightening. The most easily digested track is “Epizootics!” which manages to blend beat poetics, a lopsided percussive shuffle and loud, near celebratory horn fanfares. This is undeniably a very dark album, but there’s also humour and wit here. Witness lines such as “Nothing clears a room like removing a brain” or “I’d like to forget you just the way you are.” Scott’s journey from 60’s hit parade heart throb to modern day avant garde soundsmith is a fascinating tale which has been told many times. But the story shouldn’t overshadow the man’s actual artistic achievements.  After all, how many artists could be said to be producing music which genuinely sounds completely unlike anything else?
 
Read the rest of the list after the jump…
 

 
Despite adopting a policy of state atheism, the secularization project of the Soviet Union could do nothing to sever the cultural connection to Christmas.

Below are some “holiday” cards from the Soviet era, but one can easily detect efforts at sneaking familiar Christmas traditions into what had become a Soviet New Year celebration. You can see the character of Ded Moroz, formerly an evil sorcerer from Slavic mythology—he was said to freeze and kidnap children without conciliations from their parents. His striking resemblance to Santa is the result of a massive rebrand by the Orthodox Church to mimic the Dutch Saint Nicholas.

Of course, after the Russian Revolution, Ded Moroz was declared “an ally of the priest,” and was subsequently (somewhat awkwardly) retrofitted over the Soviet New Year holiday. In 1935, high-ranking Soviet politician (and primary facilitator of the famine-genocide in the Ukraine), Pavel Petrovich Postyshev spoke out in defense of Christmas, arguing that its pre-Christian origins and value to children should exempt it from condemnation as bourgeois or religious. This paved the way for a more lenient view on the holiday.

In 1937, Stalin even commissioned a Ded Moroz for public appearances, commanding, however, that they wear blue, so as not to be conflated with the Western Saint Nicholas. There were even Soviet Nativity Scenes with Ded Moroz as Joseph, a Snow Maiden (Ded Moroz’ helper) as Mary, and the baby New Year as Jesus.

As you can see below, Soviets fashioned some truly surreal feats of cultural synthesis with Ded Moroz, Communist iconography, and the USSR’s omnipresent symbol of ambitious futurism: space travel.
 

Rockets for speed, horses for nostalgia
 

Actually, screw the vestigial horses—they’re just bourgeois sentimentality
 

Note the icons of industrial economy in the tree—factory, bridge, dam, rocket, minecart, etc
 
More after the jump…
 

It comes in pink, white, and blue
 
The tally of children killed by unmanned combat air vehicles from the United States officially stands at 178 (and let’s be honest, it’s probably higher); so why haven’t we yet commemorated this new, highly effective war technology with a cuddly plush toy?

Thankfully, Café Press shop, The Air Force Store, has it covered with the “UAV Battlelab Teddy Bear”:

Our plush bear is a cutie in his own message-bearing t-shirt and festive red and blue ribbons. Here’s a great gift for Valentine’s Day, baby showers, birthdays, get well-wishes, a pair of wedding bears, or any reason you dream up. Put a smile on someone’s face. Just grin and bear it!

I’m sure kids will just love it.

 
An extravagantly open-minded wuss, I’ll probably spend Friday’s long-awaited “Mayan Apocalypse” wearing one unbroken wince of apprehension. Thank Christ I don’t have a TV – a newsflash’d probably kill me! All the same, I can see that there’s little real reason to worry. For one, we constantly read that the Mayan calendar is apparently cyclical – even NASA has emphasized this (as if they’d be quietly fueling their shuttles otherwise). And, for two, since when did everyone start giving a toss what the Mayans thought about anything anyway?

Someone who will be leaving 2012 with a reputation for foreseeing carnage, however, is Loren Coleman. As I’ve already detailed, this morbidly sagacious fellow has a penchant for fingering the future through the present, and made use of his idiosyncratic cocktail of behavioral science, synchromysticism and intuition to predict the Aurora shootings back in July. Naturally, not everyone will agree with this statement, but his prediction – the context of which made it eerily precise – seemed to defy coincidence. As such I could think of no better person to quiz on the 2012 phenomenon. It transpired that Coleman’s thoughts on it were by no means independent of current events…

Thomas McGrath: Loren, first things first, have you stocked up on canned food for the 21st?

Loren Coleman: No. I do not fear the world is going to end on Friday. I don’t have extra food, batteries, or supplies in my home. I won’t take any unusual precautions for living my life on December 21st. Fear mongers, however, including certain sensationalistic elements of the media, are whipping this up.

TM: How would you explain the tenacity of this “2012” meme? Do you think there could be some preternatural source for its potency, or does it strike you as mere hysteria?

LC:  Tucson, Aurora, Oak Creek, Sandy Hook: If it feels like the End is Near, in large part it has much to do with the fearful, the vulnerable, the suicidal-homicidal who are causing self-fulfilling End of the World prophecy events to come true. It must be awful times for those kinds of folks. Because of that, the red dawns, the bloody killing days, are all around us, and awareness is important. While we must be alert, we should not live in fear.

Psychologically, we all know we are going to die. Humans are not immortal. Sometimes an intriguing psychological process infrequently occurs around these “end of days” deadlines. People somewhat enjoy thinking they can know when they will die, when society will die, and that they will not be alone in the “final event,” because if it is global, everyone dies. It is massive parlor game gone mad.

That the latest event here in the States (on the night of Sunday, December 16th) involved a “Mayan” location, seemed beyond coincidental.

TM: It occurs to me that this 2012 phenomenon might betray the existence of an emergent religion, a sort of New Age syncretism with a number of specific traits (a mythology woven out of conspiracy theory, for example). Apocalyptic predictions and manias are a common feature of most jejune religions and religious movements. Of course they’ve all been wrong so far, though many survived the inaccuracy. Any thoughts on this?

LC: Some end of days (which even has a name, eschatology) movements have evolved into religions, mainstream today, and cults who self-destructed in the past. These include, for example, The Seventh-day Adventist Church and Jehovah’s Witnesses (who are still around); The Solar Temple and the Heaven’s Gate groups (who are less significant because their membership has been declined by mass suicides). Others like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are eschatological too, and these Mormons (remember Mitt Romney is an elder in the Church) believe earthquakes, hurricanes, and other disasters, including school shootings, are a sign of the Second Coming.

I do not see any eschatological movements coming out of this Mayan-blamed date. Yet.

TM: You’ve alluded to certain apocalyptic/catastrophic intimations of your own in Twilight Languageposts I’ve come upon. Do you suspect we are in fact living in “end times”?

LC: No. When humans are living they think everything happening now is super-significant. It is, for them. But humans tend to be shortsighted, and forget human history more than they wish to acknowledge. Several “end times” predictions have been visited upon humans. We just weren’t alive then, so they seem less important than this one.

TM: You’ve gone on record with predictions for an Israeli strike on Iran - do those stand for the present? Care to share them with our readers?

LC: My hope, always, is that men and women who talk peace will find a path to peace. However, sabre-rattling seems more in tune with what’s happening in Iran, Israel, Syria, Egypt, and the USA in the coming months in the Middle East. An attack seems in the making, for the fear of war with an attack or two seems the next step in these warrior states sitting down to talk peace, unfortunately. Look to the Spring.

TM: Any other predictions for 2013?

LC: If 2012’s earlier theater, church, workplace, mall and school shootings in America follow the patterns of the past and continue to be predictive of the future, I feel awareness for various kinds of dangerous incidents should dictate awareness to December 21-22, 2012, and during the “red danger” period of April 14-30, 2013. I hope not, but the Newtown violence was so horrific, the copycat effect may be a contributing factor to repeat incidents, in the short term and next spring.

“Look what fear’s done to my body!”

This 1980 Rockpalast concert from Magazine must’ve been shown again recently on German television. I snagged a high quality copy of this just last week from a torrent tracker and now it’s on YouTube, I see, with not that many views, either.

The Magazine we see here includes Barry Adamson on bass, Dave Formula on keyboards, drummer John Doyle and of course bandleader/frontman Howard Devoto, but original guitarist John McGeoch, whose strikingly original guitar lines were such a major part of the band’s sound, had by then departed to join Siouxsie and the Banshees. He was replaced for Magazine’s 1980 world tour by Robin Simon of Ultravox, who is on deck here and no slouch on the guitar himself.

This is a pretty amazing concert—these guys were tight—and must be the most substantial record of Magazine performing live during their classic era. If you love Magazine like I love Magazine, then this hour long concert is going to make you very, very happy. Watching the great Howard Devoto captured in his youthful prime here singing his darkly literate songs of icy alienation, violence and non-conformity is a revelation.
 

 
Via La Cumbuca

 
Sparks with their sleazy anti-Yuletide number, “Thank God It’s Not Christmas,” on French television in 1974.

From their classic breakthrough album of that year, Kimono My House.
 

 

 
Wonders never cease. Here’s longtime Tonight Show (Johnny Carson era, natch) bandleader and frequent co-host Doc Severinsen stretching out on a fine rendition of the timeless prog classic In The Court of the Crimson King from his long-lost and never reissued 1970 LP Doc Severinsen’s Closet.

Fun for you and yer Grandma !
 

Heeeeeeere’s Doc, Johnny and Ed.
 

 
Thanks Solo Goodspeed of Granada Hills,Ca !

 
What’s that you say? You’d like a crusty random Beatles obscurity? Well I’ve returned to the fold just in the nick of time then, eh? Apparently sometime in the mid-60’s then ad-man and future director of The Lords Of Flatbush, Stephen Verona collaborated with John Lennon on a clever and somewhat risque (for the time) animated clip for the innovative, guitar feedback-usage pioneering “I Feel Fine.”

Artnet had this to say about it:

A chance meeting in a London nightclub in London in 1966 between artist and film maker Stephen Verona and the man of the hour John Lennon led to a friendship and artistic collaboration which resulted in this, the world’s first music video. John gave Stephen a new and soon to be hit record, which arrived on an unlabeled disc. It sounded like the title of the song was going to be ‘She Said So’ not the next line in the song, ‘I Feel Fine’ hence the title of the song became ‘She Said So’.
Verona set to work in New York drawing the pop-art cartoon images to fit the lyrics and flow of the music. Lennon flew to New York and the two got together to measure the progress. Stephen remembers the night that Lennon came over to his apartment and the two wiled away the hours by sitting in the kitchen table, smoking and coloring in the images with markers – the Music Video was born.

OK, obviously it’s not the world’s first music video (why must everybody who made a music clip before the advent of MTV make that claim ?), but it’s a nifty find, doncha think ?
 

 
Thanks to the great music historian Domenic Priore for the tip ! Go buy his book !