Aural Pleasures
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” Opening Titles
The opening titles of David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This awesome sequence was created by motion designer/director Onur Senturk. The song is a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” with vocals by Karen O and music by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross.
“Clump” by iamamiwhoami
A mysterious, beautiful, frenetic, and vaguely sad music video from iamamiwhoami.Tags: electronic music, experimental music, hauntingly beautiful, iamamiwhoami, jonna lee, meadow, music videos, mystical, nature, surreal
Tunage/Pleasure for Your Ear-Holes
+ Austra – The Beast
+ Fever Ray – The Wolf
+ Soap&Skin – The Sun
+ White Ring – Suffocation
+ SWANS – I Crawled (Live)
+ How to Destroy Angels – The Space in Between
+ CocoRosie – Gallows
+ Bjork – Army of Me
+ Portishead – Machine Gun
+ Massive Attack – Butterfly Caught
+ Lia Ices – Daphne
+ Black Tape for a Blue Girl – Fin de Siecle
+ Florence + The Machine – Cosmic Love
+ LA Vampires & Zola Jesus – No No No
+ Jarboe – Kiss of Life
+ Ruby Throat – Naked Ruby
+ Derniere Volonte – Songe d’un matin d’ete
+ Salem – Frost
+ Hybryds – Opheilia/Ulunda
+ Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble of Shadows – La Mort d’Arthur (Instrumental)
+ Helium Vola – Zur Heilung
+ Coil – At the Heart of It All
+ Sonic Youth – Halloween
+ Chinawoman – Friday NightSongs can be listened to below.
Casey LaLonde’s “Thank You”: Album Art
This is the packaging design for Casey LaLonde’s album Thank You centering on a cyborg deer which I quite like:
Click to enlarge Tags: CD artwork, deer, illustrations
Two Songs
Currently among my favorites.
+ “March Funèbre” by Soap&Skin, off Lovetune for Vacuum
+ “Keep the Streets Empty for Me” by Fever Ray, off their self-titled debut album
Tags: dark ethereal, electronic music, experimental music, fever ray, hauntingly beautiful, music videos, soap&skin
Short Film: “Embrio”
Embrio is an experimental short film made entirely by Jean-Sébastien Monzani (story, direction, film, & music), with amazing acting by Stéphanie Schneider.
What draws me to Embrio is its quality of implicit horror, conveyed through the actor’s subtle, ever-changing expressions (she really is the heart of the movie) and the eerie, intense, atmospheric soundtrack. Sans a conventional narrative, Embrio explores the compulsions, fixations, obsessions, and psychological reactions of a young woman, and, though very well-composed, it also has a rawness, depicting naked sensations and emotions with all the vagueness and ambiguity of good psychological horror – all within a clean, bright, well-lit, nearly sterile environment. It draws us deeply, physically, into the experience of the woman, and gets under our skin.
Tags: experimental, psychological horror, short films, surreal horror
Trailer for “Sanatorium Altrosa”
This is a delightful trailer/short film for Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows‘ remix album Sanatorium Altrosa (Musical Therapy for Spiritual Dysfunction), which came out in 2008. It features the brain behind Sopor, Anna-Varney Cantodea, dancing to aurally enticing clips from the tracks.
Someone once asked me, regarding Anna-Varney, “Why do you like that guy? He’s so freaky.”
Hmm…okay, Anna-Varney Cantodea may be one of the more bizarre-looking artists out there, but I think she has a sort of strange beauty which is exactly her own, and isn’t just conventional beauty dressed up in macabre trimmings; she is able to evoke the deepest recesses of human anguish and horror; and her music is quite different from anything else out there. She is one of the rare musicians whose music actually has influences from what I imagine medieval and Renaissance music to have sounded like, and it has such an old-world, dark romantic vibe, with poetic, exquisitely melodramatic lyrics. Also, she is not “that guy.” She is just Anna-Varney.
And while we’re on the subject, some illuminating quotes by Anna-Varney:
“I grew up in a painfully ‘straight’ environment with straight women and straight men, where there was nothing whatsoever in between. I felt like an alien that had crash-landed on a hostile planet inhabited by carnivorous primates (and as it turned out: I was bloody right).”
“You have to understand that from my point of view it is complete nonsense to write any material in order to help other people. It’s totally pointless, because all I can really do is to write about myself, honestly and to a certain degree even ruthlessly.”
{On the rumor that she is infatuated with Darth Vader…}
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“But seriously, the blame is on some (French, I believe, though I cannot quite remember) independent magazine I did an interview for years ago. They tried to be creative, I suppose, so they closed their questionnaire adding a brief game of ‘making-free-associations’ by throwing this totally clever (ahem) list of words at me. The first concept they came up with was ‘black’…and I immediately was in complete awe of such overwhelming and totally unmatched creativity. ;-)
Now, as a good Goth, what was I supposed to reply? DEATH? Deprrrrrression? DARKNESS, even??? Grrrrrr…please! Give me a break, boys! So, instead, I decided to play clever bitch and gave them Darth Vader as an answer. Unfortunately, I had no idea that this would officially turn me into a Star Wars fan. But that’s what ‘Wank-a-pedia’ now says, so I suppose it must be true then. ;)”“A good album should be (amongst other aspects, that is) kind of like a tombstone…a sepulchre, where a part of the artist lies buried.”
Tags: anna-varney cantodea, dark romantic, insane asylum aesthetic, lovely quotations, neo-victorian, neoclassical music, retro, sopor aeternus & the ensemble of shadows, trailers, victorian mourning
Strangulation Dance: “Garrote” by Sruli Recht
Garrote is a short film by Sruli Recht of an interpretative, avant-garde “strangulation dance,” performed by Heba Eir Jónasdóttir Kjeld and River Carmalt, accompanied by experimental music and sound (by Ben Frost). Watch and see.
If you liked this, also check out these related dance posts:
“The Exorcism of…” by Anti Sweden
“Body Remix/Goldberg Variations” (or “Medical Dance”)Tags: dance, experimental, short films
CocoRosie – Gallows
This is the lovely video for the song “Gallows” by the band CocoRosie. Now one of my favorite music videos.
If you like this, also check out their video for “Lemonade.”
The sisters CocoRosieTags: animals, cocorosie, hauntingly beautiful, historically inspired, music videos, neo-victorian, twins/doppelgangers/doubles, victorian, victorian mourning attire
The Inner Kingdom
This is the video for the song “t” from music project iamamiwhoami (Jonna Lee). It reminds me a little of the film version of Where the Wild Things Are. She has the most expressive hands.
“I suppose the crowns…have something to do with autonomy and the inner kingdom.”
- Chris Con Askew, on religious imagery in his artwork
Another awesome music video, from Fever Ray:
Tags: crown, iamamiwhoami, music videos
