Stephen McClurg's Blog, page 23

At Horror DNA: The Year of the Storm Review

My review of The Year of the Storm is now live at Horror DNA.

At Horror DNA: Moon Garden Review

My review of Moon Garden is available over at Horror DNA.

New Show and New Playlist

Tonight I’ll be playing a Serenity Dagger audio/visual set to open Exprov 10. I’ll be helping to close it out as part of Taylor Rouss’s Game Call Quacktet.

A new playlist is available! McClurg’s Musicalia #25: When Thunderdome’s fires envelop the rabbit moon.

Junk Jrawer #4, Musicalia #24, and Serenity Dagger Page

Junk Jrawer Volume 4 is available on Bandcamp. Improv/sounds/textures. I played Korg Monologue on this one, but used different settings and effects chains.

McClurg’s Musicalia #24: Provo Canyon Cropduster is ready for your ears.

There’s a new Serenity Dagger Facebook page, if you’re interested. I’ll be posting about upcoming shows and recordings there.

Marginalia #30

Not the normal reading I extol here. While I’m not excited about politics or politicians, I have always done some kind of volunteer or civil work. Currently, I’m on my local Historical Commission and Zoning Board of Appeals.

Recommended for those interested in city and neighborhood planning.

Growing up, it was always cooler to be ironic and distant, but I couldn’t ever hack that. I get too excited by things like the Muppets or Godzilla.

I had never heard of this. It’s in Shudder’s current folk horror collection, but could be in the House of Psychotic Women, or Possession, even Italian Neorealism (it is supposedly based on anthropological studies of Southern Italy!). Is Puri, the young lead, obsessed or possessed? The questions and answers are all mixed in with her being subjected to various types of cultural power.

From 1963, so predates the novels of Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, which later kick off the Bronze Age of Horror.

I thought it was fantastic! Gorgeously photographed, evidently the director was a Fellini collaborator.

Some friends and I were discussing some of the subtleties of Blakey’s playing, though acknowledging what he’s known for: drive and power.

Freddie Hubbard’s spirit and technique are as fiery as ever.

I’m actually working a bit on In C for possible performances, but wanted to listen to something I hadn’t heard by Riley. Scodanibbio is maestro of upright bass and this is a bizarre little album.

Sometimes I like the keyboard tones, sometimes not.

I’ve got a new review over at Horror DNA for The Devil Conspiracy. It’s a little bit Dan Brown and a little Get Out with some religious superhero imagery on top.

A new playlist is available! McClurg’s Musicalia #23: Like speed boats on rough water.

The Canons of The Outer Limits

The Outer Limits, along with The Twilight Zone, is one of a handful of TV shows I keep telling myself I’ll purchase on VHS or DVD or Blu-ray or whatever. While reading Fangoria #9 (check out the archives!), I came across an interview with writer/director/producer Leslie Stevens. The interview features a set of guidelines for writers on the show.

I thought my frequent mix of writer friends and sci-fi/horror friends might like this. As a sometime writer and lifelong monster kid it was a great find!

At Horror DNA: The Devil Conspiracy Review

A new review over at Horror DNA!

Marginalia #29

I love this kind of stuff, and while I can’t applaud much of the filmmaking, it’s a joy to see Rick Baker’s effects for his first feature film and see Harryhausen’s Sinbad again (Kern Matthews).

A friend and I have talked about the great models out there of the drippy title beast and I imagine she’ll have one before I do.

The kids and I discussed watching this after we saw Nosferatu. My youngest seems more interested than the oldest, who enjoys cataloging the similarities and differences between the films.

I forgot how fast this one moves and Tod Browning delivers some fantastic imagery–enough to be one of the major sources of the Golden Age of Horror.

Fulci’s The Beyond creeped me out so much when I was a kid, largely for the dream logic that rules its unfolding. I realize now that it was time or budget restraints combined with less importance placed on narrative than traditional films.

Shudder has a great transfer playing right now, and the Joe Bob version has some hilarious and awful stories from behind-the-scenes.

Though the ending scared me and confused when I first saw it, it’s one of my favorites now!

Bill Orcutt’s Music for Four Guitars has been on repeat all week. In the mood of some work by Terry Riley and Steve Reich, but somehow also the guitar work in bands like Echo and the Bunnymen or Joy Division.

Here’s a great live version!

I saw Ghost Food last weekend perform a version of “Spearfinger.” An absolute blast!

The McRouss live set “The Fat Moon Is You” is available on Bandcamp and other sites. It’s a free improv set with Taylor Rouss. He played game calls and soprano sax and I played tabletop acoustic bass guitar with objects, including the mallets with beaters made of styrofoam balls, which you hear at the beginning of the set. Next month I’ll be a part of his Game Call Quacktet!

A new playlist is available! McClurg’s Musicalia #21: Caliban Wynette and the Chatterbox Orphanage.

New Music: McRouss: The Fat Moon Is You

A live recording from Exprov 9: experimental/improvisational musics nite at East Village Arts in Birmingham. McRouss is Taylor Rouss and me. He was on game calls and soprano sax and I played tabletop acoustic bass guitar + objects.

You can get it at Rouss House Records or listen below.

Marginalia #28

Finally read through JW Rinzler’s book on Rick Baker, the makeup artist. I wanted to be a marine biologist because of Jaws and my uncle’s interest in sharks. Then I wanted to be a stop-motion animator like Harryhausen. Around the same time, I started learning about Rick Baker, Tom Savini, and Dick Smith, all the artists doing great old age makeup, gore, and monsters!

I’m still in love with the field. Baker’s book gives some fantastic insight into the industry. He’s still a talented, but no less dedicated, artist to this day.

I’m having a similar experience with this book that I had when I first started studying mediation. It was before the mindfulness craze and the surge of popular writing on the subject. I feel like wabi-wabi was a phrase that I vaguely understood, and still do, though I very much enjoyed this introduction.

It seems like a great way for someone who deals with perfectionism to let go. I’m going to reread this and also search out some other works on the subject–that don’t suck. I’m sure there is a glut of it out there.

Got recommended this by a friend (who just got an honorable mention award for best use of cinematic language at a recent film scramble).

Didn’t know this movie, even though it’s a Hammer film ( I do love me some Hammer movies) and it’s got a youngish Oliver Reed as a kind of gang leader (I also love me some Oliver Reed).

Exploitation sci-fi horror with a chilly Cold War government lab full o’ creepy kids!

Maybe not my favorite Peele film, but there were ideas and images that stayed with me for days afterword (the Gordy sequences themselves are intense and haunting). And the movie had me thinking–which was a big bonus for me. While having a spectacle critique the notion of spectacle is a postmodern move, probably not loved by all, it is worth thinking about. Combined with this are ideas about exploitation in its various guises–some maybe chosen even? Throw in some Muybridge photos–the birth–or at least one of the trimesters–of moving pictures and I’m going to be interested.

Peele doesn’t supply a lot of answers here and I’m thankful for that. Most spectacle movies tie everything up neatly. We don’t get that here.

I worked on two releases of improv/ambient/noise that came out recently. Junk Jrawer Volume 1 and Volume 2 are available at Make World Gooder Tapes.

I’ve been making music and sound art with some of these folks for over two decades. We started on four-track recorders and other cassette tape machines.

This is a new video and improvised piece on Korg Volca Sample 2. I was originally going to perform this at the March Birmingham Noize Night, but it got cancelled. I’m working on a new piece that should have a live debut in June. More soon.

On Saturday, I’ll be back at East Village Arts (EVA) in Birmingham to play in a duo with Taylor Rouss, the big bouss at Rouss House Records and the curator of the Exprov series featuring experimental and improvisational music. It’s a small, but dedicated community and Taylor is doing a lot of the hard work to keep it going.

You can donate or become a member of EVA. It is a way for the community to have access to some world class artists and musicians.

McClurg’s Musicalia #20! New playlist features new Overkill, some old Peter Thomas, and track featuring the great Kidd Jordan, who left us recently. I didn’t interact with him much, but he was very kind when I did. He was, however, always a phenomenal player.