Tarkus saved my life once.

I like an old Melvins tune, how about youuuuuuuuu? I like some Mossy doom, how about youuuuuu?

"From the flight of the seagull, come the spread claws of the eagle, only fear breaks the silence, as we all kneel pray for guidance..." Feeling this way lately? Surprised that Emerson, Lake and Palmer can be at all relevant in 2017? Don't be. What's old is new again.

Bedazzling: IDES | Evocación | Seol | Sovereign | Cowardice | The Lowest Form | Ohyda | HOGG | Beheat Gorum de Mentheurd | Âmes Sanglantes | Architeuthis Dux

---------

And there up top we have Hollywood's—nay America's—Golden Boy; actor, director, lover of wives and children, winner of awards, with not a scandal attached to his name, in a bit of a jam there in Drive (a tender moment for me especially because Christina Hendricks' head has just been blown clean off), but he'll make it. A REAL HERO, AND A HUMAN BEING. 

Expect the My Castle of Quiet 2016 wrap-up film list (with notation) and music dump to post tomorrow, or at the very least before week's end.

Thank you one and all for lending your ears and minds to last night's horrorcast™.

Another shootout!

 

Remember when your friend sat you down, tried to show you something that they had learned on guitar, making several furtive attempts, each time saying "wait...wait..."? I always thought it was funny that guitar players were so well-versed in asking for your patience ...the word "wait" should be the first page in the Mel Bay chord book.

I was batting high last night, in good form, but I don't want to take all the credit, it's all about teamwork after all. That first set, though! Many listeners commented on the Vinegar track, from a wickedly idiosyncratic 1971 one-off LP by the titular gloom-psych combo....just about as "recommended" as it gets.

Again, second week in a row the new Alkerdeel amazes, this time with an 18+ min. track that runs one through a Badlands-style wheat field, into a police shootout, with several side trips to hell. Still one of my favorites in Western-European black doom death rock etc.; they never seem to do anything half-arsed, and Lede is a very all-in release, one of the best I've yet heard this year.

We also heard what probably amounts to High On Fire's best song, one I never get tired of at least; that and a song from the new Hebosagil CD ...ahh! My first time playing the Finnish band on My Castle of Quiet, but damn I waited too long, because "Melvins-y Finnish Wire" is a band description that speaks to some dark, inner need I didn't know I had until I heard them.  Also remarked upon were: the great new Lumpy & The Dumpers album | Facialmess | Klaus Schulze



The news? A LIVE SET next week from NJ's great TOXICOLOGY. Join us!



Week after, I'm thinking its high time for another Scandinavian Prog Special, you tell me. Here's v.1 from almost one year ago (how time flies in the land of the midnight sun!), one of our more visited archives... Scandinavian Prog Special 3rd June 2015

What about the 8th bride for the 8th brother?

I'm sure that my misconceptions about Scandinavia, having only ever been to Oslo. and for ~1 day at that, are many. But through their music, their cinema, their painters and writers, even their often higher-standard television, I feel I have gained an affinity for the essence and landscape of these cold-climated, majestic countries.

I imagine myself living out my later years like police detective Wallander, contemplating the volume of both the universe and the human soul; as the waves lap at the shore I can hear them, see them  from my front deck. My faithful dog murmurs in sleep, at my side ... I answer the call to action when it comes, but have learned to step lightly and with measure.

It goes almost without saying that "wherever you go, there you are," but perhaps I can convince someone to scatter my ashes near a location from Summer With Monika. ...

Perhaps we expanded (and in some cases, perhaps reduced) our listening audience for the evening, but an exploration of my favorite Scandianvian progressive rock has been on my mind to do for some time. Notes were made. Legendary record labels like Love and Silence, and bands like Alrune Rod deserve as much airtime and deep listening as one can give.

We did touch on the electronic / experimental / avant-garde voices of Scandinavia, somewhat, in our last set, with selections from The Sperm, Neptune Towers, and Anna Själv Tredje, but to fully explore that area, and the great work of artists like Folke Rabe, Bo Anders Persson, Arne Nordheim, Pekka Airaksinen, Supersilent, modern Swedish and Finnish noise, and the likes of Circle et al., would undoubtedly require a minimum of another three hours.

Playlist hails went out to Jukka Hauru | Fläsket Brinner | ...and the whole program in general, a departure from our weekly blast of heavy darkness for sure, though in my mind, as with the special programming I've done in the past, the Kraut-Outs 1-2-3, UK Blues Special, and The Sonics of Terror, among others, these excursions more than pass the "Castle filter."

Link to stream the show in full, by clicking on the comedians above, spreading merriment in the time of plague, from Ingmar Bergman's classic The Seventh Seal.

Thanks for listening and for your comments on the playlist. In truth, and with all possible modesty, I think I "outdid myself," and that this will prove to be an oft-visited Castle archive.

Hej du! Scandinavian Prog Special

>>>CLICK ABOVE TO JOIN THE FACEBOOK "EVENT"<<<

It's no secret that the Scandinavian nations have their own, peculiar voice in Rock history, especially where progressive, electronic, and "head" music are concerned. Sometimes underscored by their indigenous folk music, artists like Theodore Kittelsen and writers like Tolkien, but just as often, hippies, rebels, and counterculture conspirators to the North created a unique, regional distillation of what was happening worldwide in the 1970s and beyond. Groups like International Harvester channeled Swedish folk and The Velvet Underground equally, while Hansson & Karlsson made exquisite psychedelic blues, akin to Jimi Hendrix but with only an organ and a drum kit. 

...Making no particular attempts to WOW with rarities, just looking to have a good time playing three hours of some of my favorite music, that these days rarely sees airplay on the show otherwise.

As with previous "Kraut" specials, we'll be keeping it mostly in the 70s, with a few notable, possible exceptions ...(Änglagård, Anekdoten, Neptune Towers, Fläskvartetten anyone?)

...and anyone who can provide me with a good rip of the song, "En Av Oss" by Life [1970] will receive my eternal gratitude and possibly a kustom Castle kompilation cdr.

TONIGHT!

WFMU 91.1FM (NY/NJ)
WMFU 90.1FM (Hudson Valley)
in Rockland County @ 91.9FM
wfmu.org LIVE on the Web. 

You're my hero for playing this...

"[I'M] A REAL HERO, AND A HUMAN BEING...."

Last week, sanguine, full-blooded at least; this week, living on the fumes of hope that remain. Such is the psyche of a bent free-form DJ, but I get the sense that many of you Castleheads are extended too, beyond what's reasonable...fractured, and there is some comfort in numbers, in having a "tribe." Happy to be anyone's hero, even for 11 minutes!

Playlist-comment heralds went out this week to: vintage Bathory | new, intense, progressive black from Erraunt | the powerful split LP on Dead Section from Anicon & Belus | the outstanding new Prurient album ...

I quite enjoyed the aforementioned, as well as tracks by Stumm, Enbilulugugal, Ramlord, Caveman Cult, Mueco, Furze, Theologian, and John Wiese.

Thanks for listening, and engaging with lively film chatter on the comments board. ...

Next week: To finish off the current WFMU schedule with something different, I'll be doing a Scandinavian Prog special.

Our capture this week comes from the short-film series culled form the Berserk anime and manga [read online!] ...If you know the story, that there depicted is the "behelit," and it leads to a lot of horror and death for all involved.... The behelit generates demons, and agony, as you can well see...I guess THAT'S what I felt like, at least this week....

Justice or just-ass?

Good to be back in Castle environs, after a week abroad in the alternately sunny / foggy, hot-cold embrace of San Francisco, my home away from home. Happy also to share my many music-shopping "scores" on last night's program as well, and be assured that we have only scratched the surface of my blackened haul from Amoeba Music and aQuarius Records.

Want to say straightaway that I did catch one impressive live set, by Franco Falsini / Sensations' Fix, the loopy Italian prog artist, some of whose works have been thoughtfully reissued by the great, Bay-Area-based Superior Viaduct label. Franco is going it solo this time, making his way East, with a show in Columbus, OH, tomorrow night, Philly and NY shows to follow, though that info seems a bit difficult to scare up, so maybe someone can fill in those blanks for me. The set I saw in Oakland was largely beat-based (though not entirely), though with the Sensations' Fix characteristic vibe thoroughly intact; with hypnotic, ever-shifting synth groundwork, and Franco's melodic and processed guitar overlays. Totally worth it, for those like myself who eat this stuff up!

Highlights from our weekly horrorcast™ included a split-tape selection from New Hampshire's mighty Ramlord, who'll be bringing their gutsy blackened-crust to Lucky 13 Saloon in Brooklyn on July 26, along with outstanding black metal from Dumal (from PA, tapes on Vanguard Productions) and headliner Kult ov Azazel.

Was pleased to find a copy of the 2010 full-length, Reaper Subconscious Guide, by Norway's eccentric Furze (there's been another full CD since, in 2012) and give a song from the same its WFMU debut. Another debut was the title piece from Pig Destroyer's Mass & Volume, a newly-issued coupling of tracks left off 2007's outstanding Phantom Limb (along with Terrifyer, my personal-favorite arc in the enduring grindcore-doom project's history.) Also, in the past weeks, been leaning heavily on the great, new Anasazi album, Nasty Witch Rock.

New releases on Profound Lore Records also shone, with a selection from the GREAT new full-length by Bosse-de-Nage, and tracks from Menace Ruine & the new Full of Hell / Merzbow 2CD opus. Ferocious songs from Order of The White Hand and Peste Noire were also clear standouts on our playlist.

And speaking of playlist—to bask in a full, live night of Castleness, come out tomorrow to Lucky 13 Saloon, 644 Sackett St. in Gowanus, Brooklyn, where I'll be DJ'ing, in what will hopefully become a regular, bi-weekly stint. Say hello, buy me a pop, watch the dancers, and we can wallow in the blackness together.

Click on our weekly film capture, from Michele Soavi's The Church, perhaps one of my favorite horror films of all time, wherein the freshly demonized Evan claims another initiate in the name of the quite-damned titular house of worship.

and prepare yourselves...NEXT WEEK on My Castle of Quiet: LIVE MUSIC FROM VORDE!!!

KRAUT (& PROG) RISING!

Though incorporated into the My Castle of Quiet horrorcast™, somewhat regularly, this week, for the first time since 2011, we'll be presenting a full three hours of mostly 70s (& some 80s) Krautrock, and other European progressive rock.

So...no metal, no modern "noise" etc., though a great deal of what happens weekly on the radio show can be easily, stlistically traced back to this hyper-creative period in European music, stretching far beyond the scope of "rock," in its myriad, seemingly endless permutations.

Kraut-Out #1, from July 2011.

We hope you'll join us, for seldom-heard tracks, and sundry mind excursions.
Tuesday night / Weds. a.m.

I blow the dust off my purple bellbottoms and red-velvet waistcoat, at 12 mitternacht.
Krautrock begins alomst immediately.
WFMU 91.1FM (NY/NJ)
WMFU 90.1FM (Hudson Valley)
in Rockland County @ 91.9FM
wfmu.org LIVE on the Web.

fantastic and weird to have the Castle at this hour. Oh happy hellfire.

Always interesting to transplant The Castle into different times of day, and see how it flies, and it flew well! ...I veered far from std. Castle territory, after a while, trying to prepare / brace you all for the show's eventual / possible return to weekly broadcasts. A person with my broad appreciation of music cannot live on "roughage" alone, though the original 195 shows remain as a solid body of work that I'm fiercely proud of, and I'm grateful to WFMU for keeping them all archived for your ongoing discovery / enjoyment.

Too many listener hails to chart here, but the playlist and comments can be viewed by simply clicking above, on the immensely talented Reece Shearsmith (of League of Gentlemen fame), stuffing his face hurriedly with hallucinatory mushrooms in director Ben Wheatley's A Field in England, one of my favorite films of this year.

Thanks, as always, for listening and appreciating!

I'll be back, I know not when. ...