Findlay's Top 5 Big Bath Soundtraxx

Who the fuck doesnae love a bath? 

Hell, I may not (or may) have a Judge Dredd and Terminator figure that I take in with me sometimes to recreate scenes from The Abyss. Ever since I was a wee lad, I always loved listening to music in the bath. It always heightened that sense of lonely. Like your own soak in a temple where all you needed was darkness, some Simply Red Van Halen and a swirling myriad of relaxxation. So light a candle, lock the door, take yer skegs aff and pray to Anuket, Goddess of the Nile: its bath time baby!

5. A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 4 - V/A

What a start right? Look, ANOES4's soundtrack isnt a whale sounds/pan pipes melody to soothe yourself into a trance. Its a honking heavy metal/power pop compilation of practically nobodies from the 80's but its a creamer. Listening to this in the bath makes you feel like you're getting ready for the most impossibly RaD As HeLL 80's house party where half the party-goers will end up getting skinned alive by some death-deity appearing from a toilet cistern or through the fabrics of their parents mattress where you should definitely *not* be having sex.

4. Paris, Texas - Ry Cooder

Summer night's bath deep-soak heavy-lidded heaven. BUT DONT FALL ASLEEP. Ry Cooder's soundtracks are always so delicious you could almost eat them, but Paris, Texas is another level. Shut your eyes and you swear you're floating in a bathtub atop a dusted red rock desert, where the only shade is a dry-knotted tree, swaying for its 100th birthday.

3. To Live and Die in L.A. - Wang Chung

I cant guarantee that there wont be water sloshing around the bath when this is on but maaaaaaaaaan this is so energizing. That cover says it all. A searing city sunrise and you're singing and dancing while floating like a kicked in Bigmouth Billy Bass. Another getting-ready-to-go-out style bathe but less "house party" and more "night club in the flashes of headlights".  Let that bassline clean any dirty you ever had on ye. Its going to be okay, baby!

2. The Crow - Graeme Revell

Right, naw, YOU wait a minute. Im not talking about the big honkin' Industrial metal youre-a-friend-for-life-if-you-like-it soundtrack (although i fuckin could). Im talking about Graeme Revell's incredible score. Im not joking. This score has soaring angelic singing, ethereal strings, sneaky underlying tribal drums, chain shaking percussion and, just sometimes, Eric Dravens big guitar wails. That, plus its filtered through the films themes of death, revival, revenge and love so its the ultimate goth bath. I mean, after all, You Cant Bathe All The Time.

1. Exotica - Mychael Danna

The ultimate. Mychael Danna's Exotica soundtrack plays with eroticism, exoticism and luxury. It can be bombastic when it needs to be and it can be petal-delicate when it needs to be. Everything about it is so enrapturing and absorbing its like being able to smell spices with your ears. It experiments with slow cool strings, voice oscillations, eastern instruments, electronic drums and rain heavy themes of rebirth. Perfect for when you want to feel like you're in a giant lotus flower in the scud.

So aye, have a nice wee bath, read a book, have a bath beer, put on maybe one of these and let us know if you liked it! 

-Findlay

Findlay's Top 10 Films of 2016

Hiya, Phone the polis.

Dinnae worry, im not going to make this a giant, monolithic End of Year Retrospective about the state of cinema and how Yes, Maybe I DID Try Torrent My Memories So That I Could Chromecast The Moment I Winded Myself Infront of a High School Crush and how Superheroes are actually bad because they reinforce that the individual is bad and that working with people you'll eventually murder or plot against is the only identity thats worth anything. Nah, this is just the top 10, for me, that came out this year. Clean cut. Get in the car, kid.

10. - Gods of Egypt

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!! Gerard Butler and Alex "the Crow" Proyas team up to literally deliver a river of gold, blood and monsters right into my big dumb eyes. This film got panned by critics and audiences alike showing that, once more, no one has a fucking clue about films. Not even me. Or you. Or T H E M. Maybe the stupidest movie alive but something like this that so earnestly gives us terrible scaling, trap doors, endless vistas of a journey through the afterlife, geoffrey rush on a spaceship fighting a fucking ancient spaceworm and giant snakes being hypnotized? Aye. Absolutely Aye. 

09. - Creed

Creed made me want to be a better man. A version of myself that i could be proud of and present to world as something to channel hope and love into. A conduit of human spirit and essence. To use my soul to express that I am more than that. Creed is the best Rocky film. No question.

08. - Blair Witch

I went to see Blair Witch on my own, sat beside no one, inside a half-full theatre filled with people completely enveloped by the scares and the thrust of it and, for the first time in............forever(?), i left the cinema actually shaking. Blair Witch genuinely scared me and reminded of all the things I ever feared while growing up near and around forests my whole life. Im not stanning for Wingard and, by this point, defending BW is greeted with Not a Good Time, but i deeply loved it. So so much.

07. - Arrival

The art of diplomacy and understanding.

A unity through the shared paradigm of a single code that, depending on how you decipher it, is universal. Meditative science fiction on the loneliness of man and the endless gifts of the universe we'll eventually unlock. Beautiful and sad. Hopeful and studious. Good.

06. - The Alchemist' Cookbook

I think literally the last article on the site was my one for this, so just scroll down and read it! Im no telling ye more about it. Go read. Or watch. Its well good.

05. - Under the Shadow

Please dont call it "the Iranian Babadook". Its more than that. 

The framing of 1980's post-revolution Iran, ancient Islamic world-old demons and instinctual relationships of protection and strength absolutely blew me to fucking bits. 

Its also got THE #1 best jump scare of all time in it. I shat my breeks a screamer.

04. - The Love Witch

A rich, technicolour cornucopia of lust, 60's camp, feminist sharpness, witch craft and paganism bled through the TV as it interrupts a re-run of Bewitched. Anna Biller (alongside Joel Potrykus) is one of my absolute favourite indie genre filmmakers right now. Just fountains of imagination and originality. Fucking great.

03. - Kubo and the Two Strings

Emotionally musical and imaginatively lyrical.

Laika's most impressive film thus far. Frankly, fucking stunning.

02. - I Am Not A Serial Killer

About roughly 20 minutes in, I clicked and my brain went "ITS BASICALLY FRIGHT NIGHT" and you know what. Its not. But well it kind of is. Its basically if remakes were done right, IANASK would be the real Fright Night remake. Bold, fun, creepy and exciting but with a cold finger, wet wood telephone-pole small town that you instantly know and identify with. Mixing the familiarities of your towns and villages with itself. A proper symbiosis of atmosphere. Honestly, the best indie horror of the year. i want everyone in the world to watch it. 

01. - Green Room

The first time i watched Green Room, i was totally fucking shitting myself because I didnt know what was coming.

The second time i watched Green Room, i was totally fucking shitting myself because I knew what was coming.

****BONUS BALL****

Favourite First Time Watch of 2016

Dead Mountaineer's Hotel

Its a fairly hard-to-come-by Estonian murder mystery horror film which, i know, sounds wanky, but this is The One. Dripping in atmosphere and high mountain snow drift arctic chill and painfully beautiful camerawork and oil slick plot turns and fucking stunning glacial lighting from reflections, this film has stuck with me since i watched it at the start of the year. It also asks us such a beautiful question at the end about humanity and the visitors we expect. Dead Mountaineer's Hotel became my favourite foreign movie ever this year.

(you can watch a very good full copy on youtube here shhhhhh)

Thanks for reading! Hope yous have a good NYE and 2017.

-findlay

Recommends: The Alchemist Cookbook (2016)

Chemistry begets chemistry.

Alchemist Cookbook is a slow, melting acid burn on the pages of an instruction manual. The dangers of unlocking the periodic table and revealing the black moving mass behind the doors of reality. It’s also punk as fuck, from screen to release.

Loner Sean (newcomer Ty Hickson) locks himself away in a trailer the middle of the woods to meddle in metallurgy and alchemy, trying to unlock the secrets of homemade gold, all the while self-medicating himself with prescription drugs. When he runs out of drugs? Well, his revelations become clearer.

There’s a total reticence of technology in the film (except for a tape player). The film focuses on chemicals purely. As experiment, as incantation, as food. From cutting batteries, to melting down hot-green powders, to white-heat phosphorous, the film is a slow burn through scientific meddling and demonic whispers. Relating exploration of the secrets of elements to summoning and materialization of the Dark Arts. A pure mass of chemical inducing, chemical denying, demonspeak where the gold Sean wants to amalgamate summons something far far more sinister and insidious. Even the food he dreams of in his vision of his gold-lined future is nothing but GM foods like Doritos and Mountain Dew and Faygo and Tacos. Crystalized in preservatives and E numbers.

Even when summoned, that-which-can’t-be-spoken-to, can’t perform the alchemy to create the gold itself so it demands Sean do it for it. The entity is denied the ability to mess with science as it betrays the hokey religious rules set in place. Spirits and possession are for the otherworld, math and elemental sorcery is for man. It just found a way to get through to our world from the act of it. And when we see it? Is it a trick? Is it real? Is that the trees and moss moving? Has my medication finally worn off?

//Physical transformation through possession can be controlled. It can be reversed//

Sean, the wizard of battery acid.

There’s some amazing moments of tension and fear here, as well as a total platter of satanic themes and betrayal of the mind that really just fucking hit my sweetspot. Joel Potrykus is easily one of my favourite indie filmmakers right now. Mixing ratboy DIY punk ethics, anti-standard filmmaking and unique confidence and voice to everything he does. He revels in oddity and outsiderism and, while Alchemist Cookbook is his most mature and solid effort to date, manages to have the lip-bursting enthusiasm of a first time filmmaker with every film. He also sneaks in hardcore punk, hip hop and the Smoking Popes here just to add flavour to the recipe. Which speaks directly to my heart.

Not only that but The Alchemist Cookbook’s release was exciting and pretty punk aswell.

The film was released as a block. All at once. You can rent it, buy it or torrent it at a pay-what-you-want fee. I was stoked so I torrented it for $10 because, as I said, Joel does it for me. (also the torrent gives you the film and 7 behind the scenes featurettes which is ~very cool~).

This was great though because it’s a new way of releasing films at once. It treats the audience as an equal and respects them as such. No waiting for months until the festival circuit is done then a possible whiff at local filmhouse/crappy DVD sale. It’s here, right now. While I’m aware that total fannies will be paying like $1 for the film, but on the bright side it’s still paying. Not only that, the openness actual made me WANT to pay more for the film. I was being gifted with a great new film I could download in Hi-Def, with extras, within 10 minutes AND it benefits the filmmaker. What a joy man!!

While dvd/bluray’s are currently sanding themselves into a heady genre collectors market and torrenting is really straining the industry as a whole, it’s cool to see people try work around it and make it work for them. So please, go buy/rent/torrent The Alchemist Cookbook, not just because it’s a fucking great, isolated wee indie chiller, but because your soul will feel good for feeding the arts and getting more cool stuff onscreen in the future. Hail to Joel Potrykus!!

heres the link for the films release

you rule, Joel boy.

-findlay

Blair Witch: Resurgence

The Blair Witch Project was the first horror of my generation that I remember becoming part of the zeitgeist. So it was nice to finally have something to talk about with my peers, even if most hated it, even if I got the living pish kicked out me for liking it. All that mattered was I came out the cinema that day a complete wreck, and it felt great.

 Mary Brown feelin’ great.

The Blair Witch Project’s pioneering viral marketing campaign was so successful that audiences were unable to determine whether or not the footage they were watching was real. A modern sequel was never going to be sold like the original, especially in a climate where social media is ubiquitous and the majority of folk using it are chomping at the opportunity to spoil things for others because nobody will touch their genitals.

In an unusually creative turn for a commercially released film, Blair Witch was initially shot and marketed as The Woods. The actual title wasn’t revealed until its first public screening at Comic-Con; the audience thought they were watching a random horror called The Woods. Nice touch, lads.

The lads, writer Simon Barrett (left) and director Adam Wingard (right).

Wingard and Barrett are the most exciting and consistent collaborators in the genre, so when a teaser for their new film The Woods was released I got intense palpies. Imagine the nick of me when I found out it was actually a direct sequel to one of my favourite horrors; I felt like the mouse that caught the Babybel or whatever. The original had some potential to build upon and I knew these lads were perfect for the job.

The Blair Witch Project was also the first commercial found footage film and on a superficial level it focused primarily on people being lost in the woods. After a few watches I tapped into the metaphysical subtext, these people weren’t simply walking in circles and finding themselves back at the same spot - they were falling deeper and deeper into the curse they were already fated to live and die through, a nine circles of hell sort of deal but on a far less operatic scale. The idea of capturing something like that on physical media still fascinates me, these crusty students getting lost in the woods didn’t just take a photo of a ghost, they captured another realm.

Mike going tonto at the first circle. Coward.

When I sat down to Blair Witch I tried my best to mute all expectations, which I’ll tell you right now ruined any chance I had of fully enjoying the giant Aero I just bought from Poundland. The last film Wingard and Barrett made was one of my favourites of the decade and Blair Witch was a sequel to one of the best horrors of all time for fuck’s sake. But I was immediately relieved when Blair Witch picked up on the metaphysical theme in the opening five minutes. They presented the notion that the house the missing crusties found at the end of the original never existed, despite countless search parties on foot and in the sky. They were instantly on the ball and I could enjoy what was left of my Aero.

In addition to the perpetual progress of technology, the entire found footage format that The Blair Witch Project pioneered has changed, they were never going to be able to pull off the hoax of the original, so if the jig’s up, what do you do? Blair Witch didn’t follow the tracks of its predecessor, there was no shoehorned fan service, instead, it developed themes and tones, but most importantly, Wingard and Barrett appreciated that what fundamentally made the original work was simply how terrifying it was.

Mind that? Mind how terrifying that was? Fucked me right up for months.

Blair Witch isn’t a film about people getting lost in the woods, it’s a film about people being chased through the woods. It excels at being

I’m gutted that creative marketing, inventive storytelling and carefully crafted raw fear have proven fruitless and haven’t cracked the wall of mainstream homogenised horror. People just don’t know how good they could have it.

Stop saying this film bombed, you nerds.

-Danny

Recommends: Twin Peaks OST & Bohren and Der Club of Gore

  

This week, well last week, the tireless Mondo Records released what could be one of the the most iconic and essential scores of the past 30 years: the Twin Peaks soundtrack. 

Lovingly packaged in a deluxe-but-not-deluxury lasercut packaging with "damn fine coffee" coloured wax, Angelo Badalamenti's magnum opus has never looked and sounded better.

The album treads a cool-cat fine line between smokehouse jazz and teledrama lavishness. Pure eye-line lit, cigarette smoke hustle. The last dying embers before the night hits. Pure noir mixed with the musical equivalent of crash zooms as someone on Days of Our Lives finds a dead body while out on a jog. Julee Cruise's haunting ghost-pale vocals on "The Nightingale" and "Into The Night" echoing the stories main theme of Who Killed Laura Palmer? The voice haunting the stage of wooden paneled hotels and truckstop reflections, lingering over each actor like a sheet. 

Double bass, fingerclicks, and vibraphone at first sounding cool, confident, but slowly peeling back like wet wallpaper revealing darkness and mystery. Coming slowly down the hall, touching the walls as it goes, scraping bits off as it comes.

Badalamenti's score is nothing short of a masterpiece and even isolated from the film, makes for one of the greatest things you'll ever put on your turntable. Inimitable mood music, turning your flat into a whisky soaked cube of smoke reek and desire.

So while I'm here, I thought id recommend a follow up album to listen to. A basic follow up to the Twin Peaks soundtrack. A shade darker, but no less incredible.

Bohren & Der Club of Gore started out in a bunch of metal and hardcore bands in Germany, soon deciding to focus on other things, they naturally started playing Jazz. Jazz mixed with their past band mentalities and natures, coalescing into their own slow, slick version of Doom Jazz. Patient and deadly, moody and focused.

"Sunset Mission" is B&DCOG's greatest album (and one of my favourite albums of all time). Sounding distinctly similar to the Twin Peaks soundtrack but its own oilier versions. Where Twin Peaks goes for noir-drama, Sunset goes for pure oil black sludge. Replacing diners and hotels for abandoned industrial estates and alleyways in the rain. Chimneys in the night blasting out steam, lit by the streetlights in the industrial estates. Languidly lurching towards you like its been shot in the leg, the album knows when instruments are needed, not cramming it with pace and hooks. Everything builds and pulses. Vibraphone trickles in and fucks off, strings move and recede, the drums gloomily played like they're being hit by a guy who's joints have frozen, horns rasp in from another room then float into another. Everything is cool, slow and creepy. 

Its a pure transformative album, listening to it in the car or on a run completely changes the landscape. Things go from benign to suspicious. Time slows. Everything crystallizes, and its fucking amazing.

I'll stop now, but aye give Twin Peaks a buy and a listen, but if you want to meet its goth wee brother, listen to Bohren & Der Club of Gore's "Sunset Mission". Its an oil black slick of gloom and you'll love it.

-findlay

On Tour, Live from the field: VHS Trashfest, Glasgow 9/9/2016

The environment in which you watch a film can define, transform, reshape and cut new angles into it in ways you never thought.

I’ve watched Carpenter’s The Fog in the hull of a boat with 100 people in the pissing rain, a physical, tangible atmosphere you couldn’t replicate. I’ve watched The Entity alone in the house, terrified to even be in the house as soon as the credits end. Something watching it with a crowd could never have given me. What I’m saying is, sometimes it’s not just the film itself that gives you impact. It’s ~how~ you watch films that also do it.

VHS Trashfest, which it seems is now a yearly event, piled in with Physical Impossibility and Scalarama Glasgow to tapebend and ritualise one of the truest and purest and most revered formats for all genre lovers: the VHS tape. And what better way than to show 3 totally whacked out, cult, weird, funny, gory, disgusting films that you’d steal from yer uncle’s house when he was on holiday in Egypt. Not only that BUT there’s raffle prizes, trailers, good beer and a fucking VHS swapshop beforehand where you can trade, buy and get a hoot out of tapes. And maybe, secretly, have a good smell of those clamshells baby. Oh aye! The Video Namaste boys joined by Owen and Scott were inhaling copies of Lethal Weapon 2 like Dennis Hopper fae Blue Velvet.

knees are sweaty, stallones spaghetti

Screenings like this are important as fuck, not because we all had to sing happy birthday to a Video Player, no no, but because group screenings are a great way to share experience, meet fans of the genre, see things you’d never be able to and generally support local cinema and Feed The Scene. Go!

Get Crazy (1983)

Right, okay. I’m not going to do gigantic spiels on all these films because they’re all too good and it’ll last forever but Get Crazy is the best. Full on shambling, rip roaring, anarchic, punk rock, backstage documentary, drug-filled, drug-fuelled, kitchen sink, ideafest with amazing humour, constant non-sequiturs and daft stunts. Basically a new wave riot in the shape of the Critter ball, all about saving a theatre from being shut down and a huge New Year’s Eve party. Replete with cameos from Lou Reed, Lee Ving of Fear, Dick Miller and Fabian, this film does not stop. If one gag misses, there’s one like 30 seconds away that’s sure to actually have you clutching yourself with laughter. I’ll never stop laughing thinking about Malcolm McDowell’s arsehole-Mick-Jagger-type character Reggie Wanker, getting his heart broken and singing the most fucking hilariously pokerfaced emotional song. Lost in the mire of rights and producers, Get Crazy hasn’t been released on DVD or Blu-ray so seeing this was a genuine treat.

Night of the Creeps (1986)

An all timer. Fred Dekker’s 50’s b-movie, brain eating parasite throwback is full of beautiful cinematography, hilarious lines, belting practical effects, wee naked aliens and most importantly: some of the most loveable and iconic characters of the 80’s. A first time for Richie, Owen and Scott who all seemed to love it big time. For me and for Danny, it was one of those showings that I mentioned at the start. Reshaped. I’d always watched Night of the Creeps on my own or maybe with one other person, but in a room full of people who Got It, it totally changed. I noticed the soundtrack more, the beats and the laughs were noticeably so well placed, the deep love for the characters ~deepened~ by the crowd’s reaction to them and the little self-aware references in the film were clearer. Like, the Vaseline was wiped from the lens and I saw Night of the Creeps not as one of my favourite little underrated horrors but a full on party film. A fucking joy.

Blood Diner (1987)

YES. I love Blood Diner, man. Oh so it’s a loose sequel to Blood Feast, but set in a small town and features two weird as fuck brothers taking orders from their dead uncles brain in a jar to kill and take parts of women to build a new woman so that you can invoke an ancient Egyptian goddess? Ah cool, wait its directed by a woman? SIGN ME UP. Blood Diner is fucking disgusting, hilarious, and one of those vhs fever dreams of crushed blacks, misty lightning, body parts in fridges and a singular riotous vision from the great Jackie Kong. If there was ever a bleary-late-night film to site and warp yourself to. It’s this.

VHS Trashfest was fucking great. Amazing films run by truly nice and accommodating and welcoming people. If you can’t go to these things, or if there’s none around you. Make one. Get a bedsheet, borrow a projector, start your own club. Do the good stuff, the thing that everyone wants: Gross your friends out and show them a good time.

Thanks VHS Trashfest/Physical Impossibility/Scalarama! Yous are the best

-findlay

Dannys genuine heartbreak caught on camera

The Passion Project: Why I Love Project A-ko

I’ll be brief, as I get uncomfortable writing things like this. I can’t shake the thought of someone bursting in, announcing “Nobody asked for your opinion” and giving me both barrels. As well he should. (Also, Danny and Findlay will be raging that I’m talking about an anime instead of some shitey fuckin’ straight-to-skip horror film sequel. What’s up with those lads, anyway? Geez Louise!)

Project A-ko (1986) was the first anime film I ever saw. Back in the days where every single thing from Japan was called MANGA. Even Japanese cars. (My own father drove a Mitsubishi MANGA.) It is a parody film, and the references to other anime flew over my head. They still do. Despite this, or because of this, it was an ideal introduction to Japanese animation. What I was treated to was a showcase of what to expect from anime: mech battles, high school hijinks, incomprehensibly huge action setpieces, catastrophes wiping out millions of lives in a flash, and underpants.

None of these things are why I really like Project A-ko, though. There’s a strong nostalgic side to it, of course. But the appeal of the film for me is that it was a film that wasn’t written, but arranged on a storyboard. It began production without a script; the film didn’t have a writer. The director allowed everyone to make suggestions – character designers, animators, sound designers – and anything that was met with group approval went straight into the film. Democratic anarchy.

Project A-ko’s producer, Kazufumi Nomura, happy to dismiss convention.

Such reckless abandon shouldn’t result in a film as competent as Project A-ko. During its production, word got around that some young group of rookies were working on a film that was a no-holds-barred spectacle where animators were free to do as they pleased. Many eager young talents signed up to show their stuff. No-one was there for the 9 – 5 anymore, this was a passion project for a group of people wanting to make their mark in an industry they felt had grown stagnant or dull. Many of the Project A-ko staff believed anime had become too dramatic, and were keen to have some fun.

For a long time, if you were an animator with ideas, you put them on hold while working on what you were told to do. Then maybe someday you’d be a director. Even then, your ideas may never see the light of day should a studio decide to pass it up. Today, thanks to readily available digital animation software, this limitation has been bypassed. With YouTube and Vimeo, more and more amazing independent animators are given the opportunity to express themselves to a wide audience. (There was Newgrounds, though that was still a relatively tight-knit community rather than a place to show the world your talents.) Watching Project A-ko, I see the same passion for animation that I see today from young animators making whatever they feel will show what they’re capable of. And to achieve that in the days of cels and paint and cameras and film, it’s nothing short of inspiring.

And as if the visuals weren’t enough, there’s the original soundtrack. Now look, I clearly don’t know how to write about films. So I probably know even less about how to write about music. I won’t embarrass myself by trying. I’ll just tell you that I absolutely love it and provide a photo from the studio it was recorded in.

The good stuff.

I suddenly realise I haven’t said what the film is about. Hope you enjoyed all that READING! Later, losers. (Ha ha, but seriously folks!) It’s not about anything, really. Not being late for school, mostly – then aliens invade. Don’t worry too much about it, the staff sure as hell didn’t. And yet it was a hit. Awards, sequels and merchandise – including manga, (not cars) a tabletop RPG and (gasp) an interactive CD-ROM! I’ll now leave you with the film’s director, Katsuhiko Nishijima:

- Owen