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Music, Nerdism and Geeky stuff

Your ultimate Lovecraft soundtrack part 1

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I’ve noticed the curious fact that so many bands have recently gone in the direction of Lovecraftian themes in their music, it’s astonishing. Some of them are brilliant.

Entering the Mythos

I stumbled upon a library book when I was around 16 years of age, featuring assorted Lovecraft stories. Though the book was more aimed at New England stories (the witchcraft stories of Lovecraft), it was an immediate succes for my reading pleasures. For years it felt like a nice underground thing, that only the initiated of my friends knew about. It’s the kind of work that makes you feel like you know something others dont.

The mythos isn’t for everyone, there’s a style of writing inate to the work of Lovecraft that is dense, old and sometimes a bit too stale, but it all helps in the proces of scaring you. Not everyone can get that far, which always prompts me to recommend short stories. Lovecraft could astonish you in a  100 pages of ‘At The Mountains of Madness’, but evenly so in a 3 page short story.

Academic interest

The Lovecraft mythos and its impact has even become a topic of some academic/essayist interest with the writings of even a Michel Houellebecq adresses the topic of Lovecraft. The early 20th century pulp writer has become an underground culture phenomenon. Specially in the later decades of past century, Cthulhu is rising.

Not only are there tons of cartoons, re-issues and weird fan art, Cthulhu and other Lovecraftian creations have been part of music (mostly heavy or underground) for a while. Gary Hill documented this in his book ‘The Strange Sound of Cthulhu: Music Inspired by the Writings of H.P. Lovecraft’.  It mentions an astonishing amount of bands from all sorts of places, but I feel quite often from the southern part of the USA. I guess the foggy swamps bring about something supernatural.

Musical Reading Support

Though many bands featured mention the fact that they veel their music should stand on its own, I find personally that having a good slab of music to listen to while reading the works of Lovecraft is an entirely cool thing to have. The comical Lovecraft tunes and punkrock probably doesn’t fit very well as material that supports you while reading. Instead you would go for something more atmospheric, heavy and oppressing, leaving classical/postrock/ambient and metal. I prefer metal.

Recently there’s been a boom in Cthulhu stuff, which ranges from audiobooks on bandcamp to strange experimental rock similar to the soundtracky stuff by X-ray Dog. An example of that are these guys:

Triskaidekaphobia would be right up your sleeve if you are interested in more electronic, trance-like material. A bit of goth flavoring and a ton of electronic assistance create something akin to a game soundtrack.

Similarly, the work by guitarist Brett Miller takes on that sound, but more metal oriented and maybe akin to the famous Red Alert videogame soundtrack. Strong riffing, but little other effects. Quite up front, which  is not for every reader, and highly captivating.

More out to get some prog in your ears? The recording done by Back to R’lyeh is a worthy endeavour with soaring, big sounding adventure-music. There’s a bit of heavy vocals mixed in their, but overall they sound a bit like modern day Opeth. Good stuff by this Spanish group, but to me a bit too all over the place.

More sticking witht he ambiance of a radio show? Reber Clark supplies the music to the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s Dark Adventure Radio Theatre and more, so he’s well versed in this. You can find a lot of his work online. 

A bit weirder…

A bit more odd, but I’m not judging, is the lo-fi surf inspired noise rock by Zpider on this endeavour. Granted, for me the weirdnes of it would be a bit too distracting, but the Burzumesque drones and spiralling sounds may just be what you need to get in that Lovecraftian groove.

So the Suction Cups took that and made it even more weird and silly, with a carnivalesque organ jam that sounds way to much like a party to me, but damn,… it’s captivating.

Thomasz Bylina is a metal musician, but on the side he started doing something he likes to call illustrative music. That is great, because that is exactly what you’d be looking for. The record, titled firstly ‘Teomachia’ is in fact ment as a soundtrack of a game Thomasz is part of developing. How awesome is that!?

Or you just don’t give a tick, give Cthulhu boobs and a vagina  that looks like the mouth of  Gene Simmons , like Blinding Eye Dog. I don’t know what more to say about this. Lovecraft probably didn’t envision this, but then again Lovecraft was a bit of an old fashioned guy… The music is good in my opinion.

Mind, this is just a pick of recent materials that have been released. It’s not an all encompassing list, but just what I came across.

The thing is, the inspiration that Lovecraft’s work has given to musicians is one of a kind. Even the weirdos from Blinding Eye Dog have clearly read the works and decided to do a strange spin on that. Sure, it’s very different, but the impact is shown. Yeah sure, it’s not thet profound expression of appreciation, but it shows the impact of Lovecraft’s work.

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Tuesday thoughts: Tiny bits make big things

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I’m walking towards the university building where I need to be this morning. It’s around 10.15 and the sun is shining. I’m listening to The Fall on my headphones and quickly read the latest column by Henk van Straten. Henk writes nice little bits about his life and how they make him think. It’s good to know more people think.

I’m on my way to another day of lectures on communication. Because I have to catch up on some subjects I have a shortened pre-master trajectory, which features mainly communication subjects. I find most of them a  bit similar this far.

You can have a whole lecture series on one topic, one type of text and its elements. It’s weird science to me, focussing on all those little bits. Now, I’m more of  a fan of the big theories, the big thinkers and thoughts. Einstein, Kant or whatever their names may be. Titans in the cosmos of the sciences.

My thoughts switch to another fact. I’ve been married for a week now. Funny, it is such a tiny thing in a way. You stand in front of a desk and later an altar and you say yes a bunch of times. Has anything really changed? Not really, though I’ve been affected by a new sort of affection. I want to be with her as much as I can. But that was always the way of things.

And she’s so smart and independent, I don’t think she needs me
Quite half as much as I know I need her.
– Blink 182 ‘Josie’

It’s the little bits though. The tiny bits of research that form and break paradigms, the small steps that make a relationship grow and flourish. The small stories that make up the personality. That’s the lesson of today then.
Maybe I should do columns?

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The Reading of Books #12

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Last few weeks I read books by Hemingway, Kemal, De Sade and Hitchens, all good stuff. I summed it up a bit for you, to know what you should read next. Don’t stop reading!

Yaser Kemal – The Legend of Mount Ararat

Source: dewereldmorgen.be

I love reading books that tell about different cultures, so reading this book that I purchased in Dutch at the yearly book fair, was a privilige. Its funny to read a fairytale that doesn’t end in the way they do in the west. Morality? Faith? I don’t know, we might be different people but the stories still read like charming adventures that tell us more about ourselves and the human race in general. This is obviously the reason to read them anyways.

Yaser Kemal is one of the most read and most notorious writers of Turkey in contemporary history. The man won a ton of awards, but also the attention of authorities. This book tells about the mountain Ararat, which is already surrounded with mysteries. The story is that of a princess, a brave young man from the mountain and a vengeful father and lord, but also with the irony of judgement for the smallest flaws. It leaves that tase due to not offering the happy end I felt it deserved. Forgiveness and such… I found it hard to appreciate the final bit, but still a worthy read about that country that is a bridge between east and west.
Marquis de Sade – Justine

Source: goodreads.com

I dont know why I try to read a De Sade book again. I loathed 120 days and this proves to be as foul in many ways as I anticipated. Nonetheless, what ‘Justine’ has and what the other book lacks is explanation, a philosophical framework so to say. That is the thing that makes the rapey stories bearable  and not merely disgusting. The idea of a moral philosophy behind it all, which the other book sorely lacked.

I’m always surprised about the vocabulary and eloquence of the Marquis de Sade, which keeps proving to keep the foulness in check and makes it sometimes even acquire a poetic quality that I find rather charming at times. You start to enjoy the times when the main person escapes the next horrible trials and tribulations but also slowly blunts your consciousnes for the horrors that await her in the lair of the next male monster. Through my abhorrence, I believe that the work of this writers is worth reading. He might have been the victor in the enlightenment debate anyways, by the looks of the world today.

Christopher Hitchens – The Portable Atheist

Source: goodreads.com

Though Hitchens is an unavoidable inspiration and gatherer in this collection of texts, his role is mainly that of glue or cement, binding the materials together in order to create a sturdy wall of atheist doctrine. Doctrine would be the wrong word though, because he keeps opening as many doors as he closes in his unrelenting criticisms of the big religions. Atheism is a a case that offers more questions than answers, but remains interesting.

The strenght of this book is that it makes the atheist case by using many, many texts from people like Emma Goldman, David Hume and many others, even reaching words from H.P. Lovecraft, whom you must know I admire greatly. Lucretius, Darwin, Marx and many more names are tagged on this publication, which offers insightful, but also refreshing information on the topic, that should be required reading for anyone who starts calling themselves an atheist. Its not that easy after all.

Ernest Hemingway – Winner Take Nothing

source: goodreads.com

Hemingway is an inspiring writer and his short stories rank among the best there are. Brief sketches with sudden turns and sharp messages take the reader from the African hunting grounds to small cafés in Spain and up to North-America. This is probably some of the best work from the author, for whom I’ve started to have a soft spot in my reading habits. Still, many more to read from the master who rings together rather random events to convey a message about life and meanings.

Sometimes it’s hard to read short stories in that case, mainly because they are very captivating and the sudden endings make you feel detached for a moment, missing out on the action that you were experiencing with your characters a moment before. Characters you know through and through thanks to their descriptions, not their inner stories.  I think that this is one of the things that makes Hemmingway so great, in not saying all there is, but enough for the story to tell itself

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Self Help Books

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I know that most of you will read this and make a frown or do a face thing expression of confusion mixed with disgust at this ridiculous topic. Self Help Books, yes. I have read some and I can tell you about a few that I think for my fellow nerdy readers might be useful. I have to say, they might not be the standard ones you’d expect. It’s just stuff that I feel helped me learn.

Granted, I’m not a perfect being and still heavily in the proces of learning to control my anger and hatred for the human race, but I believe that these books have actually helped me come to grips with myself and learn to love the bomb…. Not the boob, I already praised that highly. Let me list them for you here with some explanation and perhaps you can find something for yourself.

Mind that I’m part of an audience that likes the nerdy-side of things and therefor finds solace in reading books that are nerd-inspired, geeky and that I can relate to on a personal level. I’m sure there’s plenty of sports writers and such who can do that just as well for you if you’re into that more. Oh… and hockey. Let’s see about that bullshit of the self-help industry.

Stephen R. Covey – The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Oh yes, you’ve heard this one before, so stop me, stop me oh stop me…. It is after all still the most effective, well written book in the whole genre. Sure, it’s a bit idealistic and supposes some grand wisdom in its seven habits, but not without reason pretty much every other book refers to this one. I guess in a way it speaks to so many people due to it being very middle of the road and staying close to an abstract level. The anecdotes help in giving you a sense of understanding though. I do believe that this book may be a bit over some peoples head though. If you want to give it a try, go for the abridged audio version first. Not  only does it speak much more to you, it also stays closer to the core ideas instead of jumping in the deep end.

I mean, this is kinda like the Jedi manual when it comes to it. So it might scare you away at first, because you first need to grasp some basics and be OK with not moving at immense speeds forward. I felt empowered at first and disillusioned after a while, because of its almost religious striving for mastery. This kind of brings me to my next title.

Wil Wheaton – Just A Geek

What I felt was most important to help understanding myself is being understood and able to relate to things. I have never been able to put my anxieties and worries to words, they never made much sense to me and felt very instinctive. The Covey book put me onto reading more and so I started getting into this biographical account of Wil Wheaton. Wil is the kind of guy, whose humor and take on life I really appreciated as soon as I started to get into his stuff. Specially his ‘law’ on gaming really appealed to me and even got me to name my blog after it.

In his book he tells his story and though I havent been a struggling actor with a glorious past, I was a guy (or am, but I chose not to see it that way. anymore) who graduated with a thesis  that was called brilliant and then failed to live up to anyone’s expectations, mostly my own. I felt I could relate to that. In his book, there’s some shifts of personality, of approach to things that you can learn from. For someone in the acting bizz, everything is larger than life. Not just the successes, also the failures. It thought me about those, but also about what it means to be driven and follow your gut.

Chris Hardwick – The Nerdist Way

Thanks to Wil Wheaton I found out about Chris Hardwick, a dude that, like me, had struggled with some health issues in the past and had shifted that around. The difference is that Chris is, unlike me, highly productive and succesful. That is exactly what Hardwick tries to bring across in this book, making it awesome. The silly way he does it in appeals to me too, because self-deflating humor has become a huge part of me and the way I deal with myself. I mean, you can hardly be a dick to yourself, right?

Turns out you can and I do that a lot. Instead of rising above, facing things head on, I tend to flee. I do that in an almost scorched earth way sometimes. Chris speaks to me in the sense that he has been there, he has been down to a lost, alcohol guzzling has-been and back to the top in a place he wanted to be. that feels amazingly powerfull and therefor something to learn from.

Kevin Smith – Tough Sh*t: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good. 

Yeah, I found inpsiration in the work of Kevin Smith, you know… the guy who is Silent Bob. It’s maybe not even this book, but the podcasts he did with Jason Mewes (Jay) about some real life problems. A lot of the book is about this friendship and it shows how far you can go in doing your best for others. Also another story of falling down and getting up again, learning and growing and finding that crock o’ gold at the end of it all.

The podcasts deal more with looking back and making fun of your own fucked up mistakes in the past life that you have to deal with. Acceptance is a way to growth that is pretty hard and that lesson is definitely in here too.

Gordie Howe – Mr. Hockey

I did say I love hockey, right? This book is about the challenged life of Gordie Howe, the absolute superstar of hockey. He went on to play till he was 50 years old, being the oldest NHL player of all time, only surpassed in points way later by Wayne Gretzky. It is kinda ok if you are surpassed by ‘The Great One’. The book shows remarkable love for the game and humility from the man. Its amazing to read how even in his eighties he still notices every aspect of a game he watches. There’s a lot of quirky little things in there that show how normal the guy is.

Gordie Howe is an inspiration to go for what you believe in and stick with it. Not untill they tell you to quit, but up till you think its time to quit. Humility, respect, acceptance and love, its all in there in the life of a real stand up guy.

Alright, I suppose this is sort of a weird list of books to consider self-help. I also have to admit that by now, I hate Covey’s book. It’s way to high flying. Anyways, I think books inspire, not the ‘right books. What inspires you might just as well be Harry Potter. As long as you keep reading, you find idols, icons, villains and dreams. The most important thing is to keep having those.

I tricked you a little bit into reading this. I hope you still enjoyed that and maybe you’ll pick one up from my list.

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The Reading of Books #10

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A new selection of books I’ve read, with work from Haldor Laxness, Kevin Smith,  Thich Nhat Hanh and Chris Hardwick.

Haldor Laxness – Iceland’s Bell

“Have you ever seen Iceland rise from the sea?” Asks the protagonist of the Icelandic people Arnas Arnaeus at some point in this book. That sentence stuck with me in this novel by Nobel price winner Haldor Laxness about the impoverished people in Iceland during the Danish reign. The book consists out of three parts, of which the second and third are the more serious ones. The first part mainly features Jón Hreggvidson, a farmer who happens to be at the wrong places all the time and instead of getting his head lobt of ends up travelling all the way to Danmark to plea for his case.

The other character is a noble lady from Iceland who is instrumental in the continued existance of Jón Hreggvidson and embodies a different Iceland. She and Arnaeus have a bond, a romance that is like the fleeting romance Iceland has with its liberty. It never truly comes to pass in the book but always seems near. There’s a lot of black and bleak humor in the book, specially on the account of the Icelandic population, personified in crook and fool Hreggvidson, who the reader cannot but love, regardless of all his foolish behaviours and constant reciting of the same ballad. It’s a book that instills a love and sympathy for that strange island. Well worth reading, specially thanks to its complex symbolism and folk like telling style.

Chris Hardwick – The Nerdist Way

source: goodreads.com

I started on ‘The Nerdist Way’, because I felt particularly in need of something to help me elevate my spirits. Originally I expected to find a fun book about the life of Chris Hardwick, but it turned out to be a very well intended self-help book for people with the same sort of obsessive syndroms and social awkwardness as him. Something I can relate to, but also filled with that particular humor, filled with self-deflating jokes. I was impressed by the upbeat nature and strenght of the book, which is an honest attempt to make a difference and really help people.

At various points Hardwick admits he is not a professional and suggests seeking professional help if you as a reader deal with specific problems. He talks about an attitude in life, a generally healthy lifestyle and even gives advice when it comes to excersising. The book outlines an alternative for those of us that have caught the nerd syndrome of sticking to the indoors. This book can really give you some motivation to make some changes and thus be living your life to the fullest. Chris Hardwick is an inspirational figure, not just in what he does, but also where he comes from. His punchline for this book seems to be: “I’ve been at my worst and now at my best, so I just want to try and share this so aothers can learn from it.” It really works because of that sheer honesty.
Thich Nhat Hanh – Living Buddha, Living Christ 

In this book the Vietnamese monk is attempting to define the underlying similarities between most big religious movements in the world. It’s a praise worthy attempt, because Thich Nhat Hanh seems to be spot on with a lot of things. He succesfully peels of the layers of dogmatism and classic indoctrination to reach the essential meaning of religious movements. He lists similarities between the Buddha and Christ, leaving out a lof of the fundamentelist motives inherent to various religions In that way, he sincerely opens up the dialogue with an open mind.

The author also describes the dismayed responses he has gotten over time, but points out that as religions learn from eachother, they can also remain relevant. This touches upon an issue that pretty much every major religion seems to face in recent times: loss of touch with the followers. Speaking from my own knowledge, I see that less and less people are visiting church. Some people rejoice over this, but I see it as a spiritual bankrupcy and I’m fairly sure that we’ll start seeing that some time in the future. I feel happy that books like this excist, offering a third way of finding a spirituality through the things that you find appealing in various religions, atleast I think Thich Nhat Hanh grants us that liberty, as long as we do it sincerely and respectfully.

Kevin Smith – Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good

Source: Goodreads.com

So I continued with this biographical book by Kevin Smith. Smith is one of my favorite directors, whose films I think I’ve all watched. Red State is the last in line and Im planning to watch this very soon.  In this book Smith talks about his life and whatever stuff happened to him in the  same way his characters talk in the early films. So yeah, there’s a lot of metaphors involving dick jokes and such, but one needs to get over that to find the gold underneath, which is various life lessons and hilarious anecdotes about a lot of weird stuff and the film industry.

There’s also going to be a lot of Clerks being mentioned. I feel a bit of embarrasment now and then about the direct words used by Smith, but that just says more about me. I recommend this book for the simple reason that it is hilarious and cathartic. Im pretty sure that Kevin Smith has faced enough tribulations in his own way. Sure, there’ s that whole different level where it takes place, in Hollywood and all. Still, this is transferrable to real life and sure as hell we all need some advice from a fat man who did good.

Oh, there’s also bits about Jay & Silent Bob, Dogma, Clerks, Chasing Amy, Jersey Girl, Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis.