FULL BLEED: THE WORLD DRAGS ME DOWN

That's a stolen and unidentified song lyric, not a statement of fact. Go ahead, look it up.

No secret that I dig music from the eighties, punk and postpunk and new wave, synths and such. I also like a lot of the new stuff that works in these veins as well. Guess it's mostly called coldwave, though some folks still call it goth now. Which is funny 'cause I'm a dude in his middle (ahem) fifties and I look normal as fuck. Seriously. Mr. Normcore. Check me out in my cargo shorts and Birkenstocks now that it's summer-ish. I could never pass as a punk or new waver or metalhead or any of the other modes/forms/genres of music I've been a fan of. Though I guess I could have done okay sneaking into an indie drone or mathrock band circa the nineties.

But hey, it's what's on the inside that matters, right? Just that you love this stuff. Or listen to it. So it's no surprise that I catch the Dark Wave show on Sirius radio's new wave/alternative station. It's a bummer that it's only on three hours a week, 'cause I'd spin it all the time. But if it was on all the time, it wouldn't be special, would it?

As much as I know about the era, there's always something new for me every show, whether it's a cut that I hadn't heard from bands I know or a new artist to dig into. That's all the work of Matt Sebastian, current host of the show, and that work is welcome. Last week's (well, week before last) was special, with Ian Astbury of the (Southern Death) (Death) Cult as guest interviewee and programmer. To be honest, the Cult isn't my favorite band. That first album? Total dynamite, perfect blend of psychedelia, driving rock, occult warlockry, and some pure teenage sex (hey kids, don’t lick a live mic no matter how sexy it might be). "Rain" and "Sanctuary" are just godlike (sorry, KMFDM). I didn't really care for Sonic Temple, their big follow-on. It just felt more like the producer pushing things around into leather-boy biker rock territory. Just not the right kind of dumb.

And yes, there is a right kind of dumb. Just like one of the big ingredients in grunge was idiocy (can't remember who coined that, whether it was one of the guys from Soundgarden or Mudhoney.) And you might read dumb/idiot as (derogatory). You'd be wrong. What it is more a naivete, being on the right side of camp, which is also something that I've embraced more and more. Camp knows that it's ridiculous. It refuses to treat itself as ridiculous. It just goes for it. So yeah, the right kind of dumb is an essential ingredient. Can you imagine Warhammer 40K without camp? Yeah, it falls apart. Maybe that's part of why you can't simply transplant pulp heroes into the current era and expect them to work. That reinvention where you tacitly acknowledge that yes, this needs to be updated because it's dumb and the costumes don't work and blah blah blah. Then that thing just gets straight murdered and not updated.

Okay, wandered a little bit there. Sorry. So the stuff I heard from the Cult before I sorta drifted away from paying attention to them was just not the right kind of dumb (complimentary). So, honestly, I wasn't sure what to expect from Ian Astbury as personality or host or even guy who has something to say about the creative process. And to my pleasant surprise, he was kind of a soft-spoken, not bellicose or upfront or anything like I might have expected a rock star to be. Yes, that's all my damage. Expectations broken.

So yeah, it was great to hear him talking about how Death Cult reformed and resurrected old material that never got properly recorded. How he's still very in tune with what's going on now, and even real obscure (to me) stuff from ten years ago. Him talking about Deafheaven's new album and the track "Heathen" was really great. It'd be so easy to slip into comfort and just get locked into the era where you were a thing. But Astbury is clearly interested in staying in touch with what's happening now. He dropped a track called "Starfall" from a band called Salem that I'd flat never heard of, but was something completely new to me (only it came out twelve years ago.)

Anyways, you can still pick up the show if you're a Sirius subscriber over at the Dark Wave page. They only keep up the last two shows (which kinda sucks), so it won't be around for too much longer. Good stuff.

I will say that I've been pulling a lot of this stuff down during the writing of Hazeland, starting as far back as 2016 (which only feels like a million years ago, right?) Starting with a set of what was then described as coldwave, in a block of music from a Turkish DJ/curator I came across on YouTube I think. Don't get me wrong, I was listening to a lot of the music of the day as well, but I wanted something fresh that could work with the setting/atmosphere in the stories. And as many artists as I'd found from this one block of music, oh wait, here it is:

As much as I found there, from Hante to Kaelan Mikkla, it didn't take much digging to find just a whole lot more artists working those veins. I won't even pretend to be an expert. I just keep slotting giant blocks of this stuff, making note of artists and songs that really stick out (like say, "Pain" by Boy Harsher, which I found by rummaging around). So this stuff has been important in keeping things going. Sure, there's times I can listen to the same handful of albums over and over, but something you want something new to sink your teeth into, even if maybe it sounds like it could have been on the radio forty years ago.

Which, really, none of this stuff could. The textures are all different. But the vibe is there. And that's the important thing. That transportation to another place, another experience, even if that experience is languishing in graveyards or industrial sites or reveling in the world's decay (though you can shut off the track and still go to the mall.) And even now, my brain still craves that little trip. Helps gets the words moving.

Unless it's a bad day and you can't listen to anything while writing. Those happen too.

Speaking of writing, I've wrapped the first section of The Missing Pieces. Mid-eighty pages. As it's the first part of an anticipated four parts, I'm guessing around 350 typescript pages, longer than I'd planned but shorter than a "typical" novel for me, which is around 90-95k words. Drafting is going quickly, but only because I have a plan going in. Otherwise, it'd be bad. Real bad. Maybe even laughably so. Yes, the plan can change and new stuff can reveal itself. Be prepared for that.

I was hoping to have the voice nailed down, since it's a brand-new POV main character (Grace, who you'd recognize from All Waters Are Graves), but it's still pretty much my same voice. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but it sure is.

Until next week, unless inspiration hits.