From Corners Unknown

In episode six of Celluloid Obscurities, we bring on our first guest, Tarek, of the rambunctious New Haven noise rock quartet, Intercourse. After conducting an interview with him several months ago and from it, learning the artwork of his band’s latest LP, Everything is Pornography When You’ve Got an Imagination, is inspired (in part) by Frankenhooker, we thought it would be fun to have Tarek expound upon his love for this comedic 80s schlock. This paves the path for future Celluloid Obscurities episodes to feature guests and the one simple rule we impose on these episodes is the guest chooses the film of discussion. This also takes us beyond the scope of films we have discussed on Celluloid Obscurities thus far, porting us to a genre we did not anticipate to traverse. And for this, we thank Tarek for fracturing the mold.

Frankenhooker is a dark comedy from director Frank Henenlotter (Brain Damage, Basket Case Series), scored by Joe Renzetti, and stars James Lorinz and Patty Mullen. Jeffrey (Lorinz) is a failed medical student, a mad scientist, that concocts a bevy of strange specimens and gadgets. His fiancée is Elizabeth (Mullen). On the sunny afternoon of the birthday party of Elizabeth’s father, she unveils a self-automated lawnmower, created by Jeffrey, as a gift to him. Though when she turns on the contraption to show off its bells and whistles, she ends up mutilating and decapitating herself in a complete freak accident. With the guilt of her death weighing upon Jeffrey’s chest, and as he spirals into psychosis, he formulates an unhinged plan to reassemble Elizabeth using body parts from Manhattan street walkers. What unfolds is an absurd romp of copious supercrack consumption, firework exploding sex workers, and sardonic wit. Thank you so much for listening.

In episode nineteen, we discuss The Prize, the latest album from Rochester-based experimental death metal quartet, Sulaco. We immerse ourselves in the unnerving—and at times, warm and inviting—auras trickling from Luca Sigurtà’s and Sergio Sorrentino’s dual effort, Naked Brunch. And we journey into the phantasmagoric realms conjured and evoked on All is Phantom, the debut LP from the cinematic progressive metal outfit, Ghostbound.

Thank you so much for listening. Let us know what you think about each of these records down below and please feel free to leave us some album suggestions for future episodes.

Alec A. Head is the brainchild of the post punk-steeped, cinematic progressive metal outfit, Ghostbound. A project that did not fully take form until about 2012 or 2013, Ghostbound resided in the depths of Alec’s mind several years prior. Growing up beside the white sand shores of the ethereal California city, Carmel, its sleepy, small town vibe and surreal, evocative vistas harbored in Alec a verdant canvas for him to explore. And it was in his later teenage years when the phantasm, the first fleck, of Ghostbound was seeded. Life would trudge ahead for well over a decade until Alec decided to conjure Ghostbound to reality, but during this expanse of time, he maintained a clear semblance of what his project would sound like: majestic riffs, delicate auras formulating each composition, a pared croon, and a neoclassical through line to round out the emotional punch. “The Gallivanter”, the first song on Ghostbound’s debut LP, All is Phantom, has remained almost perfectly intact since Alec imagined it all those years ago in Carmel. But it did not become flesh until a personal event transpired in his life.

In the years preceding this moment, Alec moved from Carmel to Brooklyn, where he honed his craft as a theater actor. Though once Alec reached the crossroads of this passing did he decide to wholly embrace the ghost-like realms he envisioned. As opposed to being in service of play scripts, he became the master of his own destiny by taking the reigns of Ghostbound he so fervently crafted in mind and channeling this energy through voice and guitar.

In this conversation, Alec discusses the themes and lyrics comprising Ghostbound. He articulates the early formulations of his project whilst noting a handful of his influences. He also describes the process of composing All is Phantom, how long it took him to make his project a reality, and how he chiseled out such a unique, evocative sound. Thank you so much for listening.

In anticipation of Randal Collier-Ford’s second trilogy to surface on Cryo Chamber in the years ahead, he and I found it an intriguing idea, an exploratory exercise, to dive into the lore he has been so meticulously crafting since his album, Dark Corners. The first record of this trilogy, entitled Advent, does not yet have a firm (or disclosed) release date, though it is near completion, and just a few weeks ago he released am.OS Season One. This EP marks the origins, an introduction for listeners, to the AI protagonist at the center of Randal’s new trilogy. It also provides us a glimpse into the evolution in Randal’s sound. Where a number of his past works were firmly grounded in ritualistic ambient with tendrils of industrial and neoclassical elements pouring through, Season One ports us into electronic-industrial domains assimilated with chillingly deep atmospheric undercurrents. And it is with this first season as well as Advent where our mini-series, Unity, begins.

Unity encapsulates oneness, a pivotal theme comprising the foundation of Randal’s new trilogy. In a review I wrote for Season One, I articulated some fragments of lore and touched on the overarching concept and story of Advent. To summarize just a slice of that review, there is a formless deity beyond the confines of time that is on a death march across the cosmos and it is reverting the universe, as we humans understand it, back to its original, uncorrupted state: unified and one. Expounding upon this rather cryptic statement would take well over tens of thousands of words to articulate here, thus herein lies the reason for Unity’s existence. It is worth nothing the theme of unity is not merely exclusive to this deity, but it is woven intricately throughout each dimension of Randal’s storytelling, as you will learn in Volume I. There is much to digest, much to lose yourself in, but as this series progresses, we hope you come away with a clearer understanding of what is being constructed in Randals’ records.

This first volume punctures am.OS’s mainframe and divulges how am.OS came to be, what purpose it serves, and how it begins to fail protecting humanity. It also explores the concept of corruption, the deity promulgating it, and how earth is slowly being consumed by this ultramundane rot. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you enjoy the journey.

In episode eighteen, we discuss the 5 track demo of the raw and acidic British Columbia-based punk outfit, Starvation. We explore the mini-album, the prologue, Alive with Scars, from neoclassical dark ambient composer Flowers for Bodysnatchers (Duncan Ritchie), which has been released in anticipation of his new LP of the same name to be available on Cryo Chamber later this year. And we also dive into the superbly crafted eleventh album, Vox Medusae, from the colossal one-man progressive sludge project, Potmos Hetoimos.

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Let us know what you think about each of these records below and please feel free to leave us some album suggestions for a future episode.

Sandesh Shenoy is the founder and CEO of India-based extreme metal and noise label, Cyclopean Eye Productions. It started as a distro about eight years ago, in 2010, but in the well of Sandesh’s passion there fervently writhed the desire to expand beyond merely circulating brutal metal releases. He wanted to sign bands under his own banner and simultaneously proliferate some of the most grisly sounds being spewed from southeastern Asia’s underground to the rest of the world. This pivotal moment occurred a couple years into Cylopean Eye’s existence as a distro. In 2012, he signed his first band Genocide Shrines, an utmost bestial death metal quartet hailing from Sri Lanka. And from there, Sandesh would continue to unearth utmost sinister metal incantations and eventually reach some of the most piercing frequencies, harsh noise and power electronics with artists such as Konflict and Bell.

But the year before signing Genocide Shrines, Sandesh and a close group of friends banded together to create an extreme metal festival entitled Trend Slaughter. The intent was to coalesce some of the grimiest dregs of sound from India and beyond into one space in an effort to rejuvenate the bone-dry spring of extreme music shows. To their surprise, the turnout was rather sizable and it rendered the festival’s debut a success. This was a boost to Sandesh and his friends. And ever since that initial show, they have been maintaining Trend Slaughter as an annual festival, bringing in some larger extreme metal acts as time has persisted, like Finnish death metal legends, Demilich.

In this conversation, Sandesh speaks about his early beginnings as Cyclopean Eye and how his label has evolved over the last eight years. He talks about his love for extremely harsh music, how this love is like a drug addiction as he ceaselessly seeks the outermost fringes of music for the heaviest sounds, and he also goes into more detail about Trend Slaughter and the local extreme metal scene in southeastern Asia. Thank you so much for listening.

In episode seventeen we push further into sonic territories unfamiliar to us. We discuss the debut atmospheric dark folk EP entitled Sigh for Sigh by Zeresh, the often surprising and genre-bending progressive metal from Polish quartet NewBreed and their fifth album, Law, and we conclude with Keosz’s No Future: Vol. 2—a bass-driven electronic soundtrack for a grimy, dystopian metropolis.

Thank you so much for listening. Let us know what you think about each of these records below and please feel free to leave us some album suggestions for future episodes.

Goshen is a sweltering furnace blast of chaotic metal from California’s Inland Empire. They cast their first demo out into the ether early 2017 and just this summer, they released their grimy, punishing self-titled EP. Though ‘metal’ can be used to describe Goshen’s sound, it is rather unfettered from the genre’s confines. Grating swells of guitar-conjured noise, eviscerating hardcore riffs, passages of slow, undulating atmosphere that emit an anxious mental fog. Each component of Goshen’s sound is unbridled chaos. And all of these sonic motes converge, collide, and congeal into one off-kilter mass of vociferous catharsis. Their writing process, as discussed in this interview, is as unkempt as the noise pouring from their instruments, which only fuels the anxiety and stress induced whilst immersing oneself in their compositions. Though this quartet has only existed a short time thus far, the belters comprising their self-titled EP exhibit an utmost fervor that will impel you to experience the energy exuded repeatedly.

In this conversation, Goshen (Kyle, Joseph, Jake, and Mitch) discuss how the band was originally formulated. They discuss the days of their demo and how their sound has evolved into what they are performing now. They also provide us a glimpse into their writing process and note a bevy of influences that funnel into their chaotic noise. Thank you so much for listening.

Woman in the Dunes, originally a novel penned by Kōbō Abe, directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara, and scored by Toru Takemitsu, is a Japanese drama/thriller from 1964. The story revolves around an amateur entomologist who travels to windswept dunes on the fringes of civilized life. There on an excursion to escape his day-to-day as a school teacher, he is on the hunt for a new species of sand beetle with the hope of getting his name forever inscribed in field guides as him being the discoverer. Though when he naps a bit too long in the shell of a beached boat, he misses his bus back to Tokyo. He stays the night in a local village’s dwelling, at the bottom of a sand dune, and is provided hospitality by the only individual residing in the dilapidated abode, a woman. Unbeknownst to the beetle-catching wayfarer, the village folks led him down the sand dune pit with no way to escape. He is trapped. And it is from here that Woman in the Dunes flourishes into a mesmerizing and harsh Sisyphean tale of combating the elements and struggling to exist.

Thank you for listening. Please feel free to leave your thoughts on Woman in the Dunes below, suggest an obscure film for us to discuss in a future episode, or even provide some constructive criticism as we are always aiming to improve. Our next episode will feature our first guest on the Celluloid Obscurities series.

In episode sixteen, we delve into Scott Lawlor’s beautiful and heartfelt tribute to his brother Joe, who passed away November 2017. We dabble in some delectable sludge metal riffage enshrouded in post-metal atmospheres with Mass Culture’s Primal | Ephemeral and we embark into the uncharted auditory territory of power electronics via the mysterious one-man project, Bell, and their album Secrets from a Distant Star.

Thank you for listening. Let us know what you think about each of these records below and please feel free to leave us some album suggestions for future episodes.