This week's news on Goth.
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VAMPIRES EVERYWHERE! To Film New Video This Weekend
15 MayBLABBERMOUTH.NET
Los Angeles-based goth-metallers VAMPIRES EVERYWHERE! will film a brand new video on Sunday, May 20 at Bar Sinister in Hollywood, California. -
BTC: SHOCK’s “Dynamo Beat” is Candy-Colored, Proto-Cyberdork/Cemetery Goth. Everybody Wins!
14 MayCoilhouse
Good morning. Pretend for a moment that this is not, in fact, the Spring of 2012, but rather the Spring of 1982, now thirty years past. We’re in England. New Romance is budding. Rocky Horror is a’rockin’. The likes of Gary Numan, Spandau Ballet, and Klaus Nomi rule subterranean radio.
Under the banner of SHOCK, two young London lads with very excellent bone structure and pop ‘n’ lock skillz named Tim Dry (who would one day become Tik from the robotic mime duo Tik & Tok) and Richard James Burgess (who would go on to produce all manner of sophisti-pop) have joined forces with two young London lasses with very large hair and dovelike coos called Carole Caplin (who shall one day become far better known as the tormented fitness and fashion consultant to Tony and Cherie Blair) and Barbie Wilde (who is soon to be immortalized in celluloid as the creepyhot female Cenobite from Hellraiser II).
And they make this splendiferousness happen:
Via Brian Moroz, with giggly thanks.
If you enjoyed this darque ‘n’ tender morsel of obscure nostalgia, you may also appreciate:
- Teen Goth
- Poésie Noire: “Tragedy”
- The MegaMen
- Bristol Punks
- Tim Curry in “The Worst Witch”
- “Die Sonne”
- Crowleymas, LOLeymas
- Darque Dungeon
- Haysi Fantayzee
- Nosferatu Vogueing: A Symphony of Horror
- Going to MTV Hell With Nick and Blixa
- Lene Lovich
Post tags: Better than coffee, Britannia, Cyberpunk, Dance, Geekdom, Goth, Hair, Music, Punk, Robots, Sci-fi
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HOLYHELL To Release 'Darkness Visible' In June
14 MayBLABBERMOUTH.NET
"Darkness Visible", HOLYHELL's new studio release of epic, power-goth metal, will first be made available worldwide on June 16 exclusively on iTunes and on the band's own online store, The Kingdom Of Steel. -
Avengers A Smash Again At US Box Office
13 MayEmpire - News
Dark Shadows creeps into second
When a film opens as record-breakingly big as The Avengers (Assemble) did across the pond last week, there’s always a wonder as to what it might do in its second weekend, and how far it might drop. For the Hulk and co, it turns out… not that far. Yes, Marvel’s superhero team still has “money-making” among their considerable powers, dropping just 50% for a staggering $103.1 million, a new record in second weekend figures. In related Avengers financial news, Disney has announced that the movie has crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide in 19 short days. Shawarma for everyone!
Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s latest collaboration, Dark Shadows, couldn’t scratch the champion’s hull, and had to settle for a disappointing $28.8 million and second place. Ensemble rom com Think Like A Man is still doing storming business, dropping just one place third and adding $6.3 million for an $81.9 million total so far. The Hunger Games is also still earning, making $4.4 million in fourth, with The Lucky One clinging to fifth with $4 million.
The Pirates! Took in $3.2 million worth of booty in sixth place, with $23.1 million in their US treasure chest to date. In seventh The Five-Year Engagement made $3.1 million and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel expanded its cinema count and leapt into the top 10 at eighth with $2.6 million (not bad for a movie still only in 178 cinemas around the States). Chimpanzee stayed in place at ninth with $1.6 million and new indie arrival Girl In Progress took 10th and $1.3 million.
To see a statistical representation of Tony Stark beating the Goth out of a vampire, head over to Box Office Mojo.
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Alexis Petridis on The Height of Goth
13 Maywww.guardian.co.uk
At turns unwittingly hilarious, fascinating and incredibly boring, this 1984 nightclub documentary is a great British pop culture document
It's hard to understand why someone in late 1984 took it upon themselves to finance and make an amateur film about an alternative night at a club in Batley, West Yorkshire, called Xclusiv. The person who uploaded it to YouTube claims it was the idea of Xclusiv's owners, Annie and Peter Swallow, who sold copies to the club's clientele ("mainly futuristic and way-out people," as Peter puts it in the film). Anyone who stumped up the £2 certainly got their money's worth in terms of quantity: The Height of Goth, as it's called, goes on for a mind-boggling two hours.
Whatever their reason for taking a video camera into what the introductory voiceover – delivered with the halting quality of a hostage reading a ransom demand, over footage of Batley Job Centre and an easy-listening version of John Lennon's Woman – calls "this jewel of a building that is now a first-class disco", it's hard not to be delighted they did. They inadvertently created a great British pop culture document, by turns unwittingly hilarious, fascinating and incredibly boring.
There are sublime moments: the goth angrily explaining how he lost his job at the local hair salon; the admirably diverse music tastes espoused by one punter ("I like Glenn Miller … and Cabaret Voltaire"); the deadly technique employed by its interviewers (one of whom appears to be the bouncer). "Where did you learn to dance the way you do, because it is fairly good," he asks, clearly not a man to go overboard with the compliments. For reasons unknown, Charlie Williams, star of 1970s TV series The Comedians, briefly appears in the crowd, clutching a pint. "By gum," he says, looking as baffled by his presence amid Batley's goth contingent as the viewer presumably is.
At the end, the DJ plays David Bowie's Life on Mars: the handful of people left on the dancefloor go into flamboyant routines, evidently rehearsed all week in front of bedroom mirrors. This is their moment, in which they leave the realities of life in early 80s Yorkshire behind and fleetingly become stars in their own minds. It's beautiful, a moment of transcendence captured in the most improbable circumstances. You watch it and think: "This is what music can do." Then the song ends, the club closes and they head back to normal life.
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
The Great Escape – review
13 Maywww.guardian.co.uk
Various venues, Brighton
Looking wearily at the vast queues that stretch from the venues where the bigger artists are performing, and the grim-faced bouncers operating a one-in, one-out system, that suggests those at the back of the said queues might gain admittance around the time that Brighton and Hove Council start putting the Christmas lights up –it's hard not to feel that The Great Escape is more appropriately named than its organisers realise. Frankly, the best chance you've got of getting in to see Grimes, Toy, Django Django or the Mystery Jets is by making like Charles Bronson and Dickie Attenborough and fashioning a makeshift tunnel.
Anyone who actually manages to gain access to see Django Django can tell you what the fuss is about: their dense, reverb-laden, harmony-drenched psychedelia sounds fantastic live, and a second, marginally less oversubscribed show on Friday turns out to be one of the weekend's highlights. The shows in the daytime are less mobbed and offer up intriguing choices: on Thursday, you can find both the hazy psychedelia of Porcelain Raft and College's lush, 80s teen-movie-soundtrack electronics gamely attempting to transcend the surroundings of a pub's upstairs roomin the middle of the afternoon. Meanwhile, the sense that you've ventured appealingly off-piste is palpable when watching Tokyo's Tripple Nippples: three female vocalists in facepaint and body-stockings adorned with the kind of crudely drawn penises drawn on posters in the London Underground. The music is fittingly berserk, lurching from something vaguely analogous to electronic chart pop to something vaguely analogous to South Africa's shangaan electro. Considerably less eye-popping is the spectacle presented by Jam City, from the post-dubstep label Night Slugs. In the grand tradition of live dance music, it's a non-descript bloke frowning at a computer, but what's coming out of his laptop is incredible: a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of electronics, disembodied R&B samples, rhythms that clatter and lurch unexpectedly. At a festival where one heavily-tipped name, Savages, turn out to sound remarkably like an 80s goth band – albeit a good 80s goth band – there's something bracing about hearing music that could only really have been made in 2012.
You get the same sensation off AlunaGeorge's impressively inventive and expansive take on pop-R&B, with frontwoman Aluna Francis so obviously a star in waiting – and Kwes, a singer-songwriter whose music never settles. One minute his rich voice is backed by laid-back electric piano flecked soul, the next by hammering, distorted beats. Elsewhere, the increasingly frantic search for a big, new guitar band throws up Palma Violets – glowering atmospherics with definite hint of Wu Lyf in the pained vocals – and California's Haim, who live at least sound no more like their advance billing of folk-meets-R&B than they do the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band, but they clearly have decent songs to spare.
Rating: 4/5
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Musica Globalista: Subsonica, "La funzione"
11 MayWired - Top Stories
*Ladies and gentlemen, this Subsonica clip is the very definition of Turinese Prada-Goth.*It gives one a warm, darkly euphoric feeling! -
Johnny Depp's Dark Humor And Charm Works In 'Dark Shadows'
11 MayStarpulse Entertainment News Blog
"Dark Shadows" is filled with lots of goth-like sarcasm and dysfunctional characters which include, a reluctant vampire with irresistible swag; a mysterious women who is strangely drawn to him; a j...
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Review: 'Dark Shadows' retread sucks out the fun
11 Maychicagotribune.com - Most Viewed Stories
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - The original idea of a Tim Burton-directed "Dark Shadows" certainly must have seemed like a good one on paper, with the master of mass-market Goth applying his imagination and a Hollywood budget to the infamously on-the-cheap, Dan Curtis-created cult soap opera that ran from 1966 to 1971 on ABC before spawning various film and TV follow-ups. -
You ask for signed bookplates, you get signed bookplates | The Loom
11 MayDiscover Magazine
At some of my recent talks, I’ve been running into people who’ve been annoyed that they forgot to bring a book of mine to get signed. You really couldn’t think of a better way to cheer up a writer, and so I feel the need to reciprocate.
So if you’ve gotten a book of mine and want to get it signed, I’ve printed up some bookplates that I can autograph and send to you.
Just to ensure I’m not signing bookplates for alien robots who will take these bookplates to their home planet to…do whatever evil thing alien robots do with bookplates from science writers…please follow these steps:
1. Take your picture with the book.
2. Email it to me, with your mailing address and any special signing request. As in, “To Ken Ham, so that someday he may appreciate transitional fossils….”
Optional step 3. For those on Twitter: instead of emailing me your photo, you can upload it to Twitter (mentioning my Twitter name @carlzimmer). Be sure to email me your address, too, so that I know where to send the bookplate.
So far, I’ve got three bookplates–one for Parasite Rex, one for Science Ink (in matching Goth type), and one for Planet ...
