Alcest - Écailles De Lune (2010) (v0 mp3)

Genre: Black Metal, Shoegaze
Quality: mp3 @ v0
About: "Stylistically, Neige reverts to the sound of Black Metal that once shaped him: a picture of heart-rending, otherworldly screams, collages filled with passion and sadness, and the characteristic clean vocals. These mellow and ageless voices manage to weave a shroud of sorrow around the album. "Écailles de Lune" is like a dream, a manifesto of transience and human inferiority. For all the changes, Neige has kept all of his trademarks: calm passages, massive slabs of guitars, catchy melodies, and hook-lines going straight to the heart – all this once more delivers a convincing articulation of ALCEST's unique style.
Close your eyes and dream along. This time, melancholy shall propel and unite us. We immerse ourselves once more in fairyland. This time, it doesn't seem fresh but fallow. Its pallor and its shadows are unfathomable, and it reveals itself to us through our senses. It is always there when we quest for it."
- http://loadown.blogspot.com/ - I wasn't going to attempt to write a better review! Great review.

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Please support the musicians that spent so much time, effort, and money to make this great music for you! Buy their albums and go to their concerts (if possible)!
- Buy CD, Vinyl, or Limited Edition Box Set

Sofa Surfers - Blindside (2010)

Genre: Alternative Rock, Trip-Hop, Downtempo, Chillout, Experimental
Quality: AAC @ 256
About: After a long delay, the trip-hop gone chillout-rock quartet is back, as of yesterday. They keep their downtempo and relaxed rock style from the previous album, but sound like they are going back to their roots a little, on songs like "Hardwire" and "Heavy Water". Hardwire is a trip-hop song with that relaxed style of rapping that sets this band apart, and Heavy Water is a speedy instrumental rock song. Their lyrics are often unbelievably deep, which keeps you coming back for more, wondering what the true meanings are. My only complaint is the album is too short.

Here's track 1, "Playing the Game." You can see this relaxed and unique style the band has is exemplified by this video.


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- Buy - Only $8.91 on iTunes!
- CD
- Vinyl

New Spring Growth In My Yard

Drake elm leaves, Ulmus parvifolia, Family Ulmaceae (elm Family). Common names include Chinese elm, lacebark elm, and Drake elm. Native to China, Korea and Japan. This dwarf elm usually grows no higher than 40-50 feet. Says Floridata, "This is a good replacement for American elm which is apparently going extinct due to Dutch elm disease."



Sweetgum leaves, Liquidambar styraciflua, Family Hamamelidaceae (witch-hazel Family). Sweetgum occurs in the United States from Connecticut, west through southeastern New York and southern Ohio, through Missouri to eastern Oklahoma, south to include Texas and Florida.



Loropetalum, Loropetalum chinense, Family Hamamelidaceae (witch-hazel Family). Native to Japan and southeastern Asia, including southern China.



Snapdragons, Antirrhinum majus, Family Scrophulariaceae (figwort Family). Native originally to North Africa, Spain and along the Mediterranean to Italy, snapdragons have become naturalized in temperate regions in North America and elsewhere.

There are hundreds of snapdragon cultivars. Mine grow wild. Close-ups:





Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too







Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.) Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, and Destiny in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Land O'Lakes Library Author Fair

But first, a shameless bid for attention...

I've been participating in a thread over at Jay Lake's Facebook page. The thread's upshot: how what some people use as normal, everyday vocabulary is seen by others as too smart, too show-offy, or even as newly-invented words, not to mention providing fuel for hot and cold running malapropisms. Mind you, I'm giving a polite distillation here.

I mentioned the time a creative writing professor had accused me of plagiarism: "...until I showed him my notes. Then he said he thought the piece was publishable. I thought it was crap. Our assignment had been to write a short story draft in one week, so I just threw something down on the page. (I still remember a line from it -- 'So cold, that telescope's shaft!' I hang my head in shame...)"

Jay pointed out the line's potential to be part of a "brilliant" haiku. To which I replied:

The stroke of midnight --
So cold, that telescope's shaft!
Burn, you swollen stars.
:-p~~

I remember the story's title, too -- "In Magnification of Touch." Did I mention I'd been reading a lot of Freud in those days?

(Thanks for the thread, Jay.)



The Land O'Lakes Library in Pasco County, FL, held its inaugural Author Fair on Saturday, March 20. I drove down with Lakisha Spletzer and her daughter Alea. Thanks to both of them for helping me haul my load to and from the car!

My display included:
1. Deviations: Covenant (paperback, Aisling Press).
2. Covenant and Appetite on CD (click here for more info and free downloads).
3. Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory (Scriblerus Press, IPPY Silver Medalist; contains my story "Arachne").
4. Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press, Bram Stoker Award winner; contains my story "Memento Mori").
5. Issue 14, Electric Velocipede (Hugo Award winner; contains my story "Hermit Crabs," which is on the recommended reading list in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 26th Annual Edition).
6. Oct./Nov. 2009 Asimov's (Contains my novelette "Flotsam" and poem "Derivative Work").
7. Vampyr Verse (Popcorn Press; contains my poem "Neighbors").
8. General info flyers, and flyers advertising forthcoming work, including She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (Dybbuk Press), which will contain my story "Judgment at Naioth."

Kisha also took a video of me at the event, accessible here. Videos of more authors attending can be seen on her Kishaz Worlds Facebook page.



L-R: unidentified, Valerie Anne Faulkner, Susan Noe Harmon.



Chris Coad Taylor.



Seated, L-R: Philip Rice, Toni Martin, Rebecca Nunez. The books at far left were authored by Henley Holbrook.



Kisha and her daughter Alea.



Alea sits at my display, alternately writing her own story and editing her mother's book Werelove: Dusk Conspiracy.



Seated at far right: Fred Tomasello, Jr. The books at far right were authored by Kal Rosenberg.



Standing at left, L-R: Michael Dalton, Wendy Van Horn, Jerry Teske.



Coming up: I join Loretta Rogers to do cold read critiques at the Homosassa Public Library on Saturday, March 27.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too







Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.) Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, and Destiny in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Les Discrets - Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées (2010)

Genre: Atmospheric Blackened Post-Rock Shoegaze
About: A very unique take on what is already a very unique genre. Blackened Shoegaze. They only have black parts when appropriate. No screams, but blast beats and depressive guitar parts only when they feel appropriate. The album starts out really mysterious, then very heavy and dark. After 20 minutes of amazingness, we get to the title track, which is something straight out of suicidal black metal's book. A crow cawing. A sad acoustic melody. It makes me feel like I'm laying face down in the middle of a forest, lost for a week, and the crow is just waiting for me to die so he can peck at me.

It's such an amazing feeling that this song, and this while album gives. Finally, you have another heavy song, like a struggle. But then things start to look a lot brighter, a really light and content, almost cheery melody, like a new beginning after a time of terrible tribulation. I've been through feelings like that, so to relive it and know that I got through and I'm alive is just great. I can connect to it probably more than most people. If you don't like this album, I'd say its because you can't connect with the feelings it evokes.

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Wow, 1 whole download in 3 days... Guess my blog's popularity spike (About 100 downloads of Anal*g Rebellion, and 500 downloads of B*rzum, in 3 days) was in fact a fluke. Well, if you want to buy this album (You know, since you downloaded my file, listened once, and then deleted it...), here's the link!:

Buy 2-cd Art Book, Vinyl, or CD!!

Signs of Spring/Beauties in the Lot

Normally my hedge gets azalea blossoms this time of year, but it's slow to get started due to our unusually cold winter. I spotted these blossoms outside the mall.

The local swamp lilies have undergone a feat of rebirth. A member of the Amaryllis family, swamp lilies bloom all year. Their life cycle takes them through a drastic metamorphosis that goes from this (taken in October 2005):



... to this (taken in November 2005):



... and back again. But this year, January's extended hard freeze made me wonder if they'd make it.



That touch of green gave me reason to hope -- not in vain, as I discovered this week:



Mary pointed out this juxtaposition of cloud and contrail, which made the cloud look pretty zippy:



After our mall run, we stopped in the town of Holder to get in a walk on the Withlacoochie State Trail. Just off the trail, we stumbled upon Palm Coast Auto Restorations. It was after hours and the place was closed, but I could stick my camera lens inside the chainlink fence. The first car I noticed was this 1931 DeSoto:



Then the Chevy:



Camaro:



VW Beetle:



I can't identify this next one, but I love its shape and color:



Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too







Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.) Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, and Destiny in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.