I can feel
the real dis-ease.
I've been pretty burned out on music lately, but here goes anyway: a couple post-Halloween records that also work year-round. First is Quix*o*tic's second and final album, 2002's Mortal Mirror. Featuring Christina Billotte (Casual Dots, Slant 6, Autoclave), Mira Billotte (White Magic), and an almost unrecognizably shred-free Mick Barr (Crom-Tech, Orthrelm), Mortal Mirror, for me, kind of blows all those past and present works out of the water (although I do adore Crom-Tech, and I'm starting to adore White Magic, and there is that one Autoclave song). It's also essentially a guide for what girls should do if they're going to start a band--spooky, slightly mathy garage/ girl group jams, with stunning Aaron Neville and Black Sabbath covers thrown in. That's only if you want people totally falling in love with you and thinking you're the coolest, though.

Quix*o*tic - "Anonymous Face"
Quix*o*tic - "Open Up The Walls"
Quix*o*tic - "Lord of This World"

And then there's Velvet Cacoon's Genevieve. Full credit goes to Tyler Farren for randomly throwing this on the living room stereo (thanks, Leah!) one afternoon, and for generally being my #1 black metal supplier (sorry, Leah). I'm still an amateur enthusiast, but I'll say this: Genevieve is in the gauzy, speed drone realm of the black metal universe, full of multi-layered embittered darkness and occasional growls of despair in mini-epic form--not quite the high Wagner-ian drama of something like Vothana, but moving nonetheless. I want to say if you could get down with Orchid, you could probably get down with this, too. But who knows? I had this idea for a haunted house/hayride thing that revolved around Genevieve being played really loud inside an abandoned church, which seems kind of cheesy now. It's good, though, it's pretty scary.

Velvet Cacoon - "1"
Velvet Cacoon - "P.S. Nautical"
Velvet Cacoon - "Genevieve"

Random other songs are "Scrapbooking", "Odorono", and "Ten Thousand Animal Calls" (remember this song??). Check out clips from the best album of 2008, I mean besides whatever Straight, No Chaser puts out. Oh and Spiked Candy got updated big time last week--major French girl pop and Halloween song talk, plus A LOT of downloadable things.