#34: "weird in all the best ways"
Well well well, if it isn't the newsletter that time forgot, screaming back into your inboxes with all the grace of a motorcycle being sucked into a jet engine. You may wonder what prompted my unexpected hiatus. Well, perhaps you're familiar with the time-honored advice for writers to "write every day." I was practicing a variation I've developed called "do not write every day." My approach has benefits.
Welcome to issue #34 of THIS NEWSLETTER CANNOT SAVE YOU, proud sponsor of the need for escapism in the midst of societal collapse. A bright commercial jingle plays, and a charismatic announcer says, "Now let's all run out and do something unnecessary!" You find out later he was executed by the regime. This isn't important to the story.
Highlights from Scottoworld
Somewhere back there, my new book WILD MASSIVE finally arrived in bookstores and internets. It's the simple story of a refugee and a spy who face down a powerful totalitarian empire inside an infinitely tall tower at the center of the multiverse. Their battlegrounds include the Wild Massive network of theme parks. If you like the idea of roller coasters that go so fast they create interdimensional rifts, this is your book.
I was asked to provide imaginary casting choices for an imaginary movie version of WILD MASSIVE, over on a blog called My Book, The Movie. It functions as a great little introduction to five of the main characters in the book. A few bloggers got advanced reader copies and their reviews are starting to pop up. Primmlife posted a nice take on the book, providing the pullquote: "Scotto Moore’s Wild Massive defies simple description. The closest that I can come up with is that it’s weird in all the best ways."
If you've had a chance to read the book already, dropping a review on Amazon or Goodreads or the outlet of your choice would be much appreciated.
My publisher posted this picture, I guess to remind people who I am:
Collect the whole set!
Scottovision
It's been so long since our last issue that my recommendations have truly stacked up. To help catch up, the list of recommendations in this issue is going to be a JUMBO SIZE list. No ordinary size list will do, not for you. No, instead of the usual ten recommendations, this issue I'm going to give you ELEVEN. (No Spinal Tap jokes, please, it's just... too soon.)
"A Model of Reality" (2023) - Electronic musician Max Cooper is renowned for collaborating with animators, directors, and visual artists to create an impressive catalogue of music videos. He's been releasing one video per track from his new album, Unspoken Words, and this one is definitely the pièce de résistance so far (only one or two remain to be released). The animator, Eris is Red, uses reaction diffusion software models to generate dazzling impressionistic effects and textures intended to illustrate "the arrival of abstract thought as a tool for human expression." There's a lot more on the technology and philosophy of the video in the YouTube description. Collectors can order a Blu-Ray with all the videos from Unspoken Words via Bandcamp.
"Kathmandu - Summer Never Sleeps" (2022) - Never before have I been so tempted to travel outside my fortified bunker for the purposes of "recreation" and "fun." But this travel ad did the trick. Shouldn't be surprised this ad is so entertaining - the same director, Daniel Warwick, turned in "The Internet of Shit" for one of his clients.
"Clubbers" (2023) - Nowness is "a global video channel screening the best in culture," and when they publish new content on YouTube, they use a full descriptive phrase instead of the actual title of the piece (for SEO, or to be cheeky, who knows). The phrase for this piece, published in their "Experiments" series, was: "CGI distortions visualize the psychedelic experience and the instant connections it shapes." Friends, this is no ordinary visualization of the psychedelic experience, nor the aforementioned instant connections that you've heard so much about. If you've got two minutes and sixteen seconds to spare, this one's a face-melter.
"Maison d'en face" (2022) - I dig stylish people in stylish clothing performing stylish dance numbers in (seriously) stylish houses, so this piece hit the spot. It's described as "a contrast between madness and human warmth," which I can see (in retrospect, given my inability to interpret dance beyond "wow" and "pretty"). Choreographed by Léo Walk, whose YouTube channel contains only one video (guess which one), but his IMDB page describes him as "a French b-boy & contemporary dancer, choreographer, model, fashion designer and director." So he's got that going for him.
"Lionsuite" (2018) - A cappella ensemble Gestalt performs an insanely tight medley of the Skylar Grey song "Intro - Wilderness" coupled with Björk's "Lionsong," and it Absolutely. Kills. The lead singer is just outrageously strong. In my day, collegiate-level a cappella was about jazz hands and flashy smiles, but these people are operating closer to modern dance while they sing, and it's all very WTF how did this even happen. Their website states, "Gestalt seeks to push the limits of art and create pieces that embrace the avant-garde." Aha, well that explains it!
"KIRBY SAFETY VHS (2003)" (2021) - Official description: "Kirby and Dedede are here to teach you how to avoid dangers in your daily life in this mysterious found tape!!!" From Xploshi, who makes weird stuff like this. I featured another piece of theirs, "Postman Pat and the Pills," last issue. Also if you like "Wallace & Gromit," you might like this. Maybe. Definitely don't watch this one, though.
"This Is It" (2023) - A three-minute film that packs enough plot and hijinks to fill an entire screwball romantic comedy. Plus they pull a unique stunt with the storytelling that's pretty ingenious. Written and directed by Alexander Engel.
"Signal Transmutations" (2023) - Electronic musician Spekki Webu teamed up with visual artist Matti Vilho for the music video to this song, which feels like you're wearing a VR helmet and piloting a drone through a few acres of alien landscape that have been sliced off a planet and deposited in the void for you to study. Sometimes the drone's signal becomes brilliant waves of colorful interference, although sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between interference and the weird atmospheric conditions the drone encounters. Also, why are there so many TVs embedded everywhere? It's a mystery.
"Teardrop" (2020) - Just discovered that leftfield electronic musician Sega Bodega released an intimate album of strange duets during lockdown, literally just two voices per track - Sega, and a guest vocalist, heavily leaning into auto-tune and pitch-shifting to stack vocal tracks, to create a covers album with some excellent choices. My favorite, due to nostalgia for the original, is this cover of a classic Massive Attack song, with lead vocals by Lafawndah, who fakes you out with a seemingly plain opening before the song begins to unfold and mesmerize as harmonic textures emerge. From the album Reestablishing Connection.
"early RISER" (2005) / "early RISER" (2008) - Plus-Tech Squeeze Box was a wild J-pop band who put out two albums and vanished, but oh, the madcap joy of those two albums. Here we have the music video for one of their only singles, coupled with a "live" appearance three years later on a BBC music show in which they're joined by an avant-garde dance troupe. Delightfully bonkers.
"The Weird Girls: Episode 4" (2008) - And so we arrive at our BONUS pick, going back in time to gentler, simpler days, when a troupe of women made their way to the snowy Icelandic countryside for rapier training while wearing large bunny-head masks. And why do this in the snow? Because it makes the blood stand out, of course.
Exit Music
Sending you out this week with a new track by The Orb, in a classic ambient style, from their forthcoming album, Prism. The track is also called Prism, and it might make you very nostalgic, or at minimum, very sleepy.
A YouTube playlist with this issue's recs can be found here.
Until next time, I remain your friendly correspondent, thinking of you,
Scotto
Scotto Moore is the author of WILD MASSIVE, BATTLE OF THE LINGUIST MAGES, and YOUR FAVORITE BAND CANNOT SAVE YOU.