For those of who who have always wondered how to master this arcane dance art, a helpful tutorial is included above.
For further cheering-up, see below. It’s like watching a dozen adorable Tamagothis hatch and grow in full-color, right before your very eyes:
Designer Wren Britton revels in creating one-of-a-kind “Post Apocalyptic Victorian accessories” and “clothing for Time-Traveling Dandies and Femme Fatales of all ages {and genders!!!} and all those in-between.” Both the gentleman and his wares exude a winsome air of elegance, playfulness, and feral sensuality. Ooo la la!
Britton elliptically describes his aesthetic, and the PUREVILE line of accessories:
I have a background in fashion but I have always had a love for accessories…They really can make a simple outfit POP…or make an extreme outfit topple over with GLAMOUR….I think CoCo Chanel said something like “When you leave your house always turn around and look in the mirror and take off the first thing you see… {chuckle} …Me??? I turn around and the first SPACE I see I pin on something else!!!!!
All items are handmade…{With love}…All one of a kind…Made from antiques… Heirlooms… Bones… Doll parts… Keys… Lace… Oddities and Curiosities of all shapes and sizes….Things found in an attic…Things forgotten in a basement… Things behind glass in a museum… This is PUREVILE.
The New York-based bon-vivant will be holding a trunk sale of his gorgeously anachronistic finery at Five and Diamond in San Francisco this Thursday, the 28th of July, from 6-9pm. I’m definitely gonna be there, and a little bird told me Nadya might show up as well. If you’re in the neighborhood, please do drop in and say hello!
Also see:
Let Poésie Noire transport you to a simpler time, when goths were GOTHS, and donning black lipstick ‘n’ goggles to shoot one’s darque synthpop music video in a desolate industrial setting wasn’t enough; only by dancing spasmodically atop slanting planks with newspaper stuffed down one’s pants could one convey true angst.
Best comment on teh YooToobz: “You gotta love the eighties videos. ‘I will stand here and look like a mysterious complex individual that has secrets that don’t exist and I still want you to figure out what I’m thinking about right now.’ Long live alternative music!” ~Mannchild11
The only thing that could potentially improve the “Tragedy” viewing experience would be inclusion of footage of lead singer Johan Casters (aka “La Bête Noire” – “The Black/Dark Beast”) actually “climb[ing] to ze top of ze tree” in that getup.
But seriously, these wacky Belgians made some great tunes, blazing a trail alongside dark synth countrymen Front 242 and Neon Judgment. So good on ’em and their neo-Victorian inflatables!
Other tidbits of possible interest:
via DJ Dead Billy
“Oh la la”
“I paint my demons. I paint nightmares. To get rid of them. I paint my fears. I paint my sorrow. To deal with them.” – Mia Mäkilä
Mia Mäkilä, a self-taught artist who lives and works in Sweden, describes her art as “horror pop surrealism” or “dark lowbrow” and further illustrates: “Picture Pippi Longstocking and Swedish movie director Ingmar Bergman having a love child. That’s me.”
Her work consists of digital paintings and vintage photographs manipulated and distorted to produce nightmarish mixed media portraits. The creations borne of Mäkilä’s artistic process are both uncomfortably horrific and unaccountably humorous– demonic entities lurk in the form of gash-mouthed, leering Victorian families staring from within a tintype void. Fire-breathing/ennui-stricken and dandified gentlemen ejaculate from the precarious heights of a Parisian rooftop. All manner of flaming Boschian hells overflow with cavorting fish and flamingos and God knows what else.
“Holiday in Hell”
Praise. IMMENSE praise– for the creative development of Katie Stelmanis and her rare, tremulous bird voice, swooping and soaring higher than ever, supported by her bandmates in Austra and the epic production value on their recent release, Feel It Break. Kudos to Bjork/Prodigy/UNKLE producer, Damian Taylor, for lifting them up on his capable shoulders. Such a strong, vivid dream of an album; a “100% dud-free collection”, as Stereogum puts it.
The inevitable Zola Jesus and Karin Dreijer Andersson comparisons are pouring in, and let them. There are some parallels, for sure: dark witchy prowess, shamanic danceability, classically trained chops, sharp songwriting skills, unconventional presentation. It’s electronic pop steeped in earnest ritual.
But dial back the scrumptious bleep and bloop effects a bit. When the arrangement is primarily just Stelmanis and her piano (as with the final, breathtaking track “The Beast”), it becomes clear that the album’s most powerful magic lies simply in that voice. There’s something humbling, and deeply healing, about that.
Highly recommended.
Photo: Allan Amato. Clothes: Plastik Wrap. Models: Zoetica Ebb and Ulorin Vex. Hair: Adriana Mireles.
via Haute Macabre:
After months of excruciating antici…pation, decease Zoetica Ebb and Plastik Wrap have released a preview of their collaborative effort.
Titled GHST RDR, health the tailored top and square skirt combo is inspired by strict riding jackets of the Victorian era, clinic Anime and the dark punk aesthetic. Classic tailoring and details such as pleats, draping and structured sleeves are vivified with modern materials and adjustable straps.
The mini collection, made entirely in Canada, will be available for custom orders at PlastikArmy.com on May 9th.
Turn off all the lights, get under the covers, put on your best pair of headphones, and listen… if you dare:
Via Aaron Shinn (whose own fantastic work definitely deserves a Coilhouse writeup ASAP).
Demdike Stare is an occult-tinged music collaboration between Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty, two highly knowledgeable fellows from Manchester, each with a versatile background in DJing, record collecting and curating. Author Mike Powell’s review of Demdike Stare’s Triptych –one of the most interesting write-ups Pitchfork has posted recently– covers Whittaker’s and Canty’s work and history, both as a team, and separately. From that same review:
Demdike Stare is primarily a sample-based project, and “dark” is its organizing principle. Their logo is a skull, rose, and triangle; the cover of one of their EPs is a visual riff on a Ouija board; and they’re named after a 17th-century witch– a quasi-gothic, English variation on the sci-fi and horror imagery that has saturated the American underground over the past couple of years. The tracks on Tryptych are droning and nightmarish: lots of close murmuring and distant wind, lots of groaning earth and quietly whining steam-powered machines, glassy techno keyboards and the buried wailing of undefined tribes. But like some drone (and most minimal techno) there’s usually a build or a climax, and one of the most consistently satisfying things about listening to Tryptych is that it takes music you might expect to be purely ambient and shapes it into something with a hump somewhere in the middle– something with a narrative to it.
Cover for Demdike Stare’s Forest of Evil EP. Buy their CDs and MP3s at Amazon or Insound.
There’s a captivating visual element to Demdike Stare as well– to accentuate their live shows, the band often projects footage lifted from a wide range of classic horror and giallo films, spaghetti westerns, and thrillers onto the wall behind them, then mixes live beats and samples into their tracks to match those visuals. Additionally, Demdike Stare’s listeners have come up with with several captivating fan videos, many of which are included in the above playlist [and are not entirely SFW, mind you], along with a great interview with Whittaker and Canty, for those interested in learning more about the team’s process. Or, if you’d prefer to keep things more mysterious, skip the interview, and just let yourself be swept away by the enigmatic loveliness of the music and presentation.
Previously on Coilhouse:
Sure, most of us can wholeheartedly agree that FOX NEWS SUCKS. But credit must be given where it’s due: they handled their recent interview with a vampire scrappy, sharp-toothed home owner respectfully and professionally:
Via Eric Cheng, thanks!
While there’s no doubt that FOX aired this segment knowing full well it would go viral and bump their ratings, the story of homeowner Patrick Rogers turning the tables on a life-draining bank like Wells Fargo would be a joy to hear even if he wasn’t a darque and sultry creature of eternal night.
After the bank tried to bully Rogers into paying an outrageous insurance premium, the black-clad, fanged resident of Philadelphia, PA, found a little-known, 30 year-old law, and successfully foreclosed on them. Ha!
Via DJ Dead Billy comes this live 1983 performance of “Designed for Living” by an obscure Brisbane, AU band called The MegaMen. Watch, listen and rejoice as three elegant new romantics take the Bandaged Bear Telethon by storm.
Singer: Xhian Behm. Keyboardist: Mark Love. Duct-taped snare drum tamer: Lance Leopard. [via]
Billy professes to being nonplussed by certain aspects of the performance, namely The MegaMen’s mega-bitchy lyrics. Your mileage may vary: personally, I find their immaculate Nagelesque coifs, perfected sneers and lissome, synchronized dance moves impossible to resist. And really, when you think about it, don’t lines like “I see your pain and find it funny / You gave me love and I took your money” go together with disdainful high-kicks [2:39] and queenly mic-cord flips [2:42] like ebony eyeliner and ivory skin foundation? RAWR. Love.
Shannon Funchess radiates a certain low, rumbling power unlike anyone or anything else around her. And her voice… O Holy Fuck, that VOICE. It belongs in a cathedral, or an abattoir.
The Brooklyn-based musician’s previous work as a frontwoman, and with NYC indie darlings like TV on the Radio and !!! and Telepathe is all very cool, but it’s only more recently, with the platform of Light Asylum — her duo with electronics maestro Bruno Coviello– that Funchess’ vision and strength seem to have reached a fulminating state.
This is the raw, real stuff right here, hearkening back to ultra-early Ministry, dance hall Cabaret Voltaire, or any of 4AD’s most toothsome output from back in the day. Think Ian Curtis at his most tuneful, Grace Jones at her most carnivorous, or Clan of Xymox with roid rage… then think far, far beyond that, because, with Coviello matching her, it seems like Funchess now has the space she needs to commit to ritual that pushes even further into the dark. Light Asylum songs, at their best and most grandiose, seriously feel like they’re on the verge of some sort of Crossing-the-Abyss-at-the-Discotheque type of working. (Is that statement too bombastic? Maybe. Maybe not. Go to one of their live shows and decide for yourself.)
“To me Light Asylum is a metaphor for the lack of genuine self-expression in the world, where people suppress their sexuality, their creativity, their entire lives. This music is for them and for people to realize that they’re not alone. The music is dark, but it’s at a place where you can see there is light at the end of the tunnel. The darkness isn’t all around us; it’s inside us.” [via]
Creepy baby is creepy.
