I was visiting my friend Charles the other night (you may remember him from the CERN show) and he turned me on to this amazing band Circle who bill themselves as “The New Wave of Finnish Heavy Metal”. Holy jumping Jesus is this shit on the money. It tips and spins and barks from thunderous atonal echo-washed psych rock into lush and confusing folk-like soundscapes without bothering to check over it’s shoulder and make sure you’re still there. It’s a tough ride, but you come out the otherside with your fuzzy brain glowing a dizzy green and your loins feeling like they’ve been massaged by finely crafted razor mitts. Crazy awesome.

Looks like they’ve recently completed a documentary on these fucked up souls. Here’s what their site says about it:

Saturnus Reality (2007) is the Finnegan’s Wake of Finnish rock documentaries, and a fabulous cul-de-sac in a stream of consciousness. The film’s subject is Circle, the prolific Finnish experimentalists hailing from Pori, but it is a self-ironic vicious circle of a film that focuses on the curious world of the band and its musicians, shot on a home video camera. Jussi Lehtisalo, Mika Rättö, Janne Westerlund, Tomi Leppänen and Tuomas Laurila appear in the film as if they were acting out themselves.

The film is nominally centred on the recording sessions of Miljard, one of the latest albums by this extremely productive band, whose output includes 28 albums in 16 years. Starting out as a traditional rock documentary, the film soon runs loose on various sidetracks: to the depths of a forest, onto a frozen lake, into the darkness of night. The band’s primeval music becomes the soundtrack for magic rites performed in nature. The musicians meet the mysterious Oracle of the Reed Sea, a strange meteorite has landed in a snowy landscape, and so forth. What matters in Circle’s fantastic world is totality of vision, while details are treated somewhat generously. The new genre the band has coined, NWOFHM (The New Wave of Finnish Heavy Metal), may just as well mean fragile atonal piano improvisation or catatonic one-note walls of sound. Inspired by the ritualistic films of Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger, the film moves to the beat of double and triple exposures, the atmosphere balancing in the timeless opening between childish horseplay and reckless pathos. Enthusiastic live commentary can be heard beside the camera by the director/cinematographer, Pori’s multi-talented craftsman of the psychedelic, Esko Lönnberg. His earlier works include the splendid concert film with Doktor Kettu (also from Pori), shot through a distorting lens.”

I just picked up their amazing 2x LP ‘Sunrise’ from AllThatIsHeavy.com and you should too.

Wow. The last post I put up about Julia Child and Sterling Hayden working for the OSS got my ires up and I dug around this here old bucket of tubes for some more information on one of my favorite character actors of the last half of the twentieth century. Turns out Sterling Hayden was more interesting than Jack D. Ripper or even Roger Wade for that matter.

A veteran, spy, gun runner, alcoholic, pot fiend, actor, best selling novelist, seaman and philosopher, Sterling Hayden wrote the fucking book on what it means to be alive in this world; uncompromising and restless. I only wish he was still stomping around our little planet sos I might have had a chance to knock a glass or two with the guy.

God bless you Sterling Hayden!

Awesome new web show from Dean (Michael “Mickey” Melchiondo) Ween, “The Brownie Troop Fishing Show“. In this particular episode he goes fishing with Gibby Haynes from the Butthole Surfers - it’s kind of like “Fishing with John” but with no John Lurie and more apparent drug abuse.

Give yourself over to the fish…

Cool ass trailer for Sukiyaki Western Django - in theaters this month.

Try to ignore Quentin Tarantino and you’ll enjoy the trailer much much more.

My friends and colleagues, let today be a day of joy and auspicious glee for all involved in the One World Conspiracy. After many a years hunting up and down the aisles of marginal internettical lunacy, I have discovered a blog that may indeed be the Unified Theory of Internet Madness.

Focus on your perineum, hose down your aura, and dip your evil-doing teeth into the bounty that is The Pseudo-Occult Media Blog!!!

Never before have maniacs gained so much by reaching so far.

I just came across this short essay on one of my favorite Kubrick films, Eyes Wide Shut. Too often panned, misunderstood, or just not considered, Eyes Wide Shut, is a labyrinthian journey through the deepest mysteries of human experience, it’s an adult-themed fairy tale in the tradition of Grimm that continues it’s kaleidescopic still-life of the human mind, in richer and richer complexities, after each subsequent viewing.

This also reminded me of a series of internet ramblings attempting to tie Eyes Wide Shut to Illuminati world governance and Mind Control. These essays (and there are a ton others to be googled) are fun afternoon reading for those who, like me, enjoy a study of people’s whose compulsion for myopic answers is only outweighed by their inability to comprehend art on a mytho/symbolic/non-literal level.

No doubt there are terrible experiments being played on the mind’s of hapless victims of all ages, sexes, and nationalities, but I have a hard time believing that someone who can’t manage to present their findings on a web page with less than a 20pt font is hot on the case. But perhaps that’s techno-bigotry (and right).

I’m proud to say that I spent the early part of this week building another site for film maker and Viking comrade Wayne Ewing. This newest site is for his most recent project that will debut at the Denver Film Festival in November, The Border Wall. From the site:

The Border Wall examines the effect of the Wall where it began as a double fence in San Diego in the 1990’s. Local activists argue that militarization of the border and the walls have simply driven undocumented aliens to cross through more dangerous terrain, causing the deaths of over 5000 people. However, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R., CA) – the author of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, claims that there was a 50% drop in crime in San Diego County after the walls went up along the border, and that the wall saves lives.

In Arizona, The Border Wall looks at the seven miles of wall recently built near Sasabe, and discovers a horde of illegal immigrants simply going around the end of the wall into mountainous terrain where the filmmakers find two Mexican ladies lost and terrified. Undocumented immigrants dying of thirst in the desert often find help from No More Deaths, an organization of volunteers dedicated to saving lives in the desert of Southern Arizona, and the film follows them patrolling the desert, and cleaning up the immense amounts of trash left behind by migrants.

Also in Arizona, The Border Wall examines a legal challenge by the Defenders of Wildlife to wall construction in the fragile San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area which was at first successful in the fall of 2006 in persuading a federal judge to halt all construction. But Secretary Chertoff invoked the extraordinary power given him by Congress with the Real ID Act of 2005 to waive any law that he determines stands in his way of building the wall. Chertoff waived 19 laws.

Wayne is best known for his extraordinary documentary on the Good Doctor, “Breakfast with Hunter”. You also may remember our interview with him discussing “When I Die”. In the past few years Wayne has put his focus back on issues of justice - or lack of justice - in the American system. I’m looking forward to seeing the completed film in November some of which will be shown during tonight’s airing of NOW on PBS.