It seems like a lifetime since I found a new band that I thought was worth a damn - let alone one that I thought the whole world should know about. I guess the world might know already about these guys but they only crawled across my radar this morning - there's every chance that the next time I go out, I'll be met with a hundred t-shirts proclaiming me stupid and slow in hindsight. Beware of Darkness. This is their site - jump onto youtube and you might find some video clips there. This is the album cover for 'Orthodox' and hellfire, it's wonderful for all the right reasons. If you're feeling lazy, you could fire comparisons of Jet hooking up with The Black Angels at them, but that still wouldn't hit the mark:

Why did I not know about this before this morning? Cross at self... but satisfied.

•••

I know I spend far too much time in the bookstore. Maybe I'm soaking it up for when it's no longer there. They have these cards on the counter at the moment: "The book that made me." The idea is that you fill it in (I guess about the book that changed your life) and then drop it in a box never to be seen again.

I thought hard about this. That's a tough call - but the universe has a way of giving you a good shake every now and then. Many times I've gone on record that since the day it came out it was always Clive Barker's Imajica, until around fifteen years later, I picked up Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Both are large. Both suffered the same fate - from the second they were begun, I barely moved or slept until they were finished, though I suspect I smoked a lot and ate far too many packets of crisps.

Weighing them up against each other, I still can't pin it down. I guess it's no big deal really. I hear a rumour (a decent rumour) that Jonathan Strange is about to be become some kind of TV show - and I don't want to watch it. I will, but I don't want to. Imajica on the other hand has largely been forgotten about by the masses - apart from those of us who have read it of course. We will never forget it. Couldn't if we wanted to.

I was kind of leading up to making a decision there wasn't I and it looked like I was headed for Imajica. It sits comfortably. See, if I say Imajica, that's OK. I can live with that. If I say Jonathan Strange, my heart always says "yeah, but what about Imajica?" So I guess I have decided. I don't like it though. Good job nobody is making me choose really.

I was actually leading up to something here - last night, I noticed that Clive Barker had posted some words about Imajica - being as I must have sold about 1000 copies of it over the years simply from talking about it non-stop, I'm going to paste it here with a clear conscience for you to read too. Enjoy it even - if it makes any sense:

I never came closer to giving up like I did with Imajica, never doubted more deeply my skills as a storyteller, was never more lost, never more afraid. But never was I more obsessed. I became so thoroughly immersed in the narrative that for a period of several weeks toward the end of the final draft a kind of benign insanity settled upon me. I woke from dreams of the Dominions only to write about them until I crept back to bed to dream them again. My ordinary life - what little I had - came to seem banal and featureless by contrast with what was happening to me- I should say Gentle, but I mean me- as we made our journey toward revelation. It's no accident that the book was finished as I prepared to leave England for America. By the time I came to write the final pages my house on Wimpole Street had been sold, its contents boxed up and sent to Los Angeles, so that all I had that I took comfort in had gone from around me. It was in some ways a perfect way to finish the novel: like Gentle, I was embarking on another kind of life, and in so doing leaving a country in which I had spent almost forty years. I do not discount the possibility that I will one day return there, of course, but for now, in the smog and sun of Los Angeles, the world seems very remote.

There's something about this paragraph that says I'm not the only one who thinks it's as close to perfect as a novel will ever get. Unlike many of his books, there was never any talk of a sequel and despite rumblings, there's never going to be a movie of it. Not in a million years. It can't be done. I would put an awful lot of money on the fact that not even Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro could pull it off properly even working together with a bottomless pit of money.

Then again, Susannah Clarke has played a good game by not even having a website - if you want any information about Jonathan Strange, you're just going to have to read the book - that's all there is.

Still... it's one war that's not worth fighting. Not really. Sooner or later, maybe something will come along and join them.

•••

Talking of great things, I've just started to watch Torchwood: Children of Earth again. Quite easily - and by a long, long way - the best television sic-fi show of all time. Yeah - even better than Doctor Who - apart from the Family of Blood storyline. As a five episode story arc, I've never sat through anything better written or more enjoyable. Seriously... I could watch it over and over for days on end and not get bored of it.

•••

Meanwhile, work continues. Never had something in my head that's wanted to move so fast onto paper and into the real world before. I'm not quite being Barker-esque about it, but I can see how that could happen to a man. If you're hankering for something quick but very cool to read, try this from Doug Crandell. It's really very good...

I started writing a song this evening. I haven't written a song in a very long time and having spent a very long time being a writer of songs (albeit with little to show for it in the long run), I was a little more than 'slightly' disappointed to find how rusty I was. Then again, once I'd started, things began to come back pretty quickly. I've got a couple of days to myself at the end of the week - let's see what happens - and out of interest, along the way I'll give GarageBand a damn good hammering. More intriguing than how rusty I was, is how as artists, we move on without realising it. I dug out the recordings of the last time I put anything of value down and found that lyrically, I really didn't think the same way anymore. Not even close. That means there's going to be an awful lot of material on the cutting room floor before I find my train of thought again.

This rekindled activity comes courtesy of my buddy JJ who is currently building a studio. Actually that's not strictly true. The studio is already there in the shape of Aerial Studios and fully functioning but there are more rooms in the studio space still to be built. A couple of weeks back, we met, we talked, we laughed, we imagined and we looked out of the window and laughed again at how long it takes some dreams to come to fruition and when they do arrive, never come fully formed. They always have more work to be done - but that's OK otherwise it would probably look like somebody else's dream. Go check it out - and if you want to get something on, it's as easy as dropping the dude a line believe me.

Anyway, I was toying with the project name 'Black Like Sunday' but I don't like that anymore. It didn't stand the test of time and certainly doesn't fit the frame of mind that I'm working in. I guess we'll be revisiting this place regularly as winter turns slowly into spring...

•

COMMERCIAL BREAK:

Lester Bangs. The one and only in action.

•

As much as I have loved playing with tumblr this past year in a multitude of ways, I have decided to say goodbye. Not immediately, but soon enough - like the end of the week. The way things are shaping up right now, I need to pull my sphere of influence in around me (not that it's huge or anything) and not throw it at the four corners of the interverse. It's a time thing that's all. With lots to do and all of it coming along pretty well, even though I could, I don't want to spend my time blogging multiple times. In the real world, I think that call that a commitment - or maybe even a decision.

If you tumblr'd with me, thanks. Now you need tumble no more as all things that were headed for the blog space of never ending length, will now be sunk into posts here - which are more than long enough to handle it. It all forms part of the "12 months to get your online presence together" as promised all those months ago. By by calculations, I think I have just five weeks left to wrap that part of the plan up and I don't think tumblr will be the only casualty of the war either. To be honest, I think tumblr will be just fine without me, don't you?

Anyway, as part of my wrapping up on that front, here's a repost of one of my favourites that I'd posted there about a revamping of the covers of the greatest book of all time:

Here's what I originally wrote to go alongside:

Talking of Matt Roeser (which I was just a single post ago), I couldn’t let this one slip through the net without posting it here as a personal reminder. From the pen of Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is absolutely my favourite book of all time. I love this delicate re-imagining of it but I’m not sure it would have pulled me in initially.

Now yes. Then, perhaps not.

Seeing this is kind of like when your girlfriend has her hair cut really short after a lifetime of long… or something like that.

Just prior to this I also fawned all over his revamping of the Game of Thrones series:

And again, here's what I originally wrote to go with it:

Matt Roeser - essentially cool and very talented book designer from Boston - hit the revamp button on George Martin’s Game of Thrones series a while back and, to be frank, trumped all the designs I’ve ever seen launched onto the shelves. There are some people out there who I seriously need to work with in the future. These are stunning.

Tumblr - I shall miss you a tiny bit, but truth be told, not actually all that much... everybody else, go check out Matt's work. He's pretty cool. We should probably talk.

In the spirit of things, let's wrap up with this. It looked great before it had begun and hasn't faltered one iota so far...