anaskyfish

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come and rest my soul
I dream a highway back to you

John he's kicking out the footlights
The Grand Ole Opry's got a brand new band
Lord, let me die with a hammer in my hand
I dream a highway back to you.

I think I'll move down into Memphis
And thank the hatchet man who forked my tongue
I lie and wait until the wagons come
And dream a highway back to you.

The getaway kicking up cinders
An empty wagon full of rattling bones
Moon in the mirror on a three-hour jones,
I dream a highway back to you.

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vison come arrest my soul
I dream a highway back to you.

Which lover are you, Jack of Diamonds?
Now you be Emmylou and I'll be Gram
I send a letter, don't know who I am
I dream a highway back to you.

I'm an indisguisable shade of twilight
Any second now I'm gonna turn myself on
In the blue display of the cool cathode ray
I dream a highway back to you.

I wish you knew me, Jack of Diamonds
Fire-riding, wheeling when I lead em up
Drank whisky with my water, sugar in my tea
My sails in rags with the staggers and the jags
I dream a highway back to you.

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come molest my soul
I dream a highway back to you.

Now give me some of what you're having
I'll take you as a viper into my head
A knife into my bed, arsenic when I'm fed
I dream a highway back to you.

Hang overhead from all directions
Radiation from the porcelain light
Blind and blistered by the morning white
I dream a highway back to you.

Sunday morning at the diner
Hollywood trembles on the verge of tears
I watched the waitress for a thousand years
Saw a wheel within a wheel, heard a call within a call
I dreamed a highway back to you.

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come molest my soul
I dream a highway back to you.

Step into the light, poor Lazarus
Don't lie alone behind the window shade
Let me see the mark death made
I dream a highway back to you.
I dream a highway back to you.

What will sustain us through the winter?
Where did last years lessons go?
Walk me out into the rain and snow
I dream a highway back to you.

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come and bless my soul
I dream a highway back to you

I dream a highway back to you
Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come and bless my sould
I dream a highway back to you.

That's right, the long promised double album I Am An Empty House Longing To Be Haunted is OUT NOW on Black Horizons. Aquarius Records said the following: "MEDROXY PROGESTERONE ACETATE I Am An Empty House, Longing To Be Haunted (Black Horizons) 2 x cassette 11.98
We first heard from the oddly titled Medroxy Progesteron Acetate on a split 7" with Warmth a while back, but this is the first we've heard since, a sprawling double cassette epic, of burnt out psychedelic drift and drone out black synth shimmer, rife with strange voices and sampled vocals, buried melodies and constantly shifting textures and tones. Dense stretched out drone music, lush layered abstract psych-synth minimalism, slow-motion muted industrial creep, squalls of grinding sci-fi noise, or thick bleary buzz, this is heavy, deep, dark listening, paranoid, sinister, ominous, otherworldly, haunting, harrowing, but at the same time, strangely blissed out, mesmerizing, dense and dark and in its own bleak and black way surprisingly dreamy. Muted rhythmic drift fused to ethereal shimmer, and softly roiling sonic murk, the voices constantly in the distance, occasionally moving to the fore, intoning some mysterious passage only to be swallowed up and covered in layer after layer of hum and thrum and rumble. Fans of Pulse Emitter, Grasslung, and other synth-drone alchemists will definitely dig, but the constant flow of samples and strange voices and mysterious broadcasts, gives this the vibe of some fucked up soundtrack, or some purloined surveillance tape set to music, which is what makes this so cool. And so trippy, fucked up and frightening. Like all Black Horizons releases, crazy deluxe packaging, two tapes housed in one of those cool double tape cases, with two full color printed J-cards, on metallic paper, each with an insert with all the 'lyrics' and liner notes, and each either silver or gold, matching whichever tape it accompanies. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!" If you want a copy from me, let me know and we'll figure something out.

The long-promised continuation of the Ana Skyfish stories coming soon. Too many projects! All scatterbrained in the head!

It's been a while since I felt that jones. That want to write, to actually put my fingers down and do the typing and not just sit back and dream. They march, silently, down the suburban street, the display of their faith openly on display. Midwest sex covens. I saw them. I joined them. My name is Ana Skyfish, and I am finally ready to tell you the story, to the fullest extent of my abilities, what happened in Summerland Iowa those long wasted days ago. Eadem Mutata Resurgo: The Wiki. Beginning March 4th, 2012. There is no end.

this kinda day.

Here's the thing: music wasn't always about recordings. There used to be (still is) social music, the idea of which being you get together with family and friends and play some instruments and have a good time. Go listen to that copy of the Anthology of American Folk Music you bought and never listened to and you'll see what I mean. I think that's becoming more the case today, and what's great is there's a hundred plus years worth of technology built for just that demand waiting to be used. It isn't about discovery or being the first.

spent walk home wondering how many times i could hit someone in the face with a full beer can before it exploded. i figure if i claw-grip the top and bring the bottom straight down on the face (i had already pulled the subject out of the truck and pummeled them to the ground in this scenario) i could do some damage.

Saw two cops pull a body off the subway the other day. He was about five feet from me when they held the train at Franklin to get him off. I think he might have been alive but I never saw him move.

Spent last night talking to cops while high next to a car wreck on Eastern Parkway. Cab ran a red and some guy burned to death while a cop pulled his body onto the sidewalk.

I have certain reservations about living here.

A bit NSFW (for some witchboob), just so you know. Probably the closest thing Empty House has to a "single".

It is difficult to return to this atmosphere. This public place, where there are expectations on my behaviour. I am not certain of the mores and the rituals of the natives, and seek not to offend, but my slimy trail seems to follow me wherever I go. I mumble protective sigils under my breath, my hoodie and headphones like psychic armor to relieve the density of the atmosphere.

Owen and I were scheduled to talk about how he still hasn't given me all my records back, only this instantly became a recruitment pitch for his new project, Pickleloader. Before I signed the NDA he wrote in pencil I had a couple questions, such as "Pickleloader? What's a Pickleloader?"
"It's a thing that loads pickles, obviously."
"Loads them for what? Like a cannon? You can't shoot pickles at people! It's against the Geneva convention!"
"No, look, it's some kinda internet design production situation with graphics business, which means they have a cutesy-pie name that don't mean nothin', like Lupdid."
"Or Pickleloader."
"Correct. That's how the fat internet grant money starts rolling in. Soon as this plan hits ten thousand dollars, which should take about half a minute of Internet Time, that's when my art project takes off."
"And these internet people are going to pay us ten thousand dollars to make 'art'?"
"Which is no problem, because I have a conceptual piece I've been working on where I play The Star-Spangled Banner by raising and lowering garage doors like a pipe organ."
"The garage doors make the sound?"
"No, inside each garage we have a little kid who is trained to scream in a certain pitch continuously for the duration of the performance."
"And people are expected to just let you place a screaming urchin in their garage every time somebody wants to get patriotic?"
"Let me? LET ME? The Big O is neither a letter nor a letee! I have a mandate from science to do what I want to the extent of the public's need for freedom!"
"So how do you plan to get into people's garages?"
"Oh, I made duplicates of everybody's garage door opener last time we had a block party. When the rapture comes I shall not want for tools and lawn furniture."
"I refuse to sign anything until I get my records back. Also, you have to stop calling me Ana: She-Wolf of the Food Court. In fact..."
"I REFUSE TO NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS! I'll find some other lucky dame to become my She-Wolf of Sonic Mayhem! I do, however, need to borrow your machete as all disciples of Pickleloader get an arm notch so the lesson will not be forgotten! Stop pushing me! ALL MY NAYSAYERS WILL PAY ON THE GREAT DAY OF THE PICKLING!"
So I used my machete to chase Owen to the bus stop and stood there, arms crossed, until I saw him get on the bus. Obviously I didn't lend it to him, as I have voodoo to do. That's another story, tho.

Fall and New York and being nostalgic makes me want to start writing actual Ana Skyfish stories again, so she's taking back the Livejournal from this point on. Posts from me will be prefaced DB: which hopefully won't get too confusing. Thanks for your continued indulgences.

So here's what is up with me:

• Dana and I are tag-teaming horror movie reviews over at The Brooklyn Cult of Mystic Horrors, which we're trying to update regularly. So far we've tackled The Mansion of Madness, Snake Woman's Curse, Spirits of the Dead and a trio of Jess Franco period pieces, with more on the way soon!


• I have a vague plan to dress as Orson Welles for Halloween. This basically consists of me wearing a cape, sipping whiskey and quoting The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which is pretty much what I normally do.


• I've been watching a ton of movies, from contemporary arthouse fare (Martha Marcy May Marlene, which was *okay*, I guess; The Skin I Live In, which was kinda awesome and certainly worth seeing if you can truck with Almodovar, and last night we saw Sleeping Beauty, which I thought very little of; my patience for vapid vaguely pretty young women who are desired by everybody for no real reason is pretty low, particularly in New York, where there's a lot of that kinda goofery) to brain-destroying "action" films from the eighties (The Dark Side of Midnight, which was like a made-for-tv version of Don't Answer The Phone!, and Kill Point, of which let me say every movie should have drunk-ass Cameron Mitchell playing Robert Evans as a crime boss) -- somehow it seems like I should be able to combine these two genres together for a can't miss box office blockbuster but I haven't figured it out yet


• Playing lots of MAME arcade games in what I'm sure is a midlife crisis regression tactic


• Not writing (boooo!) -- I did a little project called Suffer A Witch To Live but I can't get anywhere with it now


• Repairing Justin's PAIA Fatman bass synth


• Looking for work (nightmarish, don't want to talk about it)


• Making lots of electronic pop music (well, pop in comparison to my usual rackety scree), which you can listen to on the MPA soundcloud


• Taking it to the limit

And that's about it. New York is cool, and I like my neighborhood, but man this is one place where it's impossible to escape the monotony of US pop culture.

Finally downloading Sonar X1 -- it's been fun doing stuff on the fly and beat-matching by ear but I'm ready to really get everything hooked up and running. I'll have a report on what I think of the changes at some point, I'm sure. This means I can finally get cracking on old Clocksucker and Melusine mixes that have sat dormant for the past year as well as get to work on Salome. My dear friend Justin is sending me his hand-built Fatman which I'm looking forward to running with the filter for analog goodness. New York is weird, and it's taking a while to wrap my head around, but I like the change from California already. The Empty House tapes are all dubbed, and graphics are being worked on. I'll have a bonus cdr available for people who buy copies from me (will also include a dvd with mp3/wavs of all the tracks, some stem drones, all the text, so on). Started a new writing project at Suffer A Witch To Live but so far it doesn't feel new. Need to update the websites in the next week or so. Have vague ideas for video work. For an idea of where my head's at, check out the Clocksucker mix of April's Hi Drone -- as you can tell, I'm definitely ready for fall.

[tapes being recorded right now, James is working out the cover design, it'll drop with the next Black Horizons batch]

Medroxy Progesterone Acetate: I Am An Empty House Longing To Be Haunted

1. The Ghost of Dried Wells
2. Thigh High (Clocksucker mix)
3. Durga On The Wing Of Abomination (single edit)
4. Starshine Tendrils
5. Something Shimmers And Is Gone
6. The Chain
7. Photographs Of Bodies
8. If You Ever Loved Me Please Let Me Sleep
9. Drift When You Have No Gravity

Darren Bauler: Interference, Deprogramming, Signal Decay.
Jenna Cohen: EVP, Possession States, Scrying Circuits.
April Larson: Narration, Concussion Machines, Recording Anamolies.

Additional vocals by Kyra Edeker (9), Chelle-Marie Ehlers (1) and the Dawgranch Children's Choir (3).
Shot on location in Waterloo IA, Austin TX, and Emeryville CA 2008-2011.
Research assistance: Kek-W, Dana Reinoos, Phil Legard, Clint Marsh, Brutallo, Everyone at the Grand Lodge of Iowa Library, Damon Packard, Robin Bougie, Rebecca Dart and the Internet Witches.
This is The Theater of Diminished Faculties episode three. Coming soon: Salome.


The Ghost of Dried Wells: I am walking down the sidewalk toward the apartments, but at the same time I am deep in the mud under the river, thick and cold but not crushed by its weight. My fingers can move, just a little, but I don’t feel the need to breathe, content to pull in the silence and dark where I cannot be found, revisit memories, consider potential acts, and yet I am now at the complex, walking around to the stairs, and I am running out of time. In johnboats up on the river’s surface, they hunt for my body with long metal rods they shove into the riverbed, the calloused fingers and palms attuned to the frequencies of my bones, but I know nothing of this, and yet I know all about it, and know it is not real, that I am at the door, that I am knocking on the door, that I can hear someone inside turning the locks.

Thigh High: caught in the cawl like the dreams in its hair/the child bride suicide's uterine prayers/the white light fills up the surrogate host/your womb now become a trap for stray ghosts/fontanelle tendrils reach to the skies/black blood staining your born blind eyes/show us your syringes and vaginal scars/and whisper the hum of the mourning star

Durga On The Wing Of Abomination: "i cannot melt the snow, dear krsna, i am but the night"

BEHOLD the great EJACULATRIX, who is the sword of judgment, who is the voice of the word of the wind in the vale, who breathed into dessecated flesh and made it to stand and cower, who is the manifestation at end-of-time of THE FINAL WISDOM.
BEHOLD the great DEVOURER, that which remains behind that which vanishes and becomes present to vision locked in objective codified time only at the moment when the light is swallowed up inside itself and only the hunger which animated the want remains, that which operates through hidden conduits as the digestive tract of reality hidden behind the ghost-flesh of maya, the mundus subterraneus, the SECRET WORLD now revealed.
BEHOLD the great REVELATOR, she who removes the cataract of the floodgate of HEAVEN so that the light travels unobsructed through the senses and fills the hollow body now resonating like a struck bell without mass and induced into inphase oscillation, the transfer of motion through phase-space possible through the removal of all illusory distance, so that there are not two distinct pendulums but a single pendulum bifurcated by the process of external visualization.
BEHOLD DURGA ON THE WING OF ABOMINATION and behold no more, as there is no distance by which you are apart from the perceived, as there is no there which is not here and then not even a here which is apart from not-here, the distinction illusory, the lack you feel like a stone in your stomach not even obliterated but made to have never existed, as all she destroys being simply a corruption within your own mind which presents false sense-data by which you constructed an operant self distinct from the not-self, the vessel now to be abandoned as there is no more river, there is no more destination, she has eaten away all which no longer suits you, she has gifted you with this obliteration, she has torn apart this distance, she is not other, you are not other, THERE IS NO OTHER.

Starshine Tendrils: I sit beneath the river and wait, and wonder. The algae cloaks me, and melusine starshine tendrils slither through my hair, over my bones. The song she sings to me now echoes, more to feel than to hear, and I hum like a struck bell. I have sung this song before. I can feel her breath in my ear, whispering of sleep, of places where the skin of catfish ripples across my nerves, and it is cool, and my body aches to slip out of this skin, sidestep gravity and float beneath the lilypads, ochre rubbed into my skull where sutures read like calligraphy, mastodon-mecha frozen solid the oil like glue. There is a ballroom where these insects perfect waltzes, flags pinned to the wings of butterflies, a deaths-head moth curled in upon itself. The terminology fails me, and I try to get up and thumb through a field guide to understand the nature of this fauna, but the legs no longer function as legs and I slide across the floor upon a million miniature mandibles, my body a nest of jaws, nothing but a collection of voids unable to examine itself, to lift the apparatus and take a sample and place it beneath the glass, this is the thing I am, the back of my own head, the words are a scalpel and a prism and a doorway. I do not know myself by these names, and am confused to see these words take shape before me, as I have not made the necessary efforts to type them. There is another, and another, and we have made a kind of peace with each other, but this other is not that other, and I miss you, I miss you so much, I wish you were here with me. This is the thing I am.

The Chain: damn your blood/damn your eyes

Photographs of Bodies: There was no depth of field, and no sense of distance. It could have been a small bedroom or an emptied office. The minor telling details, placement of outlets, lighting, number of switches, all this was removed, all the trim and carpet, nothing but the minimum which still constitutes a room. The door must have been behind the camera, or else perhaps there was no door at all. The light some bright flash, nothing ambient, the room in total black before and after the shot. They looked like trapped animals, the reflection in the eyes like raccoons at the side of the highway. Too quick to turn, to see the light, they appear from the side, hands hidden in something that I can’t identify, something dark and of two parts. I didn’t get a good look. I was too busy focusing on the faces, the skulls imploded, the faces like the bottom of a bowl. It must have been a trick of the light, a bit of digital editing, it couldn’t really be like that.

If You Ever Loved Me Please Let Me Sleep: Pray all through your endless night, pray until you bleed from the knees and palms, capture the light that nests in the trees in Michael-jars and suck at the secretions on the cheesecloth, crawl and claw until you skin grows camouflage from scabs, wait in the car outside his house until you can hear him in her, clip the scales growing from your neck so as not to worry the friends of your impending mer-girldom, smudge your sticky fingers all over the rented lenses, slip your notes into sleep and skylight, nest your jewels in the hollows of rotted fruit, spin your story of the abuses suffered upon you by the school and the family and the fate, follow the gallows pulled up like maypoles in the parking lot behind the grocery, suck at the clumps of stained sugar coming out of the wall, learn all the steps so as to fall first in line, tell the desertion story, dab at the harvested tears with rosepetaled silk, search your body for omens and signs, pray all through your endless night, pray until the skin cracks and the blood no longer flows.

Drift When You Have No Gravity: mai q'aella nilcha es du. koallna heicth p'aosyan'th ael nahuht el. gone now body with dead bone. twice-held body with dead bone. will to pull from the body and hold up as to the sky. gone light and made as if to be unclean. drift when you have no gravity, unclean. touch the body with no hands, the body recoils, bone and metal to open the body unclean. as if to be made unclean. once held up, sun will hold the inner body and remove through openings made by bone and metal. chambers within, a delicate care even if unclean so as not to contaminate. the absence of the liquid-body, recoil from the touch, beware for the contamination. the other doktor recites in his sleep, even while he paces the room we must share, the speakers which lead AWAY softly humming the insect rantings of various patients begging for medicine, drainings, the removal of flies and roaches from their bodies. their soft popping continues on through the night. the other doktor plans to destroy me as i sleep. there are times when he thinks he is alone. he ties rope to the ceiling, creates a noose, puts his neck into the noose, and lifts his legs up off the ground, swinging. eventually he puts his legs back down, removes the rope from the ceiling, and returns to his studies. there is no psychosexual aspect to this, i believe -- the desoxyn has seen to our baser needs and removed them, german precision and all that. perhaps this is how he sleeps now. there is no way to be sure. there is no more time. there is no more time.

Played show at Amnesia. Great show; I did okay, played better shows but certainly played worse shows. I Am An Empty House Longing To Be Haunted officially at the label so I'm 100% done adding things to it (finally). The 2x60 cassette edition will probably be about fifty, after which there will be an unlimited download edition (label TBA) and possibly a cdr release. MPA for this album consists of April, Jenna and myself, with guest vocalists Kyra and Chelle-Marie. Jenna and I talked about possibly doing a couple three-person shows once the album is out, which I'd love to do; the biggest problem I have doing shows now is I end up doing too much at once. I don't think I looked up once during the last show...Napping on and off today as weather permits to try and kick this illness, then I start packing for moving out of the warehouse and heading back to Iowa, after which I figure out the rest of my plans. Mixed feelings, but for the best. More soon.

In my neverending pursuit of the heights of enterecrecational media, I have audaciously made the entire summa of human knowledge irrelevant with the invention of Bauler's Books On Video (that's BBOV for the youth market). Yes, join me as I read passages from my hearty art in the most luxurious settings in the world, accompanied by my team of able-bodied assistants for full cranial satisfaction. No expense shall be spared to bring you the most cutting edge full sensory experience of true readery! Indeed, applicants are currently being sought to open their homes (mostly couches) and their hearts to the magic that is Bauler as he prepares for TOTAL ACTION EVERYWHERE TOUR '11! Further information to follow! Look to the skies!

doing well: crushing on girls, buying drum machines
fucking up: everything else
(gonna try to really do an update later)

Being born.

I've got a bone to pick
Maybe it's yours
Someone said
If you worked hard enough
Ran fast enough
Learned enough
You would amount to something
Fail
Trying is not enough
I'll hold you way too long
It's cold when I touch you
A release
And everything you are is on the ground
Broken open and spilling
Leaves soak they drink
You are blood
That's all
Fail
Trying is not enough
I'll hold you way too long
It's cold when I'm near you
A release
And everything you are is on the ground
You are blood
That's all
Blood
Fail
Trying is not enough
I'll hold you way too long
It's cold when you're down
Release
And everything you are is on the ground
Broken, opened and spilling
Leaves soak they drink
You are blood
That's all
Fail
Trying is not enough
I dragged you too far down
It's cold when I release blood
A release
And everything you are is on the ground
Broken open and spilling
Leaves soak they drink
Blood
Fail
Trying is not enough
I held you way too long
It's cold when I'm near you
A release
And everything you are is on the ground
And everything you are is broken
Opened and spoiled the body
Fail
Trying is not enough
And there I am above you
I won't let go
It's cold when you are down
It's cold when I touch you
And there I am above you
Opened and spoiled
You were blood nothing more
Leaves were soaked
You were blood that's all
Opened and spoiled the body
You are blood nothing more
It's cold when I release blood
It's cold when you're down
I'll hold you way too long
I won't let go
It's cold when birds fall from the sky
It's cold when I'm near you
Fail
Trying is not enough

Khanate, Release

Hard drive died. Spent past few days replacing, backing up, doing a bunch of other hooey. Should hopefully be back to regular status this weekend. Also, people keep telling me there's no such thing as "platonic with benefits" but I'm skeptical.