I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: DEATHPROD-“Disappearance / Reappearance” (2019).

Every once in a while I like to check in with Viking’s Choice on NPR’s All Songs Considered.  Lars Gottrich specializes in all of the obscure music that you won;t hear on radio.  For this month, he did a special focus on Patient Sounds. a small label based out of Illinois.

[UPDATE: At the end of 2019, Patient Sounds closed shop. I’m not sure if any of these songs are available outside of Bandcamp].

Lars had this to say about the label

Matthew Sage, who runs the label, knows that dynamic drone, jittery footwork, oddball drone-folk, hypnagogic guitar music and cosmic Americana can exist in the same space.

The first song is by Deathprod.  Lars says:

Deathprod’s first album in 15 years, Occulting Disk, smothers dank, dark drones around the void of your soul, like a frozen hug from a cyborg teddy bear.

This song is 8 minutes long.  It consists almost entirely of a single loud distorted note/chord played on a synth until it fades into distorted crackles.  The note changes, but it is a pretty ominous soundtrack, like the slowest monster approaching you.

[READ: September 2, 2019] Blackbird

This book starts out with a very realistic concern but quickly become supernatural.

Nina was 13 years old and had a vision of an earthquake coming.  Her sister just called her a crazy baby (something the whole family called her). But moments later, the Verdugo Earthquake happened.  She and her family fled, and were almost crushed by a collapsing bridge.

But then a beautiful celestial monster came down and fixed the bridge and saved them.  The creature cast a forgetting spell over everyone, but somehow Nina remembered it all.

Despite the magical creature’s help, Nina’s life went to hell from there.  Her mother and father began fighting.  He began drinking and she died in a car accident while trying to get away from him.  Nina had been a great student but high school became unbearable.  She became “the girl who talked about magic and wizards and paragons.”

Now as an adult, she has a dead end job at a bar, is living with her sister and is sneaking painkillers.

There’s a guy, Clint, who seems to be stalking her at the bar.  I mean, he’s cute, but he’s always there.

Outside of the bar one night she finds a bracelet which is an actual paragon cirque.  She puts it on and feels magic pulse through her.  A magical world is revealed and the most magical being looks just like Clint. But instantly Clint hides the world from her again.

She is thrilled until her sister comes running up with the pill bottle that Nina thought she had hidden.  They start to argue but it is interrupted by the same beast that saved them ten years earlier.

Nina is so excited to see it again–confirmation of her dreams–but Marisa is terrified. Especially when it grabs her (and not Nina) and takes her away.  Nina can’t believe that her sister is gone and she can’t believe that she wasn’t taken–it as supposed to be her!

As she slumps against the wall she sees her cat, Sharpie.  Sharpie ran away after the earthquake and she hasn’t seem him since.  But there he is. As she looks at him, a third eye appears on his forehead.  And then he starts talking.

Nina uses some clever detective skills to track down Clint (he wears beautiful, clean imported sneakers, ha) and somehow finds herself  in the Paragon world.

She is not supposed to be there since she is a human, but somehow she can use the cirque to cast spells (which she can not control at all).

After some false starts and tricks, Nina gets Clint to reveal some of his secrets.  But as he does, two Paragons come from the sky.  The one is Clint’s father.  The second is Nina’s mother.  What?

What’s weird is that from there on, the story becomes a kind of turf war.  Some knowledge of Los Angeles is apparently pretty useful because they keep talking about which side of the 405 they are on.  So, sorry non LA residents, you’ll have to assume that the west side is nowhere you want to be.

But thus far there are three Cabals in the Paragon world.

Clint’s father is head of the Zon Cabal.
Nina’s mother is head of the Iridium Cabal.

They have had turf battles over the years.  Clint’s father assure’s Nina’s mother that Zon does not want war again.

Then we learn that there is another Cabal, the Polaris Cabal.  They hope that the other two fight so they can swoop down and claim the 405 turf.

Obviously this is a magical story, but there are still some things that are beyond belief.  Nina wants to confirm that he mother is dead so she digs up her casket with a shovel.  Now, I know suspension of disbelief and all but, you’re telling me this lazy girl is able to dig a perfectly rectangular hole so that she can open up a casket?  All during the evening while no one is there?  If the story had just had her use a spell from her cirque I would have been fine with it, but come on.

But back to the more believable magical realm.  As Nina gets closer to the truth. Marisa comes down to talk to her.  Marisa is a Paragon too (and boy is Nina pissed about that).  Marisa says that she and their mom were trying to protect Nina, to hide the truth from her so she could have a normal life: “All she had to do was give up and go away.”

Then Nina’s mother comes to tell her the truth about what happened that night of the earthquake.

This means that Nina has a choice–forget everything and go back to normal or become a powerful Paragon, the thing she’s always wanted in life.

And which cabal would she think about joining?

I enjoyed this story but not quite as much as I wanted to. I guess I wasn’t that interested in the L.A. turf war business. I am curious to see what else Humphries has planned out, though.  Since the second volume is not out yet, I’ll have to wait a while to see what happens next.