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Archive for October, 2025

Christian Bök, “The Extremophile” (published 2025) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Christian Bok, Hingston & Olsen, Huh?, Patton Oswalt, Poetry, The Ghost Box on October 31, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 31, 2025] “The Extremophile”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

I don’t know very much about Christian Bök except that he wrote the poetry series Eunoia which is a remarkable piece of art and poetry:

 Each poem uses only one vowel, creating sentences like: “Hassan can, at a handclap, call a vassal at hand and ask that all staff plan a bacchanal”

It’s worth checking out.

I didn’t know if he did anything since, but apparently he has been working on something called The Xenotext which Wikipedia says

Xenotext consists of a single sonnet (called “Orpheus”), which gets translated into a gene and then integrated into a cell, causing the cell to “read” this poem, and in reply, the cell builds a protein — one whose sequence of amino acids encodes yet another sonnet (called “Eurydice”). The cell becomes not only a durable archive for storing a poem, but also an operant machine for writing a poem. The gene has so far worked properly in cultures of E. coli, but the intended symbiote is D. radiodurans (“the dire seed, immune to radiation”) — an extremophile, able to thrive in very inhospitable environments, deadly to most life on Earth.

I quoted that because it uses the word extremophile, which is the name of this story.

This story is quite short and it is, simply, a list of conditions that this entity can survive in.  It’s fascinating but not terribly interesting and, indeed, not very scary.  Especially since nothing happens in the story.  I mean, the ending is “It awaits your experiments,” which I guess is an interesting setup and given some of that background above it does make it slightly more compelling, but as a story, well, meh.

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Francis Stevens, “Unseen—Unfeared” (published 1919) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Francis Stevens, Gertrude Barrows Bennett, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 30, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 30, 2025] “Unseen—Unfeared”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

Francis Stevens is the pseudonym of Gertrude Barrows Bennett who I know nothing about.  I assume this story is set in Philadelphia (South Street and Franklin Hall), but that’s not really important.

The story opens with the narrator talking to a detective over dinner.  The detective mentions a case in which a doctor is accused of murdering someone.  The detective doesn’t believe the doctor did it, but he doesn’t want to reveal too many details.

As the detective leaves, he gives the narrator a very fine cigar and heads out.  The narrator waits a few minutes and then heads out as well.  It’s here that I had to wonder about the intolerance of the author.  Because the narrator is walking down the street casting aspersions on everyone he sees–all races and colors are scrutinized harshly–especially a group of young Italian men who give the narrator the stink eye like he’d never seen.

He’s freaking out about how much he hates everyone and everything and decides he needs to rest for a minute.  Then he sees a sign over a shop that says See The Great Unseen!

Thinking this is a museum of some sort, a place where he can sit and relax, he goes inside.

The owner of the place is a strange man with dark eyes and white hair.  He starts talking about photography and the process of generating color prints.  It’s either very technical or complete nonsense, but it hardly matters because the man is about to show the narrator a new technique he has achieved through the use of a membrane that he said is from South America.

When the man places the membrane over his equipment, the narrator suddenly sees…. what the host describes as all of the evils in the world that have been unleashed by humanity–included the narrator himself.

Given how disgusted he was by everyone outside, he starts to realize that he is the reason for all of the evil around him.

This story was really creepy and I really enjoyed the way it was told.  With the final chapter bringing at leas two wholly unexpected conclusions.  And I’m thinking maybe the author wasn’t such a curmudgeon after all.

 

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Belly: King 30th Anniversary Tour (Underground Arts, Philadelphia, PA, October 27, 2025)

Posted in Belly, Los Angeles Power Disco, Philadelphia, PA, Tanya Donnelly, The Breeders, Throwing Muses, Underground Arts on October 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: October 27, 2025] Belly

I really liked Belly when they first came out.  Their debut album is great and the follow up King is probably just as good.  When this tour was announced I wasn’t sure if I had listened to King all that much but when I put it on again I realized I knew it quite well.  Then I looked at other setlists to see of they were playing any of the songs from Star, and the were.  So I decided to see them.

I’ve always liked Tanya Donnelly–she’s been on the periphery of massive success pretty often.  She founded Throwing Muses with Kristen Hersh (her step sister). But I feel like Tanya left just before they became more commercially successful.

Then she formed The Breeders with Kim Deal.  But she left before they released Last Splash.  And then she formed Belly.  She had a pretty big hit with Feed the Tree.  But King wasn’t as successful and Belly broke up.  Tanya went solo.

Belly reformed in 2016 with almost all four original members.  The original bassist was replaced by Gail Greenwood right after Feed the Tree and is with them as they reunited.  Belly put out an album in 2018 which I missed entirely.

They toured in 2016 playing a set of mostly Star and King, then toured in 2018 playing mostly the new album, Dove.  And now they were back for King.

The set was great and I was delighted with how much fun bassist Gail was.  She was very chatty with the audience and when she said that the next sing would make you cry, a guy next to me said I’m crying already, and she went over and gave him a hug.  Gail also sang an amazing range of backing vocals, from really deep voices to very high pitched ones.  And her bass sounded great.

The stage set up was interesting, with Tanya and Gail right up front.  Lead guitarist Thomas Gorman was on the far side.  He was in the background a bit although he did take front stage for the few guitar solos he played.  His brother, drummer Chris Gorman was behind a pole and I didn’t see him for the whole show–but the drums sounded great.

But of course the focus is Tanya.  She exuded a coolness that I really enjoyed.  But she didn’t see aloof or above it all.  She seemed to be having a really good time.  Especially when Gail said, thanks for cheering us on even when we suck.  But they did not suck.  They sounded great and Tanya’s voice was really impressive.  She hit some high notes in the encores that really blew me away.  And the harmonies between her and Gail were fantastic.

I didn’t know every song from King.  It’s weird that I didn’t really know the first two songs all that well, but I knew the next few–who doesn’t remember the first song on an album?  And when they sang the jittery Red, I couldn’t wait to shout along with the chorus.  Silverfish sounded fantastic and Super-Connected was even better than I remembered.

After the album, they took a short break and came back with a second set of mostly songs from Star (which was great!).  I got to hear all of my favorite songs from the album, so that was super cool.  They played two songs from Dove which sounded very nice, if not a little slower.  And they ended the set with the Dive track Shiny One.  They merged that song into Jimi Hendrix’ Are You Experienced (which I see is on their B sides record, so I guess it has been a part of their set for a while) which merged back into Shiny as they headed off for the encore break.

It’s obvious that they were going to do an encore (it was on the setlist after all), but it’s always nice when a band seems to really appreciate that the people there are excited for them to come back.

I didn’t know the first song, Thief, which is a bonus song on their greatest hits album.  This was one of the songs where Tanya really showed that she could hit those high notes.  It was a quiet, almost acoustic song (she didn’t play acoustic guitar) for about half of it. And then the band kicked in to rock the rest.  The final song was Full Moon Empty Heart.  I aways assume bands are going to save the big hits for the encore–but no one seems to do that anymore. And that’s fine. But I found it odd that they picked this song to end the show.  Unless it was an opportunity for Tanya to save her voice for the end, where she–damn–really hit some impressive high notes.

I also really appreciated that this was an evening with Belly and the whole show was done by around 10:15.

I’m really glad I finally got to see them.

SETLIST
King album

  1. Puberty ♠
  2. Seal My Fate ♠
  3. Red ♠
  4. Silverfish ♠
  5. Super-Connected ♠
  6. The Bees ♠
  7. King ♠
  8. Now They’ll Sleep ♠
  9. Untitled and Unsung ♠
  10. L’il Ennio ♠
  11. Judas My Heart ♠
    Set 2
  12. Low Red Moon *
  13. Gepetto *
  14. Slow Dog *
  15. Human Child ◊
  16. Spaceman ≅
  17. Dusted *
  18. Feed the Tree *
  19. Shiny One ◊   >
  20. Are You Experienced (Jimi Hendrix song)
    encore
  21. Thief ≅
  22. Full Moon Empty Heart *

≅ Bees (2021)  [also appeared as new songs on their Greatest Hits album in 2002]
◊ Dove (2018)
♠ King (1995)
* Star (1993)

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Gahan Wilson, “The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be” (published 20–) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Gahan Wilson, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Patton Oswalt, The Ghost Box on October 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 28, 2025] “The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

This story was accidentally left out of my Ghost Box (that’s the real horror!).  The nice folks and Hingston & Olsen said they’d send me my copy of the story, but with the stupid tariffs that our stupid president is ruining people’s lives with, I’m not sure when it will arrive.  But I’ll post it when it does.

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Autechre (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, October 26, 2025)

Posted in Autechre, Mark Broom, Philadelphia, PA, Union Transfer, William Fields on October 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: October 26, 2025] Autechre

I have one Autechre album and I don’t really listen to it.  But when they announced this American tour (their first time playing here in ten years), I asked my friend Lar, who had seen them if I should go.  He told me an amusing story about how he liked the show but he took his significant other to the show and she almost broke up with him because of it.

But when I dove a little more deeply into the show it sounded like a unique experience that I’d like to try.

I arrived at the show knowing that this would be the case, but I loved seeing this in print on a flyer at the door:

autechre

will  perform in darkness.

For their set all lights in the venue will be off.

Please plan on being in one place for the performance and do not move unnecessarily until it has finished when the lights will come back on again.

Please do not shine any lights at the stage or ar0und the room during the performance unless you require assistance.

…

If you are uncomforatble with the idea of spending around 80 minutes in the dark while Autechre play, please see venue staff before the performance starts.

Autechre are an English electronic music duo consisting of Sean Booth and Rob Brown, formed in 1987.  After the two openers did their set, the lights dimmed, with only red lights on the stage.  Some ambient music played for, frankly, longer than was necessary.  It was so long, that the music stopped and they had to start it again. (more…)

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Edith Wharton, “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell” (published 1902) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Edith Wharton, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 28, 2025] “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

I admit that I have never read Edith Wharton (not even The Age of Innocence).  But I read an essay by Jonathan Franzen which made me think I really should:

readers tend to read writers we finding sympathetic in some way–whatever appeals to us about their humanity.  But Wharton really has nothing appealing about her.  She was utterly privileged: touring Europe in private yacht with chauffeurs, and she was deeply conservative: opposed to unions, socialism and women’s suffrage.  She even left America in 1914 because it was too vulgar. My favorite example of her unsympathetic nature:  she was often “writing in bed after breakfast and tossing the completed pages on the floor, to be sorted and typed up by her secretary.”

But despite all that, her novels are engaging and hard to put down … compelling reasons for reading them include the wonderful character names she creates:  Undine Spragg, Lily Bart, Ethan Frome.  And, you root for the protagonists despite themselves.  Lily Bart is profoundly self-involved and incapable of true charity; Undine Spragg is spoiled, ignorant, shallow and amoral.  Wharton even sets The Age of Innocence at a time when divorce was unthinkable–even though she herself had just had one.

But I had no idea that Wharton wrote scary stories (there is a book called The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton, so…).

This story is about a young woman who accepts a job as a lady’s maid.  The main character, Hartley, has just gotten over the typhoid and looks weak and tottery.  She had been denied jobs because of this.  But a friend suggests she apply for a job with Mrs Brympton.  She was something of an invalid and lived all year round at her country place.  The last thing she was told was that the gentleman of the house was almost always away and when he was at house, she would just need to stay out of his way. (more…)

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Mark Broom (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, October 26, 2025) [AUTECHRE]

Posted in Autechre, Mark Broom, Philadelphia, PA, Union Transfer, William Fields on October 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: October 26, 2025] Mark Broom

I have one Autechre album and I don’t really listen to it.  But when they announced this American tour (their first time playing here in ten years), I asked my friend Lar, who had seen them if I should go.  He told me an amusing story about how he liked the show but he took his significant other to the show and she almost broke up with him because of it.

But when I dove a little more deeply into the show it sounded like a unique experience that I’d like to try.

The opening act for the tour was Mark Broom. We also ha William Fields.  Fields was on the left side of the stage with his laptop and when he was done (after 30 minutes), Mark Broom who was on the right side of the stage with a laptop, started immediately (I appreciated the lack of pause).

I assumed that it would be more of the same because Autechre are also glitchy and noisy, but Broom had a different vibe.  His music was a bit more musical and a bit more dancey.  In the most basic way, it was more “enjoyable.”

I have no idea what he was doing up there (the lighting was very dim).  He had a laptop I know but he had some other gear too.  I could see him twisting knobs from time to time.  So I don’t know if he was making up the sounds on the fly or if they were existing songs that he was mixing around with.  As I said, it’s not my genre, but I found myself really getting into his stuff.

Broom has been DJing (and producing others) for a long time.  He is a veteran of the techno scene and evidently specializes in hardgroove with heavy percussion and tribal beats.

I assumed that he would get a 45 minute set, but he actually played for an hour.  Since I was planning to kick back and enjoy the night, I didn’t have a problem with him playing for an hour.  I felt like he mixed the tempos up and added interesting sounds and beats to make the hour pretty enjoyable.

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Gabino Iglesias, “Don’t Go Into the Woods Alone” (published 2023) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Gabino Iglesias, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 27, 2025] “Don’t Go Into the Woods Alone”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

This story opens with the title “Don’t Go Into the Woods Alone” which is something that the Marta’s grandmother used to say.  She had a lot of pithy sayings like that.  It was part of her Caribbean upbringing.  She was born in the mountains of Puerto Rico and had no birth certificate–she was anywhere from 85 to 120 depending on who you talked to.

She also said things like Don’t put your purse on the floor, Pray whenever you go past a cemetery and Stop and smell the flowers.  But it’s the woods that are on Marta’s mind as she walks through the woods by herself.

She can’t quite understand why her grandmother was so insistent upon this.  it’s daylight and the woods are great–she is even stopping to smell flowers.  But then she looks up and sees a cabin.  A cabin that she didn’t know was there.  And then there’s a woman waving to her from the cabin.

Marta is drawn to the cabin and the old woman invites her in and gives her tea.  After talking for sometime (and neither one of them offering up her name), the old woman says “the reason Sonia never left her house is because that was the only place she felt safe.”

Marta realizes she never said her grandmother’s name.  And this woman knows about something that Sonia did a long time ago.  And what Sonia did to make amends.  And the woman is ready for her reward.

This was a spooky story with a really creepy ending.

 

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William Fields (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, October 26, 2025) [AUTECHRE]

Posted in Autechre, Mark Broom, Philadelphia, PA, Union Transfer, William Fields on October 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: October 26, 2025] William Fields

I have one Autechre album and I don’t really listen to it.  But when they announced this American tour (their first time playing here in ten years), I asked my friend Lar, who had seen them if I should go.  He told me an amusing story about how he liked the show but he took his significant other to the show and she almost broke up with him because of it.

But when I dove a little more deeply into the show it sounded like a unique experience that I’d like to try.

There was an opening act listed, but we had two opening acts.  William Fields is a Philadelphia based DJ whose bio says

William Fields is an artist and musician from the Phildelphia area whose work explores the intersection of generative processes, improvisation, and audio-visual correspondence.

What does that mean?  Beats me.  But here’s some reviews

“Some of the most mind-blowing algorithmically generated music I’d ever heard”  — Richard Devine

“William Fields is at the absolute front of algorithmic music and this tremendous 24 hour collection is some of the wildest stuff out there… TOP NOTCH” — Telefon Tel Aviv

That still doesn’t quite explain it but this kind of does (more…)

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Michael Shea–“Brief Scenes of a Noxious Nativity” (published 2024) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Huh?, Michael Shea, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 26, 2025] “Brief Scenes of a Noxious Nativity”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

It’s unusual that I simply do not get a story.  And I absolutely did not get this one.  Or maybe I don’t get why it was written.  It’s very short (3 pages in this tiny format) and it shows two scenes.

In the first scene, a rock hits a hill.  Something cracks open and a little molecular net–an elaborate hydrocarbon making its first appearance in nature–floated out.  She floated through the rock to the water and was swallowed by a fish.

In the second scene a backhoe hits a bluff–maybe the same hill?–and another microsomething escapes.

On a second reading I get that I think this microscopic invader is potentially going to destroy the world.  But it was so oddly written that I ‘m not really sure.  Ah, I see that this is excerpted from a larger work.  So that makes sense because this felt like the set up to something.  Although I won’t be seeking out the novel.

Interestingly, Shea wrote a story in Ghost Box II that I loved.  Every story is different.

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