FREE MUSIC: HARLEQUINADE - NIHILYMOUS GERMSCAPES

Presenting the latest release from Black Lantern Music! Under the auspices of the very reverend Neverzone Channel!

Just in time for Hexmas, Lovecraftian hip-hop maestro, cubist pantomime artist, Chemical Poet and lead vocalist of Sileni, the fearsome HARLEQUINADE drops his first release as a producer: the frankly awesome sonic collage that is NIHILYMOUS GERMSCAPES.

Lurching syncretically from experimental jazz to hip-hop, from horror films to Manga, from metal to drone and back again, this is possibly instrumental, definitively epic cinematic horror-hop.

Taking the sample collage style of composition at hip-hop’s core to its spooky cartoon carnage extreme. With moments of extreme comedy and spine-chilling terror, along with an incredible array of beats, samples and found sounds, Harlequinade takes the art of cut-and-paste to its (ill)logical conclusion.

ANDRE 2099 / WPNZR TEE SHIRTS

This is a preview of how one of the Weaponizer tee-shirts might look, as modelled by Andre Navarro in the year 2099! As featured on Paul Sizer's Deviant Art page, and drawn by Sizer. So awesome.

THE ROAD: VFX FEATURE

One of Weaponizer's good friends (and occasional contributing editor) Jessica Clegg interviewed VFX artist Mark Forker about his work on John Hillcoat's recent adaptation of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It's an intriguing interview, and actually made me more excited to see the film. I had reservations about the scale of effects they were going to use in the film, but it seems like Forker and Hillcoat have done an excellent job:

"It’s exactly the type of job that I like in the sense that it’s not some surreal or sci-fi world that we’re trying to create—it’s instead based on history or imagined reality, how it would have or could have been. The biggest compliment to the type of work in The Road is that it doesn’t look like a digital effect; it looks photographic." - Mark Forker

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW

TEXTURE INTERVIEWED

The lovely Muse Hick interviewed me for his site, which I was talking about yesterday. I got the chance to talk about Weaponizer, Black Lantern Music, and some of my collaborators and favourite artists. Go have a read.

CHECK OUT THIS SITE - INTO VIEWS

A fellow Whitechapel Fiend, Muse Hick, has started a great interview site for independent creators, called Into Views. He's already interviewed photographer / writer Robin LeBlanc, artist K. Patrick Glover, and webcomic creator Costa Koutsoutis. I love the idea behind this site - it's so great to people like Robin talking about their work and process. Well done Muse Hick!

1,001 TWEETS

*comic from www.penn-olson.com

I just passed 1000 Tweets. Thought I'd share the best of the first thousand with you, leaving aside any thing that was basically me pimping Weaponizer or Black Lantern Music, an #FF or #MM post, and so on... There's some Twitfic, some drunken stuff I probably shouldn't have said, links to funny stuff... abuse directed at innocent bystanders... you can definitely detect Uncle Warren's influence on my thinking, but I honestly swear I'm not trying to be some kind of pseudo-Ellis... I found it fun to re-read two years worth of Tweets, so I've culled the best stuff for you. Maybe I'll do the same at 2000!

Here's my first ever!

Editing fiction by JL Williams and Xavier Toby, working on my own story about this huge fucking rat with human muscles.

The best of the rest:

destroyer of sofas, i wreak seatlessness on puny humanity

@kahavi: I had to talk down a suicidal woman when working in BT Sales one time. I actually got a demerit for not trying to upsell. Heavy.

@stombridge: yes, tempted to watch any video that features a sexually rampant homo-spongebob killing himself for the gllory of allah

Off to scream loudly in a small shed in the middle of nowehere in the name of experimental dubstep. Exeunt!

Vice City is the pinnacle of human achievement

I feel like Ive competed in the Chinese Olympics. Am googling 'buy new lungs'.

Morning 'verse. Please make the nasty men stop poking me in the lungs with their sharp sticks. I'll be good, honest I will.

Burned 3 years worth of tax records. Not mine, but it was still cathartic. The coals looked like lava. Chequebooks die hard.

In Scotland, we get our comics a day late. Which is why we are traditionally pereceived to be so fucking angry all the time.

Uh oh, I pissed off the Christian fundamentalist poets. http://tinyurl.com/5qh482

I am now going to poke a random stranger in the eye and see if I can start a fight. BRB.

@JohnnyZito: if a Michael Jackson falls in LosAngeles, and JohnnyZito isn't watching the internets, does it make a sound like AAAAOOOOW!

Best line of today, Alan Grant: 'Judge Dredd is Plato's solution to the problem.'

"No jobs here." Not even polite about it. Feel like Im in some kind of Oliver Twist-like parallel reality. Maybe I'll become a chimney sweep.

Heard on #leith walk: 4am, 'I could kill ye tae death wi one fuckin' swipe.' True love in scotland!
With Murphy in the park. Dogs breathe 4 times faster than humans. Extinct volcanoes look on impassive

STOP! PASTATIME

Lamb + cumin + salt + couscous + dates + mojitos = nom nom nom. #food
also, dolphins: http://bit.ly/1owBL

Boda is full of drunken randoms tonite. Polish rappers? Yep. Flamenco dancer? Check. *sigh* #leithwalk

right you orrible lot, time for some dubstep... now why cant I livecast from my decks to Twitter yet? Come on science! #thefuture

#leastfavoritewords frottage embollism cancer relationship intellectual popular vaginal carcinogenic sobriety moderation faith entitlement

@swear_bot shitbiscuits!

@AK47ISARMED The multiverse also has a much, much wider range of breakfast cereals.

If sin does not exist because there is no God, where does right and wrong come from? "It just is." So, what, i take it on faith?

Weaponizer - willfully ignoring the Edinburgh Festival in all its forms. Because we are all broke. Shit.

#MusicMonday A bunch of rubbish guitar bands you've never heard of, obscure Belgian electro, hypnocrunk and stoner blues

I am having that fucking raygun

Re-watching Red Dwarf from epsiode one. Because sometimes TV is better than people.

Jaegerbombsite? Jagerbombskare? Jaegerbomberman? Jaegerbombthreat? All of the above.

is trying to take a picture of his own bottom

(but obviously less drunk)

@sea_leggs NO! Not the spawn of Billy Ray, please! "Hi y'all - I'm the new Rogue, and I'm a born again Christian!" #killmenow #marvel

¡Me cago en todos tus muertos!

Jaegerbomberman: Reprise

"I hate that fox. It doesnt even use proper bingo slang." – Amber

I also hate the bingo fox. Fuck that guy.

Beer vs. posting on the internet http://www.dorktower.com/images/comics/Sample15.gif which makes me think hahaha and also hmmmmmmmm

Wikipedia is an info gateway drug: you look up Anton LaVey, pretty soon yr at Malachi York, David Icke, Planet X, Sumeria and Luciferianism

#youcantdj without cocaine therefore YOU SUCK AT LIFE

its kinda sad that rick james and the clash are upscale cocktail bar music now.

1 Deeply. This is not a manly way to feel. 2 Amphetamine psychosis is not a toy. 3 Narcolepsy is not the opposite of insomnia.

For the record, saying things like "I dont read comics, just graphic novels" will likely earn you my derision.

Drencrum velocet synnthemesc: Behind the Light 3 is going off, droogs, zombies, mummys and mentals.

@milblogging this Twitter has little or nothing to do with actual weapons. Just checking you're cool with that.

@twae A final diminutive, furry corpse was placed upon the bonfire. Lucy sighed with frustration. "Worst birthday ever!" The kittens howled.

@twae She undid the ties. Her dress slipped to the floor, and I knew I was doomed.Gelid, obsidian tentacles slithered behind the walls. Dark.

@lilyallen_megafan Honestly, I barely ever mention the Lily Allen. It was a mistake, a mistake I tells ya!

Good morning, contemporary land mammals.

@communicating80 Fuck off you horrible pornobot

Single-celled self-deceptacon incubate nano-Barbies in luminous yeast

AND THEY'VE ALL GOT MASSIVE RACKS

I have witnessed the majesty of Burt Reynolds in Cannonball. All is well.

Dear Internets, is this weekend for a) drinking, b) writing, or c) sleeping? Answers on a Tweet. I'll go with whatever gets most votes.

Life is fucking crazy, eh?

Kid Ritalin roars like a beast before he drops a verse. Its awesome, in the truest sense of the word.

"Its not a pencil, its Jesus in the shape of a question mark."

Drag Me To Hell is all about getting unpleasant fluids in your mouth. Heh.

The 'artists' on that Saatchi show are all massive fucktards.

Today, I feel like punching Peter Jackson in the face and telling him to make a decent fucking horror film again.

#nowplaying on www.weaponizer.co.uk #free #fiction! #horror, #sf, #weirdness, stuff that #willgetyouslapped.. #flash for ALL!! Just #pickone

(damn that was a lot of hashtags)

"Indupitably," said the monkey, puffing nonchalantly on a cigarette. He adjusted his fez. "Organ solo?"

Rain falls on me, a million liquid fragments reflecting neon. The cop barks orders. I'm too high to care. Absinthe angels dance on pinheads.

Trigger finger tightening slowly, he watches her draw. Smell: burnt meat. Looks down. Cavernous chest wound, his own. "Darling," he cries.

@Cutty_Darke Scrotumpunk is the best sub-genre ever. "I shot him in the bolt-washers with my retro-future mechanical gun cock." Yeah.

VERONIKA VON VOLKOVA - DRESS ME UP (SAATCHI SHOWDOWN)

Go rate and vote for this image on the Saatchi Showdown page. Then go and see some more of V's work on her site. I love the quality of these images - ethereal and sensuous, but also dark and foreboding.

NEW FRONT PAGE! SPACE SHARK!

Our NEW FRONT PAGE features a comic by the hugely talented Chris G of Team Mummy Comics. That's right, the sharp-toothed hero who is causing huge waves in the world of internet comics, the mighty SPACE SHARK, has come to Weaponizer!

This is also the perfect time to announce the official launch of our new logo, by the mighty Paul Sizer. Sizer won a competition on Whitechapel to re-design our site logo, and we are VERY pleased with the results! Sizer has finally given us our own, distinctive visual identity. Look out for these designs (and more from the competition) appearing very soon on t-shirts, hoodies, mugs and whatever else we can think of!

So, that's our re-launch complete. The site finally looks how I want it to, and I am so pleased with the massively high standards of work being submitted. On a personal note, I'd like to thank a few people who have made the re-launch possible, in particular site architect Cook of Monkeytribe Design, for his patient re-sculpting and error-checking of the behemoth that is Weaponizer, not to mention his valuable advice on strategy; Yoav for his suggestions and comments; Jess for help with proofing and editing; Ariana and Warren at Whitechapel for support, inspiration, and letting us play in their sandbox, and finally all my amazing contributors - you are the people who make it all happen.

GET MORE FREE STUFF!

Black Lantern Music

Little Rock Records

Freakangels

Team Mummy Comics

FLASH - HAVE ANOTHER DRINK, SURVIVOR

Ah, swearing. The apocalypse. You can't have one without the other. To prove this point, please wlecome our esteemed newest writer (and November's cover artist) Robin LeBlanc. The multi-talented Ms LeBlanc works in film, takes photographs, and writes like a demon over on her blogsite. She is also the curator of the super-interesting Notebookery project.

This country used to be something great. Something fucking fantastic. Land of cheeseburgers, apple pie and all the whores you could afford. Now look at it. Fucking war. Fucking bombs. Blew this country to hell. Now all it is is a fucking wasteland. Last cheeseburger I had was made out of a god damned ten foot cockroach. What the fuck kind of way of living is that? ...READ MORE

TEXTURE'S LIVEJOURNAL

I've started a LiveJournal blog for keeping track of my own thoughts / rants and so on. This blog is filling up with Weaponizer / BLM related content, so I felt the need for somewhere a bit less content-heavy. Come visit me over there, argue with me, leave some comments.

WILL ELLWOOD: NEW BOOK ON SALE NOW!

Weaponizer regular and all round nice guy Will Ellwood has been infected by the Get Excited and Make Things meme! You can now buy Will's awesome new short story collection, Captain Space Bastard and Other Stories. There are two editions: I particularly like the one with the Robin LeBlanc cover. Featuring some top-notch Flash Fiction, ranging from SF to fantasy to the inspired rant, this is a really good stocking filler. Go forth and buy!

Congratulations Will!

INTERVIEW: THAVIUS BECK, HIP-HOP'S HERMES

Thavius Beck is the producer behind k-thei???'s magnificent Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow; he co-produced much of Saul Williams NIN-assisted Niggy Tardust album and co-founded experimental hip-hop outfit Labwaste. His third solo LP, Dialogue, is a departure: as well as being entirely self-produced, the vocal duties are entirely handled by Thavius himself. In our interview for The Skinny, Beck talked about the personal nature of the lyrics on this album. Here, exclusively for Weaponizer, Thavius went into his own philosophy, the technical aspects of his production work, and his beginnings in the Californian music scene ... READ FULL ARTICLE

SERIAL - STILLETTO EYE & RAZORGUT AND THE CARNIVAL OF DEATH

Because the fans demanded it! Because we pay them in neat whisky and bizarre voodoo ingredients! Because they'll kill me if I don't, I've begged them not to! IT'S... Dwayne Coltrane and the HyperDeathPsychoRock Threeeeeee! And the plucky heroes StillettoEye and RazorGut! This time facing... THE CARNIVAL OF DEAAAAAATHHHH! Part five of this horrifying Epic Serial Adventure! BUT!!! If you just tuned in, click here for part one!

StilletoEye and RazorGut were driving their sleek 55 Cadillac, Betsy, through town, when they came across a grotesque parade blocking the road coming towards them ...READ MORE

FICTION - THE DOCK

Sigh. Holiday romance. It's so nice and simple and carefree and innocent. Right? Wrong. Our newest addition to the Weaponizer crew, Yvonne Silver, shows us that love is sweaty, complicated, painful and hallucinatory, in this fantastic stream of cosnciousness piece.

She laid her nakedness upon him as the sun beat down, the ice cold of the water clinging to her hips, and he was with the abuser in his home. The day had been like a postcard dream, an impossible shaping of a moment too simple to experience, the beauty too subtle to a city-brain. Traffic and buildings clinging to the intellect like a moth to a flame, flapping the calm and sensitive reflection into the complex and overblown ...READ MORE

FICTION - SHORE LEAVE

This is a short science fiction story I wrote after coming back to Scotland from New York earlier in the year, given a bit of spit and polish. It's about coming back from deep space to a world that is very different to the one you left.

Here on Earth, it was chaos. A cacophony of sound and movement. Everything had to be re-learned. In the Deep, there was no up, no down – only Out, endlessly and forever. It was difficult to readjust, to look up and not think in terms of the planet’s atmosphere, but instead to think of the sky as a region. A territory. A vast canvas, upon which men painted their dreams of flight ...READ MORE

NEW LOGO ^ ^

This is our new logo, by the mighty Paul Sizer, author and artist of the rather awesome comic BPM. We'll be rolling out some t-shirt designs by Paul and other artists who've had a crack at the Weaponizer logo very soon! The main site will be re-branded shortly as well. Marvel at the awesomeness!

ALBUM OF THE YEAR: EATERS - SHOUTING AT THE WIND

Eaters new album Shouting At The Wind is nothing short of a masterpiece. I know that when I love a piece of music with a fierce passion, my comments can tend towards hyperbole and exaggeration – but please listen to me on this. Shouting... is the rawest, most honest, brutal, brilliant and beautiful album I have heard this year, and effortlessly places itself alongside the absolute best of Edinburgh’s hip-hop scene (not to mention joyously trouncing pretty much every other album released in 2009).

This is a collection that reaches the dizzy heights of perfection achieved by Penpushers on their first album Last Vestige of Holism, and the EP Void Engineers. It is an album that only the Eaters could have made, full of the piss and vinegar that inevitably comes with more than a decade of experiences both bitter and sweet in a scene that is consistently misrepresented, slept on and derided by all but the most faithful of listeners. It’s an album that makes you want to keep believing in the ability of regional hip-hop to transcend its isolationist position – and it is proof that Eaters are just getting better with age and experience. Here is a track by track guide.

Propaganda

A searing piece of invective against bad journalism, and an honest confessional about the Eaters musical mission, this track is full of bile and wit, and lopes along with an unbelievably funky slap-bass riff.

Burn
The only track on the album to feature Quiet Man, Burn is a hook-laden lovesong to the joys of creating and listening to music, with an incredibly catchy chorus. This potted history of Eaters (and their previous incarnation, The Pesky Varmints, the group which also sired Penpushers) is perhaps the most club-friendly tune the Eaters have ever written.

Strung Out On Truth
An argument between two conflicting personalities (or one split personality), on this track Laughing Gear addresses conspiracy theories and the thinking that leads to esoteric knowledge and beliefs. Conceptually, this is one of the cleverest and best-written tracks on the album. Vomit
Another angry piece, underscored with horror movie keys and laced with a complicated rhythmic rhyme-pattern, in Vomit, Laughing Gear explores more of the themes touched on in Strung Out On Truth.

Enjoy The Ride
This track finds Laughing Gear in philosophical mode – over mellifluous picked guitar, he dispenses words of wisdom and begins the serious business of heartfelt confession which characterises the second half of the album. A very beautiful track, and immensely uplifting.

Product
Laughing Gear distils his influences once more, from video games to cult TV to drugs. Tuck Pendleton's beat is edgy and paranoid, underscored with feedback and static from electric guitars and snare-heavy beats.

No Coherence
The strange, nursery-rhyme rhythms of Laughing Gear’s verse deftly slip into doubletime over a 3/4 time signature beat, with yet more expertly finger-picked acoustic guitar on the beat from Tuck Pendleton. Hypnotic and blissful.
Encoded In Raindroplets
Moving into more aggressive territory again, Laughing Gear destroys his lyrical and professional foes with surreal and science fiction-inspired wit and humour.
Slap The Deluded
The album’s highlight for me – utterly exquisite finger-picked guitar oscillates behind a verse of searing honesty and intensity. Slap The Deluded succeeds not only out as a stand-alone track, with its beguiling melodies and sublimely eloquent writing; it also manages to do something that hip-hop as a whole has rarely (if ever) managed to do. It is genuinely moving. I’m not ashamed to say that I actually cried when I first heard this. That Laughing Gear had written something so brutally self-revealing (“This is me speaking very clearly...”) genuinely astonished me, and continues to astound with each listen. This track raises the bar of writing not just for Scottish hip-hop, but for song writing in general. His softly-inflected, gentle delivery of the lyric brings out the technically superlative character of his writing (“I’m a complicated and unique individual / Just like everybody else...”), and marks Laughing Gear as not only a great emcee, but also one of Scotland’s most important and talented writers. Incredible, mind-blowing stuff.

Shouting At The Wind

Another track covering the history of the Eaters: a triumphant but downbeat ending to an album which confirms the band as a vital and important part of the Scottish music scene, and highly skilled practitioners of the hip-hop artform.

Burn (Watchmaker Remix)
An electro-energized retake of the album’s most dancefloor-friendly track, the remix actually manages to improve on the original. Burn is an anthem. Play it loud.

You can buy Shouting At The Wind here. It costs £5. It will be the best fiver you spend all year. It’s so good that if you asked me to burn a copy for you, I’d tell you to piss off. Go and support Scotland’s best independent band – for fucks sake, put down your (great, but much-hyped) Frightened Rabbit CDs and your Franz Ferdinand 7inches, leave your cheesy dubstep and boring minimal techno pish alone for a minute, and go and buy this instead. Eaters should be on The South Bank Show by now, and we as a community need to start recognising this and spending as much money as we can on their music. Got that? GOT THAT? Good.

Shouting At The Wind is without a doubt the best album I have heard all year, by a long chalk – better than Anti-Pop’s new effort, or the incredible Thavius Beck album (which would have topped my best-of list last month) because of its feral intensity and twisted, damaged beauty.

The honesty of Laughing Gear’s lyrics and the by turns delicate and brooding sonic architecture of Tuck Pendleton’s tracks make this an instant classic – Shouting At The Wind is an album which I will be listening to for years to come, and playing to my children.

I’m honoured to say I’ll be sitting down with Laughing Gear for an interview in the next month – so keep your eyes peeled for more about their upcoming releases.

SERIAL: OPERATION SUNRISE (PARTS 1-3)

Operation Sunrise was one of our first serials, and is in fact already completely written. Which means I have got even less of an excuse for not putting more of it up on the site yet. So let's do a little re-launch for those of you who've just joined us. The story follows two characters as they prepare for action. What action exactly has yet to be revealed... but as the story explores ESP, telepathy, lucid dreaming and mind control, we learn a littole bit more each episode about the details of Operation Sunrise. Let Grimly Whetfox be your guide, in this understated dystopian psychological thriller.

CHAPTER ONE - LAST STOP HOTEL
"This is the beginning, if you could ever cite a true beginning. If you could, then this would be it. Right here, right now. Today." ...READ MORE

CHAPTER TWO - THE BEACH
idea that she could not was as ridiculous to him as the idea that she could was to her. "Full duplex, baby! Everything is polarity, bidirectional. So, of course you can!" ...READ MORE

CHAPTER THREE - THE PHONE CALL (PART 1): FALSE FLAG FANTASIES
"You do understand that everything you know is wrong, don't you? The world is not what it appears to be, not what we perceive it to be, not what we have been taught. You have been lied to, consistently, every day of your life, from the very start..."...READ MORE

GODMANWHO - 2ND REVIEW BY NEEDLE IN THE GROOVE

Thanks to the guys at the Needle In The Groove netlabel and blog for this review of Big Whoop!

These guys kick out a top quality alternative hip hop sound which sways from fat, slow ambience from the trip hopping Massive Attack school to party flow rhymes straight from the late 90’s UK hip hop lexicon. The rhymes are well constructed, and delivered without shitty machismo and pretension, and it’s all dropped with a laid back feel that’s deceptively relaxing to listen to. Top album for the smokers amongst you...

Full review here.

TICKLE'S THE THICK OF IT DUBSTEP TRACK

Tickle made this. Speaks for itself really!