- TOO TIRED TO SAY ANYTHING: Everything Is Remembered – 15-min ambient music podcast
- Monument Podcast (MNMT 534 : Alex Tirelli) – 1hr techno music podcast, on the quiet pulsing end of the spectrum
WARREN ELLIS LTD Posts
Right, then.
Autumn’s here, and I’m shifting gears. Massively simplifying, going analogue wherever possible, going back to handwritten daybook lists in the office, and going back to using this as a log.
I’m on the Retro Nano in the office, because I realised that at some point I stopped listening to podcasts, and I have a shitload of music podcasts queued up in the Downcast app on the phone.
Nailed down the rough shape of a un-codenamed project at the coffee shop.
ACCESSIONS:
The last James Ellroy I read was BLOOD’S A ROVER, which started with him babbling about “scald-on-contact tablets” as if they were a thing that ever existed in the world and by the last quarter had descended into complete fucking gibberish. But this turned up on sale for 99p so I thought I’d find out if the old devil dog ever recovered from what very much read like a stroke.
RED SHEET, James Ellroy (UK) (US+)
OPERATIONS: we’re going to try and touch pieces of four different projects today
STATUS: thrown a few old devices out of the office, hunting for the pack of Silvine index cards I know I bought earlier in the year. Inbox: 194
I wrote this book for the ghosts, who, because they’re outside of time, are the only ones with time.
READING: re-reading ANTWERP, Roberto Bolano (UK) (US+)
LISTENING:
SUNN O))), Sunn O))) (UK) (US+)
LAST WATCHED: three old episodes of CALL MY BLUFF, which will mean nothing to almost anyone reading this
DRINK: Flint Vineyard Bacchus 2025
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Comments closedMancub came in when my alarm went off to tell me that the sunlight has gone away and I needed to bring it back. While I was sitting outside with coffee, the sun broke through briefly, and he commented over his shoulder (very much an “about bloody time”) and then jumped over the fence to begin his day of finding sunbeams to lay in.
Went down to the Jazz Centre on Saturday to see the Roger Beaujolais Quartet, because I’ve never seen a vibraphone played live before. What a sound! Imagine a metal xylophone with a sustain pedal.
OPERATIONS: this is a crunch week, as I have to finish generating some overdue ideas and materials and I need to have a certain amount out the door by end of play Friday
STATUS: It’s under 20 degrees C!
LAST WATCHED: A filmed version of the Frayn play COPENHAGEN with Stephen Rea, Daniel Craig and Francesca Annis.
DRINK: Port
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Comments closedOffline day: finishing up in the office and then out for lunch, shopping and then a gig.
We’ve learned to crave feeds that impose a steady stream of unconscious, dreamlike images we struggle to forget, but also to fully remember. In the millisecond interval during which we might practice perception, a “reconstructive doing,” another image already enters into our view. The patterns of digital media extinguish this interval, though they don’t make it impossible.
Once Terence McKenna suggested the most sought-after drug we could invent would be one that allows us to remember all of our dreams. We may have built something close, except the dreams aren’t ours, and we can’t quite wake up from them.
But the only way out, as McKenna might say, might be through.
OPERATIONS: marking up the boards AGAIN and setting a proper schedule for next week, I need to move sixty pages out of the office in the next week and it’s going to be a grind.
LAST WATCHED: SISU 2: ROAD TO REVENGE (2025) is, sadly, a more conventional film than the original. Still lots of bloody fun, but too similar to the original in its beats to be as enjoyable, trying harder to be “emotional” while losing some of the little textual depth that made the first film surprising. But there are a couple of good jokes in there – the bit with the spoon in the final fight is a nice touch, as is the last weapon our man used. Which is, as the film itself leads you to say to yourself, legendary.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Comments closedMillions of people finish short video after short video every day; a new brain-scan study shows that the very act of finishing a clip they like temporarily quiets the brain regions that normally help them stay focused and weigh longer-term goals. When people watch a short video they enjoy enough to finish, two brain regions involved in cognitive control show significant deactivation.
Chinese startup DaxAI has shown off a “Cyber Horse” quadrupedal robot that visitors of the recent 2026 World Robot Conference in Beijing, China, could actually ride.
STATUS: Too much to do today, so I’m posting this and moving on
LISTENING: OBSTRUCTIONS, Elyse Hart / John Pisaro
LAST WATCHED: Rewatched PROJECT HAIL MARY, which definitely stands up – it’s just a very well made entertainment. I spent more time listening to it this go around, and that score is very clever and very joyful. Just a smartly done piece of work all round. May the saints preserve us from a sequel.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Comments closedDid you ever think about the number of films you don’t get to see because you’re self-harming your own brain cells with aggressively mid streaming shows?
I remember when the binge watch was a new and often joyous thing. I cleared a day to watch an entire season of the US HOUSE OF CARDS, and that was a good show in its first two seasons. Now a weekly release schedule is treated like a novelty. It occurred to me the other evening that the bingewatch and the doomscroll are the same thing: a symptom of having given up control of your life. But I had been drinking mead, so…
OPERATIONS: marking up the boards and laying down notes
STATUS:
The date window on the Ingenieur is being cranky!
READING: IN HER MIND A DARKNESS, LS Johnson
LISTENING: THE MODERNS ep 430
LAST WATCHED: I’ve been looking forward to watching IS GOD IS (2026) and it didn’t disappoint. Twins mutilated by a house fire are sent by their mother on a mission to kill their murderous shitbag of a father. The filming is a little bit Tarantino, but more literary, more heightened, more emotional. It is VERY well written, even though the top of the third act derails a touch. Some terrific acting. Cameo from Janelle Monae playing against type and killing it. Hell of a finish. The writer and director is Aleshea Harris, and it’s based on her play, and she is now on my list of instant purchases. Prime Video.
DRINK: some random sparkling white
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Comments closedAirPods with cameras in is a good thing because for a year they’re all anyone will want and proper earbuds will get cheaper. And then there’s a fair chance that anyone with camera AirPods will be shunned as unnatural and there will be a whole Conversation about them and I can ignore it all and read a book while listening to music over IEMs. Which I had no idea even existed until around 2013, when Fred Armisen was sitting in the airplane seat opposite me and using IEMs to review footage on a tablet, and when he took them out I leaned over and asked him what the hell those weird earbuds were.
OPERATIONS: I need to nail down a long essay today.
STATUS: I should be thrilled that it’s temperate again
READING: finished THE KILLER’S MARK, MW Craven (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: CELLOSCAPES, Emma Caterinicchio & Pete Swinton
LAST WATCHED: FLUX GOURMET (2022), which probably hits a bit different if you DON’T go and see a lot of experimental and improvised music gigs. And I’m not sure how many people can relate to third-division writers with gastric issues, but I personally wanted the ailing protagonist, a bad writer with a bad stomach documenting the performances of sonic artists exclusively using culinary techniques to make sounds, to win everything and become king. The film is actually very good, earthy and jagged and trippy with a marvellously gross ending. It’s just an incredibly niche satire. Sonic catering. Double-barrel it with THE MENU, made in the same year, or, perhaps more fittingly, Peter Greenaway’s THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Comments closed
Me too, mancub, me too.
Herself incubated what may possibly be plague at Bloodstock and is therefore in the Plague Cell (our daughter’s old room) once again. The internet is acting like an elephant is sitting on it. The humidity continues to be fucking terrible. But I am not ready for summer to end. I still need to get down to Old Leigh!
(Nightmare scenario: we are already talking about Xmas planning)
OPERATIONS: script/dev/essay/newsletter
STATUS: breathing soup
READING: THE KILLER’S MARK, MW Craven (UK) (US+)
‘Agreed. You want overt or covert surveillance?’
‘Surprise me.’
‘Covert it is then. Having a scrap with a bunch of Bruce Lee wannabes will let the boys vent some of that pent-up anger.’
‘Who you gonna use?’
‘Best you don’t know,’ Towler said. ‘But rest assured they’re fucking animals. Half of them still eat with their feet.’
LISTENING: IF WE COULD HEAR, Natalie Beridze
Yes, I am playing it in the CD drive! Like an Old!
LAST WATCHED: LET THE CORPSES TAN (2017) on MUBI, a Belgian film which roughly approximates what you’d get if you stuffed Sergio Leone full of speed and told him to direct a Seventies crime drama. With Saul Bass in the back yelling ANTS ANT ANTS and Ben Wheatley close by whispering spells from A FIELD IN ENGLAND.
It is drunk on style and very fun.
DRINK: herself brought some vile cherry “soda” home, which I saved with a shot of O’Donnell’s Very Cherry Moonshine like an hero
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Comments closedImagine a story where the events in our lives that happen online are never depicted or mentioned. A day would seem twelve hours long and the protagonists would spend two thirds of that time asleep.
I was gifted this Panerai Table Clock by a client a few weeks ago. I should be keeping it in its box, as it’s crazy expensive. But what’s the point in having things and not enjoying them? So it lives on my work desk, sitting on top of the little box containing a medal I was given in Ireland years ago. It’s a reminder to myself that I need to stay disconnected from the internet. Testing a site blocker on the laptop today.
Had dinner at the local haute restaurant on Friday night and it was as ever fully insane. There was a mushroom risotto with walnuts, walnut ketchup, fresh Parmesan and riced mushroom in place of the rice that was simply MAD and they made it just for us. We also got experimented on with a few dishes and god damn please keep doing that. We have been informed that we are Regulars now, and that is delightful.
I had an Idea on Saturday and realised I’d lost the day to sitting thinking about it, which was annoying, so I’ve booked myself a gig for next Saturday to make sure I leave the house. I am naturally so bad at leaving the house and I really need to.
ACCESSIONS:
MAIGRET IN VICHY, Georges Simenon (UK) (US+) was on sale, and it’s one I haven’t read.
MUD DUCK, Travis Malone (UK) (US+), because the author emailed me yesterday and since it’s currently free on Kindle (in the UK at least, I dunno about the US right now) it was easier to just grab a copy there.
Recently divorced and having drank himself to unemployment, Iain McHughes has no idea who he wants to be anymore. When his former rehab roommate offers him a second chance he hasn’t earned by way of a business opportunity he can’t afford to pass up, he loads everything he owns into his car and points it west on I-10.
Somewhere between San Antonio and Las Vegas, in the miles of nothing between the man he used to be and the man he hopes to become, mania, anxiety and a CB radio are the only tools left at his disposal that can help him rewrite his eulogy. Mysterious towers dot the countryside, phantom voices bleed through his radio, and Iain struggles to ascertain whether his mind is deteriorating or the world around him is. When Iain’s new business partner inadvertently pushes him into the middle of a dangerous business transaction, Iain must finally determine the legacy he wants to leave, and what it will cost him to leave it.
OPERATIONS: updating the boards, getting into scripting with one hand and story development with the other
STATUS: slow to get started.
READING: THE KILLER’S MARK, MW Craven (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: THE REGYKLA VARIATIONS I-III, ASHTORETH & ONSTURICHEIT
LAST WATCHED: PORTH TRETHEK, Mark Jenkin (2020)
DRINK: Black Cherry Mead.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
One CommentIt is fiercely hot. I won’t be heading out for a while. I also have a mead delivery on the way from Horns Of Odin. Hopefully it won’t boil in the van. Did I mention it’s FUCK OFF HOT?
I joined the BFI, because I’ve decided I should go to London and watch more films.
The mead has arrived!
STATUS: Tropical nights mean poor sleep even with a fan and a standing AC unit blasting.
READING: THE KILLER’S MARK, MW Craven (UK) (US+)
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Comments closed