Happy Birthday, Mr. Giger

Hans Ruedi

Happy Birthday, Mr. Giger

You get talent when you discover the ground of your pain.

- H. R. Giger

One of these years, in my still-nonexistent Haunted Barn, there will be an organic room that might just look like H. R. Giger got in there somehow while I was sleeping.

Autumnal Equinox

Happy First Day of Fall, everyone.  I feel like this autumn season is FLYING.  My dad was right when he used to warn us that time speeds up as you get older (and more miserable).  Made a corn stalk run last night and will be doing up the porch this weekend in the cooler temps.  I swear unto GOD I will savor this stuff and slow time down whilst I do.

Biomechanical World

I love that Hans Ruedi Giger (pronounced GEEGER, btw) will always be the father of biomechanical design.  That was his jam.  He invented it.  Giger has cited inspirations along the way, but his work is not derivative of their drawings and paintings (Salvador Dalí...Alfred Kubin).  He was his own thing.  To the point that his influence is instantly recognizable in other artists' works.  It can't be hidden.  Literally never.  And that's pretty neat.

As much as I wasn't a fan of the recent ALIEN films, I do love that his name appears in the credits of those films.  And in the current video games that exist.  The stories are literally built around his designs.  The settings feel alien and foreign because of Giger.  The atmosphere is smooth, shiny, dark, and terrifying.

And it appears Hollywood will never stop squeezing that intellectual property, so I think Giger shall live forever in xenomorphic splendor.  

Wren sent me the below IG account... Biomechanical World.  It's loaded with photos of Giger's work that I've never seen before.  Pretty amazing stuff, of course.

Click below...

Thanks, Wren!

Christmas Wish List

Sometime in the 1990s the Swiss occultist who goes by the name Akron suggested to his countryman H.R. Giger that he create a set of tarot cards. Giger demurred, claiming a lack of time as well as a lack of interest in the subject—all the while insisting that he was “too superstitious” to take on such a project.

Giger did, however, regard tarot as an interesting venue for his artwork, and he was willing to re-purpose some of his pre-existing images as a tarot deck. The tarot deck featuring Giger’s artwork covers only the major arcana and is known as the Baphomet deck.

Click below...

Thanks, Mike!  I had no idea these existed.

Concert: Das Mörtal, Dance With The Dead, And Magic Sword

My first blog post about Dance with the Dead was back in 2014.  I've been a huge fan ever since.  And I certainly never really thought I'd see them in concert.  Prior to seeing John Carpenter live in 2016 (which was more of a sit-down theater event), I hadn't been to a concert since the late 90's, when I had the chance to see Juno Reactor in Philadelphia.  

Last night's concert was at Underground Arts, a small venue with the perfect atmosphere for something like this.  Every location and angle in the joint was a great spot, and we happened to get there early, so we found a table off to the right of the stage that had a terrific view.  So we stayed there for the opening act Das Mörtal and for Dance with the Dead, but moved towards the back of the place for Magic Sword.  And that proved to be the best decision as I had no idea Magic Sword was such a visual band.  Three hooded guys (assumption) with glowing visors and an actual illuminated magic (assumption) sword, which would be raised like He-Man's.  The crowd, and us, went nuts every time.  

The opening act of Das Mörtal turned out to be incredible.  I was unfamiliar with this guy and it was the perfect way to get the crowd excited.  I recall sitting painfully through the opening act for Juno Reactor.  And I think I just assumed that all opening acts were necessary evils.  But when Das Mörtal finished his set, we were bummed.

But then it happened.  Dance with the Dead came out and began.  And it was glorious.  Like TRULY glorious.  I'm a huge fan of their lighter stuff (like their song Oracle), but they played their heavier stuff last night, and I have no complaints at all.  None.  At one point I became aware of the fabric of my shirt vibrating from the giant speaker nearby.  Glorious.

So they played their amazing set, with a ton of songs I didn't even recognize.  The crowd went crazy during every single note.  And then it was over, and they disappeared off stage.  We all went nuts again.  This, we were convinced, would be the moment where the crowd demanded an encore (are encores even a thing anymore? [John Carpenter did an encore]).  But then the crew started taking apart the equipment, and we knew Dance with the Dead wasn't coming back.  So they start playing some house music and the lights come back on, so we got up and moved around to check the place out and get some more drinks (this was a common theme [the drinks part]). 

So we see some movement up front and the lights go dark.  We are dead center in the back of the place, leaning comfortably against the back control booth.  With our drinks.  Then Magic Sword appears.  I posted one blog entry featuring their music, back in 2017, so I wasn't extremely familiar with their work.  I knew I liked their sound back then, but wasn't expecting the visuals of the hooded figures.  The band members consist of The Keeper (mask illuminated in red; keyboard, audio-visual), The Seer (mask illuminated in blue; guitar), and The Weaver (mask illuminated in yellow; drums) (Thanks, Wikipedia).  

Cloaked characters, playing synthwave, with neon strips of light peering out from black hoods;  all three Knights from a Digital Medieval Age (I made that up).  Now I don't know if it was the spirits, or their music, or the fact that I'm a theatrical guy and was in heaven witnessing this, but Magic Sword is my new favorite thing as of tonight. 

I took off from work today to recover.  My voice is shot from yelling.  And I may or may not have a hangover for the first time since the late 90's.  

Teaser: My Tuesday Night

Easter Candy

Click below for a fun video.

H.R. Giger would be proud.

Thanks, Wren!

Weekend Plans

Hans Ruedi Giger

H.R. Giger would have been 82 today.  Endless inspiration from this man, and his Pilot/Space Jockey design and prop literally kept me wondering and dreaming for decades.  And it still does.  I always wanted to meet the man.  I have a feeling the language barrier wouldn't have been a big deal.  He would have known I adored his work, and owed him a great debt, by the expression on my face.

The Pilot

I reject that expensive fan film called Prometheus.

The creature below is exactly that:  A creature.  An alien being.

And definitely NOT some blue humanoid in an elephant-bone space suit.
Lies.  Prometheus was all lies.  The King of Lies.

Click below and tell me that thing is just a space suit.

NASA Prepares Big Announcement On New Find By Mars Curiosity Rover

The Pilot

Evolution

Ridley Scott: As they enter the derelict, I wanted them to come up over the edge of something and into this vast chamber that's dominated by a huge chair. In preparing  this frame of the storyboard, I went through Giger's Necronomicon and took this character, whom we call the "space jockey", because I wanted a fossil, almost, one which you'd have a hard time deciding where he leaves off and the chair,  on which he died, begins. So here they are with this dead space jockey frozen in death to the weapon he was firing when he died. And he's kind of gargoyle-like and spooky. Sometimes we got very close to the films visuals in the storyboard.


HR Giger: From the script I knew he was huge and had a hole in his chest, but that was all. Ridley suggested another of my Necronom creatures as a guide. They don’t look much alike now, but it was a starting point; and the space jockey kind of grew up from there in bits and pieces. The creature we finally ended up building is biomechanical to the extent that he has physically grown into, or maybe even out of, his seat – he’s integrated totally into the function he performs.

Alien Explorations blog.

Selective Memory

Click below for a bunch of amazing photos of the Space Jockey prop from ALIEN...


I officially reject Prometheus as a bad dream.  And the Engineers, if they exist at all, were simply mimicking an alien life form's organic style.  Because they thought it was cool.

Lies. All Lies.

Below...  my current wallpaper on my work computer.  A coworker saw it yesterday and said, excitedly, "That's from Prometheus!"
You can imagine how irritated and irritating I must have sounded as I informed him that this was, in fact, from 1979's ALIEN and that it was, in fact, not a blue humanoid Engineer in a spacesuit, but, rather, the most significant film prop in our lifetime.  And clearly an alien life form due to the size differential and strange proportions.


I blame Ridley Scott for this mess.


And now he's messing with the Blade Runner sequel.

Giger

Image source.

Xenomorph

By Dominic Qwek.

A Neat Interview

With the director of the new H.R. Giger documentary.

Click below: