Music… A pretty good thing. Recently, there have been a few albums that have caught my attention and been on heavy rotation here. Try them out for size. They just might fit. Warpaint’s self-titled album was released late January and is the anticipated follow-up to the glorious debut The Fool (2010) and some EP work in-between. I don’t know what it is exactly but these LA girls create something undefined and totally beautiful in everything they do. It’s psych for sure but not in any way traditionalist. There’s also a loose slacker element in their output, but not in a crusty grunge kind of way. There’s also a distinct longing for the UK 1980s, when Martin Hannett ruled supreme and everything was rough and elegant at the same time. Intricate drumming, suave basslines, etheric guitar picks, licks and riffs and beautiful, almost angelic singing. That’s the Warpaint package right there. I have no idea what the songs are about and it...

John Szpunar’s hefty brick of a book Xerox Ferox: The Wild World of the Horror Film Fanzine takes you on a gloriously sticky memory lane trip to the golden era of Horror- and Sleaze film fanzines. It’s massive (800 pages!), packed with interviews with writers and editors and creates a longing back to an era of a relentless will- and passion-driven love of movies. As such, an invaluable book. Early 80s up until the internet buds of the early 90s. Postal networking and printed matter. The dawn and heyday of cassette culture and home video. VHS collecting and fanzine devouring. Tape trades and xeroxed xeroxes. Every little scrap of Entartete information and outsider esthetics was regarded as gold and jewels in a mainstream 1980s culture that was tasteless and truly horrible beyond belief. Sleazy diamonds in the rough buried deep in the pastel-colored and Stock-Aitken-Waterman-sounding fields of normality manure. It’s hard to describe what...