Howdy! My name is XTIAN, I am a surrealistical artist guy from Melbournia. This be a blog of my arts, a sort of "what's new?" with regards to everything from collages to music to film. I make a lot of stuff (mostly collages though. Do you? Get in touch.) WARNING: some of this gear may be NSFW.
For more of my stuff see www.gadzooxtian.com .
I've been making collages out of postage stamps. It's great fun - try it if you like working s-l-o-w-l-y and with a giant magnifying lamp. And yes, I call them "Nano-collages".
Okay, follow me... [1] Research indicates most ppl get their ideas on crime stats from crime dramas on TV. [2] Research indicates most ppl get their ideas on ghosts from movies. Ergo: it's safe to say a lot of (dumb) folk believe fiction as truth. [3] No other country loves TV/ entertainment like the USA. [4] We have a conspiracy theory epidemic: anti-vaxers, Flat Earthers, climate-deniers, etc, etc. [5] Most of these theories seem to originate in the USA and are firmly held by ppl my age. [6] They - like me - grew up watching the X Files, 20-odd years ago - a show filled to the brim with every imaginable "trust no-one" conspiracy theory. - - - [7] Chris Carter, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!!!
Pictures don't always work out. Since everyone always posts pix of "work-in-progress" or final masterpieces, here's a pictorial of an image I spent a week on - that ended in the bin. Sometimes you keep hammering at it, and it just dont' work... gotta let it go.
My sister Sylv sent me one of those FB 10 day challenges- "Albums That Inspired You". Since I never remember to complete those things, here it is in one go. Hopefully you'll either learn something stupid about me, or better - you'll discover a great album. The challenge was for 10 only - and THAT was hard. 1. GRACE JONES - Slave to the Rhythm
The first "weird" album I heard (aged 13) that made me WANT to hear weird music. Plus the cover is a collage! Woohoo! It's mostly odd little industrial-esque pop songs, narcissistic interviews (I LOVE narcissistic artists), and the end part (Operattack) which is Grace fucking around with her voice to sound like she's a horde of demons. HUHH!!!
Honourable "Weird Pop" mention: WEIRD AL YANKOVIC - Even Worse
2. MR.BUNGLE - Disco Volante
Never gonna get sick of this. It's so incredibly outrageous, it has set such a high bar for weird avant garde stuff, and has launched so many imitators, including me. HUGE influence on my songwriting. Everything, from the clusterfuck of 50 genres per song, to Patton's incredible vocals going from crooning to Satan to chocking-on-his-own-tongue - to just silly - just wow. We have techno, we have Sufi, we have metal, ambient, jazz, circus sounds, "spy music", "duet for guitar and breathing apparatus"... - it's an album like no other. (I got into this before I got into jazz... I went backwards...)
Honourable mention: just get all their albums, there's only three.
3. COIL - Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil
This album made me get off my butt and MAKE music - and I'm not even a big Coil fan. But this thing... the first half is strange electronic weirdness, kinda neat, but the second half... woah. 27 minutes of the grittiest, most irritating and yet hypnotic electronic drone. I never heard anything like it before. How could music be so hard to listen to - and yet so utterly compelling? Is it even music? This album really opened my eyes (ears) to what music COULD be - regardless of the audience. My first songs were weird backwards sounds, coughs, random drums, etc...
Honourable "weird noise" mention: ADD N TO X - Avant Hard (they're actually very catchy)
4. SEPULTURA - Chaos AD
THIS ALBUM MADE ME THINK for the first time, if you will. As in, music wasn't just for entertainment - this album had something to say. It was their punkest effort, and launched me on a path to question EVERYTHING, and reject the mainstream entirely. This album had less convoluted metal riffs, and more groove and simplicity -and some trad Brazilian sounds (more so in the next album, Roots). The lyrics were simpler and not about a future Armageddon but about the apocalypse that is the modern capitalist world. And it had an industrial remix!
Honourable "thinking music" mention: FEAR FACTORY - Soul of a New Machine
5. SMASHING PUMPKINS - Siamese Dream
One of the greatest albums ever recorded. It's just psychedelic amazingness from go to whoa - wrapped in guitars that sound like a B52 Flying Fortress. I heard ten seconds on the radio of "Cherub Rock", and I KNEW this was gonna be my fave band. And for yeeeears they were. (And up to and including Adore, they still are.) But influence? Well, on the SOUND of my musics. Their combination of beautiful melodies coming out of MASSIVE thundering bottom-end rumbling guitars is the sound I try and do. I could never get into Sonic Youth because they were too tinny. THIS fucking band had guts and balls - and fairy wings. The thunder and the fragility.
Honourable "thunder and the fragility" mention: SMASHING PUMPKINS - Pisces Iscariot; also: the band JESU
6. WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS - Spare Ass Annie
It's 199something. I've just read "Naked Lunch" and my world is upside down. A friend gives me this. It's THE VOICE OF FUCKING GOD! Wooo!!! Can I get Amen?!!!
If ya donno Unka Bill: he was a villain. And he knew it. But he didn't like it. And he wrote amazing novels that he would then turn inside out and re-assemble in a Frankenstinian fashion. And musos would try and put it to music. Kinda badly. But this one... imagine cranky old Unka Bill's droooooning old man voice reading his surreal obscenity-filled word-abortions - set to hip-hop by the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. Fuck. Me. Genius. It sucks you in with those phat beats - then suddenly you punch yourself in the ears - did he just fucking say what I thought he said?!!!! WHat the...!!?!?!??!
Unka Bill is still a massive influence on my creativity and how I think. THAT is why it's here. He. Makes. You. Think. And go beyond.
like I wasn't gonna put this here... 😂
Honourable "spoken word" mention: everything ever by Ken Nordine
7. NINE INCH NAILS - The Downward Spiral
I didn't like this at first. Took many listens to it's predecessors and the remix version (Further Down the Spiral) before I got it. Yes, it had some influence on my songwriting and more-so on my fashion-sense 😆, but the number one reason it's here is because of the song The Becoming. It was the first time a song had captured what the inside of my head sounded like to me - when I'm making art. It's that chaotic. It's that monstrous and monotonous. It's that hysterical. Random noises. Shrieks. Machine sounds. Tension. Fun. Staccato guitars. Singing off-key. Catch your breath. Destroy again. "It won't give up, it wants me dead - Goddamn this noise inside my head." My brain is fucking Heaven when I make collages - and it's noisy as fuck. The out-take "Burn" (later used on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack) is another nice example.
Honourable "noise-in-the-head" mention: NIN - Further Down the Spiral
8. MELT BANANA - Charlie
It's actually the song Spathic!.
Again, a total eye/ ear-opener - "What... you mean you can make music THIS WAY too?" It starts off like some manic punk song, then the guitar cuts out and the body of the song is samples of broken glass - no guitars-, drums and a vocalist who sounds like an angry chihuahua, torturing her own poor Japanese tongue with English tongue-twisters. Then back to manic, then back to glass, then some weird space-guitar feedback conjuring a UFO... Melt Banana squeeze 5000 ideas into every song, usually delivered in one minute bites. I heard this and KNEW this was a direction for me to explore. They take the basic recipe of grindcore - go fast, keep it short, many riffs - but they add so many ideas and sounds, it's ridiculous. Maximalism, everytime. These guys popped my "Japanese-Music-Love Cherry". I saw them live. So loud I couldn't make out any riffs. Bummer. Hounourable hyperactive J-rock mention: POLYSICS
9. BURZUM - Burzum
I don't care that he's a convicted killer, and racist edgelord. Kristian (hey, nice name!) -"Varg" - "Count Grishnakh" Vikernes was once a genius. (Make sure you DON'T watch the movie about him - it's total arse.) Anyhoo. Black Metal. Early 90s. What a fucking mindtrip that was. Are they really Satanist vampire lunatics building an army of darkness and fire? How scary AND cool is that?!! And fuck me sideways, this music... it's like nothing else ever spewed from an amp. It's hideous. It's cold. It's scary. It's ... it sounds like the dead screaming from their graves. And it's literally shrieking - no-one fucking shrieked like Varg. This shit still gives me goosebumps. Lead me down the garden path of black metal (I still rock a Burzum T), I've recorded my fair share. It's so much fun to scream with hate! Burzum also shaped some of my thinking, but not in a racist fashion.
Honourable BM mention: the OTHER #1 BM band: DARKTHRONE. Anything up to and including Goatlord (fucking ugly album that).
10. ANAAL NATHRAKH: Domine Non Es Dignus
I was gonna put MINISTRY's Psalm 69 as #10, but I think this is more influential. They kinda pushed it more, even though they came much later.
Big influence on my songwriting. Just so extreme! The harshness of the sound, the breakneck speed, the surgically precise mish-mash of noise and melody (by now you should notice my love of noise, but more so the love of USING noise), and those vocals... holy shit. How long can Dave go on for before his throat explodes in a mess of blood and gristle? It all sounds like they're trying to keep up with an inhumanly fast beat before they die of exhaustion. While some big machine pulls their guts out their bums. It's just brutal. It's so much fun trying to make music like this - just let go of rationally expressing yourself and go all primeval King Kong - but with OCD. You hurt yourself in the process, you hurt the audience - but you all walk away smiling, feeling better. Top shit.
I shoulda put Pandemonic Hyperblast here, but I didn't wanna scare you... 😍
Honourable monster-rape and melody mention: THE AXIS OF PERDITION (everything but the last album)
Wow, this has truly been an emotional roller-coaster ride. I get that some of these songs/ albums may make some of you rip your ears off, but to me they're deep as the abyss. When I hear Anaal Nathrakh's out-of-control insanity sounds - I feel happy and purged. Heck, they even bring tears to the eye at times with the sweet release, hahaha! These albums have all managed to capture or say something I couldn't find the words for - but then helped me to do so. There are others, but these are the seeds (limited to 10). Interestingly a lot of my fave bands/ albums didn't make this list - but these albums (mostly) were the ones that LEAD me to those faves. And whilst these bands may not have invented the genre they're representing (here) - they're the ones that clicked for me. ALSO: I'm more influenced by books... now THAT would be an interesting challenge!
Have you been checking / following my tumblr ? It's where I post a lot of old and new stuff, like this one from c.1998... untitled dada thing (55x37cm)
When I was a boy in Magyarország, there were a couple of TV series that blew me away. (Mind I was about 8-1o yrs old.) I have been trying to find these for over 3o years - finally the interwebs delivers. Here's the first: Le Visiteurs, a.k.a. A Látogatók. It was about two aliens who come to Earth to find 6 other aliens who have never returned from their mission. They had spooky names like Alambda, Zarko, Reka, Pirvii, Kyrin, and Memno. They were hairless dudes! The two aliens were a man and a woman - and she could stop time with a little gizmo! They were telepathic too! And they travel the world trying to find these aliens - only to be tricked every time by a mean little dwarf in a wig, who drags them into surreal adventures. And the theme music - spoooooooky. Very hard to find - but I'm a Black Belt Pirate Lvl 10. Anyhoo - here's the first two episodes of "Les Visiteurs" - if you just want to hear the spooky themesong (by Georges Delerue - and it's great) ffwd to 47:37.
After seven years and aboooot 3ooo collages later - it ends. It ends today! Well, kinda - there's still the book version of Vol 3 to come, pluuuus some other plans. Stick around. But for now, go here:
I've introuduced a new thing via tumblr/ instagram (#gadzooxtian) - I'm posting an original hand-drawn picture for sale every Friday (Doodle Friday). These are all drawn by me at work - I don't draw at home. As such, they are very surreal as I rely on the distractions around me for inspiration (eg: people's conversations, the sound of them working, me blocking out the supervisor, etc.). Here's the latest - email me if interested.
Original drawing, black ink on paper, A5(21x14.8cm/ 8.27x5.83′), AUD$50 (incl.postage), unframed. Paypal preferred.
I'm only half-paying attention to this - the other half is watching the Superbowl... But you should pay full attention to TheMicturatingAngel - coz it's good! In this issue : more of Sheri and her adventures vs potential headloss, and a short and sweet one from Molly, her 5th adventure. Sample:
