More Dick?

Do you want more Dick? Sure we all do. The third and final Swingshift story arc soon come.

Babes of the Abyss Playlist

As with I did with Dog Days' Nights, I am celebrating the conclusion of  Babes of the Abyss by assembling an 8Tracks mix of music I either listened to while writing the story or that I associate in some other way with the series.  It is a strange and varied collection of sounds with the only common thread being a gauzy layer of decay and reverb.  Many of the songs share a raw and unmastered aesthetic that matches well with both the general vibe of the Swingshift worldview and the often chaotic creative process behind the stories.

There will be more Swingshift in 2011, and Cheer is still available for depraved holiday enjoyment.  As always, thanks for all of your support.

01 cv313 - Subtraktive (King Midas Sound Dub)
she might be right

02 Gonasufi - My Only Friend (Hezus mix)
“Please, stay even though you know my reality”

03 Rolling Stones - Dancing with Mr. D (alternate take)
L-Girls theme - “A drink of Belldonna on a Toussaint night”

04 LA Vampires vs. Zola Jesus - No no no
strung out soundtrack to late nights at the club El Cambion

05 s. maharba - Tell a Lie
“millions of hearts have been broken, just because these words have been spoken...”

06 Demdike Stare - Bardo Thodol
several stories deep below Canal St.

07 The Stone Roses - Shoot You Down (lost demo version)
our man has big plans and a full moon swagger

08 Skeletons & Sobansa Mimanisa - Kiwembo / Unstuck
“Things are in motion ...Get out and get lost.”

Swingshift: Babes of the Abyss - Part VII

"A patch of lightening rolls its way through the fog and across the water’s surface. The air pressure is dropping. My ears fill with echoing Latin. My knees buckle as gravity goes fluid for a brief moment. Best guess, this is the time. "

The damp and dramatic conclusion of Babes of the Abyss is live at T21.

Full moon, Saturday night. Dick crashes a Meridian orgone siphoning ritual and brings his own pyrotechnics. BJ plays the heavy, Jonesy drives the getaway car and the cat returns to life on the run. And, it all goes down with a swagger.

There is one more multi-chapter story in the Swingshift trilogy. It should kick off in January.

Thank you all for the support.

Swingshift: Babes of the Abyss - Part VII

Swingshift Archive

Swingshift: Babes of the Abyss - Part VI

"Three flights down through narrow stairwells lit by flickering fluorescents. Then, we cross a dark empty sub-basement. The speed surges in my veins from the exercise. The immersive silence fills my ears with malicious insectiod whispers and twists my thoughts into intricate knots of paranoia."

Babes of the Abyss - Part VI is live at T21.

In the penultimate chapter of  Babes of the Abyss, Swingshift proves the old adage that you can find anything in Chintown, including an orgone vacuum/bomb. 

I once heard a member of the NYPD's Trademark Infringement Unit tell the story of chasing an old woman, and knock-off watch salesperson, through a labyrinth of basement tunnels several stories beneath Chinatown.  Since then, I have had a fascination with Canal Street's bootleg culture and the secret architecture of Chinatown.  On more than one occasion my curiosity has gotten me chewed out in Chinese by ladies like the older lady in this piece.

Next time: the suspense filled, soaking wet climax of Babes of the Abyss. (I wonder if that phrase will bump my google ranking.)

Swingshift: Babes of the Abyss - Part VI

Swingshift Archive

Swingshift: Babes of the Abyss - Part V

"That sorted, I got down to work banging together a binding ritual to capture and incapacitate my girlfriend. It is not the sort of thing my old man touched on when he explained the birds & bees. However, I would be lying if I told you this was the first time it had come up. "

Part V of Babes of the Abyss is live at T21.
 

This chapter is a personal favorite.  All the peculiar elements of the series, dark humor, occult elements, horror tropes, intoxicated shenanigans are all at work her in the service of some complex personal ideas and emotions.  When I revisited this chapter for a last round of edits, I had one of those moments of estrangement from the text.  The words felt new to me, as if they had been written by someone else.  It is always a strange sensation and this is first time I experienced it writing this series.

 
Thanks, as always, for all of your support.





Swingshift: Babes of the Abyss - Part V

Swingshift Archive

Swingshift: Babes of the Abyss - Part IV

 






"I tilt my head in an attempt to keep the steady stream of blood from pooling in my eye sockets. I see BJ’s Glock lying amongst the pile of denim at his feet. I consider making a dive for it.  I am not planning to pull it on anyone. I am planning to shoot myself in the head. Death may be the only way out of this wretched hallway. I wonder if I can get the gun into my mouth quick enough or whether I should just take a fast but dirty slug to the temple."
 
Part IV of Babes of the Abyss is live at T21.
 
This time out, Dick manages to infiltrate the mysterious club El Cambion only to spend most of teh night trapped in a maintenance corridor.  He is rescued by the dashing Samael who then gives him a personal tour of the clubs exclusive grotto of love.
 
 

 
 
Swinghshift: Babes of the Abyss - Part IV
 
Swingshift Archive
 



Dog Days' Nights Playlist

I have cobbled together a random playlist of tracks that I either listened to while writing Dog Days’ Nights or that have, in my mind, a connection to the story. I slapped the tunes into an 8Tracks mix for your enjoyment. It is interesting that these are very different sounds than my standard everyday soundtrack.

I will try to assemble another playlist at the end of Babes of the Abyss (Zola Jesus and The Rolling Stones will certainly make appearances).





00 RAW - Dog Days
intial inspiration for the title (among other grander things)

01 Thom Yorke - Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses
wake up on your feet vibes

02 The Whitefield Brothers (feat. Guilty Simpson) - American Nightmare
lock-up at the 6-0

03 Spoek Mathambo - Control
South African electro-house cover of Joy Division - perfect loft party joint

04 Gonjasufi - Duet
possible theme song for CSI: Bushwick 420

05 Cliff Edwards (aka Ukulele Ike) - I’ll See You In My Dreams
I’m still not sure why ukulele music is playing in the background

06 James Blake - CMYK
Dee's lament

07 The Kilimanjaro Dark Jazz Ensemble - Dark Night of the Soul
exactly what it says on the tin

08 Bei Bei & Shawn Lee - East
Rodriguez’s action theme

09 Oneohtrix Point Never (feat. Antony) - Returnal (christian fennesz remix)
“you've never left, you've been here the whole time”

Swingshift: Babes of the Abyss – Part III

"As best I can tell, through the bad in browser translation, HandiMandi is a forum for Eastern European transsexuals who are also home improvement enthusiasts. Even by .ru standards, it seems a little too obscure to be for real. Judging by the jarring amount of unintelligible grammar in the posts, either the site is the world’s greatest spam-bot magnet or most of the traffic is shady bastards like me leaving obscured covert messages."


Part III of Babes of the Abyss is live at T21.

In this chapter, we venture to the dark backwaters of the internets where Dick flexes his best spam-bot impersonation. MacEndroe re-emerges at the end of the sordid paper trail surrounding the El Cambion nightclub. The cat steals a few more scenes and both Ed/Lou and the L-Girls make appearances.

My apologies for the spacing and formatting glitches. They should be sorted out shortly.



Swingshift: Babes of the Abyss – Part III

Swingshift Archive

Swingshift: Babes of the Abyss - Part II

“Meeting a girl’s friends is a tricky tight rope act. A little flirting never hurts but too much flirting will yield you enemies for life. I quickly decide that my best strategy, as is often the case in awkward social situations, is to throw a ludicrous amount of charm and booze at the situation. By the time I order the third round of shots and run through my greatest hits of self-deprecating stories, it is as if we are all old friends.”


Part II of Babes of the Abyss is live at T21.

The Allied bennies come on cool and slow. We discover the reason behind Rodriguez’s surprise social call and the NYPD detective and the charmed feline form a sinister alliance.

Then Dick settles in to his new role as the boyfriend. He meets the lovely L-Girls and glimpses a well-chiseled shadow from Qarin’s past from across a crowded room.

I'm thinking of assembling a Swingshift playlist. Zola Jesus v. LA Vampires is definetly the soundtrack for this chapter.




Swingshift: Babes of the Abyss - Part II

Swingshift Archive

Swingshift: Babes of the Abyss

"I wake to the familiar sensation of my brain trying to burst its way out of my skull. I manage to turn the AC to full blast and pull a sheet over my head to hold back the day a few more minutes. I close my eyes and let frantic images of the previous night’s debauchery scroll by. Glimpses of fevered copulations, teasing, taunting, bordering on violence and ending, as has become common, with me handcuffed to the headboard."


Babes of the Abyss a new storyline in the Swingshift series is live at T21.

The story picks up a few weeks after the events of Dog Days' Nights. It is built so that a reader could jump in to the series now with minimal confusion. However, it also fits within a larger narrative for the series.

Babes of the Abyss should be a little sexier and a touch more surreal than the previous story. It will see our man Dick operating out on his own in a bizarre underworld, pushing himself well beyond the break of sanity. I you enjoy it.




Swingshift: Babes of the Abyss - Part I

Swingshift Archive

Swingshift: Dog Days' Nights - Part VII

“In my own sudden moment of action, I slam the study door shut and bolt the lock. This leaves me alone in the small room with a near catatonic Murzim, moaning and clutching his balls, and a massive, sinister demon dog. It is perhaps the dumbest decision I have ever made but I have an irrational faith in my secret weapon.”


Part VII of Dog Days’ Nights is live at T21. This is it, the frantic conclusion. This installment is a twisted riff on a classic mystery cliche, where all the players assemble in the study for the big reveal. Only here, the players include a demon, a pack of street dogs and an enchanted cat.

Dog Days’ Nights is the first of three interconnected story lines in the series. The next story, Babes of the Abyss, will go live in a couple weeks.

Swingshift: Dog Days' Nights - Part VII

Swingshift Archive

Swingshift: Dog Days' Nights - Part VI

Things are tense in the interrogation room. My story has run out of yarn but the promised revelations and actionable conclusions have not materialized. I am convinced there is something more, that the timeline is incomplete.


After a small delay, my bad, Part VI of Dog Days' Nights is live at T21. In this installment our battered hero commits the unpardonable sin of sobering up and getting some sleep. A respite he pays dearly for. Also, our story returns full circle to the beginning and we discover a little bit about what is up with the cat.

Swingshift: Dog Days' Nights - Part VI

Swingshft Archive

Swingshift: Dog Days' Nights - Part V

The Loft turned out to be an old two-story warehouse. A massive open common area comprised the front half of the first floor. It was sparsely furnished with junk store relics and curbside cast offs. A number of strung out party people were sprawled around the room or wandering about with a lack of focus specific to afternoon intoxication. Somewhere, unseen, someone was playing Victrola era pop standards on a ukulele.


Part V of Dog Days' Nights is live at T21. Things are starting to come together. Swingshift gets a peek inside the Pop Magus study and re-affirms his distaste for rich men and automobiles. One more chapter before Part VII's high flying finally.



Swingshift: Dog Days' Nights - Part V

Swingshift Archive

Swingshift: Dog Days' Nights - Part IV

“What do you think I’m running here, CSI Bushwick?”

Rube eked out the sarcastic barb through smoke filled lungs. He handed me the smoldering ends of a once massive spliff. I slid it between my fingers gingerly, careful not to drop ash into the cooler that took pride of place on the table between us. I had brought the spliff and a couple of out-sized coffees as gifts of conciliation for showing up at Rube’s door so early in the day with such grisly luggage in tow.

“I didn’t know what the fuck else to do. To be honest, I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. I just knew it was evidence to something and that if The Heat got a hold of it I’d never know its secrets.”

“Well do you know its secrets now?”

“Well no. But that’s why I brought it to you. I thought you would Quincy this shit out for me.”

“OK, maybe I should clarify further. My apartment is not the morgue from the set of any forensic procedural on television now, or at any time in the history of the genre.”


Part IV of Dog Days' Nights is live at T21. It is the procedure heavy investigation portion of the story. However, since it's our man Swingshift he is mainly sitting around, drinking rye, getting stoned and generally shooting the shit with a cast of characters

It is my favorite episode of the story so far.




Swingshift: Dog Days' Nights - Part IV

Swingshift Archive

Swingshift: Dog Days' Nights - Part III

"Rex steadied himself with one hand on the doorjamb, traced an intricate sigil in the grime above the dog’s head and muttered a short incantation that sounded like a Welshman learning Yiddish. It took him a few attempts to get his numbed tongue around the unforgiving syllables but eventually the door did not so much open as simply dissipate into the air. As we crossed the threshold, a rush of crowd heat, incense smoke and loud music enveloped us."


Part III of Dog Days' Nights is live at T21. It's a party/club scene. You knew there would be at least one. In this instalment we get the low down on Jimmy The Pop Magus, discover that our damsel in distress may not be so distressed and learn that The Muppet Show did in fact reach the shores of Norway.

This was the most difficult part of the story to write. There are a lot of moving parts and events in this section are essential to not only this story but those that follow. Keeping the action moving and the pace lively was a challenge. In the end I am pleased with the results.





Swingshift: Dog Days' Nights - Part III

Swingshift Archive

Swingshift: Dog Days' Nights - Part II

"Monday lost to weekend residue, I arrived Tuesday afternoon just in time for happy hour at the Thirsty Serpent. I settled in at the bar hoping to nurse a few whiskeys and read the paper. My hopes were promptly dashed when Tracey the bartender brought me a line of trouble with my rye. "


Part II of Dog Days' Nights is up at T21.

In this episode our man Swingshift begins to lay the tale out from the beginning. We meet our girl Tracey the bartender. We also meet a self-named man called Rube and get a glimpse into a peculiarly feline byproduct of the real estate collapse.

Part III should be up in two weeks.

Swingshift: Dogs Days' Nights - Part II

Swingshift Archive

Swingshift: The Series

The familiar double chime of the subway doors stirs me. My head enveloped in a chemical fog, my eyes refuse to focus. I lean in through the blurred surroundings trying to decipher the warbled string of syllables running from the overhead PA.

“Avenue X / McDonald, next stop”


So begins my new black humor occult-noir series, Swingshift, for T21. It is going to be a woozy rawkus ride with our man Dick Swingshift at the controls. Dick is an old school shamus, straight out of grainy black & white films and dusty pulp novels. Dick is also a practitioner of the arcane and the occult. The series follows Dick as he stumbles his way through a complicated twenty first century reality hyper-saturated in technicolor and pop magick.

The first episode, Dog Days' Nights - Part I, is now live and new instalments will follow every two weeks. I am essentially making it up as I go along. To that end any feedback will be greatly appreciated. Please drop your thoughts and reactions in the comments here or feel free to shoot me an e-mail if your too polite to slag me off in public.

Also, if you missed the early Swingshift story Cheer, T21 has re-posted it as a nice introduction to the series.



Swingshift: Dog Days' Nights - Part I

Swingshfift: Cheer

Swingshift Archive