I’ve been asked a number of times if I’m going to release my videos on DVD. I’ve considered it, but I don’t think it would be worth the time and effort, because I don’t foresee the demand being greater than the effort to master and set up menus (and I guess produce extra footage?). They would most certainly have to be a DVD print-on-demand scenario. I’ve released them in HD format for free, and it’s fairly easy to download them and burn them to disc.
One way you can help future video production, I’ve just added an amazon Gift list page here. Check it out and if you’ve enjoyed the work I’ve done, think that there’s potential for more, think about buying an item ranging from $12 to $1,200 and have it shipped directly to me. There’s also the donate button over there somewhere —–>
In 2012 I have two video projects that I’m working on. One is essentially a series of monologues, much like my lectures but with better camera work, editing, graphics and the ability to retake a shot. They’ll run maybe 10 minutes? a piece, and therefore will be a little more suitable for YouTube (people complain about the hour long lectures being “too much”).
The other would be a series of video interviews.
I don’t want to say more than this, because both are in early stages of writing and development. I still have some more testing/learning to do.
After hearing me mention it in an interview, someone on Facebook asked if my music was available. I’ve performed in two bands proper – URILLIAsekt and Axis Mundi. There isn’t much from URILLIAsekt available but Axis Mundi was sort of my solo project and I do have a few tracks from that. I admit, I cringe a bit on listening to some of these, but for what they are and the time I was doing them, it works decently well. Here is a bit of history I wrote some time around 2002:
Kevin
Axis Mundi was formed as a solo project in 1998 after Joe Morgan and myself dissolved URILLIAsekt. URILLIAsekt has a bootleg video that has been passed around infrequently, but there was no official releases.
I first recorded under my own name “Kevin I. Slaughter”, releasing a cassette tape limited to 9 copies. These nine copies were given out and I think that I’ve lost my own version of it. Shortly after this Heather Fraser began wirking with me on music and in performances, and I released “Popular Music We All Love”
Heather
“Popular Music…” is a compilation of tracks from the first 4 years of Axis Mundi’s musical work. It has been the only full length release to date, and currently we plan on it being the only one.
The CD has been released 4 times in an “official” capacity (whatever that may mean), with each version being slightly different. I have my own very convoluted “artsy-fartsy” reason for doing this, and if you ever meet me and don’t know what to say, you can bring this up and that’ll be good for at least a few minutes of conversation.
I uploaded the tracks to Soundcloud.com so they are available once again (warts and all), and they’re in the last known order/arrangement.
Even the most doltish listener will quickly pick-up on the fact that I stole existing music and sounds with impunity. Most of the work present is more of a collage than song-writing, and at no point do I make the claim of originality or talent for that matter. My most frequently used equipment was a couple of tape decks and a primitive sampler.
The track “Transitional Pulse” is just that, a marker between older tracks and newer (at the time of release). Some of the tracks are effectively soundtracks to films unmade, some only make sense when they were performed live. There was always a heavily visual aspect to my performances. “Man Sun” is literally a soundtrack to a video, it was a school project where we had to manufacture our own “creation myths”, so I chose the concept of Helter Skelter and produced a psychedelic video montage and the audio that appears here.
“Brocken” was a live performance of Matt G. Paradise’s “A Night on the Brocken” ritual, published originally in his magazine “Not Like Most.”
“Frustration” is a recording of a Dorothy Parker poem, with guitar by Erin C. It’s followed by a sort of remix from a performer I worked with at the time.
The last track is a recording I made of reading an excerpt from a Barnaby Conrad book on bullfighting. .
I also found a review penned by Tracy Twyman, and I believe it ran in her magazine Dagobert’s Revenge:
Popular Music We All Love
review by Tracy Twyman
Joseph Campbell defined the Axis Mundi as, “the imagined axis linking the Earth’s surface with the lower world (Hell) and the upper world (Heaven) at the metaphoric center of the Earth.” And that is exactly what this CD does, taking you on a trip from the depths of infernal madness and obsessive compulsion, on through the profane and unhallowed mire of our mundane, temporal existence, across the vast, chaotic chasm of Choronzon known as the Abyss, and on into that ineffable and sacrosanct region which we call the Divine, all done in a process of three stages which can be interpreted to represent those three levels of being which I have just described. And yet, oddly enough, the songs on this CD were never meant to be together. As the liner notes explain, “Popular Music’ Is a compilation of tracks derived from live performances and home taping sessions… This is not intended as a standard album, but merely a reflection of an ongoing process.” It is mostly the work of one Mr. Kevin Slaughter, known for his program on the Radio Free Satan broadcast network, along with some help from Heather Fraser and unnamed others.
The first track, “Sound of Music”, is a good example of what it would be like to play your Fisher Price Tone-a-Phone in the sewer. The next track, “Her Muse”, is one of those “depraved ravings” pieces in the vein of Sisyphus Autopsy, written from the point of view of a stalking ex-boyfriend who has captured his prey and is now trying to convince her, probably at gunpoint, that they belong together. On “Thanks for the Memories”, someone mumbles incomprehensibly over an instrumental of “A Kiss is Still a Kiss”, an over-modulated version of “Funky Cold Medina”, and a soup of various static-filled samples. “Popular Media” is perhaps the most wry in its humor, an actual recording of Kevin Slaughter calling up a radio talk show to discuss “racialist music”, including the moronic comments made by the host of the program. And in “Mi Amore”, women scream as their bodies are cast into the flaming pits of Hell. The last track, “Man Sun”, is very interesting, as the narrator explains concepts of infinity, eternity, God, Abraxas, dualism, unity, and equilibrium, mixed with reenactments of speeches made by Charles Manson and his followers. As more of a “stream of consciousness” piece than an act of premeditation, this compilation works very well. I’d like to see what they do when they plan it out ahead of time. A more standard full-length CD entitled, Love Songs, is scheduled for release in the coming months.
In addition, while I was at it at least, I’ve uploaded some miscellaneous tracks that were never released properly. First is an unfinished recreation of a novelty album first released on 78 titled “Hard to Get“. I don’t know the orig. artist name or anything at this point, but the female voice is my dear friend Erin:
And finally (unless I find other junk on my hard drive to append here), this is a track created for an HP Lovecraft tribute compilation CD that was cut from the final release. The title of the track is “Invocation Inebriation“:
I’ve posted a short excerpt from my lecture on Wednesday, and made a post on Underworld Amusements. Please go there to view the video and see a few related photos.
Here I will post a few photos from the Detroit Institute of Arts. I was very impressed with the collection, and was able to spend quite a few hours there yesterday. I had used up nearly all of my 16 gig memory card with video from the lecture, so I was using my backup 1 gig card forcing me to be very selective in taking photos. Either way, these are some of the works that I wanted to look at again when I got home….
Josh Latta (you’ll be hearing that name again from me soon) created one of his trademarked Avatards for my wife and I (and our cat, and the bats that live out in the back yard):
I spent a little bit of time this morning completing my first task for #phonar. Details can be found in a previous blog post.
Below is the copy I wrote for the spread. It’s a wee bit heavy handed, but it’s better than lorem ipsum. Also, I proofed as best I could… full refund if not satisfied.
IT JUST AIN’T NACHURAL, I TELL YA.
IT AIN’T RIGHT
WILLIAM MORTENSEN, WEEGEE, DIANE ARBUS, AND
THE ANONYMOUS PHOTOGRAPHERS OF LOW-END NUDIES
Written and Edited by Kevin I. Slaughter
The styles and processes couldn’t be more different. The motivations varied from a desperate bid to make quick cash to cultivating a truly unique and painstaking artistic vision. And yet, there is something familiar in all of these photographs, something most people don’t want to see.
People often have a visceral response to these images. They often evoke one of our strongest instincts – disgust. We see the “other”, the thing outside of ourselves that we want to keep away. From ugliness to retardation, from morbidity to degeneration.
And yet, we look. Maybe after some initial reflexive response, where we turn away or close our eyes, but we still look and often stare.
Possibly an evolutionary response, knowing one’s enemy. A gazelle will watch the cheetah, because if the cheetah comes to close, it means death. The same can be said about degeneracy, though in a more abstract way.
It is natural to hate and fear the “other”. People deny this aspect of nature because they want nature to behave how they think it should, instead of how it is.
It is also natural to fool one’s self, to live a lie that what you have is good, even when it’s flawed or ugly or broken. Objectivity is always elusive in the human mind, and being presented with an uncomfortable objective truth sparks an irrational mental war on that truth.
There is a constant struggle in the public sphere to take control of “nature”, of what it means. A constant push of this priest or that politician to couch their beliefs into a frame that is on the side of nature, be it one that “god” created, or one that evolved.
The one objective truth about nature that we know is that it works completely independently from our wants and needs. What is good, or right, or beautiful has nothing whatsoever to do with what can and will occur.
Nature is what is.
17/04/2011 – 6:05 p.m.
AVIGNON (NOVOPRESS): The Piss Christ by Andres Serrano was destroyed today. According to information from news of France , which revealed the devastation, “individuals have used the opening of the museum to get mid-day before the work and destroy it with a sledgehammer and a hammer” . They have entered noon in the Collection Lambert by paying their entry, as mere visitors. Then, “faces uncovered, they destroyed the glass cover and came to the end of the Plexiglas with masses and hammers before attacking the Piss Christ” . The vandals were gone, shouting “Long live God! God lives! ”
Also, another depiction of Barak Obama as a man-monkey is circulating and the gnashing of teeth and wailing has predictably begun. The offended have been known to shout “Long live Obama! Obama lives!”
Marilyn Davenport, who is also a member of the Orange County Republican Party, has resisted calls for her resignation, claiming she was not a racist and had only been joking.
The email sent by Mrs Davenport contained a picture of the US president superimposed over a baby chimpanzee with two adults of the species, with reference to the conspiracy theory that Mr Obama is ineligible as president because he was born outside the United States.
Scott Baugh, chairman of the county party, called on Mrs Davenport to resign from its central committee after receiving the email, saying that it was “dripping with racism and is in very poor taste”.
Refusing to step down, Mrs Davenport made her case in an email to party members. “I’m sorry if my email offended anyone, I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth,” she wrote.
But we should not forget that it was Serrano who did a stunning series of portraits of Klansmen as well:
I’ve been meaning to build one of these for a while, but upgrading my camera and my wife starting her etsy store and needing me to photograph stuff for it gave me the impetus.
Some cheap wood, a scrap of PVC sheeting, a $4 white sheet from the thrift shop and here’s what I’ve got so far:
I’m not getting enough light, and since I’d broken a few bulbs in the past few days I had 3 different types of bulbs in the 4 lights.
I clamped the sheet on because I’m not sure of the best way to secure it, or even if that’s the right kind of sheet to use. The point is to diffuse the light, but I don’t want to block too much of it either.
I may need to partially cover the front of the box to bounce some of the light back in.
