SOUNDTRACK: THE DEAD SCIENCE-“Throne of Blood (The Jump Off) 7” single [CST053] (2008).
This was a tour only 7″ that Constellation picked up before releasing The Dead Science’s Villianaire album. There are two songs, “Throne of Blood (The Jump Off),” which is the lead song from the Villainaire and “The Duel of Iron Mike” which is unavailable elsewhere.
“Throne of Blood (The Jump Off)” opens with some lovely harp playing before the eccentric vocal styles of The Dead Science take over. Everything about this song is unexpected–the weird staccato guitars, the crazy falsetto, wavery vocals. The song seems totally random until you hear all of the intention in it all where it all gels at the chorus. I love the part where the backing vocal comes in and sings “Villainiare Ice Grillianiare” (or whatever the heck it says).
“The Duel Of Iron Mike” (not to be confused with the Wu Tang Clan track which is what you’ll find if you look up the song n YouTube), opens with an interesting riff. There’s that low bass and that falsetto vocal that you either love or hate.
[READ: February 12, 2015] Moomin Volume 7
Moomin Book 7 and every subsequent book is made entirely of strips written and drawn by Lars Jansson. These stories originally ran in the Evening News, London 1960-1975.
These four stories continue with the themes that Tove wrote about. And Lars’ drawings look very much like Tove’s as well. I have noticed a few things that look different–sometimes he does the eyes differently, and certain angles don’t look quite right. But otherwise, it’s a pretty seamless transition. Oh I aslo noticed that in this book, he has begun signing his name much bigger in each strip.
The chapters are “Moomin the Colonist” “Moomin and the Scouts” “Moomin and the Farm” “Moomin and the Goldfields”
“Moomin the Colonist” sees the Moomin family settling in to hibernate, but once again it is ruined by something. Not a guest this time, but by Moominpappa’s exploratory needs. Moomin is reading a book about settlers and in the map at the back of the book they see an undiscovered continent right by Moominvalley! Pappa says he always wanted to be an empire builder. And so the family (and just about all of their friends, and even Mrs Fillyjonk), set out on a small boat (with way too much stiff including a cow) for the new continent.
They settle in fairly well with Moominpappa being in charge, of course. There are some complaints but Pappa has a deaf ear most of the time. After some time, though, then they run into several other people from Moominvalley–Stink and several other familiar faces. One of them claims to be the viceroy on the continent, and so there is a battle for supremacy. As the story ends, there comes a surprise about this undiscovered continent which brings everything crashing to a comic halt.
“Moomin and the Scouts” reintroduces Mr Brisk, he of the winter sports chapter some time back. But it is spring so that can’t be why he’s here. Turns out he is here with the scouts and they are looking for merit badges. Moomin considers becoming a scout too, but he gives up at the order to “march briskly.” Moomin is kind of disgusted by the scouts until he sees a girl guide and falls in love with her “hair yellow like ripe corn and eyes blue like my enamel mug.” And then he does everything he can to try to impress her (which fails miserably as he winds up spoiling all her plans in hilarious ways). Naturally, SnorkMaiden is there to break things up, although I’m sure that would have happened on its own anyway. And of course, the fickle nature of everyone in Moominvalley means you can’t keep Mr Brisk away from the slopes and the girl guide has now moved on to something else entirely.
“Moomin and the Farm” sees our family inherit a farm. Naturally they have always wanted to own a farm so they set off to become farm hands. And of course they are terrible at it. There’s some wonderful jokes about how the city folk know nothing about farming (some of the jokes come from the animals on the farm!). There’s also a ghost on the premises who is horrified at the way this new family is treating her farmstead. Their first order of business if getting rid of the ghost (who is basically just a nuisance) and then trying to figure out just what you’re supposed to do on a farm. If only there were a way to get out of it!
“Moomin and the Goldfields” opens with the family lugging a chest to the attic. And this chest has a treasure map in it. So the family sets out to find where X marks the spot. They don’t actually find anything but their digging inspires a neighbor to assume the at they are digging for gold. This leads to someone else saying that have a found a goldfield. And soon enough everyone is digging in their yard (poor Moominmamma’s garden). Even Mrs Fillyjonk brings a vacuum cleaner to suck up the gold dust. n fact the whole family is sick of all these people around so they try to trick everyone into thinking that gold fields are elsewhere. In all the digging, Moominpappa does find a gold piece (the size of a speck of dust) and they do spend it all in one place. Indeed, the only one who winds up with any gold is SnorkMaiden and for an entirely unexpected reason. The book ends with a delightful pearl of wisdom from Moominmamma “I think sea shells are so much prettier than nuggets and also nobody else wants them.”
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