Summary:

Jeff is an ordinary guy that is stuck at a dead end job with a boring life, but when a strange old man gives him an Ancient relic and tells him that he is the last bloodline of H.P. Lovecraft, He and his friend Charlie embark on an adventure to protect the relic piece from falling into the hands of the Starspawn and his minions that wish to reunite the relic and release Cthulhu back into the world.

Trailer:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOWtgLneeNE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrl-AIB_4T8

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9wWdtsFN3c

This clip was assembled in iMovie, which I loathe. It’s only the second video I’ve ever done, so cut me some slack, willya?

Goes great with a smoky-peaty single malt!

Yesterday was the official release of my new record, Eldritch Musicks. I’ve got the CDs in hand, and the album has populated to the majority of online stores, like iTunes, eMusic and Amazon MP3. To those of you who preordered, I expect to ship by week’s end — just waiting on the padded envelopes to materialize.

I’ve talked about the project briefly before; you can visit the official page for more info and to give a listen. What’s that? You want a little backstory? OK, fine.

This record is based on the weird fition of HP Lovecraft, etc. The blinking banner ad on the right side of your screen tells you that much. What it doesn’t tell you is that there’s quite a community of Lovecraft enthusiasts out there who I’m happy to say have received this project warmly. There are a few album-related happenings on the calendar that I can’t tell you about quite yet, lest the Old Ones tear my soul asunder.

For the time being, maybe you want to buy a CD? If you purchase it from this site, you get access to some nifty “digital extras,” including a password-protected link to download:

• Lyrics to all the songs on the album in maddening “eldritch font”
• “The Cove” — a short story with exclusive illustrations
• A behind-the-scenes video shot at Sounds of the Baskervilles studio in Washington, DC
• The Contrarian: Eldritch Podcast — a track-by-track exploration of the album’s themes and the inspiration for the songs. Just like getting drunk with The Contrarian in real life!

Frankly, the illustrated short story is worth the $10 price of admission. But the album rocks, too, if I do say so myself.

Oh, and I’m not much of a video guy, but I did manage to cram together a clip for the first song on the album, “Sunken City.” I plan to do more — not because I’m into moving images, but because it’s always good to have crap on YouTube for people to stumble across. Maybe I’ll even get better at it, who knows? (And if any of you want to help me string together some clips, please let me know.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiUMraIn6RU

(Thanks to Diabologue for posting the video!)

Here are a few more sexy shots of the CD:

Astute readers may have noticed the blinking banner ad on the right hand side of your screen. (Fine, you don’t have to be astute, merely sighted.) The reason for the blinky thing is because I am gearing up for the release of my new album, Eldritch Musicks.

I have written briefly about it before, but I didn’t want to bore you with more details until the record was in the can. Now that it’s complete and in the manufacturing stage, I figured it was a good time to annoy you with some shameless self-promotion.

If you click on that there ad, you’ll be whisked over to the official page for Eldritch Musicks, which features more info about the project. But allow me to summarize.

A while back I was gabbing with one of my heroes, Sandy Pearlman (manager/producer, Blue Öyster Cult, etc.), when the topic of conversation turned to HP Lovecraft. Specifically, how there hadn’t been a halfway-decent album inspired by the Lovecraft Mythos in at least a couple of decades. So I figured I’d take a crack at recording one.

Unlike my previous effort, I decided to release this sucker on CD. I firmly believe that we’re at the end of the era of physical media, but if there is to be one more redundant audio artifact, it might as well be this! So, I enlisted the remarkable talents of designer Jared Metzner, and we set about coming up with the look of Eldritch Musicks. I’m very pleased with the results, and I’m certain you will be, too.

Many thanks to our very own Wes Covey of The Ten Thousand Things, who contributed four “eldritch drones” to the album that make my hair stand on end (in a good way).

I’ve also created a “value-added” package to entice you towards the physical disc rather than simply buying it from iTunes or eMusic (which of course, you can still do — buy early and often!). Obviously, I’m limited by time and budget, but it’s important to me that these extras are both fun and provide a unique window into the product. And I think they do.

Here’s what you get if you purchase directly from this site:

• A signed and numbered CD copy of Eldritch Musicks

And a link to download:

• Lyrics to all the songs on the album in “eldritch font”
• “The Cove” — a short story with exclusive illustrations (VERY excited about this)
  
• A behind-the-scenes video shot at Sounds of the Baskervilles studio in Washington, DC
• The Contrarian: Eldritch Podcast — a track-by-track exploration of the album’s themes and the inspiration for the songs. Just like getting drunk with The Contrarian in real life!

I’m expecting to have everything ready to ship by mid-December. Can you think of a more awesome Christmas present for the anachronistic weirdo in your life? (You know you have one.)

As you were.

A while back, we told readers about a new graphic novel called Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom, by artist-writer Bruce Brown. Well, Bruce tipped us off that it’s about to be published (I’ll be pre-ordering my copy today).

The book concerns the adventures of a six-year old boy named Howard Lovecraft, who gets his grubby kid paws on the dreaded Necronomicon and is whisked away to a frightening realm populated by tentacled monstrosities and other creepy creatures. Where was this comic when I was a lad?

Part of me was concerned that HP Lovecraft‘s visions had been adapted for a childrens’ narrative — not because I was worried about kids’ fragile, eggshell minds, but rather that such a treatment would run contrary to the misanthropic, cosmic horror at the heart of Lovecraft’s works. Then I saw the art:

There’s a cool interview with Brown over at the Lovecraft News Network (yes, there IS such a thing), where he explains why a Lovecraftian graphic novel aimed at kids is a perfectly reasonable idea:

LNN:  I don’t think it is a stretch to say that Lovecraft’s fiction is neither designed for children nor is it particularly accessible to them, yet this has not stopped his themes and motifs from lately being exported to them en masse in the form of projects like yours, which repackages them for a younger audience. What continues to surprise me in almost every case is just how well this transition works out. What is it about Lovecraft’s dark themes that allows them to be so successfully adapted at what are ostensibly polar opposite ends of the literary spectrum: heavy-handed adult “horror” and children’s literature?

Brown: Up till The Frozen Kingdom, I have not heard of anyone trying to adapt Lovecraft to children’s literature. However, I believe it was an incredibly easy fit. Think about it, he crafts these tales of scary monsters that come from the seas, outer space or simply that dark shadow in the corner of the room. If you consider older fairy tales, it seemed to make perfect sense.

I guess it kind of does. Now for a shameless plug: stay tuned for the full-length CD and digital release of Eldritch Musicks by The Contrarian, which is inspired by the likes of HP Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, Thomas Ligotti and. . . Blue Öyster Cult. We’re finalizing the artwork right now, but I expect it to be available by December.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOHJUrcVdJk

[Hat tip to Shane of the Government.]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxScTbIUvoA

Is this a new Contrarian feature? Too early to tell. It does, however, seem grimly appropriate on this overcast Mid Atlantic morning. Were those tendrils I just glimpsed in the slow-moving fog?

• Lonely? Job getting you down? Murderous impulses on the Metro? Maybe you just need a little Necronomicon in your life. This infomercial will show you how to turn that frown. . . into a gaping maw of eldritch horror!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnbYcB9ctu8

• And here’s the trailer for the-released documentary, Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown. Look, it’s our pal Guillermo del Toro! (I haven’t seen this flick yet, but it’s in my Netflix queue.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnkQqfAlQ-4

• The ShadowCast Audio Anthology is looking for Lovecraftian fiction for their podcast series (they’re also interested in art and theme music). More info here.

• Cthulhu spawn captured in coastal Louisiana. Doesn’t that just figure?

• Finally! Nintendo hits on what kids really want: video games pitting Cthulhu against a skateboard-riding God!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB1Wnbhlzrs

• Looks like one of the foul offspring of Dagon and his slavish worshippers has washed up on a Panamanian beach:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQPECLcReW0

I’m not buying the “official story.”

• Cute, low-budge Lovecraftian stoner comedy. Like Harold & Kumar meets “The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward.” Favorite line from this clip: “We’re like Girl Scouts. But instead of selling cookies, we sell insanity. And we sell it for free.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oASJCozH8Uc

These fellas also have a skit called “Antiques Roadshow: Arkham, Massachusetts”:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFWHteD4EsU

More info on the geeks here.

• Finally, Here are two favorites from Toronto-based filmmaker Joseph Nanni.

“Elder Sign”:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWT07iRvI9M

“The Casting Call of Cthulhu”:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyd7U_p3mEc

In lieu of anything interesting to report (or the time required to report it), I thought it might be cute to present my favorite “tweets” from Twitter personality @HowardLovecraft. Now, I must inform you that I have no clue whether this character is indeed the reanimated HP Lovecraft or just a bored fan, but I can tell you this — his 140-character prattling is Cthulhu-rific.

As the Aeons pass blindly, the Old Ones slumber mutely. That is, until now.

Where, but from beneath the seething, inky depths of the nighttime sea, might such fetid, eldritch horrors have been summoned?

Miskatonic Church is slathered in briny ichor, its pungent offal searing my nostrils as I step hastily over the slick cobbled walkway.

A rake-thin man of Mid East descent visited me today, with tales of mysterious desert cults who worship a foul Beast from beyond the Stars.

What others may call a hobby or the queer product of an overactive imagination, I call a vocation and a wearying flight from madness.

I’ve been finding dried scales in the garden, of odd texture and an unusual luminescence. What watery phantasm haunts these grounds?

A covered walking bridge spans a narrow section of the Miskatonic. Some wretched thing with hundreds of eyes rests in its dark hollows.

For my birthday, I received one hoary tome of indeterminate age, throughout which are etched numerous symbols and cthonic prose.

To all those who offered birthday salutations yesterday: may your curdled dreams always be tickled by tendrils of imperceptible madness!

I’ve been reminded that today is my birthday. How utterly abhorrent such commemorations are.

Blather and bluster is the sum of what this old scribe has produced of late. I’d call it writer’s block, but that is too kind a descriptor.

I lately gather specimens from the garden. One such creature possessed a dozen legs and what can be loosely described as a woman’s face.

Today, I spoke to a local man of the cloth about the impossibility of a benevolent Creator. By conversation’s end, he was most perturbed.

Humanity is a seething mass of ignorance and outright stupidity, barely worth the calories they will provide the wakened Old Ones.

The hours darken and the years grow black with evil things, and mad machines spawn monstrous fears that follow sleep with somber wings.

A pulsing mass at the entrance to a sewer drain by the Miskatonic river. Ratty children of local malcontents poke at it with a stick.

I’ve witnessed that which was thought beyond the grasp of mankind’s apprehension. Now, shattered of constitution and bereft of sanity.

Despite a colleague’s descent into mordant madness, I have decided, against all sound judgment, to accelerate my investigations.

A recent translation of an ancient bundle of reedy paper by a noted Arkham professor has resulted in said academic’s utter dissolution.

As the evening air becomes cool, the fervid, wordless wailing of the degenerate forest-dwellers drowns out all other nighttime sound.

It seems @AMachen and I have simultaneously uncovered strange messages, possibly related, though thousands of miles apart at their source.

A letter from an archeologist friend includes a passage in an untranslatable tongue, which he says was copied from an ancient fetish idol.

Between the maddening tribal chants which emanate from deep within the forest canopy can be heard the obscene flapping of leathery wings.

If there is a psychological malady that can’t be alleviated by spending time with an affectionate feline, I know not what it is.

The human species’ capacity for ignorance helps a majority thwart madness, but it also produces the most despicable aggregate beliefs.

Ever Their praises, and abundance to the Black Goat of the Woods. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!

At breakfast, I spied an incipient eyeball peering out at me from my poached egg. When poked with a fork it spewed forth glutenous ichor.

Within my journal are missing pages, apparently torn out with furious haste. I remember not composing these entries, nor removing them.

Caressed by icy fingertips as I descend the basement stairs to locate the old leatherbound tome lent to me years ago by a dark visitor.

Craven women claw at themselves before a grotesque obsidian idol of an ancient being; perhaps the twisted offspring of long-slumbering Gods.

Caught up in my own deranged imaginings, some of which I’ve managed to put to paper. Others shall dwell permanently in the mists of dream.

Carved in the stone pillars that frame the entrance to Arkham Grange are two oddly familiar symbols that I cannot quite place.

Driven to despair and the edges of sanity, the weary worshipers of Dagon find themselves without respite on this sullen summer evening.

Among the shadowy brambles that grow in unkempt tufts along the sanatorium wall lie the crumpled, yellow-lined scribbles of former inmates.

I often ponder at why I have not yet found a suitable bride. Then I recall the thing in my basement and its ravenous hunger.

On my constitutional, I struck up a conversation with a young man of curious airs. His nails were long, and his porcelain teeth sharp.

Consternation is the disposition of the unseemly lot who congregate by the river. Yet their sour attitude is preferable to their red eyes.

Under these carefully arranged stones lies an aged parchment of terrible wisdom. Within it is rumored to be the words to waken Yog-Sothoth.

The strange, luminous shapes in the sky might be aurora borealis, except Providence is not northerly enough. I am, at present, unnerved.

Panic and dread rise from the pit of my abdomen at the thought of the dead-eyed, gill-marked townsfolk I encountered at the grocers.

Madness lurks at the periphery of apprehension. Behind the veil of the commonplace lurks the ancient Chaos whose true Name is known by few.

Beneath the calm stillness of Miskatonic river lies a terrible force that eminates a cthonic energy in a maddening (and widening) radius.

Tonight’s howling noises are infinitely less unnerving than the previous evening’s cackles and horrid scratching from down the corridor.

Queasy symbols perform an idiot dance across the walls of the abandoned shack. The floor is slick with briny offal and mouldering plasma.

I’ve begun a correspondence with a professor from Boston, who aids me in deciphering the curious markings in an old book of my father’s.

Tonight, I heard the foghorn wail. Tomorrow morn, we shall be blanketed in dank mist, yet hardly enough to obscure our festering dementia.

Sullen faces in Arkham’s watering hole. I don’t imbibe, but I often stroll past, wondering what foul secrets are shared between patrons.

And that’s just the beginning. If you’re on Twitter, you can follow the weird scribe for your daily dose of madness From Beyond. (You might also be interested in our soon-to-be-ressurected series of Lovecraft Haiku.)