August 2020 – Necromantic

b

Wrap me in your violent hair: Ruby Throat

Below is the oneiric music video for the song “Hu’u” by surrealist neofolk duo Ruby Throat. I have long admired Ruby Throat’s haunting, slowly sad melodies accompanied by KatieJane Garside’s lullaby-like, dreamy voice, which is filled with so much vulnerability that it is the ideal vehicle for a ghostly ballad or dirge. A voice draped with shimmering, trembling cobwebs… The quietly aching, mournful, both chilling and tender quality of their song speaks of bygone longing and obscure personal tragedy. It is described as “recall[ing] the etherealness and fragility of English folk music and the deepest black heart of Gothic Americana.” This title is off their album Stone Dress & Liar Flower, and also appears on Baby Darling Taporo.

b

Black Sheep & Prodigal Sons: Jewelry by Derrick Cruz

Artist and designer Derrick Cruz creates necklaces, rings, pins, darkly beautiful modern objects, as well as curating shows, exhibits, and craft collaborations. He is the founder and creative director of one of my favorite (now defunct) online shops/collectives, Occulter.

{See more}

b

Segovia Amil

The following is poetess Segovia Amil’s “Genesis Cries” video, directed by Amil and filmed by Laura Pol (original here), paired with the haunting Goëtia by Peter Gundry. I am captivated by the melancholy expressiveness of this film, her hands, her wraith-like garments, the unforgiving landscape, everything.

Amil also has perhaps one of the most distinctive faces among poets, an intensely vivid, simultaneously severe and extravagant beauty – the bone structure of a harrowingly lovely ghost.

{See more}