Written by Emily Ballaine

There are certain questions that haunt those who choose to make art for a living. Is this good? Is this worth it? Some buckle under the debilitating self-doubt these voices in the back of one’s head inevitably induce, while others learn to quiet the voices, to embrace the voices, to channel the voices, to say fuck off to the voices. Amina Cain belongs in the latter category. In her latest collection, Creature, Cain channels the anxieties and fears so many writers face—let’s be honest all writers—into stories that bristle on the page, desperate to burst out of such archaic containments as ink and paper. Continue reading →

Written By: Eric Street

Sacrifice.

A boy in pain prayed to all who listened.
“How may I be of service?” Said the Devil.
“Make the pain stop.” The boy cried.
“I can, for a price.” Said the Devil.
“Anything!” Screamed the boy.
“I will make you the master of pain, but you must love everyone and everyone shall love you in return.”
“Love?” The boy wondered. Continue reading →

Image By Henderson Art

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This essay is dedicated to our brother and friend, Christo Buffam who passed away recently. -je

How do you fall in love with yourself? The thick purple haze of narcissism is beginning to eat at me. It’s beginning to choke my throat, and I dream of ashrams, passionate lovemaking, and the absence of words. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to talk about it, I just want you to shut up and tell the truth. My senses are so torn and bashed, and raped by living in a society that is truly enamored with nothing. I watch America coast along and protest for $15 an hour while Syrians are being bombed with poison gas, and one hundred Korean children drowned after the captain of their ferry abandoned their malfunctioning ship,  Continue reading →

Written By: Skyler Warren

Remember the multiple phases of excitement you went through during a long and highly anticipated road trip?

First, there is the initial excitement that kicks in when the car door closes, the engine gets started and the radio is turned up as you creep onto the open road. Then, after some time, there is that frustration felt when heavy traffic is hit on the freeway, and that moment of complete relaxation when you hit the long stretch of an open two lane road as you glide between the coast on one side and flat fields on the other.

And you experience a sigh of relief when the destination is finally reached. Continue reading →

Written By: Giovan Alonzi 

I am sitting behind a drum set in a large, black room with royal blue curtains cutting the corners of a window separating me from my band and Jack Shirley. He is operating dials, knobs and screens. He is focused, moving, true and attentive.

My band and I are all very impressed. “Ready when you are,” he says into my headphones. He is operating our spaceship; he is Captain Kirk and Spock, Geordi and Chekhov and sure, even Crusher. “Fuck. Let’s do it again,” I say, staring out of the fish bowl style glass window into the flight deck where (I wonder if) my voice sounds super tiny. I look at the microphone at the other end of this private pantheon, and it’s huge. It’s the most phallic mic I’ve ever seen. It looks alien. It looks like the offspring of the Obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey. From what I’ve gathered, it’s recording the meaty “thud” of the room. Again, I am very impressed. ‘Later,’ I think to myself, ‘I must ask this man questions.’ Continue reading →

Written By: Emily Ballaine

If the pistol wasn’t pointing at my head I’d kill her. But I can’t let them know. If I let them know there will no longer be a pistol pointing at my head but instead a pistol handle in the back of my head, a glob of blood on those perfectly shined shoes, and my face in the dirt, breathing deep that wet earth smell, so deep it is all I can smell, all that I know, not the rust of blood or the fume of polish or the burn of gunpowder. Wet earth. So I can’t let them know. Continue reading →

Written By: Kat Collins

If The Horrors and The Vines had a lovechild, it might look something like Florence, Italy -based group The Vickers. Their newest album “Ghosts” captures dreamy psychedelic vibes that flow with on-point percussion to subsequently start a dance party inside an effects pedal. Continue reading →

Written By: Emily Ballaine

A pristine wilderness. An environmental disaster zone. Both phrases describe the mysterious Area X that is the centerpiece of Jeff Vandermeer’s excellent new novel Annihilation, a psychological thriller that rejects the notion that a story must either be science fiction or literary fiction.

While the first expedition into Area X returned with tales of an unspoiled landscape free of human contamination, the succeeding expeditions all ended in suicide, murder, or disease. It is with this contradictory history of death and beauty hovering in the background that we are introduced to the members of the eleventh expedition, known only by their respective occupations: a psychologist, a surveyor, an anthropologist, and our narrator, a biologist. Annihilation deals as much with each character’s competing feelings of revulsion and fascination with Area X as it does with the complicated group dynamic that arises when one is unable to detect the other member’s real motivations. Continue reading →

Written By: Skyler Warren

A comfortable, calming feeling can be achieved while sitting at the beach at night and watching the moon reflect off the waves. San Francisco’s Void Boys capture that feeling in their recent release, Starfish Single.

A mix of pop-punk, surf-rock and a little grunge are heard throughout the two track single released on March 14th through Pretty Penny Records. Coming out of San Francisco, the sound is refreshing because it doesn’t stick to the weird, noisy, pseudo-psychedelic garage-rock that the city’s music community has become known for in the last decade. Instead, Void Boys reaches back to a different part of the early 2000s, the more alternative rock side. Linear song structure and a dynamic that is easy to follow for the listener takes control of the album. Each part of each song allows enough time for foot tapping. Their songs are catchy and well structured, while not coming off as too jumpy. Continue reading →