P is for Pishacha

My Alphabeasts for this week: Pishacha

Pretty straight forward, they are flesh eating demons from Hindu mythology. They love darkness, possessing people and even have their own language. It is said they can cause many forms of insanity in humans from their possessions and that certain Mantras can drive them out.

It's funny that so many cultures used to believe forms of madness were brought on by possessions from ghost and demons. It'd be nice if things were that simple and a few words could drive out such things. I guess it is nice that most mental illness don't eat your flesh on the flip side of that spectrum.

O is for Ouroboros!

My Alphabeasts for the day: an Ouroboros!

A fun creature to tackle, a snake beasts from ancient Egyptian times. It's described as an odd snake god who ascended from the chaos waters of Egypt and that it would constantly renew itself and die each day. Since then it has become a famous symbol for infinity represented by a snake continually eating it's own tail.

I decided to go with a playful, corpsey kind of feel.

Alphabeast: N if for Nephilim

I decided to start participating in this Alphabeasts project (http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com/) starting with the letter N so I drew a Nephilim:

I thought a Nephilim would be fun to draw because they're very ambiguous in both description and shape. Nephilims are old mythical creatures found in the older testaments of the Bible before the flood. They were supposedly descended from god (Described as "Sons of God") but born by a women so in way they are seen as half angels. Never properly described other than sometimes being giants and sometimes looking human, I thought it be fun to tackle it.

Looking forward to O next week so expect a post for Alpabeasts each Monday.

Also a dump of sketchs I forgot to post before the year ended.

and now I just got to color this one:

Space Dust #2

So we have entered 2012 and the world has not sadly blown up, as most people have said when starting out entries like this. That aside, each year I like to do a semi-loose not really overly comprehensive listing of the 6 albums I enjoyed the most over the year. So without further ado, here is a list of that with words, pictures and numbers!

6 great albums to put into your ears from 2011:

St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

A damn sexy album about self destruction, worry and madness. All set to amazingly rough guitar riffs, insane drumming and odd distortions that work together swimmingly. There is just too much to love here and after 3 solidly good albums, I look forward to her next outing.

Memory Tapes - Player Piano

Clunky, strange and flawed, I am still surprised how much this album grew on me. It has a very dark, slow electronic sound to it but with each listen I found myself more entranced by it. It lives in it's own weird, odd universe that I've come to appreciate and highly enjoy.

Washed Out - Within and Without

Perfect fuck music. A++

Gruff Rhys - Hotel Shampoo

Essentially it does sound like another Super Furry Animals album (which is great in it's own right) but Gruff Rhys does a fine job of putting his own nostalgic spin on it. It plays like a lost pop album from the 70's smashed together with a more modern sound. Also to be noted that the track Christopher Columbus is one of the most amazing songs I've heard in awhile.

Omodaka - Sanosa

Not many things earn the saying, "This shit cray" but this shit cray. Over the top electronic beats taped up with chip tunes and a geisha style singer; it is honestly a delightful train wreck of music that is super enjoyable and super bizarre. It might be grating to a few but something about it's hyperactive existence is insanely lovable.

Destroyer - Kaput

Dan Bejar is a lot like Gruff Rhys to me. Both of them are part of bigger bands I enjoy as much as their personal work and both of them put out amazing solo albums this year. Sultry saxophones mixed with synthesizers and dance tracks should be horrible, or even worse, ironic, but on this album it is tactfully executed and amazingly lush. This album got the most plays out of me this year, considering it was released in January but it never left my playlist. A perfect album and amazing last track.