Alright, as we near year’s end (crazy) and nearly a year of doing this series (also a little crazy), we aim to hone our skill in curating these monthly mixtapes. To that end, the goal is making them less simple, crude lists of 15 new songs by new (to us) artists and more sincere, sentimental nods to the cassette tapes we spent so many hours making so many years back. In those days, we sought to impress friends and hopeful girl-/boyfriends with thoughtfully arranged songs from sometimes obscure bands, being careful to never repeat a band on the same tape, and dedicating considerable time and energy to tape covers (like this one).

Today, technology’s made most everything in this aspect easier, but it’s also flooded our collective creative consciousness with an immeasurably deep field of artists, making the simple act of appreciating music daunting at times. Which leads me to another goal of these mixtapes—highlighting and sharing new sounds from new artists that might otherwise go unnoticed.

…okay, true, Santigold‘s on this mixtape and I don’t think there’s any fear she’d ever go unnoticed these days, but we just couldn’t resist her brand new, awesome single. Same goes for the new Miike Snow + Kate Boy—we’re suckers for good pop.

But, digging deeper, we start off this month’s mix with a magically beautiful new track from Stockholm-based songwriter, Johanan (highly recommend also checking out his other new track, “Holy Spirit”) before moving on to an amazing song from British multi-instrumentalist Georgia—think Missy Elliot meets the Knife—one of two female rappers this mix features, the other being the stunning Little Simz out of London. We’ve also got a new song from Canadian duo Majical Cloudz—a band we’ve never been into live but who’s wowing us with their new material—one from longtime favorite Computer Magic off her debut full-length (you can read an interview we did with her back last February), a bizarrely beautiful song from Dublin’s Cloud Castle Lake, and a ton more. Er. Six more. Math. Not our strong suit.

Give it a spin below or on our SoundCloud page and feel free to catch up on previous months’ entries.

Catching up with the rest of the world on the BBC’s new(ish), excellent adaptation of author Susanna Clarke’s excellent novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, faeries have been on my mind more often than usual of late.

Which brought to mind this blown-out, Impressionistic old Polaroid of Katie in the Japanese gardens at Richmond, Virginia’s beautiful Maymont estate + gardens, taken in—I’m guessing—1997 or ’98.

Katie + I have a pretty long history of dressing up for Halloween; honestly, it’s one of our favorite holidays. It gives us all the thumbs-up to adopt visual themes that’d normally be considered macabre at best, darkly psychotic at worst; employ masks + costumes that allow us to take on whole new personalities; and eat copious quantities of sugary candy—what’s not to like?

This year, we took on a favorite classic—Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands, with the main character and a couple of his topiaries. Our friends got a couple quick shots (thanks Connor + Martha) since we were a little too preoccupied with party prep and hosting to get some better-staged photos, but it prompted us to gather some costume pics of old. So, below, enjoy some shots stretching back through almost ten years of dressing up together, with the exception of a year we traveled for a wedding and one where I phoned it in when we were moving the next day.

2014 – Tippi Hedren and a raven from The Birds (which made the finals for KCRW’s Masquerade costume contest last year)

2013 – Día de los Muertos with our friend, Hayden

2012 – Awkward family photo (with split photo backdrops attached to our backs—tricky at parties)

2011 – We attended a non-costumed Halloween wedding, but 2010 – owl + nest

2009 – Edgar Allen Poe and the raven

2008 – Katie played it solo as a black widow

2007 – Marionettes (a costume contest-winning year)

2006 – Tapping tabloids of the moment with Britney Spears + a cornrowed Kevin Federline

And 2005 – A proud showing as Mary-Kate + Ashley Olsen—you’re welcome

Came across this somewhat ghostly papercut-ink combo I did years back whilst going through archives recently.

Happy Halloween, all. Stay safe, stay weird.

Sometimes, when taking macro or really close-up photos, we focus on the “wrong” thing that ends up being the right thing, and we find ourselves in the midst of a surprisingly complex perspective of color and form and focus. If there were a non-overused, cheesy term for happy accidents, it’d be that.

We’ve been doing some spring cleaning of late and I came across this seasonally appropriate polaroid the other day—a friend and me (costume pants being held up with twine) from the green room for a high school play—say, 1992 0r 1993—spooky ghost in the background.

Odd. I don’t remember there being a ghost in that play….

We made a trip down to the Huntington Beach Art Center today to catch Common Side Effects, an exhibition of the work of artist and skater Ed Templeton.

The show features mostly Templeton’s photography (and that of five other Huntington Beach artists Ed chose to be part of the show), documenting both the skate + music scene of the nineties and then blooming out into more contemporary subject matter closer to home for Templeton and company, painting a raw, gritty scene of the artist’s hometown.

The work’s impressive, especially for us, who were previously largely unfamiliar with his art and being brought to the show by fans. We’d highly recommend a trip south to see the densely beautiful show—you can follow it up with a stop in to one of our favorite nearly-near-at-hand restaurants, Seabirds Kitchen—one of the best vegan spots in Southern California.

Common Side Effects runs through next Saturday, November 7th.

I don’t think we’ve talked about this much—if at all—on these pages, but we’re pretty big fans of The Walking Dead. Knowing how violent, zombie-filled, and off from our normal viewing routine the show was, I actually watched the entire first season myself to see if the show was worth all the gore before deciding it definitely was, recommending it to Katie with my assurances that story, character, and acting were excellent, and immediately re-watching the entire first season with her. Ever since, we’ve been huge fans, along with most everyone else who’s given it a chance.

Last night, as any fans know by now, they supposedly…might have killed off one of the mainstay original characters and one that’s probably the most beloved by viewers and readers of the graphic novel alike—Glenn Rhee.

In the TV show, Glen shows up near the end of the pilot as a disembodied voice calling Rick—who’s just climbed into a tank in the middle of a walker horde—a dumbass. He eventually helps Rick escape and introduces him to the rest of his group. The comic follows a similar introduction to Glen, the first living human Rick encounters after his initial run-in with Morgan and his sun after waking from a coma.

In last night’s episode—number 3 of season 6, eerily titled “Thank You” (Nicholas’ last words to Glen before shooting himself)—we see the troubled/troublesome Nicholas tumble off a dumpster into the depths of yet another walker horde with Glen in tow and are shown a close up of walkers ripping someone’s guts out in a close up of Glenn screaming, leading many teary-eyed fans to believe one of our favorite characters may have breathed his last, screamy breath.

But that’s totally not the case. Glenn is 100% alive.

First off, there is zero way that the writers, producers, directors, and fans (which encompasses all previous categories) would let such a beloved character leave the show in such an ambiguous, hollow way. This is a dramatic fucking show, one that has never been accused of pulling punches or shying away from explosive, bloody excitement. It’s also one that—above all—celebrates and nurtures character development as its primary narrative mechanic. I have absolutely no doubt that they all feel Glen deserves a proper send off, and maybe dying underneath a guy no one particularly likes is not that send off.

Second, following up on that concept, there are too many loose ends. This is not a happy ending show…at all, and it’s also not one that tries to be perfect or predictable in its storytelling, but between the fireworks/flares that Glen still has that were meant to start a walker-distracting fire and the unsatisfactory lack of goodbyes between Glen and his wife, Maggie…and Rick, for that matter, that adds up to too many possible threads to great, tear-jerky stories that no writer in their right mind would just throw away for a less-than-mediocre character death.

Lastly, I’m not an expert (happily), but those screams of Glen’s seem much more of the variety of ‘Oh dear god, that guy on top of me is being eaten by zombie, how am I going to get out of here’, not the ‘Fuck, I’m being eaten alive’ variety. Again, I’m happily no expert on that. Vulture’s got some helpful reminders in the form of animated GIFs if you need a refresher though.

Basically, undramatic, shallow “death” of main character + good writing = no death. So, if we accept that Glen’s not currently dead, which he totally is not; and we accept that the people behind The Walking Dead are good storytellers who would at no cost sidestep telling a good story with one of our favorite characters, we have two possible outcomes:

First, we don’t see Glen for a while, we’re all distraught over the next couple episodes, and then, near the end of the season when we’ve maybe forgotten about him a little bit, Glen appears as some awesome, superhero version of himself to save the day, a la Michonne when we first meet her with the sword and walker guards.

This possibility—I think—is thin and unlikely. It just doesn’t sit well in the whole world that’s been set up for us.

More likely—Glen is alive, but dies very soon. Think about it—they can’t just show us that he made it out and go back to everything being hunky dory…er, as hunky dory as things get in this world. It’d be a let down in terms of cause and effect in this world and would cause us, as an audience, to step back from the world and its believability, not in terms of zombies, but in terms of consequence to actions and choices. If Glen survives and everything’s fine, then anyone can survive in this kind of situation; suspense instantly evaporates.

But if Glen escapes this situation of the zombie pile-on long enough to create some sort of fiery moth-to-the-flame sacrifice that saves not only his friends and these new thin-skinned Alexandrians, but also his wife…that’s a good closer on our friend, Glenn. That’s a send off.

Above, our illustration of the illustration of one of Glenn’s first frames in the original comic, by Tony Moore.

Some pretty pleasant pop from Richmond, VA’s own Natalie Prass today in the form of her colorful video for “Bird of Prey”. Natalie’s debut, self-titled full-length is out now and available via iTunes. She’s playing LA + San Diego in the next couple days and continuing to tour across the country into November—dates on her site.

Fair warning—expect many more cute and/or arty photographs of Owen the dog in our new studio space. Mostly on Instagram, but you know. Fair warning.