Matt Katz Topless Piano Magic for Gothtober Day 2

Visit the Gothtober Countdown Calendar and CLICK DAY  TWO to see today’s Gothtober Piece!

Imagine my surprise, my delight, my utter THRILL to receive this piece for Gothtober and present it to you. Matt Katz is one of my favorite musicians, I’ve only sung with him once, but I’d do it again in two shakes of a lamb’s tail! When he said he’d do a song for us, I was over the moon.

Here you can have a wonderful musical experience whilst gazing at his fine form playing a beautiful song by Goldfrapp. But this is no routine tickling of the ivories all regular style. He’s playing it topless AND blindfolded AND wearing what looks like a knit executioner-style hood from Robin Hood days!?!

In his own words, Matt says

“This song represents a story of mystery, of a person falling in love with danger for brief moment, and seemingly pays the ultimate price for curiosity. I chose to put my self in danger and play blindfolded. Happy Gothtober yall!”

I love how it sounds perfectly autumn-like, you can feel the temperature getting cooler, maybe some wet sidewalks and skittering leaves… and there’s a pensive, gloomy longing in the tune enticing you just around the bend for every note.

You could put this in your headphones and stand in front of a bog or a marsh, looking into the distance, wistfully, pulling your cloak a little closer to keep from shivering.

How Nightmares Can Transform Your Life (DAY 2)

A Cross-Dissolve frame from “Sir’s Bad Dream”

Gothtober’s DAY 2 features Sir who is trying to sleep.
Who is sir?
Seems kind of like a hairy dude, intent on getting a good night’s rest until… oh dear, guess that’s not going to happen. Sir’s worldwide sleeping tour of recorded vinyl treasures is sure to inspire a myriad of personal emotions for you. From the very first frame of the movie, you get a sense of the main character’s somnambulistic nature, a sure clue that a sleep-induced adventure is about to take place, and it won’t be disappointing. You can hear the voice guiding him to “take the right boat” and “beware of zombies” my recommendation is to watch it a few times so that you can really grasp just how totally weird Sir’s dream is!

In the waking life of comic book and old-fashioned vinyl record sales, Mr. Canyon Fisher is a king, and the fact of this Gothtober movie is: he has sold every one of these titles featured in his store at PixelBiscuit Records and Comics. While Mr. Fisher didn’t play the main character in his movie, you can be rest assured that he empathizes with him greatly.

In other news, did you know that they have recorded the weight of the biggest pumpkin EVER?
It weighs more than a “Smart Car.”

DAY 2: Gothtober’s FIRST ANAGLYPH FILM!!!

Today’s film is a technological tour de force in countdown calendar films. You can watch Cristin Pescosolido’s film “Swifty and the Atomo-Flora” in 3-D! All you need are a pair of the classic red and greenish/bluish glasses, and you can see the eye-popping action fly out at you!

Shot with an HD 3-D camcorder, observe what happens when a visitor from another planet decides to visit our earth!

The bright, pumpkin-colored costume is off of Tom Swift and His Subocean Geotron. To create “Swifty,” Cristin used orange kite fabric and an excel spreadsheet to help calculate the roundness of each piece of fabric to make an inflatable sphere. Cristin sewed the costume together. Air intakes at the bottom of the suit help fans that sit in mesh pockets within the geotron.

You also might notice that the film has only ONE actor, and that’s not a typo. Using her mad digital-compositing skills, Cristin duplicated Jennifer Howard (in the white hazmat suit) running out of the tunnel approximately 7 – 8 times to get the desired effect of a gang of people running. Jen Howard plays Swifty as well.

Chris Morgan, composer, says “I just started playing around with ideas for fun, and ended up with the following, which incorporates elements such as an homage to the dire straits “money for nothing” drum fill, cyber-stripper doo-wop music, police radios and the swiss-made hang drum.”

Gothtober Fun Fact: You can find Swifty’s earlier adventures behind DOOR 2 of both Gothtober 2005 and 2006 in the archives.