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Sludge metal act Sumac and avant-jazz poet Moor Mother have announced a collaborative album, The Film, arriving April 25th via Thrill Jockey. The lead single/opening track “Scene 1” is out now and offers a first glimpse at the project.

According to the press release for the album, the track should be considered a fragment of a work “meant to be taken as a whole,” but does introduce the sonic characteristics of this intriguing collab between artists of seemingly disparate genres.

Sumac — consisting of guitarist/songwriter Aaron Turner (ex-isis), drummer/synth player Nick Yacyshyn, and bassist Brian Cook — provide the musical backing, diving into the improvisational, free-jazz-esque playing that’s central to their excellent 2024 album The Healer and body of work in general.

Meanwhile, Moor Mother’s words were penned to Sumac’s improvisational explorations, and both parties laid down their respective parts at Studio Litho with engineer/mixer Scott Evans.

Spoiler Alert for Ghosts season 4

This article discusses drug use.

Ghosts must explain an inconsistency in the death and afterlife of two ghosts in the CBS series, which would enhance the show's robust lore. The inconsistency, quietly rearing its head in nearly every episode, affects two main ghosts. Ghosts season 4 highlights the inconsistency when it redeems the story of Trevor's death. Ghosts season 1, episode 16, "Trevor's Pants," first tells the story, flashing back to the night Trevor died at Woodstone Mansion without his pants on. Trevor becomes nonresponsive after mixing prescription pills while partying with his finance friends, and they dump his body in the lake.

Ghosts season 4, episode 4 revisits Trevor's death, which circles back to his finance career. "The Work Retreat" reminds the audience that Trevor helped his friend Pinkus by lending him his pants just before he performed the "Run of Fun" running from Woodstone Mansion to Manhattan without his pants on.

There’s a lot of great content spilling out onto Blu-ray, so I thought I’d play catch-up with Vinegar Syndrome’s avalanche of titles, which offer a little bit of everything for horror folks. Strap yourselves in!

Evil Town (1977): Two, two, two movies in one! Curtis Hanson started this project in the ’70s, then left; released, it did nothing. Enter (in)famous producer Mardi Rustam, who decides to film a bunch of new footage (some of it also used in his Evils of the Night) in the ’80s that only highlights the clear difference in the eras in which they were filmed. Dean Jagger and James Keach are on hand for this “wacky doctor and the dead bodies he loves” flick. It’s… an interesting picture, mainly from the point of view of its weird production. There’s a solid audio interview with co-director Larry Siegel, and a...

“Eyes Wide Shut” is one of Stanley Kubrick’s most divisive movies, but it does contain one of his most iconic sequences: The orgy scene. Vulture critic and writer Bilge Ebiri has published an oral history on the sequence in which assistant director Brian Cook, choreographer Yolande Snaith, composer Jocelyn Pook, and more weigh in on its months-long making. One of the biggest revelations in the oral history comes from Leon Vitali, Kubrick’s assistant who gained fame in front of the camera as Lord Bullingdon in “Barry Lyndon.” According to Vitali, Cate Blanchett had a never-revealed cameo in the famous orgy scene as the voice of the mysterious masked woman, played on set by Abigail Good.

“It was Cate Blanchett!” Vitali said of the voice. “We wanted something warm and sensual but that at the same time could be a part of a ritual. Stanley had talked about finding...