We Are the Mutants
@wearethemutants.com
https://wearethemutants.com/ An online magazine focusing on Cold War-era popular and outsider culture.
The 1983 HBO Feature Presentation bumper "combined live actors, models, motion control cameras, animation, and a full orchestra soundtrack."
“A Closer Look”: HBO Feature Presentation Sequence, 1982
Earlier HBO idents had been relatively simple affairs, the kind of simply animated and crudely soundtracked bumpers you might see on your local UHF station’s movie revue. But this bumper̵…
wearethemutants.com
ICYMI: A definitive exploration of the shadowy organizations and corporate conspiracies in David Cronenberg's The Brood (1979), Scanners (1981), and Videodrome (1983).
“An Enthusiastic Corporate Citizen”: David Cronenberg and the Dawn of Neoliberalism
The cinematic corpus of David Cronenberg is probably best known for its expertly uncanny use of body horror, but looming almost as large in the writer-director's various universes is the presence of f...
wearethemutants.com
ICYMI, we ran three new pieces this week! Paul Williams' 'Aquarius' is a library music LP that's a complete work in itself: "a soundtrack to an imaginary film" about inner and outer space.
Electronic, Ethereal, Sublime: Paul Williams’ ‘Aquarius'
Unlike most library music, Aquarius is a complete work in itself. It’s like a soundtrack to an imaginary film, and Williams uses both traditional and experimental arrangements to tell the story...
wearethemutants.com
I fully realize that poring over a record listening intently for hidden messages puts me in territory dangerously close to the various cults I excoriate in this piece but that's the beautiful irony woven throughout the entire career of Boards of Canada, isn't it?
We Are the Mutants@wearethemutants.com · last mo.NEW TODAY! Mike's definitive review of Boards of Canada's new LP: "Listening to the album as a whole, 'Inferno' is nothing less than an indictment of the world we live in now."
NEW TODAY! Mike's definitive review of Boards of Canada's new LP: "Listening to the album as a whole, 'Inferno' is nothing less than an indictment of the world we live in now."
Chants, Prophecies, and Cultic Transmissions: Boards of Canada's 'Inferno'
Fans of fraternal Scottish music duo Boards of Canada could be forgiven for being a little overexcited when news of the feverishly anticipated fifth LP, Inferno, the group’s first new music in 13 year...
wearethemutants.com
Another new piece today! Richard writes about Franco Leprino's first and only LP, "a suite of music and sound that constantly oscillates between euphoria and anxiety," released at the height of Italy's chaotic and violent Years of Lead.
Life in the Hive: Franco Leprino's 'Integrati... Disintegrati'
The work of 24-year-old Sicilian musician Francesco Leprino, Integrati... Disintegrati is a suite of music and sound that constantly oscillates between euphoria and anxiety, blending the “organic” sou...
wearethemutants.com
New today! Kelly reviews an "accidental ambient masterpiece" that Brit Paul Williams made in a garden shed entirely with a borrowed synth.
Electronic, Ethereal, Sublime: Paul Williams’ ‘Aquarius'
Unlike most library music, Aquarius is a complete work in itself. It’s like a soundtrack to an imaginary film, and Williams uses both traditional and experimental arrangements to tell the story...
wearethemutants.com
Reprising one of our favorite pieces for no particular reason. "We grew up addicted—by design—to brands that were relentlessly market-researched and vetted to be precisely what we desired, resulting in the uniquely capitalist brand of nostalgia-driven consumption that’s so prevalent today."
Crooked Masters: How He-Man Colonized a Generation’s Imagination
By Jimmy Andreakos He-Man and the Masters of the Universe bubbled up from the depths of Mattel’s marketing hive mind and irradiated the toy and TV industry with a simple but ultimately revolutionar…
wearethemutants.com
Maybe even more than the film, Jim Steranko's 1981 graphic adaptation of Outland conveys the deeply noir, deeply cyberpunk elements of the story that would find completion a year later in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.
Inventing Sci-Fi Noir: Jim Steranko’s ‘Outland’
When Heavy Metal published 1979’s stand-alone Alien: The Illustrated Story to coincide with the release of Ridley Scott’s now-canonical sci-fi horror, no one knew what a “graphic …
wearethemutants.com
ICYMI: In 1978, a Polish publishing house released a series of comics based on Erich von Däniken's crackpot "theories." Beautifully drawn by Bogusław Polch, the comics were later published in the UK as 'The Gods from Outer Space.'
Ancient Astronaut Comics: ‘The Gods from Outer Space’, 1978 – 1982
By Richard McKenna In 1977, with von Däniken mania still thriving, Alfred Górny of Polish publishing house Sport i Turystyka—Sport and Tourism—made an agreement with Econ Verlag, the pu…
wearethemutants.com
ICYMI: The early '90s comic and TV series Wild Palms present a "satirical vision of a media-saturated present/future crawling with mind-altering drugs, sinister conspiratorial cults, and ubiquitous computer technology promising transcendence."
California Dreaming: Our Cyberpunk Future According to ‘Wild Palms’
The 1980s saw the gradual ascendancy of cyberpunk narratives in popular science fiction. The genre projected Western societal trends seen in the decade---corporate conglomeration, the rise of computer...
wearethemutants.com
Thank you for tuning in to Post-Apocalypse Week here at WATM. ICYMI, here they are again, complete and uncut. First up, board game Thunder Road! The boomers got The Game of Life. Gen X got the game of trying to survive an apocalyptic hellscape.
Drive and Survive: Milton Bradley’s ‘Thunder Road’, 1986
By Richard McKenna Incredibly, it took only four years for the spectacle to regurgitate the absurdist nightmare future that George Miller had assembled in 1982’s Mad Max 2 as that most inane and tr…
wearethemutants.com
NEW TODAY! A deep dive into the ancient global disasters at the heart of all three original D&D campaign settings: Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance. What do these cataclysms tell us about the game? Why do we find the end of the world so comforting?
Seas of Blood, Rains of Fire: The Post-Apocalyptic Worlds of Early ‘Dungeons & Dragons’
By Michael Grasso A couple of years ago, a canny and intelligent friend referred to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons setting of the Forgotten Realms as “post-apocalyptic.” I thought …
wearethemutants.com
What do Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance have in common? An apocalypse in their pasts! Revelations abound about the AD&D campaign worlds of the 1980s in today's edition of Post-Apocalypse Week!
Seas of Blood, Rains of Fire: The Post-Apocalyptic Worlds of Early ‘Dungeons & Dragons’
By Michael Grasso A couple of years ago, a canny and intelligent friend referred to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons setting of the Forgotten Realms as “post-apocalyptic.” I thought …
wearethemutants.com
Post-Apocalypse Week continues with these sci-fi inspired Cola Wars commercials from the '80s targeted at the kids who dug Blade Runner and Mad Max 2.
“There Ain’t Nothin’ Different”: When Dystopian Sci-Fi Ruled the Cola Wars
By K.E. Roberts Star Wars and the Cola Wars collided, launching a series of futuristic, high concept TV ads that included all the major players. At the heart of it was one Ridley Scott…
wearethemutants.com
ICYMI yesterday: A kid's board game based on the ultraviolent, post-apocalyptic Mad Max 2. Fun for the whole family!
Drive and Survive: Milton Bradley’s ‘Thunder Road’, 1986
By Richard McKenna Incredibly, it took only four years for the spectacle to regurgitate the absurdist nightmare future that George Miller had assembled in 1982’s Mad Max 2 as that most inane and tr…
wearethemutants.com
NEW TODAY! How a series of sophisticated and increasingly dystopian sci-fi commercials, many of them directed by Ridley Scott, influenced the escalating Cola Wars of the 1980s.
“There Ain’t Nothin’ Different”: When Dystopian Sci-Fi Ruled the Cola Wars
By K.E. Roberts Star Wars and the Cola Wars collided, launching a series of futuristic, high concept TV ads that included all the major players. At the heart of it was one Ridley Scott…
wearethemutants.com
It's Post-Apocalypse Week at WATM! First up is this kids' board game based on the ultraviolent Mad Max 2. "The last surviving car owns the road and its driver becomes the ultimate survivor. Will it be you?"
Drive and Survive: Milton Bradley’s ‘Thunder Road’, 1986
By Richard McKenna Incredibly, it took only four years for the spectacle to regurgitate the absurdist nightmare future that George Miller had assembled in 1982’s Mad Max 2 as that most inane and tr…
wearethemutants.com
Three new pieces this week! First, when a New Age "acoustic vibration researcher" discovers actual sounds from Voyager, a brilliant series of space ambient CDs (and psychic awakening) results.
Good Vibrations: The Legacy of the NASA Voyager Recordings
There’s a lot going on here, but let’s start at the beginning: did Voyager I and II really collect sounds from the outer planets and their moons as they passed by? Yes, in a way. Each of the probes wa...
wearethemutants.com
"Imagine suddenly meeting one of these (left). This is one of the beings Travis Walton said kidnapped him. But, Travis claimed that though they look frightening, they did not harm him."
We Are the Mutants@wearethemutants.com · 3mo agoNEW TODAY! The paranormal 1970s inspired its own version of "religious art," and "the platform for these visions wasn’t cathedral windows or the walls of aristocratic palazzos, but the seemingly endless stream of children’s books about UFOs."
NEW TODAY! The paranormal 1970s inspired its own version of "religious art," and "the platform for these visions wasn’t cathedral windows or the walls of aristocratic palazzos, but the seemingly endless stream of children’s books about UFOs."
"The Sightings Take Place Only in Their Minds": Bob Rickard’s ‘UFOs’, 1979
First released in 1978 by Archon, a publisher based in London’s Soho district, UFOs gains some added legitimacy from the fact that it was written by Brit Bob Rickard, who in 1973 founded what would ev...
wearethemutants.com
“You are seeing an unidentified flying object. It is NOT a hoax. It is REAL.”
‘UFOs Are Real’: A Childhood Close Encounter
By Michael Grasso I’m finding it oddly difficult to write about UFOs Are Real, a low-budget UFO documentary from 1979. Not because there’s not a lot to say about it, but instead, thanks…
wearethemutants.com
I got these great MUFON Symposium Proceedings as a gift a while back but as I started reading them and seeing all the spooky bios of all the (ex) government- and military-employed scientists giving presentations to hundreds of impressionable ufologists, I admit I inexorably started feeling The Fear
We Are the Mutants@wearethemutants.com · 3mo agoNEW TODAY! Star maps, ley lines, mutilated cattle, "ultraterrestrials," missing time: welcome to the weird world of 1980s ufology...
NEW TODAY! Star maps, ley lines, mutilated cattle, "ultraterrestrials," missing time: welcome to the weird world of 1980s ufology...
“Qualified, Competent, Sincere”: The MUFON Symposium Proceedings
The suggestive commonalities of these disparate MUFON presenters does seem to buttress the now-common view that the entire world of postwar American ufology was a giant blind alley meant to distract f...
wearethemutants.com
New today from the editor-in-chief: the New Age and NASA collide in the outer orbits of the solar system!
We Are the Mutants@wearethemutants.com · 3mo agoNEW TODAY! Is there sound in space? Did Voyager beam it back to Earth? Did a New Age "sound scientist" discover a "harmonic essence" in these "primordial" recordings that heals traumas in the unconscious mind?
NEW TODAY! Is there sound in space? Did Voyager beam it back to Earth? Did a New Age "sound scientist" discover a "harmonic essence" in these "primordial" recordings that heals traumas in the unconscious mind?
Good Vibrations: The Legacy of the NASA Voyager Recordings
There’s a lot going on here, but let’s start at the beginning: did Voyager I and II really collect sounds from the outer planets and their moons as they passed by? Yes, in a way. Each of the probes wa...
wearethemutants.com
“Fantastic Stories”: Family and Cultural Memory in Martin Scorsese’s ‘Italianamerican’
After Martin Scorsese burst onto the scene with the one-two social realist punch of 1973's Mean Streets and 1974's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, he produced an ode to the milieu from which he spran...
wearethemutants.com
Criterion Channel@criterionchannl.bsky.social · 3mo ago💗 An essential Mother's Day watch: Martin Scorsese's ITALIANAMERICAN (1974) 💗 Now playing on the Criterion Channel!
