I must admit that I caught a first glimpse of Candi Carpenter in a way that's way uncool for a "DIY music journalist" like me, and that is that the youtube feed slapped it right across my face a few months ago. So, no research, digging, or cleverness on my part, just, boom! there it is.
I noted them in my mind as "interesting" and added them on my "artists to keep in watch list". Which is a list I keep for artists that appear ground-breaking or might blow up in the future.
And I was not disappointed in that regard, because a while later they released "the fear of being human remains" music video, and, yeah, that was one of the best things that happened to me in the entire year.
When you see the video, in the beginning, you see them suspended on some kind of knife-throwers circus wheel, which also looks like these "hypnosis" wheel animations from the mid 20th century. Oh, and did I mention there is also a skeletal body. They are suspended in... "something" that might symbolize the night sky, stars flying by, or maybe it's a metaphor for eternity and the flux of æons, like the ancient greeks believed it.
there is a spoken word "intro" by Carpenter, that sets the mood for the entire piece, and also their entire work of music, i guess. Carpenter recounts an early encounter with death (likely auto-biographic), then muses about cultural taboos, including morality. They end with "I don't know why everything I think about is so ***ed up".
Then the song begins for real (or for good) and, to my surprise, it's a very cool alternative rock or indie number. Like the best of the 90s stuff, think hole or the pumpkins for part of the style.
The rest is contemporary and / or their own creation. I also appreciate that the guitar chords, and their own voice, often sound uncannily "detuned", like the song is slipping apart, in the same way our sense of rationality or morality might fall apart while watching the video (in a good way).
The video is a visual masterpiece too, there are claymotion sequences (like ye olde mtv video), green and black are dominating colors, the singer is getting a suntan in a coffin or jumping into the sheets with what looks like a skeleton.
but it never feels like "shock the audience for shocking the audience's sake", or fake, or insincere. and the notion of clay figures and coffin tans should make it clear that there is a big slice of humor and (dark) comedy involved.
after that "experience", i decided to finally research their past music trajectory. i found a piece published by "fox news" (yikes!) from 2020 which hails them as "Carpenter is taking the country world by storm, working with the likes of Dolly Parton and Brandi Carlile" and explains that "The country singer's adventures in music began when she wrote her first song at 3, a hymn called 'Jesus Care for Me.'"
And that's quite an extreme transformation, going from a country pop darling that sings hymns for sweet jesus, to a musician that now practices witch craft and sings about intimacy with skeletons and other "creatures of the night".
It's a sensitive topic, and I only read glimpses about it, so I don't go to too deep into it, but it seems that Carpenter experienced their childhood and upbringing as having elements of christian cults, and also religious hypocrisy. to a large degree.
and that their new, darker music, is an attempt to "heal" this religious trauma. and also an attempt to help and heal others. And i wish them much success in that, and also much success with their music, in general!
Now, let's get back to the "Reincarnation", which might be a fitting title. If you relate it to the other things I wrote above.
The full title is "REINCARNATION (THE SHORT FILM VIDEO SEMI-ANIMATED MOTION PICTURE MOVIE) visual EP". From what I can see, the "short movie" consists mostly of various music videos Carpenter did for their songs, stitched together in one seamless sequence of things. (well maybe not just one sequence, as really a lot is happening here!).
apart from "the fear of being human", many other good song by them are included.
as you might have guessed already, the short movie accompanies the release of their Reincarnation EP (so i guess if the movie is the "visual EP", the actual release is the "audio EP"), which is now available everywhere. and well worth checking out!
"Reincarnation" full short movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IJrt2Ls1DA
"Reincarnation" EP https://ffm.to/candicarpenter_Reincarnation
Website https://www.candicarpenter.com/
Montag, 14. September 2026
Samstag, 12. September 2026
Jodorowsky after Dune (Did you know he became very successful as an author of comic books?)
Note: No AI in any form has been used when writing this text.
Jodorowsky's works were one of my first big, big loves, and not just in the field of scifi, but when talking about media, stories, art, when I was a teenager, even before William Gibson really hit me, before Neo and The Matrix, or before I became lost within the stories of Stanislaw Lem.
How was that possible, or rather, how did that happen?
Well, I guess, and it's an educated guess (I hope!) that the majority of people these days know Jodorowsky because he did not make Dune. And that is quite the feat indeed, becoming famous for a movie that... you did not even end up making!
The story is covered elsewhere already, just go and dig on the internet. In the 70s, Jodorowsky got the rights to Dune (or he thought he could get them, can't remember exactly), then went on a completely whacked out cruise around the world, in order to recruit Pink Floyd, H.R. Giger, Orson Welles, future set and special FX artists of Star Wars and Alien... and then it went "kaboom!" as expected, even blew a few people's brains out (i.e. they became "mental unstable" for a while).
In the end, David Lynch got to make Dune instead, and, much much later, Denis Villeneuve got to make a more well-received version. (BTW, as Pink Floyd was in the trailer for that version of Dune, my educated guess is that Denis Villeneuve sought out to rip-off Jodo's ideas for good).
So, I assume people know all of this. But, I think there is a thing that is lesser known, which is what happened to Jodorowsky afterwards.
And this is that he became a comic book artist (or "graphic novel", like the art folk like to say these days). And I kid you not, he went into the comics industry, and became very, very well known and famous by making comic books for teenagers and young adults (like me when I first read them).
At least on the outside label.
Because the truth is that he took the most outrageous ideas he had for his dune movie. and even expanded them. he added some other strange ideas. and also used some of the earlier ones he had. and used that to build his comics (aka "graphic novels"). and for later comics, he came up with just as outrageous ideas.
i should add that he rarely painted (drawed?) them. he recruited other people for that, like moebius (author of the well known "blueberry" comics) or a host (army?) of others.
the books were a creative collab between him and the artists.
so... yeah, how to describe his comics? it's usually scifi, but his own style, i'd say... often very cyberpunk, there is also stuff that is like space operas, but never with a clean "black vs white" morality... more like a dirty version of epic scifi franchises...
the stories are full of references to psychoactive substances, religious cults, conspiracy, tarot, tantra, there is real violence (often getting very nasty), there is intimacy... let's just say that when some big US corporation brought his "before the incal" series to the american audience, they literally enlisted artists to "paint the clothes back on" for some panels! (quite a few panels, actually).
but it's never 100% nihilism, there are also shiny heroes and a possible, positive ending...
that's the universe, the future of mankind, like these books envision. books? well, comics, and i hope you are able to consider comics as real, serious "books".
okay some people will scream now: "wait, i know jodorowsky, but he did not do comics, he made movies, like el topo or the holy mountain".
yes, that is true. but his major body of work is his comics books (aka "graphic novels", hah!)
i suppose he is one of the most prolific comic authors in the 20th and 21th century. it is hard to find a complete list or index. but it must be close to 100 of volumes (or more).
"the incal" alone has a dozen of spin off series that are completed by now, and new spin offs seem to spawn every year.
plus it's not just scifi anymore, there are western comics, comics set in the middle ages, fantasy books. oddly enough, they stay similar to his other works, and even the western ones are about drugs, divine intervention / punishment, mystical conspiracies.
ah well.
all i can say is i highly recommend jodorowsky's comic books.
my top 5 of comics one should (could) check out by him:
1. The Incal (with Jean Giraud / Moebius)
2. The Metabarons / La Caste de Méta-Barons (with Juan Giménez)
3. Before The Incal / Avant l’Incal (with Zoran Janjetov)
4. The Technofathers / Les Technopères (with Zoran Janjetov, too)
5. Megalex (With Fred Beltran)
Jodorowsky's works were one of my first big, big loves, and not just in the field of scifi, but when talking about media, stories, art, when I was a teenager, even before William Gibson really hit me, before Neo and The Matrix, or before I became lost within the stories of Stanislaw Lem.
How was that possible, or rather, how did that happen?
Well, I guess, and it's an educated guess (I hope!) that the majority of people these days know Jodorowsky because he did not make Dune. And that is quite the feat indeed, becoming famous for a movie that... you did not even end up making!
The story is covered elsewhere already, just go and dig on the internet. In the 70s, Jodorowsky got the rights to Dune (or he thought he could get them, can't remember exactly), then went on a completely whacked out cruise around the world, in order to recruit Pink Floyd, H.R. Giger, Orson Welles, future set and special FX artists of Star Wars and Alien... and then it went "kaboom!" as expected, even blew a few people's brains out (i.e. they became "mental unstable" for a while).
In the end, David Lynch got to make Dune instead, and, much much later, Denis Villeneuve got to make a more well-received version. (BTW, as Pink Floyd was in the trailer for that version of Dune, my educated guess is that Denis Villeneuve sought out to rip-off Jodo's ideas for good).
So, I assume people know all of this. But, I think there is a thing that is lesser known, which is what happened to Jodorowsky afterwards.
And this is that he became a comic book artist (or "graphic novel", like the art folk like to say these days). And I kid you not, he went into the comics industry, and became very, very well known and famous by making comic books for teenagers and young adults (like me when I first read them).
At least on the outside label.
Because the truth is that he took the most outrageous ideas he had for his dune movie. and even expanded them. he added some other strange ideas. and also used some of the earlier ones he had. and used that to build his comics (aka "graphic novels"). and for later comics, he came up with just as outrageous ideas.
i should add that he rarely painted (drawed?) them. he recruited other people for that, like moebius (author of the well known "blueberry" comics) or a host (army?) of others.
the books were a creative collab between him and the artists.
so... yeah, how to describe his comics? it's usually scifi, but his own style, i'd say... often very cyberpunk, there is also stuff that is like space operas, but never with a clean "black vs white" morality... more like a dirty version of epic scifi franchises...
the stories are full of references to psychoactive substances, religious cults, conspiracy, tarot, tantra, there is real violence (often getting very nasty), there is intimacy... let's just say that when some big US corporation brought his "before the incal" series to the american audience, they literally enlisted artists to "paint the clothes back on" for some panels! (quite a few panels, actually).
but it's never 100% nihilism, there are also shiny heroes and a possible, positive ending...
that's the universe, the future of mankind, like these books envision. books? well, comics, and i hope you are able to consider comics as real, serious "books".
okay some people will scream now: "wait, i know jodorowsky, but he did not do comics, he made movies, like el topo or the holy mountain".
yes, that is true. but his major body of work is his comics books (aka "graphic novels", hah!)
i suppose he is one of the most prolific comic authors in the 20th and 21th century. it is hard to find a complete list or index. but it must be close to 100 of volumes (or more).
"the incal" alone has a dozen of spin off series that are completed by now, and new spin offs seem to spawn every year.
plus it's not just scifi anymore, there are western comics, comics set in the middle ages, fantasy books. oddly enough, they stay similar to his other works, and even the western ones are about drugs, divine intervention / punishment, mystical conspiracies.
ah well.
all i can say is i highly recommend jodorowsky's comic books.
my top 5 of comics one should (could) check out by him:
1. The Incal (with Jean Giraud / Moebius)
2. The Metabarons / La Caste de Méta-Barons (with Juan Giménez)
3. Before The Incal / Avant l’Incal (with Zoran Janjetov)
4. The Technofathers / Les Technopères (with Zoran Janjetov, too)
5. Megalex (With Fred Beltran)
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