A FUCKED-UP TAROT DECK WITH ITS OWN SOUNDTRACK BY THEE OH SEES’ JOHN DWYER

from: Dangerous Minds:

t’s a bit late to get ahold of it for a Christmas gift this year, perhaps, but I suspect that the sure-to-be-malign year of 2017 will furnish plenty of opportunities to enhance the life of someone special in your life with the intriguing and evocative “Tarot of Personal Experience,” which comes with its own soundtrack.The product comes to us from Castle Face Records, and includes a propulsive 7-inch recorded for the occasion by Damaged Bug, a.k.a. John Dwyer, better known to many as the hyper-prolific leading spirit of Thee Oh Sees; he’s also been a member of Coachwhips and Pink and Brown and the Hospitals and is probably cooking up a new musical project even as I write this. Castle Face has put out the last several Oh Sees releases as well.

The deck comes with 45 tarot cards painted by artist Kyle Ranson. The cards eschew the traditional archetypes of the arcana familiar from the Rider/Waite tarot deck, favoring identities more useful to us in our cacophonous age, such as “Stoner Older Brother” and “Saturday Morning Cartoons.” The deck costs $35 and comes with a limited-release 7-inch called “Smoggy Terminus” which I’ve been playing on repeat all morning and I personally find quite fantastic and utterly appropriate to this project. (The b-side tracks are “Horse Egg 2” and “Stellar Dust.”)

The 45-card deck comes in a hot-foiled card case; there’s also an insert with explanations of the card characteristics and a written introduction by Ranson. The colored 7-inch vinyl comes in a printed jacket with a cover painted by Ranson as well.