What Pioneering Queer Filmmaker Gregg Araki Is Listening to Right Now
Over the past three decades, New Queer Cinema innovator Gregg Araki has established a gloriously anarchist cinematic language: sexually fluid characters who speak in arch, ultrahip, and periodically made-up lingo; garishly colorful backdrops and eye-popping cinematography; twisty storylines that encompass reptilian humanoids, doomsday prophecies, and lurid flashes of violence. All of these characteristics shine through in “Now Apocalypse,” Araki’s new sci-fi adventure comedy on Starz. The series revolves around a doe-eyed Angeleno stoner who finds himself tangled in a convoluted government plot that ropes in everyone from a Grindr one-night stand to a crackpot YouTube conspiracy theorist (played by Henry Rollins, naturally).
The surreal first season of “Now Apocalypse” also boasts an inspired soundtrack, ranging from the Jesus and Mary Chain to Burial. The director is fastidious about the music in his projects and adds specific cues to scripts, with his favorite shoegaze songs forming a hazy throughline across his work. With the first season of “Now Apocalypse” now available to stream, Araki called in from L.A. to detail what music he currently has on rotation.
Slowdive: Slowdive
Slowdive is my spirit animal. There are four or five Slowdive songs in “Now Apocalypse”—“Star Roving” was sort of the theme song of the pilot episode. I kept going back to them. Their new album is fantastic. When they got back together and did their reunion tour, I went both nights they played L.A., and it was literally like being in a spaceship. It took me to this completely other place, it was so overpowering. It’s just transformative. That’s what it is about [shoegaze], and particularly a certain style of shoegaze that takes that My Bloody Valentine noise and the ethereal romantic beauty of the Cocteau Twins and melds them together. Slowdive really had a big influence on me.
Airiel: Molten Young Lovers
Another band that’s in the show a lot is this group called Airiel. They’re a nu-gaze band out of Chicago and their latest album, Molten Young Lovers, is super fantastic. My boyfriend listens to KCRW [storied NPR affiliate in Santa Monica] a lot, so we get a lot of new music in an old-school way. I’ll also look online or a friend will tell me about a band. It’s all through different sources, but it’s just the way it’s always been. I don’t really listen to mainstream radio. I’m not into super pop music, it’s more things I hear about and check out.
The Radio Dept.: Clinging to a Scheme
The Radio Dept. have so much in their music that is right up my alley. They also have a few songs in “Now Apocalypse”—episode nine has “Token of Gratitude,” off Clinging to a Scheme, which is one of my all-time favorite songs of theirs. It’s also one of my favorite cues in the whole show.
I always say my movies are like my kids, and I love all of them. But it’s always the most recent kid that I love most. [laughs] It’s really the closest to you. My movies are like snapshots, they’re very much a picture of where I am at the time of my life when I made them, and “Now Apocalypse” represents everything that’s in my head at this moment.
