For now. I’m suspending all activity at least through the weekend. I’ll likely post once or twice next week. Then I’m going to Chicago for the following weekend. So may also send something from the road via the phone. Not that anyone cares. Look at that image though, yikes that’s beautiful. Got that from THIS Flickr page, by the way (kinda beat the system by being too fast for it, I don’t think I’m supposed to be using it; but c’mon, I’m promoting the shit… and is there any damn ads on this page?? The guy’s name is Paul Bradley, and he’s good; but if he wants to sue me for promoting his art then so be it).
- I just had a lovely internet conversation with a guy named Patrick. I had met him once before, actually twice before. And via the magic of social networking (and the power of good music) we stumbled upon each other. Patrick is from my neck of the woods and he’s always at local shows with a camera and a smile on his face. What he does with his time is pretty awesome: he produces, curates, and hosts his own local music showcase/blog. The official synopsis reads as:
“unique techniques is a podcast / single camera video blog focused on the artistic endeavors of modern day mozarts across the globe, and the talented individuals who live gig to gig in search of the meaning of life.”
Yep, the site is called Unique Techniques. Basically he has artists come in — typically it’s a rapper, but not always — and he does a very long and always interesting interview with them that he podcasts, along with a beautiful (HD, it seems?) performance video of the artist as a sort of companion piece. They’re all local artists, as far as I can tell, so anyone with an outsiders perspective would get a good glance at some of the music we have here in the Twin Cities. Go and visit him, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
This is the latest performance video, Joe Horton of No Bird Sing improv’ing some piano:
- AllMusic has released their favorite records of 2011 by genre. The site is one hell of an encyclopedia, and I’ve used it on many occasions to cite samples in my own stuff, find new artists I’d enjoy (their “similar artists” tab is a Godsend for anyone with an open mind), or look up information. On top of that, their editors have pretty excellent taste and don’t discriminate and they aren’t snobs and they just seem to genuinely love all kinds of music.
This is how eclectic they are. They’ve got lists up right now (in no particular order, and I love that they call it their “favorites” rather than the “best”): Metal, Electronic, Soundtracks, Rock, Jazz, Indie Rock and Pop, Pop, Country, Latin & World, Rap/Hip-Hop, Reggae, Folk, and Blues. And I don’t even know if they’re done yet. Heh. Checking out any one of these lists will expose you to new music (most likely).
- There’s a new trailer for the Hobbit, and it looks pretty cool. Although I still wish Del Toro was directing over Peter Jackson, but oh well.
Gots to get going soon. But here’s some brilliant Banksy for your prying eyes:
- Also, some words of wisdom on the United States’ current political structure/climate:
My view of contemporary US politics, which is that of an outsider and obviously incomplete (and possibly faulty, and subject to change) is as follows:
1. The USA is already a functional oligarchy. (Or, more accurately, a plutarchy.) It has been functioning as such for some time — since 1992 at the latest, although the roots of this system go back to before the Declaration of Independence — it’s a recurrent failure mode. Historically such periods last for a few years then go into reverse. However, this time the trend has been running since 1980 or even earlier. What we’re now seeing are the effects of mismanagement by the second generation of oligarchs in power; the self-entitled who were born to it and assume it to be the natural order of things.
2. It’s impossible to be elected to high office without so much money that anyone in high office is, by definition, part of the 0.1%; even if they’re an outsider to start with, they will be co-opted by the system (or neutralized — usually before they are elected).
3. Public austerity is a great cover for the expropriation of wealth by the rich (by using their accumulated capital to go on acquisition sprees for assets being sold off for cents on the dollar by the near-bankrupt state). But public austerity is a huge brake on economic growth because it undermines demand by impoverishing consumers. Consequently, we’re in for another long depression. (The outcome of this new long depression will be the same as that of the first one: the main industrial power — then it was the UK; now it’s the USA — will lose a lot of its remaining economic lead over its competitors and be severely weakened.)
- The latest BLACK LANTERN MUSIC release is by Krowne, called “Distorted Thoughts”. It’s a clever bastard of an EP where Electro numbers swoop up out of nowhere and make your ass and hips move.
Sitting under my laptop right now lies a brand new copy of the daunting Philip K. Dick manuscript “Exegesis”. Comprised of piles upon piles of both handwritten and typed notes, journals, philosophical wanderings, and the plain weird… the collection was an attempt by Dick to pull some sort of context or meaning out of a bizarre series of events he refers to as “2-3-74″ (or: February and March of the year 1974). The introduction alone is fascinating.
Now, the precursor to these events — arguably — was the break in he encountered a few years prior. Dick came home one day to a front door that had been bashed in, and an exploded safe with valuable — and personal — papers stolen. He apparently ran through a whole slew of suspects in his head, never finding out who broke in… or why. Like many of the significant events that came to shape Dick’s life (the infant death of his twin sister one of the best and most glaring examples), the break in somehow led to the next series of events, the next chapter, of Dick’s life with remarkable and strange significance.
That next chapter — the “2-3-74″ chapter — was very strange indeed. It started with a delivery woman, of all things. She had knocked on his front door to give him his prescribed medication after getting his wisdom teeth removed. During the interaction a pendent she was wearing around her neck jumped out at him: the Ichthus symbol, the “Jesus fish”. In that instant Dick had some sort of revelation that I still cannot wrap my head around. No matter how much I read about it or imagine it I still can’t wrap my head around it. I’m assuming my moments of clairvoyance — the few I’ve had… Ha — cannot match such a brain as Dick’s moments, but that’s as close as I’ll get to understanding it.
In the ballpark of a week later Dick saw what he describes as a pink beam of light, which he would apparently see again. And again. The light communicated with him. This would influence his later works like VALIS, The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. There were other episodes of revelation for Dick in these months, a whole slew of coincidence or divine intervention or a bit of both. At one point a panic attack stuck him about his son, he begged and pleaded with his wife that they take him to the hospital, his wife thought he was hysterical. As it turned out, his son was diagnosed after they brought him in with some form of rare (blood, I believe?) disease.
There were many more happenings I’m failing to mention here, there may have even been some he didn’t write down for all we know. Reading through the first few pages last night, it’s really hard not to get a few things out of it: Dick was — pure and simple — an unadulterated genius, and… several, if not many, of these pages and experiences point towards a whole slew of mental disorders. The editors of the Exegesis mention this also, that Dick shows signs of bipolar disorder, among other conditions. But good God, the man’s letters to friends alone are the stuff of brilliance. They’re these beautifully elegant, patient, yet humble letters where he’s writing to close friends about the things he’s going through in his life, essentially. Except he’s applying a philosophical context to everything, everything, that happens to him.
It really makes one think that everyone should be doing this with their lives. Writing down their experiences and analyzing them… both for their own sakes and the sake of the rest of the world. If such notes and journals can be so illuminating — on the nature of reality, God, culture, and more — from one person (albeit a brilliant person), then I’ve got to imagine a billion would only be that much more illuminating.
Scientists were left scratching their heads after methane gas was detected by a Mars rover in the thin Martian air this year. The confusion steams from the fact that methane molecules are released only by living organisms, and with that they are easily blown apart by ultraviolet light from the Sun, so any methane in the atmosphere must have been released recently. It has yet too be discovered, however, what’s emitting this methane gas.
- ARTIST OF THE DAY is a guy named James Heimer. James grew up in Pennsylvania and has a background in (like many artists and designers) skate culture and hardcore. His main thing seems to be doing concert posters, but his other work is stunning as well.
- Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” (aka: Alien prequel) finally has got a poster up (the tagline reads, “the search for our beginning could lead to our end”; that statue face points towards some sort of archeology-based finding about an ancient culture… it seems):
“When we look at the black holes in the centers of other galaxies, we see them get bright and then fade, but we never know what is actually happening,” said Eliot Quataert, a theoretical astrophysicist and University of California, Berkeley professor of astronomy. “This is an unprecedented opportunity to obtain unique observations and insight into the processes that go on as gas falls into a black hole, heats up and emits light. It’s a neat window onto a black hole that’s actually capturing gas as it spirals in.”
“The next two years will be very interesting and should provide us with extremely valuable information on the behavior of matter around such massive objects, and its ultimate fate,” said Reinhard Genzel, professor of physics at both UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, Germany.”
- So that drone that the US government “lost” in Iran? Yeah, an Iranian engineer has been interviewed about the whole ordeal. He’s claiming that the way they captured it was by jamming it’s satellite systems until it couldn’t take anymore and crashed. An opposing group is saying that is a bunch of hogwash, claiming that any amount of jamming — at least right now — could likely not ground such a device. Interesting stuff.
- El-P — as this article reads — hasn’t been as quiet this year as it seems. He reunited with Company Flow, first of all (in an opening slot for Portishead, oddly enough). He’s been updating this blog, periodically, which is chronicling the making of his next album. Here’s to hoping that it will finally release in 2012. In the meantime, he’s been guesting on other tracks, doing DJ gigs here and there, and even releasing a tiny bit of new material every now and again. He just released a very strange Metallica and Prince mashup that should make your head spin. This is what he had to say about it:
“I was asking people who follow me on Twitter about who the most anti downloading/digital music musicians were and we landed on Metallica (who I dont give a shit about) and Prince (who is one of my biggest influences). For fun, I put this thing together comprised of Metallica’s “Unforgiven Part 2″ and Prince’s “Purple Rain.”
Here’s the track:
- UnusualTimes.net has compiled a pretty comprehensive list of the most unusual happenings of 2011. This is only Part I of the list, featuring 25 happenings. Some of my favorites were:
So this week has been Doomtree Blowout week at First Avenue. Still is. DT is a rap crew from my hometown(s) which currently features 2 producers and 5 rappers (two of whom also produce). They have a new album out — “No Kings” — which is getting pretty good reviews. Anyways, they’ve been taking turns doing solo sets all week at First Avenue’s smaller room, The Entry. It’s been a blast. Tonight I’m hearing the surprise opener is none other than independent hip-hop legend Sage Francis. Monday’s show featured some 40ish artists. It was awesome (here’s a review). But the one I was probably the most excited to see was this group called “Kill The Vultures”.
Kill The Vultures are a bit tough to describe. Above is lyricist Crescent Moon (right) and producer Anatomy (left). Crescent Moon carries a room the same way Tom Waits does: that old-school showmanship, drenched in gritty urban history with a ringmaster type commanding presence. It’s hard to look away. One gets the sense that he’s been through some shit — as we all have — you can see it in his face, hear it in his voice. I think, at least around here, he’s one of the more underrated rappers we’ve got. As far as the music goes… again, hard to describe. There’s an urban tribal feel to it that’s vaguely reminiscent of Velvet Underground: trash cans clanging and unadulterated noise-rhythms. Most of the sampling comes from that noir-type jazz aesthetic you get from watching a hard-boiled crime film. Mysterious, haunting horns and dangerous but smooth upright bass. You know what… here, try it for yourself:
“14th St. Ritual”:
“Walk On Water”:
I know, right?
Now, in their store at their site they’ve got a really cool poster for sale… which led me to this artist.
DWitt has clearly been inspired by his Heavy Metal-induced past. He does comic books, gig posters, design work, and press materials. He’s worked for beer companies, record labels, bands, venues, publishers, even the likes of Nike. His gallery is split into two sections: Posters and Fine-Art. The style is that surreal, line-heavy, complex mish-mash of imagery you’d think of when envisioning a Mastodon concert poster (which he has done before). But it isn’t all skulls and lightening bolts. Some of his stuff features beautifully rendered omnipresent beings, fish, turtles, landscapes, etc.
I was paging through some John Dos Passos at the library today and noticed some lines that eerily apply to today’s cultural environment. It’s astonishing:
“It is time for all honest men to band together to resist the ravages of greedy privilege.”
“I make the prediction that unless those in charge and in whose hands legislation is reposed do not change the present system of inequality, there will be a bloody revolution in less than a quarter of a century in this great country of ours.”
“Law-Hating Gatherings not to be allowed in critical time threatening social upheaval.”
“Bankers Hail Era of Expansion”
“These are men for whom the rabid lawlessness, anarchistic element of society in this country has been laboring over since sentence was imposed, and of late they have been augmented by many good law abiding citizens who have been misled by the subtle arguments of those propagandists.”
So for the past few months something odd has been happening to me. At first I thought it was a coincidence; then it repeated itself. Over, and over, and over, and over again. It has to do with clocks. Pretty frequently, when I make a conscious decision to check the time, I’ll see all the same numbers. So, 4:44, 1:11, 3:33, etc. But I believe in coincidence. I don’t really believe in determinism. I tend to think a large part of existence as we know it is basically made up of odd, charming coincidences. So imagine my surprise when this repeated numeral clock phenomenon starting happening to me. So today — my day off — I’m finally reading up on it and trying to make some sense of it.
The skepticism is out there, to be expected. This guy thinks that there could be several rather simple explanations for the phenomenon, working in conjunction to actually make one’s chances of seeing these things fairly high. The first thing he mentions is that a digital clock readout with some sort of unique pattern is obviously far more memorable than a non-pattern. Our brains don’t remember 8:51 but do remember 11:11. He also proposes that clocks have a far more likely chance of having patterns in them then we’d imagine because of the simple fact that clocks have very few numbers to work with. Especially on a non-24 hour clock: hours only go to 12 and minutes go to 59. In most reported cases, the digits are small — 11:11, 3:33, 1:11, etc — which means that if most of the time the clock is showing smaller numbers, the likeliness of the pattern will increase.
But with all these reasonable explanations and my moderate personal skepticism, I still can’t help but feel something when it happens. It amazes me. Even with all the evidence the above article presents to say, “not a big deal, it’s just coincidental”, I still can’t help but think how unlikely it is. Now I’m running the numbers in my head: 1440 minutes per day… divided by 2 for a non-24 hour clock is 720 minutes (or, 12 times 60). Now in my case I’m only noticing repeated numerals, all the same. Which means there is only 6 options, right? There’s 1:11, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44, 5:55, and 11:11. 720 possible combinations divided by 6 options equals 120. Now divide 1 by 120 and you’re left with a .0083 (repeating)… A .83% percent chance of seeing a repeated numeral time on a digital clock. That isn’t much. You have a better chance of dying in a car accident, which hovers around 1%.
So I keep coming back to the question of, “if something so unlikely keeps repeatedly happening to me, what does it mean?”. And that I cannot say. I’ve got a few numerology pages up on my tabs right now that I’ve been digging through. Believe it or not, a whole slew of people have experienced this phenomenon though. It happens all the time to people. Particularly with 11:11 (which is the time that I first started seeing repeat itself; then it evolved to include the other 5 of the 6). This page has hundreds of reports and testimonials from people, collected from 1996 to 2006. Surprisingly, the Wikipedia page on the 11:11 phenomenon has given me quite a bit of insight. It’s related to Synchronicity: a concept developed by Carl Jung which states that “just as events may be grouped by cause, they may also be grouped by meaning”.
It’s also odd that I’m experiencing this now because we’ve just passed November 11th, 2011… 11/11/11. Which the Huffington Post dubbed the “Greatest Binary Day of All“. In fact, in the past two years we’ve seen a number of binary days (dates consisting of only 1′s and 0′s). The next binary day is January 1st, 2100.
Of course, I could be succumbing to some amount of confirmation-bias and/or post-hoc analysis. Either way I find it to be incredibly interesting. Now that I’ve thought about it consciously for some amount of time I wonder if it will keep happening. The key is to think about it though… to not look at clocks just for purpose of seeing if there’s a repeated numeral time.
- Every time I listen to Wugazi — which, for a while there I was quite frequently — I’m reminded of how great both the moving pieces were. Still are. Especially Fugazi. They were indeed something special. The Fugazi Live Series: A to Z has just debuted on their website: a hodgepodge of live shows spanning around a decade, from Berlin to DC. When I see this band perform live, or hear them, I really can relate to the entire experience. And from the looks of this show, I’m not alone:
I’m not sure if there’s anything more punk — as a commenter points out at the YouTube page — than playing a show in the freezing winter outside the gates of the White House.
And speaking of the DIY business model, here’s this:
