Friday, April 15, 2016
Friday, January 2, 2015
14 for 14: 2014's Best Albums Round Up
14 for 14
2014 Albums I have Loved
Lust for Youth: International
-like the broke down, lo fi and heart sick younger brother of Howard Jones, fading Duracell's in his Casio but melodic tricks up his synth--wizard sleeves, dusty beats and ghostly traces of Robert Smith style dream-guitar
Electric Wizard: Time to Die
-heavy, scrungey and half-speed yes but also dense and psycheadelic and almost shoegazer-like at times. Put it on in a darkened room and turn up those headphones and unleash the Satanic Panic!
-heavy, scrungey and half-speed yes but also dense and psycheadelic and almost shoegazer-like at times. Put it on in a darkened room and turn up those headphones and unleash the Satanic Panic!
FKA Twigs: LP1
-this girl is channeling the Goddess, just watch her dance in her video's. Like floating in audio honey laced with absinthe
-this girl is channeling the Goddess, just watch her dance in her video's. Like floating in audio honey laced with absinthe
Broadcast: Tender Buttons
-this one came out a while back but I had sort of a re-alignment with the Broadcast this year. All of a sudden I just can't get enough of this album. I love the Kraftwerk style primitive drum machines and the minimalism and all of Trish's vocals and lyrics overall
-this one came out a while back but I had sort of a re-alignment with the Broadcast this year. All of a sudden I just can't get enough of this album. I love the Kraftwerk style primitive drum machines and the minimalism and all of Trish's vocals and lyrics overall
Peaking Lights: Cosmic Logic
-this is like the perfect summer soundtrack; naive mystic vocals, playful synths, amazing bouncing bass lines and multiple layers of rhythms.
-this is like the perfect summer soundtrack; naive mystic vocals, playful synths, amazing bouncing bass lines and multiple layers of rhythms.
Black Bananas: Electric Brick Wall
-if Peaking Lights is like Sesame Street then Black Bananas is the Electric Company. Slightly weirder and more likely to have someone stoned involved behind the scenes. Sort of hit or miss but when it hits it is amazingly almost sickeningly fun and catchy. Plus, Jennifer's vocals and lyrics are always fun to me
-if Peaking Lights is like Sesame Street then Black Bananas is the Electric Company. Slightly weirder and more likely to have someone stoned involved behind the scenes. Sort of hit or miss but when it hits it is amazingly almost sickeningly fun and catchy. Plus, Jennifer's vocals and lyrics are always fun to me
Heat: Hunter Complex
-there's a real melancholy feeling to the synths on this album, like California at the end of summer
-there's a real melancholy feeling to the synths on this album, like California at the end of summer
Kim Deal: Solo Tracks (Walking with a Killer, Are You Mine, The Root, Range on Castle)
-finally fulfilled a life-long dream this year of seeing the Breeders in concert. Kim played her new song Walking with a Killer and I was moved ladies and gentlemen, Kim is the Real Deal...
-finally fulfilled a life-long dream this year of seeing the Breeders in concert. Kim played her new song Walking with a Killer and I was moved ladies and gentlemen, Kim is the Real Deal...
The Knife: Shaking the Habitual (2013)
-this one was actually 2013 but I have to admit it is a difficult one to get into. The way the album is sequenced is very demanding on your time and attention. If you are in the right mood though it can be very transporting
Paul McCartney: McCartney II (re-issue)
-reissue of an album from 1980, Paul McCartney got himself a whole mess of bud and some drum machines and synths and made this album at his farm in Scotland. It's amazing! So ahead of it's time. It's like you think you have discovered a new sound and lo and behold The Beatles were already there before you...
-this one was actually 2013 but I have to admit it is a difficult one to get into. The way the album is sequenced is very demanding on your time and attention. If you are in the right mood though it can be very transporting
Paul McCartney: McCartney II (re-issue)
-reissue of an album from 1980, Paul McCartney got himself a whole mess of bud and some drum machines and synths and made this album at his farm in Scotland. It's amazing! So ahead of it's time. It's like you think you have discovered a new sound and lo and behold The Beatles were already there before you...
Pye Corner Audio: The Black Mist e.p./ Singles
-soundtrack to the dystopian film noire London to Los Angeles, that David Cronenberg algorythm. The darker more urban and less pastoral side of the Ghost Box sound
Sinoia Caves: Beyond the Black Rainbow
-amazing movie that touches on themes from Lovecraft, Crowley, Kubrick. A strange sci fi/horror fever dream. The soundtrack is amazing. It has nods to John Carpenter style score work but it also has plenty of melodic and rhythmic invention. It definitely works as it's own statement as opposed to being just a soundtrack
-amazing movie that touches on themes from Lovecraft, Crowley, Kubrick. A strange sci fi/horror fever dream. The soundtrack is amazing. It has nods to John Carpenter style score work but it also has plenty of melodic and rhythmic invention. It definitely works as it's own statement as opposed to being just a soundtrack
-This is independent ambient style music from the 70's, 80's. For when Brian Eno just doesn't do it anymore...
Bardo Pond: Looking for Another Place/ Peace on Venus
-Bardo Pond are doing something pretty unique right now. It's like lo fi shoegaze meets new age music, or like acid-fried dream pop. Guitars that burn like lava through sheets of echoing flute, you can't even call these jam's, they are more like Apocalypse's....
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Was Stanley Kubrick a Gnostic? Thoughts on Room 237 and The Shining.
Thoughts on Room 237 and The Shining.
Stanley Kubrick created a movie designed to "shine" a gnostic and enlightening illumination on us. Without getting into spoilers let's just say the documentary Room 327 draws our attention to crucial details in the film The Shining that reveals a deep commentary on the horror hidden in the soul of modern man. The horrific genocide of the American Indian, the bloodthirsty corruption and competition of the gold rush and America's "Manifest Destiny", the horror of the Holocaust, the horror of child sexual and physical abuse... ( I can hear Marlon in Apocalypse Now: the horror, the horror)
The Devil is US kids; America is built on blood and as Chaucer says; "The blood will out" We are bloodthirsty rats in a cage my friends, forced into competition with each other to the death and Stanley Kubrick saw it all and unflinchingly threw it back in our faces.
I have always loved The Shining, it creates such a subtle but by the end powerful sense of horror that no other film has ever really had the same cumulative psychic effect on me that I can think of.
The moviegoers next to me, a hip L.A. couple who probably just wanted a place to make out and come down after their week of soul-crushing ass kissing work were tittering and making snorts of derision throughout the entire documentary. I understand; it's easier to laugh at these ideas and those who present them than to face the reality of what Stanley was getting at. To be sure there are also some crazy ideas in the film and I am not convinced at all that Stanley aided in the faking of the moon landing footage, that is just too much conspiracy to even comprehend.
It all shows though what a monumental work of art this film and all Stanley's films are (maybe excluding Barry Lyndon which puts me to sleep). You just can't help but think cinema has dried up and died in modern times when you see the depths of work and subtle detail and research which have gone into making The Shining the poetic psychological masterpiece it is. It's an Occult Masterwork strong enough to support a million meme's and points of gnostic illuminating light.
Blood sacrifice and deviant sex pop up all over the movie... Are we talking about the supposed "Illuminati" or hidden upper echelons of society and what goes on behind their closed doors, a theme Stanley seems to have returned to in Eyes Wide Shut? Are we talking about Archontic or Biblical "Watcher" type beings who have kept us enslaved and fooled us by posing as Gods and feeding off of negative sexual violent emotional energy? Are we talking about an aspect of ourselves that we keep denied like Jung's "Shadow"?
This is what makes Great Art; layers upon layers...
See the movie and suspend your disbelief long enough to grasp some of what Stanley was hinting at, the only thing you can lose is your mind, and there is all the Gnosis in the world to gain... as the man said; "the truth will set you free..." Oh and of course I saw the movie at 2:30 and sat in seat 23!!!!!!!
Stanley Kubrick created a movie designed to "shine" a gnostic and enlightening illumination on us. Without getting into spoilers let's just say the documentary Room 327 draws our attention to crucial details in the film The Shining that reveals a deep commentary on the horror hidden in the soul of modern man. The horrific genocide of the American Indian, the bloodthirsty corruption and competition of the gold rush and America's "Manifest Destiny", the horror of the Holocaust, the horror of child sexual and physical abuse... ( I can hear Marlon in Apocalypse Now: the horror, the horror)
The Devil is US kids; America is built on blood and as Chaucer says; "The blood will out" We are bloodthirsty rats in a cage my friends, forced into competition with each other to the death and Stanley Kubrick saw it all and unflinchingly threw it back in our faces.
I have always loved The Shining, it creates such a subtle but by the end powerful sense of horror that no other film has ever really had the same cumulative psychic effect on me that I can think of.
The moviegoers next to me, a hip L.A. couple who probably just wanted a place to make out and come down after their week of soul-crushing ass kissing work were tittering and making snorts of derision throughout the entire documentary. I understand; it's easier to laugh at these ideas and those who present them than to face the reality of what Stanley was getting at. To be sure there are also some crazy ideas in the film and I am not convinced at all that Stanley aided in the faking of the moon landing footage, that is just too much conspiracy to even comprehend.
It all shows though what a monumental work of art this film and all Stanley's films are (maybe excluding Barry Lyndon which puts me to sleep). You just can't help but think cinema has dried up and died in modern times when you see the depths of work and subtle detail and research which have gone into making The Shining the poetic psychological masterpiece it is. It's an Occult Masterwork strong enough to support a million meme's and points of gnostic illuminating light.
Blood sacrifice and deviant sex pop up all over the movie... Are we talking about the supposed "Illuminati" or hidden upper echelons of society and what goes on behind their closed doors, a theme Stanley seems to have returned to in Eyes Wide Shut? Are we talking about Archontic or Biblical "Watcher" type beings who have kept us enslaved and fooled us by posing as Gods and feeding off of negative sexual violent emotional energy? Are we talking about an aspect of ourselves that we keep denied like Jung's "Shadow"?
This is what makes Great Art; layers upon layers...
See the movie and suspend your disbelief long enough to grasp some of what Stanley was hinting at, the only thing you can lose is your mind, and there is all the Gnosis in the world to gain... as the man said; "the truth will set you free..." Oh and of course I saw the movie at 2:30 and sat in seat 23!!!!!!!
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Four or five years ago all you would have heard the Mystery-Saint listening to was older music, Miles Davis's Dark Magus years, Exhuma, Dr. John, Can, Brian Eno and Klaus Schulze but a sea change has come dear readers; there is a lot of amazing new music out there. Artists are taking the control offered by modern technology to create ever more challenging and dare I say it "psychedelic" sounds.
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METAPHYSICAL FOLK BLUES FOR THAT ASS