HealeyIsland
On Ponzi Bridge
White Label Music

Frances Fukuyama’s book The End Of History, published in 1992, went directly against Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx, predicting the global triumph of Capitalism and of the Spectacle. Greg Healey’s music, as HealeyIsland, is the soundtrack of sprawling shopping complexes and virtual dating sites.

This is the world predicted by Walter Benjamin, in his unfinished Passagenwerken (The Arcades Project): the birth of the pop culture, the beginning of the shopping mall, of commerce, of virtuality. It’s the simulacrum’s smug satisfaction that it is real, that it has it all under control, under wraps. It’s a dustbin museum, full of never-ending card catalogs, everything dated and numbered, and we are told to go pilfer, go explore. But the museum is not real life; Healey remembers the outside, the sunshine and dirty gutters. Healey both pays reverence to and makes a mockery of high-definition, high-gloss early-’90s CGI utopianism in On Ponzi Bridge. Healey loves and hates the spectacle, and fights back with the keenest of British weapons: sarcasm.

On Ponzi Bridge is an enjoyable listen, and increasingly so. It’s a solid collection of songs that works both as a whole, and as individual components. The first couple of tracks are more vocal-oriented, sounding like Bryan Ferry collaborating with James Ferraro, before segueing into the more instrumental latter half, that recalls some of Fripp’s interludes on Another Green World. It also sounds like menu music for a video game, like you fell asleep with your NES console on pause — super sharp and high-defintion, but still with a funkiness, a hip-hop groove. Like Duke Ellington said, “That’s cool. But does it swing?”

But,all the double entendres and smirking menace aside, the music that Healey makes is astounding: so many subtle layers, different keyboard sounds, drum pattern variations. He’s a legit electronic producer, and is using many of the deft tricks available to the discerning beatsmith to create a new New Romanticism, a bedroom synth-pop library music floor banger. On Ponzi Bridge is the amphetamine-fueled, cynical take on Boards Of Canada’s wistful reminiscence; it’s sharp, rather than blurry, competitive while still being reverential. It’s the sound of a generation of kids determined to make the illest beats imaginable on a hacked PlayStation council. Precocious and hungry, they defy the people who say that everything has been said and that we are doomed to endlessly vomit and regurgitate our parent’s generation. If the past was so great, why isn’t the present perfect?

Healey is refining the past, melting it down to purest ore, taking what he wants, and laughing at the rest. He is using every trick at his disposal, including great songwriting, musicianship and production. On Ponzi Bridge is a model Edwardian village to wander around in, to transform your days and nights into smooth gleaming pleasure cruises, on your way to the launchpad.

Ω

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

HealeyIsland – On Ponzi Bridge Album Review

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANTHONY MASTERS; ABOVE ARTWORK BY EMILY FRASER

Evan Caminiti

“Fading Dawn” from Dreamless Sleep

Barn Owl

“Void Redux” from V

Barn Owl’s music has a way of slowing down attention, slowing down one’s perception of time. Meditation produces a similar result. What are your intentions with putting music out into the world? Are they aligned with such qualities?

Evan Caminiti: I approach music less conceptually than I once did and rely more on intuition and daily practice, embracing the strong moments of improvisation rather than trying over and over again to execute an idea based on concepts that don’t resonate viscerally. Having a specific vision and knowing what we want to hear is crucial; I would say we always make the kind of music we would to listen to. I think slow music, deep music that taps into something beyond just entertainment, music that engages your body and mind in an all encompassing way — that is really valuable and crucial. Personally, it is a major part of my well-being, and I hope through releasing music that it does the same for others. I find it to have a grounding effect, both energizing and calming.

Barn Owl Band Interview (cont’d)

What does meditation mean to you, and when did you first encounter the idea? Do meditative states influence the creation or consumption of your music?

Evan Caminiti: For me, music comes first and the meditative benefits are one part of it. Long duration music really introduced me to meditation in some strange form. Raga, especially the slowly shifting styles of Dhrupad and Pandit Pran Nath, and the music of La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, Terry Riley, and Pauline Oliveros, were important in that they allowed me to literally hear musically differently. Before getting into all of these artists, I experienced the powerful live sets of Sunn O))) and Om, which primed me for the transcendental philosophies these [other] artists have explored for decades.

Meditation produces a slippery sense of self, when you cease to identify your thoughts. Can you speak about the self and how it effects your creativity?

Evan Caminiti: The ability to dissolve the ego and allow performers and audience alike to slip into a trance state is one of the most amazing and rewarding things about music. It’s the moments where we’re open where we can leave the self behind and become fully absorbed with the music; there we can become part of the continuum of inspiration and influence.

There are some studies about the ability to induce deep trance states (theta and delta states) by listening to tones (binaural beats). Theta states are also brought on by simple, repetitive tasks, and these states are attributed by artists and scientists as responsible for inspiration and clear insight. What are some things you do to clear your mind and allow for inspiration to occur?

Evan Caminiti: Having a comfortable environment at home is really helpful in creating the right environment for inspiration and insight. Surrounding myself with positive influences and creating an altar-like space in my home studio is essential.

BARN OWL INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

Meditation emphasizes letting things arise, and letting thing go, without clutching or attachment. I have always found improvised music very similar to this. How do you compare the process of recording, versus just playing music in the moment?

Evan Caminiti: Improvisation and recording are inseparable. I was talking to a friend the other night. He brought up a quote; I think it was something Mark Hollis said. It went something like, “The first time you play something it is at its peak.” That philosophy makes a lot of sense to me because I’ve found over the years that improvisations and first takes can possess this vital essence driven by pure expression which is impossible to attain when something that is contrived. The catch is knowing how to improvise without wanking or noodling and knowing how to edit improvised recordings down to the essential parts. Furthermore, not being afraid to edit the recordings and shape them into something new. This approach where improvisation, composition, and production are equal is really exciting to me.

Hardcore practitioners of meditation often advocate material renunciation. What is your take on creature comforts versus ascetic living? Materialism is to a degree necessary in the music industry; how, if at all, does that dialogue affect your creative process?

Evan Caminiti: I’ve been spending a lot of time lately with my modular synthesizer. I get endless hours of joy and inspiration out of the synth; it’s also essential in a practical way as a working musician, so yeah materialism is necessary. Like collecting records, there is no substitute for vinyl, but they take up a lot of space. We all have our creature comforts but I keep things really minimal; my small apartment certainly helps with that. As far as effecting the creative process, I look at the limitations of a small space and the fact that I can’t afford a really elaborate setup as a good thing. There was an interesting piece by Mark Fell in a recent issue of the Wire that discusses how limitations lead to innovation. The less you have, the more you’ll get out of what you’re working with and it can produce unique and personal results.

You recently played at the SF Zen Center. Can you describe how this came about and what the experience was like? Have you and do you wish to do more things like this in the future?

Evan Caminiti: This experience was thanks to Jennifer Mearz, a writer for the Bold Italic here in SF. The experience was great, totally unique. One of the most amazing things was reading the blog of one of the Zen Center’s residents, who happens to be deaf. In detail, this individual described the physical sensations of our set, the way vibrations moved from the heart to the belly, all over. It sounded like a very multi-dimensional experience. The physical aspects of our music is a key element, something people may miss out on if only listening at home and not coming out to shows. That being said, the PA we used that night was actually very small so we weren’t half as loud as we like to be. So yes, doing more things like this in the future would be great, but we would want to make sure the PA is powerful enough so we can give everyone the best experience possible. Good sound systems are becoming increasingly important to us now that we’re playing so many electronics live; we’ve really wreaked havoc on some inadequate systems.

Your latest record is much more electronic than your previous outputs. How did this shift come about? Do you think that the shift between analog versus digital changes the meditative atmosphere at all?

Evan Caminiti: We’ve always used both analog and digital instruments. There are more digital elements on this record, but you know, almost all the synths were analog, we used a bunch of tube amps; there is just no substitute for these things. This shift came about because of the desire to expand our techniques and try new things. We just weren’t inspired to create a record structured around the guitar as the primary instrument. We’ve made a lot of albums that took that approach already. We have always been drawn to a hands on approach so we gravitated towards synthesizers that allow the user to sculpt the sound from the ground up. Your options open exponentially when you move from the setup of guitar, pedals, amplifier, on to synthesizers — massive octave range, full control over the stereo field, a vast array of timbres… it goes on. I love guitars, but it’s refreshing and inspiring to work with something so open; it’s like a blank slate.

Do you have particular records that you use as a tool for getting into a meditative zone? Are there any positive or negative experiences of note stemming from meditative states in your life?

Evan Caminiti: I listen to Alice Coltrane’s devotional tapes pretty often, and in situations like being a plane, where I’m feeling on edge, those songs have an amazing calming and empowering effect. On the opposite side of things, I’ve certainly been in situations where I get on the bus after a long improv session or a deep listening [session] and I’m just not ready to deal with all the chaos of the day-to-day BS after been in such a deep zone. It’s like crossing a barrier and you then have to re-acclimate to the outside world.

Ω

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2. Prince Rama Band Interview: Utopia Of The Now Age (w/ Manifesto)
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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Barn Owl Band Interview: A Bilateral Reflection On Meditative States

Dreijer goes on to write in the same manifesto that the two were hoping to create “… [music] that is impossible to consume in a quick and easy way. Long difficult songs.” This idea forms a tension on the album, and one that wholly distracts from the bulk of the songs. The 19-minute “Old Dreams Waiting To Be Realized” is nothing more than the noise of a few industrial machines carrying on for about 19 minutes too long — though it is incredibly triumphant in its ability to achieve exactly what The Knife set out to do: dare the listener to turn it off. “Crake” and “Oryx” function as much shorter ways to create this tension, accomplished by the sounds of instruments pulling at each other in a way that’s both unsettling and generally discomforting, just as likely to be skipped as something nineteen times its length. These three tracks, which sorely stick out from the rest of Shaking the Habitual, so desperately fill the desire of the group to be subversive and counterculture that it detracts from the album as a completed work. The lack of structure or nuance — traits that have defined and enriched past albums — makes these pointless tracks all the more frustrating. But maybe this is the way both Olof and sister Karin purge their hatred of pop culture norms, creating something so insidious that regardless of its success there remains a sense of accomplishment; a weight lifted.

The rest of the album, which I should point out is most of the album, plays out tremendously. “A Cherry On Top” owes its debts to David Lynch scores, a haunting formation of organ sounds and indistinguishable loops played mostly in reserve before barreling towards a crescendo of what sounds like an oil drum being rolled down a hill, set to the sputtering of a tractor engine. In so many ways, Shaking the Habitual is like a car crash playing out on a fuzzy television screen. You wince and squint, never looking away for fear of missing an important human action or display of physics-defying mutilation. Even on tracks like “Without You My Life Would Be Boring” and “Raging Lung”, two of the more exuberant, dance-oriented songs on the album, Shaking the Habitual commands every bit of energy and attention a listener might have. Maybe it’s the way the group has positioned the album, what with the lengthy PDFs explaining the release and their mindset, that I feel guilty pulling even my eyes away from the ticking MP3s. Breathing too heavily, blinking too fast — any disruption in your normal routine seems to disrupt the organic music, but with songs as impressive as “Ready To Lose”, it’s hard to not play by their rules.

But for all the album’s successes, from the whimsical flute interludes to the home-recorded hauntings and incredible live drums, Shaking The Habitual leaves little room for its listeners. It’s an entirely insulted experience, one that feels like it should be left alone and admired but never tampered with. To think outside of its predetermined box would be blasphemous. For an album so esoteric and politically-charged, it should, and likely will, warrant a deal of discussion from its fans. But to impose opinion on a piece of art so definitely set in its ways seems almost rude, in a way. For as much as The Knife question social norms, it’s awfully bad at questioning its own habits.

Shaking the Habitual could do a better job at teaching rather than preaching, but their music remains an industry outlier, and a good one at that. The ambient numbers are indeed challenging (don’t mistake that for a good thing), and the album as a whole requires a commitment few people are able to make. If you’re excited about Shaking the Habitual as a way to reaffirm the notion that The Knife are indeed the greatest electronic artists out there, as so many fans seem to think, then you’re no doubt going to fall in love all over again. But for newcomers, and those who are just curious, you might also find something worthwhile here. Just whatever you do, don’t call it “pleasing”.

Ω

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2. The Knife, Planningtorock, Mt. Sims – Charles Darwin Opera Preview Video {?!)
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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

The Knife – Shaking The Habitual Album Review & Olof Dreijer’s Manuscript

Maria Minerva
Bless EP
100% Silk (2013)

On her website, Maria Minerva (née Juur) tells us that once she left home, it was easy to do it again. Indeed, for her, home is wherever she lays her head and finds a wifi password. This impermanence and transience hovers above her music like a ghost, belied by the Euro disco and dance pop stylings that she deploys. It is this combination, of the fugitive and the substantial, of the common and the uncommon, that gives her music both its reach and dynamism.

Born in Estonia, the tiny northeastern European state hemmed in by the cold waters of the Baltic and Russia, in 1988, Juur’s creativity is clearly shaped, in part, by her early experiences in the dying days of the Soviet Union. Growing up on a “model” Soviet-era concrete suburb, her web biography recalls heavy Russian influences, hated trolley buses, shitty TV, lycra, and, crucially, badly-produced 1990s Euro disco.

Juur’s music harnesses the melodic imagery of Euro disco, with its relentlessly vacuous tunes and dry upbeat rhythms, and subtly distorts and disconnects it before combining the result with sly vocal dissonance. In this way, her music deliberately inhabits a hinterland that is between destinations, using this to powerful artistic effect.

The stand out track on the EP, “Black Magick”, with its deadpan and detuned vocals delivered atop the aforementioned awkward melodic imagery, typifies the knowingly innocent, alienated and strangely plaintive attitude of the female protagonist present in all these songs. As this track evolves, the lyrics cleverly mutate, from an opening few lines that could be found in any mainstream pop song, via subtle shifts of stance and ground, to a scenario and meaning that is darker and more complex in nature.

MARIA MINERVA – BLESS EP ALBUM REVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

Allied to her relationship with the land of her past, there is also an undoubted arts and academic context to Maria Minerva’s music, with her background at Goldsmiths College in London. In her earlier album, Cabaret Cixous, her reference to Hélène Cixous, the feminist philosopher and author of “The Laugh of the Medusa”, sheds a light on her interest in feminist philosophy and literary criticism. This framework is perhaps also reflected in her decision to adopt the nomme de guerre Minerva (but that’s a whole other can of worms). (Editor’s note: See extended info panel below for expansion on the content in this paragraph.)

Juur is constantly moving forwards. Her career in music only began in 2011 when she signed to the renowned L.A.-based label Not Not Fun. Since then, there have been a string of releases and an extensive itinerary of tours across Europe, the USA, and Australia, including an appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Now based permanently in America and in pursuit of a green card, she is involved with the esteemed UCB Theatre, whose stellar alumni includes Robin Williams and Tina Fey.

Strangely though, for an artist who has embraced the USA, it is within the European literary and philosophical traditions that Juur’s work seems to find its home. It is perhaps at odds with the philosophical outlook of her music, but I find echoes in her output of that other great émigré of forgetting, whose work in literature relied on displacement, exile and connection, Milan Kundera.

This is a great EP full of that strange but effective hybridized music the New York Times called “dance pop made sallow and creepy”. It is dark and dirty and laced with a sleepy sexiness that is made all the more disturbing because of the sweetness and innocence that also pervades. Maria Minerva is destined for greatness.

Exploring Maria Minerva’s Artistic Framework
Via The Feminist Philosophy Of Hélène Cixous
& The Greek Mythology Of Minerva And Medusa

 

There is undoubtedly an artistic and indeed literary framework to the music of Maria Minerva/Juur, and this is to be found in many aspects of her oeuvre. As a graduate of Goldsmiths College in London, her output reflects an interest in the work of Hélène Cixous, the French feminist writer, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. The feminist context is clear, but perhaps Minerva/Juur sees a kinship with Cixous, not only as a woman struggling against a world where, as Cixous says, an apartheid exists and women are the dark heart, but also as an émigré. The “belonging constituted of exclusion and nonbelonging” that Cixous and Derrida — both French Jews in Algeria — experienced, is perhaps also experienced by Juur. Juur, who grew up in an area of her country that was affected by a heavy Russian influence, may have been alienated by the impact of this ruling foreign occupier who sought to change both the landscape and the culture of her homeland. It is possible that the Russification of Estonia is where the dislocation that led Juur to moving from place to place, finding a home wherever her head could lay, began.

Hélène Cixous

Read “The Laugh of the Medusa”

Purchase “The Laugh of the Medusa” on Amazon

Minerva

In her major essay, “The Laugh of the Medusa”, Cixous offers a kind of manifesto to disempowered womanhood, calling them to create a new paradigm of writing, an “écriture féminine” — a paradigm that could equally apply to other forms of creativity. Cixous celebrates the differences and “infinite richness” of the individual female constitutions and the unclassifiable nature of female sexuality. For Cixous “women’s imaginary is inexhaustible”, however, she states, this great font of unbounded creativity is suppressed, carried out furtively and in small measure, guiltily, like masturbation, subject to the obsequious relayers of imperative laid down by an economy that works against womanhood. In the work of Juur we find, perhaps, a knowing take on that furtive and guilty secret in the innocent voice that is shot through with sleazy and suggestive sleepiness. Juur has, after all, responded to the call but in a manner only possibly in the early Twenty First Century, some thirty eight years after Laugh of the Medusa was written.

Juur’s choice of name, Minerva, and the interplay between the characters of the myths of Medusa and Minerva is significant. Medusa was a beautiful and much-desired young woman with magnificent long hair. The youngest of the three daughters of those titans of the sea, Phorcys and Ceto, she was the most beautiful but also the only one to be mortal. These three sisters, Medusa, Stheno and Euryale, were said to have great wisdom and served as priestesses to the virgin goddess of wisdom, Athena.

Minerva was the Roman goddess of wisdom, magic and the arts and defense. The connection between Minerva and Medusa is one of mutating history and co-option, with the Roman’s equating Minerva with Athena. According to the late version of the myth by Ovid, Athena is the goddess who, on witnessing the rape of Medusa by Poseidon, punished Medusa by transforming her beautiful hair into snakes and making her face so ugly it would turn those who looked at it to stone. In this version of the myth, the victim is the transgressor and, in the eyes of Perseus, is rightly punished by Minerva (Athena). Perseus then beheads the mortal Medusa.

Juur appears to be inverting the narrative imagery evoked by Cixous, deliberately and ironically placing herself on the side of the goddess who judged and then harshly punished the innocent victim of rape, the mortal woman that was Medusa. In doing this, she throws the dialogue into sharper relief, defining, perhaps even more clearly, through her clever and imaginative use of the the idiom, the current and ongoing plight of womanhood. For Cixous “woman’s imaginary is inexhaustible” (sic), “their stream of phantasms is incredible”. Through her persona Minerva, Juur has not only absorbed and acknowledged this tradition, but reinterpreted it for the difficult and dangerously ambiguous times in which we live.

Ω

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1. South Central – The Owl of Minerva Album Review
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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Maria Minerva – Bless EP Album Review & Exploring Her Artistic Framework Via Mythology And Feminist Philosophy

Vote for Mysticism & Spirituality in Modern Music: REDEFINE magazine’s SXSW 2013 Panel Download Hi-Res Infographic

Vote for Mysticism & Spirituality in Modern Music: REDEFINE magazine’s SXSW 2013 Panel Download Hi-Res Infographic Explore all articles related to influential thinkers

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Mystical & Spiritual Ideas in Modern Music: REDEFINE magazine’s SXSW 2013 Panel Pitch

Part I: Now Age Manifesto And Q&A

TEXT BY THAD MCKRAKEN; Q&A BY VIVIAN HUA; MANIFESTO AND ANSWERS BY TARAKA LARSON

The fundamental nature of time itself wasn’t something I’d contemplated at great length until roughly a year ago. I think what turned it around for me was when I accidentally summoned what classic occultists would refer to as my Holy Guardian Angel. Out of nowhere in the summer of 2010, I started performing sigil projection exercises which seemed to be coming from somewhere else. I felt strangely and unconsciously compelled to envision myself in third person, as an external character wearing a sleek black suit. I was confronting my demonic persona — the part of me that longed for frivolous shit like wealth and power — or something to that effect. Who am I kidding, I had no fucking idea why I was doing this, but the further in I got, the more the scenarios played themselves out in my head; they had me shaking hands with the world’s elite and proceeding to haunt their unconscious.

To make a long story short, this version of myself that I’d been unwittingly focusing on actually showed up in my room one night. I will confess that I wasn’t fully awake. I was in a hynagogic sleep state that a lot of mainstream psychologists would refer to as sleep paralysis. I taught myself how to do this by experimenting with astral projection years earlier; it fucked with my head forever. But it’s what “I” told myself that’s relevant here:

They then projected a telepathic communiqué into the depths of my spirit. My reality became this video-like demonstration which oscillated between perspectives, drawing connections to something I’d also randomly started contemplating months prior – the Gnostic concept of the Holy Trinity:

• The Father (or Holy Guardian Angel) – the me who is eternal and exists outside of time;
• The Son – the me who exists inside what we refer to as human reality;
• The Holy Spirit – the conjunctive tissue which binds us all into one coherent plotline; time itself, shown to me like a glowing orb which I existed inside of, though apart from my cosmic overmind persona (it/I watched from outside as if floating motionless in outer space).

Sounds completely nuts right? Well, it does until you realize you’re one of about a billion people throughout history who have had this type of shit happen to them. Unfortunately, these topics are usually relegated to the easily disregarded world of “New Age” literature, ensuring that anyone who believes a half-man half-God walked the earth 2,000 years ago will laugh them off without a second thought. The term “New Age” has been so intentionally co-opted throughout the years by military and religious interests that even I hate it. Luckily, writer Daniel Pinchbeck has been trying to rebrand the neo-psychedelic evolution of these concepts as “Next Age.”

And here, we have the multi-talented Taraka Larson of Brooklyn’s Prince Rama putting a much needed artier spin on ancient New Age ideas with The Now Age Manifesto. It’s a work about the importance of intentionally transcending so called normal space-time perception and entering what Larson and English philosopher John G. Bennett refer to as Hyparxis, a hypertime dimension that has a timeless quality noticeable to human perception.

In a way, these experiences and mind states kind of have to happen to you before you’ll take any interest in them – but The Now Age Manifesto details concepts that will help you get there if you try. The entirety of Larson’s manifesto can be viewed online at www.now-age.org.

Symbolic Power: In Practice

TEXT BY THAD MCKRAKEN; Q&A BY VIVIAN HUA; MANIFESTO AND RESPONSES BY TARAKA LARSON

About a year ago, Prince Rama were participating in a Portable Shrines record release event, and were projecting tripped out variations of a sacred geometrical pattern, the Sri Yantra, on the screen behind them. Their set led me to do a bit of research. What managed to stick with me the most was that in certain mystical traditions, downward facing triangles represent sacred feminine energy and conversely, upward facing triangles represent sacred masculine persuasions. I’ll never be able to get that out of my head. It was because of this area of internet inquisition that now when I look at Larson’s use of intercepting triangle images throughout The Now Age Manifesto, I see the convergence of masculine and feminine sexual energy creating an orgasmic state of dislocated timespace perception. The underlying philosophy behind basic magickal practice involves the recognition that states of stoned, erotic, and artistic excitation are the holiest of sacraments. Larson calls this Hyparxis.

SOUND AND MUSIC
Sound is both FORM and FORMLESS.
It can be recorded on various forms,
but its original state of being is formless.
Its paradoxical state makes it a fundamental building block
for constructing the architecture of utopia.
SOUND CAN CREATE FORMS.

The science of cymatics demonstrates that a single tone can manifest
complex geometric forms out of sand.
SOUND CAN DESTROY FORMS.

Ultra-sonic weapon used to sink approaching ships.

[The "Trust" exercise has] become kind of a very personal exercise for myself. I feel like it’s really intrinsic to the idea of music-making – and performing, really. There has to be this element of trust between the creator and the audience, the performer. I feel like trust and danger are very linked together; without danger, you might not see a reason to trust; if you don’t trust, then you’re in danger. I feel like, in a lot of ways, music-making is kind of a dangerous process – and performing, too. There’s an element [of putting yourself out there. On the other side of creation... there are like these destructive elements that come into play... we can make [destruction] into something constructive, and have that balance. Creating is sort of a community and a bond between the audience and the performer. I feel like whenever I do that, I feel so much more connected with the audience… if there’s a trust, there’s a bond, a connection that wouldn’t be there otherwise. It’s really intimate, too.

We just performed with Liturgy. They’re a black metal band. The lead dude, Hunter [Hunt-Hendrix], gave a black metal lecture at the show we were doing. His lecture was kind of all about courageousness and how it’s related to [transcendental] black metal… for him, courage is a big part of [transcendental] black metal. For me, trust is a big part of the Now Age. Trusting is… really like surrender, and surrender is the ultimate form of courage. It’s the bravest. It’s like giving yourself completely over to whatever situation, trusting that you’ll come out of it alive, as a better person. – Taraka Larson

Part II: Revelatory Experiences With Prince Rama

Q&A BY VIVIAN HUA; RESPONSES BY TARAKA LARSON

Prophetic Dreams

Basically, I was on a house boat when it happened. I was kind of really involved in filmmaking at the time; I thought that was what I wanted to do. I wasn’t playing music at all. I had this dream that I was in this weird sort of an abandoned park of some sort, with these kind of abandoned structures, almost as though it had been an outdoor market at some point. And I was kind of walking around, and there was this one abandoned structure that seemed like it had some movement going on in the background. I stopped to see what was going on, and there was this animal, sleeping in the back. I couldn’t really make out what it was. And then it got up and kind of saw me and started coming towards me. It was like this giant, seventeen-foot-long prehistoric leopard. I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is so insane.” I got my camera out — my Super-8 Camera — and was like, “I gotta film this.” So I take it out and just as she’s getting close to me, I started filming. As soon as she heard that sound, she just leapt back. It scared her or something. She went back to hiding where she was, and I was like, “Oh no! Come back!” I tried to coax her to come back again, and she kind of slowly crept back. I pulled out my camera and softly pressed the trigger, and she leapt back again.

It kept going back and forth a couple times. I can’t shoot her; it’s not working… so I finally put the camera down and am like, “Alright, just come over here.” She came over and once it was established that there was no more threat of her being filmed, she just collapsed in my lap and laid her head in my lap. And I started stroking her and singing to her, and I was singing this really weird language — I don’t even know what; it was a really weird hymn of some sort, a really haunting melody. I’d never heard it before, but I could tell she was responding to it. She was becoming more and more relaxed and then, all of a sudden, there is a gurgling sound in the back of her throat and it was almost like she was trying to make sounds with me. A voice came out of her, out of nowhere — a really beautiful, high-pitched harmony. She was singing with me. We were both singing together. I woke up from the dream and it just seemed so clear to me; I can’t film anymore. I have to sing. This is what I need to be doing. It was almost like the leopard was my soul, visiting me. By me trying to film it, it wasn’t responding, and it was trying to leap away from it. But as soon as I started singing, it knew the song. It had remembered… it was kind of poignant. It was kind of a game-changer.

When was this?
This was like my Junior year of college? Maybe like 2008? No, it was more like 2007.

Do you consider this a realization on a subconscious level or the universe directing you in that way?
Probably a bit of both.

It seems totally intense to have an animal like that hanging out on your lap.
Yeah, totally. I don’t usually have dreams like that. I generally have, I don’t know, kind of annoying dreams about like, checking email or something… I had [another] dream right before 9/11 that was like, this city on fire… there were planes all around, and I didn’t know it was New York City, but Abraham Lincoln came up to me — he was in a lot of my dreams for a while — he was in like every single dream for a really long time — and said, “New York City is burning.” And the next morning, 9/11 happened.

Paranormal Encounters

Me and Nimai both have had pretty extensive ghost experiences. I had one not too long ago; I was at my parent’s house in Florida, which we found out later was built on this old Confederate farm. There was apparently a slave quarters that had burnt down on my parents’ property, and I had no idea until afterwards, when we all started having weird ghost experiences — everyone in my family [did]. I had this one where at the time I had this weird dream. I woke up and got up and splashed water on my face and went back to bed — but the bed just felt really weird. I felt, I don’t know, kind of an erupting feeling coming over me where I was paralyzed; all of my limbs felt really cold. There was something really heavy pinning me down, and I look to the side of the bed, and there’s kind of an open closet right by the bed. There seem to be these silvery film projections — that’s what they look like at first — but it was just a man who was dressed completely in an Confederate soldier outfit. He was kind of an older man, but then his face and body started transforming to become younger and younger, and then behind him, all of a sudden — this is going to sound really weird — this other image started coming up behind him and growing bigger and bigger. All of a sudden, it came in front of him and totally eclipsed him. There was this giant baby head. I don’t know. He was growing younger and younger, and all of a sudden, this giant baby head came and was staring right at me. I was like, “Oh my god, this is so crazy.” So I was like, “I’m going to turn around. I’m going to count to ten. At that time, you guys are all going to leave, because I want to go to sleep.” So I turn around and I count to ten; I look back and there’s nothing there. And the pillow next to my head started — I don’t know how to describe it, but you know how when someone first gets up from a really cushy area, you can see the imprint of where they were kind of rise, like inflate? It was totally like that. There was something that was lying beside me and it just got up. So I felt the sheets kind of uncrinkle and smooth out, and I kind of felt the heaviness lift from over me. We have a lot of stuff like that happen. I don’t know why; I feel like ghosts just like to hang out with us.

And they’re always just chillers? You can be like, “Okay, we can hang out, and I’m going to count to ten and you guys are going to leave,” and that works?
Um… no… that was kind of a more peaceful one. I feel like I’ve gotten better. I was trying to tell you one that wasn’t so scary for me. We definitely — me and Nimai both — have had experiences where they’ve kind of messed with us, and it hasn’t been as easy to get them to leave. The place that we were at before — one reason my family left was because it was so haunted. Sometimes it’s tricky; sometimes they’ll take the forms of people who are familiar to you. I remember when I had my wisdom teeth taken out, and I was already in kind of a weird state. I wasn’t really able to eat a lot; I wasn’t sleeping a lot. I was already kind of delusional a little bit, but I feel like because I was kind of inebriated, my guards were let down so they were able to mess with me more than usual. I remember one time they took the form of my mom and it felt like my mom was in the room with me, but it wasn’t her. Just stuff like that would happen.

The ghosts you see are really clear, then? They’re not like, translucent?
Yeah, exactly. There’s different kinds, I guess. There’s the kind that, I said before, almost kind of seems like a film projection or something; it’s kind of silvery clear. And then there are other ones that totally look real. They look like a real person until they just disappear. Nimai had this experience where one took the form of a guy she was dating at the time. He was in bed with her, and it looked like him… but she looked down at his feet, and instead of his feet, there was like this trail, like ecto… so that’s kind of half and half. And sometimes they’ll just get into your subconscious. You won’t necessarily see ghosts, but you’ll feel them, and they’ll just kind of put images into your head. They’re weird. It’s almost like they tap into your mind and just put these images there that you’re not really creating yourself; it’s like watching a movie or something.

While you’re awake? Or is it a between wake and sleep kind of thing?
Kind of between awake and asleep a lot of the time. But it’s different than your mind producing it. I’ve had that too, where it’s like, lucid dreaming or whatever, but this is different because you feel that same kind of sinking feeling — that cold feeling, where you don’t really feel like you’re in control.

Why do you think some people are so much more receptive to these things? Why do you think that happens to you and Nimai so much more?
I don’t know. I’m not really sure. There’s some people who see them way more than we do. A friend of my mom’s — she would just see them all the time, and it was so intense for her that after a while, she just kind of had to make a pact with the spirit world. She said, “I really just need to lead a normal life. I can’t see you all the time. Please stop.” And for a while, she just started ignoring them, and they gradually just kind of left her alone. But at any time, she could see them, and they would be there. I think to some extent you have to be a little bit receptive to begin with; I feel like if I was dead set on not believing in ghosts, I’d probably have so many other explanations as to why these things were happening, and I’d probably go to a shrink or I don’t know what, haha. I think it has a lot to do with… I’ve been fascinated with other dimensions, and I think that even though it can be kind of scary sometimes, it does kind of fascinate me.

It’s cool that you guys have each other to relate to on that level. I have some friends who grew up seeing that kind of stuff and just start to go crazy, because there’s no one else to talk to about it.
Yeah, totally. I think that’s important. I think there’s something in the genes too … my parents — my mom — has definitely had a lot of ghost experiences growing up. And her family, on a whole, are from Russia, and… there seems to be a heritage of psychicness. My mom is totally psychic; it’s kind of annoying. You can’t keep anything from her. And her mom is kind of like that too. I feel like it’s just kind of passed down. I worked for this guy, Paul Laffoley, and he’s kind of a medium. He talked to me a little bit about just… the medium trade, and how you get yourself into it. A lot of times, it’s not something you can really train for. It’s just something you’re born with, or you’re not. His father was a medium, and his grandfather was a medium, and it’s just kind of passed on.

How do your experiences with ghosts relate back to your music?
We had some [EVP (electronic voice phenomenon)] going on a track on Shadow Temple… just this strange mysterious sound; we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from or how to get rid of it. The place we recorded in was an old church, so we just figured it was a ghost and left it on the record.

END.

www.now-age.org

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Prince Rama Band Interview: Utopia Of The Now Age (w/ Manifesto)

The author, Roger Caillois, is what Wikipedia describes as “a French intellectual whose idiosyncratic work brought together literary criticism, sociology, and philosophy by focusing on subjects as diverse as games, play and the sacred.” Profound guy — a synthesizer of information, no doubt, and right up REDEFINE’s alley. Chung shares one of the quotes from The Writing Of Stones, writing:

“Philosophers have not hesitated to identify the real and the rational. I am persuaded that a different bold step … would lead to discover the grid of basic analogies and hidden connections which constitute the logic of the imaginary.”

ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW

An excerpt from The Writing Of Stones reads like it was written by a scientist finding his poetic voice, or a poet finding his scientific voice. The combination is beautiful and evocative. You can buy it on Amazon for one zillion thousand dollars.

“Meanwhile the tree of life goes on putting out branches. A multitude of new inscriptions is added to the writing in stones. Images of fishes swim among dendrites of manganese as though among clumps of moss. A sea lily sways on its stem in the heart of a piece of slate. A phantom shrimp can no longer feel the air with its broken antennae. The scrolls and laces of ferns are imprinted in coal. Ammonites of all sizes, from a lentil to a millwheel, flaunt their cosmic spirals everywhere. A fossil trunk, turned jasper and opal like a frozen fire, clothes itself in scarlet, purple, violet. Dinosaurs’ bones change their petit-point tapestries into ivory, gleaming pink or blue like sugared almonds.”

VIA PATTERN PEOPLE

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

The Writing Of Stones: Patterns In Geology

“To me, a born-and-raised Californian, the forest of Oregon has a heavenly, Garden of Eden, sacred feel,” explains vocalist and guitarist Christopher Lynch. “It was a major force behind ‘Black Hills’ and some of the other tracks.”

“The lyrics are mostly for me, and anyone who wants to dive deeply into my weird world… like how John Lennon used to tell everyone that all his lyrics were just gibberish,” explains Lynch, who goes back and forth regularly on the idea of “mystery versus transparency” in song lyrics. He cites Sigur Rós as a band for which mystery works; their Icelandic and sometimes language-defying lyrical content play a secondary role to their lush instrumentation and associated imagery.

“I like it when lyrics are not easy to make out or understand in the first couple listens,” continues Lynch, “because it opens up the listener more to the vibe and emotion of the melodies, vowel sounds, and diction.”

Gardens & Villa focus heavily on capturing these moods, and even the album’s press release expounds on logistics and musical comparisons rather than on lyrical content. Rest assured, though; such decisions are wholly intentional.

“There would not be enough room in a press release to sufficiently expound on or describe them,” Lynch supposes, making it clear that Gardens & Villa‘s shiny pop veneer betrays the depth of its content.

It is only when one really begins to deconstruct the lyrics that a fascinating underlying thread begins to reveal itself.

Discovering A Hidden Narrative

Take, for instance, the surprising nature of even the album’s most in-your-face dance tracks. “Thorn Castles” features an acoustic guitar, sunshine-laden melody, and bounce-in-your-step rhythm, but gives wide-eyed descriptions of magic and miracle. Over a disco beat, “Star Fire Power” relays hushed references to “shooting stars” and “fire power,” while “Spacetime” playfully explores the malleable nature of the space-time continuum. Even at their most flamboyant, Gardens & Villa explore unconventional themes that would never cross the minds of many.

“A lot of my songwriting comes from a desire to open myself up to nature and the universe, experiences with love, my subconscious, childhood memories, imagination and various cocktails of each,” reveals Lynch. “I guess these are reflections of my larger life philosophies, but not in a concrete way.”

In fact, none of the lyrics on Gardens & Villa are particularly concrete. Though Lynch is quick to say that though he does not follow any specific meta-narratives or doctrines, his curiosity of philosophical and spiritual ideas shines through. The entirety of Gardens & Villa is a cryptic blend of philosophy and memoir, with content converging from varying places and spaces.

“Sometimes [the songs were] sporadic creations, other times calculated, and sometimes directly inspired,” says Lynch. “All came with a different feel and color.”

Like the morning sun rising over the horizon, a progression of synth and scat singing slowly brings Gardens & Villa into sight. Opener “Black Hills” begins the journey with descriptions of mankind scaling mountaintops and witnessing the rising of the seas — only to eventually submerge themselves in water to be “baptized.” “Cruise Ship” follows, inviting listeners to take their wives and children onto the cruise ship because “that’s how God made us to live.”

While these lyrics can certainly be taken at face value — and may even recall the band’s experiences bathing in frigid rivers — they are, more importantly, symbolic. The album’s many references to water parallel with well-known ideologies and parables. Just as Siddhartha found enlightenment at the banks of a river; just as one is baptized to be saved; just as John Lennon sings, “Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream” — so are Gardens & Villa doing. They are not floating down a river in a literal sense, but in a whimsical sense; they are taking a plunge into life’s flow, by living to the fullest and by pursuing their passions. And, in the opening tracks of the album, they are boldly inviting listeners to do the same.

Ancient as well as personal wisdom abounds on Gardens & Villa, and there are certainly profound lessons shared. By their very nature, though, the emotions, memories, and concepts the band attempts to document are difficult to distill into words.

“The album document[s] a love story… and a period of growth, but not overtly,” explains Lynch.

Towards the end of the record, Lynch speaks less of abstract concepts and begins to recall memories with poetic jargon. In “Carizzo Plain,” the line, “You and I are intertwined,” seems to describe two yin and yang halves cosmically woven up into one another. “Neon Dove,” the album’s last track, references a lover’s “cosmic touch” and symbolic return. Together, the tracks offer a satisfying, romantic conclusion to a record that seems to document an epic adventure — one which all began because the band decided to swim in life’s waters. From there, all things became enlightened; they experienced the magic of the universe in its limitless forms and learned the benefits of accepting circumstances both positive and negative.

Finding Answers Within

Despite how remarkably cohesive the album’s narrative thread is, its track sequence was chosen mostly “for [its] sonic relationships.” Its lyrical continuity was not even considered, and it is only over time that the power of its narrative has become evident.

“More and more, as I become familiar with it, I feel like there may indeed be a strong flow and story within the lyrics as well — maybe corresponding to the sounds and vibe,” muses Lynch. “Anyway, it was not completely intentional… but maybe subconsciously [and] sonically-driven.”

The record’s lyrical and musical cohesion becomes less of a surprise when one considers Gardens & Villa’s relationship to their collective subconscious. Decision-making is an exercise highly rooted in the band members’ intuitions, and Gardens & Villa seem to live by the philosophies they celebrate in their music. In “Star Fire Power,” Lynch repeats the word “intuition” like a mantra, only to conclude that following it leads to fruition.

“Intuition plays a major part in creating songs, vocal melodies, business choices, lyrics, pretty much everything,” says Lynch. “Vibe is maybe the most important thing to us when it comes to music-making and decisions.”

Rather than relying exclusively on cold, hard logic, Gardens & Villa have opted to place their trust in these more elusive creatures. Luckily, their instincts have led them to a satisfying and fruitful place, indeed.

“I believe that in my mind there is a constant oscillation between feelings and reason and things that appear as truths and others as falsehood. It is like a sea with waves and wind and calm and sun and kelp. Perspectives change and objects change color,” says Lynch. “Your intuition can be like a boat that you can navigate with. I think it will usually take you where are supposed to be.”

Q&A

What do you think about the resurgence of psychedelic music and imagery? Do you think it has impacts for the near future?
I think the return of psychedelia could be a natural step in the development of 21st century culture. We are curiously exploring our minds and our connection to nature/the universe. In a way, the ’60s began a cultural movement which yearns to fill a void which science and modern Christianity (and their ongoing war) have created (in America). We are extremely spiritual beings who have inherited a spiritually dead culture. I think that through trial and error we are in the process of building and synthesizing a new myth which could help guide us through the new paradigm. My biggest hope is that we rediscover and use the wisdom of the ancients. Everything has been done and thought of before — and if not in actual traditions and texts, it is all around us in patterns and sounds and miracles.

What is the best piece of advice you would give to those wishing to pursue a fulfilling life?
Spend lots of time gardening. Seriously.

Ω

“Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are almost always superior to us creatures of the mind. You take your being from your mothers. You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we don’t live fully; we live in an arid land even though we often seem to guide and rule you. Yours is the plenitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art. Your home is the earth; ours is the word of ideas. You are in danger of drowning in the world of the senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void. You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at the mother’s breast; I wake in the desert. For me the sun shines; for you the moon and the stars.”
– Hermann Hesse, Narcisuss And Goldmund

www.gardensandvilla.com + gardensandvilla.bandcamp.com

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Gardens & Villa Band Interview : Naturally Mystical (w/ Lyrical Analysis)

Directed by Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky
Hungary

After finishing The Turin Horse, I read some quick blurbs on the web about the film. I was curious if anyone had written about the significance of the film’s focus on six days. Not that six days, instead of five or seven, is significant in and of itself, but I wondered nonetheless. It may be that 6 is an even structural number. However, in the case of The Turin Horse, it is likely that the sixth day reflects God’s command that the land “bring forth living creatures,” and then the consequent shaping of humans in His image and likeness. Heavy. Well, it’s hard to approach a film based on a critical moment in the life of Friedrich Nietzsche and assume it to be removed from philosophy.

To my–now evident–shame, I have never seen a Béla Tarr film before. There was a screening of the Hungarian director’s seven-hour Satantango (1994) this past spring at the University of Chicago, but I missed it. Damn. And I mean that.

ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW

The very first scene of The Turin Horse is a long take (the film is all long takes: 2.5 hours long, 30 shots) of the horse and the cab driver going forward brutally, mercilessly into the wind. The camera takes us alongside the horse, then in front and close to its nose, as it breathes and snorts at the dust in its face. It stays with the horse and cab, allowing us to see and feel the resilience of the two beasts to the wind. The melancholy strings–somber, yet oddly soothing, and bound to the Sisyphusian might of the creature and its vast presence within the screen–touched me. I love that first shot.

ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW

Unlike the narrative expanse of a film like Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, where story and dialogue drive the sound and visuals, The Turin Horse works to dissolve story in favor of visual instance. The meticulous occupation of watching Tarr’s superb crafting of a tactile sense of space pressures us to see his world in its particulars. Tarr is both subtle and exact, in the picture frame of a woman as the daughter packs her luggage box or the lame right arm of the father—which only becomes explicit after repetition and detail. The moments where daughter and father sit at a stool and look out the window at the harsh wind contain, for me, the humiliation and conviction of humanity.

ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW

The story of Nietzsche and the Turin horse is something of a parable of the madness and cruelty of this earth and a creature’s refusal to abide the lashings of an imposed order. (Read more about Nietzsche and the Turin horse.) This sentimentality is the initiative of the Übermensch. But The Turin Horse isn’t an interpretation of Nietzsche so much as a meditation on those impositions against which Nietzsche railed–order, morality, indoctrination, humanity removed from its animality–which is survival and life as a daily expenditure. It is a hard movie to watch; some people may think it bleak, may think the world “broken” or hopeless. The Turin Horse is cinema where narrative is transposed to light and shadow, to visual instances where a woman pulls water from a well, where a rough hand peels a hot potato. The lingering, omnipresent details of space and livelihood are the film’s metaphysics, and they are our means of understanding and empathizing. We are the horse and Nietzsche.

It is really encouraging to me that a film like The Turin Horse was made now, in 2011. I associate this type of film with Robert Bresson (the equine connection with Au hasard Balthazar), Ingmar Bergman, and arthouse films of the ’60s and ’70s–so it is awesome to attach the word contemporary” to Tarr. It is a shot of intellectual and spectatorial adrenaline rush.

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

The Turin Horse (2011) Film Review

The SF Moma blog has taken to publishing a series of Positive Signs, which is described as, “a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism*, and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June. (*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.)”

Original post here.

#25, #26, and #27, created by Christine Wong Yap with glitter pen on gridded vellum, utilizes careful precision with a finicky medium on a finicky material (trust me; glitter pens are indeed finicky, as is vellum!) to create pieces that are refreshingly big picture. These images speak abstractly about “universal truths,” giving equal weight to feeling and thought in literary and graphical manners. The quotes are from the book Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience by Yi-Fu Tuan… which apparently I need to read, with immediacy.

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Christine Wong Yap : Positive Signs Interpretive Diagrams