The Science Of Myth

THROBBING GRISTLE IS COMING TO SOCAL

2009-01-30T16:07:00.000-08:00

And not only that...

They're playing at Coachella.

WTF.

My love/hate relationship with Goldenvoice is not unlike my resentment/admiration of California as a whole, and The Culture of Cool that permeates every nook and cranny of this goddamn state. I guess it could be worse - I could live in New York City. Ha!

Seriously though, every year the Coachella lineup reads more and more like Pitchfork Media's "Best New Music" list and it makes me want to be sick all over myself. The word "Indie" and subsequently the Idea of remaining independent from the stifling effects of Big Media and the capital with which it was established has been hijacked and tied up and mouthfucked by Ryan Schreiber and his gang of intellectual rapists. "Selling Out" is now a totally desirable circumstance in circles once driven to making pertinent and moving artistic statements by the consensus reality's indifference to their own, circles now completely overtaken and utterly (even permanently?) swooned by even the lightest mention of their efforts by The Tastemakers at Bitchdork and their subsidiaries. I guess all people really want is to be loved. Or at the very least, paid attention to.

"...what we do is very sincere. The bands that we pick, that comes from a genuine point of us really liking them. We’re not really calculating about any of this kind of stuff..."
- R. Schreiber, 2007

Am I being ridiculous? Perhaps. But notice all the acts performing at Coachella this year not signed to major lables. Notice, if you will, the "indie" lables they've signed to instead: Matador, Merge, Sub Pop, Touch & Go, etc. Now visit Pitchfork. See all those big ads? You'll never get far enough inside to see Pitchfork's books, and thusly how much they're being paid for those ads, but you'll notice that ALL of them are for albums put out by the lables listed above and others like them, all stinking of corruption to varying degrees. See, you'll also find that, almost universally, the albums that Pitchfork is being paid to advertise also get Much Higher Ratings. This is, of course, not yet backed by scientific data, but I'm taking the method to this whole racket as we speak, dear reader. I firmly believe that Pitchfork is paid not only to advertise shitty groups, but to give them high ratings as well, and since nearly every major music rag now takes it's queues from p4k, all available channels are becoming more and more flooded with limp and depressing "rock" tailor-made for perpetuating the anxiety, darkness, and lack of hope or motivation to be found within the collective hearts of Western Men & Women.

Which is perhaps the way Throbbing Gristle wanted it all along? The irony of such a group playing at such a festival is nearly impossible to even digest. Rest assured, I'll be there. Check this space in a few months for a full report.

Johnny Rotten's Crew Beats The Shit Out Of Kele Okereke, Ricky Wilson; Loses Any Potential Karma Via Alleged Racist Remarks

2008-07-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

While I may not approve of one of Lydon's chronies giving Bloc Party's frontman Kele Okereke a hard time about "his black attitude", which taints the whole thing irreparably for me, I'm not sorry it happened because it's easily the best headline I've read all year. That and I hate Bloc Party. Almost as much as I loathe the Kaiser Chiefs. If they'd only gotten Chris Martin thrown in the mix...

yay props!

2008-04-01T20:33:00.001-07:00

Levi, head hauncho over at The NIN Hotline, recently posted a short and glowing bit of praise on my recent (generally positive) review of Ghosts for TMT. Thanks Levi! I was actually kind of embarrassed at it's ridiculous length, but I'm glad the NIN community has been directed towards it's glorious hugeness as they're probably the only ones who will read it all the way through. Big shoutouts to all my old-school ETS chronies (Exit Domina, Abominari, etc), and to the whole Hotline crew, who've pulled off yet another brilliant April Fools page today (making fun of Radiohead NEVER gets old!).

Have I now completely shattered any illusions of my being an even remotely objective critic? We can only hope!

Sensory Overload (Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Huygens Titan Wgah'nagl Fhtagn!)

2008-04-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

I love this show entirely too much. It's actually embarrassing; any semblance of the meager social life with which I occasionally indulge myself is completely dismissed every Tuesday night after I get home from work, the dying afternoon spent preparing for the show. Joints are smoked and popcorn is popped as I set about soaking up every little bit of information released via the unique online feature Nova hosts on their site for each episode - and tonight, dear reader, you're getting dragged along for the ride, as for this episode the Nova crew are once again falling back upon everybody's (my) favorite topic: Space!

We're being taken to Saturn tonight, Titan specifically, and I couldn't be happier. Every few weeks my day gets made just a little bit more exciting by some wild fragment of reality hitherto unseen by human eyes (hey, Lovecraft was an amateur astronomer too; hence all those gibbous moons over cyclopean masonry, Polaris, etc), exquisitely captured by the Cassini mission before being broadcast back to Earth and disseminated online. The images get most of the press for their breathtaking immediacy, but the sounds sent back are, to an audiophile, just as awe inspiring. Here's the official "Sounds From Saturn" page NASA's set up for us, and here's the U of Iowa's "Space Audio" page, which has a few Saturnian sounds not found on the NASA page (along with a great multitude of otherworldly audio from previous probes and terrestrial telescopes). There's so much information compressed into every second of these recordings, every moment an immense flood of data inaccessible to the unaided human ear; scientists will spend months of their lives deciphering them and reverse engineering the exact circumstances of the cosmic electrical disturbances responsible for the squeaks and squeals picked up by our dutiful instruments. When listened to in this context, the indescribable tweaks and moans sent back to us become delightfully overwhelming, and like the best field recordings, evoke specific atmospheres and even emotions.

I've recently been exploring "music" that evokes a similarly mind-blowing concentration of information; John Zorn, naturally, has satisfied my criteria with flying colors due to his unending experimentations in arranging and rearranging micro-fragments of sound and music, and has been involved in two of my favorite works in this vein: John Oswald's singularly devastating pop-music collage Plexure (which Zorn commissioned, co-produced, and released) and Zorn's own Necronomicon suite off his album "Magick", released in 2004 and brilliantly executed by the "Crowley Quartet" assembled specifically to perform the work.

Plexure is both a monumental achievement in sound design as well as in sampling, which upon it's release in 1993 was a still fresh legal debacle. Seemingly inviting a crippling wave of litigation while simultaneously avoiding it via the microscopic samples from which it is composed (sampling law demands that a sample must be "recognizable" and of a certain length for the copyright holders to receive compensation), Plexure manages to crush about 1000 different pieces of otherwise highly recognizable rap, pop, and rock music into 19 minutes and 19 seconds of total chaos, shitting in the face of a mashup culture still in it's infancy with the sheer balls of it's mammoth concept and sound; I've yet to hear such an undeniably original work based on "stolen" source material.

The Necronomicon suite, on the other hand, is an original work in five parts, composed for a string quartet. References to the frantic screeching of Xenaxis's works for stringed instruments (and in it's slower bits, Jerry Goldsmith's unforgettable score for the original Alien film) are abound, but transcend such influences thanks to Zorn's own perverse and highly unique compositional touch, successfully evoking the incomprehensible horrors of it's namesake with a veritable flood of screaming and scraping strings. But both of these multi-movement masterpieces test the limits of listenability with an average running time of about 20 minutes each, and as such I have come to find the four scalding minutes of Autechre's Gantz Graf to be the pinnacle of my auditory quest for the immeasurably complex. I wrote out a moment by moment commentary on the track based on years of listening (I've listened to it regularly since picking up the untitled E.P. featuring the track in 2002, though I didn't start enjoying it properly until at least 2004) attempting to unravel it's bizarre internal logic, but it ended up doubling the length of what I've written so far, so I'm providing instead the video for the track as well as the full song in FLAC (as the sound quality for the video is predictably awful). A warning, however, for the less adventurous or more headache prone listener: appreciating Gantz Graf's Merzbowesque intensity and overbearing level of detail requires confronting each moment with your full attention, as grotesque as the task may seem, and stepping beyond the initial recoil one may feel due to the unfamiliarity of the music's structure and texture. Enjoy:

Oh Snap! The show's coming on!

***

Holy Shit! Saturn!

What I love about Nova is that they make real science as sensational as it ought to be - they really pull your heart strings and get your pulse racing, and the effect is not dissimilar to that feeling of being manipulated you might get sometimes (or all the time, depending on your level of paranoia) while watching the news, but in this case with a transparent and entirely productive agenda. This episode was no different - they really went all out on soundtrack licensing this time around too, weaving in some Massive Attack, John William's Indiana Jones Score (WTF?) and the curiously aforementioned score to Alien (it's just that good!), all utilized for maximum emotional impact and arranged with an acute sense of pace. Great television!

As ought to be entirely obvious, the program consisted primarily of looped computer generated footage of Saturn, her moons, and the various probes we've sent to Saturn with short, epic cuts to the bogglingly awesome images they've provided us with dispersed at even intervals throughout the show. There were some juicy interviews with various individuals responsible for executing the Cassini/Huygens mission from it's inception to the present as well, in addition to a segment on the potentially life sustaining properties of Titan's environment - probably the most exciting part of the show. And those CGI closeups of the rings! Mmmmm.

Oh, and while we're talking about educational television, the illustrious Cosmos has recently been put back on the air by The Science Channel, which has been re-running each episode of Carl Sagan's landmark television series in order for the last few months, a different one each week. Check it out, record it if you can!

ghosts (will drown this world in astral fire etc)

2008-03-03T16:34:00.000-08:00

trent reznor : internet superhero. the amount of blogging done about the new ghosts album is difficult to even comprehend, so i'm going to keep it simple with yet another strong endorsement of the distribution model. i'll be revisiting ghosts I-IV from a critical standpoint once i've had a bit more time with it, of course, but it's definitely a piece of work that takes some serious time and dedication to fully absorb. i will say that it reminds me very much of the new autechre - speaking of which, let's follow up on my previous post.

so the autechre broadcast last week turned out to be one of their marathon mixes, this one clocking in at just over twelve hours long (almost digestible compared to their 36 hour mix for xltronic), hence my providing a link to a torrent of the mix rather than hosting it myself...free up some hard drive space and give it a listen though, it's fantastic! loads of obscure old school hip hop is the MO this time around, though there's a fair amount of captain beefheart and the hafler trio and all the usual suspects. you can find an increasingly more complete playlist for the mix here, if you're looking to be totally fucking overwhelmed.

back to NIN's new ghosts project reminding me of quaristice: one of my favorite aspects of the release is that we can finally hear the influences NIN and AE share (80s industrial, early hip-hop, eno, etc), and the different if finally reconcilable directions both artists take those influences towards - playing both releases back to back makes for one of the most engrossing "ambient" music experiences i've ever heard, and serves to highlight their similarities. add this to my first experience with both LPs being FLAC copies provided by surprise internet-only pre-releases in which i had to wait precariously for the servers hosting the files to get their shit together (i find it a little unfair that reznor's been lambasted for not having his servers prepared for the onslaught of customers that flocked to the new release when the well oiled machine that is bleep.com almost entirely collapsed when quaristice came online, and they've been one of the most successful internet record shops in the business), not to mention the fact that both albums are long playing collections of short, instrumental sound experiments leaning toward the ambient (each one tied to specific images sent with digital copies of the album), and things start moving towards the uncanny. the weird, even [hauntology is the new goth!]

speaking of das unheimliche, i wonder if the general population will be subconsciously rejecting the effects of the 24th sunspot cycle as big-shot astronomer sten f. odenwald rather vehemently suggests we may have done with sun storms in past via his book "The 23rd Cycle". i wonder this as key space weather experts converge on san fransisco for a panel on the coming cycle - one particularly well written article on the upcoming sunspot surge casually drops that "while some scientists are predicting a weak cycle, others are predicting a cycle that would be the most intense solar activity yet recorded". in fact, there seems to be a great deal of debate between the two dominant schools of thought presented at the panel on nearly everything about this cycle, which is predicted to start warming up this month and rage on to a peak at the tail end of 2011 (all you freaks obsessed with the end of the world might note the proximity of this sunspot peak to the year 2012), mostly due to the lack of data we have regarding the sun's habits and it's effect on humanity and the planet as a whole. while i, for one, find this lack of data to be both terrifying and massively exciting, i think the data we do have is even more so. satellites falling out of the sky, entire power grids backfiring and shutting down, the earth's magnetic field being jerked around like a leaf in a hurricane, auroras in texas...keep in mind these are all things that happened last time the full 22 year cycle peaked in 1989 (the sun's magnetic field reverses in polarity every 11 years), and even then, they're only the things we can directly attribute to the sun - the butterfly effect these events could have is of course impossible to determine, but can provide many many hours of contemplation and speculation, at least to me, and we'll be visiting more on the subject in the weeks to come, i think.

but for now, there are more important things to think about, like the SEASON FINALE OF PROJECT RUNWAY OMG!!! I swear, Jillian better win this shit because I do NOT want to see Christian win by default (it really bothers me when people are rewarded for being total fucking assholes), and Rami just does not cut the mustard.

NEW AUTECHRE

2008-02-22T01:25:00.000-08:00

like you haven't heard about it already. it's dividing opinions about as much as one might expect for a typical Autechre album, most of the talk being about it sounding throwback or "inconsistent" or what have you - which is all pretty silly to me music doesn't get much more subjective than this and talking about it gets old fast. still, that's not going to keep me from offering the assuredly biased opinion that if you made it to this blog, then there's a good chance this album will speak to you - lots of exciting cut-up techniques and a much more diverse sound palette than Autechre fans might have become accustomed to make it a real winner in my books. if you don't already have a legal downloaded copy, you can hit up bleep.com via the player below, or alternatively wait for the LP release early next month. In the meantime, Booth and Brown will be broadcasting a live, streaming mix from their website tomorrow at 20:00 GMT (that's noon for those of you on the West Coast - I'll do my best to get the mix up as soon as it's available online in the likely event of a long Friday night), after which they'll be going on a world tour and spreading the love in 7/4.

NASA MMO

2008-01-21T15:57:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's actually real. Well, almost - NASA's announced it, but there's a lot to be done in between deciding to make an MMO and it's eventual completion, and we all know how reliable NASA can be following up on projects...

So I've stayed as far away from World Of Warcraft as humanly possible, more or less, not to mention all the dozens of other semi-successful MMORPGs released in the last several years, as I've no to desire to pay my way into some horrible clique of teenage freaks amped on Bawlz and Riddlin for several hours per day, or week, or ever (though EVE Online looks awfully tempting...). But THIS! This is outrageous. I would pay whatever asked to play this monthly, as long as they make sure the gameplay is solid. To be honest, I'm worried they'll focus too much on it being an educational project and dumb it down for kids, but who knows, it might end up being a pleasurably complex and realistic simulation of space exploration (yes!!).

Bobby Fisher Dead...

2008-01-18T13:28:00.000-08:00

"Chess is life."
- Bobby Fischer

current listening

2008-01-04T18:44:00.001-08:00

I first got into E.V.P. by listening to Coil; as I became more and more wrapped up in their personal mythology, I found they recorded many of their own "ghostly voices" by leaving equipment on nearby magickal or psychedelic events, or by finding curious sounds in malfunctioning hardware (that Balance sings almost exclusively about death, particularly his own - which happened just over four years ago now - adds a deeply moving level of beyond-the-grave eeriness to their work), but it was Coast to Coast AM's features on Electronic Voice Phenomenon that got me hooked - they were a bit more blatantly "spooky", perhaps, but hearing actual children's voices or the sounds of men screaming seemingly coming out of nowhere ensured my continued interest in the subject. Sure, there's a great deal of room for fraud and over-eagerness in both the arenas of AM Radio and Industrial Music, which isn't particularly lessened on the E.V.P. comp I've been listening to recently issued by Touch Music, but that doesn't make the idea any less engrossing, or the sounds any less haunting. Tap in:

Ode To Tim

2008-01-01T21:48:00.001-08:00

I just thought I'd take some time out to acknowledge the illustrious Tim Gunn. A blinding beacon of fashion, etiquette, and general decorum, Tim is a role model for the modern man, regardless of social standing, profession, or attitude (or, ah, orientation) and a breath of fresh air amongst the stifling and nauseating air expelled by the modern television "host". To the relief of many a fashion geek, Tim has resumed his "Tim's Take" blog over on bravo.com; it's gloriously written, a must read for all avid followers of Project Runway and Tim Gunn's Guide to Style, or anyone interested in staying fashionable, for that matter. Here's to Tim!

Oh, and happy new year everybody - let's make it work in 2008!

2007's Top 25 Albums

2007-12-19T16:34:00.001-08:00

25: Qui - Love's Miracle (Ipecac)
24: Public Enemy - How You Sell Soul To A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul? (SlamJamz/Redeye)
23: Laub - Deinetwegen (AGF Producktions)
22: Tim Armstrong - A Poet's Life (Hellcat Records)
21: Adult. - Why Bother? (Thrill Jockey)
20: Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero (Interscope)
19: Von Sudenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions (Domino)
18: Exploding Star Orchestra - We Are All From Somewhere Else (Thrill Jockey)
17: Yellow Swans - At All Ends (Load)
16: Daft Punk - Alive 2007 (Virgin)
15: Stinking Lizaveta - The Scream of the Iron Iconoclast (At A Loss)
14: Roll Deep - Rules & Regulations Vol. 01 (Roll Deep Recordings)
13: Smegma - 33 1/3 (Important)
12. DJ Food & DK - Now, Listen Again! (Ninja Tune)
11. µ-Ziq - Duntisbourne Abbots Soulmate Devastation Technique (Planet Mu)
10. Oxbow - The Narcotic Story (Hydra Head)
09. Burial - Untrue (Hyperdub)
08. Stars Of The Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline (Kranky)
07. The Focus Group - We Are All Pan's People (Ghost Box)
06. Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba - Segu Blue (Out|here)
05. Fovea Hex - Allure + An Answer (Die Stadt)
04. John Zorn - Asmodeus: Book of Angels, Volume 7 (Tzadik)
03. Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake - From The River To The Ocean (Thrill Jockey)
02. Grinderman - Grinderman (Anti)
01. Throbbing Gristle - Part II: The Endless Not (Mute)

Untrue

2007-12-17T13:43:00.000-08:00

My review of the new Burial album can be found here and here:

***

"I like Underground tunes that are true and mongrel and you see people trying to break that down, alter its nature. Underground music should have its back turned; it needs to be gone, untrackable, unreadable, just a distant light." - Burial

So let’s get the hype out of the way. Burial is one of the most acclaimed dubstep producers out of the scene (dubstep being a kind of trip-hop revival with overtones of downtempo drum ‘n’ bass for those of you too busy to follow all the subgenres blistering forth from the UK’s hyper-fertile garage and grime scenes), and not just because his balanced and melodic work is perfect for introducing new converts to the dubstep sound. We’ve got his universally praised self-titled debut (TMT Review), released only last year, an accessible and complex demonstration of how dubstep can succeed in the album format — a revolutionary move in a scene dominated by 12-inch singles. We’ve got a mythical persona, an anonymous artist who has yet to reveal his identity, a man who cultivates an undeniably romantic atmosphere to surround his work through second-hand accounts of his activities on pirate radio shows and clever press clips in which he describes the situational nature of his work, be it composing with the television on in his apartment or making tunes on the roof of his building with his "rubbish, dying computer" bellowing smoke into the night sky. And, of course, we’ve got the underground press blitz for Untrue, which mirrors the buildup for Burial’s first release: a stellar 12-inch unveiled a few months prior to the full-length featuring choice album cuts, an album preview mixed by fellow dubstep pioneer Kode 9, and a subsequent hurricane of blog buzz. Despite all this, answering the question of whether or not Untrue is indeed a killer album hinges on nothing but the sounds between its first and final tracks, a fact that will be easy for some reviewers to lose amongst all the press frenzy pushing to make this the record by which the critical success of dubstep itself will be measured — and of course the potential backlash for a sophomore album released so soon after such a solid debut.

Thankfully for Burial, Hyperdub, and dubstep as a whole, Untrue is a brilliant piece of work. It succeeds in both its expanded CD form and its compressed, more dance-oriented LP mix, managing to stand firmly on its own merits and independently of all the buzz. So yes, the album works as a self-sustaining collection of tracks, but in context, Untrue feels uncannily like a sequel, an upgraded version of Burial. Playing the two albums back to back is an immeasurably pleasurable experience that emphasizes this fact, but it also highlights that Untrue still utilizes many of the same patterns and drum samples Burial used on his debut, so much so that it’s tempting (at least for a hypothetical critic more inclined to reactively shit in the face of the great hype machine than to suckle on its filthy tit) to accuse him of repeating himself. In breaking down such accusations, however, Untrue’s singular advances reveal themselves, and a higher appreciation for the album can be achieved.

For instance, while both albums may exist in the same universe of smog and submarine soundstructures, there’s undoubtedly a wider range of emotion heard on Untrue. While the self-titled album opened with the stunning rush of auditory sensation that was "Distant Lights" before dropping off into the disorienting and opinion-splitting "Spaceape" — personally, one of my favorite Burial tracks, and his only tune featuring an MC — Untrue establishes that same initial euphoria with "Archangel," a similarly charged tune and an obvious single. The magic of Untrue, however, is that, rather than shifting pace and mood with each song, it keeps that blast of energy alive and distributes it artfully throughout its 50 minutes, bringing the beat to the front, dragging it to the back, and sometimes (at least in the case of the CD version) eliminating it completely in favor of tension-filled synth swells, like on "Endorphin" and "In McDonalds." The final nail in our hypothetically crass critic’s coffin is, of course, the album’s much-publicized use of melodic R&B vocal samples put through the Burial treatment (a careful mix of pitch-shifting vocoders and delay/echo effects), along with its references to much more varied spheres of electronic music; both lend Untrue just enough of its own sonic edge to defuse any accusations of homogenization.

Of that edge, Burial had the following to say, under Kode 9’s gentle inquiries at Hyperdub’s Blogspot: "This one is a bit more buzzin’, glowy. It’s a bit more uplifting. It doesn’t hang around. It’s a bit more up." Uplifting might be a bit strong, considering Untrue plays like yet another 2007 breakup album (µ-Ziq, Grinderman, etc.), but the positive intent is still undeniable, secreted away somewhere between all those vocal samples detailing the telling of lies and the spread of mistrust, primary themes of the album. Additionally, Burial keeps a kind of twilight haze over the album and avoids major chord progressions (except for a few instances, such as on the glorious rising R&B chorus that emerges out of nowhere about three-fourths of the way through "Shell Of Light") along with any other obvious techniques for lifting his sound up from the depths, but he also avoids plumbing the obscure and even difficult depths of sound and emotion that he did on his self-titled. Comparatively, there’s a sense that it’s going to be okay, a sound like a security blanket, that seeps from this record, even as Burial continually threatens to crush it underneath another torrent of broken beats and sighing strings.

Throughout the record’s duration, there seems to be a battle playing out between Untrue’s downcast vocal samples and its upbeat 2-Step programming, and it’s no surprise to those acquainted with the power of this kind of music that it’s the programming standing victorious at the end of it all. Keep in mind, however, that "this kind of music" doesn’t just mean the more emotionally resonant end of the electronic music spectrum, it’s more about dance music that addresses the darker elements of the human psyche, an idea found in the music of Joy Division and New Order, in Xiu Xiu and Adult., in any number of rock or non-rock based acts. Your experience will be that much more transcendent if you attempt to dance away the bullshit that can drag a soul into desperation and hopelessness. Untrue closes on this note with probably the best track of Burial’s career — a straight up 4/4-on-the-dancefloor club banger, appropriately titled "Raver." While the track opens with that familiar "but you lied" vocal sample utilized throughout the album, there’s no way to escape the euphoria those surging synths bring down on the house or how the "but you lied" sample gets replaced by a new sample, sung by the same nameless individual, every time the chorus swings around: "You love me."

It’s apparent that Untrue was recorded in a comparatively short time, but that doesn’t mean the production is any less engaging. Rather, it seems as though the quick release of Untrue restricted Burial from burying his emotions underneath layers of alternatively sparse and overwhelming production as he did on his debut, resulting in an album that instead wears them unabashedly on its sleeve. Whether or not this is more effective will vary depending on the listener, but one has to admire Burial’s genius either way — the way he plays with the idea of how the audience relates to and understands the artist through a projected identity, the way he manages to channel a self-consciously ramshackled and thrown-together vibe into his music; all of these are elements that surely keep this music "underground," as he so clearly wants it to be. But never before has such underground posturing, which seems to stand in direct opposition to Untrue’s emotional appeal and sleek R&B leanings, found itself so polished and ready for the masses. For that achievement alone, Untrue deserves all the praise it will undoubtedly be receiving from the international music press in the next few weeks. It also brings up an important question: What if it gets better from here? There’s a feeling in Burial’s music that he’s becoming less conflicted as an artist as he develops his already highly unique voice; so, what if he were to spend the time and energy required to learn some new software, if he were to let his tunes gestate for a bit longer? For all that these last two albums have been glorious works, I get the feeling that Burial’s yet to make his definitive artistic statement, the one that will forever cement his place in popular music; I for one won’t be fully satisfied until he’s made it.

***

Download The Aforementioned Kode 9 Preview Mix

Video Games Are A Waste Of Time

2007-11-17T11:23:00.000-08:00

...In other news, this exists:

...WTF. What does this mean? Has Sega/Sonic Team finally lost every shred of self respect it once held? Is it even worth playing a Sonic game on one of these next-gen consoles? Aren't the developers at all concerned how poorly this is going to date, how silly it's going to look in 4 years? Perhaps they're similarly excited about the Olympic Games being held in Beijing, so the world will be forced to acknowledge China's acid rain and unbreathable air. I don't have a wii (or an Xbox or a PS3) so I can't really answer any of these questions, nor do I particularly want to. I do, however, want to discuss this, badly:

IGN has a preview here, and it's totally full of shit. It's whiny spongeheads like these who ruined the C&C franchise through the first half of this decade, begging for simpler interfaces and snappier graphics. They actually CRITICIZED EEII for having too many useful features! If I wanted to play a game of fucking checkers I would, you know? Games like Empire Earth aren't supposed to be for the casual RTS fan; what I loved about the first two was their complexity, how they required dedication and time to fully understand, let alone to master. We need complex games in the RTS genre - one shouldn't be forced between playing a week long turn-based game of Civ 4 and playing an hour long comp stomp in C&C III. There needs to be a balance for those of us looking for a (relatively) quick game without sacrificing strategic depth, but publications like IGN seem to just keep pushing for a clear divide between highly complex games for the thinking man or woman and fast paced real time strategy with no room for realism or higher thought functions. The worst is that developers seem to be listening to these fucking stooges, too: this year's C&C III and Supreme Commander were both disappointingly simplistic (though Command and Conquer 3's AI is absolutely stunning), and the only other highly anticipated RTS coming out in the near future, Starcraft 2, is in all probability going to take a similar simplistic route. Ugh!

Nova Rules

2007-11-07T19:45:00.000-08:00

Can't wait to see this next Tuesday:

I've Been Hired!!

2007-10-12T01:26:00.000-07:00

Say hello to the newest addition to TMT's News Staff!

Me!

Right, well, here are some crazy Darren Brown videos to make your visit to The Science Of Myth at least somewhat worthwhile:

I am a Consumer Whore

2007-10-10T13:49:00.000-07:00

First things first (as though I've not spent enough freaking time on astronomy already): you all need to get over to CICLOPS asap and check out the mindblowing new images Cassini took of Iapetus on a recent flyby. I've always wanted to see real life images of the half-light half-dark celestial curiosity to compare to the ones I've had in my head since reading of Capitan Bowman visiting the sadly fictional alien monolith planted on it's surface in Arthur C. Clarke's A Space Odyssey - but the pictures still manage to surpass all reasonable expectations. Passing by the moon at an incredible distance of only 1000 miles, Cassini is beginning to unravel some of the questions astronomers have had about the moon for hundreds of years - but don't let me spoil it for you, go check out the site!

***

So as someone who generally gets acutely agitated when advertising targeting my subconscious is so crass as to make me consciously aware of it's intentions, I have to say I've been pleased with recent innovations like the easily ignorable yet highly profitable text ads of Google's World Domination Department, or similarly, TiVo and it's imatators - though in recognizing that many viewers are simply fast forwarding through commercials, most major broadcasting companies are now injecting jarring and tasteless ads straight into their featured programs. But that's for another post.

No, what's bothering me is that I seem to be lost in the gray area between Alternate Reality Games, which I see as being the future of entertainment, and "Viral Marketing", an exploitation of the fresh ideas presented by the ARG genre. I remember being initially intrigued by ads for EA's Majestic alternate reality game a good 8 years ago or so, but I also remember it being a colossal failure, tainting my opinion of the form for many years to come. It didn't help that my next encounter with alternate reality games was through marketing campaigns for two absolutely loathsome projects: Halo 2 (I Love Bees) and Steven Spielberg's perversion of Stanley Kubrick's AI (The Beast). Little did I know that these two projects were considered not only massively successful, but definitive examples of the ARG form, a fact that came to me only after being ensnared by the excellent Nine Inch Nails ARG. Which leads us conveniently to a short interlude on one of my favorite recording artists.

While it's clear through the sloppiness of the performance in the above video that Trent and Co. are still adjusting to the recent complete re-definition of the band's sound (i.e. the human rhythm section getting sacked, unfortunately resulting in the loss of Josh Freeze from Devo and The Magnificent Twigster from Marilyn Manson's old band, probably the two most talented musicians of Trent's 05-06 live group), I'm actually pretty excited by this development. While it's definitely going to alienate American audiences accustomed to NIN's big guitar sound - popular opinion regarding his new album, from what I've heard around Southern California anyways, is that it's too "electronic" - it suggests along with Trent's sobriety and expanded lyrical themes that he may actually be shaping the Nails into a group with vitality and meaning, something his post-Spiral material has been acutely lacking. His focus and vision is actually inspiring, something I feared I would never be able to say about Mr. Reznor again.

Coupled with the remarkably clear statement of intentionally excluding North America in his tour supporting Year Zero, as well as his mastering the operation of modern electronic compositional tools for the first time in over a decade (look at him go behind that laptop!), now being able to achieve his artistic vision on his own terms rather than those of some knob-twiddling hired hand, it's no surprise he's made enough waves to put him back in the headlines - stories of both his Year Zero ARG and his command to Australian fans to steal any high bitrate rips of his music they can find online have found themselves in wide circulation. The sequel to YZ is due out next year, and there were talks of a movie that have now moved to talk of a television series based on the YZ concept - and once it's all over, NIN will be free of it's contract with Universal and Trent will be able to construct his vision of entirely listener-supported music, distributing his work himself through his website and by sending copies direct to record stores (of which he is perfectly capable considering his personal wealth). I know I'm sounding a bit unnecessarily excited about an aging 90's rock dinosaur, but don't take my word for it when I say he's doing inspired work again: make up your own mind by taking him up on his dare to download his music for free and hit up this Year Zero torrent.

But back on topic, what alerted me to the importance of the Halo 2 and AI alternate reality games was some curious investigation into the company that developed the NIN ARG, 42 Entertainment, founded by Jordan Weisman in 2003. After jumping into the gaming industry with his re-invigorating the floundering MechWarrior series in 95, his FASA Interactive taking over production from Microsoft, Weisman was brilliantly poised to make some waves with his revision of the ARG concept, which many companies had been kicking around for years but hadn't figured out how to consistently operate and fund. Guiltlessly taking advertising money from large companies (or from particularly wealthy individuals, as in Trent Reznor's case) desperate to reach consumers through more innovative techniques than the traditional commercial avenues and their declining effectiveness, 42 Entertainment nails all the concepts presented by the initial wave of proto-ARGs: videos, callable phone numbers, real life artifacts, intricately woven + constantly updating web pages advancing a central plot, etcetera.

Their latest endeavor is a viral marketing campaign for the new Batman flick, The Dark Knight, which I don't mind saying that I'm damn stoked for. I noticed the project at San Diego's Comic-Con this year, which made itself rather visible with an army of Joker's minions (fans that had been alerted through the ARG to meet at a specific location at a specific time to help support "the cause") marching back and forth straight through the main floor of the convention, face paint and all. Smoke bombs were released above the convention center downtown by planes thousands of feet above, the ensuing clouds spelling spelling out HA HA HA in enormous letters that could be seen all the way to La Jolla. But I still found myself in need a rationalization to allow myself to get all caught up in these marketing campaigns - the guilt of supporting the advertising machine, regardless of how innovative, was still bothersome to me. That is, until considering that great art has been receiving questionable funding since art became important enough in human culture to require funding: how many of the greatest renaissance artists were paid by patriarchal monarchs or the oppressive and murderously domineering cult of Jesus Christ? More applicably, the first CD I ever purchased at the age of 8 was Prince's soundtrack to Tim Burton's Batman - a comparatively weak piece of work from one of the most important artists of our time, but still a highly influential one to me at that age, and even now to a certain extent. It may have been a blatant marketing ploy, Warner Brothers pooling their resources to make as much money as possible off an already established character. But that doesn't make tracks like Party Man or Electric Chair any less banging, Prince going into full industrial mode to match Burton's vision of Gotham City. Give it a shot if you like: the album cover is linked to a torrent.

On a related note, Bareback Mountain star Heath Ledger is totally playing The Joker in The Dark Knight (he actually looks pretty terrifying in all the promo shots, with his cheeks slit and bleeding in a huge grin), while Harvey Dent is being portrayed in fine fashion by that tobacco company stooge from Thank You For Smoking. While not much else has been leaked regarding the film, Gary Oldman is still on board as Commissioner Gordon, as is Christian Bale of course (sigh). Here's a few links from the ARG and a trailer to tide everybody over till there's some real news:

http://www.rent-a-clown.com/
http://ibelieveinharveydent.warnerbros.com/
http://ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com/

edit: I know I wasn't the only one who wanted to fucking strangle Richard Hogland on Coast to Coast last night. I don't mind wackos being entertained on C2C, but I wish Noory wouldn't support the guy as wholeheartedly as he does; I miss Art's comparative objectivity.
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Now playing: Spacemen 3 - evening of contemporary sitar music
via FoxyTunes

NO KID + POTM001

2007-10-03T09:54:00.000-07:00

40 reasons
not to spawn

These are the arguments French author Corinne Maier uses in her book to persuade readers to just say no to having children. Each reason gets a chapter.

The desire for children: A false aspiration.
Childbirth is torture.
Don't become a travelling feeding bottle.
Continue to amuse yourself.
Subway-job-kids: No thank you!
Hold onto your friends.
Do not adopt the idiot language we use to address children.
To open the nursery is to close the bedroom.
Child, the killer of desire.
They are the death knell of the couple.
To be or to make: You shouldn't have to choose.
The child is a kind of vicious dwarf, of an innate cruelty.
It is conformist.
Children are too expensive.
You become an ally of capitalism.
They will destroy your time and your freedom.
The worst drudgery for the parents.
Do not be deceived by the notion of the ideal child.
You will inevitably be disappointed by your child.
To become a merdeuf (soccer mom) - what horror!
Parenting above all else - no thanks.
Block your professional path with children.
Families: They are horror and cruelty.
Don't fall into an overgrown childhood.
To persist in saying "me first" is a badge of courage.
A child will kill the fond memories of your childhood.
You will not be able to prevent yourself from wanting your child to be happy.
Child care is a set of impossible dilemmas.
School: a prison camp with which you'll have to make a pact.
To raise a child, but toward what kind of future?
Flee from the benevolent blandness.
Parenting will make you soft.
Motherhood is a trap for women.
To be a mother, or to succeed: You must choose.
When the child appears, the father disappears.
The child of today must be a perfect child: a brave new world.
Your child will be in constant danger from pedophiles and pornographers.
Why contribute to a future of unemployment and social exclusion?
There are too many children in the world.
Turn your back on the ridiculous rules of the "good" parent.

(via technoccult)

* * *

Welcome to the first installment in my Podcast Of The Month series. This week we're looking at Over The Edge, an experimental program recorded in Berkeley and broadcast on KPFA, a commercial free listener supported station in the area. The show is assembled by Don Joyce of Negativland, with the professed intent of "proving that your speakers can still surprise you" - it's essentially a weekly 3 hour long Negativland release, a sound collage intended to induce feelings of disorientation and new patterns of thought in the listener. The show is primarily constructed from tape loops, found sounds, obscure archival material from 60s and 70s radio and television broadcasts - not to mention the occasional local caller run through all sorts of effects and delays mixed into the middle of it all with no introduction or line of questioning, allowed to ramble as they please until Don becomes bored with them and cuts them off or interrupts them. It's particularly enlightening to hear educated commentary on the material presented by the show spontaneously cut off in favor of one of those real kooky "open line" callers, the kind that give you the feeling you're listening to a wildly entertaining and severely disassociated bum. Over The Edge has been broadcasting regularly since 1981, though only recently has it become available online; currently, the show has been studying the decline of man through examinations of extremely specific time periods - the last 42 episodes have all been assembled from material recorded in 1971, specifically curated and edited to suggest social commentary on current events. As the show moves towards 1972, an election year, one becomes aware of the cyclical nature of human history, even of time and the universe itself. Though it could never rival sister mind-expanding program Coast to Coast AM, in the same way that William Burroughs could never match up to "real" writers like Camus and Hemmingway, it's significance remains undiminished. An excellent program.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW
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Now playing: GARY CLAIL/ON-U SOUND SYSTEM - THE EMOTIONAL HOOLIGAN

Αγαπη για Ποσειδών

2007-09-28T01:26:00.000-07:00

Oh, Blue, come forth!

Oh, Blue, arise!
Oh, Blue, ascend!
Oh, Blue, come in!

(ll. 1-5) I begin to sing about Poseidon, the great god, mover of the earth and fruitless sea, god of the deep who is also lord of Helicon and wide Aegae. A two-fold office the gods allotted you, O Shaker of the Earth, to be a tamer of horses and a saviour of ships!

(ll. 6-7) Hail, Poseidon, Holder of the Earth, dark-haired lord! O blessed one, be kindly in heart and help those who voyage in ships!

This week, a short 161 years ago, Urbain Le Verrier of Saint-Lô, France, was mulling about the Paris Observatory late at night (not an uncommon sight at the time) when he casually decided to spend an hour or so behind his telescope after playing with some numbers he'd been gathering for several months. Within a matter of minutes, he found what he was looking for, and in doing so, put centuries of speculation regarding the irregularities of Uranus's orbit to rest. Though initially contested by British astronomer John Couch Adams, Le Verrier's prediction of the mysterious eighth planet's orbit is considered by most to be the official discovery of Neptune, despite Galileo's observations of the planet in the early 1600s (he mistook Neptune for a fixed star, unwittingly witnessing the frosty giant in retrograde). Following the drama regarding who discovered it when, the name Neptune was decided upon by the international community after various suggestions including Janus and Oceanus.

Derived from the Roman Neptūnus, the barely observable blue tint of the planet suggested that it was an ocean world, and was mostly responsible for it's namesake, Neptune being the Roman God of the Sea. Also worshiped by the Greeks (especially by those who traveled by sea) as Posidon, the Greeks and the Romans both considered him a particularly moody entity, his better moods resulting in calmer seas, and his frustrations channeled into floods and storms and waves capable of tearing a ship to shreds, making Neptune a more fitting title than those who named it could have ever imagined, given the planet's weather. Furthering his reputation amongst travelers of the time, Neptune the Deity was known to both cultures as the God of Horses in addition to having dominion over the sea. I find the image of sailors drowning horses to appease Neptune before setting out on a voyage particularly resonant. On perhaps a lighter note, he was also known as Neptune Equester - the patron saint of horse racing. One of the two temples in Rome dedicated to Neptune is located just outside the Circus Flaminius, an Ancient Roman horse racing track.

As is the mysteriously infallible trend in ancient mythology, there were plenty of analogous deities associated with other cultures across the globe ready to be applied to the eighth and most distant planet of our solar system. Neptune is known in India as Varuna, god of water and the sky, not to mention of Law and The Underworld. Varuna and Posidon both held extremely high positions in the hierarchy of the gods - Zeus and Hades being Posidon's brothers, and Varuna being chief of the Adityas and the most prominent Asura. Both the Indian and Roman/Greek based gods were frequently portrayed as riding the mythical Hippocampus, a magical sea horse first recognized by anthropologists in early Etruscan wall-paintings. This mythical horse also happens to share a name with the section of the brain responsible in part for memory and spatial navigation - the part of the brain most affected by marijuana use (its impairment being at least partially responsible for the sudden meandering of what was supposed to be a quick little post on the discovery of Neptune - let's get back on track, shall we?).

Visited by man's tools only once, by Voyager II in 1989, the big blue sentry at the edge of our solar system was found to be considerably more wild than it's relatively peaceful exterior would suggest. Frequently plagued by storms large enough to fit several of the telluric planets within their seething torrents of poisonous gas (featuring winds exceeding 2,000 KPH, the most extreme winds anywhere in the solar system), Voyager II found that Neptune's core stays warmer than anyone had a right to expect at the time of the probe's arrival. Consisting in part of oceanic clouds of methane gas, which really ought to be frozen considering Neptune receives about 1/1000th of the light from the sun that Earth does at it's distance of approximately 30 AUs from Sol, the planet's wild weather results in the gas being released from it's lower, toastier atmospheres only to freeze and diffuse as it approaches the surface during Neptune's warmer seasons ("summer" consisting of about 40 earth years). This stream of methane from either the northern or southern hemispheres, depending on which axis is presently closer to the sun, is responsible for the planet's being so gloriously blue.

A Neptune Orbiter is currently under consideration by NASA - though unfortunately, following their pushing the projected launch date from 2016 to 2030, it appears it may be going the same route as the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, officially canceled in 2005 after over a decade of hype and excitement surrounding the idea of finally getting under Europa's skin.

Neptune is presently sitting out in Capricorn on the West Coast of the United States for those of you with nice telescopes - go check her out if you can. I can't think of a single non-shamanistic activity equivalent to viewing the furthest conventionally observable object in our solar system from the comfort of one's own backyard.

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Now playing: NoMeansNo - The End of All Things

Wow! [a review of the new Throbbing Gristle]

2007-09-27T02:10:00.000-07:00

After nearly 30 years, there is a new Throbbing Gristle album.

Part Two: The Endless Not was released on April Second of this year. I feel like we've finally discovered the Philosopher's Stone or an alien broadcast from interstellar space. After teasing us for years with literally dozens of archival live releases, festivals that never happened, and one off live shows scattered around the globe, the girls, boys, and transsexuals of TG have shed the veil of mystery surrounding their existence and revived their muse; they're quieter now, perhaps, but as the late Jhonn Balance (bless his soul) observed, such an approach is perhaps required to make a point in these times of "too much shouting". So yes, the "music" has been turned down and jazzed up: but accordingly so, as things have changed. Genesis P-Orridge has developed breasts and has traded in all those jackboots and army uniforms for high heels and miniskirts. Close friends have fallen from banisters onto their heads and died. The United States is closer than it ever was to establishing a one world government. Scarlett Johansson is recording an album of Tom Waits covers. Plenty of fuel to add to the fire smoking the beast from its cave and bringing it once more to your local independent record store.

Part Two is as apt a title as any; addressing the "reunion" aspect of the release in the very name has the added effect of rendering criticism towards their getting back together completely redundant. Of course, there's also the band's reputation, the exciting occult references buried within the album (tracks like Above The Below, or the totems made of bone and 23 carat gold that were shipped with the special edition of the album), and the strength of the actual material to consider . Very similar to the later works of Coil - Sleazy's production work still oozes it's way through the speakers and into your inner ear - Genesis P has clearly taken much from his/her/it's frequent collaborations with William Breeze in Thee Majesty and their mid-90s PTV work, Orridge's vocal range and presence now suggesting both broken hearts and an aged illumination, as opposed to the teenage confrontationalisim of the transgendered band leader's work with TG in the 1970s, or the "Look Ma, it's Magick!" obviousness and overemotional theatrics of earlier Psychic TV. On "Rabbit Snare", Genesis slowly leers out at the audience in a simultaneously aggressive and pleading tone, "Are you scared? Why are you scared?", whilst Christopherson's electronics sweep around the ears like bats out of hell and the husband and wife duo of Chris and Cosey hold down the beat with some jazzy electric piano and a wheezing cornet. On "Almost a Kiss", the lead vocals have an almost Louis Armstrong rasp to them; Genesis P-Orridge has not released a more emotional piece of music since PTV's Stolen Kisses.

What strikes one most about the album is how well the band gels together after 27 years apart. As they've all been active solo artists, their individual sounds have grown both with the artists and with the technology developed in the last two decades; while there is an abundance of live instrumentation on the album, it's all been tweaked and stretched and sautéed by laptops until beyond recognition in most cases. On the first track, Vow of Silence, this is particularly true, a mass of loops and growls and terrible screeching that goes on for seven minutes, a kind of banishing preparing the listener for what's to come. When reality does leak through however, it is just as bleak and cold as the mountaintop gracing the cover of the album - the vocals in particular haunt one in a way not quantifiable except perhaps in terms of existential loss. Whatever it is TG has lost, however (lovers, friends, gender identity) the open-minded music enthusiast has equally gained in the release of this monumental achievement of sonic architecture.

If I were to compare Throbbing Gristle's new music to something, it would perhaps be this recently discovered decaying core of a comet, orbiting our solar system regularly every four years. Totally absent of anything resembling a tail or coma, this gloriously dead rock is silently hurtling through space at thousands of miles per hour, spectacular for its singularity. Not a showy creature, 070925_P/2007 R5 is the essentials of a comet boiled down to a hunk of black ice and dust only a few hundred feet in diameter; it is what it is, a signal of the coming universal entropy and the inevitability of time's fatal fingers wrapping around your neck. I think it's pretty, after a fashion.

in other news:

HOLY FUCKING SHIT
NEW DEVO SONG
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Now playing: WormOuroboros03b

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad + Halo 3 + Qui

2007-09-25T00:55:00.000-07:00

the night is being eaten away by old time radio broadcasts and homework. i run out of cigarettes and run down to rite aid around midnight. Fred Anderson and Hamid Drake's superb From the River to the Ocean is in the earbuds, loud, over which i can still hear car alarms and what sounds like marines shouting; right past me walks a skinny girl in a blanket and a skinnier real unhealthy looking guy with big bags under his eyes and the hood of his decidedly unfashionable flannel sweater thrown up. he is clutching a large, ominous black box. the closer i get to rite aid the closer i get to the gamestop a few doors down. a wild crowd of people has packed themselves against the glass of the videogame dealership at least ten rows deep. in realizing that halo 3 is in all probability being released, i consequently begin to fear being hit by a drunk bro or perhaps hassled by the cops in the patrol car parked right outside. i pick up my unfiltered lucky strikes okay (Camel is obviously trying to kill me by discontinuing Lucky Strike Filters and Lights while leaving Unfiltered in full production) but upon leaving the drug store i realize the crowd has gotten larger, and louder. STEP AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE an anonymous army-man sounding type announces to everyone within the sound of his voice. several individuals, many wearing motorcycle helmets and carrying these mysterious black boxes under their arms, dart from the store and pile into a van parked outside under shouts of MOVE IT MOVE IT and similar forms of phrase found otherwise exclusively in war zones, paintball arenas, and multilayer FPS games. i start getting weird looks - they know i'm not one of them. i stare down one of the kids wearing motorcycle helmets before cutting out to finish my astronomy homework.

DAVID YOW

IS GOING

TO BELT YOU

download NEW ORLEANS by the magnificent new David Yow project: QUI from Los Angeles
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Now playing: Vincent Price - An Eye For An Eye

93 IS DEAD LONG LIVE 156

2007-09-24T00:05:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from Pg. 69 of Joel Biroco's monumental KAOS 14:

UNCOMFORTABLE? PARANOID? YOU COULD TAKE YOUR MIND OFF SECRET SOCIETIES BENT ON WORLD DOMINATION AND READ this highly entertaining article on Cryptozoology and Nintendo over at Chewing Pixels

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Now playing: Coil - remote viewing 5

edit:
The visionary and tremendously well-informed staff of LA's newly revived Arthur Magazine have hosted a particularly well written (if short) article on Kaos 14 and the 156 Current here.

THE WIRE # 269

2007-09-23T03:02:00.000-07:00

Published July 2006. Page 30. Full page spread detailing the who's who of Current 93's most recent live band, the one Tibet's been toting around Europe in support of his new and most fabulous Black Ships Ate The Sky LP. Baby Dee is sitting against the wall to the far left, her half-grin probably the most disturbing element of what's already a pretty goddamn wacky photograph. Six Organs Of Admittance leader Ben Chasny stands with his arms crossed in a calculatingly disgruntled pose at the center of the image, furthest back; David Tibet with his wildly patterned dress shirt and scarf dominate the foreground, as does Matt Sweeney's mustache. Four or five other individuals of varying gender, weirdness, and nationality fill out the lineup, making for what would probably be a massively disorienting group of people to physically experience, if not a downright terrifying one.

A blog entry writes itself upon my realizing that Bill Breeze, the grand and mighty one O.H.O., is looking extremely uncomfortable about being photographed on the far right. Previously a member of Coil in their later more ambient years, I know a Bill Breeze that plays viola in some of my favorite bands and according to brainwashed.com is "currently the executive director for a not-for-profit organization devoted to good works." - but I know another Bill Breeze, one that unsurprisingly (being the head of the Caliphate O.T.O. based in Southern California) gets considerable press within the occult community. Also known as the one and only Hymenaeus Beta, editor of many texts related to Crowley and his Order, Breeze has generated some heat with a good deal of suing and being sued by various individuals regarding intellectual property rights. An agenda slowly begins to form in the unraveling of this seemingly infinite legal net strung from many a reflective sphere; while endlessly fascinating to me (I never knew how desperate I was for a real life occult soap opera to supply me with hours upon hours of guilt-free entertainment), the subject may be redundant for some, and entirely meaningless to others. Regardless, I'll get around to throwing my coin in the pool of highly esoteric public opinion surrounding who's O.T.O. is the Real O.T.O. and what sucks about all of them very soon, I'm sure. For now, after being jarred suddenly from my tea, trying to fall asleep and catching up with my Wire subscription, I'm headed to bed feeling a bit more informed, and of course a lot more confused about everything.

The same goddamn person!

Αγαπη + Θελημα Περί ͵αϡϟαʹ

2007-09-21T16:08:00.000-07:00

Lookout! 050, 12" LP

Title01=Screeching Weasel - Making You Cry
Title02=Screeching Weasel - Slogans
Title03=Screeching Weasel - Guest List
Title04=Screeching Weasel - Veronica Hates Me
Title05=Screeching Weasel - I Can See Clearly
Title06=Screeching Weasel - Cindys on Methadone
Title07=Screeching Weasel - The Science Of Myth
Title08=Screeching Weasel - What We Hate
Title09=Screeching Weasel - Teenage Freakshow
Title10=Screeching Weasel - Kamalas Too Nice
Title11=Screeching Weasel - Don't Turn Out The Lights
Title12=Screeching Weasel - Fathead
Title13=Screeching Weasel - I Wanna Be With You Tonight
Title14=Screeching Weasel - My Brain Hurts

Wax Trax! Records. WAXCD 7143, Compact Disc

Title15=Coil - Disco Hospital
Title16=Coil - Teenage Lightning 1
Title17=Coil - Things Happen
Title18=Coil - The Snow
Title19=Coil - Dark River
Title20=Coil - Where Even The Darkness Is Something To See
Title21=Coil - Teenage Lightning 2
Title22=Coil - Windowpane
Title23=Coil - Further Back and Faster
Title24=Coil - Titan Arch
Title25=Coil - Chaostrophy
Title26=Coil - Lorca not Orca
Title27=Coil - Love's Secret Domain

Jive. 1418-2-J, Compact Disc, 24 Sep 1991

Title28=A Tribe Called Quest - Excursions
Title29=A Tribe Called Quest - Buggin Out
Title30=A Tribe Called Quest - Rap Promoter
Title31=A Tribe Called Quest - Buffer
Title32=A Tribe Called Quest - Verses From The Abstract
Title33=A Tribe Called Quest - Showbusiness
Title34=A Tribe Called Quest - Vibes and Stuff
Title35=A Tribe Called Quest - The Infamous Date Rape
Title36=A Tribe Called Quest - Check The Rhime
Title37=A Tribe Called Quest - Everything is Fair
Title38=A Tribe Called Quest - Jazz (we've got)
Title39=A Tribe Called Quest - Skypager
Title40=A Tribe Called Quest - What?
Title41=A Tribe Called Quest - Scenario

Too Pure. PURE04, 10" EP

Title42=Stereolab - Super-Electric
Title43=Stereolab - High Expectations
Title44=Stereolab - The Way Will Be Opened
Title45=Stereolab - Contact

Big Life.BLRDLP 5, 2xLP, 15 April 1991

Title46=The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds
Title47=The Orb - Earth (Gaia)
Title48=The Orb - Supernova At The End Of The Universe
Title49=The Orb - Back Side Of The Moon
Title50=The Orb - Spanish Castles In Space
Title51=The Orb - Perpetual Dawn
Title52=The Orb - Into The Fourth Dimension
Title53=The Orb - Outlands
Title54=The Orb - Star 6 & 7 8 9
Title55=The Orb - Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Center Of The Underworld

Touch and Go,TG068LP, 21 February 1991

Title56=The Jesus Lizard - Then Comes Dudley
Title57=The Jesus Lizard - Mouth Breather
Title58=The Jesus Lizard - Nub
Title59=The Jesus Lizard - Seasick
Title60=The Jesus Lizard - Monkey Trick
Title61=The Jesus Lizard - Karpis
Title62=The Jesus Lizard - South Mouth
Title63=The Jesus Lizard - Lady Shoes
Title64=The Jesus Lizard - Rodeo in Joliet

RCA.07863 61007-2, Compact Disc, April 1991

Title65=Gary Clail - Food, Clothes and Shelter
Title66=Gary Clail - Pt 2 Monk Track
Title67=Gary Clail - Escape
Title68=Gary Clail - The Emotional Hooligan
Title69=Gary Clail - Magic Penny
Title70=Gary Clail - Human Nature
Title71=Gary Clail - Crocodile Eyes
Title72=Gary Clail - Rumours
Title73=Gary Clail - Beef (The Future Mix)
Title74=Gary Clail - Temptation (Parts 1 & 2)
Title75=Gary Clail - False Leader (Parts 1 & 2)

Polydor (US). 847 717-2, Compact Disc, 19 Nov 1991

Title76=Talk Talk - Myrrhman
Title77=Talk Talk - Ascension Day
Title78=Talk Talk - After the Flood
Title79=Talk Talk - Taphead
Title80=Talk Talk - New Grass
Title81=Talk Talk - Runeii

Geffen Records. GEF 24425, 12" LP, 24 Sep 1991

Title82=Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
Title83=Nirvana - In Bloom
Title84=Nirvana - Come As You Are
Title85=Nirvana - Breed
Title86=Nirvana - Lithium
Title87=Nirvana - Polly
Title88=Nirvana - Territorial Pissings
Title89=Nirvana - Drain You
Title90=Nirvana - Lounge Act
Title91=Nirvana - Stay Away
Title92=Nirvana - On A Plain
Title93=Nirvana - Something In The Way
93=249
NumberOfEntries=93
Version=2