Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts

Tuesday, 5 May 2026

SHUYET commercial release






GBP   £28  pressed-to-order Vinyl


GBP   £14  for CD


GBP   £6.66  for digital download 


(or you can listen to it free a few times in BandCamp)



I don't set the market prices

and I only get a fraction of that;

most of it goes on printing and agency fees


It's available, at least 

That's the main thing



Oh, and this: 












Sunday, 14 January 2018

Proxy Kill

Proxy Kill


"I will not hurt any student, and I will protect all learners from harm. I will remember that there is art to learning as well as science, and that caring, empathy, social, emotional and physical development are as critical as intellectual achievement. I will apply, for the benefit of each student, all available instructional supports and resources, in the knowledge and conviction that we each learn differently, and that everyone can learn." socratic-oath-for-educators



Socrates, the "father of western thinking" was forced by controlling society to drink poison for their perceived crime of corrupting youth.



0. pre-med
In the first decade of the 20th century, Snake Apple Tree wrote a serial of short stories entitled The Murder Chronicles (aka New Murder Fiction). 

It was published incomplete to www.snakeappletree.co.uk

This has nothing at all to do with;  Liang Yaosheng's works of same title or R. Barri Flowers works of same title or the-line-up's interactive fictions of same title or anybody else using the same title which quite clearly is collectively a shareware title under no formal copyright property. 

Snake Apple Tree's serial as a complete includes both the final (unpublished) chapter(s) and also other short stories not included in the published core. They were not published due to their personal nature. The serial is billed as being semi-fictionalized accounts of true stories. They are tales from the underground; official records always show very different versions of events. This is because the official versions are cover-ups by a corrupt society.


The following are chapters of the final novella (Proxy Kill) of the serial. 

IN MEMORANDUM. 




1. basis

Manufacturing a collective operational base which holds a paradigm and enforces it upon target. 
The paradigm enforces depression upon the target of such severe intensity that the target commits suicide.

Everybody says "its a shame" and enjoys their suffering of the loss of the target from the collective. 

In animal species we observe this behavior. Example, a murder of crows (collective noun for a flock of crows in English language is 'murder') will peck to death the weaker members of the flock, increasing the amount of available food scraps to scavenge for the stronger members. This maintains the health of the flock while being a bitch for the target. 


2. control

Trying to control the target. 
Enforcing a false paradigm, establishing it in the mind of zombi's as the officially endorsed collaborative agreement, the dominant narrative.
Instead of respecting nature, intuition, spirit. 
Aboriginal map of reality has three circles: the world of nature, the world of Spirits, the world of Humans. The world out of balance is the world which accepts only Humans as valid and Nature to be exploited, and dismisses the world of Spirit as make-belief.
Shaman integrate it as Truth. 

The excuse to protect 'vulnerables' from those who can and want to help.
The result is: 
Without help, the vulnerable kills him/her self.


3. Luci

Luci was 14. 
I was 28. 

I saved up and bought a Japanese fretless blue electric bass guitar. 
Luci saved up and bought a red electric fender guitar. 

The first time we met was in the street, both in the glow of yielding our tools which were finally in our possession, on that first day of ownership. 

Bang! 

There is magick in instruments. 
There is even more magick in music.
There is magick in the universe to have put this coincidence together. 

We are but cogs in an intergalactic, multi-dimensional machine the mechanics of which are far, far beyond our understanding. The very best we can hope for is to recognize some small glimpse of this, through the divine worshipful connection of, when we trust our intuition, when we let music flow through us without mind getting in the way, when we have sex. These are the three principles of divine worship.

Luci was dark and worshipped dark gods with blood and sex magic.
She had a shrine to black metal and goth. 
She had candles and spoke a language I have not heard in several incarnations. 
A young witch coming of age, wise far beyond her years and obsessed with Jungian Shadow. 

Luci and I did not have sex. 
We did play music.
We did talk about psychology. 
Luci was depressed and cutting herself deeper each time. 

I had recently finished doing counseling nvq2 and frustrated that the red-tape limitations of doing it professionally for money through the state would make any real attempt at actually fixing somebody, not possible. The girl needed emotional and mental support, she needed a hug. She needed a fuck but being only 14 in a nation which kills paedophiles and where the age of consent is 16, we did not go there. We could have and it was a potential between us. Some other lucky brat would have to sort her out that way. I proved my parental responsibility. We behaved in accordance with social conformity despite occasionally facing down natural instinct together. 

Our relationship was mostly defined by music tutor and counselor. I lent her cd's and guitar effects boxes. We both used the same software, so I taught her some of the tricks I have learned with it. It helped her to focus on creativity instead of self-destruction. Her family members who got to know me and who trusted me remarked the positive influence I was having on her. She stopped cutting so often. Her scars began to heal. 

The prejudice twats did not like me sniffing around a vulnerable minor. 
They did not like the age gap. 
They beat me up in the street. 
They knew where i lived.
I stopped visiting her. 
That was my mistake. 
She nose-dived.
She cut too deep.
She dead now. 


4. Popi

After the tragedy of Luci I traveled to get over it. 
I trusted my intuition and I went in that direction, regardless. 

I found myself in the Valley. 
From the outside, the Valley is the last retreat of free people in Britain.
It does have an internet site and it is described on there as;
"Survival lifestyle"
There are no facilities.
It is entirely based on people and people skills. 
A place where free people can go to develop skills not even known about by the city slaves and their mindless polluting conformity.  

Drink water and wash from the stream. 
Import food or grow your own. 
The Valley is surrounded by forest. 
The community is organized well enough that a daily shit-bucket collection takes your toilet from your bender and deposits it in the community compost. 
Kids born there are educated locally and not by state school. 
It is hardly Canada and the reserves, but its the closest thing to it in UK. 
Everybody knows everybody. 
Everybody knows everybody's business. 

A culture in miniature highlights the issues which all cultures face.
Politics is as rife in the Valley as it is in the city. 
It is also somewhat of a tourist venue for those curious and able to find it and get there. 
Everyone lives openly, which is to say everyone has the same STDs because with a very small population of very open minded people, liberal people gonna do what liberal people gonna do. 

Popi grew up there. 
At 15 Popi had enough. 
I heard about Popi. 

Popi a Bright in the context of the 2017 movie Bright (directed by David Ayer)
Everybody loved her. 
Popi was the most free spirit the Valley had produced, of a population who uphold being a freespirit as the ultimate Human Right and Aspiration.
My intuition screamed at me that I have to connect with her.
As soon as possible. 
I asked around.
The community protect.
People do. 

"No mate, you ain't going near our Popi."
"Ye well thanks for making me feel like a wolf after a sheep but there's more to it than that." 
"We don't know you."
I looked her square in the eye.
"I am True. You don't know Truth."

I wasn't though. Had i been True i would have gone direct to her.
My mistake was a preconception that I needed to go through other people to find her.
The Valley works its mysterious charms; to take, to give, to set its own balance.

I knew that by connecting with Popi I could set her toward a path she needed to be on, and that it had to be me because nobody else could do it. Because of the primal nature of energy and how it dances, electromagnetic. I cannot explain this without sounding crazy to the crazy people. 

I had seen the girls spirit and connected with her in dream. Because brights stand out in the darkness and I have stared into that darkness so much that I can see the motions of brights, their colours which have meanings, where and how they flow, and ebb. I saw the imminence of her ebb.

The valley closed its cultural gates against me. 

I saw her ebb extinguish and I cried. 

Later, i heard that Popi had killed herself. 

Those who knew her explained, she had been trying to get away from the valley and its controlling culture. She had nowhere to go. 

I returned to my empty flat in the city which was a gate to so much of the multiverse. 

Another light gone out. 


5.Toni

Soon after that I encountered a young teenage boy crying on the back doorstep of a church at the back of my apartment. I asked him whats up? Sat next to him. Talked. He opened up to me. 

"Social services has forced me into adoption with a woman who does not feed me and hits me." 

He showed me the bruising.

"The teachers don't care. The police don't want to get involved. So I have run away. I don't know where to go." 

I could not take a vulnerable minor into my apartment alone without putting myself at risk. i do not operate that way. 

I was returning to my apartment to eat because I had not eaten for a day or two. Neither had Toni.
I suggested we buy food from the shop, which we did. Moving the body in walking is a step toward going forward, motion, holistic metabolic system regulating itself toward balance, starts the healing. He stopped crying and had a goal now, albeit temporary and small but the food would help.
He is eating my food, technically not my food but food I had bought. My energy is going into him with it. His configuration would shift and align with mine. This is how energy works. Idiots do not see it this way.
We discussed his friends and their parents being home, people who know him and can help. 
He was missing the hell out of his old friends, his old school, his old life. He had been banned form seeing any of them by his foster mother.
We visited his friend in another part of town. He was grateful that I knew the route. 
His friends parents were out and I did not want to drop him off there, it felt bad.
We visited another of his friends in another part of town. 
We borrowed the phone to call Toni's mother and she told him to fuck off.
The friend phoned his own mother and arranged Toni could stay the night there. 
She likes Toni and knows him well.
This felt good. The healing Toni needs even if only for one night.
I did not know what else to do.
Had I called the authorities, the police &/or social services, it would have betrayed Toni's trust for me and it would have caused him more problems. 
He would have run away again with nowhere to go.
He would lose trust in other people and his ability to trust others would be damaged.
Shaman are healers. We are advanced at emotional psychology and at psychology. 
We do our best to do the right thing.
I did not see Toni again but I did see a few of his friends sometime later who told me that he had gone back to his foster mother's and they hadn't heard of him since.


6. This list continues. 

Many more examples. People would rather drive their kids to suicide than allow a shaman to heal them. This is UK 21st century. I do not regard any of this to be my failing because I tried damn hard to prevent those who I could see are going to do it, from doing it. Everyone who was binding them to the path of self destruction did everything they could to get rid of me by labeling me as the danger element, as an unknown, as a potential risk. 

There is a beautiful tradition that by remembering to others the lesson of a persons life, is to honour that life.
 






©2018 Ordo Octopia

Tuesday, 9 January 2018

Wuxia Moves





 1.


"She's a fake!"
"Look more closely."
"But she doesn't realize she's a fake!" 

Two old guys from a different, more respectable, experienced and older, insightful yet repressive culture; scrutinizing Holly (Auddrey Hepburn) as 'the symbol for Modernity as Lifestyle' (1960s), in the movie Breakfast At Tiffany's 1961 American romantic comedy film directed by Blake Edwards and written by George Axelrod, based on Truman Capote's novel. 
  



And so we go into post-post-post-modernist 2018 where the intelligensia elite has to involve itself with the practicality of fakes who do not realize they are fakes. The pursuit of Truth as embodiment of Aspiration and spiritual path sets its seldom accoladed acolytes as a caste apart. Capable to see through illusion and yet surrounded by a mainstream who perpetuate illusion, the intelligensia become outcastes. 

"Zombies do not recognize that they are zombies. That's the problem." SnakeAppleTree

"They go aggressive when it is showed to them and they simply cannot and will not integrate it. There's no getting through to them. They mistake their job role within their illusion of social hierarchy, for reality - because they are cognitive dissonance mental health condition. They are technically unsane. Yet as mainstream, they re-affirm delusion as 'normality'. They persecute the non-normative, which is to persecute the truth. For scientists this is a bitch of a situation."

Experiences outside of the structural norm define the out-caste. It is here where we discover that UFO's, fayries and exotic yet real stuff, is not mythical but actual. It is here with these knowledges that we can never go back to existing within the confines of a state of restrictive intelligence and delusional decision making. Lies built upon lies create monstrous towers inevitably to fall when the fundamental wave collapses, as science tells us it will. 


2.

This is the foundation of our exploration of Wuxia. 

Wuxia (武俠, IPA: [ù.ɕjǎ]), which literally means "martial heroes", is a genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists in ancient China. Although wuxia is traditionally a form of literature, its popularity has caused it to spread to diverse art forms such as Chinese opera, manhua, films, television series and video games. It forms part of popular culture in many Chinese-speaking communities around the world.

The word "wuxia" is a compound composed of the elements wu (literally "martial", "military", or "armed") and xia (literally "honourable", "chivalrous", or "hero"). A martial artist who follows the code of xia is often referred to as a xiake (literally "follower of xia") or youxia (literally "wandering xia"). In some translations, the martial artist is referred to as a "swordsman" or "swordswoman" even though he or she may not necessarily wield a sword.

The heroes in wuxia fiction typically do not serve a lord, wield military power or belong to the aristocratic class. They often originate from the lower social classes of ancient Chinese society. A code of chivalry usually requires wuxia heroes to right and redress wrongs, fight for righteousness, remove oppressors, and bring retribution for past misdeeds. Chinese xia traditions can be compared to martial codes from other cultures such as the Japanese samurai's bushido tradition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxia


Wuxia is primarily a code of honor which instructs lifestyle. 

We have identified already that 'zombies do not recognize they are zombies and perpetuate falseness through their beliefs and thus actions'.

Contemporary Chivalry is, for the outcaste who have retained integrity and honor by standing against delusionary behavior of the zombie apocalypse mainstream horde, are by default Wuxia. Whether the individual aligns with the pursuit of waking up the zombies for the betterment of community, or avoids them, or a mix of both, is the choice of the individual. Even in Minecraft can zombies be rehabilitated. There is hope. 

Most outcaste are in some way broken by the mechanical systematic dehumanization of the state architecture. The hierarchy machine is not your friend.Recognition of this is critical to understanding why most Wuxia are kinked in some way; through constant barrage of abuse.

"When something so extreme happens to us that we cannot go back there in ordinary consciousness, but we need to go back there to heal ourselves, the pursuit of it defines us, the journey becomes expertise. This does not make us bad people."


3.

“Stories of Imagination tend to upset those without one.” Emma Lou

We are living in a fayrie-tale. True to any fayrie-tale it has darkness and beauty, lightness and mirth of the sort black witches determine kill. It's full of Love fragile from the advances of the fake and obsessively controlling world of exploitation which is the System and Society. 

She asked me my favorite movies and for the first time I thought about trends running through the first three which came to mind. This, from an overview of what the movies are about. 


"It's about music. And a good hearted thief vs society and its corruption." (on Subway)

"That ones about music too, and good hearted thieves. It explores how society accepts or not, and how hypocritical its rules are." (on Diva)

"That one's a love story about thieves and honor. Being Chinese it story-tells in an epic and beautiful way. And has great music." (on Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon)

Recognition that we are in a story. That the genre defines the dialogue. That the direction is within a context for it to flow. That the tenets of storytelling apply also to the unfolding of our lives. 

After which, justification: "I'm not a thief!" I'm not. 

Except perhaps for the dog-hearts of daughters; infinite loving, attempting always understanding as default mode to return to asap, and can become bitches when this trust is scarred, as happens to far too many. It is why the tenderness of loving is critical to positive development of relationships. 

"These are all love stories too."

I like these movies because the underdog, forced to survive repression, has to make a stand. I like the characters who make a stand against oppression. They are heroes. But there is wisdom here too, they must be the fox to outsmart superior odds. Cunning which develops from experience and insight.





Subway - 1985 French comedy drama film directed by Luc Besson and starring Isabelle Adjani and Christopher Lambert. The film is classified as part of the cinema du look movement.

Diva - 1981 French thriller film directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, adapted from the novel Diva by Daniel Odier (under the pseudonym Delacorta).

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (simplified Chinese: 卧虎藏龙; traditional Chinese: 臥虎藏龍) is a 2000 martial arts film. The film is a Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong and American venture produced by Asian Union Film & Entertainment, China Film Co-Productions Corporation, Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, Edko Films, Good Machine International, and Zoom Hunt Productions. Directed by Ang Lee.




Why I like these films

These films all happen to have thieves in them. I am not a thief I do not respect theft. I do value that all property is theft from community but I also value that I am looking after the tools I need to be an artist better than some disempowered twat who would break it from social frustration or spite and envy and throw it in a river.  

I did not make these movies and decide to put thieves in them. Why did the film maker make that decision? Because they are adventurous and stand against not the normality of human community but primarily about survival in a culture where outcasts exist because capitalism, not property ownership, is inequality based and by default will always create a poor underclass which once accepting the pointlessness of aspiration toward an impossible dream accepts instead degeneracy as a survival necessity. 

In short, the excitement of those who stand against the enforced rules of a society which exploits instead of providing for all. This is the second factor, that it is not the community who the thieves target but the totalitarianism of a system which has let them down. In this they are not only vindicated but become also heroes standing for the moral cause of human equality for all. 

Stealing an apple (or indeed a hole) from the barrel is less offensive than stealing a fifth of a hard earned income through taxes or the ground beneath your feet by land ownership, the many in debt as slaves to the few, and most enslaved to a corrupt system which relies on persecution and exploitation as well as the brainwashing of the masses, to self-perpetuate. Within Wuxia culture the many facets of this are explored. Such exploration is of contrasts and by example. Often, by analogy.

Such examples are not always from Chinese literature and movies thus, in Western traditions the equivalents are to be found in movies about criminals which range from the good, stylish French movies such as Subway, Diva and Nikita (1990 Luc Besson), through film noir, the ugly of gangster movies such as Untouchables (1987 Brian De Palma), to the bad of mega violence movies such as Ronin (1998 John Frankenheimer) and John Wick (2014 Chad Stahelski, David Leitch)

All of these explore morality crisis through various situations varying from heroic revenge to simple robbery for personal gain and empirical expansion. To this we bring Lawrence of Arabia (1962 David Lean) and Zulu (1964 Cy Endfield) into the fold, and the inevitability of StarWars (1977 George Lucas) space opera dramatically inspired by wuxia precepts indeed to such extent the cliches listed as bullet point define the Wuxia genre.









Friday, 19 May 2017

jazz noir

private email to a friend:

smokey late night jazz, film noir style


tracklist for an imaginary album

1. the conformity
2. he's one of them
3. gutter club
4. the broad dame sings
5. cemetery trenchcoats
6. city under wraps
7. nicotine break
8. projection room
9. glass tower
10. bullets in the rain

piano and brass. cymbals and snares.
deco and sleaze. speakeasy and freeze!
with roots deep into the shadow of a criminal mind.
sound is to describe a mood.
the title theme describes the scene.
his voice is clear spoken and firm;
her voice is diesel husk,
clawed fingertips honey inside your spine.
the best line in the movie was snuffed like a secret candle. 
in an abandoned warehouse downtown.

The Viscounts Harlem Nocturne (inspired by Duke Ellington)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfAv8yAaHps

Duke Ellington's Harlem Nocturne
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIkekMoEQY4
the megabox set of Jazz Noir 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjU0FSHLMrw
personally this seems too bluesy to be proper noir
(still on disc 1, it might change yet)
the style of the albums art is about right

not entirely sure if we are working on this yet
its more of an idea for an idea, than an actual idea
i thought about your music and atmosphere,
emotion and progress: mostly of focus.
again aspiration seizes me with its storm virus sights 
and you know the real sounds come from experimentation
scheming to set up a cymbal and layer up samples of its raspy chime
deadbeat dreams because real work is too much like reality
something we all need to take a break from sometimes
so the plan as it forms is to take half of the tracks each and write the backbone, then
swap and add flesh to it, building in layers
try to stay away from borrowing more samples than we could clear because ultimately the investment of time into productivity should on some level be commercial, commerciable, commercialable, saleable. If not for us then for the kids.


I'm so lazy. this new place is good though - I need to force myself to set the music gear up o I can work with it. Had a setback when i updated the macs OS and the firewire alesis mixer is not compatible with the new OS. Mac's are bastards i have to factory restore it to go backward with the OS and to do that I would lose all my software. Easier to sell the mixer and go back to using the dj mixer through a usb converter. Its funny right, for all the gloss of modern tools, when it comes down to the reality of knowing what I am doing because i know what actually works, it's the low-fi simple crude basics that outlast high-tech 'keeping up with the trend of development'.
Keep it all loose and easy so the tracks can be modded into movie soundtracks, well the whole thing should sound like a movie soundtrack more than a series of vaguely related but very different tracks. Keep it all simple. That's why I started the list:

piano and brass, cymbals and snares.

thinking about music in ways to conform to the structures of the traditional jazz-noir tracks is quite different from the loop based stuff we are used to. It progresses. Sections after sections after sections where the two instruments talk with each other. That's a common theme here, the lead instrument and the answer instrument. They do that and then they play together at the same time. Then the rhythm changes, often introducing an entirely new instrument before the main ones (piano and brass) return. Each section is quite short. A lot of it is long and drawn out, a lot of it is short stabby bursts of sound creating ... they aren't exactly melodies. They are stressful and discordant sections of peaceless fucking nuisance noise. A lot of it falls up its own ass and disappears into self indulgent nonsense. The whole genre does, that's why it only really works when it is totally underplayed. I much prefer regular melodies which you can relate to. Think its time to use some modern synths in here and see what we can come up with that is both trad jazz noir and yet very much 21C. And nothing at all like Blade Runner.

film noir
fɪlm ˈnwɑː,French film nwaʀ/
noun: film noir
  1. a style or genre of cinematographic film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace. The term was originally applied (by a group of French critics) to American thriller or detective films made in the period 1944–54 and to the work of directors such as Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, and Billy Wilder.
    • a film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace.
      plural noun: films noirs

"low angled shots and wide angled lenses"
I was thinking this could mean stereo-panned dubsteppy bass and wide open ampitheatre halls (deep reverb).
trying to find an impressive picture to illustrate this email with. it sure as hell ain't easy.
my shadowed eyes are abstract chessboards squinting through blinds as twitchy as my trigger finger.
Man, we need some cello in here too. It's not going to work without cello. The big ones as deep as fat larry's laughter booming through the subway as he treads into the mists of time.

Next up: Burial (cant recall if it's his 1st or 2nd album). Soulless breakbeat. Urban sounds. It sounds more like concrete. I don't mean "music concrete" because that's 90% shit even if it was an important development in 'what music is' brought about by early-mid 20th century sound technology. Burial is modern noir in its own way. Minimalist and dark. That desperate, fatalistic futility. It's jazz with the jazz taken out, what is left after the storm clears.
What becomes of survivors after the movie is over?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keZDbIHJaHI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-VmiLA3nqg

piano and brass, cymbals and snares.
cello.
©2017 snakeappletree

Saturday, 9 January 2016

UnicornHuntersE7



Unicorn Hunters 7

"What do you think happened that night?" I asked. We were planting rows of seeds into trays of plant-pots in the corrugated plastic sheet roofed potting shed, open on one side to a courtyard area facing the paddock.

"The ownership people arrived. They crashed down our access to the dreamplanes because we are living on their land. Its not their land but they believe it is, they have their paperwork deeds which the governors and their agents the police respect as if they are a more real thing than the human spirit." Ever the voice for freedom, Meadow.

"Or that someone more powerful than us did a number on us. We didn't expect we were being stalked." Jake suggested as an alternative.

We are still studying the sciences which interlink the three worlds of Human concerns, Nature and the Spirit worlds. An aboriginal map describing the aspects of Life which we must strive to work in balance with. The Human world is obsolete to the other two which can happily exist without our concerns projected onto it. We cannot say the same for our relationship with the others, although it is widely accepted that Human world is at imbalance with the other worlds is because we ignore it and deny it. Openly living in harmony with both other planes of existence is something for which the state has diagnosed us as schizotypal for attempting to achieve; social prejudice against shamanism endorsed by their textbooks, as Meadow has expressed, the pieces of paper they rely on and believe to be a more real thing than the Human spirit.

"The Victorian." I bring it to the fore. Perhaps there is a relationship between the Victorian and the three co-owners of the garden centre.

"He had that thing with him." Jake says.

"A spirit ally. I have heard of such things."

"It would benefit us to acquire our own."

Meadow sighs. "You would have to capture one by the same way we were attempting to bind the unicorn. By beating its will. You would be surprised how many you have already acquired without knowing it. Jake, your dense electronic and plastic metal demons upstairs, they have a form of spirit which helps you, it is like a brain map through which energies flow, we perceive as sounds. Altogether it is alive although bringing it into our dreaming would likely alter our harmony too much. I have been visiting the crystals and attracting some helpers, nature spirits, mostly for this place to make it a healthy environment for plants to thrive but perhaps we can also use the source there to bring through something that can help us, next time we go into dreaming together."

"When will that be?"

"It depends how much energy we can muster. Tradition is to use the moon cycles but I dont think that really matters for the sort of work we do. We can try again after the brat-pack have left, after we have done what we can by way of healing them. They all carry the city taint."

"Roger wants to stay. He likes it here and he needs to get out of the city probably more than any of us."

"Also he co-owns it. Technically he is one of our employers."

"We should train him up. Bring him in on it."

"That is going to take years and you know it. The state his mind is in, he needs stability. Taking him into dreamspace is going to screw with our balance, you know that."

"He has potential though. He knows about different states of perception and how screwy the mind is."

"Its going to take all of our combined efforts to focus him. We can help him for sure but we still have to go on without him. Hes not ready to take on the Victorian anyway. Even discussing this openly with him is dangerous, for us. We have to protect ourselves."

Most of this conversation was psychic and not actually put into spoken words. Breathing and watching the colouration of energy fluctuation and harmonizing between us; right brained awareness spectrum which are invisible to the left brainers. Empathy borderline autism. Sharing emotions and communication through fluctuations within that.

"Where is he anyway?"

"He went for a walk into the village to check out the facilities."

"Shopping addiction. City taint."


Jake did it. He showed Roger his studio. The two of them hit it off; Roger had some experience with wind instruments and a little guitar. They discussed sound and music and feeling and vibe. Jake played him a sound byte through headphones, they were just getting into it when Meadow and myself gatecrashed them.

“That’s a personal, special sample. Not many people ever heard it before.” Jake explained. “I was just teaching Roger about how the music boxes are magickal instruments. They take us outside of scientific physics and into the world of folk and folk-lore. Check it out.”

The sample was Jakes ex girlfriend saying the words “I love you.” From the sound of her voice she meant it too. It was beautiful. I was about to ask what happened to her when Meadow interrupted me with a gesture, warned me not to. Jakes smile hid pain.

“It gets, exciting; when you do this with it.” Then he played us a short section of the music they had made together, her playing some sort of eastern sounding medieval string instrument. “I love you, you know that, don’t you?” She said. He voice was really nice, she sounded quite young. I said as much.

“This is the sample bank for the track. It’s all in there.” He explained and showed us a list on his computer screen. Everything was arduously named so you could see immediately what was what. “Do you notice anything?”

After a moment we collectively came to the realisation that whatever he was pointing out to us, none of us were getting it. He played “I love you” again.

And?

Then he played it backward. We have all heard vocals played backward before and they usually sound like someone speaking in German or Russian. This time the voice very clearly said; “You know that, don’t you?”

“Wow. How did that happen?”

“To be honest, I am not entirely sure. I did not think to play it backward until after we had already added the original sample to the song, and heard it through a couple of times. It needed something else and that’s when devilishly, decided to play it in reverse too. Whatever it would have sounded like played backward the first time around, my belief is that it was ah, warped somehow by its interaction with the other sounds, the way that folk music blends together to create something more beautiful than the sum of its parts.”

He was choosing his words carefully because these catch phrases were a part of our groups training toward establishing a working frame of reference which we used constructively in our dream sharing. Jake was clever like that.

“It fitted so perfectly. So when I later thought to play that sample backward on its own, without the song - it simply sounds like it sounds.” He played it by itself again. “You know that, don’t you.”

His mood was sad. It was obvious that he had not seen her for a long time and that something sad had happened between them. Which in turn explained why he had dedicated so much of his time alone in his studio with his machines becoming excellent at what he does with them.

“I didn’t know sound could do that.” Roger said, changing the tone before it became an uncomfortable silence.

“It doesn’t usually. Like i said, there is magick. The physics of sound engineering are not a clinical science; they warp timespace. A lot of it has to do with how our perceptions work, how our ears interpret grains of sound to try and make sense of them. Someone who does not know how to speak English language very well probably would hear that quite differently to how we all do.”

Suddenly we felt very small and alone in a vast universe, and took comfort together in each others presence as a group. Roger was included in this. It was a strong and important moment in our collective, a bonding experience.



Monday, 17 March 2014

7sobm / pasadoproximo

South West Wales / Bristol Scene; shaman of the river Severn (north): 


I am lucky to be doing some music projects with her.

Tuesday, 3 September 2013

Green Man Year Zero




"Welcome to the summer of dread. The conservative party's dreams of an England culturally cleansed of 'hippies', 'crusties', 'soap-dodgers' and 'scroungers'. A countryside reclaimed for picnicking Lebensraum for decent suburban folk. A rural idyll unspoiled by dreadlocked, bearded, unwashed, social deviants who will be forced back into the inner-city cesspits from whence they crawled... this is no deranged fascist wet dream. This is the culmination of a determined effort to crush and destroy a multi-cultural, empowering activist lifestyle for no other reason than the besuited gentlemen farmers and merchant bankers of the Conservative Party find it offensive." 

'Convoy Clampdown' article, NME 8 May 1993. 


"When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty."  Magna Carta 1215  (paraphrased)




2013ad is Year Zero by the Mayan long count. The backdrop of the rise of a fascist state in Britain, two and three generations after my ancestors fought two consecutive world wars to prevent such a thing from happening. A return to Law is required while there is still time, now two years before the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta which established in writing a legal system based on the Common Law of our Ancestors (Do not Steal, Do not cause Harm, Do not use trickery, and Keep the Peace) that has become increasingly corrupt and ignored ever since. We are long overdue for and in desperate need of a reformation. The near future will  be one of political reform.  

This summer I was fortunate to take time out of my research and educational work, to be a part of the four day long Green Man festival in the black mountains of Wales. It is located on an ancient riverbed and halfway up the hillside.

One thing that I did notice during the festival, living in high energy nature and away from Babylon, the urban wilderness, cellphone and wifi radiation, is that my sperm production has doubled!


Green Man is the best organised, cleanest festival I have ever been to, although it has been nearly fifteen years since the last big festival I went to, other than the occasional free party and traveller rave during my twenties. Green Man is safe for kids and has a lot of facilities for them, divided into 'younger' and 'older' categories (toddlers/pre-teens and pre-teens/teens in two separate zones). The site is gorgeous! Open spaces as important as music stages, food and trinket shops. Some of the trees here in a grove between the healing field and the main circuits are otherworldly.

Main things; my 3 year old got to see Patti Smith live!

Unfortunately I missed Julian Cope (Teardrop Explodes & the Modern Antiquarian) speaking due to the festi timetable being a fiver more than I had.

The drum workshop was amazing, smoke-filled-bubbles machine, heated showers, toilets cleaned twice a day, every food tent a different nationality from African souk to hippy chai, fresh fried fish and quinoa to full english breakfast. 

Many thousands of people living communally, a state of original-sense anarchy (not needing government) with not one policeman on site throughout; surely this alone says it all.

I walked around the festi where there were many dreadlocks feeling at home, being respected and smiled at simply for their presence, in my mind floated the phrase 'the gathering of tribes' from a 1999 exhibition 'a century of fashion' which predicted a culture that has become relevant now. 


I was at Glastonbury festival at Pilton in the year of the mud (and I still have green toenails from it despite wearing Doc Martens at the time, as trained by my early teenage years of Riot Grrl / Grunge generation vying with Goth and Reggae for my attention before becoming a full blown festi-born new-age traveller as now forever stereotyped). That pre-millenial festival was regarded by many at a time of global tsunami and maelstrom flooding to be Mother Earth speaking; remember what you are, remember nature! Walking barefoot at the Green Man I very soon got back into the festi spirit, watching/feeling several grids of the different festi spirits as they arranged coincidental experiences, time-synced events and meetings while everything falls into its own natural harmonic. 

The Green Man is Renewal cycle of nature; a british deity symbolized by an oak-leaf faced man. To many this signifies Druidism in its honorific state and the association with Oak Trees, of which are many and ancient on the Glanusk Estate in where the festival has been located for the past three of its ten years; although Celts have been worshipping the Green Man for countless generations, it is one of the earliest recorded traditional british imagery seen on pagan artefacts, so important that like Sheela Na Gig it was absorbed into British christian temple carvings prior to the Gregorian reformation.  

The cycle of renewal. It was followed by a hard minimal techno set the likes of which I haven't seen for a decade either, and which helped inspired me to get into making my own techno music.

"Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.” Rumi

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke.


3.9.13 Evidently I came back from the Green Man festival feeling a strong political message! Time has flown by since and I have not had time to sit down, look through the photo's and finish this blog until today.