ALL EARS VOL. 2 (NEW AUSTRALIAN MUSIC COMPILATION)

STAG HARE - ANGEL TECH (2013)

NEW STAG HARE BLISSFUL AS USUAL

r i o t _ m e a d o w s - b i o t o p e s (2013)

Drifting about in an unassuming corner of the global web is r i o t _ m e a d o w s, conjuring moss-drenched Endless Summer-era vibes both future-oriented yet blissfully primeval. In 'd a w n _ w i t h y o u' vast swathes of energy coalesce, vaporise, surge and dissipate in yawning cycles, with bass-synths punctuating the overall mix and forming a trail through the beautifully disorientating haze. Enter 'o t h e r b o a r d' for supreme levitation, where the echoes of future worlds slip time boundaries and energise your temporal lobe. Pass further on with 'i c e _ p a t t e r n s' and project your body in astral form to distant crystalline realms, then locate one golden idea and realise it back here in the material world.

STAG HARE

Spirit Canoes (2011)

It's time to open up the gates on an artist who, in certain ways, inspired the creation of Obstacle Illusion. We've received so much good energy from his music that it's time to pass back some vibes. After all, he recently made all his music free to download, and we'd like to point as many people as we can towards it.

"In Utah there are such large flat expanses surrounded by these mountains. I have spent a lot of time riding in a car watching out the windows as these landscapes roll past. I think everything I love to create is in these landscapes, texture, story, time, vast slow changes......natural shapes, you know?" - Stag Hare, in an interview with foxy digitalis.

It's something you hear straight away in all of Stag Hare's music;  the geological and ecological progression of time, the ground-swell of radiating guitar drones, almost raga-like in their languor and meditative drift, and the way all the sounds together feel as if they are being inhaled and exhaled rather than played. Vocals play out like mantras for concentrating the mind, and the occasional upsurge of rattling bells and chimes feels like an invocation or ceremonial welcoming for spirits, echoing vibes and other unknown energies to pass through, swirl around and generally synchronise with you wherever you are. 

Black Medicine Music (2008)

Black Medicine Music (2008) is exactly that; sound-based medicine for the whole being. The album art reveals some of the alchemic ingredients at work; two hands give us a human factor, but it's grounded in the material substrate of nature - there is no separation, but instead, we see nature shining through two sheer human paws. The rainbow-filled vessel feels like an offering, but also a source of nourishment. Stag Hare's music is like a warming cup of yerba mate, keeping us ever alert and aware of the magic inherent in all our surrounds.

On 'Holy Quinn' it feels like waking up, but by the end we've moved from sweet morning tranquility to an excitable, playful rain dance reminiscent of the flute-charmer intro to Herbie Hancock's Watermelon Man. Energetically speaking, 'Crystal Dust Dream' takes us even further, perhaps on eagle-back soaring through mountain chasms and redwood forests. The harmonica calls down rain and triumphant thunder and gives life to the land, while solar-currents run through the guitar strings and drench the listener in simmering layers of chest-soothing drone. The percussive elements throughout all of Stag Hare's music are essential; the rhythms are deceptively simple, always hypnotic and feel as if they're tuned to the rhythm of hiking footsteps or the migration of reindeer.

Ahspen (2007)

While we've been focusing on Black Medicine Music (perhaps because it was his first release to ever find us), every Stag Hare release is equal. If every song was collated onto a single album they would still make perfect sense. They grasp with similar ideas, explore similar territories, and evoke that same sense of peacefulness, joy, radiant energy and calm ease which has made Stag Hare, for us, an essential beginning, set and setting to all our inner explorations, backyard gatherings and outer journeys across the various nooks and vistas of the natural world. 

JOGGING HOUSE - LONGINGS (2012)

Icy uplift and drift, crystalline beats, serene and yet energised; for long journeys over vast landscapes or smoke-heavy dancefloors at 3am. ♥ it.

BEWILDER BEAST - RUNNING (2012)

Cloudburst; sunlight leaking through humid fields of tropic rain; the atmosphere dense with sweat; human breathing, human movement; a coral atoll visible not far away, sand between the toes, waves rolling in up to the knees, bass heavy in the chest and rattling nearby palm trees; the high is sweet and real, the vibes pure.

If everyone in the world all of a sudden decided that it would be MORE FUN to just get along, what would take place?

gimme Bewilder Beast, a soundsystem, the beach, sunset communions…

It's a question I ask my kids when I teach. Then: what if these things we envisioned just went ahead anyway? Maybe we could bring about little bursts of paradise by working backwards? Our world is simply the realtime arrival of ideas from human minds. When it comes to the arrangement of human society, all it takes is an agreement to play by an idea.

'Push'd Out' thrums and kicks with hi-energy synth - it's the arrival of joyful relief setting in with a sincere recognition of our origins; that we are as much skin and bone as we are anger and joy, as much dust and ash as human son or daughter, and as much bird and mammal as we are anything ever fired up into life beneath the offering sun. 

This whole album, easily one of my favorites from 2012, just oozes with joy. Another feeling sets in - it may not be what inspired the music, but it's what the music inspires in me, and it's the simple fact that all people, no matter where you look, want nothing more in this world than to be happy. It's the great equaliser. Try just twenty minutes alone with this idea, eyes closed, with Bewilder Beast for company, and wonder... 

To me, it seems our only problem is that we differ in our ideas as to how to bring about this happiness. All strife begins here. For me, the question of all ages is this: Can we learn to play by an idea which includes everyone as a player in an infinitely changing, ever-dissolving and ever re-forming cycle?

ARICA - HEAVEN (1971)

1971; Journeys east, west, north, and south, making trails over rocks, thru rivers, on clouds and in heaven. Sounds from an earlier time which, echoing out of Time, resonate with our new millennial soundrealms. Pieces like 'Lake' evoke circadian rhythms and interspecies communications. Others, like 'Wind,' eschew traditional structure and instead mimic the formless ebb and flow of atmospheric processes. On 'Ocean,' piano's wake up to the sound of distant  drums, rolling layers of reverberating cymbals and the peaceful exhalation of rattling chimes. This album is a lost treasure, and an ideal guide for reestablishing a calm and centered spirit.

Download it here.

- Sneeks

∜♡MDISCS 2K13 COMPILATION (AMD2K13)(❤❤,)∜♡

Future hope is a theme here on Obstacle Illusion and I feel like the ∜♡MDISCS: Futures Reserve Label is a definite pathfinder on this trail -- they usher in a consistent and glittering stream of future-gazing, -exploring, and -unveiling sounds from every glazed angle of the electronic hypersphere and do so with a real healthy mix of playfulness, humour, and joyful sincerity. What also sets them apart is the aesthetic cohesiveness they create across all their releases while still wrangling in a massive diversity of sounds, conjuring everything from slick HD technicality and precision-beats to lo-fi pop dreamhazes to sludge-wading yet glimmering hip-hop to so many indescribable mongrel genres that it's hard to keep up. Their latest compilation is a mind-opening testament to all of this; 73 tracks moving over 4.4 hours in length and spread across two discs. I've enjoyed every track here and wish I could give some words to every single one, but truly, the task to describe even half of what is contained here in these compilations is monumental enough!

Starting with the first slab we encounter a i r s p o r t s exquisite 'Dubbed in 3D', the sorta .wav perfect for cruising high and happy over a floating ecopolis, wrapped up like a bird man and slicing through the air in a state of perfect bliss. Straight after, LINGERIE's 'KIMI KIWI' evokes a wired VR-disco for spaced romantics to boogie down with one another, a kaleidoscopic mirror-room which wobbles like jelly with every kickbeat and treble-sharp handclap. Climbing the ladder we reach 'Pizza Man' by Golden Axe; because even pizza men will be respected heroes in the future. Blast this out of your space-cruiser speakers while traversing the neon streets of New Mars. A couple tracks later we hit a personal fav of mine, 'Works' by Dreams, composed of beautiful heartbeat snare roll ups, happy pitch-high stammers and enthusiasms, subtle Yoshi samples, funkdafied bass and disco stabs, all woven together at the end of each section with a chorus-like flotilla of upwards-ascending synths and atmospherics…  beautiful.

The hits keep coming; Jogging House's 'You Don't Talk (feat. Kat Kaufmann)' sends me aboard a train weaving through alps and snow-encrusted forest. From lilting atmospherics we shift very suddenly into 'GOOD ANNA DA BAD' by POORSCHE which is like a cerebral wormhole cyber voyage through a 90s happy hardcore rave spliced with Mount Kimbie at 20x speed. Apart from hyperfuturistic electronics there are plenty of more traditional vocal- and pop-oriented tracks spread across these two discs and 'What v.2.0 Do' by Gabriel White is one of my favourites along that line. 

Another side to ∜♡MDISCS and featured on this comp are some next-phase vapourwave sounds which, for me, sound like vapourwave's younger and less cynical bro/sister, less bitterly ironic and simply more chill, and not very concerned about impressing you or your friends. You don't quite understand their mannerisms, their clothes or anything they are saying, but you feel as if everything they do is coming from a much more honest and joyful place than you could ever muster up when you were their age. This is a sign of the times; growing up with the internet means instant exposure to a multiplicity of realities, and it tramples that homogeneity which schools try to impose generation after generation. The internet abolishes one-truth systems and explodes the levee with mind-shaping levels of variety. ESPRIT空想's 'cruiser' pushes aside the half-speed dirge which can make so much vapourwave feel like a chore and replaces it with unapologetic sax-driven 80s funk mash. Infinite Frequencies 'The Sultans Garden' is the glimmering digital landscape you reach after the bad trip you experienced in the 'corporate elevator.' QUILTLAND brings us 'TIME PHRASE,' a lush and positive trip with percussion submerged in an echochamber of quilted synth-layers. Ramzi's 'Pou Yon Mond Nouvo' unsurfaces scuba-dived water beats from plaintive dimensions all chopped and diced for optimum textural enjoyment. This is just the first side, and it ends with 'The Patriot' by 333 Boyz , a track which is just too great and too bizarre a mix of mysteriously harmonious elements that to describe it would ruin the sheer enjoyment one gains from encountering it for the very first time. Really, to describe in detail every track I love even on the first disc is quite a task -- much more could be written for Giraffage's 'Computer City (Go Dugong Remix)', the misty cool vibes of 'The Elsa' by Jaaska, and the endless bliss-drift of 'Grid Life' via Coolmemoryz.

Wiping away the sweat and joyful tears we move to the second side. 'Hot*DOG…' by Gunge is a damn nice dance wash soaked in bubbling electronics, streaming synths, handclaps and old diva vocal echoes moving in from a past realm somewhere. Feels like I'm at a pool party with 3D holographic waterfalls instead of fake fireplaces - the ending sounds like the speaker system fell in the pool but kept on chugging anyway, with the MC in snorkels and everyone too busy dancing to notice. Lockbox's 'LUST 2.0' is a righteously splayed skittering phased-out beat hurricane whose musical heritage is so diverse that it leaves you in a kind of Socratic aporia. Myrrh Ka Ba calms things down with the serene and steady galactic bounce of 'Astral Disco', expertly-diced vocal samples perfect for a late-night dancefloor meditation, or an even later-night bike ride home to bed. Things turn 4/4 with PARTY TRASH and FERAL LOVE, and like Myrrh Ka Ba they chop their vocals with sushi-sharp knifework, glazing the rest in reverb and overdriven bass for future preservation. Then there's Krusht's remix of 'Just My Imagination' by The Temptations. The way Krusht carefully stretches out the chorus is simple yet masterful - truly and utterly serene, a flood of peaceful energy perfect for any hour of the day.

There is just so much ingenuity across these two discs in terms of production and structure. On the production side of things we have songs like "Heard-Crashed" by Shisd, where some sort of reverse crash or hi-hat takes the foreground while the rest of the kit is buried in faraway reverb; the vocals sit somewhere in-between, oozing mellow vibes despite the enfolding racket. MEWL's 'Stop Caring' is structurally fascinating, anchored the whole way through via one very simple (but never tiring) guitar loop. Free-wheeling drums crash over the top with no obvious purpose - yet, in their spontaneity, they suit perfectly.  Finally, with the guitar loop playing anchor it's the vocals, reassuring and carefully escalating, which act as the lifeline, urging you along blissfully throughout.

It's interesting that the final track ('Voodoo in The Afternoonn,' by Kikiilimikilii) is also one of the darkest, making it something of a rarity amidst the previous explosions of light. On this finale it feels like the sky is being torn apart, but it's the kind of apocalyptic storm that one senses is completely necessary, as a kind of catharsis for all sentient life. Many times humankind has had to undergo these worldwide historical experiences in order to shed the deadweight of old, unjust ideologies and power structures. We are in a similar age where much tension is occurring alongside beautiful waves of relief and realisation. The last 16 or so seconds feels like a tribute to that relief, and a symbolically eloquent closure to 4.4 hours of mind-altering sound vibrations.

You've heard enough from me, stream it below!

You can also head here for download options and other tings.

SEER WAVE - TIME LAGOON EP (2012)

"Seer Wave crafts journeys thru cloud-drenched timeworlds, winding rivers, lucid dreams and landscapes littered with portals, maps of guidance and transcendent relics for waking level ascent and gliding sight."

MOUNTAINS - AIR MUSEUM (2011)

Mountains are one of my favourite bands: every offering they send out into the world contains transmissions which, for me, evoke a sensation of such raw, sweet, slow and organic growth; blissful tones which resonate somewhere deep within my chest, and then in a calm and liquid outward movement, trail into my toes, fingers, neck, brain and mind. In Air Museum, the oft-sampled freefall of weather and natural cycles and warming guitar drones meld with new and rich waves of bubbling synthesizer tones, painting valleys in my mind of bluegold crystal lakes and long eons of meditative languor. This is music for the cultivation and celebration of a calm, peaceful world.

Listen below or stream here.

- sneeks

WISE WORDS: SOLOVYOV ON LOVE

"The meaning and worth of love as a feeling is that it really forces us, with all our being, to acknowledge for another the same absolute significance which, because of the power of egoism, we are conscious of only in our own selves. Love is important, not only as one of our feelings but as the transfer of all our interest in life from ourselves to another, as the shifting of the very center of our lives."

- Vladimir Solovyov, "The Meaning of Love."

A TIME: YARDSTOCK AND WHY IT RULED

(photo by James Sher)

Oswald Spengler, in The Decline of the West, coined the term “historical psuedomorphosis” to designate, as he explained, “those cases in which an older alien culture lies so massively over a land that a young culture, born in this land, cannot get its breath and fails not only to achieve pure and specific expression forms, but even to develop fully its own self-consciousness.” The figure was adopted from the terminology of the science of mineralogy, where the word psuedomorphosis, “false formation,” refers to the deceptive outer shape of a crystal that has solidified within a rock crevice or other mold incongruous to its inner structure. (Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, 1976)

All across the world, seemingly more than ever, there is an ongoing process of psuedomorphosis taking place and working itself out in rippling and congealing spasms of activity and contemplation. Information has exploded like a neutron star; the Internet is not a Web but a lightspeed evolving Octopian hydra with wires instead of veins and a billion computers for a billion neurons, synapses firing through new software rivers, with data from the real world feeding into the virtual and back out again in an endless copulating interchange; sensory information inhaled, digested, recombined and repurposed for higher & higher understanding – and it all came from the womb of that “older alien culture,” yet quickly turned loose. It’s becoming a sensory repository for the human imagination and is as much a culture in itself as it is a catalyst for cultural change, yea the boundary lines are impossible to discern. Stuff happens in, out, through, via, because of...

Occupy was merely the eyelids opening. What a world to gaze out on! It gazed and hammered back. Our instincts kicked in. These things always start politically but they must, if they are to survive their own internal transformations, step forwards lightly and mindfully. Mindfulness is the shield which both carves the path and brushes aside the thorns. If we lose ourselves to hate, then all our power is lost instantaneously, but not “to the other side” (there is no other side, no 1%, which is not an intimate part of who we are) – when we hate, when we can no longer forgive, then our power evaporates and even turns against us, deteriorating everything we’ve worked so hard for...

Yardstock (and any positive-creative gathering anywhere) is just one way in which Perth/Earth is oscillating wildly out of its own frightful psuedomorphosis and into a more fertile process of ongoing symbiosis. If psuedomorphosis is the secession of expression and independent thought to an older and more powerful cultural formation, then symbiosis is that newness of expression and thought which integrates the old, recombining and repurposing it for mutual self-transformation.

To put it more simply: there is no destruction taking place, only acceptance and mindful reformulation. Instead of complaint, we have action. Instead of critique, we have praise. Instead of taking, we have offering. Symbiosis.

The entire organic world is composed of smaller, inter-collaborating organic worlds, and has evolved through collaboration. This idea is called 'symbiogenesis' and is unravelled in great detail by Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan over an extensive series of books ranging from 1970 to 2007. In Microcosmos (1987) they wrote:

From the first primordial bacteria to the present, myriads of symbiotically formed organisms have lived and died. But the microbial common denominator remains essentially unchanged. Our DNA is derived in an unbroken sequence from the same molecules in the earliest cells that formed at the edges of the first warm, shallow oceans. Our bodies, like those of all life, preserve the environment of an earlier earth. We coexist with present-day microbes and harbor remnants of others, symbiotically subsumed within our cells. In this way, the microcosm lives on in us and we in it.

Symbiosis is a kind of interwovenness, and at the human level it implies for me the idea of love. What I felt when I was at Yardstock was, at first, an ambience of sheer goodwill which, as time progressed, became something akin to a grinning and Platonic love for every human, dog, cat and creature in sight.

Love is a concept human beings have named, but what is the actual force behind the name? Is it some self-existent principle, some law of Nature, an actual energy or permeating field, like gravity or electricity? Is there simply an action performed with love, or can there be a thought fuelled by love? Or is love an invisible force which we must open ourselves up to, in order that it may flow through us? If love is an idea, then surely it must be all these things at once.

I believe love is an idea. It may be said that love is a fundamental, inborn idea, inherent to all of life. I say this because many would define primordial love as essentially a coming together, a unification, and we can see this process of unification in all aspects of the phenomenal world, from the microscopic to the telescopic. It is in the delicate balance and coming together of galactic forces which allowed for life on this planet to arise in the first place. It is the previously quoted biological symbiosis of our cells and bodies. It is there everytime a human being forgives another, accepts another despite ideological differences, everytime we dance, or jam, or collaborate in any way...

... it was there, at the end of the tangled wilderness in Yard Five, when the skateboard ramp was lined with onlookers and that one solitary board, piloted by an array of enthusiastic dudes of varying competence, drifted and crashed over the plywood turnpike, and no one jeered but instead clapped and cheered regardless of fall or flourish...

It’s there too in the way the organic world nourishes us when we eat it, and how we return that nourishment to it when we die; a coming together, a unity. It’s happening all around us, and indeed if we delve (both intellectually and physically) into the fractal fabric of time and space, we will see that the universe is inextricably, and infinitely, interwoven – and no organism, no mineral, no star or seed is exempt. I do not think this interwovenness is the same as love, but I think it gives rise to love’s sheer necessity. If everything we do has an impact, and we ourselves occupy the space of that impact (no matter how distant things may seem), then mindfulness is really key...

If love is simply an idea rather than some fundamental force bringing cohesion to the living universe, it loses none of its power. The 'fundamental force' thing is, at heart, just an idea. Ideas are powerful in this way because they are all-pervasive. I do not think there is anything in this world which exists without them. A termite is an idea; a plan of action to be enacted in the world in collision with an almost infinite array of other ideas, predator and prey alike. We ourselves are ideas, blueprint seeds bursting through the soil. Yet we extend beyond the double-helix and make conscious alterations to our own development when we draw from the realm of human ideas, i.e. collective imagination.

The collective imagination is like the internet; it is not a place of total cohesion. Our collective imagination holds within it many, many different truths. At one point in Yardstock there was a conflict: one world of ideas and another. Fitness and Fighting entangled with Music and Mingling. Surely there are no greater opposites? Yet if you refined each into a separate solution you’d end up with essentially the same thing: something distinctly human and desiring, somehow, to be happy in this world. When the two make contact, each infects the other, and we have to be mindful of what takes place. To understand what seems impossible to understand we have to travel back in time; everyone was a kid once. How does aggression fire aggression? Let it be, let it pass. Keep connection in mind.

He who knows others is clever, but he who knows himself is enlightened. He who overcomes others is strong, but he who overcomes himself is mightier still. (Tao Te Ching)

Thankfully the tension did not snap but passed like a cloud. I found my way into Yard Four and into the dense mass of smiling human beings all crammed into a tiny backyard reeling with the gnashing guitar, bass and primal drums of Fucking Teeth, beautifully cohesive, red-faced, ecstatic and snarling all at once, summoning up crowdsurfers and swaying bodies to n fro. Meanwhile, Miles the Party Dog is chasing sticks and tennis balls, loving life - and like pretty much every dog ever – serving as the greatest model for friendliness and acceptance you can hope for, setting the tone and platform for the rest of the party to launch from. Then came the galactic drift of These Shipwrecks, guitars traded out for synths and providing for a more ethereal vibe than ever but which, thanks to some casual & untempered vocals, was all strangely human and earthy Kraut-infected minimalism dividing the weed haze and baking in the fading remnants of the sun.

Yard Five next; arriving a touch late to the sound of Mental Powers. Sounds insane from outside, bouncing off streetlights and garden fences. I move to the backyard and spy bronze bells and steel lids mic’d up and clattering like centipede legs, rippling alongside repeatedly oscillating ribbon synths and Limbo’s usual kit replaced with an ancient-looking drum machine puttering away under firing lightning fingertips, all of it brewing up a kind of lunar junkyard atmosphere. Either this is the last song or the last movement of one huge song, either way it rules but ends about ten minutes after I get in. After that the partygoers drift into the yard which is actually a deep, deep jungle overgrown with enormous tangles of nasturtium, ferns and who-knows-what-else, so dark I can’t tell where the whole thing ends or begins. Social tribes intermingle and, as mentioned earlier, a neighbour’s skateboard ramp is occupied. The owner of the ramp comes out but she greets us with a smile and an amazing Irish Wolf Hound, telling us that the ramp belongs to her son who, when asked to build a storage shed, built this instead…

The police cut off the rest of the bands in Yard Five. It’s a damn shame. I didn’t talk with anyone about it properly, don’t know what the reasons were (noise complaints?) but they proceeded to follow us to the next Yard anyway… we can’t hate on them too much, the riots of the younger dudes the previous weekend got them standing on edge… though I'm a little worried about the new laws brewing against this stuff. Party Safe Posters might not cut it.   

At Yard Six the bristling energy of Hamjam kicked things off, real beautiful stuff. I was pretty out of it by then but every sound felt mixed to perfection; crowd got well into it, lights were pulsing, energy gathering, so nice.

It had to end there, though. The police had enough; maybe next time we can find some better understanding with them or, as plans seem to be brewing, Yardstock can hit Freo or, even better, go bush and become ForestStock. Truly that would take the whole thing to the next level.

Anyway, I’m deeply thankful to the organizers for putting it together, for cultivating some symbiosis and positivity all around. Again I’m thankful to all those who help to knit together the social and creative fabric of Perth (and, therefore, the world) Keeping everything inclusive, full of positivity and mutual encouragement is what’ll keep it strong and healthy for a long time running.

Beauty does not reside in the exclusion of certain realities, but in the absolute inclusion of all realities. (Friedrich Schiller)

Peace!

- Sneeks

WISE WORDS: STEPS 2 PEACE

The ancient people who desired to have a clear moral harmony in the world would first order their national life; those who desired to order their national life would first regulate their home life; those who desired to regulate their home life would first cultivate their personal lives; those who desired to cultivate their personal lives would first set their hearts right; those who desired to set their hearts right would first make their wills sincere; those who desired to make their wills sincere would first arrive at understanding; understanding comes from the exploration of knowledge of things. When the knowledge of things is gained, then understanding is reached; when understanding is reached, then the will is sincere; when the will is sincere, then the heart is set right; when the heart is set right, then the personal life is cultivated; when the personal life is cultivated, then the home life is regulated; when the home life regulated, then the national life is orderly; and when the national life is orderly: then the world is at peace. From the Emperor down to the common man, the cultivation of the personal life is the foundation for all. It is impossible that when the foundation is disorderly, the superstructure can be orderly. There has never been a tree whose trunk is slender and whose top branches are heavy and strong. There is a cause and a sequence in things, and a beginning and end in human affairs. To know the order of precedence is to have the beginning of wisdom.

(quote & translation taken from The Importance of Living (1938), by Lin Yutang)

WISE WORDS: LOVE & POWER

(Quotation source: Professor Hans Heinrich Schaeder, "Der Mensch in Orient und Okzident: Grundzuge einer eurasiatischen Geschichte" originally cited in Joseph Campbell's "Creative Mythology"]

Now the exercise of power is governed everywhere by the law of intensification, or as the Greeks would say, “greed for more than one’s share.” There is within it no principle of measure; measure is brought to it only from without, by counterforces that restrict it. So that history is the interaction of power, on one hand – its establishment, maintenance, and increase – and those counterforces, on the other. Various names have been given to the latter – of which the simplest and most inclusive is love. They are released when doubts arise (generally among the governed, but occasionally, also, in the circles of the ruling class) conducing to a criticism of the power principle. And this criticism may develop to the radical point of an absolute renunciation of power, generating then the idea and realization of an order of life based on brotherly love, and mutual aid. Self-confidence, and thereby the strength to influence others, accrues to those in this position from their belief that only in this, and not in power, which they reject, can the meaning of human existence be fulfilled. Meaning is then sought no longer in the organized powers of a state, the domination of the governed by their masters, but in individuals, giving and welcoming love.

When such an order prospers in its conversion of people, guiding them to new life, it may bring into being a spiritual movement that nothing can stop. This is passed on, from one generation to the next, and spreads from the narrow circle of its origin over lands and continents. It succeeds, along the way, in persuading even the holders of worldly power to concede recognition – either actually or ostensibly – to its truth and obligations, and lays restraints on their will to power that are not an effect of that will itself. Twice in the history of the world, in Buddhism and in Christianity, such movements have acquired the character of world-historical powers; and in the course of their development they have themselves become infected by the will to power and mastery, which has at times even darkened them to the core. Yet both are such that they can be restored to their pristine character, in the sense of the life and teaching of their founders.  

SOUND MIX: TIMECRAWL LIVING

‘Think that you are not yet begotten, think that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you are dead, that you are in the world beyond the grave, grasp all that in your thought at once, all times and places.’ – Hermetica.

‘The formless moves to the realm of form; the formed moves back to the realm of formlessness. This all people alike understand. But it is not something to be reached by striving. People everywhere debate how to reach it. But those who have reached it do not debate, and those who debate have not reached it.’ – Chuang Tzu, Taoist sage.

I’d like to pour a substance over the earth. It’d be an oozing, halting sap, as sweet as raw honey, and drawn from a secret and incredibly ancient tree embedded deep in the heart of a mist-drenched Japanese forest. I would mix this mystic sap in a cauldron with the clear and soothing goo of aloe vera, and then I would warm it to the temperature of freshly baked bread by infusing it with the superheated vapor of salvia divinorum. I would then add some magic crystals to ensure that the substance was highly absorbent and extremely colorful. After this I would place the giant bubbling cauldron of magic sap in an echo chamber and let it resonate with an array of sounds like the ones mixed above, gently simmering it together for twelve years straight. By then the substance would be fully imbued with an energy of raw healing slowness, and I would proceed to pour it over the planet. Clocks everywhere would melt into a highly nutritious and organic paste. Jobs everywhere would crumble into gardening and caring for cats. People everywhere would start thanking the sun. Kids everywhere would breathe a sigh of relief, and roads everywhere would give way to their living inner jungle. Cities would become playground skatepark canvasses, and offices would become homes. People would try and thank me, but I would wave my hand and say, “No, thank you for believing in the power of the sap!” 

Then we would all play a game of chinlone.

- Sneeks

01. WYLD WYZRDS - Forest Light (Free Magick, 2011)
02. Colleen - The Happy Sea (The Golden Morning Breaks, 2005)
03. Growing - Primitive Associations / Great Mass Above (The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light, 2004)
04. Function - Shards (The Secret Miracle Fountain, 2006)
05. Brightblack Morning Light - Friend of Time (Self-titled, 2006)
06. Mountains - Add Infinity (Choral, 2009)
07. Animal Collective - Daffy Duck (Feels, 2005)