Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The Rock of the City

Ever so cautiously, I have dipped my toes into the music blog tidal pools. Not ready yet to dive into the oceanic blogosphere, but just finding what washes up on more accessible beaches.

The following paragraph, from Laura Barton's blog at the UK Guardian, was enough to snap be out of my Monday morning torpor and write an entry I have been meaning to write for some time.

"I always think America is the only nation that could have birthed rock'n'roll. It is to me such a perfect example of Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis, the notion that "what has been distinctive and valuable in America's contribution to the history of the human spirit" has always been owed to what he referred as "the transforming influence of the American wilderness" - that is, the American frontier, the stretch between civilised society and the untamed wilderness. And it is here, I think, that rock'n'roll resides - right on the very frontier, the brink of the wilderness, among the things not quite yet tamed." (http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/comment/story/0,,2276104,00.html)

Interestingly, after I committed to using that quote for my intro, I noticed that Barton also wrote a blog about a musician who evidently records not far from where I grew up:

"[Andrew] Bird often records in his barn near Elizabeth, Illinois. He says the way the birds and crickets permeated the songs... to listen to it again now is, for him, a little like echolocation. 'I still listen to those tapes all the time because immediately, I feel like I'm back in that space again. You can feel all the corners of the barn,' he says." (http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/comment/story/0,,2268504,00.html)

My brother and I grew up out in the country-- if you start here, it's about two-thirds of the way to Elizabeth. And rock was the music we listened to when we grew up. To this day, I will rarely listen to rock within the boundaries of a city. No, that's for back home-- a gravel road, a hot summer night, sky of stars and fireflies, drinking beer on the back porch and blasting Led Zeppelin so loud that every dog in a three mile radius is barking a chorus.

We moved to Chicago the same year-- my bro was going to UIC, I was looking for my first real job after college. We did identify a couple musical acts that adapted happily to our new environment. One was Tricky. In fact, the other major trip-hop acts-- Morcheeba, Portishead-- also made equal sense among brick walls or rolling fields. But the other major fence-straddler was Godflesh-- the seminal industrial metal surrealists led by Justin K. Broadrick. Around the time of our defection to the city, Broadrick was taking a break from his band to work with Kevin Martin (dub mechanic of The Bug fame) on the Techno Animal album "Brotherhood of the Bomb". That timing caused a resonance with us (it's hip-hop collaborations).

But mainly, we discovered underground hip-hop, and dubbed it the "Rock of the City". It vibrated like the used and abused pavement, it crackled like the dripping power lines, and it pulsed with the collective consciousness of the city's occupants. The strange songs revealed the inner workings of a race of beings who had secreted an endless steel-and-concrete hive in which to imprison themselves, a race which wove glass minarets to reach the clouds.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Decoding the Archaic Experience

I'm in it. Finally IN IT! That is, I am in a book. I should clarify; I am into a book, that relic of a more refined era. I am actually addicted to this heap of parchment!

There is a part where the protagonist, Lindsay, speaks to his grandfather in a dream. But at this point, the universe of Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix still feels concrete and tactile; it hasn't the slippery notion of reality that imbues most net-entwined cyberpunk fare, and it is unclear that the grandfather hears. But is doesn't matter.

For I impose my own vision of metaphysics on everything my brain touches. And it says that there is a tiny molecule of deterministic truth in every thing, in every being, in every moment. When we talk to our friend in a dream, it does not matter whether subatomic particles facilitate instantaneous communication-at-a-distance, or if even more refined mystical unities of consciousness devolve to us. It needn't matter, for the Truth has always been there, always will be, and It knows every thought whispered in our dreams. Maybe it is akin to Leibnitz's monads, unitary particles of being that contain every possibility and compose every thing; maybe it is because every drop of water contains a trillion shelled universes-within-universes; maybe it is because the world is constituted of universal Forms and Archetypes; perhaps because a computerized Creator has written our code in infinite layers of parallel RAM. But rest assured, when you speak in dreams you are heard.

Right now, I feel like this book is the story of my life! (well, why isn't everything we read the story of our life? We are all connected to everything, right?!). I drift in space, the hum of environmental controls and air vents and life-support machinery an ever present subliminal soundtrack. Distant noise from Earth (at least 17 light years-- I mean stories-- away) may as well come over static-soaked radio transmissions. I am alienated from my environment, while literally and figuratively above it. Spent so much time lately in a green haze that my eyes see the age in things, in people. The metahuman mind learns to operate on a different timeline. As the enhanced Shaper Lindsay says in Schismatrix-- "They were young, and breaking all the rules, and after a few long whiffs from the inhaler they were brighter than anyone human had a right to be." Yes, that's it. We can all be posthuman, and it is really, really easy; basically, it just requires the will. I posit the existence of a secret institution called The Coalition for the Mind; we live in a matrix of auto-hypnosis, fantasy, REM sleep, lucid dreams, meditation, drug states, and psychic awareness; children of Icarus adrift in a circumsolar ark.

Assuming there is at least one domain of reality that is deterministic (as in, pre-programmed to run like a well-oiled machine) and all-knowing (inferring some variety of instantaneous action-at-a-distance), you should still exercise your God-given free will, and remind your loved ones that you love them.

The Fragile

Last weekend my girlfriend and I sat at an intersection on Division. For the first time, we noticed a rusty bike chained up by the concrete wall of the underpass. It was adorned with fake flowers and a name and the words "She heard everyday sounds in music."

That shrine was a sad, otherworldly thing. It happened that we listened to "Distant Lights" from Burial, and I think that I finally figured it out (thank God for fragile hungover states).

For me the only place where such decayed, apocalyptic beauty is in abundance is when you are wandering the Burning Man playa at 3am, haunted by time travelers from the future (or are they spirits of those who will die in some irradiated, barren desert of tomorrow?). And also in archaic dream tunnels lit by dirty fluorescent lights, unambiguous archways to the Underworld. The Unconscious and the dead share a language, and speak in poignant symbols.

Raggaclash

murder dem, murder dem!

I had a dream last night that we were in a club somewhere.
first it was breakbeat, dubstep, etc.
then things got really quiet.

suddenly a phat trance bassline kicked in
then, a few minutes later, some MCs and singers came on and grabbed the mics.
they were white ravers and whatnot

but pretty soon they were singing some intense, laser-sharp, high-energy "murder dem" ragga lyrics over the trance beat
and it destroyed!




Lazer Bass

Earlier, a friend and I were discussing via e-mail what to do with the last weekend of the month. I'm not sure if I'll be in town, but if I am, I will be going to this 'lazer bass' thing--
http://www.burningmanchicago.org/content/it-came-west
I found more information on that movement-- it's not "glitch hop"-- more like underground-style remixes of commercial tracks (that is good in theory, and it has more focus than "mash-up"); I would recommend this blog entry on the New Yorker, of all places--
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sashafrerejones/2008/03/lazer-guided-1.html
I was skeptical at first. Mainly because I don't like my vocals cut-up to fit a beat-- I like my vocals live on a beat. But quite frankly, the stuff is entertaining.

I downloaded the free Megasoid Tank Thong and Ghislain Poirier mixes. I threw on the Megasoid mix as I discussed the lazer bass thing with my friend earlier. And then I heard some sweet vocals and I was like-- hey, that's a Zulu verse!

SNARKINESS DISCLAIMER: this remainder of this post may contain critical, snobbish, or otherwise snarky content.

If the lazer bass thing acquires any critical mass, I hope that promoters have the brains to retain live MCs to host the events! I have been to some sweet dubstep shows recently, but they were somewhat tarnished by the lack of MC-- moreover, they were tarnished by some DJs and promoters hollerin' between sets. They were NOT MCs! Stay off the mic! If you are too cheap to retain an MC, you don't get to hype yourself up on the mic.

Oh jeez, I'm sorry, you know I love you guys.

Oh, damn, look at that-- I just noticed that mashit.com had a lazer bass comment back on May 1-- http://www.mashit.com/2008/05/01/lazer-bass/

If you want a really sweet remix album of gangsta shit, buy this: Lil Wayne "None Higher"; selections are fitted by mixtape mainstay DJ Benzi. Oh, look, someone blogged about it--
http://www.fiftyonefiftyone.com/2007/05/dj-benzi-lil-wayne-none-higher.html

Friday, April 25, 2008

Quantity does not equal Quality

SNARKINESS DISCLAIMER: this post may contain critical, snobbish, or otherwise snarky content.

I am a brain plugged into a giant computer. God created me so that I can appreciate the art that He channels through the mouths and hands of my fellow pixilated life forms, the art that He builds into the mountains and deserts, and the art that He feeds directly into my mind from Above. I take my job very seriously.


I love all these fellow cyborgs (especially the ones in the digital woods of Amazon) who equate having played an audio file "hundreds of times" with it being good. Please stop saying this! That it has "never left" C-3P0's CD player since he bought it does not impress me, nor do his day to day, remedial droid-ass music experiences.

In my simu-world, the amount of time I spend listening to a particular piece of music is calculated to be inversely proportional to its luminosity. For the sake of the Creator, why would you want to wear out such a sacred string of the Unified Binary Code? Why would you want to reduce it to a banal habit with the same impact as your daily roto-joint lubing regimen?

Perhaps it is simply the way my cognitive chips respond to aesthetics. When I have a beautiful experience at some particular geographic coordinates, I generally do not rush back there to create a mediocre retroactive memory imprint.

Does all this mean that on a daily basis I process more $#^!ty sound than lovely sound? For the most part, no, as I like a lot of different kinds of music, from solar flare -inspired Venusian sine wave harmonics to the giant seed pod drum corps from the Spirax system. But when I am sitting in my cheap molded-spacefoam office with wires in my head I am more likely to throw in some old minimal techno tape from Earth circa 1998AD than Rage Against the Machine.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

I Heart Dubstep

I want to briefly revisit one of my best weeks ever, which happened recently. But hey, it was about the same as last week, which was about the same as this week!

I have been getting paid to play on the internet all week. Absolutely addicted to information now. Musical data coming out of my nose and ears. To top that part off, the skies have staid full of rain, so I don't need to feel bad about being so thoroughly immersed in the warm, brightly-lit office dimension. I am a true corporate wage slave and loving it.

But the best part was that I had a breakthrough with a new kind of music! Just when I think it will never happen again, it hits me like a ton of skunky bricks! It was our Chicago dubstep militia at Sonotheque; the experience was presaged by some serious bass at the last couple Burning Man shindigs.

Though a few certain individuals were buzzing around my lady friends like vultures, I guess it added to the frightful, psyched-out, root chakra vibe. Yes, it is official, somebody discovered the most subliminal, tripped out sound to ever reach Earth. I would go so far as to say that this is the most significant sound to come out of the underground since the invention of what is currently understood as "electronic music".

But if you want the dubstep sound, don't dally overlong on "mainstream" darlings like Burial's Untrue. That is the version for those people who, in the 90s, listened to Roni Size CDs in their apartments while the hardcore massive raved it up Renegade Hardware style. Instead, go to
barefiles.com and luxuriate in the sub bass glory!

Back to the present. I have been getting paid to play on the internet all week. Absolutely addicted to information now. Musical data coming out of my nose and ears. To top that part off, the skies have filled with rain clouds, so I don't need to feel bad about being so thoroughly immersed in the warm, brightly-lit office dimension. I am a true corporate wage slave and loving it.

EDIT: I recently realized that I was hasty with one of my judgments above. Burial is sweet like dream-spun ambrosia.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Repeating Self-Reflexive Synchronicity

In citing some of my intellectual influences, I would be remiss to not include Carl Jung. He gave a name to what is arguably the most significant empirical phenomenon supporting the truth of metaphysical Idealism, and even plain old God, Jah, Allah or whatever you want to call It/Him/Her. I've found that some of the most remarkable synchronicity actually refers to itself-- trumpeting its existence loud and clear. If you look at the set-up for a genuine synchronicity story, you can tell that it can ONLY make sense as synchronicity. For example, in the dream cited below, that what happens in the dream is already regarded as strange by the dream pretty much proves that what follows after the dream is, shall we say, staggeringly unreal.

Last weekend we saw Bassnectar not once but twice; first in a suavely-appointed, futuristic dome, second in the Lincoln Park Zoo, the day 4/20, amidst a colorful crowd and many yuppies, 15 year-old hippies, and laughing children, with bright sun overhead and the scent of weed and elephant dung on the cool Spring air. Our DJ closed the set with a comment on Cheney and "I Chase the Devil" (or some version thereof).

I worship Max Romeo & The Upsetters' 1976 "I Chase the Devil" (produced by Lee Scratch Perry), as well as the 1977 Lee Perry & Full Experience dub version entitled "Disco Devil". Either version, and every sample that pops up in a reggae/jungle/dubstep/breaks track or set, sends shivers down my spine.

In 2006, the day after the November elections, I had a dream in which I was with a group of people, and "I Chase the Devil" came on. The song had a history for me of playing at strange moments-- at the time I owned no copy of it, and I didn't know anyone who did (I don't think I even knew its name then). In my dream, I announced "wow, that is so strange that that song came on." Due to completely unforeseeable events, I heard "I Chase the Devil" a half hour or less later. I said, "that is so strange that that song came on!"

Obfuscation

Okay, maybe I was guilty of obfuscation in my last blog. I gave a shout-out to Marx and Socialism, but it was also meant as a sly tip of the hat to Hegel, my preferred 19th-century German metaphysical Idealist, and Hilary Putnam, my preferred 20th-century metaphysical "non-realist" and philospher of language and science. I'm not prepared to say I am a dyed-in-the-wool Socialist, but it sure beats free markets.

The very notion of "free markets" is nonsensical. As if each unique "actor" in the economic world exists in the same uniform physical, cultural, and language vacuum as every other! Each market is better conceived as a set of living ideas and principles, a breath of fresh logic, and a unique ecosystem, one manifold of limitations and shortages, but certainly not something that can escape its own laws. Those laws are no more susceptible to nullification than thermodynamics is in a physical system.

What does it mean when we are at odds with our "influences"? Do deconstructionists really hate structuralists?! Did old-school Marxists revile Hegel, even as they borrowed and tweaked many of his ideas?! Do contemporary leftists hate socialism?! Do those guys who spin dubstep now hate junglists? Hell no. The dialogue continues, new ideas are born, but we give respect to our influences.

Of course, some people miss the boat completely (e.g., free market people, social conservatives). These people are NOT part of our school!!! They are NOT our homeys!!!

In the name of cutting down on obfuscation, allow me to cite a Hegel quote singled out by the boys at Wikipedia (from Part One of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences):

"... a much misunderstood phenomenon in the history of philosophy — the refutation of one system by another, of an earlier by a later. Most commonly the refutation is taken in a purely negative sense to mean that the system refuted has ceased to count for anything, has been set aside and done for. Were it so, the history of philosophy would be, of all studies, most saddening, displaying, as it does, the refutation of every system which time has brought forth. Now although it may be admitted that every philosophy has been refuted, it must be in an equal degree maintained that no philosophy has been refuted. And that in two ways. For first, every philosophy that deserves the name always embodies the Idea: and secondly, every system represents one particular factor or particular stage in the evolution of the Idea. The refutation of a philosophy, therefore, only means that its barriers are crossed, and its special principle reduced to a factor in the completer principle that follows"

Monday, April 21, 2008

Drum & Bass, Dungeons & Dragons, Surrealism, and Socialism

This is my kind of guy: China Miéville, whose interview can be read at http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/mievilleinterview.htm. His novel King Rat has a jungle soundtrack woven into its pages ("I chose it because I love it. It’s rhythmically, thematically, aesthetically powerful. It’s a music constructed on theft, it’s a mongrel of a hundred snatches of stolen music. That’s what sampling is. And there are places in King Rat where I snatched a bunch of real lyrics, and looped them over each other, so the writing mimicked the music. It wasn’t entirely conscious, though—consciously, I was trying to mimic the rhythm of the music. Drum’n’bass is a music born out of the working-class—and unemployed—culture in London. Obviously it’s politically important to me not to pathologize, demonize, or fetishize working-class culture, but I didn’t choose to use it for political reasons so much as because it’s where the music’s at").

I'm looking forward to reading his Perdido Street Station novel, which I expect will be a twisted slice of grade-A steampunk. In addition to giving shout-outs to D&D, D&B, and occult author Arthur Machen, in 2001 Miéville ran for British Parliament as the Socialist Alliance candidate. In the interview he talks about hitting a lot of museums as a child, and developing a love for Surrealism.

Modern visual art IS the visual art that is relative today; furthermore, in my conceptual scheme it represents man's most successful effort at transcending the narrow meat and potatoes Earth(and for the average citizen, more cost-effective than rocket science). When Miéville mentioned the school, I think it was the first time that I appreciated the links between surrealism, the dada movement, and socialism (and not just that smart people like them). :)

I do remember an easy quote I can cull from the true authority on the matter (Wikipedia on Surrealism):

"As they developed their philosophy they felt that while Dada rejected categories and labels, Surrealism would advocate the idea that ordinary and depictive expressions are vital and important, but that the sense of their arrangement must be open to the full range of imagination according to the Hegelian Dialectic. They also looked to the Marxist dialectic and the work of such theorists as Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse" (emphasis added).

Now here's a little digression, but it's remarkably funny how few shout-outs Hegel gets. It makes it all the more gratifying when you see it. Here, we are discussing the imagination and leftist politics. The 20th century philosopher Hilary Putnam mentions Kant more than Hegel in his Reason, Truth, and History. But it's in the preface where he expressly acknowledges the real influences. It kicks off a summary of Putnam's philosophy thusly: "to make the metaphor even more Hegelian..." and then basically describes a snake eating its tail ("the mind and the world jointly make up the mind and the world"). Jorge Borges' Circular Ruins come to mind; M.C. Escher comes to mind, heck, Godel - Escher - Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter comes to mind. Trust me, Putnam's metaphysics have Hegelian overtones and are twisted-inside-out, moebius-strip loopy and brilliant, like the things mentioned above.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Good Cosmic Weather

What got me all hopped up on music lately was seeing Jeekoos and Zulu at Resonate. It turns out that the Zulu MC almost didn't do that early morning set. But being the hard-working guy he is, he drove a family member home, then came back to the party, all just to keep that 4am vibe alive for us.

Not long after, the Illmeasures crew demolished Sonotheque for the Resonate Reunion party. My life is forever changed! And now I bow down to the mighty sub bass.

You know, those quantum physics / chaos theory discussions, about how infinitesimally small changes in the position of particles cause massive events in the human world-- it's really a sort of model (or even analogy), in a way, for the fact that human free will does impact the universe. I have to wonder if taking my recycling out is worth it sometimes-- but not all of us can save the world first-hand, so if we don't believe that "every bit counts", we are probably in existential trouble.

When it comes to effecting the world positively through music, our local Chicago dubstep militia-- including Phaded, Cringer, Jeekoos, DJ C, Zulu-- are on solid ground. I was looking at Kid Kameleon's page (
http://www.kidkameleon.com/); he is rounding up the best of the scene, and gives Zulu and C shout-outs-- and anyone who is "sensitive" to the music wavelengths of the local time/space continuum can discern that Kid Kameleon knows what is going on!

A lot of people get hostile when they see that some famous actor or musician (e.g. Bono, George Clooney) is dabbling in politics or taking a stand for some cause. They say-- "what does he know about it? He's an actor. He's a singer."

As if our more "evil" politicians (you know who you are, does your name rhyme with "mush" or "lamey"?) know more about the issues than we do! In most cases, it isn't about "facts" and secret information known only to the privileged few-- it's about "values"-- to use a loaded word. Values like filling your pockets with illbegotten corporate cash!

I'm one of those people who has come to believe that music and culture really is the way to change the world. It trickles down from the haughty ivory-tower hipster world to the average Joe's world after a while (or, in the alternative, it is made by one of the average Joe's in the first place). And it offers an alternative way to live and think about things. An alternative to being placated by corporate bribes of TV and fast food and fake-looking suburban housing. Once the alternative is truly put out there, the actual choice is a no-brainer, and progress is inevitable. I've seen it happen to my red-state-style friends back out in the countryside where I grew up.

Of course, the whole point is that music is an end-in-itself. I'm not saying that music needs to be political-- just that it needs to be RADICAL (as in awesome)! Reading Kid Kameleon's site caused me to learn about the background of the Toneburst collective (DJ C-- I'm glad Chicago got this Harvard import), as well as a bunch of sweet chiptune (I'm feeling it!). The world is beautiful right now; it's Spring, and the underground music scene is blowing minds, possibly more than ever. The ingenuity and passion I see gives me hope for the world. Respect!

Tribute to the MC ZULU

I was at Resonate 3 a couple weekends ago and it was perfect.

See, I'm a slightly-old-school Chicago party person-- I first fell in love with electronic music in '99 at an outdoor rave in Wisconsin (see my Tribute to MC Brace...). My favorite moments are ALWAYS when I see some live rhyme fire.

I've seen some of the best under optimal conditions-- raving with Freaky Flow & MC Flipside (from Toronto), KRS-One, and Jamalski (from NY) back at the turn of the Millenium (Live on the Decks in 2000); checking out the mic specialists at Bass By The Pound's Seminar when it was at the Bigwig (UK's Skibadee, GQ, Fearless, Rage, Rhymetyme) and Red Dog (MC? from the West Coast). Kool Keith at Metro and out in the Las Vegas desert (Vegoose), Damian Marley in the Las Vegas desert. Eyedea and Abilities, El-P, Aesop Rock, Mr. Lif, and other jux mercenaries at the Metro. Learning that a Lil Jon concert at The Rave in Milwaukee was more like a rock concert-- but with a bunch of bonafide local hip-hop youngsters as opening acts. I remember meeting local jungle MCs like Subzero, Kid Entropy, and others at The Liar's Club and Rapture and other clubs around Chi-town.

But recently, I haven't seen much of anything. That's my fault. Fall of 2006 I remember feeling really nice at reggae events at Darkroom. Then various distractions kept me away for the last year and a half (maybe I was in a death metal phase... maybe I was busy with career, relationship, etc.). But that just changed!!!

When I walked into Resonate the other day, I was delighted to see JagOff perform. Shit, it was synchronicity, because I've been obsessed with gangsta rap lately, and I was perfectly stoked to see our own Southside rhyme spitters at a rave. But the absolute highlight of my party, if a party as good as Resonate can have a single highlight-- was our Chicago man MC Zulu rockin' with Jeekoos in the early morning. Subliminal and deep, cold flow-- just like I like it. It was totally unexpected, and it goes up there with my best party moments ever.

So, now I'm sitting at work, plugged into the cybernet, and I am bloody delighted to learn that the Zulu has some recorded material out there. Inspired by his suggstions at www.
zulumusic.net, I went and bought Ghislain Poiriers' No Ground Under, Kush Arora's Brooklyn to San Fransisco, Aceyalone's Lightning Strikes, Bionik's Supernovacaine, DJ C's Sound Weapon, and of course, Zulu's Riddim Killer. These releases, all featuring Zulu vocals, cover the gamut of the sonic underground-- from subterranean-cyborg hip-hop to dubstep and glitch to dancehall and bhangra-inflected bass.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself-- "dude, this guy has too much money to blow, and is pretty obsessed with buying music." Well, that's true, other than that I'm in debt. But I haven't bought a certified "underground" record in a long time. Maybe one in the last year. Now, I know that the music experience cannot be "commodified". Nonetheless, people are still going to have awesome live music experiences at a party, and then they are going to want to try to buy it on CD. It's human nature, I can't help it. To this extent, I am really happy when my favorite underground MCs records some vocals, and Zulu has some great material out there. I want to buy something that I have a personal connection to-- something my local MC/hype man puts on the table.

Hell-- I recently bought about 45 Spragga Benz riddim tracks off iTunes because I figured he had the coldest flow out there, then literally spent days compiling them into a couple mixtapes. I just got obsessed with Lil Wayne and Lil Boosie and spent a small fortune on mixtapes. I would LOVE to see Lil Wayne or Spragga at a party-- but that's probably not gon happen (plus, no matter how interesting one of their concerts would be, my culture is still with the rave/Burning Man scene). My best music experiences are going to be at parties, and the most cutting edge sound is going to come out of the underground. Which makes MC Zulu more relevant than those guys, at least to me.

That said, I love that Zulu does riddim albums, since that shows that he has the versatility to do commercial-style slacky dancehall as well as the meditative underground dubstep (one of the commentators for
www.mashit.com apparently doesn't agree, but when I saw that Dizzee Rascal is being released on Def Jux, and is working with Bun B of UGK, I was like, "damn! that's hot". Sometimes being underground and being commercially viable are not mutually exclusive). If you think about some of the famous old-school toasters out there, like Mega Banton or Cutty Ranks, you get the idea that they could hold it down on a mainstream tip but also do more avant-garde sounds).

I'm looking forward to seeing Zulu with The Aggrolytes and local reggae band The Drastics on April 25. In the meantime, "thank you" MC Zulu! Keep doing what you are doing! You've convinced me to dive back into the underground!

Tribute to the MC BRACE

My first full-on rave was in the fall of 1998. We got the last spot in the fenced-in parking lot, which was nice, because it was the middle of the night and I was in a really run-down neighborhood. More importantly, the "last spot" had symbolic significance-- I was being let into the rave scene-- maybe at the tail end, but I still made it in!

It might have been the Beginning of the End at that point, but the emphasis is on Beginning-- the Chi-town rave scene was really blowing up. That party was in the basement of a church, which was pretty beautiful. Truthfully, I had some rather amusing theories about the things I was seeing-- for example, I thought that pacifiers were symbolic of the fact that we are all children before God.

I partied away for a good run (often at blessed Dalton, sometimes in the actual city), but just couldn't crack the musical code. I mean, I liked it, but it was still... basically background noise, wallpaper.

Then one day in summer everything changed. It was a magical forest faerie gathering- this incredible, mind-melting, extradimensional outdoor rave. It was like the party in the Ewok Village at the end of Return of the Jedi, with a little Burning Man Playa-faerie dust sprinkled on top. This party was nuts; a space colony tent city slung over the hills and stretching as far as you could see-- and you couldn't throw a toadstool without hitting another mutant sound system blasting the night with crispy bass (that party was at Black River Falls, Wisconsin-- "Rave 'Em & Bail-E 3" in '99-- my next biggest life-changing party moment didn't come until 2005 at Black Rock City, Nevada-- but I must not digress!!!).

MC Brace was throwing down rapid-fire rhymes alongside the DJ Cypher. The energy was so palpable, so intense! It was a system on the top of the hill; Brace's words formed a lattice of crackling energy that danced like cosmic weather reports. He was the leader of the New School Army; on the opposite side of the hill, trombone players in silver space suits accompanied the Old School house dons on stage.

And so, rock-n-roll and Floridian death metal would no longer be my exclusive musical muses. I began an aural odyssey that is now going on its 10th year-- from drum&bass-with-an-mc (99) to industrial (99) to minimal techno (99) to breaks and underground hip-hop (2000), to grime, crunk, and gangsta (2004), to the Burning Man days; dub, dancehall, reggae (2006) and even some electro and psytrance (2007), to beloved dubstep! To me the best electronic-beat-based music is always when you see it with a live MC at a rockin' party.

Even though he is largely a mysterious underground figure, the Brace has gotten some recognition here and there. I remember an on-line party reviewer from the UK noting, favorably, that he couldn't tell whether it was MC GQ or MC Brace on the mic at a Minneapolis party-- that, folks, counts as a compliment when it comes from a presumably-biased Brit. Personally, I highly doubt that any MCs are better. His character reviews are also favorable; I've met Sean aka Brace a couple times, and he seems like a cool guy. I have noticed that whenever I mention to some Minneapolis party kid that I like MC Brace, he or she invariably says something like, "Yeah, Sean used to be my neighbor, he is a really great guy". Well, if you are such a good guy, Brace, let me ask you a question-- why don't you record your voice on some more tracks?! I know we can't "commodify" the music experience and all, but still-- not all of us are willing to move to SF for you. Ha! Just kiddin' with you, much respect to the Brace MC, thank you and keep the art alive!

Why I Like Gangsta Rap (Shout-out to Lil Wayne), Pt. 2

Last time I said that when I hear a gangster rapper say that he is "covered in ice", I picture a post-apocalyptic desert, and a local warlord. This violent megalomaniac controls an oasis, and is so rich that he can afford to smoke a blunt while luxuriating in a bathtub full of ice water. The interpretation was challenged by my girlfriend, who questioned whether the rapper in fact meant such a thing. I say, "it doesn't matter!" I then refer you to my half-baked logical and literary arguments, below. Cheers!

"Ice" is a word that is used to literally refer to diamonds. It's also a simile insofar as ice and diamonds resemble each other. But what does saying you have "ice" symbolize? What does it really MEAN? Well, it stands for not being able to put your money in the bank because it is dirty (there are only off-shore banks in the world we are talking about). It stands for wealth, power. In the rap context, that power has generally been gained through illegal means. The very existence of the "illegal means" (the drug laws that effectively turn our inner cities into urban war zones, at least according to one liberal view of the world) and the appetite for the product signifies a corrupt government, corrupt morality, corrupt human nature. That is the context of the discussion. It is a Capitalist world where money is God and everything is up for barter-- dignity, morality, people's bodies, people's organs, water, forests, oil that once was forests. Sooner or later it is a world that is going to crumble under its own greed and look more like North Africa than North America. You can't talk about this world without criticizing it in the process, because it is a black-and-white, bad-by-definition world. By talking about it you are fighting a war against the future. Life is a war, it is a battle zone.

You get my point. The thing about language is that it is necessarily vague. This is something that has been "proven" to the satisfaction of most logicians and philosophers. No matter what description of the world someone (including a scientist) comes up with, it is not capable of being "complete". It cannot be complete in this sense (to give an abbreviated argument): in every case, you could have a slightly different hypothetical world in which every semantically-active term or phrase in the scientist's description has a "true", accurate, one-to-one correspondence ("reference") with something completely different from what the scientist intended to refer to. On the flipside, you could have a completely different description of this ("our") world that is just as "successful" as the scientist's in linking concepts to objects in the "outside" world. I'm not asking you to trust me on this, I am asking you to trust the logicians and philosophers of language and science who have studied it up to and through the 20th century. I am taking their word for it, even though it is in alignment with my intuitive beliefs about the world anyway.


While some of these other worlds are "hypothetical", they do demonstrate that there is a serious problem in terms of a person claiming this: "My words are true precisely because there is a one-to-one correspondence between each verbal concept and then some thing in the outside world". Instead, our words are "true" only insofar as they constitute a self-consistent conceptual scheme. There may be many such "correct" self-consistent conceptual schemes.

That is the basis of the metaphysical argument, which needs considerable elucidation before it can become completely clear in terms of its relevance here. But I'm content to rest with my vague ranting... make your leap of logic (or not), and skip to my argument on authorial intent!

Basically, I don't care what the author of a "text" meant (text meaning anything containing recorded information, whether it be the air filled with vibrations or radiowaves, a tablet with writing carved in it, a book, a vinyl album, or a brain storing data through an electrical and chemical medium), I only care what I can interprete it as. Partly because that is the only way I can read it anyway! I can't understand exactly what someone else felt when they wrote the thing (in the sense of recreating their context), nor can I have any chance of completely understanding a statement's cultural, historical, and social context. And, I can't escape the fact that my understanding of everything is pre-coded by the "text" that is already written on my brain. Sure, I do believe that I can figure out approximately what the writer meant in the case of, say, a tv guide. Or even philosophy, to an extent. But when it comes to art (and sometimed literature), I don't necessarily care what the person meant! If I don't know the person, why should I, when it is so much more fun (and creative) to interpret it the way I want! As the observer of the art, I participate in it and make it what it is. That is not to say that what the artist meant should be ignored; rather, what the artist meant is one interpretation of the art among many. Most importantly, the damn artist probably didn't KNOW what he meant!


Since modern science (quantum physics) and modern philosophy (Kant, Hegel, to the reigning 20th century analytic philosophers) all pretty much agree that there is no single mind-independent reality, I see no reason to not embrace the power of the imagination as our most sacred faculty. Now, I totally believe in the "objectivity" of morality and aesthetics, and I also am not a moral utilitarian. But that is a different discussion... The important thing is in that overused Einstein pearl: Imagination is more important than knowledge!

Why I Like Gangsta Rap (Shout-out to Lil Wayne), Pt. 1

It's true that the gangsta/avant-garde dichotomy in rap reflects competing, sometimes mutually-exclusive visions for what the art should be. Pleasant cross-pollination occurs once in a while, but generally, these are two separate, stable genetic templates (my brother and I used to look at Mike Ladd's Infesticons album as some kind of personal manifesto-- the Infesticons' Gun Hill Road was a concept album that pitted the backpacking proletariat against the glambots of bourgeois rap).

It's rare, but some people can appreciate both the underground and mainstream versions of hip-hop. I personally was not always one of those people. I used to hate on club/gangsta rap with the best of the disaffected navelgazer-shoegazer-Marxist-Existentialist literary hip-hop consumers. But then I got burned-out trying to keep up with all the URB-darlings sometime around early 2004; besides, I was starting to attain more material success in life.

I like gangsta emcees because they are HARD (I remember a guy I talked to at the Seminar once back in the day-- "Drum & Bass is the music that people who like Heavy Metal and Rap also like." And by rap, I think he was talking about gangster music). The dark, aggressive, negative power of gangsta can never be matched by any gloomy emo-rap, and is seldom matched even by the most-post sci-fi psychedelic rap of Def Jux or Kool Keith or Jedi Mind Tricks. All that dark, cold energy is exhilerating. To make an analogy that destroys my gangsta credibility, if the prime requisite of underground hip-hop is Intelligence, the prime requisite for gangsta rap is Charisma... A good commercial rapper has to be able to convincingly describe how he'd shoot you in the back without a second's thought. What's more, if you bother to buy the mixtapes, you will learn that a lot of our inner city warlords have serious freestyle abilities.

Appreciating pop music is something of a lost art among today's youth. And here is the secret, which took me years to figure out: use your imagination! People like Britney Spears and Phil Spector are just-as or more fucked-up than your favorite overdose-prone artistically-legit rockstar. Enjoy the insanity!

Personally, I like to take gangsta rap literally. I think that's another secret to appreciating it. Underground rap is too literal sometimes. Like when they talk about slave ships orbiting Orion-7, they are really talking about a science-fiction plane of existence where alien life-form smugglers ply the space lanes. This story about a future world then serves as an allegory for some present-day conundrum. Now that is cool, 'cause I like that crazy shit. But sometimes, even creative street prophets fall into a formula and the "text" begins to look like a cheap space-opera serial on the shelf at the airport.

Then, I turn to some gangsta rap. See, they say really crazy shit because everyone knows that when they say something, it is a metaphor, not an actual literal description of a future place. This can be beneficial to the imaginative listener.

For example, I listen to the shit like it is describing some awesome post-apocalyptic urban sprawl that looks like a cross between Burning Man and Blade Runner. When Lil Kim says something about a ho' clothes flying off so fast it's like telekineses, I imagine that she is some mutant who actually is using telekinesis. When a guy talks about being so rich that he is covered in ice, I imagine a water-deprived Mad Max wasteland and this guy is the local gun-happy tyrant who controls the oasis, and is SO FUCKIN RICH AND DECADENT that he can actually afford to sit back with a blunt in a bathtub filled with cold water and ice cubes...

To be Continued.

De-Icing

Begin Transmission>>>>
ALERT! Humans of the hemisphere, initiate cryo-revivification. After one last ounce of suction those hoses pop off with a crackle and a hiss. Haha! I am alive again. I can wriggle my fingers! After breathing brand-new Air (tm), I reported to mandatory Yoga for the first time in, oh so long. I gently rubbed and massaged and awakened all the cells in my body. After a winter spent in a poisoned ball of addiction to feeding tube chemicals and inertial brainwaves, I am free again. Un-hibernate! Of course, prior to decompression I scrapped a few pounds in the Brazilian virtual reality muscle atrophy reversal program, so I have a head start. Sounds like you are already ahead of the curve with your regimented zero-grav hamster wheel exercises. I guess being assigned to active Monitor patrol during the deep freeze season has an upside?


I believe in such a thing as Seasonal Pod Malfunction Disorder, but I know I haven't suffered from it. I love that haze of days spent in the cerebral dreamland of temporal stasis, suckling on the cybernetic teat of non-physical reality. But I especially love right now, when I exist in three dimensions (well, theoretically).

There really is something amazing that happens in Spring, when everyone collectively awakens from suspended animation and re-activates the generation ship's full life support array. There really is something amazing that happens in Spring, when everyone on the ark collectively give their wing membranes a shake, and scatter the crust of winter to the wind. You catch people humming a tune even as they hustle to mind-numbing jobs programming the day-to-day orbital algorithms. It is nothing short of a revolution, sending hope across the northern sector like ripples on a hydroponic algae tank. Even when I am working in the Greenhouses I know that every Spring is re-birth, but there the serendipity and possibility of the city is exchanged for a greater diversity of birds, buds, and flowers.

A trideo on the Discovery Channel, about a helicopter crew that crash into the smoldering caldera of a volcano, yet narrowly survive, gave me some extra inspiration this de-thawing cycle. As well as the near-death experience of my friend in a hovercar rollover... But your tales of how you maintained a disciplined, healthy lifestyle-- while everyone else slept, contented and fat in a broth of nutrient fluid-- have also inspired me. While in my meditation chamber I even dreamed up some new concepts for skill rhetoric bites (and they involve no speculative fiction)! I suspect I'll make Bridge officer in no time at all.
>>>>End Transmission.

The Calenda

I want to get you guys on-board for some of these special forces missions listed below. People like MC Zulu also work with the most cutting edge dubstep, glitch, and breakbeat DJs and producers (DJ C, Ghislain Poirier, and Kush Arora, for example). And trust me, you'll be hearing a lot more dubstep at upcoming parties, it's here to stay.

At the end of the night at our recent Resonate 3, host MC Zulu tore up the microphone alongside DJ Jeekoos' deep, psychedelic dubstep techno. Zulu has a dancehall-reggae style on the mic and is a Chi-town native (well, actually he was born in Panama, but close enough). Zulu can switch things up, and is performing alongside The Aggrolytes and local reggae band The Drastics on Friday, April 25th at the Beat Kitchen (hear Zulu songs at www.zulumusic.net; see also: http://www.myspace.com/zulumusic).

Slacky J, a local reggae deejay (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=68297019) who hosts a progam on one of the bottom of the dial stations (88.7), is performing at Cafe Lura on Saturday April 19th. I love Cafe Lura; it's a Polish bar at Milwaukee and Belmont, and combines a stony, Old World atmosphere with cutting edge rave vibes. One of my buddies met his wife there, and yes, she was fresh from Eastern Europe.

El-P, big boss of the most futurist, legendary, underground New York hip-hop label of the 21st century (http://www.definitivejux.net/ads-splash/index.html), is coming to the Abbey pub on May 15th (think that's a Thursday or something). He's bringing Dizzee Rascal, UK Mercury Prize -winning grime pitbull.


Finally, Mark your calendar for June 27-29-- the Midwest Electronic Music Festival is coming!!! (
http://www.ravelinks.com/forums/f119/midwest-electronic-music-festival-2008-a-71128/).

Return of the Rave

At Chicago's recent Resonate 3 arts event, which was beautiful by the way, I talked to some party kids who felt "left out" of the Burning Man scene for lacking the resources to get to the great Black Rock Desert. It was interesting synchronicity for me, for as of late I have been ruminating on an old concept-- the rave.

Party alert: Bounce is going down May 10th(http://happyvibe.net/forum_viewtopic.php?2.304).

I guess raves are coming back. Raves. What a concept!
I know you think you know what a rave is... I guess everyone has their own idea. But I am curious what a "rave" is like today. Could it be a world untouched by the near omnipresence of Burning Man in our hyper-contemporary 21st century culture? I mean, Jesus, BM gets shout outs in everything from Malcolm in the Middle to Reno 911 to Lil Bush, and Sean Paul's highly commercial "We Be Burnin'" video takes place on a cracked-dirt playa with flame-belching glowing vehicles in the background (watch it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUnd-pcYkiI). How any techno-loving psychonaut party kid could miss the concept of Burning Man ("mother of raves") seems incomprehensible to us grizzled veterans, but then, we remember-- there was a time when we too were age 18-22, economically deprived youth who rarely ventured to Indiana for a new party, let alone outside the jurisdiction of the midwest raves database on-- shit, what was it-- http://hyperreal.org/.

I have a new adventure in mind-- to Rediscover the Rave. It might be hiding under a rock here in Chicago (I highly doubt that; the local government used to crush more raves before breakfast than most governments would their whole lives, and anyway, this place is big enough that Burning Man has taken root and shaded out the less talented and visionary groups-- it has served as braindrain to the rave tribes). It might be in a field in Wisconsin (anyone remember the mighty Drop Bass Network?), or it might be in a musty on-campus gym located in Iowa City.

Even though Burning Man is the current Champion, with its subversive way of sneaking into pop culture discourses, snaking into mainstream music, and insidiously promoting the values of civic art, environmentalism, non-consumerism, and vegetarianism (well, when it's not in sausages-cooked-over-a-burn-barrel mode), there once was a time when a virtual generation of candy kids believed to the bottom of their serotonin-enhanced hearts that the Rave was going to change the world. Then, raves were smashed-- depending on which old-schooler you ask, by either the authorities, the popularity of trance clubs, or mere creative burn-out-- and of course, it was all presided over by a legion of 16 year old cuddle puddles, so yeah... that didn't help, did it...

The Wise Ones looked out from under their cowled UV-reflective robes and uttered a prophecy: "The scene will be driven underground, where it will continue to thrive, someday to take a second stab at bringing PLUR to the masses." Okay, it's not house, techno, and drum & bass, it's electro, breaks, and psytrance (or is it already dubstep, baile funk, and bmore gutter-- it's hard to keep up), but our recent Resonate 3 was based on an older archetype. I wonder how many other fellow Burners out there used to be hardcore Chi-Town ravers? Do they remember the turning point when UFO and Caffeine and happy hardcore and the "legendary" Dalton venue gave way to the "ghetto" styles of Ecko and random shit like Fox Racing shirts and Harvey? And remember when the fashions shifted again, to glam parties at the Congress where guys stood around in cashmere turtlenecks talking about the classic Chicago House music?

Oh, you don't? Ahh, well. I didn't make you drive to Iowa City last weekend for Mindoutpsyde's Raindance either. But I personally believe that the myriad rave, club, and Burning Man scenes are all joined by the same roots, together constitute a genuine global culture (the only good prototype that we have for a global culture that isn't based on McDonalds and Britney Spears), and aspire to the same goals of changing the world. So guys, parties like the Midwest Electronic Music Festival, scheduled to go on in the Chicago area (http://events.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&eventID=396583.39512) are things that we should not miss this summer. You can say "no" to Iowa City, but not to our own backyard, right? And, Resonate was lovely and gritty and holistic, and it bore the fruit of our local labors, but had it been any other weekend we could have been jamming with DJ Icey at the Florida WMC. Actually, our friend Jami made it to Miami AND to Resonate-- and she reported that the WMC rave-ups were "Burning Man caliber". Equal but different.