Historia Naturalis

If you see this...DRINK IT!

So when I went to Sacramento again recently, I decided to be crazy and drive over 2 hours to the bay area, just to get to the town of Santa Rosa, CA to experience the beer known as Pliny the Elder.  Toted by the Zymurgy Magazine and Beer Advocate as one of the greatest beers in the world, and me having a penchant for a tasty brew, I figured it would be worth the trip.

So yes, it is the greatest IPA I've ever had.  Which is sad, because I had though Bell's Two Hearted Ale was my favorite, and is much easier to get a hold of, not requiring a trip to CA...or even a trip up to Philidelphia.  Sadly the scenery of Napa and Sonoma counties were shrouded in nightfall, as the only the time I could go was after work, and then to the red-eye flight back home...

Did I mention this was the best IPA I've ever tasted?  The balance of mouthfeel with the hoppy character, which never bit hard, but swirled with iridescent characters of pine, grapefruit, pineapple, hyacinth, chardonnay and a hint of strawberry and grass showed a penchant for a deep knowledge of how hop-species play together.  That, and their name alone, took me on a journey of history that I had no idea was the origin of a lot of my scientific background.  The origin, would be his Historia Nautralia, a monumental compendium which tries to condense all of the roman scientific knowledge and and his field observations into a tome for all time.  And which most relevantly, does he identify the lupus Salictarius, "The Wolf of the Willows," a.k.a the beloved hop plant.  

Pliny's wiki article alone is a fascinating read.   In fact, the type of eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Pinatubo, Mt. St. Helens and the like, where you have the explosion of the caldera into a mushroom cloud is called a Plinian eruption, in honor of this great scholar.

So I recommend on this journey, crack open a fresh bottle and then tune into this fantastic song by local Northern Virginia artist Meredith Bragg called "Plinian ".  Below are the lyrics to the song provided in the link...no youtube vidya this time.

When the stones rained down and smoke rose above the clouds

Dodging debris, my uncle put his fleet to sea

And as he waved and turned away, set his sails across the bay

Who could ever guess, my dear Tacitus

The gods were so enraged

And the lightning arched, and dust turned the daylight dark

And the helmsmen cried, wondered it they’d survive

But through the thickening smoke, they found the harbor choked

Still he urged them on while he stayed calm

And the ash fell like snow

And the mountain ground, tearing the buildings down

And for two dark days, fires lit the Naples Bay

When it came for them leave, there was no escape by sea

And his body fell as the vapors swelled

They say he died as if asleep

On a lonely ridge, a couple focus in

Their lenses trained on smoke and fire and flame

And in unison they rise as the plume reached greater heights

While around the bend a grey cloud descends

That’ll be their demise

And with blinding speed they’re both killed instantly

And the Island roars, boiling the ocean floor

Though their bodies disappear, mingled with the earth and air

They will echo on through the work they’ve done

Projected through the years

Meredith has created something really special here, using only the guitar and mastering effects to produce this haunting narrative as told by Pliny's beloved nephew to the roman historian Tacitus.  What I find fascinating, besides the limitation of using only guitar to make this piece, is the penchant for the classics, and delivering it with an emotional force to make the centuries old story relevant today, with romance, love and wistfulness that stands the test of time.

If only, Meredith were more famous...and his tumblr site more detailed...and he had more videos on youtube.  His label is Kora Records.  Who I invite you to peruse for other gems, like Fredrik.

Video Song "Viskra" by Fredrik

Draggin Fire

A good example of the "drag" aesthetic.  Work done by Fiji Moonstone

Just showing off my latest chill gift.  Fiji's a forum friend of mine who is offering her artistic vision up for grabs to those that want to genuinely participate.  My signs are the California Speckled cat,  the Hop (looks like the Mount Hood, smooth-cone variety), and the seal of ALALALABAAAL in the upper right corner...which is suspiciously similar to that of a gated diode.

These are the vision quests she creates from the elements that come to us mortals, beyond the pale veil of life.  Definitely has a California bend to it...cause that's where I got inspired when I saw a cat hunting ground squirrels in the heat of the afternoon, in the shade of a pine tree line, through the chaparral.  I knew then, that the cat was successful and it's family will be fed, and then it can chill and nap for a day...and everything is right...poor ground squirrel though.  Beer is my magic potion and circuits are the arcane mysteries that allow my career to progress, as we engineer better things, that require electrical power.

Here's a song in memoriam of the squirrel, the California chaparral, the redwoods and the amazing beer at the Russian River brewery...can't wait to go back!

"Shine On You Crazy White Cap" by Teen Daze

Hunting for Witches

I should have known M.I.A.'s album /\/\/\Y/\ would be a portent to all of these producers calling their du jour genre witch-house...or at least that's what the blogosphere is calling these unicode monikered DIY producers.  We seem to no longer be in the era of chill-wave, where juggernauts like Neon Indian, Pictureplane, Toro y Moi and Memory Tapes graced our presence with fuzzed out, 80s inspired, psychedelic electronic music that seemed to bend everything from circuits to genres.  They dared people to classify them.  But it wasn't dark enough for the witch-house artist.  Like Goth being a response to Glam rock, it seems that Chill-wave/day-glo has got its response with the dark filled witch-house outfits cropping up all over the US (and a finger-full abroad from what I've seen).

Of course, as usual I'm late to the party.  The articles below are great primers on the genre, that will reduce redundancy to this post and introduce contradiction and pretentiousness, as well as nuggets of awesome:
Expatriarch's blogpost
The mothership (Pitchfork)
Drowned in Sound's Forum Post

Also here are the oft quoted distribution outfits  that push the sound out into the internet:
Disaro
Tri Angle

Better that there's some sort of outlet, because many of these names are impossible to google or get all hype-machiney with all their unicode triangles and crosses.  It's as if they obnoxiously chose impossible to spell and pronounce names to keep themselves away from the internet hive-mind (google).  Was this an attempt to keep the music pure?  Or at least the intent.  Because it definitely borrows, perverts and drags from genres I know intimately, or at least obsessed over at one time or another in the 90s.

Por ejemplo,  ///▲▲▲\\\ is now called Horse Macgyver, probably because nobody could spell or pronounce the band name correctly.  I'm not convinced though of the legitimacy of its witchyness though, very much has a Salem vibe.

So let me offer some perspective.  We have the godfather of witch house, which emphasizes the hip-hop slant to the genre.

Get Crunk!  (with Salem) 

And the other flag-bearer to listen to is of course Balam Acab

But what really separates these folks from low-fi hip hop producers?  Here's some White Ring for refreshment:

White Ring's lxC999

My conclusion is very little in technique (sampling/beatbox/MC).  But the replacment of rap's urban edge by this lust for the occult and the nostalgic makes it very different.  And this lust, I find is paralell, yet perverted from the lust for lost-youth and nostalgia that permeated day-glo (which is probably all spun out of control from M83).

But, witch-house does seem to demand some codes of conduct, in order to call yourself "witch-house". Mainly, that you must have a DIY attitude, which is where a lot of the name shenanigans came from, and so many of the people getting signed even by the smallest of record labels have probably transcended the witch house label.  The above example by White Ring is a monumental example of the genre.  Not much new, other than you're fuzzing it the hell out and a woman's voice is leading the charge.  This is rare in music...really.  Women are often not making genuinely dark music to begin with...as it often morphs into anger like Otep.

That and fuzz the hell out of your production, because within distortion are the happy accidents that cast your magic spells.

So are these nods to the likes of the Cocteau Twins?  You can definitely pick up on Shoegaze & Goth everywhere in the witch-house scene.  And of course the worship of vintage horror sensibility, for reference, Goblin:

The title track to Suspiria is kinda like, the root of all Witch-House IMHO

The unicode symbol names, the DIY video art, the overt references to the occult, and more jokes inside their hermetic circles than there are punk bands in NYC add up to a lot of pretentiousness in.  God warriors beware, this shit's definitely dark-sided.  Though admittedly, it's all really tongue-in-cheek and about as serious as the movie Warlock.  It can be a lot to process though.  Rather, let the music sublime into you like burning incense and let the ghosts do their thing to your brain.  It's often best not to try to fight them anyway, or you'll probably end up like the dude in Paranormal Acitvity.

Here's some homemade vidya art by oOoOO:  Note the use of triangles, trees and lightning along witht he traditional reaper representation and many nods in the music to the 80s and 90s.

Forcing the TRON Hype, Stopping the Noise!

I am dissapoint!

This track...we had high hopes for:

This Tron link was a fake track apparently...oh people trying to achieve a singularity point of greatness, but the fake ended up sounding pretty good.  


Ah well, here's some real class by Thomas Bangalter for a great Gaspar Noe film (not for everyone). 

See?  Everyone thought we were getting Irreversible quality stuff from Daft Punk (though Irreversible was just the Thomas Bangalter half of the duo).  Cool little perversion of Beethoven's 7th isn't it?  However, the images are questionably SFW.


The tracks for the TRON ST that have been officially released are kinda instrumental...like with an orchestra, more so than that used in Irreversible...a Disney orchestra per se, so it's probably something akin to the metropolitan symphony or the london one.

Time will tell if the 6 tracks released on you tube by STNTronLegacy (the seminal stop the noise bloggers) are all that's in the movie.  While interesting in a minimalist sense, you're not getting anything along the lines of Koyaanisqatsi here either.

Plus, you're definitely not dancing to this sound track, like you could with a couple tracks from the Noe Film like:

But at the very least there will be some more exposure for Daft Punk with their Disney film venue...and one can hope to see a new album from them soon...

Swimming with Goldman & Andrew

New project from the seminal DC area producer and UMD alum Ari Goldman with Andrew (Vulture Voltair from Food for Animals), Beautiful Swimmers promises us kids some kickass white-label 12"s and hopefully some club dates in and around.

This is some tight italo-disco inspired work.  I feel like I need sunglasses for the neon signs to reflect off after the sunset on the beach.  Big thumbs up to the duo and a definite boogie production house.  "Swimmer's Groove" is an instant favorite, but the rest are sweaty and ready for a dip in the big salty wave pool!  There's a heat wave, didn't ya hear?

Disco is just a state of mind, not an era.  Shine your patent leather up and get your groove on!