i live in one of the biggest tomato producing regions in the world, and all the supermarkets are full of beat to shit tomatoes that spent weeks bouncing around in trucks as they were being imported from mexico. i know it's cold out. but you know what the bizarre thing is? the imported mexican tomatoes are hothouse tomatoes. yeah. worse, i know for a fact that the tomatoes in the region i live in are also mostly grown year round and indoors.

i'm new to the area, of course. however, i'm going to have to go out of my way to try and figure out where the local growers are leaving their produce. and, to be honest, that's the kind of thing that calls for some local awareness raising.

i mean, honestly. why are we sorting through moldy tomatoes from thousands of miles away (i haven't actually bought any in weeks), then overpaying for the transportation costs to get them here, when there's a giant surplus 30 miles down the road? stupid, stupid, stupid...

acid mothers temple - nam myo ho ren ge kyo

Meh

the attraction to this is supposedly that it's an updated rendition of a very old, traditional buddhist chant. what do buddhists think about people in canada listening to sacred music without even realizing that it's sacred music? because i didn't realize it was sacred for some time - not when i saw it live nor while i was listening to it, not until i read something that explained the significance of it. to be blunt, the religious significance of the record means absolutely nothing to me and i have absolutely no interest in exploring it further. had it been marketed as religious music, i would have actually almost certainly chosen not to attend the show (which actually would have been a shame because i was introduced to the awesomely rocking mammatus at the gig).

i could consequently accuse the band of cultural appropriation in just about the worst way possible, but that's not a line of condemnation i walk down often and not one i really want to press in too much detail right now. i'd rather just be a punk and call them pretentious.

pretentious, indeed, is the best way to describe this. there are a few sections of more intricate detail, but it's mostly really just a simple, prodding riff repeating over and over, accompanied by sounds that seem to come from nowhere rational at all. within that accompaniment, there's a lot of atonal chanting that a westerner may conceive of as gregorian; this is interspersed with some kind of shamanistic chanting that really stresses japan's ancient siberian heritage. westerners may immediately interpret it as "native american sounding", but by doing that they're confusing a very old shared heritage.

what's really pretentious about it, though, is it's nature as "channeled music". i mean, what do you say to people that think they're channeling spirits into a theremin? is it worth saying anything at all, or is that one of those situations where it's better not to bother wasting your time? so, excluding those sparse patterns that repeat as motifs, the disc is completely aimless by conscious design. i could point out that the record lacks structure and cogency, or point out that it lacks a human element in the improvisation, but who am i to argue with the gods?

where the divinely channeled improv is particularly awful is the guitar playing, which can't have made religious authorities throughout asia particularly happy, i should add. i'm not likely to agree with them in exact terms, but i will agree with anybody that claims that it's in particularly bad taste to load up sacred music with entirely self-indulgent and overly masturbatory guitar work. i might not understand all of this, but i do understand that, and it is weak.

in the end, i can't help but feel that the best audience for this (outside of the stereotypical pothead stuck with the necessity of looking beyond western culture to connect with any kind of spirituality) is anthropologists. there's something fascinating about this on the level of it modernizing something that seems destined for cultural death. but, that's a very analytical application that goes well beyond the level of pure listening, and i simply can't recommend the disc - or the band, for that matter - at all on that level.

stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysWbGhvfcWU

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/AcidMothersTemple/2007-Nam/index.html

thee silver mt. zion memorial orchestra & tra-la-la band - 13 blues for thirteen moons

Symphonic Benchmark

this is a record that happened in a very different phase of my life; i have to admit that i was actually extremely surprised to connect to this disc at all, let alone as deeply as i did. as it is, it might be my favourite record of the 00s - and a special disc it is, too.

my life in 2008 was virtually unrecognizable from my life in 2005. i'd lost touch with, rejected or been rejected by virtually everybody i had been in contact with; i was spending virtually all of my time outside of work entirely by myself, and largely enjoying it. while i would eventually go back at least twice, it seemed like i was out of school permanently - and without any serious employment opportunities. i was bouncing around from call centre to call centre (repeatedly fired, and unable to care) in an attempt to pay rent, bills and student loan interest payments. the pressures were very different, but, in a very real way, this was a return to the conditions that i first connected with this band in the first place. into that reality of aimlessly drifting through forced meaningless labour, and through whatever alignment that the universe provided, mt. zion managed to yet again produce a record that explored precisely what i was living through and hit me in exactly the way i needed at exactly the time i needed it.

i've long interpreted the disc as a concept record, but i don't pretend that the band meant for it to be one. it just seemed to intersect so much with what i was feeling and thinking that i intuitively constructed a narrative out of it. in this interpretative fantasy, the record follows an honest musician through the horrors of modern existence. it explores the vapid nature of indie culture, constructs villains out of evil bankers enforcing wage slavery to demand loan payments and ultimately ends with an affirmation of pure fucking honesty in the most powerful way possible. in absolute terms, the climax of the record is so precious as to nearly be trite but that's exactly why it's so amazingly powerful. you mean there really are some hearts that are true in this world? really? why are they so hard to find? in the midst of the extreme doubt i was experiencing, i definitely needed somebody to tell me exactly that at that exact point.

it's not just the conceptual aspect that drives this thing, either. in completely unhyphenated terms, it's just a fucking sold rock album full of messy, no wave stomps and flat-out kickass riffs. see, the kind of indictment of popular culture that the record lays out requires a very angry delivery and the band really delivers on it. the strings are very much pulled back to a more traditional "rock accompaniment", but it's actually an asset, in context. it's one thing to tear down the shit culture we're stuck with, it's another to show everybody how it should be done in terms that the masses can connect to. this had to be a takedown of popular rock music to get it's point across properly; it wouldn't have packed the same punch as a bunch of bartok variations.

it's not often that i will suggest an album is flawless, but i can't find a flaw here. what i will say is that the record is heavy. if things are going well for you right now and you're feeling pretty good about yourself, you probably won't want to hear a record full of rants that question your integrity, your intelligence and your basic decency for merely carrying through with the life that the system created for you to live. that might be exactly why you actually should listen to this very carefully. you might need an anvil across the fucking forehead to get you to behave like a decent person. unfortunately, if that's the case, you're probably more likely to get defensive about it, or run off words by some asshole philosopher that is so lost in meaningless abstraction that they can't see the basic use of being nice to people. that will restrict this record's most passionate audience to people with a conscience - and especially people with a conscience that are just getting bludgeoned down by a society that lacks one.

unfortunately, that means that most people won't really get this. for those that will get it, though, it's really a treat. highly, highly recommended.

stream:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnpQFjefXCRMZAGkNSy2DD7gcSPhsGgZ0

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/ASilverMtZion/2008-13BluesForThirteenMoons/index.html

you need to be extra careful about venezuela, because you don't just have imperialists lying to you, you also have chavistas lying to you.

without any special knowledge of what is happening, i'll point out that the opposition almost certainly does not represent the protestors. it may be entirely true that the opposition is working with the united states to overthrow the government. however, pointing that out is not the same thing as accusing the protestors of being right-wing - as they clearly are in the ukraine, i might add.

all the "independent" media reports are essentially the same. students represent the upper middle class. poor support the government. it's counter-revolutionary. but that's of course based on the false understanding of venezuela as a left-wing state in the first place. it can't be a counter-revolution if a revolution never happened in the first place. i'm well aware of active leftist movements in venezuela that are deeply opposed to the existing government.

within all that confusion, there have been tons of false images floating around, and it's hard to believe that's not something that's been orchestrated.

so, again, it's like anywhere else: there's three sides here, not two. the state and the opposition are well understood, and the opposition is definitely an imperial proxy. but the actual people, what they're fighting for, what their political ideals are and their end desires are a far more difficult entity to understand.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/82817/these-photos-being-shared-from-venezuela-are-fake

you know, given the prevalence of these "free trade" agreements, which are of course consciously designed to enslave the rest of the world into producing good to import to america, it's ironic to consider the role that america's place as an import driven market played in the revolution. that is to say that a big part of the reason that the landholders revolted was that they were denied a local market by being forced to compete with imported goods from elsewhere in the empire.

it plays back into the narrative about the revolution being a civil war in the british empire. those local landowners are now transnationals that are integrated with their british counterparts. recreating that condition of local landowners seeking more power would require a redistribution of wealth that is itself revolutionary. for that reason, those conditions cannot recreate themselves.

just a reminder that, liberal rhetoric notwithstanding, this is the first thing the united states actually did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_Act_of_1789