once again i let this little foray into supposed community lapse. my bad. i've been getting settled into our new gallery space/apartment in lovely kreuzberg, which has taken much of my energy. most times i'm at the computer, i can't fathom engaging in activities that are unnecessary (though i must admin, facebook occupies a bit of my time). i found this album, shadrack chameleon is amazing. only 500 copies were pressed, so cop one if you can. otherwise, i think the album has been thankfully re-released by gear fab records, on vinyl even!

when i was 14 i met a girl named merry, and she introduced me to a band called 'clam famine', who apparently hail from wheaton, illinois. i still know very little about this band, and have never seen them live, but still their tape was seminal in my musical development. i wanted to play guitar like on 'i am peter pan' and was amazed by how tight a local band could sound... i would sing their songs to psych myself up before soccer games, and to 14 year old me, they were as important as any of the other sort of bad grungy music that i listened to, like the smashing pumpkins or pearl jam. yes, i once listened to (and loved) pearl jam.


before i moved back to berlin i took some time to dub the only clam famine tape i have ever heard for posterity, then realizing that they are on myspace (linked by the picture above), albeit with different versions of the same songs, though there's something about dirty tape hiss and four track recordings that i find vastly superior to local bands being recorded at the local studio, generally a reverb intensive and compressed affair. without further adieu, i bring you clam famine. think of them as my own version of pete & pete's 'polaris'.


as i settle into berlin i shall continue to bring you music, but as the road towards having all of my possessions settled into an apartment seems long and arduous, bear with me as i progress towards freedom and free time. enjoy this tasty morsel as an appetizer first...

this record was given to me by a friend, and seems to be quite rare. i have found no information online on it. i think the group featured here 'belonged' to ram dass (richard alpert) in the sixties, but there was no jacket with the record, and many of the songs don't have an artist attributed. some of the vocals are reminiscent of becky stark (of lavender diamond), some sound more like space ghost, and others are dirgey versions of hindu classics...
get it here!

the music presented here is more irreverent and intentionally local than the posts preceding, but celebratory and gripping nonetheless. the raytown hustlas hail from my hometown high school, and their cd lay dormant in some basement flip folder until i resucitated it a few years back, finding bounce & ballin'ness. trill-a-g is better than federline certainly, but imminently more self aware. if art can be post-post-modern, music can be faux-faux-gangsta, which is, perhaps, the most proper genre assessment for the hustlas.


Click on image for album, and hit them up to donate if you dig it.

electropeasant will continue with gems from further afield in its next installment. i just want to rep something that i heard about but hasn't been in the news at all.. an ohio farm share coopreative, the manna storehouse, was raided without reason by fully armed swat team members, their assets, equipment and food raided, and still no reason was given. more here.

click on the image above to download


i don't know how i first came across this delightful and immanently transcendent performance, but i would like to pass it along, as it's position within the canon of the history of america/music/art is so astounding. i can't imagine being at the funeral for the great john coltrane, nor any funeral with musical accompaniment like that displayed here, but i am thankful that it existed as a moment. don ayler, who is playing in the funeral had this to say of the performance:

At the funeral I was present, right, everyone was there, yes, I mean, not only musicians, but people from all lots of life, all colors from all nations, because people understood what John Coltrane stood for. I remember seeing Stockeley Carmichael, Rapp Brown... Yes, I remember, my brother and Ornette Coleman were supposed to play, and we played at funeral in St. Peter's Church. I think that everybody cried when they heard that he had died, you know, and I cried when I heard about it, I cried when I heard that he had died, but after a while I realized you couldn't bring him back in the world, so, you know, I just played the best I could, I think I played some of the best music of my life at old John's funeral, yeah, the music was recorded, we heard it, very spiritual music, very spiritual.

personnel on the recording are:

A. Ayler - Tenor Saxophone / Vocal
D. Ayler - Trumpet
R. Davis - Bass
M. Graves - Drums

finally, i found that this is from a box set released by reverent records of albert ayler's music. peep it!

i've been deliberating which course to steer this somewhat rudderless vehicle called electropeaseant, and i have decided on a somewhat new direction, that of a music blog. my proselytizing and nuance can be entertaining, i know, but i'm not convinced of the format of chattering to the fishes. i still may posit a smattering of randomness here and there, but this brings me to another line of business.

i want to invite anyone who would like to contribute random, unheard music to electropeasant to please do so. in fact, the site would work the best if visitors from around the world were including their favorite bits of local hardcore, tropicalia from travels, indian field recordings and the bar band from down the block that wasn't amazing in 1978, but now... you could swear they were nickelback! (actually, please don't submit anything that sounds like nickelback).

with that being said, just email or comment and i'll certainly allow you to post your tunes. let's grow together!

here is an amazing album by a band called 'puff'. found description below:

PUFF was the 1969 extension-group of the Rockin Ramrods with songs written by founding Ramrods leader Ron Campisi and featured guitarist-vocalist David Allen Ryan (later of Sha Na Na) and jazz flutist/keyboardist Jim Mandell. The sound of the group was a marked departure from the Rockin' Ramrods. It was softer, more experimental, and for the first time introduced jazz, blues and classical themes into their music. Although the lyrics Ronn Campisi wrote in the early, middle and late stages of his groups were set against different musical idioms, there was always one thematic-constant of kid's dreams, adolescent desires & growing up.

1. DEAD THOUGHTS OF ALFRED 2. RAINY DAY 3. VACUUM 4. WALK UPON THE WATER 5. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE 6. OF NOT BEING ABLE TO SLEEP 7. WHEN I WAKE UP IN THE MORNING 8. TREES 9. IT'S MY WAY 10. I SURE NEED YOU 11. GO WITH YOU 12. CHANGES

that review doesn't do the album justice. it was never released and is better than the monkees. the site from which i sampled that bit of text was charging $68 for the vinyl! crazy! here it is for free.. enjoy!



note: link is in the comments...

ok, i have let this blog languish yet again. sometimes creating digital info is less than appealing to me, even though i soak it up. the election proffered a breadth of information, and my saturation levels were at maximum. it is nice to decompress from informational overload. at the same time, existing post-election allows posts to uncloak themselves of fear and step out into the sunlight of the majesty of existence. no more fear! this is what i've been chanting internally, and it is helpful. so yes, things are changing quickly, yes we are at the end of an age, but whatever! go outside! enjoy yourself! engage with infinity everywhere!

i have also built up some resistance towards blogging, as it can often feel like diarrhea of the mouth. still, there is much love to share, and i shall begin that process anew. in this small digest of stimuli, i shall present a few videos and an article, well, written about me.

first, here you may read all about my processes, from the lens of la based writer leah demo: here

second (i'm such a list maker, if you hadn't noticed), here are a few videos that have passed my way. just discovered 'el guincho' from dublab.com, and found his video for his song 'kalise' to be both wonderful, and like exactly what i make. maybe that's just something that's going around, the recontextualization of everything into a form that is more... cool? without further adieu:



lastly, another video. this from yale at luaka bop, don't really know the story behind it, except that it's amazing. enjoy! i was thinking of posting a doom and gloom lesson on how fluoride is both toxic and in everything, but just go here to learn more about fluoride. certainly google to find out what it's in, because i was surprised (though i shouldn't have been) to learn that it's in cereal, beer, and anything that is from a fluoridated watershed. eesh. mega-bad.
here's the fun brazilian video:

as our financial system collapses, the mayan prophecies continue to reverberate and correlate with the events currently transpiring. this from daniel pinchbeck's 2012, The Return of Quetzalcoatl:

“The nine-story Mayan pyramids are thus telling us that consciousness is created in a hierarchical way and that each Underworld stands on the foundation of another,” writes Calleman. The initial level, starting thirteen hablatuns or 16.4 billion years ago, proceeds from the inception of matter in the “Big Bang,” through the development of cellular life on Earth. During the second step, beginning thirteen alautuns or 820 million years ago, animal life evolved out of cells. The third underworld, starting thirteen kinchiltuns or 41 million years ago, saw the evolution of primates and the first, rudimentay use of tools by human ancestors. During the fourth underworld, beginning thirteen kalabtuns or 2 million years ago, tribal organization began among the ancestors of Homo sapiens. During the next underworld, starting thirteen piktuns or 102,000 years ago, Homo sapiens emerged, developing spoken language. The sixth underworld comprises the Great Cycle of thirteen baktuns, beginning 5,125 years before the approaching birthdate, when we created patriarchical civilization, law, and written language – Calleman calls this the National Underworld. The seventh step, dubbed the Planetary Underworld, thirteen katuns or 256 years, beginning in AD 1755, introduced industrialization, electricity, technology, modern democracy, gene splicing, and the atom bomb. Our knowledge became Faustian power over the physical world. The eighth level – the Galactic Underworld – thirteen tuns or 12.8 years, began in 1999, with the development of the Internet into a global communications infrastructure. The final step, thirteen uinals or 260 days, will lead, Calleman believes, to the attainment of “nondual cosmic consciousness” across the Earth. By the end of this Universal Underworld, humanity will have crossed the threshold of the abyss, confronting the shadow projections of the Apocalypse, to become conscious creators of reality.
Each step on the pyramid “corresponds to a certain frequency of consciousness,” in which evolution operates twenty times faster than the previous phase. According to Calleman’s thesis, “In the Galactic Underworld, as much change must happen in a tun (360 days) as happened in a katun (19.7 years) during the Planetary Underworld, or in a baktun (394 years) of the National Underworld.” Perhaps for this reason, the twenty-year “Generation Gap” of the previous era no longer seems applicable to our situation, which requires increasing flexibility and adaptability to navigate. Institutional structures formed over the last 250 years of the Planetary Underworld, from the nuclear family to the nation-state, seem to be losing their stability as we go deeper into the Galactic Underworld. At the same time, scientific breakthroughs proliferate, as we receive increasingly accurate data about the universe in which we are embedded. Calleman believes that understanding the spiral dynamics of evolution expressed through the Mayan calendar is, in itself, an aspect of the Divine Plan: “Taking responsibility as a cocreator with God presupposes a basic understanding of how creation works.”
Confusingly, Calleman’s interpretation of the Mayan calendar puts the crescendo of all human history back a year – even more breathtakingly close to our dangerously fragmented present tense. According to his thesis, based on his own interpretation of the sacred calendar’s energetic shifts, global humanity will attain nondualistic enlightened consciousness by the end of October 2011, “It will simply not be possible not to be enlightened after October 28, 2011,” he confidently asserts, “or at least from a certain time afterward when the new reality has definitely manifested.” The final year of the calendar will be used, he conjectures, for celebrating and adjusting to our new circumstances of unlimited bliss and creative freedom…
According to Calleman’s study of the Mayan knowledge system, within each of the nine underworlds, there are cyclical pulsations of light and dark energies, which he calls “Days” and “Nights,” Whether 16 billion years or 260 days long, each underworld contains a pattern of seven days and six nights, a partition into thirteen stages, each stage represented by a different Mayan deity. With its Seven Days of Creation, Calleman’s reading of the Mayan calendar neatly enfolds the Judeo-Christian creation myth presented in Genesis. He argues that the energy shifts that manifest within each cycle become predictable, once the entire pattern is understood. According to Calleman, the crucial forward step in the evolution of consciousness takes place during the “Fifth Day” of each underworld, ruled by the energy of Quetzalcoatl. The previous form of consciousness asserts itself through final acts of destruction during the Fifth Night that follows, ruled by the energy of Tezcatlipoca. The 256-year cycle of thirteen katuns that began with the Industrial Revolution [the Planetary Underworld] reached its darkest point during the Fifth Night of 1932 to 1952, the period of Nazism, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japanese cities (in the 5,125-year National Cycle that preceded it, the Fifth Night, AD 434 to 829, corresponded to the collapse of the Roman Empire). The cycle of thirteen tuns that began in November 1999 will, likewise, reach its midnight hour, its involutionary crescendo, during the year 2008. Interestingly, various studies on the imminent peak oil crisis point to 2008 as the year when resources of energy, food, and water will become critically stressed.
Calleman proposes that this period could see a global financial and ecological collapse, accompanied by nightmarish misuses of power on the part of the ruling elite. “In Night Five, ruled by Tezcatlipoca, the lord of darkness…we will see the last desperate and at the same time most forceful, attempt to secure control by the forces seeking to maintain dominance.” Such an interregnum could also provide the opportunity to circulate a new vision of what this world could be, and disseminate the tools and principles to implement it."

-Daniel Pinchbeck
2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

do as you will with this information. as i see it, dualism must be dead, and the duopoly will no longer be sustainable. in this regard, no politician can possibly symbolize hope, so long as politics and nationalism retain their courses and intentions.


when september 11th happened, i ran to radiohead's amnesiac. walking to school, i listened on a discman and felt the pulse of the world's destruction that breeds its recreation just as a forest fire begets a healthier forest. i believe this instance to have been one of the more profound experiences i have had with music....

if you haven't heard the of montreal song that the title of this post is referring to, scroll to the bottom of this post. i'll add the lyrics also, because i'm that nice... i shall first begin with an interview with the journalist naomi wolf (and above the of montreal video is a video for the song 'naomi' by of montreal's former elephant 6 fellow jeff mangum, of neutral milk hotel. this is perhaps out of line as naomi wolf writes some feminist theory, though the song isn't supposed to be about her). watch and learn about america/fascism. the information contained therein is throttling and upsetting, especially for proponents of freedom and democracy who believe in elections, like the one that the united states is about to stage.

the contents of this interview are all the more vivid for me, as last night i screened el topo for the first time, alejandro jodorowsky's 1970 masterpiece. i read a piece that he wrote recently in last month's 'arthur magazine' which you may download as a pdf <"http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?p=2969" target="_blank">here (the article is on page 14 of the pdf). el topo displays the beginnings of christianity a bit absurdly, as a psychedelic series of shamanic gunfights. the end of the film displays the illuminati insignia currently found on the back of dollar bills everywhere. this society is destroyed in the film's apocalypse by god the gunfighter himself, as it has corrupted itself through enslavement, debauchery and secrecy. it is not clear to me whether jodorowsky is speaking of america or capitalism as a concept, as many societies are complicit in the slave trade, but he is deriding it regardless. here are a few clips from that film.





rent el topo. do it now. you will thank yourself later. now, to the promised contemporary culture:




forecast fascist future lyrics:

The language of the frost lobs dead balloons over ruins today
In view of wan wordless crowds that chase waifs to spires with fiery plumes
And incite the firmament’s portrait of ’A Drowning in Styx’
That gives impotents kicks

Boredom murders the heart of our age while sanguinary creeps take the stage
Boredom strangles the life from the printed page

Masking vapor trails from Mercury for a killer on Umbria
Who crippled birch mares now briars replace their old cotton limbs
Who will tell? I mean would it make a difference?
Look metal flower petal tears do not even appear in the Myopic Mirror

Boredom murders the heart of our age while sanguinary creeps take the stage
Boredom strangles the life from the printed page

The moon was sagging in the sky as I held her face to mine
All our thoughts were coming in so clear beyond the Myopic Mirror
We were darting from the place where we just couldn’t fit
For away from all the violence safely flying in our own orbit

Why do I always have to tell you ”forget about the prescient signs!”?
Forget about the life we knew
May we never be stripped of anything we love
may we grow so gentle never go mental
may we never go go mental
may we always stay stay gentle

May we never go go mental
may we always stay stay gentle
May we never go go mental
may we always stay stay gentle
May we never go go mental
may we always stay stay gentle
May we never go go mental
may we always stay stay gentle

Boredom murders the heart of our age while sanguinary creeps take the stage
Boredom strangles the life from the printed page

What was my number? What was my number? I don’t care!
No no no no no

so, i've been listening to this constantly. alice has a way of explaining that is subtle, but beautiful and impactful like slow motion footage of a building collapse. Turiya and Ramakrishna is my favorite, i was able to rankle this album off of ebay for an amazing $6, and it's now one of my best friends. especially underneath the tranquil yet constant freeway noise of my nook in echo park, and the radio headlines pertaining to the fall of the bankosphere (and western capitalism?). i overheard bush today refer to 'democratic capitalism' as 'the best system ever devised'.


so, my bank just collapsed.

i don't really know what that means, as my assetts are under $100,000, and they're FDIC insured. regardless, the money needs to come out and go somewhere else. i've been saturating myself with reports of this collapse, and it seems so preventable.. our greed got the best of us, and stock trading became more dada than dada. trading the idea of money that doesn't exactly exist is pretty stupendous stuff, but the house of cards does not stand for long.. it's all marcel duchamp's fault!



in all of the economic doom gloom talk, i see parallels in various prophecies, from mayan to hopi to nostradamus, 2008 has been cataclysmic and all signs have seemed to point to that from, well, hundreds to thousands of years ago. i even found in another spot on the internet that sarah palin's name in hebrew added up to 666. i was reminded by alan watts that there have been scathes of anti-christs and that she may just be the most recent, but her sudden stature is disgraceful. for someone to regard one's self as a christian and hold ideas so dissimilar with the christ is appalling. america has laid out its stereotype on the ground and is sticking to it. intense, misguided, hero-fools with a pre-disposition towards random bursts of violence (at a distance, of course).



in seeking alternatives to this deluge of lies, i have also been seeking podcasts (as i'm working non-stop..) from more uplifting/intelligent sources. as you may know, 'electropeasant', or rather 'electropeasantry' is a term coined by william irwin-thompson, an american whom should be greatly respected throughout our culture but is predominately unknown. here he is, speaking somewhere. wit in this talk (i believe it was this one) declared that religion existed between the sumerians and 1945, and that when any structure is on it's way out, it gets especially violent and forceful, see any reference to what religious fundamentalists want to do to the world.



that leaves me with alice coltrane and the sound of the freeway, solace in these sodden times.

i just found out that eric dolphy died of a heart attack. at the age of 36! in 1964.. he lays it down like he's playing streetball on the courts of the west village.

i made a joke to myself last night that i still consider to be funny. we were driving to see mirah, who played a vivacious set of insect metaphor driven ballads (oud and all), and when realizing that the troubadour we were driving to was in west hollywood, i referred to beverly hills as the land of 9021no parking. maybe that's not that funny, but when one is scouring for a plebian plot, a little can mean a lot.

when i went to finland i had the pleasure of witnessing an installation at kiasma created by almagul menlibaeva called steppen baroque. i randomly pulled the kiasma catalogue i kept for collage in the intention of using it for such, and came across her psycheshaman work. actually, the installation felt sort of like an 80s music video as it included a crib with no bottom and semi transparent floor to ceiling fabric, but her work was compelling regardless. was reminded of her via mircea eliade whom i picked up randomly at an nyu booksale for the exact and only $8 i possessed...




the photos from the show remind me currently of joseph beuys, sun ra, and sarah palin's pentecostal congregation, in that order.




and this is what my walk home india street just now was like:


white people have a different plan....



and now a palette cleanser, after all of this rabble rousing, a delightful pairing of hanna höch compositions.



and silence by john cage

just read this morning in harper's weekly about the idea of quantum entaglement. this from wikipedia, defining the idea of quantum entaglement:

Quantum entanglement is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which the quantum states of two or more objects are linked together so that one object can no longer be adequately described without full mention of its counterpart — even though the individual objects may be spatially separated. This interconnection leads to correlations between observable physical properties of remote systems.

so, things are interconnected at a much faster rate than we previously thought. apparently, the minimum of speed estimates for quantum entanglement to transpire is 10,000 times faster than the speed of light.

from telegraph.co.uk:

In 1935, Einstein outlined one such perplexing feature in a thought experiment with his colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen.

They first noted that quantum theory applied not only to single atoms but also to molecules made of many atoms. So, for example, a molecule containing two atoms could be described by a single mathematical expression called a wave function.

Einstein realised that if you separated these atoms, even by a vast distance, they would still be described by the same wave function. In the jargon, they were "entangled", as if their fate was connected in some way.

we are immanently more interconnected than priorly thought..
separation is a fallacy at a quantum level essentially.
now we just need 'teleport' apps for iphones.

relatedly, i've been reading hal foster's 'recodings' and am nearly finished. more on that in the future, but in the present, light probably isn't going to fix my master cylinder.

08/08/08 is upon us, and the fields in england are synchronous with the synchronicity.



today to mark the date, we will head to the la brea tar pits and partake in 88BoaDrum featuring 88 drummers of various los angeles band affiliations...




i contributed some collages and some loops to this project. very cool, have a look around, at random!



snip snip. more soon, must enjoy day. must enjoy day. must enjoy day.

this morning i became familiar with the new radiohead video, 'house of cards'. really amazing visual description of infrastructure collapsing, whether that means thom yorke's head, or a suburb and power lines...



a lot of you have been responding to the obama hype poster that i mocked up. obama is clearly the better choice within the 'race', but he is still part of a system that seeks to objectify its participants. he wants to be like you, he wants to know you as a viewer on some level, but he still remains a politician..



via Krishnamurti's Think on These Things

When the mind revolts within the pattern of society, such a revolt is like a mutiny in a prison, and it is merely another form of ambition. But when the mind understands this whole destructive process of the present society and steps out of it, then its action is not ambitious. Such action may create a new culture, a better social order, a different world, but the mind is not concerned with that creation. Its only concern is to discover what is true; and it is the movement of truth that creates a new world, not the mind which is revolt against society.

Obama is not an iconoclast. Obama will not change the system. He will make the system more manageable and people friendly, he will attempt initiatives, and he definitely listens more to dissent than Bush does, at least seemingly, but his stances against gay marriage, and towards further wiretapping are not progressive. Wanting 'progress' without the massive restructuring of society seems absurd, and every progressive that wants progress within our contemporary order is naïve, to say the least.

whatever. i'm not really interested in obama qua obama. i'm way more into what obama represents within the language of control. the ability to abstractly choose one's national representative should not be regarded as freedom. the ability to listen to one's ipod while choosing one's national representative is also not freedom, but possibly more near to it...


this from Theodor Adorno's essay on Freudian Theory in The Culture Industry

The essential role of narcissism in regard to the identifications which are at play in the formation of fascist groups (ed: which we must consider the US as, given its consistent rebuking of international law especially in regards to 'the war on terror') is recognised in Freud's theory of idealization. 'We see that the object is being treated in the same way as our own ego, so that when we are in love a considerable amount of narcissistic libido overflows on the object. It is even obvious, in many forms of love choice, that the object serves as a substitute for some unattained ego ideal of our own. We love it on account of the perfections which we have striven to reach for our own ego, and which we should now like to procure in this roundabout way as a means of satisfying our own narcissism.' It is precisely this idealization of himself which the fascist leader tries to promote in his followers....The people he has to reckon with generally undergo the characteristic modern conflict between a strongly developed rational, self-preserving ego agency and the continuous failure to satisfy their own ego demands. This conflict results in strong narcissistic impulses which can be absorbed and satisfied only through idealization as the partial transfer of the narcissistic libido to the object. This, again, falls in line with the semblance of the leader image to an enlargement of the subject: by making the leader his ideal he loves himself, as it were, but gets rid of the stains of frustrations and discontent which mar his picture of his own empirical self. This pattern of indentification through idealization, the caricature of true conscious solidarity, is, however, a collective one. It is effective in vast numbers of people with similar characterological disposistions and libidinal leanings. The fascist community of the people corresponds exactly to Freud's definition of a group as being 'a number of individuals who have substituted one and the same object for their ego ideal and have consequently indentified themselves with one another in their ego'. The leader image, in turn, borrows as it were its primal father-like omnipotence from collective strength.

in this way, obama becomes 'hope', which i feel is more a shame than a triumph. this seems to stem from a reliance on media and credit, and a lack of personal control or an ability to maintain personal responsibility, which is mirrored in almost every financial institution extant. we would not have personal debt if our nation did not uphold the standard. we would not seek another michael jordan if we no longer believed in any sort of attainable/sustainable victory. the breaking of norms seems facile within contemporary society, and almost a mode of rebellion against history, which seems to only beget more history. institutional reformers generally don't see society as too stringent, they see it as too loose. the Lutherans know this well. Luther wanted a stricter church, and therefore affixed a doctrine to the church door. Obama is not a visionary, he is a manager sans manger. He is our chicken soup for the soul.

enough hateration. we're beyond that. let's talk about us instead of him/them. let's change our internal policies for other than fiscal considerations. let's cease positing our expectations/hopes in others and forge them in ourselves. let's turn off our ipods and talk to each other. let's all be special little art rebels together.