And now the latest installment of John Gillander’s continuingExtra Dimensional. Recently Mr. Gillanders was featured on the weird and irreverent Paratopia, a podcast which takes a controversial look at high strangeness and the paranormal. Check it out here.
When I found her she was huddled on a bed in the basement bedroom, laughing and crying simultaneously – it was quite a peculiar spectacle. They hadn’t held anything back with her, and I should have seen it coming. She was addicted to order, which is why she made such a formidable counterpart. There are holes missing from my brain, she helped fill in the gaps while my mind constantly drifted skyward. We made perfect sense in that quintessential odd couple kind of way. But letting go in the manner necessary to enjoy a hallucinogenic frenzy was probably beyond her current capabilities. I should have known this. If you resist the wave, it beats you into the rocks, and they’d been beating her for a while now. She was sick to her stomach, and one of those people that has problems letting go enough to vomit, so it tormented her internally. But there was more going on. There’d been a level of communiqué afoot. As she stared in the basement mirror something from within forced her to contemplate her self perception, and acknowledge her own distorted self image. Read more…
Just got a batch of excellent photos from Andrea Brunson, who documented Escalator Fest 2009 at the Lo-Fi Performance Gallery and the Vera Project. Escalator Fest returns in 2010 on October 22 and 23 at the Lo-Fi Performance Gallery in Seattle, WA.
Peaking Lights are on tour but alas I will have to settle for this fascinating film as they are not traveling to my mizrable and goshforsaken burg. Perhaps you are a luckier sort. Check out the whole “Sound Builders” series though it’s pretty nice…
7/27/10 – The Crepe Place, Santa Cruz, CA w/ Pocahaunted + Mi Ami
7/28/10 – Rickshaw Stop, San Francisco, CA, w/ Pocahaunted + Mi Ami+ Late Young
7/29/10 – Muddy Water’s Cafe, Santa Barbara, CA w/ Pocahaunted + Mi Ami
7/30/10 – The Bootleg Theater, LA, w/ Pocahaunted + Mi Ami
8/2/10 – Echo Curio, LA w/Ged Gengras, Sun Araw, Metal Rouge, Robedoor
8/3/10 – Tin Can House, San Diego, CA – w/Metal Rouge
And now the first installment of a summer serial from the one and only John Gillanders of Black Science. Stay tuned for more…
“And I saw this jester. And he was coming down the street. I was in the crowd, I was right there. And one side of him was totally black, and the other side was totally colorful, and here he is, just laughing.” She closes her eyes, remembering. “And I’m getting the image of the dark side of life, and the light side, and here is this jester…just laughing! Laughing at the human condition, that we humans think we have any clue as to what is really going on. And I started chuckling, and then I started laughing, and I’m thinking–we’re so clueless! I was laughing with God, and with the jester, and with everything, and I said to myself, `We humans, we’re just so silly! We think we know. We don’t know. What is this experience on this earth? This is amazing.’ When you really start to think about it–how could this be?” (from a John Hopkins University Psilocybin research participant.)
Strange times good people – strange times and shadowy entanglements. Spontaneous ruminations on the warring factions of chaos and order, mergings in the outer reaches of a nervous system that call forth an erotic astral trance of expanding magnitudes. The convergent path is fed by the incoherent, like an eternal bliss fuck come down – a cascading mind warp of pleasantly echoing distortion. Was I the order? Was I the echo? There were boundless and inspiring miracles. Incestuous tragicomedies. Always the complexity. Forever. Read more…
8pm May 6th at 2020 e. Union st.- A band called Nymph from NYC will be bringing their cosmic gamelan javanese junkyard sounds to Seattle. I saw them a little while back and they were AMAZING! Don’t miss it.
Along with Corespondents, Shana Cleveland(of the Curious Mystery) and Tiny Light (feat. members of Geist & the Sacred Ensemble and Backward Masks)
And now another spirited rant from Mr. John Gillanders, here’s his latest installment of “Extra Dimensional”…
If you were to think of our species as united cosmically as one being, which is something that most of our religions and prominent neuronauts have been telling us since the beginning of what we perceive as time – plotlines begin to emerge that don’t necessarily involve self destruction. In not listening to these viewpoints, we’ve separated ourselves from our own eternal nature and the essence of time. We’re kind of like an idiot savant that can program the shit out of a computer but couldn’t get a date if his life depended on it. Another way of putting it is that we’re becoming increasingly and dangerously unbalanced as an individual; a work-a-holic who’s career success has blinded him to the fact that his personal life is in shambles. This unbalance has produced some hilarious and mind blowingly horrific enchantments, but we need to diversify our science now more than ever. Pleasure rather than violence. Cooperation rather than competition. Self love rather than self hatred. Biology rather than synthetics. DMT rather than prozac. Read more…
Hey folks, many happenings in the works for the near future in shrineland-
DJing at Grey Gallery 3/14, doing projections at the Comet 4/1 , Jackie-O MF at Chop Suey 5/1, and tons of other cool shows and junk real soon. A big Portable Shrines compilation album is in the works as well as Escalator Fest 2010. More info soon.
Moon Duo are currently on the road to celebrate their Woodsist release "Escape" on Feb 16.
Check 'em out tonight on DJ Rick's KDVS show on Feb 15, 10PM PST (http://www.kdvs.org/).
FEBRUARY 2010 WEST COAST TOUR DATES
2/11 • Hemlock Tavern, San Francisco, CA (w/ Nothing People, Epikurs Euforie)
2/12 • Synchronicity Space, Los Angeles, CA (w/ Pocahaunted, Psychic Handbook)
2/13 • Showcave, Los Angeles, CA (w/ Psychic Handbook, Former Ghosts, Popdrone)
2/15 • KDVS Radio, Davis, CA
2/16 • Brookedale Lodge, Santa Cruz, CA (w/ The Entrance Band, Lights)
2/18 • Rendezvous, Seattle, WA (w/ Du Hexen Hase, Midday Veil)
2/19 • ANZA Club, Vancouver, BC (w/ Stellar OM Source, Pacific City Nightlife Vision Band)
2/20 • East End, Portland, OR (w/ The Urinals, Leaders, Eat Skull)
They'll be in Seattle this thursday in the Jewelbox Theater at the Rendezvous 2322 2nd ave.
along with the terrifying sounds of Du Hexen Hase and ethereal vibes of Midday Veil.
Prolific New Zealand experimentalist Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel) will be making only four stops in the US and this is one- Saturday Jan. 9th at the Funhouse in Seattle. Melt your face with sound. Our Love Will Destroy The World (New Zealand) AFCGT (check out their new shit, it will mess you up good) Dull Knife (members of Story of Rats and Du Hexen Hase) Great Falls (Hemingway, Playing Enemy)
With brand new hypnogogic visual accompaniment by Portable Shrines
Have you been wishing for a queer/ fantasy/ Magic/ DnD/ Metal fest?
Well…TOMORROW (11/28) in North Portland it is on! workshops include: Witchcraft 101, Let the Muthaf***a Burn: Intro to Candle Magic, Image Magic: Intro to the history and uses of Tarot, and Hand/Palm Reading.
PLUS…Purple Rhinestone Eagle, Northern Swords, and Forsorcerers and playing it. Damn, Portland is cool.
Tonight Saturday 10/16 the imminent Kurt Vile returns to Seattle (this time with his band the Violators) along w/ Eat Skull, the Whines and Charles Leo Gebhardt IV. At the High Dive in Fremont…
Coming November 1st- A Portable Shrines Dia de los Muertos show w/ Blues Control, Little Claw and Brother Raven at the Funhouse. Blues Control (of Queens, NY) have been gifting the world with unique and amazing jams on reputable labels such as Holy Mountain, SiltBreeze and Sub Pop for some time now but I believe this rare appearance in the NW is their first journey to these parts. Don’t miss it, cousins.
Little Claw are one of Kim and Thurston’s fave bands (he just put out there 2nd album on Ecstatic Peace) and they leave a trail of fire in their wake wherever they go. Check out some of their new tunes HERE.
Little Claw in the light of day...
Brother Raven are a local Seattle duo who deserve your undivided attention. Their analog virtuosity will take you on an awesome voyage through the pineapple portal and into interstellar space. Dig up on that shit right HERE.
“Art is magick because art transforms consciousness”
Alan Moore
The above nugget of cosmic wisdom was culled from the documentary: The Mindscape of Alan Moore, which was released on DVD stateside in 2008 to little fanfare. When I just checked, there were exactly two holds placed on said movie at the public library, whereas comparatively the Watchmen DVD had nearly a thousand. Which is really too bad, and kind of a reflection on how we want the body of our art and not always the mind. To be honest, I ran out and saw Watchmen on opening weekend back in March and banished Mindscape to the bottom of my ever expanding Netflix cue before just getting around to finally checking it out last month.
If I were to recommend a cogent introduction to so called magickal thought, I’d suggest this to anyone far more than actually reading anything Aleister Crowley’s written (which I’m still yet to get much out of) – which is kind of the aberrant thing with magickal writing. Whereas, people like Austin Osman Spare and Crowley are often seen as the forefathers of western magickal thought, I’ve personally found it far more beneficial to read other’s interpretation of their work rather than hearing it directly from their own mouths. In fact, it was actually attempting to read Crowley that turned me off to all things magick for years.
