And now an intriguing new piece from John Gillanders of EXTRA DIMENSIONAL fame, the first of what will hopefully be a multi-part series. Read on if you dare…
As a general rule, there is a fairly simple measure which can be used to judge any supposed spiritual leader. If they act is if they truly know what they’re talking about, like they have all the answers, they’re an obvious fraud. In a world of infinite complexity, to think the macro consciousness would be more simplistic than the micro reflection of itself feels like a tragically lazy assumption, yet that’s the mentality that drives a great deal of our daily behavior in regards to spirituality.
Whether you want to believe in the reality (a tough concept to define) of these things is up to you, but it can’t be denied that throughout human history and to this day, certain people perceive what mystics describe as the spirit realm, or I like to refer to as fourth dimensional timespace perception. It just sounds sexier. We love to label these beliefs as crazy because a lot of these people are so far over the edge that we have trouble even connecting with them, but also conveniently ignore the fact that millions of others deal with this on a regular basis, and aren’t remotely “crazy” by any conventional definition of the word. As a matter of fact, spiritual practices that involve ritualistically ingesting sacred chemical compounds and other more natural methods to create “contact with gods” encounters have existed throughout human history, and it’s estimated that at least ten percent of the world’s population practice these more shamanic disciplines still.
I’m one of these people despite the most adamant protestations of my left brain, not to mention my western cultural imprinting. I tried to run away from this aspect of myself for the better part of a decade, but eventually just decided to run with it. It should be noted that my life has improved infinitely since I revised my approach. Read more…
This Saturday April 2nd we celebrate the release of our super deluxe double LP extravaganza of mind boggling sounds from beyond. An amazing 6 of the 18 bands featured on the album will be performing at the Lo-Fi Performance Gallery 429 Eastlake. I daresay one of the finest lineups we’ve had the pleasure to present. These are exact times so don’t miss out!
Spinning the finest zonked out gems all night in the lounge will be DJs Valerie”Explorateur”Calano, Dull Knife’s Adam Svenson and Garek Druss and the all-seeing DJ Eye. Projections by Aubrey Nehring, Darlene Nordyke, David Golightly and Ellie Dicola.
The record wont be in stores til Record Store Day April 16th so come down and score a copy now, along with some other very limited edition treats.
Those cosmic travelers Moon Duo return April 8th at the Funhouse bringing dreams of summer fuzz. Speaking of dreamy fuzz San Francisco’s Young Prisms have plenty to spare so come get some. Also joining them will be one of the finest live acts in Seattle, the Diminished Men along with the soaring sounds of AIrport.
Celebrate the (hopefully) imminent arrival of spring with an evening Bacchanalian boogie and intense mind-manifesting space rock brought to you by Portable Shrines. Get down and space out.
Psych-metal giants Lesbian will be performing their shroom-inspired epic “Fungal Abyss,” for the first and possible only time ever, along with cosmic sets by Midday Veil and This Blinding Light.
Word on the street is that there will be limited edition t-shirts and silkscreen posters on hand for the occasion. See you there!
For this week’s Magic Sound Theatre we have a special treat: DJ Beardomatic who some may also know as Jeffery Taylor from Wall of Sound records and such popular musical combos as Climax Golden Twins and AFCGT.
Jeffery starts things off right at 9pm so be sure and show up early cause you know he’s got the goods.
Then for the late shift DJ Eye will spin you into a stupor and send you home dazed and confused. Please join us for the finest in electrical sound stimulation. With projections by Portable Shrines.
Portable Shrines Magic Sound Theatre- Phantasmagorical synesthesia and audio visual incantations every 1st & 3rd Wednesday at the Living Room -1355 E. Olive Way on Capitol Hill.
This Monday night 11/8 at the Comet: Masaki Batoh of Japanese avant-rock legends Ghost brings his Falling Spectre tour to Seattle along with the mighty sound sorcerer known asJabonand those travelers of the void Tiny Light. DJ Veins will bring the vinyl.
Batoh and Jabon will continue the tour together down the coast:
11/9/10 Mississippi Studios Portland OR w/ Jabon
11/10/10 The Storm Ship Arcata CA w/ Jabon
11/11/10 The Vortex Room San Francisco CA w/ The Young Elders
11/12/10 Ghost Town Gallery Oakland CA w/ Sic Alps
11/13/10 Pappy and Harriets Pioneertown Palace Pioneertown CA w/ White Magic (solo)
11/14/10 Spaceland Los Angeles CA w/ White Magic (solo) and Young Elders
This Thursday 9/23 Prince Rama return to the Vera Project almost exactly one year after their appearance at last year’s Escalator Fest (we are ahead of the curve as usual), this time with Deakin of Animal Collective. The AC’s Paw Tracks label has also released Prince Rama’s latest album Shadow Temple.
Come down and celebrate the Autumnal Equinox. The show is all ages. Tiny Light will be opening.
This weekend of the autumnal equinox is packed with esoteric wonders. Whatever you do, don’t stay at home! Go check out:
Tonight and tomorrow night (9/17-9/18) at the Josephine, Debacle Fest returns with a smorgasboard of experimental, drone, dark, out sounds including Dull Knife, Renee Hell, John Wiese, Yellow Swans’ Pete Swanson, Brain Fruit, Megabats, Thunder Grey Pilgrim, Du Hexen Hase, and Matt Carlson.
Saturday 9/18, at the Sunset Tavern: Brooklyn psych-rock gods White Hills touch down in Seattle for the first time to perform with two of Seattle’s most exciting up-and-coming bands, Night Beats and This Blinding Light.
Also Saturday 9/18-Sunday 9/19: the Esoteric Book Conference, hosted by esteemed Ouroboros Press, returns to Seattle Center featuring a huge selection of, well, esoteric, occult, hermetic, magickal, alchemical, and otherwise mysterious books, art, and people. Performing Saturday night will be Seattle’s psychick tour-de-force Master Musicians of Bukkake with instrumental and chamber arrangements of material from their recent album Totem II.
Bridging the deep dark gap between the days of the Esoteric Book Conference, Emily Pothast and David Golightly of Midday Veil will be performing the all-night deep cosmic drone piece A Double Rainbow in Curved Air as part of the Face Time artist series hosted by the Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University on Capitol Hill. The show starts at 8 pm and lasts until 8 am, but you’re free to show up or leave any time. Bring a pillow and a blanket.
Wednesday 9/15 at the Living Room on Capitol Hill the first Portable Shrines Magic Sound Theatre psych DJ night with this weeks guest DJs Emily Pothast, David Golightly and Timm “Mood Organ” Mason of Midday Veil. Phantasmagorical synesthesia, and audio visual incantations every other Wednesday until they ask us to stop. Come get down. Free.
And now the latest installment of John Gillanders’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…
Friday September 3, 2010 7pm at Elliott Bay Book Company Ralph Metzner will speak about the good old days of experimentation way back in the 1960′s.
Ralph Metzner, veteran (with Ram Dass and Timothy Leary, among others) of the experimentation with mind-altering substances at Harvard, speaks about his experiences in those early days, as chronicled in his new book, Birth of a Psychedelic Culture: Conversations about the Harvard Experiments, Leary, Millbrook and the Sixties (Synergetic Press). Ram Dass and Gary Bravo are co-authors. Co-founder of the Green Earth Foundation, Ralph Metzner also practices psychotherapy and is professor emeritus at the California Institute of Integral Studies. His many books include Alchemical Divination and MindSpace and TimeStream.
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…
