Portable Shrines

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.

by John Gillanders…

“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.

Read more…

The Slaves are currently on tour with Cloaks and will be playing ESCALATOR FEST Saturday 9/26 at the Vera Project.

Thanks once again go to Adam Svenson for the interviewing. Take it away Adam-

The Slaves exist at a juncture of the past and the future. This Portland two-piece
conjure up a cough syrup collusion between sweet crooning AM radio vocals and hazy
keyboards and slow time signatures. There is a beauty and darkness in their sound
that reflects their love of 50′s pop and modern noise and Goth musical moves, and a
record of theirs would not be out of place in the 4AD catalogue or placed during
the end credits of a harrowing foreign film. Sit back and let your mind wash down
the twilight river pouring forth from the Slaves.

Who are The Slaves and where do you come from?

The Slaves are Birch Cooper and Barbara Kinzle and we’re both from the Northwest.
I (Birch) grew up in Alaska, until I moved to the “greater Portland area” (AKA
Forest Grove) where Barbara and I went to high school together. After that Barbara
went to Portland and I went to Olympia. I’ve lived in Portland now for about 2
years.

You used to be an improv / noise band before morphing into a more structured
format…is there still a element of improvisation when you record and play live?

Improvisation is an important part of our music. We do have structures to our
songs, but they are really reliant on the energy of the moment, which is the main
thing that I like about improvisation.

Was the progression from a free-form approach to song-based pretty natural?

Yeah, ever since “The Slaves” really came into being, we’ve mixed the two, and
that’s what has come most naturally to us. We really started structuring our music
when we had the idea to try and blend “drone” and “noise” with “50′s rock/pop”.

Do the songs come out of improvisations or is the structure there before recording
them?

Well, we don’t really think of recordings as the ultimate way for a song to exist,
we think of them as being equal to a live song. Our songs come out of
improvisation, and then we develop structures from that, but the songs tend to keep
on changing after we record them.

If someone described your sound using the words “Twin Peaks” and “4AD”, would you
walk away, shaking your head with disgust?

We definitely consider David Lynch an influence. Juliee Cruise and Angelo
Badalamenti, too. I think that this answer is going to bleed into the next
question.

How about “cough syrup” and “Suicide (the band)”?

We love Suicide and we love This Mortal Coil and Cocteau Twins. I’m not crazy about
the Suicide comparison, though, if only because I feel like the commonalities
between our music are the result of us deciding to mix certain elements that are
also mixed in Suicide, rather than trying to follow in Suicides footsteps. I do
think that it’s pretty honest to say that we are aware of those bands, though, and
we have been affected by them.
Song to the Siren was kind of a gateway for us. We first heard it in “Lost Highway”
and were blown away, enough so that we decided to cover it, and i think that the
song has had a lasting impact on our band. Also, Alan Vegas collaboration with
Pansonic and Bruce Springsteens cover of “Dream Baby Dream” are important ones.
I think a lot of our sound comes from Barbara’s child hood love of new age music,
in combination with all the other stuff. 50′s rock, surf rock (especially Beach
Boys), free noise, composed noise, goth, industrial music, drone music, black
metal, contemporary pop/hip hop, amazing pop, 90′s rap, Neil Young “Trans”.
After getting really into noise music, I got really into pop music. I was very
interested in extreme music, and I think that The Slaves have always strove for
the extreme qualities of pop music. The helplessness and the power…
Actually, I like the “cough syrup” comparison the best. When we play I often try
to imagine that we are moving incredibly fast and incredibly slow at the same time,
in kind of a frozen moment of speed. I’ve never actually tripped on cough syrup
though….

You have a self-released CD out…any new releases coming out soon?

We are just completing our new release called “Grey Angel”! We’re putting it out
ourselves on tape and CDR. We’re really excited about it.. it’s definitely the
best sounding recordings that I’ve ever done.

Would you consider your music psychedelic?

What a question! I think that all music is psychedelic on a basic level. But I
would say that we try to hone in on the deep dark parts of human experience, and
for me that is a very psychedelic space.

Luminaries of the Frisco psych scene known by earth dwellers as the LUMERIANS just sent us a new unreleased track called Burning Mirrors. Check it out HERE. It will burn your MIND! (in a good way). They’re playing one week from now at ESCALATOR Fest -Friday 9/25 at the Lo-Fi Performance Gallery! Check out the site it is newly updated…

With the Fest coming up fast I just wanted to take the opportunity to give a holler out to all the friends and cool folks who have lent us a hand in a million different ways and come out to the shows, making the happenings happen. It’s always a pleasant soo-prize. Hope to see you all next weekend, it’s going to be AMAZING, an event not to be missed… (also thanks to the unimpeachable Arthur Blog for the plug last week)

Sat. 9/5  9pm  at the Funhouse 206 5th ave.  Davila 666 (from Puerto Rico!), Mannequin Men (from Chicago), Idle Times,  Backward Masks(last show EVER?)

Then Sunday 9/6 7pm at the Georgetown Morgue(all ages) Davila 666, Mannequin Men, Coconut Coolouts, Sandy City

ALSO* portableshrines DJing at the Moe Bar this wed. 9/9/09!!

VERY LIMITED SUPER SPECIAL ADVANCE TICKET OFFER! Get em while you can people- only 50 2-day VIP(Vastly Illuminated Person) passes available, good for both Lo-Fi and Vera nights at a one low low price. These will only be available until sep. 15th. (must be 21+ for the 2-night passes, sorry…)

My friend Peggy turned me onto this British kids tv show circa 1970-72 Ace of Wands. With the main character, Tarot, a magic magician and a pet owl named Ozymandias pretty much guarantees I will be purchasing the dvd soon. Sadly, the first two seasons have been wiped, but the third and final seasons were saved, praise be Thoth.

prepare your third eye for an awakening…

“PSYCHIC ILLS, named “Best Psychedelic Rock Band” by the Village Voice Best Of NY Issue, since ascending into stratospheric global cult popularity with their canonical 2006 Social Registry LP Dins (the finest psych rock album since the 1970s. Hands down!), remain uncompromising in their artistry and continue to blaze new sonic trails every day of their relentless touring and recording schedule. Still one of the supreme mind-melting acts in the world!” -so says New York Night Train

a little CAN to help along your saturday afternoon-also be sure to hit the Diller Hotel Party tonight if you are in Seattle.

The Capitol Hill Watercolor Society will be holding a showing of new works very likely to be pertaining to and inspired by the mysterious and supernatural forces of universe which will be called “Paranormal”.

Opening party Thursday July 9th at 7pm at the Cafe Racer in Seattle (on Roosevelt next to the Trading Musician).

Shannon Freshwater: Congelier House was in Pittsburgh and was America's most haunted houses until it mysteriously blew up. previous owner "experimented" with severed heads.

The Following is an excerpt from the book “Entrails of the Multiverse” by Seattle writer John Gillanders of the band Black Science. There will be more to come…Enjoy and Expand Your Mind…

In his ground breaking and extremely controversial research on supposed Alien Abductees, Harvard professor John E. Mack coined the phrase “ontological shock” to describe the nature of how these experiences can affect a person’s view towards the universe. In a nutshell, most people are brought up to think about their own existence in a particular way and yet certain things can happen that suddenly change that view radically and uncontrollably. He uses the word shock to emphasize how wholly unpleasant these experiences can be to accept. It isn’t always easy to completely dismiss decades upon decades of societal programming in favor of a new, widely unpopular belief structure.

It can be even harder to come to terms with the fact that the world in which you once conveniently existed now thinks that you’re functionally insane. Imagine waking up one day only to realize that nearly everyone on Earth, going about their tedious daily routines, were wrong. All the dominant religions that people put so much faith and energy into were grossly off the mark. Feelings of overwhelming frustration and confusion would inevitably set in, most likely followed by anger and alienation.

While I can’t even come close to claiming that I’ve been abducted by hyper-intelligent trans-dimensional space-faring beings, I can say that I have experienced this ontological shock that Mr. Mack refers to and, oddly enough, done so by my own volition.

I remember the night well. I later began to refer to it as the night my innocence was slaughtered. I was staying in a friend’s dorm room at San Francisco State University. A couple of friends and I were in town for the night lured by the promise of ingesting psychedelic mushrooms for the fist time. Now, up to that point the only illicit substance any of us had ever consumed was marijuana so we were anxious for a new kick–not knowing at all what we were getting ourselves into.

We ate the disgustingly flavored ovoid capsules and elongated stems, masking the flavor with peanut butter and pretzels. They went down okay and we began the mile or so long trek to the nearest beach. On the way down we were kind of smiling off handedly–looking at each other nervously wondering when and if anything significant would happen. We even made somewhat disappointed comments as to how it didn’t seem much different than getting stoned.

Then, as if by magick, the second we hit the beach everything changed. The other world invaded. We all became lost between dimensions. The next few hours were kind of a blur. We ranted and laughed at one another incoherently. When I say incoherently I mean that quite literally. I honestly don’t think that any of the words spoken over the next several hours meant anything at all in a conventional sense, and yet they all seemed perfectly intelligible at the time.

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regardless of who or what creates crop circles, these are stunning…. behold the dragonfly and the jellyfish…

Now for some saturday morning cartoons

The shocking truth about hotdogs…

And then there’s Xavier: Renegade Angel an actual show on actual television(adult swim) brought to you by PFFR.

Visionary cartoons for the Salvia generation.