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AmbiEntrance: Thermal and Seofon, when/where did you two meet and what was your first impression of the other? Your first live collaboration was said to have lasted six hours; can
you describe that situation for us?
Seofon: Joshua and I first met at Eleusinia, the ATOI concert on New Year's Eve of
1995. Richard essentially organized ATOI's involvement in that monstrous
event, and he had contacted those who seemed like the most interesting and
receptive music-makers in the local community to come participate in the
spontaneous collaborative ritual jam that he was envisioning. I may have
already been somewhat familiar with Freezer at that time, since they
appeared at and subsequently hosted the chill room at the 8th House of
Ambient (the premier ambient club of the day) ... though perhaps that was
not until later.
Anyway, despite the fact that none of us had met
personally, we had plenty of time to form a sympathetic bond what with the
technical hilarities and thumb-twiddling that characterized the many hours
leading up to the start of the event itself, so that by the time it began
playing together seemed quite comfortably natural.
My most lasting
impression of Joshua from that evening was that his guitar-styling was the
most totally psychedelic sound I'd ever heard ... I found it truly
compelling. Also, though I didn't specifically note it at the time, I must
have picked up on the fact that he is also refreshingly easy to work with;
he has a way of approaching discourse with an equanimity that I find most
agreeable and conducive to creativity.
Thermal: By way of the Silent
label, which had just released ATOI's first volume of Mystery School, Richard Sun had contacted Freezer, my live duo with BPM/0, and asked us to
join ATOI at an enormous rave at the Cow Palace on New Year's Eve of
1994-1995. At the time Freezer was an improvisory live chill-room organism
- Peter had a very interesting assortment of vinyls for the decks and his
DJ mixer fed into my instrument mixer and effects along with my drummachine
and guitar - and had not yet added synthesizers and sequencers to our
battery of boxes, and meanwhile along came Michael a Kurzweilist and his
friend Mark a drummer to join Richard and Seofon on stage, a triple duo
whose three pairs had never before played with each other. But it gets
better...
The Cow Palace, after all, was named for its various cattle
expositions, evolving later - and obviously quite naturally - into a corral
for Rush and Scorpions concerts (where, yes, I was among the herd as a
child), yet here on a cold rainy afternoon we were shivering a massive into
shape. And then: the sound system; had it been a car, a towtruck would
have followed at close range, and the mechanic would have advised against
any long desert journeys. As a mixer and speakers, however, it was our
only defence against the far more substantial vehement noise wall offered
up across the divider by the Hare Krishna family band (whose tireless epic
renditions of That Song to the tunes of - take your pick - folkrock anthems
of the 1960's would soon very nearly overwhelm our more delicate washes of
sound), but first it had to serve as the child object of a custody dispute
between two differently but equally incompetent soundmen, whose curses of
each other's work themselves would have made an excellent album and whose
chief war tactic was to completely re-wire each other's configurations.
Monitoring? But not at all. Hours of distressed goosebumps as two
neanderthals hamfisted the subtleties of grounding and electricity.
And
then several hours in which our ensemble varied its size to adapt to the
rigors of the situation. But after about two hours of the trench warfare
of woofer and tweeter against orange-hued holy band jubilation in the next
cubicle, something happened: the Peter Joshua Seofon Richard became a
band, the sequences became synchronized, and the fizzlenoise of the dying
dying dead sound system became music. The confusion ended, and after a
quite densely energetic ritual by the IAO-Core folk, something quite
powerful took over us and used our instruments to play its music.
Seofon
and I both took turns leaving the stage and feeling the energy in front of
the speaker cabinets, looking at each other in amazement - we too had even
as players been added to the several hundred sprawled before us - and when
a woman ascended from the audience to the stage and began to writhe quite
transcendently at its center it was clear something other than our little
group set was at work.
After six hours, we were quite drained and cold,
and a pile of DAT's sat waiting to be wand-wave-changed into the
"Eleusinia" album. I have a vague recollection that Seofon and I agreed -
between yawns and exhaustedly vacant stares near dawn of that year's first
day - that a collaboration would be an excellent idea. Having heard the
intoxicating sounds oozing and pulsing from his equipment during the set, I
was quite intrigued with the possibilities. This was our first meeting.
Seofon: This, likewise, was 1995's Eleusinia concert, at an event called Blast Off
To Planet New Year promoted by Cool World Productions. Looking back, it
was a noteworthy point in the history of the SF scene. Rave promotion was
definitely becoming a serious business--on the scale of today's so-called
"massives"--but it was still a DIY underground thing, without corporate
sponsorships or inflated politics. Indeed, that we could arrange to direct
the activities of a whole room/sound system for the whole six hours is
testament to that. Nonetheless, the fact that they sold out the Cow Palace
for this event definitely indicated that the "rave" thing had moved to the
next level ... that place has a capacity of 25000 people, and they had to
turn another 7000 away at the door.
Understand that this performance involved being continuously awake for a
disturbing amount of time, plus it was some years ago, so my recollections
of the evening are limited to impressions ... :
... Scuffing around one of the side wings of the Cow Palace (where we were
to play), an enormous space something between an industrial warehouse and a
barn. At one end of the hall a modest stage haphazardly takes shape, like
an amoeba with an identity crisis, out of various segments of riser that
seem to have personal grievances with one another and occasionally escape
and have to be chased down by burly well-trained personnel. Unrolling
large sections of carpet in an arc around the proto-stage, soon to be
garnished with a literal van-load of cushions that I had rescued from the
aftermath of a prior event and been keeping rather awkwardly in my studio.
Collapsing amongst the cushions while one techie runs off to find a thingy
that will keep the sound system from making the horrible noise that seems
to be the extent of its vocabulary, and another techie trenchantly undoes
all of the work that the first one had done for the past half-hour.
... Grimly realizing that only way we were going to be audible over the
enthusiastic, high-decibel devotion of the Hare Krishna band (from whom we
were separated by an ineffectual black curtain) is if we provided
headphones to every member of our observing crowd. Repeated sprinting from
my gear to a speaker in order to press my ear up against it so as to gauge
if we were, in fact, making any noise at all, and, if so, what it might be
like.
... Returning from a short break at an epiphanal moment in which the sound
system violated all prescribed limits in order to broadcast a glorious
Richard-Joshua guitar duet (now known as "Telesterion S.F."), subsequently
permitting our mutual sounds to mingle and gel in delightfully rewarding
configurations.
... IAO Core springing out of the woodwork at the 4-hour mark in a sudden
and mezmerizing organized chaos of costumes, movement, drumming, and
fire-spitting, summoning the now-copious energies for their hour-long
Ritual of the Feast of Fire. Later, a couple of attendees, in the
tentative but sincere manner enjoyed by those under the care of good
hallucinogens, initiate an episode of altar-building and group interaction
with IAO Core, crystallizing the energetic rapport among everyone in the
room.
Sun: It was a unique "moment" in the SF rave scene ... and quite stressful ...
and large and good considering all the factors.
Seofon: We didn't get paid a dime ... heh heh ...
AmbiEntrance: Can you briefly encapsulate the history of Ambient Temple of Imagination and define your involvement in it?
Sun: It started back in Santa Cruz in 1991 with Mr. Floppy's. Mr. Floppy's were
the first rave events in the Bay Area. There were probably about 100 people
in the collective. From there I did an event called The Interzone Project
with Robert Anton Wilson, Nick Herbert, World Entertainment War, Cyberlab
Seven, and about 20 drummers ... it was 12 hour daytime gig with 5 rooms,
outdoor drum circles, a feast of many poets' lectures by various speakers
with deep psychedelic information being dispensed ... a nice little
gathering.
This was before the rave explosion entered America, but it was
important in the various contacts that were made, and led to our band of
merry pranksters involvement in Toon Town's "Psychedelic Apocalypse", the
first San Francisco event later that year ... with over 8000 people it was
without a doubt the most totally insane scene that had ever happened
science the sixties "be ins" ... the "acid house" music, the "Hyperdelic"
visuals, smart drinks, etc.
In '92 I was involved in Immersion, which was
a joint effort with Mondo 2000 and Naut Humon's Sound Traffic Control ...
interesting that Stephen Kent played at this one, then relatively unknown
and now one of the foremost didgeridoo players on earth, and then appeared
on Planetary House Nation. There were then many parties that I DJ'ed at
leading up to my event Imagination, which for the first time had a separate
non-dance room for people to lay down in. This is where the Temple was
crystallized, and also where the connection with Seofon began as well as
IAO Core, a Bay Area magickal collective, and many other connections within
the foundation of the "underground", most notably the Gathering, whose
founder Malachy O'Brien and myself worked many events together doing chill
rooms and defining what the "world house movement" was about.
The pagan
connection also needs to be mentioned ... Beltane (Mayday) 1993, a
2000-person maypole ritual "fireleap" ceremony with Starhawk's "Reclaiming"
collective, as well as association with the Whole Life Expo, etc. This
event was a ritual celebration, a bridging of the Bay Area pagan community,
the new-age community, and the rave scene, an important event that still
reverberates to this day as a hallmark in the scenes evolution, and an
important part of ATOI's history and future intent. A track on Vol. 5 is
an excerpt of that event mixed into the present.
Seofon: We mostly rant about the importance of the horizontal experience, but it's
worth pointing out that the vertical, sweating, screaming, super-energized
trance-dance environment is an important part of the experience, too.
Imagination had all the top local English DJs (who formed Wicked) in the
dance room, so you had the full spectrum of energetic quality, which really
made it interesting. Anyway, as Richard said, my involvement was seeded at
Imagination. Richard had been spearheading the emergence of chill-rooms in
the San Francisco scene for several years, and thus interacting with rave
promoters and production companies like the one I was working for at the
time, and Imagination was the fruit of that process: an all-night event at
a prime location with two large rooms, one of which was totally dedicated
to the horizontal experience with wall-to-wall mattresses, pillows, organic
visuals, and live ambient composition and mixage by a great variety of
local talent. It was an eye-opening event, especially in that chill-room
was really a finely-crafted, isolated temple environment, rather than just
a measly alcove in which to enjoy muddy acoustics. I was actually
performing with my grotesque post-goth electro rave band in the dance room,
so for me the event was a chance to see the other side: the experimental,
ambient, ritual elements that were mostly ignored in the main stream of
dance culture.
Sun: I think it's a humourous thing to recall that the security wouldn't let you in to perform due to your "age" ... I had to convince them you were indeed
on the bill.
Seofon: I was only 18, but had already been experiencing the scene for two years
thanks to sympathetic doormen who were willing to look the other way.
Anyway, my involvement didn't become crystallized until Richard and I
followed up our interaction at Imagination with a collaborative session in
my studio during February of 94, which led to more and more sessions, and
eventually garnered Silent Records' interest enough to start the process of
actually releasing CDs. Thus, my initial involvement with ATOI was as a
producer, whereas Richard was the director. I then took an unintentional
but definite hiatus after Eleusinia; and when I got reinvolved for
Planetary House Nation, Richard and I had a lot of serious talks about the
intent and manifestation of ATOI, which led to my involvement in a more
active, central role in development and coordination. At this point
Richard and I share the duty of "driving the bus", but the
director/producer distinction is still a handy way to think about it.
Thermal: My role in ATOI is as one of several tentacles connected to the core of
Seofon and Richard Sun. ATOI is both a group in the conventional sense of
a band and a network of musicians either performing together or recording
in conjunction; in the band, I have played at the two large events
documented on "Eleusinia" and "Planetary House Nation," both of which are
tasted on "Y2Kaos, and as a participant in the more diffuse network I am
about to have a go at an ATOI sonic recyling project also involving Vidna
Obmana and Steve Roach.
AmbiEntrance: Seofon mentioned hallucinogens; how has the drug scene interrelated
and changed with the music/rave culture during your involvement?
Thermal: It seems fair to say that - for better or for worse - directions in
chemistry have long found their mirror in the trends of popular music:
cocktails (from the speakeasy era of prohibition) and early jazz, heroin
and later jazz, hallucinogens and psychedelia, coke and 1970's LA studio
bands, and after a few more rounds of such things we hit MDMA and raver
culture. The word "psychedelic" means "mind-opening," and certainly the
use of hallucinogens is associated with such an opening; it is no mistake
that the advent of chill rooms and the incursion of experimental and global
musics into the pulse of the dancefloor - the nursery of what began as
"ambient techno" - came at a moment at which hallucinogens were in fashion,
available, and even in some cases legal.
As The Scene (if one can even
speak of a single "scene" in the now fragmented and microghettoized world
of raver culture) has moved away from such chemicals toward amphetamines,
it is similarly quite predictable that the florid musical spectrum of the
chill room has moved toward the macho and almost Rock stances of tech step
and hardcore. But this seemingly unmistakable tethering of music to
chemical trends is rather sad. There is a tendency at present to lament
the mutation of the happily tripping chill realm into the brutally tweaking
dancefloor, but really much of the so-called "ambient" music released at
the peak of the former's popularity was merely tacky musical wallpaper for
those too medicated to notice the difference.
I return to the word
"psychedelic": any good piece of music Should Be mind-opening, should
create a world in which one can dwell for the length of a track or of an
album, should leave one disoriented at its end. Chemicals are just a spice
on the music, but no amount of designer flavoring can mask the mediocrity
of tasteless main ingredients. On the one hand, the psychedelic period of
chill room culture had the effect of sucking many important experimental
musicians into dance music and of informing the floor - that upon which one
may dance or recline - with the depth and creativity of many rich musical
traditions and deviations. This pull drew me away from pop music into the
electronics of the chill room, when I had never been interested in dance
music previously and in fact had grown up hating disco and listening
instead to heavy metal. On the other hand, the same period established
raver culture explicitly as a drug culture, placing music in the role of
soundtrack to drug experience and undermining its primacy as a driver of
consciousness.
Hippy culture eventually combusted in its own bong, and I
fear a chemically centered rave culture may end up doing the same in its
crack pipe, as the rest of the world giggles at yet another potentially
profound music consigned to squinting and coughing self-parody. That said,
the offspring of this culture is already forming the diaspora of future
musical warpages, and I continue to hope that at least a few of the minds
sprung open through chemistry will stay open through deeper explorations of
music as well as through the more profound disciplines of consciousness.
Meanwhile ambient electronics have had what I think will turn out to have
been the good fortune of going out of fashion in the worlds of rave and
club culture, and beyond the influence of trite slogans and chemical
caprice I find the music has already become more challenging and diverse.
This is not just a party, and I do believe that a great record can change
one's life.
Sun: Well, the issue of serious scientific research into the various compounds
and their effect on human consciousness (and animal) is becoming more and
more relevant. The whole rave culture in Europe is really moving forward
in this research. The events in Europe are so completely immersed in
psychoactivity, especially the psilocybin and ayahuasca culture, being
legally sold everywhere in Holland, Japan as a normal smart shop item, and
legal LSD psychotherapy in Switzerland is happening. It (psychoactive-rave
culture) is now in Hungary, Poland, Russia, etc. These places never really
got psychoactivated in the 60's, musically or chemically. It is
interesting how America's "counterculture" has diversified into so many
fields, yet the European experience is really unique in that it is more
relating to the musik without the English language domination and mind
control.
Seofon: I tend not to separate the drugs from the gestalt experience, and rather to
speak in terms of 'psychedelia' in general. Psychedelia is a mode of
experience, which is prototypically accessed through drugs, though music,
visuals, and dance are all avenues as well. I think that a point of the
psychedelic experience is to get one unstuck from conventional, programmed,
constricted modes of thought and behavior; and, to the extent that it does
that, it's a great thing. This is also the point of the spiritual
discipline; but, aside from sitting people down to meditate until they
start accessing higher consciousness, the hallucinogenic high was important
for the evolution of rave culture into something truly revolutionary. The
problem comes in when one then gets stuck in the trip, especially with
narcotic drugs which are programs in themselves, and then the whole thing
loses its essential liberated quality and becomes stagnant. But people
have a hard time being truly liberated. A craving arises for something to
hang onto and define our identities with, so we turn the rave "alternative"
into another institutionalized "scene", and turn from mushrooms to meth or
something. So as far as the drug and music trips go, they've really been
parallel or intertwining tracks. Now that salvia divinorum is here, who
knows? What kind of a scene would go with salvia? The mind boggles.
Incidentally, there's an interview on the website in which Richard talks
quite a bit about the role of drugs in the dance community, which
interested readers may want to check out ...
AmbiEntrance: What's the difference between A-TOI and Mystery School?
Seofon: Good question. To this point the difference has been mainly conceptual, so
the evidence has been pretty subtle. The best way to describe it is that
ATOI and MS are flip-sides of a single coin: the MS is more scientifically
oriented "school", while the ATOI is more religion/philosophy-oriented
"church". In practical terms, the ATOI forms the overarching concept
structure and contextualization, while the MS deals with pragmatic matters
of research, sound experiments, music production, etc. The music that's
been released more specifically reflects the work of Mystery
School--especially Volumes 1 and 2--but we've kept it all the titles under
the ATOI name in order to keep continuity. We have been seeding the
Mystery School name, though, through the numbering of the volumes and
through the website, and it may branch off into a distinct project in the
near future.
AmbiEntrance: What's Richard Sun up to currently?
Sun: Saving the rainforest, literally.
Seofon: Richard is pretty seriously involved with a company called Rainforest
Bio-Energetics, started by a guy who has spent 21 years in Amazonia
learning the mysteries of rainforest plants and campaigning to save their
habitats from appropriation by the industrialized West. The company
develops botanical nutritional supplements, based on traditional
combinations used by shamans, and designed to address the imbalances that
we increasingly face as our soils become more and more depleted and our
diets become less and less nutritious. In order to physically thrive
living in a country like North America, with totally debased food sources,
one must eat raw, organic food. And to the extent that you don't, you need
to supplement in order to compensate for the nutrients that have been
leeched out of your food by cooking or processing. There are lots of links
on our website to raw food resources, which we strongly suggest that people
look into. Anyway, the idea with RBE is to utilize and maintain resources
that have not had their life-energy squelched by modern practices. Their
number is 1 800 835 0850 ... it's a network marketing deal, so anyone can
get for a catalog and join up.
Otherwise, Richard is currently hanging out near Amsterdam, doing the
European trip ...
Sun: The European trip: ambient in Europe is a quite popular positive movement
... it is really fun ... they of course are very much into beats in
reference to the term "ambient", but the deeper "darkwave" forces are also
very much a part of the culture.
AmbiEntrance: What process was used to select which songs appeared on Y2KAOS?
Seofon: We had actually been thinking about putting together something like Y2KAOS
for a long time--first as a complete reissue package of Volumes 1 through 4
(complete with unreleased bonus mixes by various participants in the
collective), then as a single-disc compilation, then in its subsequently
realized double-disc form ... So the song "candidates" has already become
clear through a steady process of discussion, as well as the evaluation of
trial mixes put together by Mark Wayne or myself.
When it came down to the
final mix, Richard and I simply meditated on what would be the most useful,
and bounced ideas back and forth until they were mutually agreed upon. We
also had a number of good previously unreleased tracks that we were glad
for the opportunity to release, so that simplified things somewhat.
AmbiEntrance: Who came up with the Y2KAOS title? Is there an underlying belief
system associated with that or was it just catchy?
Sun: I did, and yes there is a definite reason for it. As for many people who
research magik, for me the philosopher Austin O. Spare is the originator of
the term "kaos magick", sigils, and kaos art (automatic drawing). Thus
when kaos is spelled with a k (not chaos), it refers then to the Sparian
"definition" meaning wild untamed prana energy, qi, etc. It should be
clarified this kaos is also undefinable and evolving(?), open to personal
experience, interpretation. There is no "authority" on this, just
explorers. It is good for interested persons to research the Spare
archives for more background on this subject. Why"2"kaos? Why not 3,4,5
... whose calendar are we locked into? This brings in the whole Mayan
calendrics (Chinese, Hindu, Tibetan, etc., as well), so if people get the
message in some of our tracks is the encoding of the hints, referencing to
altered states of "time", going back to the 13 moon lunar year time clocks,
pre-Roman Catholic time=money=12/60 game. But suffice it to say primordial
force=kaos.
Seofon: The Sparian influence is also present in our recording, by the way. The
first album (Mystery School), especially, was a series of experiments in
musical automatic writing ... all of those tracks were recorded
'live-in-the-studio' with a bare minimum of planning. In the live
scenario, of course, spontaneity is a built-in factor. Also, as Richard
was saying, there's no authority on this stuff, and in talking about the
things we talk about we're not setting ourselves up as authorities, but
rather sharing observations. Our titles aren't so much meant to make some
kind of definitive statement, but more to raise a set of issues for
consideration.
For example, take Y2KAOS ... Well, whether any of us like
it not, we've all been raised with the seeds of millennium fever. It's
integrated into the Christian mythology, the popular mythology, global
prophecies, and now Y2K is adding more fuel to the fire. We may all be
sick of hearing about Y2K, and start to pooh-pooh the whole millennium trip
at this point, but that doesn't make it go away. This is like what we were
bringing up with Planetary House Nation: There was a lot of rhetoric in
the early rave scene about a real transnational ideology. These days it's
like such a thing is too painfully unhip to even mention, as if a planetary
house nation is something we achieved back in the early 90s and now we've
moved on to better and more grown-up things.
Anyway, with regard to the
millennium, I have no idea if something outlandish will happen when 2000
hits, but I will stand behind this: that the very willingness that we have
for there to be radical change at that time will practically guarantee that
something radical will occur. So then the question is, What is that change
going to be? Well, the change is going to be based on our intent and
desire as a species.
In essence, the question is, What kind of a world do
we want to create? This is what everyone is going to be asking themselves
at some level in the year 2000, and it's a serious question because it
implies a huge amount of responsibility. We've shamelessly dominated the
planet, and then been conditioned to let the self-proclaimed authorities
run the show. Whose hands do we think the planet is in? Will anything
save us from ourselves? Are we going to get serious about creating a
paradise, or will we just throw in the towel as a species and create
Y2-chaos? Indeed, for most of us, the awareness of responsibility to the
planet immediately brings up fear. We are so surrounded and conditioned by
doomsday prophecies that the image of that dark-future nightmare is much
clearer than that of the utopia. This is one reason why, in ATOI, we focus
so much on religion and prophecy, because religions are used to program and
control people; but we have power over this enough to change the doomsday
prophecies, to demonstrate that we have choice in these things. When and
if it registers that the power to create our future is a gift full of
promise, and not a burden full of responsibility, then a world of peace and
joy becomes a practical reality, and we'll really have accomplished
something on this planet. This is just one train of thought.... Anyway,
as an album, Y2KAOS documents a large span of material we recorded which
addresses issues like these, recorded at this "significant" point in time.
AmbiEntrance: Are there any specific events or recordings planned in ATOI's future?
Sun: Possibly ... we'll see what's worth doing. It isn't really about the
muzak. I don't want to just be another CD swimming in a sea of CDs with
nothing to say. If there are signs and directives to continue the
trancemission, it will obviously have to evolve to something more
interesting than the current format. To be more blunt, I think the whole
entire music industry needs a serious restructuring. I could babble for
days about ideas of how I think it could really work to create astonishing
works of transformative art, but they will never listen ... They are in a
toilet hell of the entertainment industry; they all hate their "jobs" ...
But I could say that, if some of them would want to innovate something
interesting, I am full of ideas, which is really what this thing is about:
a forum for discussing the possibilities of this vast, vast subject.
Our
plans are to disinfect, sanitize, and separate the real, true,
scientifically demonstrable effects of sound on consciousness from the
idiocy and blatant, criminal, masturbatory use of these talented humanoids
and technologies as akin to so mething like recycled sewage waste that the
musik industry uses to feed upon and excrete. It's now feeding on its own
excrement, producing a quality that indeed has social ramifications.
Consider A TOI M.S. as a possible colon therapy laxative cellular
cleansing, etc., within the "industry".
Seofon: Don't misunderstand--we're all for doing events and recordings--but but we
have to be clear about what we're doing and what we're doing it for, and
that's not so easy these days. Richard pretty much covered the
music-industry recording angle. As far as events go, we had really
convinced ourselves that people were tired of paying $20 to watch a band
play and then go home. The ambient-dance scene symbiosis was really an
interesting evolution, in that you paid $20 and had a diverse, all-night,
immersive experience. But now you have electronic artists touring and
gigging like rock stars, and you have "raves" in nightclubs with cigarette
smoke and alcohol. It's the same old schtick with more gadgetry, and the
people go, and the moneymakers make their money, and there you are.
I'm
not pointing the finger at anyone in particular--musicians still work from
the old-school blueprint, promoters consider ambient rooms to be a
disposable indulgence, venue-owners inflate space rental costs to the point
of absurdity, local officials use the scene as a scapegoat for the social
scare du jour--it just boils down to the fact that it's still the old way
or the highway. So there's no sense in limiting things to the short term.
ATOI has been around in some form for over 10 years already, apparently not
destined to be a flash-in-the-pan sort of deal--so we just persist with
making observations and brainstorming, and when it's time for something
truly new we'll be there celebrating!
Anyway, there are projects in the works, of course, primarily the
collaborative exchange springboarding from Planetary House Nation that
Joshua mentioned. It's not clear what the final form of the project will
be, but it has been great fun expanding the creative dialog, especially
with such esteemed and gracious colleagues as Steve and Vidna. Those guys
truly walk the walk.
AmbiEntrance: You're quite active (both individually and with ATOI) on mp3.com. Is
this new technology opening new doors and/or breaking down old ones?
Sun: Both. It's important for our intention to be realized: the complete
bypassing of the "old" industry ways the muzak was distributed. MP3 is
possibly the best thing that ever happened to electronic "muzak".
Thermal: It's the best thing in an absolute sense, but individual opinions are of
course quite up in the air. What MP3 has done is elucidate the fact that
the music industry as we know it is obsolete: it's rooted in a rock-&-roll
paradigm that is simply no longer adequate nor sustainable. So we're now
in an "evolve or die" phase. I don't know where the MP3 phenomenon is
going to lead, but if there's going to be growth then it's going to be
positive growth, so I'm into rolling with it and exploring the doors that
do open.
AmbiEntrance: Who's primarily in charge of the A-TOI website? (It's one of the
"wordier" music sites I've seen...)
Seofon: The site is relatively wordy because, in some sense, for ATOI the music is just a side-effect or by-product. In other words, the CDs are just the outer circle. They're what we're doing to communicate within ourselves and
to humanity the intention of the Temple, which is to study the mysteries of
life and bring them to people's conscious mind--out of the subconscious
dreamtime into the mass conscious waking state. Indeed, most of the
recordings emerge from a discussion of religious formulas or philosophical
texts, which then directs and is encoded into our creative process.
Music
is an ideal medium, though, because it communicates at the level of
intuition and feeling. People tend to be really intellectually overloaded,
and tend not to register their core selves intellectually, so there's no
point in trying to break the ice with lots of verbiage. But if the music
really registers with someone, then a dialog can begin with the underlying
information and ideas, and the WWW happens to be really ideal for that.
Thus, the website is not so much structured as an online press kit, but as
a continuation of what we're doing but in a new medium. This may seem a
rather baroque approach to musicianship, but really the alternatives have
all been done. We're not cut out to be rock-&-roll celebrities ... and
sure, obscure ultra-modern hipsterism is fun and cool, but there are really
so many meaningful things to express! I originally was drawn to electronic
music because it didn't lock itself into saying anything in particular,
i.e. anything banal, but I don't think the idea was for it to say nothing
at all. We at least want to inspire people to question, dialog, and
explore consciousness; and if they want to listen to the music, that's
great too.
Sun: Seofon is thee "webmaster". He is responsible; R. Sun inputs various
ideas, linx, and direction, but it filters through Seofon. Our website is
wanting to expand: we invite other "artists" to link up, get involved, and
join. ATOI is not like a normal "band" in any sense ... this is an open
field. R. Sun is kind of like a moderator/facilitator/conductor: his
intent is to create a forum where the possibilities of sirius sonic
research can be continued. People also need to really get it clear that
the ultimate purpose of this "project" is to demonstrate scientifically the
effects of sound on consiousness, and how the inter-connectedness
(symbolized by the ATOI "tree of life" icon) of all things create the
unified fields. Thus the spheres are not separate, yet each is distinct,
with its own unique qualities and flavors, textures and atmospheres, etc.,
but all are connected in some way ... likewise with the "people" within the
temple.
Diversity is really the "spice of life" ... ambient thus is a term
that represents the all the sound you can eat buffet, everything from the
most horrifying noise to the most lovely tones of "music" is ambient ... it
really is a good generic term that actually does encompass the full
spectrum, the black and white, but there is a clear place totally completly
out of the music-entertainment-industry: pure scientific sound research ...
This is the ultimate purpose of ATOI's mystery school.
AmbiEntrance: Thermal, speaking of websites... your personal site is unusual as a "graphics-free" zone... are you still using Lynx?
Thermal: Well, I really was using Lynx for a while! The "best viewed with Lynx"
idea on the web site is really a joke, as I hope is obvious, on the "best
viewed with" browser wars of pointlessly incompatible code and absurd brand
loyalty. But there is a political seriousness to the jab. The brilliance
of the early Popular Internet - that which emerged from the penumbral
realms of defense procurement and scholarly research - was in the fact that
it was accessible to anyone with a modem and a computer; I should add: ANY
modem and ANY computer. With the most basic terminal software and the most
primitive modem, anyone could find all of the riches on the internet.
Which is not to espouse the moth-eaten Net Utopian Creed, which holds that
a computer and a modem for every human on the earth will save our world and
our species - only to suggest that the early model of the internet was
based - ignoring passwords and subscriptions - on equal access by all.
Here was another example of digital democracy: just as the difference
between a $100 CD-player and a $1000 unit was from the start far less
apparent than that between two phonographs of the same prices, creating a
sort of levelling of the digital listening field (and inspiring the
aristocratic tweakophiles of high-end analog audio to become quite snobbish
and dismissive at the thought that the dirty masses might be able to listen
to music at the level formerly reserved for the rich and obsessive), in the
pregraphical version of the internet, one's Gear did not matter, but one's
skill in navigating did. But once the big software companies began to
fight over the internet in the hope of forcing it into the old
platform-specific model, offering increasingly bloated and mutually
incompatible "enhancements" to the universal protocols, the aristocrats
chased out the democrats, bringing us to the present model, in which
without the latest browser software - which itself requires the latest
operating system (and of course the newest hardware) and the fastest modem
- one finds oneself unable to access much of the content on the internet.
For a while I connected to the internet by way of non-graphical terminal
software at my job, and even now at home I have a 14,400 modem and browser
software at least three years out of date (my ancient Powerbook has neither
the hard drive nor the memory to support the enormous "upgrades"), and I
have often encountered web sites unreadable on my machines. If the
unavailable content is streaming video or animation, then I have no
objection - most of the technologies for these have come into being only
recently - but why should the reading of news or other textual data require
the Latest Software? Because the web designers behind text-hostile sites
have forgotten that some college students in poorer countries have - perish
the thought - hardware and software created more than two years ago?
Because the publishers do not care? Because no-one even remembers the
older democratic model? Because the software companies have made these
designers and publishers their shills in a market battle whose losers are
most certainly the users?
And then there is the matter of traffic: why
slow down the internet with unnecessary graphics and gimmicks? These are
cute once, but after a while one stops admiring their appearance and
notices instead how much slower they make one's browsing. And who benefits
from the bandwidth bulge of overdecorated web publishing? The telecom
conglomerates, the modem makers, the ISPs, but certainly not the users. So
again the masses lose to the central powers, in a model which should - and
could - be decentralized. And then we get to the punch line: my site is
about music. From reading the various mailing lists on line, I know that
many of the participants are at schools with less that current equipment or
are using archaic technology. Obsessive music geeks - and who else,
please, is listening to marginal e-music? - will be spending their money on
albums, not fancy computers, and web sites devoted to music need to keep
this in mind: everyone interested in Boxman, regardless of Gear, should be
able to read the pages on the site. Oh there is one other explanation: I
am really lazy about keeping the site up to date; I would much rather work
on new music than write raw HTML on my tiny monochrome screen! When I
finally get a more current computer, I will at least change the audio
format from the primitive (but tiny) AU to the far more pleasing MP3, and
with a color screen I might even have to put up some pictures of the
releases. But for the moment, yes, graphics free zone.
AmbiEntrance: How has your "Open DAT" concept been working out?
Thermal: "Open DAT" is the theme for the Electronic Salon. With a dearth of venues
even in San Francisco for e-music, I decided several years ago to adopt the
old Salon concept: artists present new work in a private house. I had
just acquired my first serious recording equipment, and Freezer wanted to
record its first long-form work in a live setting, so the first salon was
held in my flat for the purpose of the recording of what became "Pressure
Zone" (an excerpt of which was released on the 4th volume of the
Excursions in Ambience compilation series on Astralwerks).
The next two
salons - whence I derived "Span" and "Turing Bombe" - were also in my flat
but included other live electronic performers, and the chaos of gear
assembly and wiring as well as timing at the third convinced me that a
better approach was needed. Live electronics, after all, is a relatively
sketchy concept, and for all except the most caffeinated gear geeks
watching a person pressing buttons on a set of boxes is about as
interesting as watching paint dry. The point of the Salon was the
presentation of new music, after all, not the mass migration and display of
electronic equipment, and for many of the participants the taxi ride across
town and the dismantling of their studios was not worthwhile simply to
perform 15 minutes of music to a dozen puzzled spectators. So I hit upon
"Open DAT" as the solution: we would adapt the "Open Mic" concept from
poetry readings and acoustic performance to the realm of e-music, inviting
anyone in attendance to present a new piece or even a work-in-progress on
DAT.
Now that many of us use MD and many others have CD-burners, I renamed
the concept "Open Transport" - yes, a Mac reference - to allow the
multiplication of formats, and at the fifth Salon several months ago the
only Gear in sight were walkmen (for cassette, MD, CD-R, and DAT) and a DJ
mixer. The new approach has made an enormous improvement: rather than a
Show by a few, the Salon has become a realm in which even the most nervous
and greenhorned of e-musicians can present their first recordings and in
which all of the audience may participate on equal footing, and at the most
recent event some of the best music was by people hesitantly offering their
first pieces. The Salon is also an attempt to extend the Archipelago - to
coax isolated musicians out of hiding in order to meet each other, hear
each other's work, and perhaps to plan collaborations. As will all of
these metaphors, the concept has really evolved by itself and continues to
mutate in unpredicted ways.
AmbiEntrance: Tell us about the Archipelago.
Thermal: The Archipelago began as a simple metaphor. I have found that many
e-musicians operate as islands - solitary, isolated, and disconnected from
any larger "scene" or community - many not only not knowing each other but
not even knowing of the existence of others. Yet if one looks from the air
above, as it were, we are a large chain of islands forming a single pattern
of multihued landscapes - an archipelago which can be seen as one. The
metaphor has been clear from the beginning of my involvement in the
electronic music world - whatever that is - but the ways of activating it
as a means of reinterpretive perception have remained somewhat obscure. I
started with two manifestations of the concept: the collaboration, in
which the cultures of two or more islands are comingled within the frame of
a hybridizing creative rite, and the electronic salon, to which each island
sends its representative to present its own music as well as to hear the
musics of others and - I hope - to open future collaborative contact with
those others.
With the release of Monument, however, I contemplated
another way in which the metaphor might be intertwined with the insular
prose: the Archipelago might itself be explicitly brought into being. The
album is subtitled Archipelago #2 as it represents a trade route not only
between Seofon and me but also between the ATOI Mystery School group-label
and my own Boxman label. Meanwhile, I had just provided a track for the
Knots compilation on the new thousand label - the offshoot of the WMO
label also releasing Monument - and not only had Michael of The Foundry
(who did the cover layout for my band M-1 Alternative's first LP back in
1988) contributed another track to the same album but our two tracks ended
up sequed into each other, as if in a randomly realized collaborative
accident; here then: another trade route in the chain, and again a flight
path between both musicians and labels. Here it was, the archipelago
figuration coming into being, and as Monument and Knots - together
representing something of an island triangle - were being released at about
the same time as Y2Kaos and two issues by The Foundry, I suggested to
Seofon and Michael that we make explicit our linkages by celebrating all
five releases at a single event, at which we three would present our
released and unreleased music within the frame of a collaborative network
of musicians and labels.
By the time of the release party, we had appeared
on the radio as a collective and had decided to give birth to the
Archipelago as a formal entity. Which is to say, I suppose, how it came
into being but not, perhaps, what it IS: to use a Billy Braggism, a
"figment of speech." Remember: an archipelago is not a center or a
control, it is simply a set of tiny areas contextualized as a singularity
at another order of magnitude. The Archipelago is not a thing really, only
a means of understanding and organizing the small phenomena within a
repeated pattern. Or maybe: with the metaphor floating in our
consciousness, the Archipelago came into being by itself, and we tiny
islands are only now beginning to understand its meaning and its mechanics.
Seofon: I'll let Joshua's explanation suffice ... it's really his brainchild. It's
worth pointing out, though, that the Archipelago and the ATOI are quite
distinct approaches to the collective paradigm. ATOI is ideologically
centralized, and Richard and I currently act as co-administrators (which is
not to say that it's a closed system; on the contrary; anyone is welcome to
take as central a role as they wish to). The Archipelago, in contrast, is
defined only by its connective aspects, and so is entirely decentralized.
The emphasis is on exchange, i.e. "trade", and not so much on the "island
cultures" themselves. The two offer different and respectively interesting
possibilities for artistic interaction and growth.
AmbiEntrance: How did the CD release party go?
Thermal: Generally the response was quite
positive, although people were rather puzzled by our responses to their
questions concerning the source of the music, for example: well, the
drones are from a CD by that person over there, while the pulses are from
this track maybe from my next album. But most of all it was interesting to
listen to the mixtures of noises and consider that this was the sound of a
newly evolving archipelago, the pre-echo of future collaborations.
AmbiEntrance: How did the tracks on A Monument of Chance come about?
Thermal: Seofon and I had discussed a collaboration from our first meeting, but it
was only after meeting at a Freezer performance (the debut of Tank Farm
as it happened) that we decided it was inevitable. At last, we reserved a
weekend to begin our experiments, and in late 1996 we assembled in The
Institute for the Unraveling of Pancakes (my studio, which itself lives in
the corner of my bedroom) to wire up our collections of equipment, brew
many pots of green tea, and compose music. The ATOI live event at the Cow
Palace had been stochastic and improvisory - an uncontrolled fission
reaction - but we now attempted to draw on the same energies and
methodologies within the more controlled contexts of carefully assembled
and recorded pieces.
The album is structured chronologically: on Saturday
we created Ouster Swarm, and on Sunday Application of Buddhistic
Classics followed it onto the DAT. For the first piece, we simply turned
on our machines and began to play, but on the second we embarked with a
plan, building the piece around live percussive loops made from household
objects. Soon after the weekend recording session, ATOI - in the formation
of Seofon Richard Joshua - performed the source material for Planetary
House Nation at the enormous Gathering event, and quite by chance a
bungling of the schedule put both ATOI and Stephen Kent on stage in the
same room at the same time. After several moments of confusion and
befuddlement, we invited Stephen to join our little band, and his
didgeridoo added remarkable depth and intensity to the proceedings, all of
which were recorded to digital 8-track tape through a quite beautiful sound
system (in dramatic contrast with that in use at the Eleusinia
performance).
At the start of the new year, Seofon and I reassembled
ourselves and interwired our boxes at my studio, and attempted to derive a
more finished piece from the elements we used at the Gathering, the result
being A Toy Ascending the Tidal Current Mixture (although the title came
far later) - a companion piece for the live tracks at the close of
Y2Kaos. At the first interest in the collaboration on the part of WMO
(whose sublabel Thousand coreleased the CD with my Boxman label), I had put
the three then untitled tracks on a DAT and followed them with a Thermal
studio recording of Tank Farm, a piece in the same style we had named
"space funk" (as in "space" or "cosmic" music combined with funk) and a
quite appropriate addition given the role of the earlier performance of the
piece in generating the chance encounters at the root of the collaborative
album. But as the release approached, Seofon and I had become interested
in the use of an unreleased excerpt from the Eleusinia performance -
quite blissful and bubbling and static - within the context of our album,
and I meanwhile had been immersing myself in the sitar ragas of Vilayat
Khan, which - rather than drifting into oblivion along their course as do
many ambient albums - begin in near silence and build slowly to a powerful
climax at their closing. These several streams led to the remaking of the
more distant Tank Farm into the faster and denser Another Tank Farm by
Trolley, into whose beginning and ending were collaged the Eleusinia
material, and whose dynamics were designed for the peak and ending of the
album, as if its nearly hour length could be experienced as a single rising
raga.
Seofon: To my mind, Monument was an outgrowth of the movement that produced
Planetary House Nation, and I consequently tend to think of the two as
companion albums. Given Joshua's and my mutual feelings of artistic
potential stemming from the fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants experiment that
was Eleusinia, I was looking at our modest preparations for the Planetary
House Nation concert (which basically consisted of agreeing to constrain
our sequences to the key of G) as an ideal springboard for a more focused
collaboration.
AmbiEntrance: What's the story behind your Boxman label? How's it coming along with
Lost Circuits of Empty Time?
Thermal: Boxman began as the label of my "rock" band M-1 Alternative, which in 1988
decided that its demo tapes were failing to reel in the fabled Record
Contract and that an LP would be required before more serious attention
directed itself our way. At the time, Bruce (the other member of our duo,
our instruments being voice, processed guitar, bass, drum machines, and
sequenced synthesizers and samplers) and I were already passionate devotes
of the Japanese writer Abe Kobo, whose novel "Boxman" (or "Hako Otoko" in
Japanese) had inspired both of us to further explore the literature of
Abe's land.
Really, our label was nothing of the sort in 1988, and we
never expected the catalog numbers to exceed the initial BXLP1, so we found
it quite easy to apply the name of this favorite novel for both of us to
the back of our LP sleeve. To this was linked the name of our publishing
company, Curare Music: curare is a nerve poison quite similar to the toxin
found in fugu (puffer fish - a delicacy whose improper preparation can have
rather unpleasant consequences), and with this fish we associated the Dream
Fish described in Abe's novel. Our tactic worked; our little LP made it,
quite amazingly, all over the world, and among its audience was Woody
Dumas, who decided to release our next two albums on his C'est La Mort
label. But in 1997, I concluded that the music of Thermal - as well as of
my Freezer duo - was not likely to fit into the increasingly narrow and
rigid categories of the new Electronic Music Market, realizing also that I
really Liked the idea of my own label - of having full control over my
music, its cover art, its packaging (I have a rather strong dislike of
jewel cases and other breakable plastic packages), and its release - even
with the added costs and pains of running such a thing. And nine years
later, I still liked the idea of a Boxman label, especially as it already
had a previous release in its catalog.
So ten years after BXLP1 came
BXCD2, the Time out of Mind triptych ( overviewed this month) with Thermal, Freezer, and Charles
Uzzell-Edwards of the Fax label, and Boxman became a persisting reality.
As for upcoming issues, Lost Circuits of Empty Time has been the title of
the first Thermal album for years - well before I had any idea what would
be found on such a recording. Over the last year or so, I have found that
Thermal pieces fall into darker and lighter realms, and after considering
an early plan to mix both on the first album I decided to split the the
moods across two releases. Lost Circuits will be the darker of the two,
and at present the tracks are: Fylgja (the Icelandic word for a "fetch"
or vision of one's own ghost), Time Zone Arcade, Enigma Rotor, and the
live recording of Turing Bombe, these last two based on the cryptographic
technologies of 1940's. I may or may not include one or more other tracks,
and Turing Bombe will be edited to about half its present sprawling
length before the set finds its way toward mastering.
The lighter album -
more melodic and rhythmic but by no means, as my high school geometry
teacher was too fond of saying, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed - has lately
taken on the title Persistence Farming, and its tracks may or may not
include Sweep, Span, Sump, Flora, The Sky all into Windows (based
upon the Finnish epic "Kalevala"), Clus Azure, and Floramor. And I
keep changing my mind as to which of the two will be released first,
although at the moment it is Lost Circuits.
Also there is the Freezer
album, which has been finished for a while and needs to find its way into
the world, a CD or two to round out the M-1 Alternative history and my
Dazzle Painting offshoot from it, and a compilation of works commissioned
by other musicians who are fans of Abe, each piece serving as a sonic
interpretation of one of his novels or stories or plays. Although I see
Boxman as an artist-run nanolabel, I hope to release some works of other
musicians after my long-planned initial releases have been issued, and I am
quite fond of the idea of the split CD.
AmbiEntrance: Seofon, what can you tell us about Immanence?
Seofon: Immanance is the sequel to Causal Collapse, which is a Seofon solo album
that I released in 1993 before becoming involved with ATOI. I completed
Immanence in 1996, but never found anyone that was into releasing it
(though many labels thought it was good material), so the extent of its
release to date is MP3.com or a direct mail-order CD-R.
It's definitely an
evolution from Causal Collapse ... it's considerably more involved,
detailed, esoteric, intentional, and interesting. What the albums do share
is a grounding in the Attanasian universe. A. A. Attanasio is my favorite
author, and he kindly agreed to allow me to use his universe as conceptual
framework for my recordings. These concepts come through much more
potently on Immanence ... it's a multi-dimensional narrative about the
interpretation and reintegration of the alien factor. The alien factor is
my primary field of study and area of creative expression (also relative to
ATOI), involving the modern mythology of UFO phenomena, as well as Tecknos
Ahriman, the modern god of technology and machine intelligence.
AmbiEntrance: Speaking of Causal Collapse, I've been listening to that this month
as well (see this month's overviews). What are your recollections about that disc?
Seofon: Well, that was all the very first "techno" music I ever recorded, and that
was quite a while ago. It seems relatively unevolved--which I guess is a
good thing, otherwise it would be implied that I haven't evolved since
then--but that record did capture some interesting moments and elements of
the scene at that time. My recollections are that I was in a process of
experimentation, developing the artistic channel and vocabulary that I have
employed in subsequent work, so those pieces are all genuine but rather
rough around the edges. I consider Causal Collapse to be my "dark album",
ostensibly relative to Immanence. The title refers to a degradation in the
logical behavior of reality, i.e. "when things start to happen for no
reason." At that time, I was quite entrenched in the notion of the
dissolution of consensual reality, which is really just a flipside of the
doomsday trip. In investigating transdimensional phenomena and the Seofon
identity, I mainly focused on how they contrasted with the human reality.
Thus, Causal Collapse was looking at the human evolution and potential
quantum-leap through a lens of conflict (albeit well-intentioned).
Immanence starts in the same place, actually, but then draws it all into a
unified continuum and story. Indeed, we've all being dealing with the same
fundamental mythological story for thousands of years, in various forms,
but tend to recognize it only in hindsight.
AmbiEntrance: How long have you been "Seofon" and what does that mean exactly?
Seofon: I've been Seofon from the very beginning, and again--not to be a deliberate
obfuscator--but the word doesn't mean anything in particular. It's open
ended; I come up with new significances for it all the time. The only
thing that it ostensibly means is "seven", in old English. Seven is an
interesting number, showing up frequently in mythology, so it serves as a
nice springboard into my area of interest, and ultimately stuck as a
identity. Seofon represents a non-human, transdimensional self. This
notion is a historical, mythological fact. We always assume that in the
present, and especially in these scientifically enlightened times, we're
free of mythology and its influences. But I can easily imagine that those
who seriously discussed gods, elves, and devas in times past felt the same
way.
Anyway, the phenomenon faces us today in the form of so-called
"aliens." There's nothing new about aliens at all. It's just the name
that's new, and it's interesting to look at what the word means and why we
use it. Who are aliens?; What makes them so?; What do they mean to us and
how do we feel about them? I encourage people to take a serious look at
what's going on in this area ... it's an incredible, absurd, labyrinthine
scenario, not at all like it's portrayed in popular media. I believe that
the non-human continuum parallels our own and has something important to
show us, and this is what I'm ultimately getting at through Seofon.
AmbiEntrance: What, when and why was the origination of your identity as"Thermal"?
Thermal: The prosaic truth of the matter is that one day while I was walking through
downtown San Francisco on my way to work I spotted a truck painted with the
logo of "San Francisco Thermal" and archived the word for possible future
use as the name of a group or a project. At the time my solo musical
identity was limited to Dazzle Painting - reserved for music flowing within
or at least in the same forest as the streams of rock and pop music - and
several years would elapse before Peter and I did our first Freezer event
and announced ourselves respectively as BPM/0 and Thermal. Thermal has
become my name for electronic work, whereas future songs will likely
imprint themselves on the Dazzle Painting identity.
AmbiEntrance: How about your personal plans for the future?
Thermal: My personal plans I cannot really discuss, but I can sketch vaguely several
musical plans. Beyond the upcoming Boxman releases and recyclings already
mentioned, I have been discussing the logistics of a collaboration with
Michael at The Foundry, and I have also been contemplating the assembly of
an album of what I call deep space or zero Kelvin ambience likely split
between four musicians. My background is in pop music, and whereas there I
craved the textural and structural freedoms of experimental music I find
that in the electronic realm I long for a Good Song; in some way I would
like to combine both streams (as well as a few others), but what form such
a combination will take I have little idea.
AmbiEntrance: Can you tell us more about the project involving Vidna
Obmana and Steve Roach?
Thermal: Seofon probably can offer more here, as he is the central ringleader and sound wrangler in the recycling project. I can say, however, that sonic
elements from ATOI have been sent out to both Vidna Obmana and Steve Roach,
who have returned quite beautiful treatments of our, as it were,
post-consumer compounds, and that it is these treatments to which I will
next be turning for further rumination. A cow has four stomachs after all,
yet does not make records. The long-term grazing process itself will shape
the resulting album.
AmbiEntrance: Anything else you'd like to add while you're here?
Thermal: Maybe I will suggest simply that these responses have been composed under
the influence of oolong tea and synchronized loosely with the following
soundtrack: The Who "Quadrophenia," Khan "Blue Pool," Electric Sound of
Joy, and Ausgang "Electric-Arc."
Seofon: My injunction would be, Don't let yourself be used. Treat yourself to media
"fasts"; Analyze the assumptions behind institutions in your life; Explore
alternatives to a consumer lifestyle; Meditate to find your own truth and
integrity. There's really a lot of great stuff out there that talking
heads don't talk about because there isn't a context for it. And as far as
music, again, I encourage folks to branch out, break the isolation, and
establish novel trade-routes and discourses.
Sun: Sure: Eat raw foods; Learn about the raw diet on our website; Increase your "sense-itivity". Send me some e-mail. Chow ..
AmbiEntrance: Thanks for pitching in and best of luck.
Seofon: Thank you, David!
Thermal: Thank You!
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