Ten
Unknown Locals:
Ten
San Diego Locals You Do Not Know, and their Zodiac Signs.
1.
Soundshift. c
Genre: Alternative Techno.
Song: Machine.
Sub-Scene: MintFam Collective.
https://soundcloud.com/soundshift-1/machine
If you have ever heard a machine breaking down, it is
usually a sound of conditioned Angst for the contemporary mind. Yet imagine
hearing those same industrial tones as glistening like rubies or the car-keys
you’d misplaced and just now found. Behind them looms a sort of all most
perversely protective presence: deep electronic chords with oscillating
arpeggios drifting up and down and fading into moments of glitch and resonance.
Well come to the mind of Soundshift, the Alternative
Techno D.J. for the Third Millenium, and the first local to kick off our
publication of Ten Unknown Locals.
Soundshift’s average song is shorter than half an hour,
but longer than twenty minutes. He tries not to be too assuming that people
will listen to it all the way through. Yet the statistics show that, even if
it’s only for a few minutes, people flock to his tracks.
Soundshift delivers us into a field of ambience that
pacifies and relaxes us like a sonic anaesthetic. When he incorporates the
slightest unsettling or “noisy” tone he yet manages to transmute it into a comforting
sonic pacifier, owing to his precise ear for quality and serenity. An avid fan
of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, he is not afraid to experiment. His
experiments just often times tend to put us to sleep rather than waking us up.
But hey. We need that. And if sleep is aimed at the purpose of dreaming, we
might as well all ready be dosing when we hear Soundshift’s pieces, especially
“Machine”, for the entire composition is nothing short of a soothing,
beneficent dreamscape conveyed in sounds.
Precision is a Virgo trait, and Soundshift lives up to
his Sun-sign. How many contemporary artists can you name that can drop a bass
without sounding like they dropped some thing? Not many. Soundshift is the
exception. Every tone, low or high, sounds tuned to the exact frequency it
needs. And do not worry about him growing boring. Just as you feel ready to
fade into the walls the bass and drums herald in the sounds of a broken slot
machine singing the song of its own demise. And then the next thing that you
know a peaceful organ from an other dimension mediates between all the
competing voices and they all come to transform, learning some thing about
themselves and life its self in the process, and laughing together about past
difficulties, forgetting all differences. This is the sound of Soundshift. If
Peace and Diplomacy were a sound, the sonic therapy of this mild-mannered local
composer would be it.
2.
Spiralizer. a
Genre: Alternative Techno.
Song: Brotherhood [of Man] in the Third Millenium.
Sub-Scene: MintFam Collective.
https://soundcloud.com/spiralizer/brotherhood-in-the-third-millennium
Most likely, you will not hear the name of Terence
McKenna in a college philosophy, sociology, ecology, or chemistry class. That
is of course unless one of the students or professors present is a stoner or,
to use Terence’s own euphemism, an “anarchoprimitivistic ethnobotanist”.
Yet the work of the late T. McKenna, whose influence has
spread across continents (often through his own travels, towards both the edges
of the world and of the mind), is not the special province of drug users.
McKenna’s voice as a “trippy sample” has leant its self posthumously to various
musical compositions aimed at the intellectual poet’s chief purpose, the common
purpose of the American Counter-Culture: the expansion of individual and
collective consciousness.
Rupert Sheldrake and Primitive Radio Gods aside, the most
moving interpretation of Terence’s recorded voice is the track “Brotherhood in
the Third Millenium” by local electronic genius Spiralizer. It’s precisely what
one would expect of a D.J. like Spiralizer (and really of any one born under
the Sun-sign of Cancer.). Let me sum up this project for you in the simplest
terms available, before I spook you. Spiralizer is what you get when techno is
set to a meditative frequency. It is the sound of aliens dancing at a club in a
cosmic nebula. And weaving in and out of the most depravingly catchy, hypnotic
beats you have ever forgotten just to come back to with renewed novelty is the
cuttingly sweet voice of this nerdy Scorpio intellectual McKenna prosaically
reciting the words “inspiring, challenging, amazing… for the human Soul… judged
for the future… the brotherhood of man.”
And then, just like a dive under the waters of a Hawaiian
Ocean, a key change leads us to the depths of our own collective psyche, only
to emerge again in the midst of excitement, transcendence, and Armaggedon.
There is no “objective” style in which to describe the
inspired sounds of Spiralizer, only pretentious and academic attempts contrived
of weak grammar and ten-cent words. To convey true art we must be artists
ourselves. If we are not, we can only abide in awe. I’ll try my best for the
former, though I am inclined towards the latter.
Next to colleague and collaborator Soundshift, Spiralizer
is San Diego’s most-beloved and moving Alternative Techno musician. Describing
his compositions as humbly as “Chillout” or “House”, Spiralizer is able to
produce collaborations that go on for half an hour each with the same seamless
sense of ease as he produces singles that feel just as long in only eight
minutes. And not one of his pieces “drags on”. They simply transport the
listener to new levels of awareness, the function of a Church, Monastery, or
Wildlife Reserve. Interlaced with it is an all most diabolical cleverness,
weaving esoteric samples from nonetheless revered sources into a unique “found
poem” of others’ voices constructing a mythological narrative that fades into a
primal bass line sheltered by echoing pianos and ambient chords. Every thing is
tuned to perfection, not a single rise in dynamic feels rushed or delayed, and
by the end of it one does feel like McKenna’s vision of a “Brotherhood of Man”
is not only possible, but painless, and kind of chill.
3.
Sl33py.boi _
Genre: Gangsta Rap.
Song: Not Sober.
Sub-Scene: The Suburban Shamans.
https://soundcloud.com/sl33py-boi/not-sober
The presumption that a young artist cannot be successful
is every bit as naiive as the presupposition that a suburbanite cannot know the
thug life, and local boi Robbie Pesta establishes the futility of both of these
prejudiced notions. Just listen to the song “Not Sober”, a party anthem
break-out that will be a hit just as soon as the Inspired Taurus gets off the
creator’s couch and starts touring.
Robbie’s approach has all ways been simple: Simplicity. A
dope beat, some sick drums, and some dope/sick rhymes render him within moments
a Rap God, and when the curtains fall he is again just a friendly neighbourhood
bro with backstage passes. If I tried to paint him up to be more, it would be
an insult to his aesthetic. But I shall humour my self by insisting that THIS
local M.C. and Producer is likely to uproot the San Diego Hip-Hop scene in
years to come and transport it delicately (with the delicacy of a Bull in a liquor
shop) to the Heavens. And he isn’t even drinking-age yet! Mad love for my
homie. Representing the 858 and the 619. Sl33p in Peace.
4.
Cali3ns. `
Genre: Hip-hop.
Song: Love is… [Love].
https://soundcloud.com/cali3ns/love-is
Let’s be frank: when you make State or even National News
you are hardly off the radar. But in the words of Alan W. Watts, what is
closest to you is hardest to see. So this duo, San Diego’s closest
approximation to the wild stylings of OutKast (and both groups have a Gemini
presence in their midst, F.Y.I.), might pass undetected in public. Dre Trav
operates low-key at a record store next door or so to Capricorn records, and
who even knows what his partner does? But know this: If Downtown San Diego has
a day-time sound, Cali3ns is it.
The word that surfaces to mind is “Sonorous”, and then
“Solar”. In a genre polluted with negativity (and the controversy that comes
with it), Cali3ns reminds insiders and outsiders alike that Hip-Hop is a genre
of Hope. The poetry of these two rhyming aficionados break us back into the
sunlight, the spotlight, and the limelight, cutting through the frozen Ocean in
our Souls that Cancer Franz Kafka spoke of as the function of a novel.
“Love is… [Love]” is an anthem for the newborn child to
recall its roots, even as it must spread its wings and leave the nest. There is
no part of the Cali3ns aesthetic that is not aligned in the same direction:
Freedom. Hip-hop has become so commercialized that the masses have forgotten
that its hedonistic excesses are a form of destruction rather than the
Promethean flame of Creation that rap was meant to be. Critics of hip-hop as
degenerate would do well to remember a time when M.C’s were not denigrating but
educating. And Cali3ns is K-12 and college in 3 minutes and six seconds.
Nothing says “Urban Poetry” like the lines
“And I can smell it from a mile away.
If it wasn’t written off the tongue
It was painted on your face today.”
And what would Dre Trav be without the classic funk
carrying him along like a surfer’s dream wave?
If the Satanism of Lil Wayne, the vainglory of Kanye
West, or the materialism of Jay-Z are cardinal sins and prisons for the Soul,
Cali3ns are your trusted twins that show up outside your Prison Cell dangling a
pair of keys, smiling in camaraderie with you.
5.
Matt Rivers. `
Genre: Busker.
Song: Time is Short, Road is Long.
Sub-Scene: Kettle Coffee. (only because you might not get
to hear this song any where else.)
TECHNICALLY, Matt Rivers does not belong to us. He
belongs to every one. The young Gemini Hitchhiker is a busker by trade and has
made more money playing live with just his sweetheart smoker’s voice, painted
guitar, and the occasional harmonica and kazoo than any of us would make
working for the minimum wage. (in any economy.)
To name-drop politics in reference to Rivers is not
inappropriate either. A mild-mannered radical by trade and birth, Matthew is
not afraid to point out the ills of the World whilst offering medicine with his
stylized rhymes and pleasant “howdy partner” tone.
“Time is Short, Road is Long” is a tune for an other kind
of heartache. Every one with a love life can feel a break-up song, even if only
in fearful theory. Matt’s been there (because where HASN’T he been?), so you
can bet with him that you’ll hear not only sweetness or melodrama but HONESTY.
Matt’s lyrical genius grows with every new rendition of
his tunes, adding stanzas, weaving a string of hooks into the all ready tight
fabric of the rhyme scheme, and not missing a single note on any one of the
instruments that he plays SIMULTANEOUSLY.
One local conceived of Matt as having come out of the
womb with a guitar in his hand. And this pleasantly naiive metaphor is exactly
the sort of nostalgic innocence that Matt Rivers venerates. His style sounds
like some thing out World War One, drawing on a breadth of influence from
ragtime, jazz, blues, and folk. If you ever wondered what it was like to know
Tom Waits before Tom’s voice became an icon, Matt is your man. If you ever
wanted to get drunk and talk disappointed love, Matt MIGHT be your man. (Though
do not hassle him.) At any rate, if you should find upon asking for him that he
is in Texas or Wisconsin or wherever, the wonder of the internet has made it
possible for you to all ways have his song here to comfort you through thick
and thin.
P.S. He does a mean cover of Easy E as well, believe it
or not. I’ve heard it my self, mere feet from him in person, one sunny Sunday
afternoon at a bar that overlooks Grand Avenue in Escondido. True story bro.
*Turns out that by some miracle I found it. By Jove!
6.
Elizabeth Moyer. a
Genre: Indie Folk.
Song: Florida.
Sub-Scene: Kettle Coffee.
https://soundcloud.com/elizabeth-moyer/florida
Cancer is the Zodiac sign of Home, and “Florida” is the
home of our own singing selkie, Elizabeth Moyer. A central player in the Kettle
Coffee scene, the leading lady of the grunge revival band Lizard, and an
inspired and avid poetry enthusiast and environmentalist, Liz is not only the
epitome of the nurturing Mother archetype but the person you want to go to when
you feel a nostalgia for the womb. Few voices are more sonorous, few
compositions more comforting, and few styles so familiar yet novel and
mysterious as the sweet and sultry sounds of Elizabeth’s unique, enterprising
indie folk.
“Florida” is poetry not SET to music, but ANIMATED into
music (not in the cartoon sense, but in the “bringing-objects-to-life” sense
that we so love about Cancers). If you grew up listening to Modest Mouse, you
recognise the sentimental vibe immediately. If you love music, you recognise
the talent from miles away. The song is at once the purr of an affectionate
feline and the growl of a catty territorial wildcat: “If you think this town
could use a new vibration, get out of here with your expectations…” is at once
the voice of an understanding and stern, tough-love Mother: Mother Nature. If
you do not like it, you can leave. But wherever you leave to, if you follow my
path, you shall find home.
7.
Mono Polly. c
Genre: Experimental Pop.
Song: Cancer. (My Chemical Romance.)
https://soundcloud.com/mono-polly/cancer
Cover songs seldom convey more than the original; at
best, they break even. Yet when Poway local Alex Riccio’s mother passed away
from lymphoma, this old favourite became the anthem of his family’s collective
life. Now, three years later, shy extravert Riccio, alias Mono Polly, (not to
be confused with Mono/Poly of Los Angeles) has found the courage to share his
pain with the world.
I still remember visiting the Riccios’ home before it
happened. Amidst the plentitude of family photographs was one of a young Alex
back-stage in broad daylight with his childhood musical hero, Gerard Way of My
Chemical Romance.
To think: this was the band that kids felt awkward about
when they received tickets for their show as a birthday present! Beyond the
mascara of M.C.R’s “emo/neo-goth” look is of course a band every bit as
talented as Queen, just in a way that usually people do not consider
comparisons to them sacrilegious.
We would do well to hold back our indignation when we
hear the M.C.R. classic “Cancer” brought back to life by Mono Polly. This is
not only a high point in M.C.R’s career. It is all so the peaking of Riccio’s
unique and challenging style, a sound that he has self-professed as sounding
like a “dream where every thing is textured and sweet”. The autotune cannot
hide the pain, yet the dreamy aethereal Virgo chords act as a pillow to catch
you from a fall of one hundred sad stories.
8.
Maxximus K. c
Genre: Electronica.
Song: Death Valley ft. XEnigmatistX.
https://soundcloud.com/zac-sarachman/death-valley-maxximus-k-feat
How many Virgos know martial arts and dress up like
Steam-punk Anime characters? About as many as produce hours if not days of
awe-inspiring industrial techno music. Apparently.
One of the great regrets of my life was that I did not
pirate Edward’s entire discography before he decided only to showcase his
experimental Noise Metal. Artists, right? It reminds one of Kafka asking on his
death-bed that his works all be burnt before they could be published. Thank God
that didn’t happen, and thank the same God that Edward’s music can still be
found under the alias Maxximus K.
If you had visited his page earlier, you would have felt
as though you’d walked into a kid’s video game, but on steroids. As Zac the
Enigmatist once said to me, “every one and his mother has an experimental
electronic side-project”. All though this was in fact an exaggeration, (I’m
pretty sure my own mother is no D.J, regretably) it does hit home this brute
truth: that any one can learn to use FL, Ableton, ProTools or even Musagi, but
not every one can create a sound with them so novel that it sounds like the
last glimpse of God you get before you come down from a psychedelic and He’s
never seen again.
Edward is too modest to admit these things, as are all of
the relics of his project. “Death Valley”, his collaboration with Enigmatist, is
not a cutting-edge song by Edward’s standards, though of course it is far out
by any other standard. The industrial ballad sounds like Nine Inch Nails set in
a virtual desert (as was probably the working concept for it, in all honesty),
a classic rock song for the millennial generation. It addresses vocalist Zac’s
classic mythological themes of drama, delusion, loss of Soul, and death, spiced
up by the fact that it was written ABOUT his collaborator on that very song.
To this day the song mesmerizes me. Whilst Edward is
still in the game (to my best and most hopeful guess) it looms as a warning
against the tortured artist fading into obscurity like the white hot flame of
burning Magnesium. Thankfully, my most beloved local genius left us this piece
as residue. It is a true gem, and the closest swan song for more hopeful times
that we can have should Maxximus K never again attain the same grace as he had
in those days of innocent obscurity.
9.
Lee the Fourth. d
Genre: Alternative Rap.
Song: Cold Metal.
Libras are the most diplomatic and balanced of the signs.
Just think of Friedrich Nietzsche. And Eminem. Yeah. Balanced. Diplomatic.
There is a paradox to this personality type, and it
abides in the fact that what balances balance is imbalance. If you ever saw Lee
the Fourth performing live at Atomic, you would notice this when he breaks out
the Skeletor mask and performs his own day-in-the-life autobiography. His
home-made beat features himself doing diabolical back-up vocals, and the whole
song is a manic-depressive schizophrenic battle between Heaven and Hell. And
the lyrics are totally smooth and all grammatically correct. As you would
expect.
The best show-case for Lee’s style is his signature song,
“Cold Metal”. Given that the logo on his business cards is a young man in
mid-air with a kitana, over the name of the artist in oriental lettering, this
is clearly his anthem. “Cold Metal” is what Nietzsche was talking about:
triumph of the Strong-Willed, inviting us all to live a life without artificial
impositions.
The texture of the song is compact, sounding like it
could be on a Nike commercial, but is too cool for that kind of promotional
spot-light right now. The rhymes are part-poetry and part-self-help aphorisms.
Here is none of the brutish militant poetry of the San Diego Hip-hop scene. Lee
IV delivers classy, intellectual verses that never veer towards arrogance but
demonstrate conviction, never veering towards histrionic tendencies even whilst
bewailing the fate they love.
We can’t wait for the album to drop. This guy should be
on the map soon.
10.
Spontation. i
Genre: Electronica.
Song: Alone (Dinosaur Jr.)
https://soundcloud.com/spontationxo/alone-dinosaur-junior-cover
It is a little-known fact that all of our Western music
is tuned to a diabolical frequency. Various rumours surround the cause of this,
including one that Goebbels himself set us off intentionally during the Nazi
Regime.
The frequency of all pop music and even classical music
is 440 Hertz. The frequency of the Universe is 432 Hertz. It is the frequency
that Mozart and Verdi composed at. Monks chant at this frequency often.
Those eight waves change every thing.
As tacky as it may be, I would dishonor this list if I included
any one I did not know personally. And I have exhausted the alternatives. The
last of our first ten is yours truly.
Spontation is the experimental electronic project of
Dmytri Andreev, keyboardist of the now-defunct bands Fourth N Cedar and the
Suburban Shamans. He has been composing for over ten years, and he has been
recording that long as well.
His two most recent albums focus on shifts in
consciousness that come about when we shift the frequency of what we’re used to
to the frequency that our bodies most want. Pop music compels us all ways to
settle for less than what the Cosmos had intended. Art music brings us home.
Spontation’s album “The Next Level Down” offers us the
432 Hertz alternative. Meanwhile, “a [pure and] clever field of barley on the
Hill” takes us through the seven chakras, up and down, in telling a story of
forlorn love. Yet these two instrumental albums are not as accessible as his cover
of Dinosaur Jr’s “Alone”. More reserved than his other work, here the only
thing that challenges us is the voice. Torment is best expressed with a bit of
vengeance, it seems, for his vocals hurt us either by being so bad or so good.
The song is set in Spontation to 432 Hertz. It is 7
minutes and 7 seconds long, and its Beats per Minute is 108. If one wants to
commiserate, space out, or defy, one listens to the music listed 1-9 on this
list. If one wants to heal, with mathematical accuracy and emotive passion,
Spontation is the Piscean healer, last of the Zodiac and last on our list for
today.
If I may say so my self.
Dm.A.A.
No comments:
Post a Comment