2.14.2012
2.06.2012
RUFUZ, the GONGUFI SUFI
Every now and then an artist comes along that leaves an indelible print upon my consciousness. Sometimes its sheer beauty, other times its the intensity of its substance, and then there's the sheer candidness of the artist who is truly him/herself while channeling something that is beyond the ego. Idiosyncratic and genuine, and yet universal and ahead of one's time.
I met Rufuz in Berkeley, at the Starry Plough. A true cross-cultural mashup, he was singing along with a group of musicians playing a barrage of stringed instruments. I gave him a cigarette while standing outside in the crisp winter night. He offered me a poem in trade for the smoke. I expected something drunken and oversentimental, like an x-rated Hallmark card. Instead he recited a poem from Rumi with such an explosiveness and conviction, I threw up a little bit in my mouth, quickly swallowing it, avoiding what Islam would have stoned me to death for, puking on a Sufi poet....
I asked him if he wouldn't mind stopping by my studio, if I could perhaps record him. I had to promise cigarettes, more whisky and a couple 40's. Here's the first installment:
9.13.2011
A DECADE AFTER 9-11: and still the criminals walk free
SCNDRCLCK doesn't intend to be that dismissive of 9-11. But I do wonder what shitstorm has to arise before people get pissed off... Hence, I submit for the dumbing down of AmeriKKKa: the Zogby poll. Let me preface this assraking with this theory: Polls create the very thing they are polling for [See: Schroedinger's Cat]. Polls also reaffirm the ego in its identity structure. [Somebody wants to know my opinion! I'm important! I matter!]. Polls = Propaganda....
IBOPE Zogby 9-11 Anniversary Poll: Adults Split on Whether U.S. Now Safer; Intelligence Gets Credit For Stopping Attacks
58% Say 9-11 Attacks Have Been Fully Investigated
Gets credit?! Let me sort this out.... Intelligence gets credit for stopping attacks [on homeland]... 58% say 9-11 Attacks have been fully investigated.... Pardon me, but when did the lexicon for discussing international affairs regress to junior high school? Intelligence "gets credit"? Fucking Awesome! That means they can totally wank one like Waco and not have to stay after school for detention... They must have been doing their homework because Intelligence before 9-11 was beyond incompetent:
1998: Indonesia Gives US Warning of 9/11 Attack?
Remember that post-attack, all of the administration got up on the podium and declared that there was no way anyone could have seen this coming. They claimed that no one could have imagined that hijacked airlines could be used as missiles, which was later found out to be another lie. The morning of September 11, numerous war games were being run, some of them involving hijacked airlines. Jane Garvey, then head of the FAA, testified that at one point it appeared that there were 22 separate hijackings.
More from the Zogby poll:
While 58% agree that the government and its commissions have fully investigated the 9-11 attacks, 33% disagree. Also, given a list of possible motivations for the 9-11 attacks, opposition to western culture and beliefs is the most popular response with 44%.
If one third of this poll disagrees with the government and its commissions, how many more percentile points before, ahem, someone's ass gets hung out to dry? As aforementioned, I don't lend much credence to polls, it's like asking the child molester to babysit. The mass media is corrupted from the gate. Earlier, another poll's results stated that over half of New Yorkers believed that the government was complicit in the attacks. Over half and they couldn't demand that the State reopen the case? I know, I'm acting shocked, perhaps petulant....
Here's some straight dope about the Commission. The original Chairman was Henry Kissinger! The man who brought us dirty war after dirty war. The families of the victims, outraged, demanded he resign due to conflicts of interest. The executive director, Philip Zelikow, worked intimately on the Bush-Cheney transition team and co-authored a book Condoleeza Rice. The Commission was rigged from the inception, one of the Commissioners, Senator Max Leland, resigned stating that he wouldn't participate in stonewalling, and said that the Commission has been compromised. Bush, Jr., promptly called him a coward for resigning. Leland, a war veteran, lost both his legs and one arm in combat.
The accounts of investigations being blocked are too numerous to recount here but I will indulge one more... If you can't catch the criminal red-handed, follow the money... The then-chief of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence, General Mahmud Ahmad, was in Washington the morning of September 11, meeting with all the top brass, whom most initially denied. He was having breakfast with then-Senator Bob Grahan and Representative Porter Goss, the then-respective Chairmen of the Intelligence Committees when the airliners were punching holes in the Twin Towers. Ahmad's position at the ISI, by treaty with the U.S., has to be approved by the C.I.A., if that's any indication of how far he's all up in the Military Industrial Complex's—[long wolf-whistle]...
Ahmad, in the summer of 2001, had transferred $100,000 to the alleged lead hijacker, Mohammad Atta. This has been confirmed by the FBI. He quietly resigned after September 11 and stepped down from his puppet post. He was not arraigned for financing 20% [according to the Commission's estimate of the 9-11 budget] of the attacks.
Jeezus, I better find some art to balance all this bummer....
If one third of this poll disagrees with the government and its commissions, how many more percentile points before, ahem, someone's ass gets hung out to dry? As aforementioned, I don't lend much credence to polls, it's like asking the child molester to babysit. The mass media is corrupted from the gate. Earlier, another poll's results stated that over half of New Yorkers believed that the government was complicit in the attacks. Over half and they couldn't demand that the State reopen the case? I know, I'm acting shocked, perhaps petulant....
Here's some straight dope about the Commission. The original Chairman was Henry Kissinger! The man who brought us dirty war after dirty war. The families of the victims, outraged, demanded he resign due to conflicts of interest. The executive director, Philip Zelikow, worked intimately on the Bush-Cheney transition team and co-authored a book Condoleeza Rice. The Commission was rigged from the inception, one of the Commissioners, Senator Max Leland, resigned stating that he wouldn't participate in stonewalling, and said that the Commission has been compromised. Bush, Jr., promptly called him a coward for resigning. Leland, a war veteran, lost both his legs and one arm in combat.
The accounts of investigations being blocked are too numerous to recount here but I will indulge one more... If you can't catch the criminal red-handed, follow the money... The then-chief of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence, General Mahmud Ahmad, was in Washington the morning of September 11, meeting with all the top brass, whom most initially denied. He was having breakfast with then-Senator Bob Grahan and Representative Porter Goss, the then-respective Chairmen of the Intelligence Committees when the airliners were punching holes in the Twin Towers. Ahmad's position at the ISI, by treaty with the U.S., has to be approved by the C.I.A., if that's any indication of how far he's all up in the Military Industrial Complex's—[long wolf-whistle]...
Ahmad, in the summer of 2001, had transferred $100,000 to the alleged lead hijacker, Mohammad Atta. This has been confirmed by the FBI. He quietly resigned after September 11 and stepped down from his puppet post. He was not arraigned for financing 20% [according to the Commission's estimate of the 9-11 budget] of the attacks.Jeezus, I better find some art to balance all this bummer....
4.20.2011
VINYLIST THUGS
"Wednesday morning: very strong Sumatran coffee, half an aspirin, followed by ayurvedic toothpaste, tea tree oil dental tape.... Wednesday is hump day, the middle of the week, so I entertain myself by pestering other blogs, forums, reviews, etc., with my acerbic wit and satire. I'm especially fond of the "larger" forums where everyone has an opinion and the demographics tend to be populated by two main archetypes: one, the erudite, overly-intellectual geek exercising his M.A. or M.F.A. by massive, footnoted contributions, discerning between this snare's delay and that hat's reverse reverb. The geek is usually lamenting the past, when the scene was this and that, some utopian music paradise where the music was so much more happening than the jaded state of affairs. This is balanced by the neanderthal, who writes in clipped, incoherent dangling participles or internet shorthand, and is always reaching for the next canned insult to hurl at the geek or another neanderthal. The neanderthal usually lives at home with his mother, so he has all day to surf the Internet, download porn, masturbate, spew vitriolic, lather, rinse, repeat...ad infinitum.
Now that Dubstep is officially dead, I take great pleasure in visiting dubstepforum.com and kicking over the remains. Here's what I posted almost a month ago when the Burial/FourTet/Thom Yorke collaboration was released, in response to the raging disappointment of not being able to purchase the record:
by SCNDRCLCK » Sun Mar 20, 2011 11:21 pm
"Why bother releasing it on vinyl at all? Im all for the magic and ideals of vinyl, but in this instance I think someone needs their head caved in."
"@ whoever it was who said something about not whining, go fuck yourself
"
--from dubstepforum.com
Thought I'd pop in and look at my first forum topic as a recently joined member, and my...oh my... what violent thoughts course through a dubstepper vinylist's brain when they don't get what they want. Well, here on the West Coast, us post-modern hippies, we share our records because it's the "ecological" way to do things, besides all the polychloride vinyl is killing all the babies... Sometimes at events, you can see the dj's [who still spin vinyl] behind the console amiably exchanging records before their set. I'm afraid to even offer up the question "Haven't you heard of AbletonLive or Traktor? Then you wouldn't have to depend upon your ability to phone up the rekkid store. I know, I know, believe me I've heard all the vinyl purist dialectics, and I'll agree with you, it does sound better. I've worked pro audio for years and know the warm fuzzies your favorite LP can give you when dropped. I don't know, I guess I just got lost in the ecstasy of technology and the digital world. What fun it is to open up a program like Ableton Live, Logic, etc., and feel evolution coursing through your receptors. Well I won't let a little head-caving and fucking oneself deter me from the many benefits of this site. I must say I feel a little ashamed to say that I downloaded these tracks for free from the Internet today and danced around my living room like a little schoolgirl. But Burial does that to me everytime.... Everytime...
Cheers,
SCNDRCLCK
Now that Dubstep is officially dead, I take great pleasure in visiting dubstepforum.com and kicking over the remains. Here's what I posted almost a month ago when the Burial/FourTet/Thom Yorke collaboration was released, in response to the raging disappointment of not being able to purchase the record:
Re: Burial/Four Tet/Thom Yorke - Ego/Mirror
by SCNDRCLCK » Sun Mar 20, 2011 11:21 pm"Why bother releasing it on vinyl at all? Im all for the magic and ideals of vinyl, but in this instance I think someone needs their head caved in."
"@ whoever it was who said something about not whining, go fuck yourself
"--from dubstepforum.com
Thought I'd pop in and look at my first forum topic as a recently joined member, and my...oh my... what violent thoughts course through a dubstepper vinylist's brain when they don't get what they want. Well, here on the West Coast, us post-modern hippies, we share our records because it's the "ecological" way to do things, besides all the polychloride vinyl is killing all the babies... Sometimes at events, you can see the dj's [who still spin vinyl] behind the console amiably exchanging records before their set. I'm afraid to even offer up the question "Haven't you heard of AbletonLive or Traktor? Then you wouldn't have to depend upon your ability to phone up the rekkid store. I know, I know, believe me I've heard all the vinyl purist dialectics, and I'll agree with you, it does sound better. I've worked pro audio for years and know the warm fuzzies your favorite LP can give you when dropped. I don't know, I guess I just got lost in the ecstasy of technology and the digital world. What fun it is to open up a program like Ableton Live, Logic, etc., and feel evolution coursing through your receptors. Well I won't let a little head-caving and fucking oneself deter me from the many benefits of this site. I must say I feel a little ashamed to say that I downloaded these tracks for free from the Internet today and danced around my living room like a little schoolgirl. But Burial does that to me everytime.... Everytime...
Cheers,
SCNDRCLCK
4.16.2011
THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF IS IN BED WITH THE WHORE OF BABYLON
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| thesefuckersthinkthisisnewbehavior? cr: SGG Labs |
My cartography of hell—inspired by Dante's—is similarly composed of concentric rings of the damned, reserving the innermost ring for the lowliest of sinners. Here I assign am-bulance chasers, insurance salespersons, corrupt politicians, pedophiles, people who sell drugs to children, people who sell fake drugs to adults, and what I've come to call Armageddonite doomsayer flockstars. After the 8.9 quake hit Japan, the post-disaster flurry of insipid journalists and pundits assembled in a misanthropic chorus of apocalyptic predictions. "More to Come..." "The Big One is Next," "The End Times are Near!" screamed the tabloids. Scientists assured us that the Superquake was imminent, even overdue, like a 10-month fetus. Concerned citizens ran to Wal-Mart to stock up on emergency water, batteries, and enough turkey jerky to feed Sudan for a week. High Five, Turkey farmers!
The practice of fearmongering to make political gains is an age-old practice, and upon researching the world's religions and histories, you will find an Armageddon/Apocalypse arche-type in every one. The powers that be—they just love a good ol' End Times hoedown to get your attention--and then your consent. More laws, more regulations, more prohibitions, more safety measures...less freedoms. Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, volcanos...these have existed long before recorded history, long before the puny human race came along. What's new are nuclear weapons, bio-engineered viruses, magnesium incendiary devices—and the most nefarious of weapons: the media. Man has been boondoggled into inventing novel, [shock &] awe-inspiring ways to kill other men by—other men. The enemy is in your neighborhood: sleeper cells of bloodthirsty jihadists waiting for the muezzin's call. This is what the media and the Administration screamed after 9-11. The truth is that the brown-skinned people in this country are merely immigrants like your family was not too long ago, and duped like the rest of us, living out the fallacy of the American Dream.
I don’t lend the Armageddonites much credence. I'd just as soon as hire a Catholic priest for babysitting. It doesn’t take much for these idiots to proclaim the End Times are near; hell, they’re banking on it. They're driving this ship into the ground with no care or concern for the generations to come because God is going to turn Earth into a smoldering rock. Oh Goody, Jesus is here! All humanity’s problems vanquished with an earth-cleansing, annihilating world war and the believers float to heaven in the Rapture, exorcising man’s evils. What a crock of shit fabricated to sell Bibles and an agenda to keep its little lambs from discovering themselves. And their wallets and bank accounts overfloweth with blood money.
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| The Beast cr. SCNDRCLCK |
Here’s the clincher.... it’s not just the Christian Conserva-tives, not just the Republican Right Fearfuckers, even the liberal media grasp onto the Armageddon zeitgeist because it sells copy. And it sells chocolate at Whole Foods. Think this is SCNDRCLCK hyperbolic? Check the collage below. It is composed of guerrilla snapshots I took of just one impulse-buy endcap at Whole Foods, including the "last-second to spend a buck” bucket strategically positioned next to the checkstand/credit card swiper.
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| The Sky Is Falling cr: SCNDRCLCK |
Well, dear readers, from what I can gather from my forays into the joy of surrogate parenting [SCNDRCLCK is not a breeder], the kids are waking up and discovering their world has been hijacked by a kleptocracy of fossilized good 'ol boys. Chalk it up to better education, the Internet, or just simple evolution, but this generation is smarter and brighter. And there not buying the aforementioned crock. They're not going to believe the primitive, xenophobic reasons for war, or the capitalistic ventures behind them. They're going to invest in peace, transmogrifing arms and military budgets into global health care and education. They’re not going to buy into the Malthusian scarcity rap or the Bilderberg Group's doctrine to reduce the world's population by 80%. They’re going to be the vanguard of new and green technologies. They’re going to see the crises we face as exciting challenges and opportunity for growth/evolution.
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| cr: Bizarro Comic |
Fifty years ago, January 17, 1961, President Dwight D.Eisenhower, a decorated wartime general, as he was leaving office, he gave a speech warning the citizenry of the Military Industrial Complex, how if its powers were not kept in check, it could destroy the very freedoms America had fought so hard for. Did we listen? Kennedy attempted to dismantle this power and he was assassinated and the crime covered up. Cui bono? Who benefitted? Who has the power to cover it up? Thriftworks utilizes Eisenhower's speech in Eisenblaster, from their brilliant new album, Zenzero:
Thriftworks: Eisenblaster
[link temporarily removed due to DMCA complaint]
You can watch an excerpt of Eisenhower's speech here:[link temporarily removed due to DMCA complaint]
I usually prefer vegan beats but sometimes a little cheese goes a long way for the jaded heart. This mash-up still kills me, and I enjoy the positive vibes. [SCNDRCLCK, even though he is a bitch, has a heart...]
MATSIYAHU vs LENNON vs BLINK182 vs GENTLEMAN one day (so far away)
[link temporarily removed due to DMCA complaint]
With the risk of appearing too hippy, and this may have been influenced by my move to San Francisco, the city of love, I will go out on the limb of trite and profess that a little more love in the world, less apathy, more care, compassion might do the world more good, plus it's way easier to curate songs with this theme.
[link temporarily removed due to DMCA complaint]
[link temporarily removed due to DMCA complaint]
[link temporarily removed due to DMCA complaint]
I'm elated to share this track with you, as it's unreleased, forthcoming from the eponymous album, "Thumbprint," featuring Abstract Rude, a melange of organic instrumentation [dumbek, tar, mouthharp] and warm, rich analog gurgles, bleeps, flutters and fuzz.
THUMBPRINT thumbprint [ft ABSTRACT RUDE]
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