Another Strange Attractor

May Podcast ‘09

Alright then! Another mix, another day….

I began my love affair with electronic music in 2000 after downloading an early version of Napster and stumbling upon the Chemical Brothers’ remix of Mercury Rev - Bottleneck Stomp (a track I’ll throw down later this summer, just wait, it’s incredible, still!). I remember pulling my crappy little computer speakers down onto the floor, positioning my head between them, turning up the bass, and just laying there whilst an alien audio universe wound its way down my brain stem and into my soul. I’ve never felt quite that ecstatic since - it was a complete out of body experience and for better or worse, infected me with the incurable virus, EDM fanaticism.

After my initial trip down the e-music rabbit hole, I found some Blank and Jones, some Crystal Method, some ubiquitous Paul Oakenfold (Gamemaster anyone?) and Fatboy Slim, eventually entering the world of late 2001/2002 proggy trance/techno. Since then, I have (sort of) unthinkingly vilified this genre and its grand sweeping synth pads, ethereal vocals, Balearic bongos and tribal beats….believing the glory days to be over and gone, telling everyone that the only thing progressive about trance anymore is the number of people leaving the scene…. During the creation of this mix, I realized how much of a fool I was to stop listening to these old tunes. What I gave up when I stopped digging deeper into that music. Trance and prog are the emotional, teary-eyed children of the electronic world. I know my initial fascination with this music is not unique – so many people get into trance first, and then find their way down into the darkness that exists after the rush subsides. But, emotions are good to keep around. If you keep blasting people with the same relentless bass, fucked up vocals and trippy sounds capes they just get depressed and leave. The binary nature of our reality requires that there be a rise before a fall, and vice versa. I’ve been falling a lot lately, and with summer fast approaching, its high time we started to rise up. This mix showcases a bit of The Chaosthetic’s proggy/tribal techtrance and house side (hah! genres…), my version of the “hands in the air, scream to the stars, smiles all around” sort of vibe that existed in Platonic form before uplifting techno went all Tiesto and big money. This mix also taps my more emotional, pensive side - a space I have found myself in a lot during the last two months for reasons I wont bother you with here. Lets just say that learning to love unconditionally is a long, possibly never ending, path full of switchbacks, booby traps, and not enough water in the Nalgene. Along with the tunes, as usual I’ve included samples from some of my more enlightening YouTube wanderings. Check the track listing if you would like to hear more.

Where I live in Minnesota right now, hot, humid air is creeping into the crisp coolness of spring, reminding everyone that summer is just around the corner and yes, we have something wonderful to look forward to. Each morning I try to fit in an hours worth of yoga in the sunshine (or whatever happens to be out there) - an incredibly invigorating habit at 9:00 AM (and subsequently unnerving to the calculated monotony of our neighbors, I’m sure). Recently, during a moment of extreme concentration as I attempted to hold a handstand, I was struck by how infrequently most people take time out of their “lives” to just be, noticing how every morning, I see nobody else around, just birds and squirrels and the random lost dog. My handstand quickly dissolved and I found myself in a crumbled heap, face in the grass. And instead of picking myself up, I lay there, meditating in that position of gravitational submission, letting my five senses gorge themselves on the moment. I’m talking about the sensation you had as a child, sitting in the yard staring up at the clouds, forgetting the time of day. The overwhelming sensation of freedom when you let gravity take hold on a swing, dipping down to rise up into the air. The concentration in stillness and the grainy shadows on the wall just before falling asleep. The complete abandon and joy you felt spinning in circles or dancing until you lost your balance, letting the ground fold in around you. I have learned through many, many failures and restarts and complete breakdowns that these moments of letting go, of releasing attachment and just letting emotions come as fully and intensely as they must – that these moments are what keep us alive and healthy. This is how we grow – one must fall down in order to get up. In the same vein, one must release emotions in order to see them clearly and move forward. This release is, like Michael Brown describes in this mix, the first step in learning to love you, and subsequently to attracting the love of others. If we ignore pieces of ourselves, how can we fully love others?

The civilization that we exist in, that was provided to us at birth, does not (currently) hold a place in space or time for this release outside of childhood (and the underground). Even as a child, your time is unfairly cut-off at the “teenage” boundary – suddenly expected to live the life of a “functioning” adult, in control of your emotions and your thoughts. This controlled, emotionless way of life is unhealthy – mentally, physically, and spiritually. It prays on our relationships: to each other and to our selves. It eats away at security, puts conditions on our relations, fosters anxiety, and furthers negative thought-loops. When you recognize an emotion and push it away, you do not fully remove it from your being. It still exists, but now on its own, in the dark recesses of your subconscious ready to change and shift and grow into something even more intense and worrisome. Each time we stifle an emotion, push it to the back of our minds, we create a mental/emotional poison out of a potentially healing experience. The size or content of your emotion(s) does not matter - the result is always the same. Although the result of emotional release may be complicated in the short term, it will always be more healthy than keeping the feelings behind bars. We human beings are intensely complicated creatures, built from a system of chemical responses to stimuli. If you look at living as a “sensual” experience, then the more we feel of life and the more fully we respond to human stimuli – aka relationships. So get out there, have a breakdown. Listen to some gorgeous trance and let down those jaded barriers. Let the euphoria seep out from the corners of your mind, the smile from the corners of your mouth. Let the tears come and the words flow all jumbled and incomprehensible. Hit the ground, jump up, dance, or sit quietly and listen. Do whatever, but do it fully and consciously.

And then, when you are finished, do it again.

And again.