The Rock Blogger

Now that I’ve finally gotten my bloody LSATs out of the way, I can return to my underground cavern of doom. The gain is up, the guitar is tuned down and the amp is up to 11. It’s time to rock the fuck out.

I’ve been recently experimenting with a slower, drone-doom sound after having listened to multiple Earth and Sunn o))) records for demonic/angelic inspiration. Demonic/angelic? Sounds like a possible song title. Anyways, I tend to loose myself in the heavy distortion, playing out each chord into sonic oblivion. At times, it can be a cathartic, organic and even spiritual experience. Hopefully I can capture some of those feelings on a few upcoming recordings.

In closing, its been a busy few months and its refreshing to go back to into a more creative mode. With some excellent stoner-rock albums under heavy rotation, I hope some of that fuzzed-out sound rubs off on my own guitar playing.

More to come.

Bob Dylan The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan 1963. 5 Stars.

Everything has already been said about this man and his work. Like the greatest music legends of the 20th Century, Bob Dylan is just as much a myth as he is a musician, as the recent film I’m Not There will attest.

But there is no mythologizing about the lasting power of Dylan’s powerful song-writing, which in his more poignant efforts, provide stirring social commentary that has spanned decades and generations, making it depressingly obvious that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Last year, after being caught off guard by “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, off the album above, I immediately learned the song’s chords and did my best to memorize its labyrinthine lyrics. Every time I sing this song, I have to take a moment on reflect on its form and contemplative energy, trying to get into get into Dylan’s crackling mindset. I always have this image of a whethered and world-weary figure, exhausted by the multitude of horrors surrounding him, trying to inform the world of the immense costs of our collective actions. Over 40 years later, this screed is still echoing from the mountain.

Have a Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2008.

I have recently acquired most of Godflesh’s catalog, having once again been fascinated by industrial metal, and I was amazed by the cover art for one of their more heavier albums.

An image of mourning, this apocalyptic pairing of the grave and industrial waste is a fitting visual description of the current technological and spiritual crisis that lies ahead of us in 2008. This album, created in 1996, seemed to anticipate the bleak forecast for the industrial-capitalist state, which currently is brewing in the dirty and over-consuming city centers of the West. They all risk collapsing into states of takers, and the thought of giving, the message of Christ, becomes overwhelmed by the mechanical roars of greed, profit or addiction.

The modern industrial representation of Christmas has slowly deafened the sentiments of charity. The Salvation Army awaits in our subway stations, because they know how much money we are throwing at each other. They are well aware of how much we consume and how much we waste. They are waiting for the scraps.

This Christmas I will pray for a more charitable spirit to come out of us, rather than being caught in the Christmas Machine that, for the most part, rewards the dominant minority of the top corporate and political class who continue to poison many of the airwaves,waterways and pathways that line our fragile world . I pray that in the new year we can open the dimensions of our thinking and contemplate what our true beleifs are and compare them to our wasteful, hateful and selfish behaviors and recognize that no one is free of sins, be they personal or social.

While their music is incredibly brutal and makes ample of use of thunderous baselines and punishing drum machines, Godflesh’s tone of opposition and lamentation seems to call to an aggrieved and existential mindset. Yet the message isn’t completely despairing, as I see it. Perhaps the imagery of Christ that Godflesh likes to juxtapose with the machinery of the state, or our bleak imperialist world view, is meant as a signal of hope amid a blackening sky of dirt and pollution, of noise and destruction. Perhaps there is still one candle that lights the others. Hope still burns in the ambers.

Peace be with you.

I’m down in a well and my voice can only carry so far. Raindrops take their long decent down to my face, as I look up at the overcast sky, nicely framed by the well’s circular mouth.

I blink and I am back where I started, sludging through the dirty city streets, recovering from a blast of winter. The air is cold and the silence is deaden.

Blink again and I am in some other state, my emotions are hazy colors smeared gently across an infinitely dark canvas. As my thoughts race, the colors change and eventually fade, and soon everything is black, becomes black.

The sounds carry on, through all these stages I stumble into, music that you can touch as it is so dense with ambiance, dread and strange beauty, droning with inhuman but meditative intensity.

This is the heavy ambient of Earth, Final and Sunn 0))), three experimental bands who have different stylistic nuances but share the same existential pain and entrancement. Borrowing from disparate atmospherics like Horror films and spiritual ritual, these artists will plunge you into a deeply meditative and powerful experience that may captivate and also terrify.

This is their work:

Sunn O))) Black One 2005

Earth Earth 2 1993

Final 3 2006.

I was listening to My Morning Jacket’s acoustic CD with my number one groupie, taking in the warm and familiar guitar strums gently rocking our senses as Jim James’ unreal falsetto climbs, belting out:

“…feelin’ you are here again. hot on my skin again.
feelin good a thing i’d never known before
what does it mean to feel? millions of dreams come real
a feelin’ in my soul i’d never felt before… mmm…
and you always told me.
no matter how long it holds me if it falls apart
or makes us millonaires. you’ll be right here forever.
we’ll go thru this thing together
and on heaven’s golden shore we’ll lay our heads”

Sometimes, synchrony happens and your deepest feelings and wishes seem to just manifest themselves into the world around you, like some blissful energy that slowly takes hold of you, and guides you to where you always wanted to be. How long can you hold on to it? Why is it said that the enlightened have to let it go? I’m not ready yet.