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I’ve kept Promises LTD,’s 2016 EP  in steady rotation since it dropped and was so excitied to hear that they would be releasing a new track midnight May 15... Their first release had a late 80′s hooks and flourishes matched with contemporary production and the new track feels less ‘revival’ but with just as much charm. Hope this means a new album will soon follow

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That Song - Dem Yuut - Everydoor

I heard Dem Yuut play last summer at the Oxbow Hotel in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and was hooked immediately. Dem Yuut isn’t breaking any new ground but what they do, they do so well.

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That Song - Delorean - Orreaga [Lekeitio 6]

I’ve been a pretty devoted fan of Basque group Delorean after hearing the track Seasun when it was released in 2009 on their Ayrton Senna EP (a tribute to the late Brazilian champion Formula One racer). Since then their 2010 LP Subiza has been a feel good record for me. A reminder of a summer surf trip in Basque country including their hometown of Zarautz.

Just recently i’ve been spinning their latest release, which represents a bit of a sonic shift, but something entirely nuanced, thoughtful and beautiful. “Mikel Laboa” is a remix/reimagination of the work of the eponymous Basque music legend and visionary. This album is a celebration not only of Laboa but of Basque culture, time, and music itself.

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Lonnie Holley - Just Before Music

I learned about this Lonnie Holley album after listening to an interview with “Transcendental Black Metal” group Liturgy. I was immediately enthralled.

Lonnie Holley comes from a family of 27 children, and is kind of this American folk figure, a sculptor ‘outsitder artist’ who is totally a piece of art as a person.

Holley’s music is right up my alley… Very loose and in a class of it’s own. Just Before Music is not quite Soul, not quite Jazz, not quite melodic even… It’s definitely music, but the songs don’t even feel like songs so much as free form stream of consciousness set to meditative noodling. Put this on and get lost in Holley’s poetic explorations of society, life, death, technology, love and art.

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That Song (LOOKLOOK MEDIA EDITION): Memoryhouse - To The Lighthouse (MillionYoung Remix)

Some of my IRL friends might remember my stint as an impresario in Toronto during a period of the Queen West synthed out indie scene (aka Chillwave). One of the memorable tracks from that time in my life comes from one of the first shows I threw with my homie Okay Kap featuring a double bill of Flordia’s Million Young and Guelph duo Memoryhouse. Prior to ever meeting in person the artists came together on this obscenely sick remix, something that they threw down during the show (which was riddled with a fair amount of fuckery and bugs).

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Watch It: Koyaanisqatsi

I think Koyaanisqatsi is a movie worth watching. It’s a 1982 documentary film by Godfrey Reggio. Set to a soundtrack composed by Philip Glass, Koyaanisqatsi is a wordless juxtaposition of timelapse and slow-mo footage of the United States, contrasting the raw, natural world, with the manipulated world of human intervention.

Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi word meaning Life Out of Balance, and the film establishes this concept without a strict narrative, focusing on the visual, accented by Glass’ composition and Hopi chanting.

Reggio’s film reached a wider audience because of the participation of Francis Ford Coppola who was responsible for the scenes featuring the Utah pictographs.

The cinematography was done by Ron Fricke, who himself was responsible for taking similar film structures to create, some of my favourite movies Baraka, and Samsara.

Koyaanisqatsi ends with a translation of three Hopi prophecies, of which their significance seems to be glaring:

-"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."

-"Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."

-"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."

SHIIIIIIT.

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That Song: Folke Rabe - Was??

Here’s a beautiful slice of weirdness that I was turned on to after hearing an interview with Will Oldham.

It may seem like nothing, but it’s hard not to get sucked in and hypnotized by this piece of avante-ambient drone music.

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That Song: Richard and Linda Thompson - Calvary Cross

Richard and Linda Thompson are in my opinion of the most under-appreciated in the world of classic rock. Play loud.

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That Song: Kelsey Lu - Morning After Coffee

Song = A+. Video = A+.

[freemoneylife]

Eden, The Flood: Eco - Futurist - Allegory

I’m writing this stream of consciousness style in one shot, so please excuse any inaccuracies, broad strokes, or simplifications. I encourage your own investigation into the subjects I riff on and the source material I mention. While I’m still at a loss for the big ‘why’ behind it all largely because purpose is something that we project on an ‘indifferent’ world (that we are paradoxically intrinsic agents within).

This is a non-comprehensive combination of beliefs that have shaped my own Pantheistic worldview as well as ideas that I find intellectually stimulating and morally relevant. I am making no claims to be an authority on any of this whatsoever. This is super casual, Okay!?

Also I am aware that the climate of our current epoch is one of the factors that enabled a move towards agriculture, something generally considered unsuitable during the Pleistocene, whether or not our adoption of agriculture was inevitable is a fatalist question that I will perhaps sit on another evening.

I am asserting that while organized religion participates in moral policing of sorts (and has for centuries), foundationally speaking, our religions are the expression of humanity’s relationship with the natural world (which I consider synonymous with God).

A quick note about morals. We are not separate from the natural world, and following this understanding morality should not be considered an outward judgement, that is based in retribution or is punitive. Consider it more as a reflection of a natural phenomenon and a proclivity towards balance.

This is what I like to call the non-dickhead approach to morality. Following the NDA, a broken leg considered with the principles of say, Karma is less seen as punishment for some moral iniquity, and more just like the consequence of a string of events, thoughts> that lead to actions> that met certain scenarios. Humans are not essentially ‘bad’ because of any actions (such as agriculture which I will expand upon), however certain actions may further alienate us from ecological homeostasis.

Every ‘thing’ for that matter is more like a flowing stream of events itself, than a static ‘thing’, and every action ripples out throughout existence. Food for example, examined from a zoomed out perspective of time and space can and will take many forms. The material being of an orange at the time of consumption, is the result of many actions and events. Prior to consumption the orange was picked off the tree, where it was previously growing in response to photosynthesis, sunlight, water, soil, determined by the weather, surrounding flora and fauna which themselves are responding and changing based on a stream of events. Additionally the flow of this energy, change of state, and consequence will continue after consumption indefinitely.

You may recall in my earlier post that reality (analogous with natural law, the universe, God, Dhamma, etc) is an objective truth that like water takes the shape of whatever vessel is containing it (a person’s subjective understanding). Espousing my own personal eco-futuristic worldview there are some lessons to be found in the events of the Old Testament (which many often write off as a bunch of bronze-age bullshit).

A fair bit of the following was inspired after reading Quinn’s ideas in the essay about The Great Forgetting.

I’d like to take a momentary tangent as well to give a nod to the terrible/amazing Pauly Shore, Stephen Baldwin film Biodome that was responsible for some of my earliest exposure to the concepts of ecology and homeostasis, and was considerably just as pervasive in my understanding as say the work of Ronald Wright.

My test of a “universal theory” is examining how that theory holds up when investigated at different focal lengths. A relationship present at a microcosmic level that reverberates throughout different planes of experience to the cosmic level is something that generally piques my interest.

Again this is something I alluded to in my investigation of Vipassana, especially with regards to it’s application to our current socio-ecological issues. Dhamma, natural law, is a force of change that acts unceasingly to maintain a state of balance, a natural harmony akin to ecological homeostasis. In other words if something is in disaccord with the state of nature as it is, there is a natural pattern of correction that takes place.

A principle of physics, a physical law, is a manifestation of this natural law on the physical plane of existence. To me Newton’s laws are in my opinion observations of the mechanism of natural law at work. For example pressure differentials in fluid and thermodynamics ie. Bernouli’s principle, are an upset in balance that will result in a change in force/motion/momentum etc.

A practical example of this is buoyancy. Think about holding a flutterboard under-water. The laws of nature (in this instance, what we call physics - the behavior of physical matter) would see that an upward force would act to bring that material object to the surface with a magnitude of force proportional to the difference in pressure. There will be more tension on the flutterboard the more you try to hold it down. When you accept the laws of nature, rather than act against them, it will float to the surface.

In a meditation such as Anapana or Vipassana, there is to be an awareness of sensations as they are, rather than in a manipulated state (ie. how we would like them to be). Balance in the mind and body is restored when we can accept our natural state. If we stop our knee-jerk reactions, our emotional cravings and aversions to the sensations experienced on the body, then the flutterboard will float to the surface, the forces of nature will act without friction (without a person’s will holding it down). This I believe is akin to the Judeo-Christian concepts of obedience to God or faith (something that many young liberally-educated folks shy away from discussing, even writing about faith in God feels a little sweater-vesty right now, I agree).

A reaction to an experience at the sensory level with craving or aversion creates a chain reaction of Sankharas; reactions that multiply and increase tension against the restoration of balance (this is the way that as individuals our tendency to worry can spiral to full on panic, and even physical tension in the body). Sankharas in this regard are analogous to transgressions against Nature, or sins against God. When I say sins against God I don’t mean it in a finger wagging - judgy way (see non-dickhead approach); Religion from this perspective has less to do with moral superiority, and more to do with humans explaining their relationship with the natural world in a time and manner that predated the formalization and division of the sciences with metaphysics, history, law, poetry, mythology etc.

In biology this relationship can be observed through a (very pedestrian in this scenario) investigation of parasitic behaviour. An organism depletes the life force of its host, causing either eradication of the parasite by the host or depletion of the host organism. The host attempts to restore harmony. Symbiotic relationships are those in which there is mutually beneficial relationship between organisms living together. Looking at our relationship with our planet in this regard (the lens of Gaia) would see that overconsumption will deplete our host, and the host will work to rid the parasite, and changes, and corrections will occur until the balance is restored, through either the eradication of the parasite, or more importantly the eradication of the one-sided, take-only parasitic behaviour.

As with the flutterboard the more force exerted against the ‘state of nature as-it-is, the greater proportional force will be felt back, when meditating we are taught to remain as still as possible, and avoid making sudden large movements, and when needed only make small, slow controlled movements. I personally have found that if i react, say to a painful sensation in my lower back with a drastic, reaction to the pain, the pressure will either remain or be redirected somewhere else in my body (this is karma baby). However when I am able to observe the sensations and remain as present as possible my body almost intuitively adjusts so that pressure is equalized and there is less painful sensation observed.

Ecologically speaking, greater “parasitic” behaviour such as overconsumption will be met with a greater natural response to eradicate the behaviour and restore balance. Less severe, more ‘aware’ or conscious behaviours are met with less pushback; and full awareness and acceptance of this natural pattern is met with near intuitive ecological adjustments (think of the shifts of pressure systems, of the rain, the breeze in balance).

I realize I am jumping around a bit through all of this, partially because I am trying to illustrate how this pattern of balance and correction, duality reverberates through all levels of existence, and partially because I am writing without a plan (my teachers would call me a cubist in school).

What does this have to do with the flood? or Garden of Eden?

I grew up in the cosmopolitan city of Toronto where I was privy to a plurality of belief systems during my youth. I was raised in a liberal Jewish household, and have been brought up to understand the stories of the Torah, the Old Testament to have been stories that likely didn’t literally occur but bear some sort of moral takeaway. I have also shared many discussions with individuals raised with greater theological literalism, who take the stories of the bible and other scriptures at face value and I find both ends of the spectrum at some degree to be engaging spiritually, intellectually and practically. While I do not maintain a strict adherence to any organized religion I do not simply write it off as gobbeldy-gook.

As mentioned before, the bible, as is the case with pretty much any theological scripture, was written without the present taxonomy and division between the arts and sciences. To dismiss the stories of the bible as mere mythology, or bunch of bullshit fairy tales I think is lazy, rather these stories should be considered as a collection of words from a time when science, news, law, morality, philosophy, metaphysics, history, allegory, poetry, art, and yes, mythology were tackled at once. Should everything be taken literally? No, we can see many ways in which zealotry can be dangerous af. Is it all metaphor? Not quite.

I think that the chronological context in which the old testament was authored is something that should be considered. (Reminder this is a very generalized chronology).

Written human history arose roughly 6000 years ago with the rise of Mesopotamia in the fertile crescent. The dawn of civilization. Civilization is the result of surplus.

Prior to written history (written history being a result of civilization), was a period of time we refer to as prehistory.  Developments in the field of palaeontology had implications that ran against the grain of classical understandings of human history. Humanity, as fossilized organic matter would lead us to believe, predates written human history, and civilization for that matter, by millions of years.

Before we lived as nations, and cities, or kingdoms, even villages, we lived as bands of humans, our means of sustenance through hunting and gathering. The onset of civilization was brought on with the adoption of specific agricultural practices (which as Quinn noted in The Great Forgetting, was not a flip of a switch, nor uniform adoption of all agricultural systems).

Agriculture allowed for humans to stay put. It afforded us the ability to have time, and specialization. It also created a surplus of certain foods. This enabled population growth, increased innovation, the exchange of ideas, and of course literacy which allowed for written history and codified organized religion and scripture. As Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs & Steel so elegantly illustrates, geographical and geological capacity for domestication of plants and animals is at part to explain why the Levant and longitudinally-biased continents saw the rise of some of the earliest civilizations, and created a global inequality, (among other reasons of course).

Quinn notes that the arrival of written history appears at a time when our pre-agricultural past has faded so far from collective memory that it seldom surfaces anywhere in written history. Perhaps this period is equivalent with Aboriginal Australian’s Dreamtime (admittedly I have only a surface understanding of Dreamtime).

The Old Testament can (generally) be traced back to about 3000 years ago, about 3000 years after the developments of humanity’s first civilizations, roughly 7000 years after the end of the last ice-age.

I believe there are some important lessons to be gleaned from understanding the bible in the context of human history and prehistory, with regards to ecology, spirituality, morality and our relationship with technology.

The Neolithic-Revolution that saw an exponential growth in technological adoption (where we currently find ourselves) is characterized by humanity’s adoption of agriculture that allowed for surplus and the habitation of more humans than an unaltered land would allow to survive. The land left as it is, would support far fewer humans than the land manipulated to support larger populations through surplus based agriculture. This technological revolution has lead us to our current trend of technological adoption, obsolescence and dependance. Just as the ‘problem solving’ introduction of mechanical transportation, trains, cars, uber whatever have created necessity where there once was none, agriculture in the Neolithic period was where the pattern began.

Or

Just as 20 years ago you did not need a cell phone, but could have one as a solution, now the need for constant communication has created a necessity where there was once none (with residual social, health, and environmental issues resulting).

Adoption of technology that attempts to change nature to suit our fears and desires rather than work in harmony with nature as it is, will result in a dissonance that reverberates throughout humanity, that, like a reaction with craving or aversion on the body during meditation, will multiply. Blind adoption of technology is a fear or desired based reaction that results in the need for continued technological intervention.

At the biological level this techno-ecological disparity has resulted in an imbalance that ranges from malnutrition (humanity saw a downturn in nutrition with the adoption of less varied agriculturally dependant diets), to disease, cancers, accidental death etc. (Look at for example the negative physical, mental, and social implications that a cell phone can cause, and yes of course I concede there are many ‘positive’ functions).

This dissonance from reality and technological dependance  has created alienation from our means of production that results in both an individual and social void, it has created a spiritual void via deus ex machina, and our planetary ecological crises resulting from overconsumption can be seen to have been born of the Neolithic Revolution.

The adoption of agriculture, the attempt to create a surplus in nature (an unnatural phenomenon) was a social sankhara, a reaction based in desire or fear that multiplies exponentially. As the natural laws would dictate, just as any other reaction in disaccord with nature-as-it-is, the forces of change (God, Dhamma, the Universe, Nature) would see that balance is restored and a friction, or proportional tension is experienced; the further from the “as-it-is” state, the more severe the resulting correction.

Am I suggesting that preagricultural humanity saw no strife? No illness, No war? Absolutely not. However I am suggesting that their actions were much subtler pushes against nature-as-it-is, and humanity’s adoption of surplus based agriculture has lead us on a need to blindly progress via development and adoption of technology at an exponential rate, that is met with a proportional force of change in the opposite direction. Am I implying that current natural disasters are the result of our behaviour? Sure am. (Among other beings actions in our Universe).

A sankhara, or a fear/desire based reaction as I have alluded, in the Abrahamic sense is analogous to a sin. An action against God (or the state of nature-as-it-is). It is through this lens that I find the stories of the Old Testament, specifically the flood, and the Garden of Eden to be relevant (at least that’s how I feel tonight).

The basic story of the flood was that humans were acting like a bunch of sinning assholes so God flooded the Earth to eradicate the pattern of bad behaviour, sparing those who could act in accordance with divine law. See where I am going? Considering the forces of change that natural law enacts to resolve imbalances, widespread transgressions against nature-as-it-is result in changes to correct things back to a groovy state. Small imbalances, small changes. One being causes a shift in balance, proportional resulting change. A shift out of balance at the level of the civilization? Proportional correction towards balance, say by a big ass flood.

Deluge myths populate much of humanity’s earliest recorded scripture, and I happen to believe that the flood myths that we are familiar with from Genesis or Gilgamesh or whatever, are a (albeit poetic) retelling of a flood that plagued the earliest human civilizations. The irrigation technologies that made our earliest civilizations possible through agricultural surplus, played a part in their eventual fall.

The flood as a reflection of natural order responding to an imbalance, reads the narrative as a cautionary tale of uncontrolled adoption of technology. Yes of course I am alluding to our current crises, which are driven by overconsumption (surplus behaviour).

The Garden of Eden, the original sin, in this regard are a reference to the Neolithic revolution itself. Eating from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, can be seen as allegory to adoption of agriculture, the knowledge of manipulation of the nature-as-it-is to nature-as-we-desire. Agricultural surplus, allowing more people to live per capita on pieces of land than the land unaltered could sustain, bringing forth a chain of technological intervention and natural friction we currently experience.

Ok great. What is to be done about it? Are we to become luddites?

Well yes and no, at this stage it seems, ironically unrealistic for humanity to “regress” to a pre Neolithic lifestyle, however with our current situation, if we are to survive, or live in symbiosis, with peace with our planetary host, as well as each other, and ourselves, we need to approach our progress with awareness of “The Great Forgetting,” natural order, and our own impulses.

Technology that is developed furthering our disparity with the natural world will only continue the pattern, while technologies that cause minimal ecological tension, or better yet those that act in symbiosis with our planet should be adopted. Technology that is not based in serving our emotional fear or desire, that does not attempt to create a surplus, rather serves a balanced and controlled need for survival and the needs of life. Technology that is created from a place of full present awareness, of psycho-social-spiritual-ecological implications.

How the fuck do we do that?

The approach I would illustrate takes the pattern of another spiritual concept that maintains at any scale of reality. Tzimtzum is a concept from Kabbalah, that posits that pre-creation all that existed was endless, infinite light (ein sof) and the creation of the material universe involved a constriction of light into condensed spheres (sephirot). In order to take something (seemingly) infinite, or boundless and make it tangible it must be constricted. It is not the entirety, but it is a defined part of it.

In less pretentious terms, you have to cut things into bite sized pieces to eat them.

So the only way I can really think of approaching any of this is to begin with the breath, continue with the sensations on the body. Foster balance of mind for your own merits, and so others may benefit. 

To reiterate, the mechanism of the forces of nature (commonly referred to as God in theology) operates through a proclivity towards homeostasis. Karmic, events (or something ‘sinful’) disrupts the equilibrium causing the law to respond, resulting in a ripple effect of change and motion throughout the physical and metaphysical realms of existence, correcting towards the restoration of balance.

 It is not really a question of good/bad necessarily in the sense that we commonly use it’s more mechanical. Change is always occurring as a response to tensions against the homeostasis. The balance has some sway and flex, kinda like a suspension bridge, but similarly will only tolerate so much movement before more severe repercussions are felt. A techno-spiritual-ecological eschatology in this sense may suggest ‘a world to come,’ messianic age, or technological singularity is in reference to a period (attainable or not) when this balance in full is achieved.

PS. Love an anticlimactic finish but practical improvements can be found by adoption of polyculture, use of renewable resources, and sustainable biomimicry.

:)

[freemoneylife]

That Song: John Martyn - One World

Where Neil Young is considered to be the Godfather of Grunge, John Martyn is sometimes given the designation of Godfather of Trip-Hop, because of his pioneering synth work and genre bending musical exploration with the likes of Lee Scratch Perry. I think the artists of 2000-2k10′s indie folk/freak folk/folktronica whatever, like Akron/Family, Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Caribou etc. are in a world of debt to JM (but that’s just me).

With a delivery I would liken with the phrasing of Nick Drake coupled with raspy emotional inflections (that remind me of Ray Lamontagne) Martyn cranks out folk standards, slow burning love ballads and deeply layered synth meditations on love, and existential angst. 

take the lyrics of ‘One World’ for example:

Some of us live like princes Some of us live like queens Most of us live just like me We don't know what it means To take our place in one world To make our peace in one world To make our way in one world To have our say in one world If you ain't got two words to say Then I can't talk to you No use crying, there's been no crime I say it's just the way the wind blows Just the name of the game The way of the world

[freemoneylife]

That Song: Ry X - Bad Love

Ry Cuming “Ry X” is an Australian musician and surfer from some random little island in NSW. He used to play singer-songwriter style ballads that were a little formula but good and then it seems like something snapped in his brain and he started to burst creatively. Recording in LA his major following is in Germany, Ry X blends indie-folk and electronica. A member of The Acid and collaborator with Frank Wiedemann as “Howling” Ry X also curates the Sacred Ground festival.

“Dawn” was one of my favourite albums from last year, looks like the new one will be awesome based on this cut alone.

[freemoneylife]

Pinegrove: Live on Audiotree

I’ve spent the better part of a year obsessed with New Jersey band Pinegrove, especially this live studio session on Audiotree. Pinegrove weaves twangy Americana and indie math rock that feels equal parts highway and emo. It’s got a very highschool feel, in the best way possible.

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This song is what I imagine 1970′s FM radio to sound like. 

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Camp Eaux: Eaux Claires 2017

Hey y'all! Excuse my delay! I am redoing my website and these photos will not live here for long.

Here are some photos of the real ass people from the Midwest and beyond spending a beautiful few days at my favourite festival Eaux Claires in Wisconsin. No doubt funny listening to classic American Rock n' Roll and experimental indie with a huge storm cloud looming overhead, and the metaphorical shitstorm of President Fuckface underscoring the celebration. Friendship can get us through it.

*EDIT I have changed my website hosting photos are available if you contact me here

Eaux Claires I love you!

[freemoneylife]

HUSTLE: FREE MONEY LIFE X ALL RELATIVE

I'm feeling pretty solid about recent collabs with my friend artist/designer @Dnusc. We just released a heady new snapback through his brand All Relative where you can also find some good looking tees. We planning to release a lot more sick merch in the next little bit. Brothers gotta eat.

Here are a few pics I shot of the gear on our friends.

To get some tings head over to allrelative.bigcartel.com or in store in Toronto at Surf the Greats

[freemoneylife]

THAT SONG: TINARIWEN - ISLEGH TAGHRAM TIFHAMAM

Tinariwen is a band of Taureg musicians born in the aftermath of the Taureg uprising in Mali. They came to my attention after they won a Grammy a few years back and I have been feeling their desert jams since.