Beyond the Black Rainbow




Is there redemption in the void? Can I find something to forgive me, personify it, make you the angel I need to have?

A segue from geodesic decay to hospital hallway, crossfade. At some point we hear a voice. The rare bits of dialog have so much weight, your earthly ambassador in this opaque maze: a human voice, and he sets the theme early: "It's easy to get disillusioned." A kaleidoscope of long tense electromagnetic pulses as the voice settles in. "If you don't know who you are. What you are." Then the light changes and the face shifts in palettes seeping underneath. "I know who I am. What I am. That's what gives me my confidence. And my power."

Everyone is getting so hermetic. Good for them, it's what they want, to be sealed off, I can understand that kind of want. I do my own form of sealing off, I like to get into extreme comfort trips, music videos that feel up-beat, the rhythm can go down like that, it always worked. There are cursors here and there. What is created in the void doesn't matter how it sounds, later.

Why am I reminding myself of emptiness again and again? Can't you hear me? I heard that. Nod the head. Off the wagon. Was on the nod, assent to that. Since I forgot what it was like. How can it all sound so much the same, across filters of personality? Vision of universality takes the form of grass, a rainy blade, that kind of blade, a perfectly wonderful bug crawling over that blade, what's outside the black rainbow. What they told me I had a right to. Not in a proprietary way, not like manifest destiny or dominion over the beasts of the earth. 

Flirting with identifying self as unnatural. I stopped being a fan of nature, you can get to thinking that way when you've hung out too long beyond the black rainbow. I want to be natural, with you. Can I have some of your nature? Cause I was in that less-than-nothing howling wind, in the hallway, remember that hallway? It was life or death in that hallway, beyond the life and death spans of individuals, if you can imagine that. You had to hold on for dear life, and at the same time reach out to find another ledge, you had to venture, the stakes were higher than anything.

I remember that I was unnatural lust personified, but what is unnatural about that? It's a part of nature that has a source of joy, but the drives it creates take the form of enormous feats of heroism and treachery, betraying one's own code of morality, the deep desire to include oneself in others, wearing the black jacket of Noriega's fine custom leather and ruminating on some brand of unnaturalism, even after taking off one's appliances, a bare head sticky with hair glue, still feeling as unnatural as ever because what remains post-appliances is a deformed retinal-scarred thing you could barely call a living creature --- but the whole time, wanting that natural reality, the remedy for the sucking void inside, the depth and desperation of that need making the living thing inside the leather jacket all the more wretched, all the less desirable, no matter how red the light, no matter how effective the drugs, no matter what the voice on the phone said, that all important beyond-the-facility communication with a forest of fax sounds book-ending the drawn retrograde breath, a short sprout of telecom trees being the nail in the coffin of the message, a thing it didn't ask for but a fatal partnership, cemented in betrayal and casual cruelty, mutual culpability, observation rooms and mud and blood - but we needn't get so literal. But let's do it anyway, irony left me, don't care how I sound, I'm down to trading in cliches, obeying the basest instinct, and seeing this all from the outside, besides.

The scene of the assisted suicide of Dr. Mercurial Arboria is the most sad and beautiful thing I've ever seen on a screen. I haven't been moved by a movie like this in, I dunno, ever. Had become so aloof to the artform, the idea of even watching any movie twice was insane. And yet I can get lost in this one, make it my whole world, my music video. I'll latch onto that shadow vision, grip it tight and yet try and keep my oily personality off it, and not tag it too much, just let it be what it is in my head, not try and make it anything for others. But I want to bring other people into my world. But there are ways to go about that (keep it dead, in the shed, that's the way). There are windowpanes you keep shut, unless you have to remind yourself again.

When things become as elemental as the pale man in the black jacket and the girl with the teardrop, I remember. The man deranged in perfect control, arranged as protocol demanded, the procedure in place. And the girl, angel, taking on all these burdens, giving birth, taking the hit for more life. She appears angelic to my bug eyes, even though I know she's no angel really, she gets dirty, she gets into the mud, the mud gets into her, we breathe it together. We're all guilty in this planetary prison colony. This putrescent life made her a killer, the new age of enlightenment, like we needed yet another one, has warped her telekinetic abilities into a narrow brutal survivalist's toolkit.

We've been beyond the rainbow together. When we brought back the motherlode, we found there was no back, not anymore. We didn't know what to do, it had gotten away from us. Bad things happened, every moment since an attempt to salvage something from the horror. Words fail, and that is so wonderful, that I can't tag it, when words flow off it like it's a gleaming teflon skull, the new-school mercury alloy of programmed molecules, that's when you know it's legit, it's the real deal, it's a work of art worth inhabiting me, making me its gibbering evangelist, the art will be fine, whether I represent it well or not, it doesn't matter.

Barry. Bring home the motherlode, Barry. The character's name is Barry. There is no home, not anymore.

negotiations and negations.

Making peace with Alone, checking my piece at the door, I came heavy, I left light, past the checkpoint, no security now. I'm going to negotiate with Alone. I'm gonna shake its hand to show it that I don't have a gun, and I swear that I don't have a gun, no I'm happy with what I have to be happy with.

I came heavy but I left light, I am this light, it's all that is, taking various forms, infinite varieties that point to things, but are meaningless in themselves. On a macro level, the things they point to matter more than I could comprehend, far more, they mean vast things that simply confuse my primitive brain, it's like one of those gray alien anal probe things. We're Earthlings, we should blow up Earth things.

So I'm rowing out to a shipwreck to salvage whatever is left of a collection of volatile put-upon neurons in a long long meandering symphony that gets great here and dissolves into static and pattern-less celesta clicks and crackles retrograde there, a database placemaker of hundreds of thousands of firings a second... I'm just guessing, guestimating, sounding confident because peace sells, but who's buying? Everybody, actually. We're on easy street, the credible image of peace is flying off the shelves as if there could be limitless energy and matter down there, up there, all around. It's a beautiful thing, for a minute, fading, oh if we could only elongate time, maybe we can, maybe I am buying, because it's turtles all the way down, and on their backs we'll defy physics just enough to keep cheating death.

But maybe we don't wanna cheat to survive, maybe we could make peace with death, give life its due and kill the cancer of infinite growth. But our masters won't let us, so, status quo. Until, we realize we can destroy them if we realize we can destroy them. So we realize we can destroy them, they're not as smart as they think they are, they're not even smart enough to see that fact, whatever a fact is, but let's call it a fact: I tell you, this is highly important, it's of great import, it's as if these were my final words, wheezed under my dying breath (they're not). But it's as if they are, so if you listen and let them sink in to you, you could understand. I say you, because I don't really condescend to the outside world, I condescend to myself.

Hey, if you are as depressed as you say, hey, who am I to judge, I'll juggle in braille, leading a trail of blind men in my wake - they keep describing elephants, and aliens, and aliens, and elephants.

Mandy. Watch it.


Everyone has to watch it. Cause I just did. And am mind blown. Maybe it was made for me personally. Maybe that's what billionaires do, order a psychedelic prog-rock horror action epic from their favorite film director, then put Nicholas Cage in it cause they can. But I'm only a thousandaire, and yet, here it is. I won the lottery - all the lotteries I win in lieu of anything real. But hallucinations can be better than real. I can make them better if I try. Try harder.

I saw a lot in that movie, my dipstick got lubed good. I saw a hundred lot, an immaculate sheet of blotter paper in ten by ten perforations, under the surface of a neat shallow rectangular tray glistening with colorless, odorless liquid.

No, it was 5 x 20 squares. Man, they've wrong'd you, he said. Damn, why they gotta be like that? And gave his blessing on a necessary counter balance on behalf of darkness, skulls gotta be crush'd, black armored aliens gotta be arrow'd, the only thing you have left on this whole Jovian moon is a bottle of vodka, so slam that monster-fucker til the pain fades enough to get up and rage, and duel with chainsaw blades.

And that is my review.

The Bedlam in Goliath (The Mars Volta)



pre-ordered the disc, so what the hell, i'll listen to the leak, cause i found one that seems good quality - so, a bowl, a shot of sauza, headphones, darkness:

superficially, it sounds like amputechture, but at a deep level it's most like deloused – omar flavour injected all the way, of course – most prog album yet, hooray! major time dilation happening, i'm halfway through the second song, and feel like i've listened to a whole album already, in a good way – audaciously dense in sounds and ideas – i played the album on some mediocre speakers and it was impenetrable, confusing, noisy and non-musical, but it’s actually extremely well produced, well thought out, musical and melodic – it just demands a good system and a proper listening experience, or it won’t betray its secrets – like i’m listening to metatron at 5:45 the second time through – first time was utterly confusing, now i see that there’s actually a key shift a whole tone up – knowing that, it sounds perfect, the bass really hammers it home, it’s articulated precisely, but there’s so much going on, it doesn’t come across right away, similar to amp in that sense – some might consider it a flaw, but being the rabid mars volta fan i am, i see it as a necessary evolution – it rocks too, holy fuck this album rocks – not that it’s trying to rock, like amputechture was trying a little too hard to rock, but this one just happens to rock out, as the song requires, which is often – love love love the production – gorgeous sound, cinematic sound, bright, synesthetic, visual – the concept sounded like stupid bullshit to me, but now i can actually hear it, feel it, verbal expression being inane and inadequate, but as an album! with omar’s artistry… now i can believe there might be something to the concept that wasn’t put across in that horribly written essay – if nothing else, i can certainly hear and feel it as an unwanted yet partially-perversely-desired invasion of ghostly and wounded consciousness creeping subtly into someone’s sanctuary from some other dimension

wax simulacra, the only song i heard before this listen now fits perfectly in context – i like amp, but i LOVE bedlam, bursting, rich, hallucinogenic, some parts merzbowian, great use of distortion – holy shit, it's rapid fire tollbooth transformed – ikey is awesome on this – goliath is orgasmic, a giant of a song – assimilating cedric's melodic bent, his blues scale in the gravity well of a rogue star, extra galactic gospel

tourniquet man is revelatory, they've never sounded quite like this before – brings to mind the mellow parts of a nevermore album – certainly also recalls the sublime slow songs from previous albums, asilos, miranda, etc. – mainly is a vehicle for fiendish vocal deformation – been so long since the last time they slayed me with new, polished material, i forgot how weird and inventive they are – so used to the old stuff

thomas pridgen is crushing it – drum sound isn't as devastating as it was on deloused, unfortunately, but is meatier than on amputechture – a testament to omar's confidence/ego to delegate a drummer of pridgen’s skill to a role that subservient – maybe why jon left, wasn’t content to be a slave – omar is pharaoh, though, you know? he builds large – has the gall to make foundations with guitars – long long album, like a tantric orgasm – ourobourus throws me for a loop, another sound i didn't know the band was capable of – speed metal? reminding me of megadeth – trouble processing, then it gets into another orgasmic chorus, yes! soulful sound parsed through technical devices, techniques, manipulation, like the twitch of a finger or the dissection of a waveform 

i'm wondering if soothsayer is sampled from some portable recorder in omar's travels – seriously, this music makes me see crazy things, moreso than what i see without the mars volta, it's like they're tugging on archetypal strings that resonate inside me – not listening to the words, but it's so expressive on every level, every instrument, every sound, every tweak – continuing to make use of horns, mind-boggling flute interludes – juan with his slash and burn bass, a machete – totally omar guitars – i don't care what anyone says, i love his playing – i’ll take his inimitable style over a more polished technician any day – not that omar isn’t technical, but he’s about as far from textbook as you can get – the lead – cedric and omar as leads – strange combination, sometimes complimentary, sometimes perverse, always fascinating

goddayum, a new album from this band never fails to inspire – now i want to record great music again – fantastic stuff – i don't think any future album can affect me like frances and deloused, due to them being in that golden oldies age, when everything was perfect and innocent, but their latest record is probably as good as anything they've ever done, and that's saying something