Show us the last thing you bought.
I am totally going to take a nap at lunch.
1 hour and 19 minutes to go.
I use Google Earth at work. And usually, it'll start out work-related, but then I end up jumping all over the globe. Typically, I go to Egypt, London or the Bay Area. Ok. Getting back to work...
/
OK, show of hands: how many of y'all reading this have dropped acid? Strangely enough, considering my interests in neurology and altered states of consciousness, I never have. Nope. Not once. A friend of mine once said that I acted as though I were on acid all the time, just by default. Therefore, I've always been afraid that eating a tab or two might, paradoxically, make me normal. Can't have that now, can we?
Well, thanks to London, Ontario's Golden Death Music, you do not need to resort to illegal pharmaceuticals to experience seriously altered states--I'm talking the kind that can potentially mutate you into a Homo erectus or a telekinetic, maggotlike far-future form, so be careful when listening. Also, if you're forced to take a piss test at your job, do not be surprised if traces of Golden Death Music's stunningly beautiful first album, Ephemera Blues, turn up in your urine. This is the kind of bizarre, edgy, yet still tranquil music that will permeate your entire being after a few listens, lighting up your chakra, opening your Third Nostril, and perhaps transforming your pineal gland.
Golden Death Music is singer/songwriter Michael Ramey, but the album sounds as though it's been composed by a whole studio full of musicians. Nope. It's all Michael Ramey, who has written and recorded every song himself--a sizable achievement, since Ephemera Blues has a very large sound. Mixing elements of Pink Floyd, Donovan, 13th Floor Elevators, Legendary Pink Dots, Radiohead, and Jethro Tull into a swirling, multicolored and multitextured album, Ramey has created a record that literally defines the word "psychedelic." Though most songs are primarily driven by acoustic guitar and vocals, drifting in and out and through these primary elements like noctilucent clouds are eerie synths, glitchy electronic touches, flutes, cellos, electric guitars, horns, and heavily-reverbed backing vocals. Though the sounds all blend together nicely to create a languid, sleepy texture, all instruments are still distinct and nicely arranged in space, which makes this album a wonderfully immersive headphones experience. Coloured waves of sound will fill your mind with disembodied bliss...and best of all, there's no nasty come-down or flashbacks to worry about!
Much like Pink Floyd, Golden Death Music acknowledges that melody is the keystone of any piece, and Ephemera Blues is built on a solid foundation of melody and songwriting. Ramey's lyrics are often rather dark, as on the album closer "Into the Ocean"--"Throw yourself into the water / Feel the changed and tainted ocean / Let the damaged waves caress you / Feel the change"--but not morbid. In fact, there is an airy lightness to this album that gives it the feeling of a peaceful near-death experience and greatly justifies the name Golden Death Music. "Waking Nightmare" may be constructed from a tense, unnerving electro-glitch base, but the melody itself and the vocals are quiet and pretty, as though Ramey is observing the waking nightmare of life from the stance of someone who's left it all behind. Even "Lost in Violence," my favorite track on the album, manages to depict our earthly hell with a relaxed peacefulness.
Speaking of Pink Floyd, Ramey is one hell of a good guitar-player, and his acoustic guitar work will no doubt remind you a lot of David Gilmour. There are no guitar solos in his songs, however: they are trim, economical tracks that usually measure about four to six minutes in length--just long enough to let you lose yourself in them without becoming overlong or tedious.
In many ways, Golden Death Music's Ephemera Blues is musical theosophy. Much like the literary work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Golden Death Music gathers together elements from many, many sources and attempts to synthesize them into a mystical, transcendent, syncretic unity. However, unlike theosophy, Michael Ramey actually succeeds. Whereas Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled was a hefty tome of absolutely insane religio-babble, Ephemera Blues is a tight, complex, but manageable assemblage of musical concepts and ideas that really will make you feel as though you've tapped into the Pistis Sophia, the gnostic truth, the one-ness, behind the confusion of reality. And it will bring you the peace of musical enlightenment.
Every once in a while, i like to make pancakes at three am. and then you can find me the next day sweating bullets at the local gym. i always wonder while everyone's staring at me, is it my ass in the spandex? no, most definitely not. they're wondering how many pancakes i ate at three am.
Have just discovered that the company I work for has blocked all the BBC's live music players on the web so I can no longer listen to BBC 6 music while I work. (Or Radio 4 news programmes which is kind of important as a journalist.)
Classic FM isn't blocked though, what are they trying to say?
And what is next banning iPod's at your desk?
Today I helped my friend Jen at her work place at Edgewood to package letters for their many donors and such, was fun.. over 1500 letters were to be sent out. It's a really cool place helping at risk kids and my my the building they work in is soooo great! very historic it was once a Victorian orphanage at one point a great one too! After which I had lunch with Monk( the asian body guard I shot) at that lunch I met a Stylist whose responsible for training models for runway and such.. whoot! he does it for a very good cause, he takes at risk girls and train them to become high fashion models, cool guy lots of link ups too and I may be shooting some of his models... whoot!! urgh got my tickets to a charity fashion show in which Monk will participate, his first runway show. Got to support my friends.. urgh bad thing its on the 2nd of August the day that work will be having the manditory friends and family.. I'll work but I have to leave early.. this show is a great place for me to do some networking for sure...
after that went back to helping at Edgewood and I got a cute bookmark for helping!
and then after that I did a photoshoot.. this was done with one light only as opposed to my usual two.. love the effect!!
When i shampoo, I put the clumps of hair that so graciously fall into my hands on the shower wall. Although many think it's disgusting, it's actually quite genius, and keeps my drain from clogging.
I had written a large piece for the ending, far well to this space, but I saved it on a different laptop, and then I formatted that hard drive. Upside is that i have a new imac... also a new addition to my collection of stuff, a new all in one media internet, and data device, That is uber-sextacular... in the way that my new Imac was g4 power book sexy but with sweet tits, this new device allows me to check my email from bed. I have truly become one of the swine. Iam in love with my own decadence. But know in your heart that i have experienced the emptiness of this lifestyle. I am often reminded of what Roger Corless once wrote, he states looking for happiness in the comsumption of the material was like "... trying to satisfy the hunger by taping sandwiches to all over my body. "
Fucking Buddhists.
