Haven't upped any music lately because I don't have any music on my HD. I sent out my extra HD to get replaced and now my enire music collection is on a 3 year old ipod that I'm hoping doesn't die before my replacement HD arrives.

So I'll be doing this for a little while, which is posting links to other blogs that have amazing posts.

First up: this mega post from a no-longer running blog complete with some of these albums (some links have expired, hopefully you all can find what you really want here)

1000 Travels Of Jawaharlal - Owari Wa Konai
1905 - EP
1905 - Voice
7654 Stories - S/T

A Fine Boat, That Coffin!The Second Nail
Able Baker Fox - Voices
Ache Emelie - S/T
Adonis Battlefield - S/T 7"
Adonis Battlefield/D'Amore - Split 10"
Adorno - Demo
The Album Leaf - Red Tour EP
Algernon Cadwallader - Demo
Algernon Cadwallader - Hot Green
Algernon Cadwallader - Some Kind Of Cadwallader
Amanda Woodward - La Decadence De La Decadence
Amanda Woodward - Meurt La Soif bw Un Peu D'etoffe
Amanda Woodward - Picture Disc Demo
Amanda Woodward - Pleine de grâce
Amanda Woodward - Ultramort
Ampere - All Our Tomorrows End Today
An Arrow In Flight - Various Methods And Movements
Andtheywillriot! - Kick Up The Leaves, This Is Autumn
Angel Hair - Pregnant With The Senior Class
Angora Static - 7"
Angor Static - S/T
Angstzustand - Malen Nach Zahlen
Angstzustand - Ohne Dich Sind Wir Allein
Arab On Radar - Soak The Saddle
Arab On Radar - The Stolen Singles
Arab On Radar - Yahweh Or The Highway
Arsen AKA König Der Monster - No Gods...Only Monsters
The Assistant - We'll Make The Roads By Walking
Aussitôt Mort - 6 Songs
Aussitôt Mort - Demo
Aussitôt Mort - Montuenga
Aussitôt Mort/Balboa - Split

Balboa - S/T
Behead The Prophet, No Lord Shall Live - I Am That Great And Fiery Force
Belle Epoque - Demo
Books Lie - Hall Of Fame Of Fire
Books Lie - It A Weapon
Braid - Frame & Canvas
Bright Calm Blue - 7"
Bright Calm Blue - Assymetry Set
Bright Calm Blue - Direct Approach for Casual Conversation

Camera Obscura - Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi
Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country
Camera Obscura - Underachievers Please Try Harder
Catena Collapse - Demo
Cats And Cats And Cats - Sweet Drunk Everyone
Cats And Cats And Cats - Victorialand
Cease Upon The Capital - S/T
Celeste - Nihilist(s)
Choke Their Rivers With Our Dead - Tour CD
Cocoon - My Friends All Died In A Plane Crash
Crocus - The Worst Kind Of Joy Is Hope

Daitro - Des Cendres, Je Me Consumme
Daitro - Laisser Vivre Les Squelettes
Damezumari - No Hugging, No Learning
Damezumari - S/T
Damezumari - The Politics Of Lonely
Daniel Striped Tiger - Condition
Dead Like Dallas - A Story As Old As Time
Death of Anna Karina - New Liberalistic Pleasures
Death of Anna Karina - S/T
Des Ark - Loose Lips Sink Ships
Devar-Toi - S/T
Die, Emperor! Die! - Demo
Dolcim - I Am Casper
Dominic - S/T
Dot Flash Line - Easter Demo

Eaves - Höhenangst
Einermusstot - Großstadtraeume
Elements Of Need - S/T 7"
Elements Of Need/Jasmine - Split 7"
Encyclopedia Of American Traitors - Discography
End Of A Year/Kids Explode - Split
Envy - All The Footprints You've Ever Left And The Fear Expecting Ahead
Envy - Insomniac Doze

Fall On Deaf Years - We Can Do Anything!
Fieldtree - S/T 7"
Final - Dead Air
Fleeting Joys - Despondent Transponder
Flowers In The Attic - S/T
Forget Cassettes - Instruments of Action
Four Hundred Years - S/T 7"
Funeral Diner - Difference Of Potential
Funeral Diner - Doors Open EP
Funeral Diner - Is Dead
Funeral Diner - Swept Under
Funeral Diner - The Underdark
Funeral Diner - The Wicked
Funeral Diner - The World Of The Forms
Funeral Diner - Various Songs From Splits
Funeral Diner/Evylock - Split
Funeral Diner/Nexus - Split LP
Funeral Diner/Shivering - Split LP

Gantz - 318 366.2
Gospel - The Moon Is A Dead World
The Grand Color Crayon - Ice Eaters

Han Shan - S/T
Harriet the Spy - Unfuckwithable
Harvey Milk - Life...The Best Game In Town
Her Breath On Glass - We Aimed Straight Down
Hugs - S/T
Hugs - The Tarpit

I Hate Myself - 2 Songs
I Hate Myself - 3 Songs LP
I Hate Myself - 4 songs
I Hate Myself - Live In Tampa 1997
I Hate Myself/Twelve Hour Turn - Split
I Have Dreams - Demo
Index For Potential Suicide - Sex, Violence, Whatever (Discography)

Jenny Piccolo - Information Battle To Denounce The Genocide
Jiyuna - This Desolate Veil

Karysun - Interceptor
Kidcrash - New Ruins
Kill The Man Who Questions - Pigeon English EP
Kite Flying Society - Discography
Kite Flying Society - S/T

La Dispute - Here, Hear
The Last Forty Seconds - LP

Majority Rule - Emergency Numbers
Malady - S/T
Manrae - Pacata Hibernia
Mara'akate - A Significant Portion Of Their Discography
Maths/Throats - Split
Men As Trees - Six Waves In 2007
Men As Trees - Weltschmerz
Mineral - The Power Of Falling
Mogwai - Batcat EP
My Own Private Alaska - S/T
My Precious - The Fine Line

Needletail/Eucalypt - Split
Neil Perry - Discography
Nervous Light OF Sunday - Jakushinkoukei
Noisy Sins Of The Insect - Discography

Oh My God Elephant - S/T
Oh, Apollo! - Twin Peaks
Old Canes - Early Morning Hymns
On The Might Of Princes - Sirens
Orchid - Chaos Is Me
Orchid - Dance Tonight! Revolution Tomorrow
Orchid - Gatefold
Orchid - Totality
Owltian Mia - The Greatest Games Ever Played

The Paddington Bear Affair - S/T
Palatka - The End Of Irony
Pg.99 - Document #8
Pg.99 - Document #14
Pg.99/Majority Rule - Document #12
Pine - Days Slipping By
Play The Piano Drunk Like A Percussion Instrument Until Your Fingers Begin To Bleed A Bit - 7''
Please Inform The Catain This Is A Hijack - Defeat Or Humiliate The United States Of America
Pocahaunted - Beast That You Are
Portrait - Discography
Portraits Of Past - 01010101
Pyramids - Through The Hourglass
Pyramids/Violent Breakfast - Split

Quebec - Together We Have Grown, Together We Shall Bloom
Quest For Quintana Roo - New Disorder Records
Quiet Steps - S/T

Raccoo-oo-oon - S/T
Raccoo-oo-oon - The Cave of Spirits Forever
Racebannon - IV: Acid or Blood
Racebannon - Satan's Kickin' Yr Dick In
Raein - Nati da Altri Padri
Rapider Than Horsepower - Rapider Than The World
Rapider Than Horsepower - Stage fright, Stage Fright
Rentamerica/Agna Moraine's Autobiography - Split 7"
Reversal Of Man - Discography
Reversal Of Man - Revolution Summer
Rites Of Spring - End On End
Russian Circles - Enter
Russian Circles - Upper Ninety
Ryu Vs. Ken - Suffer, Surrender EP

Saetia - A Retrospective
Samurai Tod - Yokuzuna Party
Senneval - Mi Padre El Hondero De La Pistola
September - Erasmia Pucella 10"
Serena Joy - Ours Will Be A Lonely Battle
Sharks Keep Moving - S/T
She Died Real Pretty - Carpe Diem Is Dead
She Spits Macabre - S/T
Silbato - S/T
Single State Of Man - S/T
Sofy Major - S/T
The Sons Of Saturn - The Red
Sounds Like Violence - Unreleased
St. Alban's Kids - Tales Of Late Night Excursions Into Urban Wastelands (A Political Economy Of Noise)
Staircase - The World Of The Forms Vinyl
Steeples - EP
Steeples - Summer 07 Demo
Still Life - Slow Children At Play And Beyond
Stop It!!! - 7 Song Demo
Stop It!!! - Self Made Maps
Street Smart Cyclist - S/T
Suffocate For Fuck Sake - S/T
Suffocate For Fucks Sake - Blazing Fires And Helicopters On The Frontpage Of The Newspaper. There's A War Going On And I'm Marching In Heavy Boots
Sugatown Cabaret - The First Time I Lost The Road Map
Suis La Lune - Heir
Swallow! Swallow! Splinter! - Demo

Takaru - There Can Be Only None
Take Down Your Art - Demo
Take Down Your Art - Unknown Album
Ten Grand - This is the Way to Rule
Tera Melos - Drugs To The Dear Youth
Texas Is The Reason - Do You Know Who You Are?
Thee Oh Sees - Peanut Butter Oven EP
This Scares Me - 7"
Tipping Canoe - S/T
To The North - Landscapes
Toru Okada - Eight Songs
Tunes For Bears To Dance To - Asking In Askance
Twelve Hour Turn - Perfect Progress, Perfect Destruction

VA-Confuse Yr Idols - A Tribute To Sonic Youth
Verse En Coma - Rialto

...Who Calls So Loud - 12''
...Who Calls So Loud - S/T
With Horses In Her Eyes - Prologue
Wow, Owls! - Pick Your Patterns

Yossarian Is Drowning - S/T
You And I - Discography
You And I - The Curtain Falls


Can all be found here:


http://whitethrashin.blogspot.com/2009/01/mind-blowingly-fucking-insane-crazy.html

Links are pretty much mediafire . As you can see its also mostly emo and screamo, but there are some other things in there worth checking out.

I want the quiet moments of a party girl

i haven't been away so long but i kept you waiting. i haven't been away so long seems some things have changed.but bad habits still make best friends. aren't we just like envelopes? keep i ntouch with my hand. have you met the new guys? let's play who here would have gone nazi? let's get it on. i'm sorry i want to die. do you still want to die? let's get it on. let's drive to alaska.let's drive to alaska. let's drive to alaska. it really is a lonely life leaving and ignoring messages. all the necklacing. let's drive to alaska. let's drive to alaska. let's drive to alaska. oh i enjoy myself. i'm sorry i want to die. do you still want to die? let's get it on. o don't we all saunter innocently enoughlike, love as a battlefield video.


By Owls

Ways to spot emotional manupulators

In keeping with the spirit of this blog, loosely, I think this is a good read. This article basically informs about the more obvious signs that someone is trying to manipulate you or someone else emotionally.

http://www.friedgreentomatoes.org/articles/emotional_manipulation.php

Off Minor - Staring Down the Barrel of Limited Options

post-morbidity, pre-mortality, the dying proceeds and the living intercede
on the behalf of your best interests as we perceive them
and so you sign this document stating the following 'please let me go'
post-morbidity, pre-mortality, facing this inevitably
that i could never begin to understand
what is it you see staring down the barrel of limited options?
what goes through your mind as you make the decision to end all decisions?
never say everything will be ok

Today, during a break from feeling, I reflected on the style of my prose. Exactly how do I write? I had, like many others, the perverted desire to adopt a system and a norm. It's true that I wrote before having the norm and the system, but so did everyone else.
Analyzing myself this afternoon, I've discovered that my stylistic system is based on two principles, and in the best tradition of the best classical writers I immediately uphold two these two principles as general foundations of all good style: 1)to express what one feels exactly as it is felt - clearly, if it is clear; obscurely, if obscure; confusedly, if confused - and 2) to understand that grammar is an instrument and not a law...
In establishing usage, grammar makes valid and invalid divisions. For example, it divides verbs into transitive and intransitive. But a man who knows how to say what he says must sometimes make a transitive verb intransitive so as to photograph what he feels instead of seeing it in the dark, like the common lot of human animals. If I want to say I exist, I'll say, 'I am.' If I want to say I exist as a separate entity, I'll say , 'I am myself.' But if I want to say I exist as an entity that addresses and acts on itself, exercising the divine function of self-creation, then I'll make to be into a transitive verb. Triumphantly and anti-grammatically supreme, I'll speak of 'amming myself'. I'll have stated a philosophy in just two words. Isn't this infinitely preferable to saying nothing in forty sentences? What more can we demand from philosophy and diction?
Let grammar rule the man who doesn't know how to think what he feels. Let it serve those who are in command when they express themselves.

- Fernando Pessoa

Funny enough, a few weeks ago I was considering why I love reading this mans writing and listening to prose rappers like Sole, Doseone, Alias, or Why?. For me, I came to the conclusion that most of what they say doesn't beat around the bush with literary devices so much as it emphatically expresses whatever idea or feeling is said. I was pretty much on the verge of thinking there is order in the universe when I began to read this passage by Pessoa because of the realization i had weeks ago.

Immortal Technique speaks on a few things.

"A true revolutionary loves his people more than he hates his oppressor."

"When you hate, you see red, instead of seeing things in color and seeing the dimensions and perspectives that they have. When you hate, your hands shake instead of being steady and your aim is off."

Support your favorite bands

We're not this frivolous rich band. People think that we're insanely wealthy. I live fucking paycheck-to-paycheck just like everyone else and I work really damn hard. Our band works damn hard and we just want to insure that releases are paid for, not by the listener, but that the expense is paid for. It's not free to record a record. That time isn't free to get all the stuff done. Mind you, we're a hands on band, so things are still pretty affordable for us to do things. But we do everything ourselves and make sacrifices. But the label still has to pay for manufacturing, they have to pay for promoting, they have to pay for their staff making it visible and available. Regardless of how flawed the aging dinosaur that is the music industry is, there is still a base of consumerism that drives it. And you still need to be able to participate in it a little bit. Or it just becomes complete chaos. And nobody wants that. They would say they want that if they were fourteen years old and living in their parents basement, but they wouldn't say that if they had something to lose.
-Jacob Bannon

Suddenly I'm all alone in the world. I see all this from the summeit of a mental rooftop. I'm alone in the world. TO see is to be distant. To see clearly is to halt. To analyse is to be ofreighn. No one who passes by touches me. Around me there is only air. I'm so isolated I can feel the distance between me and my suit. I'm a child in a nightshirt carrying a dimly lit candle and traversing a huge empty house. Living shadows surround me - only shadows, offspring of the stiff furniture and of the light I carry. Here in the sunlight they surround me but are people.

Rationalize my sadness? What for, if rationalization take effort? Sad people can't make an effort.

- Fernando Pessoa

Elder

Emotive Hardcore band from philly with some great socially conscious lyrics and beautiful instrumentation. NOt much more you could really want from a band. Not much more I'd want at least. I'm gonna try and get something from these guys soon, I think you'll want to buy it as well after listening to just the first two songs on their myspace.



http://www.myspace.com/elderphiladelphia

Fieldtree - FIeldtree EP

Selftitled EP from a 90's emo band I wish I had more from. I play these two songs about 3 times every week or so. Love them.





http://www.mediafire.com/?2jotr5yzw2j

Tim Kinsella deserves a theistic following for this.

This is written by Tim (American Football, Cap'n Jazz, Make Believe, Joan of Arc) . He basically touches on the impact music has in a very penetrating manner. Props given to the man, God Bless 'em.

Beirut. The Patriot Act. Palestine. Africa. Wal-Mart. Clear Channel. Peak oil. Global devastation. The backward talk of those in power that dominates and suffocates our cultural discourse. Overpopulation. The dawning of neo-feudalist Theocracy in America. It's a busy, interesting place we've got here. Lots of information aimed at us. The hidden hand of power.

But beyond our control, dark energy, string theory, conceptions of an infinite mutiverse render any issues of free obsolete. We are really only allowed questions. WE can't understand anything. How could we? We live at the lip of the bubble of understanding of our own designs - never not curious, and never able to poke through.

So my point - I do have one - is that in our world, the most basic requirement we share is kept in balance only if it's shaken in many directions at the same time. And what can any of us do to help rectify the situation? We must integrate our politics into our lifestyle, acknowledge that every bridge, hook, melody and sales strategy has political demensions.

In short, I am asking that every band that appeared in the August 2006 issue of Alternative Press break up.

Sorry.

Desperate times require desperate measures. There's no good reason why "ex-rockstar" shouldn't be the most common job in the future. It's obvious from flipping through an issue of this magazine that there are too many bands, all trying in different ways to look and sound like each other. It's unsustainable. Why don't you guys all save yourself the inevitable worry and humiliation the future holds, break up now, and be the first mass movement in cutural history to self-consciously commit suicide?

There are pictures of maybe half a dozen people in that issue that I know, trust, respect and consider my friends. And I'm sorry to ask this of you guys, some of you have helped us in the past, and I appreciate it, but our country needs you. Your bands have to break up. You guys on the cover (one of you was 13 in 2001, so you're now at draft age), we need you to quit.

Even you guys that just had a thumbnail band photo in an ad, sorry. Collateral damage, I guess. However you each choose to understand it, let's all agree we need to draw the line clearly. Every band whose name is even mentioned in the August 2006 issue of AP must break up immediately. So, Cute Is What We Aim For, consider your new aim ansering the call of our country. Underoath, pledge allegiance to the freedom of your fellow citizens. Circa Survive, you ran an add, and I'm sorry, that's enough. You must not survive.

I know this seems like a bummer to you guys, but think about it. Throughout history, music has been at the center of every culture. Music is what people have always had between them to help each other understand how to live. The values of a culture are hiddin within its music. And I dont mean that in a Christian-rock or straight-edge way. I mean our culture is not only sick, but its taking the whole world down with it, and its symptoms are in song structures and rituals of performance.

The simplistic, sensational, emotionalistim of soaring crescendos - whose success or failure relate only to how familiar they seem on first listen - must become tired and redundant by design. When you reach your saturation point and can no longer react to these octave chords' urgent demands, then what? Will all displays of emotion seem silly? Mustn't it be true, like the boy who cried wolf, that every feigned-spontaneous emotional signifier thrust upon you by some band will just deaden your sense of empathy in the future? Perhaps even in a real-world situation, with real-world consequences? If TV and reality can be so interwined, past signifiers of rebellion is rebellion, and this is punk rock, why not?

Don't the sensationalist requirements of vicarious catharsis ask so much, that our empathy will be spent before it ever has a chance to blossom? I mean, I might not be able to understand when someone is hurting - and in turn know how to help them - if my formative experiences with understanding emotions is via these fashionable men and women.

But it's not too late. If the bands break up, maybe we can have music again in the future, and we will be able to hear it for what it is - not what it's being sold as.

I know this is a lot to ask of bands. And no one 22-year-old New Jersey kid is to blame - it's the design that is flawed. But one can't stay quiet. One has a responsibility to stand up for what one sees as god and right in the world, and if my plea can make a difference in even one young band's life - if just one band breaks up - my work here will have been worth it.

Fyodor Dostoevsky never stops winning

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

-Fyodor Dostoevsky, "Notes from the Underground"

Jacob Bannon of Converge, spitting some knowledge

It's interesting you say you strive to do your own thing. A lot of musicians - just for example, an interview I had with Andy Williams of Every Time I Die. He was very adamant about the respect he had for your band and your D.I.Y. attitude. Having the longevity you've had as a band, what do you think about the D.I.Y. scene now with technology such as the Internet either ruining it, or in fact helping people do things that were much harder to do back in the day.

The world of independent music doesn't exist of the level that it did, say, 15 years ago. 20 years ago - 15 years ago. Things are just dramatically different. Things are no longer truly underground. Underground culture, counterculture music, has been co-opted and packaged and sold as safe rebellion to a lot of kids. A lot of independent music doesn't have the bite and power that it used to have. It doesn't have a message - whether it be a personal message or political message, an environmental message, anything. A lot of that fight is gone. A lot of that will is gone. It's not to say that there aren't these bands that are embodying those key things and speaking up for something, whether it be artistic or social relevance. It's few and far between. There's more bands playing the fantastic level. They're role playing. They want to be in a large band. They want to play heavy music, but there's no message. It's decoration. It doesn't really go past the sound. There's no sort of personality or character behind it. That's a sad thing to me. Personally I wouldn't want to go out there and play music and share ideas with people if I had nothing to say. That's kind of how we've always been as a band. The day we aren't relevant anymore to ourselves, that we no longer have something collectively to put out there that we want to share with people, that will be the day we stop making music. I find that to be an interesting thing. Now there are bands that come out there and they get management and booking and they run around and merchandise themselves to hell - there's not really a message to what they really do. That's sad to me. I hope that they find their voice with those bands that are missing that. That's definitely the difference in punk rock or D.I.Y. mentality now. D.I.Y. mentality now is setting up a MySpace music player and adding friends. It's not going out on tour and booking their own shows. It's playing to 10 people at a VFW Hall. It's learning to find your own voice and find what you love in music. There really isn't much of that anymore. [People care more about] their fame and notoriety rather than their substances. That's sad. At least to me it is.

Going into the first decade of music, how is Deathwish Inc. going, and what do you foresee in the future?

Just like our band, I take everything one day at a time. Our intention was to create a label home for ourselves and our friends needed a label to help them. A lot of us had bad label experience. We wanted to try and create a label that was ethically sound. We still face a lot of the same hardships that any of the other label does. Labels are always financially strained, but you do your best with what you have. In the last ten years, we've been able to employ some great people, and release some fantastic music that I find to be extremely important and extremely relevant. I'm honored to work for those bands. That's really all there is to it. I don't really look at growth. I don't have some grand plan, besides that I just wanted to release some powerful music that moves me, that hopefully moves other people that are involved in the hardcore/punk rock community. It's a bit of diverse, and there's a lot of strength in that diversity. I'd just like to be able to share that with people. It doesn't really go any further than that for me and the rest of the guys that help run the label. We just want to create a really great environment.

Do you think there is a substance of album art that has been lost over the years? People trying to be ironic or cheesy or whatever?

My only criticism of the independent music world as a whole might be that nobody waits anymore. Nobody takes their time to develop something. There's always this mad dash. Some sort of finish line to create some sort of piece of art to get a release out to do this or to do that, before a band really finds that voice, finds what they really want to be. They crack under the stress of that, and aren't really happy with what they put out there. I just wish people would take a little more time in developing their ideas. That's just for me, as an outsider, as a fan of music, purchasing records, experiencing them.


What do you think about vinyl making a resurgence with the catalog Converge has?

It's not much of a resurgence for me. We've been doing vinyl since we started this band. I released our first 7" in 1991. I released our first 12" in 1994. We finally got it out in mid-'94. It's not a resurgence to me, because we've been doing it this whole time. To people who are outside that vinyl world and haven't been taken that much interest into it until now, you'd have to ask them that. We've always felt that it is an interesting media. It's been a media that's always called to punk rock, called to hardcore, just independent music in general. Number one, it's crude, it's physical. It's archaic in some ways, but it's also very beautiful. All those qualities relate to punk rock in some way.



I know we hit on this earlier in the interview, but if there's one thing that all these bands are walking away with from Converge, and what you've been doing, what is the one thing, musically or a state of mind, or the way you've run this band, what is this Smithsonian thing people should look at in your history?

It wouldn't be any sort of moral, or ethical or political statement. It would be a really simple thing - just leave your own mark in this world. That's it. Let it be a positive one. It's really, truly as simple as that. If you stick to that, and you stay focused on that as an individual and the positive aspects of life and positive music...just positive anything. There's so much negativity in this world, I just don't want us to help spread that. I want us to take negative experiences as people and help turn that into positive music and positive art. I want to be able to help people. That's been my way of being able to leave what I would say is a positive mark in this world. I've been in this band since I was 13 years old. I'm 33 now. That's a long time. I've spent more than half my life in this community giving everything I have to it. It's not for some weird ass fame or ego or anything else like that. I don't have that. I don't care about that. I'm not rich. I'm not trying to get rich. If it was about money, I wouldn't be in this community, because there is none. I wouldn't run an independent record label because there's no financial gain in that. Things pay for themselves, and you get by. It's about doing something positive. Being able to sleep at night with a good conscience, like I'm being able to do something fulfilling to me, and hopefully meaningful to other people. That's really it. If I can leave that mark and be a positive, than I have done something right. There are a lot of people that are either dormant or doing something negative in this world. They can either take that and use it in their band philosophies, or they can take that and use it in their lives. That's really that. It should be that way. It should be that simple.

Well here's one hardcore band from LA

Rotting Out

http://www.myspace.com/rottingouthc

Pretty good shit. I love "Positive Views". Its precisely why I feel pessimism is a more optimal approach to life.

Couple things:

Anyone in LA got any information about great hardcore bands doing a DIY sorta thing or just great and local? Myspace, facebook, any sorta profile is welcome. Also if you're in one of those bands, let me know. I'd be glad to promote your music here and even attend a show.

This also goes for indie bands. Hardcore and indie, probably 2 genres that will be my favorite for a while.

Also, if anyone has any Fieldtree work aside from their self titled Ep, PLEASE send it to me. PLEASE. Seriously. PLEASE.

Ken mode get 'rights' of their music back

Exclusive: KEN Mode Get the Rights Back to Their Songs on MySpace, Call for Change in Website’s Dispute System Following Copyright Battle
11/25/2009 By Jason Schreurs

Just days after we reported that Winnipeg, MB noise rockers KEN Mode were denied the right to upload their songs by MySpace, who cited ownership rights by Warner Music Group, the songs on the band's MySpace page have been reinstated.

In an interview with KEN Mode singer/guitarist Jesse Matthewson, he said he received the good news from MySpace on Sunday (November 20), two days after Exclaim! first contacted the social-networking site with a press query about the situation.

The message to Matthewson said the previously blocked songs were "currently active on your profile and your privileges are currently active." The message gave no explanation as to why the band were initially denied access to their songs, for which they hold exclusive copyright, nor did it offer any kind of apology. "If you have further issues regarding blocked media, please let us know," concluded the message.

While Matthewson is relieved to have control over his band's songs again, he is still fuming at MySpace for taking down the songs in the first place and the website's frustrating dispute forms, which he tried to fill out no less than 25 times over the course of a few days. He finally was able to contact MySpace, but believes their swift action was due to the negative press the website drew from the situation.

"I'm glad that MySpace fixed the problem as quickly as they did, but I question what would have happened had Exclaim! not gotten involved," says Matthewson. "The fact that MySpace has a dispute form that doesn't work — and I've read accounts of other bands going through the same thing and just gave up because of it — is very frustrating. I'm not sure whether that was a MySpace Canada issue or what... but to have the dispute form indefinitely offline? Weak."

When Exclaim! contacted MySpace about KEN Mode's situation on Friday (November 18), we received only an email from an unnamed "MySpace Copyright Agent," saying that the band should contact them directly and provide their MySpace info, something Matthewson had already repeatedly done.

"Unfortunately we cannot offer assistance to any third parties on behalf of a MySpace member. Please have the band you're referring to contact us directly for any assistance they might need with their profile," the copyright agent emailed to Exclaim!

Matthewson speculates that the copyright issue may have something to do with the band's former label, Escape Artist Records. In fact, that label's MySpace, as well as those of Escape Artist bands such as Collapsar, In Pieces, Blunderbuss and Theory of Ruin, has recently had songs removed from its MySpace profile. Matthewson spoke to Escape Artist co-owner Gordon Conrad, also a publicist at Relapse Records, about the possibility of the link to bankruptcy proceedings of the label's former distributor, Lumberjack Mordam Music Group, which Warner seems to have had some sort of stake in, perhaps in a creditor situation. However, the direct link to Warner is still unknown.

"Neither KEN Mode, nor Escape Artist Records, gave away any rights to WMG in any way, so we don't understand why this would be happening," says Matthewson.

Steve Waxman, director of publicity at Warner Music Canada is not familiar with KEN Mode, nor Escape Artist Records and its other bands, but he did say that the problem seemed to be from the MySpace ends of things and he doesn't believe Warner needs to take any action at this point.

"It could be a glitch in MySpace with regards to how they have publishing set up. And you don't know and I don't know, and none of us know, if this is the Warner record company that MySpace is talking about [when they send out the copyright notices], or if this is the publishing arm that they are talking about," says Waxman. "I don't think anyone here [at Warner] would be inclined to contact MySpace, just because it's not an issue for a company, and that company in this case is Warner; if it's not an issue for them, they're not going to get in touch with MySpace to find out what is going on."

But the Warner Music Group copyright notice is not an isolated incident. Besides the many independent labels and bands previously associated with Lumberjack Mordam that are experiencing trouble, some unrelated artists are also being affected by the same copyright errors. Last month, we told you about how British singer Edwyn Collins was battling with MySpace and Warner over user rights for his hit song “A Girl Like You.” And the now-defunct '90s alt-rock band Pure, based in Vancouver, also recently had their songs blocked by a Warner copyright issue and posted about it on their MySpace page.

In a blog post, Pure's former keyboard player, Mark Henning, wrote: "Starting last year, I noticed certain songs were no longer streamable on the MySpace player. Pretty much all the music that was recorded while we were signed to Warner Bros has been removed. Then, earlier this year, I attempted to post a song from the Extra Purestrial EP, which was later amalgamated by Mammoth Records as part of the USA release of Generation Six Pack. I figured it shouldn't be a problem as it wasn't part of the Warner Music period, yet it triggered some copyright software which blocked us from uploading any more songs to this page."

As far as offsetting any bad PR is concerned, Waxman believes it's not Warner who should be doing damage control. "I think it's a PR issue for MySpace, frankly," he says. "Until you just told me we were getting bad PR, we didn't know about it."

Matthewson does agree that MySpace needs to step it up in the customer service department and monitor their form emails and copyright notices so smaller artists like KEN Mode don't get criminalized for merely trying to upload their songs.

"If they're going to allow majors to do massive sweeps like the one they apparently did with their copyright filters, they need to be able to handle the myriad disputes that will occur, not just lead them to a page that crashes," says Matthewson. "They could also spare everyone the accusatory language when things are so automated. It's pretty awesome being treated like a criminal when you've done absolutely nothing wrong. This might sound like I'm whining, but the language they used only made me furious; and then to have them remove a blog I did about the situation unfolding... I was ready for war."

Matthewson also has some strong advice for any other bands that run into the same kind of troubles while trying to upload their songs to MySpace.

"I encourage any other bands or labels that have their copyrights being claimed to draw attention to it with as many people as possible. Get in touch with MySpace immediately via e-mail/fax/phone, and get in touch with any media links you have. Let people know you're pissed off. I think that's the quickest way to resolve these ridiculous occurrences."

TO ANY BLOGGERS WITH MUSIC BLOGS, PLEASE POST THIS TO HELP SPREAD WORD SO THAT OTHER BANDS MAY BE ABLE TO RESOLVE A SIMILAR SITUATION IF THEY SHOULD BE PLACED IN ONE

NO, no I don't wanna buy you a diamond ring.

Happy Fucking Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Prayer - William S. Burroughs

Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shat out through wholesome
American guts.


Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin' lawmen,
feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for
Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where
nobody's allowed to mind their
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories-- all right let's see
your arms!

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

Really don't understand the hate for the second and third Matrix movies

They're pure genius. The writing especially. I dont care much for action, though I know it takes many a meticulous hours and time being spent so that those fighting scenes can look so god-awesome, but fuck, the writing was great. I'm watching a recorded Matrix Reloaded and I'm hearing the same revelation I had a few months ago, that there is no purpose to life, only an act warranted and justified by a result. There is no congruity unless a sequence of actions are planned to attain a sequence of results. Check out this dialogue to see exactly what I mean:



Merovingian: Hmph... I am a trafficker of information, I know everything I can. The question is, do you know why you are here?

Morpheus: We are looking for the Keymaker.

Merovingian: Oh yes, it is true. The Keymaker, of course. But this is not a reason, this is not a `why.' The Keymaker himself, his very nature, is means, it is not an end, and so, to look for him is to be looking for a means to do... what?

Neo: You know the answer to that question.

Merovingian: But do you? You think you do but you do not. You are here because you were sent here, you were told to come here and you obeyed. [Laughs] It is, of course, the way of all things. You see, there is only one constant, one universal, it is the only real truth: causality. Action. Reaction. Cause and effect.

Morpheus: Everything begins with choice.

Merovingian: No. Wrong. Choice is an illusion, created between those with power, and those without. Look there, at that woman. My God, just look at her. Affecting everyone around her, so obvious, so bourgeois, so boring. But wait... Watch - you see, I have sent her dessert, a very special dessert. I wrote it myself. It starts so simply, each line of the program creating a new effect, just like poetry. First, a rush... heat... her heart flutters. You can see it, Neo, yes? She does not understand why - is it the wine? No. What is it then, what is the reason? And soon it does not matter, soon the why and the reason are gone, and all that matters is the feeling itself. This is the nature of the universe. We struggle against it, we fight to deny it, but it is of course pretense, it is a lie. Beneath our poised appearance, the truth is we are completely out of control. Causality. There is no escape from it, we are forever slaves to it. Our only hope, our only peace is to understand it, to understand the "why". "Why" is what separates us from them, you from me. `Why' is the only real social power, without it you are powerless. And this is how you come to me, without `why,' without power. Another link in the chain. But fear not, since I have seen how good you are at following orders, I will tell you what to do next. Run back, and give the fortune teller this message: Her time is almost up. Now I have some real business to do, I will say adieu and goodbye.
Neo: This isn't over.

Merovingian: Oh yes, it is. The Keymaker is mine and I see no reason why I should give him up. No reason at all.

Persephone: Where are you going?

Merovingian: Please, ma chérie, I've told you, we are all victims of causality. I drink too much wine, I must take a piss. Cause and effect. Au revoir.

Great fucking blog: Lyrics Will Not Reach The Audience

So much music here, its insane. A lot of punk, but also some metal, and some of the subgenres punk spawned. YOu want some emo, go here. You want some fucking hardcore, go here. You want some music thats real and doesn't feel orchestrated like virtually all music now does, go here.

http://lyricswillnotreachtheaudience.blogspot.com/

Deep Puddle Dynamics

Not a whole lot that needs to be said about his album either. Its truly a landmark in my progression as a fan of music. I got it after I got Why?'s Alopecia, which was also my first anticon record. Prior to that, I wasn't even listening to rap much. I had gotten my firstAtmosphere album which was When Life Gives YOu Lemons. I actually found Why? on myspace's home page, being promoted for the release of Alopecia.

After being blown the fuck away by the honesty of Yoni of Why? I searched last.fm for a similar artist to Why? and ended up hearing Sole's first single "Bottle of Humans". After being once more blown the fuck away, I researched Tim Holland himself on wikipedia and found out he was in a group with Slug. So some time passed, and I was skeptical to get The Taste of Rain, but once I did, I couldn't stop being impressed, not even if I wanted to find their lyrics and concepts dull. One song that stood out most to me first was THe Scarecrow Speaks. I'm not one for encouraging and inspiring songs, but every verse in this song made me begin to question my inactivity at times.

Sole saying "Be what ya speak, never speak on what ya be." and "It ain't that hard but stand if ya ready to be a man" really impressed itself upon my lethargy and insecurity.

Doseone saying "I come to you with one heart, broken in two, gnashed hands, and many flaws, A MAN" and "Make you yours" and "I implore you....just think" still gives me chills to this day because so many rappers aren't willing to say they're a man, even with a flawed demeanor and being. Also "simplistically, topsoil is no sea shell full of bitter ocean body, but it can be," encapsulates the sheer ambiguity of life itself in a mere sentence.

Alias saying "I consider myself blessed when I think" really personifies the maturity of his style and the truth he effortlessly encompasses in his raps.

Slug saying "God got drunk, drove heaven into a tree, now there's no reason left for you to breathe." makes me laugh even now. Him ending his verse with "trying to speak to the class and justify the act of pointing my finger at your head and asking you what the fuck is that?" also reiterated the importance of consideration and conscious thought for me.

This all got the ball rolling for who I am now and feel I'm still growing as. This album also has its fair share of more traditional, braggadocios raps and even some well placed humor. Check this shit out.



I've also thrown in some freestyles I've gotten this past year. Two are about 5 minutes and one is.....wait for it.....30 fucking minutes. I highly suggest signing up for Sole's forum HERE for more potential exclusives like this.

Deep Puddle Dynamics - The Taste of Rain ... Why Kneel?
+ Freestyles
Mediafire

Cult of Luna - Somewhere Along the Highway

What the fuck is there to say about this album? My lack of words to express the feelings I experience while listening to this and the love I have for this band BECAUSE they made this album. Its just great.

Here's an excerpt from their wikipedia article to explain a little more about it:

Cult of Luna albums tend to focus on a theme; guitarist Erik Olofsson states in an interview that this release focuses on "Male loneliness – I was very inspired by a book by J.M. Coetzee [Life & Times of Michael K] about a man in South Africa with a hare lip. [The character] escapes from everything and lives off the earth eating only pumpkins. Johannes [Persson] had similar ideas for the lyrics about loneliness, it all has a kind of countryside vibe to it."

ANd the thing about eveything else besides the lyics is that this album stands out in a genre where you can pretty much get away with tremelo picks, predictable crescendos, and screaming vocals. These guys do a lot more than that by truly making songs that feel like they are their own, not some structure their art is adhering to.

Cult of Luna - Somewhere Along the Highway
Mediafire

Portraits of Past

Both in effort to bring more activity to this blog and help give more people great music, I'm gonna start uploading some shit. If any artists or person associated with any of the bands or musicians I post the music of, I pray you'd voice your opinion and I'll remove the music immediately.

These are the only two Portraits of Past pieces that I have, Cypress Dust Witch, their newest EP, and their self titled effort. They've had a number of older eps that came out a while ago as well as a cd with everything they released called Discography, but I don't have those. feel free to post a link if you have any.

Great screamo band though. Real music by those who feel what they're screaming and 'whining' about, as all artists should.

*********So I got an email about this shit, and because of that I am taking down the link, but the mediafire link still works, you should be able to find it by searching for 'Portraits of Past screamo mediafire'. Mediafire did take down the Cypress Dust Witch EP though, but thats like 4 songs and defnitely worth a purchase anyway, just as great as their album.

Kurt Ballou of Converge is a winner

Excerpts taken from this interview with Punknews.org



Ballou: I never had guitar lessons. Nate never did either. Maybe he had one or two as a kid, but I never had any really. My dad played a little bit of guitar, he never really taught me anything, but he did give me a chord book. I had played saxophone and piano prior to it, so I sort of transferred my musical knowledge over to guitar. I think Ben was auditioning for music schools, but he never went. We’re all just students of the artists we like who we spent listening to while we were younger and attempting to mimic what we heard on these records. When you do that you develop your ear a lot more than when you take lessons. Lessons seem to focus more on the dexterity of playing, whereas people who are self-taught have to use their ears more to decipher what they’re hearing. I think you become a more observant player that way and you also start to learn how an ensemble interacts with each other. That being said, it also forces us to reinvent the wheel a lot. There’s a lot of things we could’ve learned that would have accelerated our musical growth. I don’t think we did a truly good record till Jane Doe, which was in 2001 and we’ve been around since 1991 so in my opinion that is ten years of sucking. In the end I think it was a blessing though because we were so stubborn, idealistic or lazy, the fact that we learned to play on our own so slowly it caused us all to develop our own style.



Converge is challenging to listen to if you’re not familiar with the certain genre, but what I’ve learned to do over time is to take those inaccessible harsh sounds and put them into a more accessible song format. Not because we’re trying to be a pop band or anything. Like to me a song used to be like ten, fifteen or twenty riffs per song, but now there’s only three or four that are assembled more in a verse chorus, bridge chorus kind of way. Even though they’re weird riffs, they have a more memorable format.


Ballou: Well we usually take a few years from record to record, because especially as we’ve gotten older as people… when you’re 17 or 18 or whatever, you’re changing really fast. Over a course of 6 months you might become a different person. When you’re in your 30s like we are now, it takes a lot longer to evolve as a person and music is really a reflection of your own humanity. If you’re trying to put out a record every year in your 30s you as a person aren’t really changing that much from year to year. So it’s not likely you’d have a lot new to offer musically if you put out records that frequently. We want to wait a few years between records and make sure every song on the record is the best song we could have written at a time and giving our listeners the most premium material we can offer.

Ballou: I think we definitely walk a lot of fences as people and as musicians in terms of our own personal interests in music. We’re certainly appreciative of a lot of different kinds of sounds. I also think that genre names are things for marketing people and journalists and not something a band should concern itself with. It’s your job to report on music and you need a language that can convey in words what something sounds like, but a musician is not constrained by those words. A musician can make something sound like what it is. We don’t feel the need to confine ourselves to a particular genre; we confine ourselves to stay within our own abilities, the large umbrella that is the Converge sound. We’re not going to push it so far that we’re not going to be able to do strongly. The ethos that drives the band and the scene we all grew up in is definitely the hardcore scene. We identify ourselves as more of a hardcore band than anything else because that’s the community where we come from and we cut our teeth and a lot of early show going experiences are from there. I feel like as people we can relate to hardcore kids a lot better than most other people. Even though we may be into metal or country or indie or whatever, I think because we were born out of the hardcore scene our first love is hardcore. There’s a certain way hardcore kids get each other and relate to each other that maybe lacking in other forms of music. We just feel more comfortable in those kinds of environments. There’s an ethos to hardcore I think we still embody in a lot of ways that’s not understand outside of hardcore. Our approach is definitely hardcore, despite the fact that we’re not constantly involved in playing with hardcore bands.

Ballou: I think it’s better now than it was in the 90s. I think in the 90s that’s when hardcore went suburban and the metal influence came in a lot. Obviously there was a metallic influence in the late 80s with Cro-Mags, and Slapshot and Judge and Leeway and all these crossover bands such as Suicidal Tendencies. I think the suburban kids such as ourselves, we had that kind of hardcore influence from going to shows, but we were also the first generation that had MTV and Headbangers Ball. So we’d go to see Slapshot on the weekend or Bad Brains or whoever and come home and watch Headbangers Ball and see Slayer and Metallica. I think the 90s there was a lot of early attempts at fusing those things and a lot of it was really cheesy. A lot of that moshcore stuff that came out of the 90s was really bad. There’s always going to be bad music, there’s a lot of god awful terrible music now, there’s a lot of god awful terrible music from the 80s, but I think with time a lot of the bad stuff gets forgotten about and the good stuff gets remembered so I think certain time periods get revered more than others.

Then in the 90s you also had these hardcore kids from suburbia…. like in the Black Flag era there were a lot kids who had no other choice but to be hardcore kids. They’re urban kids, they’re runaways, they’re from broken homes, they’re people that are suffering and desperately needed an outlet. It had nothing to do with fashion or anything like that. There’s definitely some posturing going on, but it wasn’t a fashionable thing, it was dangerous and it’s just what these people were coming to do. That’s not to say affluence precludes any kind of suffering, but it’s a different kind of suffering that happens among suburban and upper middle class kids which is where hardcore starts to move in the 90s. So you have this new thing that starts to happen in the 90s called emocore, which is driven by people that don’t have such a dangerous life. It’s the classic suburban depression, kids who otherwise would have been into The Smiths or The Cure or even The Red House Painters and then started to form this more tempered music. When that term was coined, they were referring more to the D.C. scene, which is more like the intellectual side. There are a lot of politics in D.C. so you have a lot of politicians, lobbyists and other businesses in the area so you have a lot of intelligent people in the area who are having intelligent kids. So these kids are thinking more outwardly and more politically. So you have the Revolution Summer and the birth of Rites of Spring and later Fugazi and Moss Icon and these other kind of bands. All that stuff gets filtered of this kid who knows about hardcore and the metal they’re playing on MTV and the result is the 90s screamo, sweater vest, horn rimmed glasses sort of scene and so little of that stuff was any good. And between that stuff sucking really bad and that early metallic stuff sucking really bad I think it took a really long time to flush itself out and become it’s own thing than being a poorly played derivation of a lot of other things. Now that I think that evolution has happened it’s refined and it’s a higher caliber than it was in the 90s.

Another big difference in how the music has changed since when we started is the business. There’s this constant access to music that we didn’t have back then. It’s not really better or worse, it’s just different. We used to buy 7 inches and we used to take it and send it to your friend or your pen pal and you’d have to recycle your postage because there’s no email yet or downloading so local scenes would develop a lot stronger. Bands from Boston tended to sound like each other because bands wouldn’t go on tour very frequently so you’d end up playing with the same bands a lot and influencing each other more than bands across the country. So there’s this Boston sound, this L.A. sound, this New York sound. But then downloading and MySpace starts coming up and it dilutes the local scene identity and it makes music a lot more competitive in all genres of music. There’s so much out there and there’s so much access to it so only the music that requires the shortest attention span that people will pay attention to. So if something doesn’t have a great recording or a hook right away it’s really easy to dismiss it and move on to something else. It used to be like I would go to the record store and buy a few CDs or records or tapes and even if I don’t like it that much, I don’t have that much music in my collection so I spend a lot of time with each record and getting to know it and it might rub off on me and I get to understand it. That kind of thing doesn’t really happen anymore so it’s a really different environment. Touring has become the same way as the scene has grown and people are able to make money touring. Everything has become a lot more lowest common denominator with regards to the tours that you do and the music that you write because people are thinking about their careers more than about expressing themselves. The fans support that mentality through their buying practices.

Music is dead

Jeremy Freer of Fieldtree and Freer drops some serious knowledge here.

SH: Your debut album, Secret Chorus, is an incredibly eclectic set, and it’s pretty obvious that you’re drawing from a broad range of influences to create a marriage of a lot of different musical styles. Has there ever been a time where you’ve been working on something and said to yourselves, “Nah, this just isn’t a ‘Freer’ song” ?

Jeremy: No. If we play it, it’s a FREER song.

SH: Unlike a lot of bands, you guys actually seem to put a lot of thought and meaning into your lyrics. What kind of themes attract you as a writer, Jeremy?

JF: I’m glad you asked that. I don’t have a favorite theme. I don’t think or write in those terms. I just attempt to express whatever it is I need to express so I don’t lose my fucking mind. And I love good lyrics in all shapes and sizes. When the lyric and the music sound like they were meant to be it makes me tingle all over.

SH: Something that crops up again and again on Secret Chorus is the juxtaposition of natural and artificial (particularly urban) imagery. I’m thinking of lines like “In forest and in alleyway,” “In streetlight and starlight,” or the buildup to the climax in the title track where you sing “Right now we’re sick, we need the perfect melody/ You can’t find it on the radio or T.V./ It’s in a secret chorus God gave to the birds.” Sometimes these images appear diametrically opposed, and other times like they completely belong together. How do you see the relationship between man and nature, and is that an important component in Freer’s musical philosophy?

JF: There are many religions that deal with this issue. In the story of Adam and Eve they are naked in a perfect paradise, and when things go wrong the first sign of it is that they become ashamed of their nakedness and make themselves clothes. Then they get kicked out of Paradise. Mans relationship with nature is a mirror to something deeper.

SH: On your Myspace, you guys have declared an open “War on Musical Terror.” What constitutes musical terror? Are we in a worse place than we’ve ever been as far mediocre rock radio goes, or has the jukebox always been anemic?

JF: Elvis being called the “King” of Rock N’ Roll is musical terror. Pat Boone making more money off Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” than Little Richard is musical Terror. Johnny Cash getting kicked off of Columbia Records is musical Terror. When the Grammys paired Smokey Robinson (a genius) with Lionel Richie and some young asshole who, from what I could see was more of a circus performer than an R&B singer, is musical terror. Female pop stars who get naked every chance they get and send a message out to young girls that it doesn’t matter if you can sing or have soul and talent, the most important thing is to exploit your sexuality every chance you get is musical terror. Male pop stars who promote violence, extreme materialism and the total objectification of women is musical terror. Designer Emo bands who fake emotion and exploit pain for fame and money is musical terror. And yes, I believe we are in a worse place now than we’ve ever been before.

What the mind of a man,

enveloped in poverty and forced to make some kind of money through illegal acts thinks:

"I'm not afraid of dying, but I'm petrified by the idea of growing up."

Sole - My President

CHORUS:
X2
My president is black,
an I know that it's historic.
Can't help but feel I been sold a bad product,
an I want my money back,
or the change that we demand.
I want a new deal - not a black republican.

This year was a bad year,
I knew it would be that,
they gave us some nice speeches,
but I cant eat that.
We voted for change,
but homie I don't see that.
Has a momententum at the start
Didn't know how to seize that.

Mr post racial - don't you understand?
There ain't no middle ground when you dealin' with the clan
we got drones up in Pakistan,
forget that - Afghanistan.
Just be a grown man, quit playing up in the sand.

We got some real problems,
they fuckin' with Glenn Beck.
What up wit da Amy Goodman
And some Juan Gonzales

An to my name I got three hundred dollas',
and to my credit I got ten or so albums
My Corolla's bullet grey,
and my wife owns that.
The car is in her name,
but the bank owns the debt

We just moved to Colorado, ain't no jobs here but dumb shit.
this ain't a recession; its a readjustment.
the late great USA owners of the world days are gone.
better learn to grow some food on your own.
Only thing about me that's rich
is the spices I use, the beats that I rock, the path that I chose.

CHORUS:
X2
My president is black,
an I know that it's historic.
Can't help but feel I been sold a bad product,
an I want my money back,
or the change that we demand.
I want a new deal - not a black republican.


We talking Hoover verse Roosevelt,
Fox news verse Rosa Parks,
Osama verse Fifty Cent.
a Phoenix can't swim with sharks.

So wake up them blue dogs,
kick dirt on them' red states.
And give us a single payer, fuck all the red tape.
And fuck having empire
we outta aspire; to more than pursuit of cash
relentlessly chasin' power

In high school they taught Latin
shoulda' taught Mandarin,
shoulda' taught Marxism,
shoulda' taught Blacksmithin'.

My money isn't green cause I'm livin' on credit,
only time i see green is when they say "cash back or debit."

I ain't mad at wall street, cause we all wanna ball
the planet's overpopulated and cant feed em' all
problem is a missile costs a couple of mils'
wanna' swim up in the beach but i'm swimming in bills
an there ain't no reprieve till Obama grow a spine
Its the death of a nation and don't need no common ground

CHORUS:
X2
My president is black,
an I know that it's historic.
Can't help but feel I been sold a bad product,
an I want my money back,
or the change that we demand.
I want a new deal - not a black republican.

"It was November 08,
my home state was Blue, no New England was Red
so I threw my weight up in, a swing state instead
8 years of this damn war, couldn't face it to lose
so i drove to New Hampshire, walked'em straight to the booth
trooped the whole district holdin' signs and workin' phones
6am Election Day until the polls closed
then got back on the damn line, callin' Alaska
up to Wascilla, still gunnin' for Sarah
I ain't no Democrat, but this was fate by the throat
I believed in your promise, now where did it go?
Guantanamo's still open, Single Payer got dropped
this Bail Out was murder, tent cities popped up in the park!
Rendition's still on the table with no investigation
of war crimes or blatant Israeli invasion
man, what's the matter with you? Audacity's Hope
but you ain't done what you said or what we sent you to do...

BRIDGE:
X2
My president is black,
we still cant relax.
The war will stop itself
single payer ain't passed.
My money's on the movement
we're not gonna stop.
Gotta keep on working,
black president or not.

(yea, ask not what your president can do fr you
but what you can do to keep your presiient honest.
And i'm saying right now, get outta wall street homie.
Run the country, It ain't too late.)

http://www.soleone.org/media/mypresident.mp3

Hip hop will never be the same

Fuck, this is great.



Makes me wanna love Jesus again.

"Struggle is just a part of my day
Many obstachave been placed in my way
I know the only reason that I make it through
Is because I never stop believing in you
Some people wonder why we're here in the 1st place
They can't believe because they ain't never seen your face
But even when you pray, the next day you gotta try
Can it wait 4 nobody 2 come down out the sky
You've got to realize that the world's a test
You can only do your best and let him do the rest
You've got your life, you've got your health
So quit procrastinating and push it yourself
You've got to realize that the world's a test
You can only do your best and let him do the rest
You've got your life, you've got your health
So quit procrastinating"


"Who said good folks is not supposed to die
The same * that said * is not supposed to cry
United States giving out milk and cheese to pacify
I'm sure they got a cure 4 A.I.D.S., but yet it's classified
You wonder why I spit the truth and not 2 make no dough
To make a differencefo' this * up and blow
In piece, I could thinkof many reasons
Only when * is going bad you want to holla Jesus
I pledge allegiance, they got my knuckles bleeding
From crawling , got these * thinkin they ballin'
When they isn't, don't take my word,
there's * off in prison
That will tell yo, that's locked up 4 a long time and won't sell you
No flex, so congregation will turn you text,
To the book of OutKast, chapter 2, verse 1
The 1st 1, that make me jump up and make a joyful noise
You'se OutKasted, meaning you now have a choice like that"

Music genres and their assimilation

"For me, like, punk music or whatever is always about, you know, undercutting people's expectations and throwing, like, a spin in the works or whatever, and for me--I mean, I want this band to be--I mean, if this is unsettling people, I'm ready to really unsettle people, because I'm ready to, you know, I want the sound to always be moving and to be like... I--anything starts getting set, I start getting uncomfortable, because I feel like what happened with hardcore or whatever was that things get so ritualized they became--they're no longer powerful, they lose their power, they're not dangerous anymore, they don't excite people, they don't move people anymore. They just become some kind of a traditional thing which people can just, you know, slip on the clothes and slip on an attitude. But for me it's, like, it has to always constantly be moving forward and, like, have some kind of a time thing/dimension to it."

--Guy Picciotto


Exactly what happens with every fucking genre. Motherfuckers hop along, think its cool to make this sound, reproduce the sound sans the emotional drive, and fuck it up for the genuine fans of music who just want something to listen to.

And people who are weaker than you and I,

They take what they need, and just leave.





"God make up your mind, do you wanna play fair? Or should I just take whats mine...like everyone else."

Sole on supporting indie artists

on behalf of soleone.org & fakefour inc, and musicians everywhere
in the spirit of thomas jefferson and james madison
the forefathers of this here semi great nation
we have launched a forward offense against the pirates
those who roam the oceans of the internet
squandering our labor, stealing food from our children(and dogs) mouths
sucking the very wind from the mountain air

through sheer conceit, arrogance, & butchery
they have plundered for too long

the first shot fired acrossed the bow was a megaupload zip
the second was to a far off land called sendspace
soon, isohunt, piratebay, will be overloaded with zip files
containing:
old albums, country music, animals being massacred
all in the name of sole & the skyrider band “plastique”

for those who think stealing isn’t stealing
tell that to my bank account
and the indigenous people of north america & australia
the IRS, Goldman Sachs, & AIG

we, are aware that the ground beneath our feet is shifting
that someday the world won’t need:

record stores
record labels
publicity companies
working artists
magazines
newspapers
video stores
locally produced goods, labor, & ideas

but i remember old voyages
while working at mcdonald’s
saving pennies
buying a turntable
driving 6 hours to fat beats with the pedestrian
roaming the cold polluted streets of new york
simply to buy records at fat beats, vinyl kings, and anything we could find
before mail order, itunes, & the internet
coming home with a swollen backpack
sore from the subway
and playing the music for my friends

i realize, that this is a losing war
the barbarians, as they say are at the gates
and we can’t hold them off forever
but we will die trying

for more information visit
http://www.soleone.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=15082

or, if you wish, upload a fake torrent called “plastique”
megaupload a copy of “gone with the wind” sound track
call it “plastique”
recite the NAFTA, CAFTA, & bill of rights on MP3
call it “plastique”

or not, its not your problem.
its up to the artists to work this out.

but when all thats left is major label artists
and the only place to buy records is at walmart
don’t say we didn’t warn you

just cuz we live in the society of the spectacle
doesn’t mean we have to submit to it.

Bemoaning our hypocrisy

I don't know how many times I've been told or simply heard someone say that life is just hard and we have to suck it up and accept it as that and keep moving. Yet people still refuse to acknowledge our helplessness in the overall system of things. Whatever I do on my job may help me in the long run, but it won't keep the sun from giving me cancer or stop some lethargic driver from rear ending me. I don't know how we let ourselves get away with believing that bullshit.


And another example is theist who praise a god who has a will that allows bullshit to happen to good people, yet they then claim its apart of his will. Well if the bad things are apart of his will just as much as the good things, and you can't predict the bad things or the good, you can only say he's ALWAYS in control, then it seems to me that God's will is essentiall chaos. Why should I pray to chaos? My prayer won't cause anything different to happen. Goddamn. Fuck all this stupid shit.

You can love god or you can hate it. Either way, it won't be doing shit while you're alive but sending anonymous love letters in the form of sheer luck and you'll thank him, and then he won't say you're welcome. And then you might die and go to heaven.

BUt the rest of us who like to believe in things that are real, we'll just say fuck jesus and fuck a god who refuses to participate in this mess he created once he got bored one eternity long ago. Then we'll die, then we might go to hell, but if its anything like earth, it has to be because its based on elements we know from earth LULZ, then we'll get bored of getting burned, then we'll start creating civilizations, then we'll start creating ideas about how we got here and telling all the newcomers that its because some other deity loves us, and since you can't die again in hell, we'll just say our deity doesn't like you....to combat others who are saying their deity doesn't like us.

OR......










OR

We'll just fucking die.

The kind of concert I wanna be caught alive at

Bet if me and you had to breathe the same oxygen you'd choke
And foam comes out your headphones
And little men in black would scurry around and jump on dicks
Saying "Yo champ, keep the heads noddin'", I keep heads still



If I ever perform, I hope to god I attract an audience like that, people who would rather listen to the art than let it make them loose control of their body as if it were a drug. Or rather, I'd hope my music would be this rational and intellectual that it would be like a drug that allows the audience to explore their own consciousness and mind.

Basically what I've spent a year and a half searching for from the genre of Metal

A combonation of great lyrics that fit me like a poorly hummed suit and a group of instrumentalists that each use their instruments for all they're worth.

I bring you....

KEN MODE



The song is The Goat. Lyrics below:

Staring out over the vast melting; a new season is emerging.
None of it means anything to me without you. Days filled with nothingness; I hate this place and it consumes me every day.
Isn't this supposed to get easier? Something is just not right: do you feel it too?
I tried to make actions speak louder than words; but you weren't listening.
I truly believed that we were meant to be.
I can't believe the anger and hostility that you have been directing towards me; projections, assumptions; conclusive extremes. I'm hurting; and worse than I've ever hurt before. You've become so cold and uncaring.
Stop trying to make me hate you; for you'd never feel a more intense nor pure hatred for the rest of your life, and it's just not in me right now...
That searing pain tearing through my guts; this dull ache rippling through my head. You've turned me into a lame cliché. Thank you. I’m lying trembling on the floor.

Means more than words.

we live for a reason. that reason is no reason at all. we swallow our words and
hide our thoughts. everyday i regret everything coming out of my fucking mouth.
and I wish that I could shut the fuck up.

Real Freestyling and hip hop FTW

"They're keeping it calm you know, not screaming like many of these retards. He also does not sound drunk, like Lil Wayne."

Doseone is a winner. If anyone gets hip hop, its that dude.

Real Emo Lyrics FTW

Death, prolonged by a return to infancy, has more patience than I. Reborn into a caustic world with a name that inspires nothing, pulling meaning from pieces, consumed by repetition and outmaneuvered by my consciousness, my life isn't a trial; it's an eternity.

But I'm just a child. All I have is time.

And time will save me, through this machine.
Time will enslave me through this machine.
Its movement is mine.
And as we fall gracefully upward through the hourglass, no comforting melody invites us.
How long can a voyage take in a vacuum without time?



Pyramids - The Clockwork

Rule 1,

Write what you like; there is no other rule.- O Henry

Blah blah blah, said the idea to itself.

I was thinking a lot about the idea of the self, the self, or as its called from the inside, I. YOu know this strange little thing that everyone has, this odd tiny organ which the surgeons can't touch. One afternoon, I asked myself, what about that noise I always hear, that intolerable noise which comes from somewhere inside my head. ANd I realized that rather like a singer who accompanies his own singing with a piano or a guitar, I accompany my own life with a sort of endless tinkling or an endless noodling or murmuring - a sort of awful inner murmuring of reportage and opinions, idiotic arpeggios of self-approbation - "Yes, this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm doing, and this is the right thing to be doing now, because murmur, murmur, murmur, and this is right because murmur, murmur, murmur, and this is right becasue murmur, murmur, murmur - " I thought about all the isncere consideration which I gave to the future, to my plans, you know, and all the solemn concern I lavished each day on the events of my past - my "memories," as we call them, wiping away a few tears - and I wondered: Was this all tremendously valuable? Or was it perhaps just a bit unnecessary, when you consider the fact - rather often overlooked - that the past and the future don't actually exist? I sit around thinking about them from morning till night, but you know, where are they? Where are they? I mean, they're not here. And God knows they're certainly not anwere else, I would say. And so what is it supposed to mean to me that the trousers I'm wearing were worn "yesterday" by a man with my name, a man who did this, a man who did that, or that they'll be worn "tomorrow" by a man who is going to be doing something or other? It all means exactly nothing to me, because none of these people actually exist.- Wallace Shawn, THe Designated Mourner.

Its so easy to laugh, its so easy to hate, it takes strength to be kind over and over and over and over

-Morrissey

This world has some weird fucking values. The perception of strong is an individual who is often uncaring for other individuals who can triumph in any situation. If strength encompasses being that person who only takes care of themselves and is fine with living like that, I'm going to eke my days out in loneliness and weakness because I'm not going to be the half-assed participant in a bunch of group activities composed of people who will talk all the shit in the world about others once they're no longer around.

'Should you ask me if I'm happy, i'll answer that I am not.'

that is the beauty of prose. The words are as pure as a thought not hindered by presentation.

Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.
—Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves)

Fyodor Dostoevsky on why science's ass should be amputated and burned.

Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for yourselves. They say that Cleopatra (excuse an instance from Roman history) was fond of sticking gold pins into her slave-girls' breasts and derived gratification from their screams and writhings. You will say that that was in the comparatively barbarous times; that these are barbarous times too, because also, comparatively speaking, pins are stuck in even now; that though man has now learned to see more clearly than in barbarous ages, he is still far from having learnt to act as reason and science would dictate. But yet you are fully convinced that he will be sure to learn when he gets rid of certain old bad habits, and when common sense and science have completely re-educated human nature and turned it in a normal direction. You are confident that then man will cease from intentional error and will, so to say, be compelled not to want to set his will against his normal interests. That is not all; then, you say, science itself will teach man (though to my mind it's a superfluous luxury) that he never has really had any caprice or will of his own, and that he himself is something of the nature of a piano-key or the stop of an organ, and that there are, besides, things called the laws of nature; so that everything he does is not done by his willing it, but is done of itself, by the laws of nature. Consequently we have only to discover these laws of nature, and man will no longer have to answer for his actions and life will become exceedingly easy for him. All human actions will then, of course, be tabulated according to these laws, mathematically, like tables of logarithms up to 108,000, and entered in an index; or, better still, there would be published certain edifying works of the nature of encyclopaedic lexicons, in which everything will be so clearly calculated and explained that there will be no more incidents or adventures in the world.



Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then. Man is stupid, you know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is not at all stupid, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation.



Which basically means that we won't be better people if we learn about who we are as animals because our will and nature as animals won't change.

So you think for a while and realize that you'll still die. If you're not thinking at all, im not sure why you're alive.

Put this in your pipe and smoke that shit

The feeding frenzy of my starving soul, gnawing voraciously at the bones,
the exo-skeletal patchwork protecting my own reflection within;
The twin-and-same engaged in the mirrored act of chewing away
at the shell of my attacking self. The paradox unseen

Treacherous this deceit to make no choice matter
To have and yet lose yourself, until finally all reasons why are forgotten
To live through ones own shadow. Mute and blinded, is to really see
Eclipse the golden mirror and the reflection is set free

Sole & the Skyrider Band - Plastique

Happened to get my hands of this after ordering the preorder, I suggest you all do the same to get a physical copy of what you're about to download.



1. Children of Privilege
2. Battlefields (feat. Markus Acher of The Notwist)
3. Longshots
4. Nothing Pt. 2
5. More
6. Pissing In The Wind
7. Bait
8. Mr. Insurgent
9. Black



http://www.sendspace.com/file/u435bw

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=S0E537VA



Great quality for great music.

The frustrated youth deserve not their frustrations

Well I am a one man rent strike
and your couch is my picket line
Well I'm eating acid for breakfast
and puking all over the sidewalk this time
But mostly I'm just full of shit
in a world that's already filled up with that
So if Aaron makes it to space then I ain't coming back
Well I am an artist if that means that there's a cigarette in my mouth
Well I'm a punk rocker if that means that I
smell pretty bad right now
But mostly I'm just kinda crazy
in a world full of sadness and pain
We waited there in the yard but the train never came

We have to stop pretending to be rich

I realize i'll sound like a hipster or some anti-conformist, pretty much am, who hates all corporations and whatever, but we really need to stop embracing these ideals and lifestyles perpetuated by people who don't have many things to worry about. ANd if they do worry a lot, they sure as hell aren't worrying about having the right amount of money like the average family or individual over the age of 18 in America is. They're just living their life like its a movie, which is the only place they learn how to love life. What rich people sit in silence on a sunday afternoon and really try to understand life? Better yet, what happy person does that? Not many. Fact of the matter is, most people have to keep trying over and over to understand life because its either changing constantly or putting them through more and more bullshit thats unavoidable and substantially depressing.

ANd we have to acknowledge that depression. We can't build from a problem unless we know what the fuck we're missing. Unless we know what the fuck we want. Unless we know that we all want and are missing virtually the same things. Then and only then can we come together, truly understand one another, and stop accepting the forceful transferring of ideals to us from people who WON'T live lives full of worry like the average person does.

Which leads me back to my original point, corporations and businesses only want your money. They'll sell you what you need but they only want you to buy it. I'm sure research could provide many examples showing how apathetic the leaders of a company you support often has bullshitted its way out of harming or neglecting people who deserve more. They just want your cash, not your well being.

So if we're going to truly liberate ourselves and start feeling like we own our bodies and will, instead of being bound by desire to places and things we don't need, we have to stop pretending we're rich. We have to stop acting like a party is the fucking end and beginning of our world, simultaneously ending our stress, though it'll end and return us to our stress. We have to accept the fact that we can't afford those unnecessary expensive cars and be glad we can get one that can drive us between people we love or places we love. We have to stop buying a bunch of fucking clothes that only contribute to other economies more than our own and give more money to companies that don't even give a shit about their employees. We have to stop looking at those idiots in mansions as people living a life so differently from ours, its worth achieving. It is different, but its not better. Its just another.

And lastly, we have to realize the commonalities we all share that don't set us apart. We have to let fucking go of our attachments to race and appearance and even beliefs, because we all want somewhere to sleep and something to eat. Maybe even someone to love. But we'll keep fighting each other and disappointing each other if we think there is an ideal way of living that isn't based on minor necessities and pure relativity to your fellow human being.

The essence of our worry

To expand off of what I said before about everyone wanting to be this ONE significantly normal/perfect human being (we only feel perfect when normal), we'll never be that. And that is because everyone has uniquities and essential characteristics that separates them from being seen as perfectly normal.

THe idea, i suppose, is to have mostly normal traits and characteristics and philosophies so that you can get along with everyone or be more likely to get along with new people and be accepted.

But the truth is that none of us will ever be normal or perfect. And because of that we'll blow each mistake out of proportion thinking we're orchestrating our own doom because we fail a test or argue with our parents for an extensive period of our lives. In truth, even those things happen to a lot of people, but since it isn't the way that you hear successful people you meet experiencing life, you think its bad and an indication of the worst ofthings to come.

But its not. Its just your mind approximating the future according to what you've already experienced. And for that reason, it really doesn't fucking matter. THe ultimate goal is to take those instances and learn what to do to avoid them. Not so you can be perfect, but so that your life can be more of what you want. Its also best to keep in mind that you don't have to ace every test or love every waking moment with a parent or sibling or friend, but you should be able to tell when people or other things are keeping you unhappy. Then its about making a decision about what to keep from the outside world as well as your own mind. Easier written than said than done, but its the only way to know you'll be who you are.

The sad reality of sexism lies in the fact that a woman's ultimate goal is to be useful.

The sky

Looks bluer when you fuck the order of the day or the way the shelves are meant to fit.

What sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise....

is in fact... the brilliant music of a genius... myself. And that music is so powerful, that it's quite beyond my control. And, ah... when I'm in the grips of it, I don't feel pleasure and I don't feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Have you ever, have you ever felt like that? When you just, when you just, you couldn't feel anything, and you didn't want to either. You know, like that?
-Iggy Pop



The epitome of music lies in the artist's expression. Their getting of a feeling out. There are so many ways to falsify the expression, make it showy, make it pretentious, put too much into certain parts, or just plain old sound dumb. If nothing else, you have to respect metal musicians for the full on projectile approach they have to giving their all to a sound that was once in their head.

Most awesomest review of the new Transformers movie

This is a satirical piece, which makes it all the more relevant for me, but I'm posting it because...well....the movie was weird and utilized a lot of variables that people are rather impressed with for the strangest of reasons.

Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie

Critical consensus on Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is overwhelmingly negative. But the critics are wrong. Michael Bay used a squillion dollars and a hundred supercomputers' worth of CG for a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot.

Oh, and I would warn you that there'll be spoilers in this review — except that, really, since I still have no idea what actually happened in this movie, I'm not sure how much I can spoil it.

Since the days of Un Chien Andalou and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, filmmakers have reached beyond meaning. But with this summer's biggest, loudest movie, Michael Bay takes us all the way inside Caligari's cabinet. And once you enter, you can never emerge again. I saw this movie two days ago, and I'm still living inside it. Things are exploding wherever I look, household appliances are trying to kill me, and bizarre racial stereotypes are shouting at me.

Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that's because people don't understand that this isn't a movie, in the conventional sense. It's an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

And the true genius of Transformers: ROTF is that Bay has put all of this excess of imagery and random ideas at the service of the most pandering movie genre there is: the summer movie. ROTF is like twenty summer movies, with unrelated storylines, smushed together into one crazy whole. You try in vain to understand how the pieces fit, you stare into the cracks between the narrative strands, until the cracks become chasms and the chasms become an abyss into which you stare until it looks deep into your own soul, and then you go insane. You. Do. Not. Leave. The Cabinet.

Michael Bay understands that summer movies are about two things: male anxiety, and pure id. That's why he casts Shia LaBoeuf, that supreme avatar of pure male inadequacy, in the lead role. LaBoeuf projects a pathetic, wall-eyed dorkhood, when he's not babbling like a tumor removed from Woody Allen's prostate that somehow achieved sentience. I imagine the DVD of ROTF will include a whole disk of outtakes where they had to stop filming because LaBoeuf was drooling on camera. As it is, the film includes several extreme closeups of LaBoeuf's dazed stare.

Where was I? Oh yes. So LaBoeuf, who's actually a fine actor, is the stand-in for the male viewers' greatest fears about themselves. No matter how great a loser they might be, they can't be as losery a loser as Sam Witwicky. And yet, Sam has awesome giant robots stomping around telling him he's the most important awesome person ever. And he has the hottest girlfriend in the universe, Megan Fox, for whom banality is a huge aphrodisiac. The more pathetic Sam gets, the more Fox's lips pout and her nipples point, like little Irish setters.

To make matters more awesome for the insecure males in the audience, Sam actually tosses aside his giant robot fanclub and his walking-pinup girlfriend, so he can have a normal life. Of course, this only leads to other robots and hawt chicks (who turn out to be robots too) throwing themselves at him and telling him how important he is. In the end, everybody learns to appreciate Sam just a bit more than they already did, and a booming voice tells him he's earned the "matrix of leadership" through his courage and stuff.

And then there's the "id" part, which is the part where stuff blows up real good, and huge machines smash each other up. And every single performance is so ridiculous that it looks down on "over the top" as if from a great height. It's the part of your brain that thinks it would be awesome to see robots with giant dangling testicles, or hot chicks turning into robot tentacle monsters, or "ghetto" robots that talk in inept hip-hop slang and smash each other playfully, or funny Jewish men who talk about their "schmear" and randomly strip to their G-strings. Is that going too far? Then let's go 100 times farther than that and see what happens!

Transformers: ROTF is so long, you'll need to wear adult diapers to it. But the movie's pure celebration of the primal urge, and unfiltered living, will make you rejoice in your adult diapers. You'll relieve yourself in your seat with a savage joy, your barbaric yawp blending in with the crowd's screams of excitement.

And yet — and here's the part where I really think ROTF approaches "art movie" status — the movie's id overload reaches such crazy levels that the fabric of reality itself starts to break down. Michael Bay has boasted about how every single shot in the movie has so much stuff going on in it, it would take your PC since the dawn of time to render one frame. After a few hours of this assault, you feel the chair melt and the floor of the movie theater becomes an angry mirror into your soul. Nothing is solid, nothing is real, everything Transforms.

The closest thing I can think of to this movie is the Wachowskis' Speed Racer, which had a similar kind of CG image overload, although it was only five hours long as opposed to ROTF's nine.

And around hour six of ROTF, something curious happens: the two components — male enhancement and pure id — start to clash, badly. Usually, in a summer movie, the two aspects go together like tits and ass: Jason Statham plays someone who faces the same insecurities as regular dudes, but he overcomes them, and in the process he blows up everything in the world. But creating that kind of fusion requires enslaving the id to the male enhancement, and that in turn means only going way over the top instead of crazy, stratospheric over the top. Michael Bay is not willing to settle for going way over the top, like other directors.

So you have a movie that tries to reassure men that they can actually be masters of their reality — but then turns around and says that actually, reality is not real. There's no such thing as the "real world," and the only thing that's left for men to dominate is a nebulous domain of blurred shapes, which occasionally blurt nonsensical swear-words and slang from ethnic groups that have never existed. If you're drowning in an Olympic swimming pool full of hot chewing gum fondue, do you still care if Megan Fox likes you?

So yes, ROTF approaches the sublime, and then just keeps rocketing. Next stop: total anarchy. In a sense, it's the first war movie ever to convey a real sense of the fog of war, the confusion that comes with battle. Somewhere around hour nine, you will understand why friendly fire happens in wartime.

So I've gotten almost all the way through this review, and I still haven't summarized the movie's plot. Here goes. It's a couple years after the first movie, and Sam is going off to college, leaving his transforming car and his hot girlfriend, whom he still hasn't told he loves her. And meanwhile, the soldiers from the first movie are running around with a bunch of late-model GM cars and trucks, which turn into robots and fight other robots sometimes. Sam sees weird symbols which make no sense (and they still make no sense at the end of the movie) and they turn out to be the key to the location of a thing that can control another thing, that will enable the bad guys to destroy the sun. Sam has to embrace the heroic destiny he's rejected, so he can save us all from solarcide.

But that bare plot summary doesn't include the twenty or thirty other storylines that could also claim to be the movie's plot. There's the whole thing where someone from Washington D.C. wonders why the U.S. military is running around the globe with a bunch of late-model GM cars from outer space, and tries to put the kibosh on the military-Autobot complex. There's the teenager who's got a conspiracy website, that competes with another conpsiracy website which turns out to be the work of a secret agent who's decided that the best way to keep things secret is to put them on a website. (It works. I post secret stuff on io9 all the time.) Various robots die and then come back to life, and there's a whole strand about whether Decepticons (the bad ones) can become Autobots (the good ones). And there's the Fallen, who's sort of the movie's villain even though he barely shows up. And people from 17,000 BC who had weird teeth and fought robots. And the ancient Egyptians did stuff. And Sam's parents go to France except that they meet a robot and then they're in Egypt.

Really, I could go on and on. This movie starts out with a coherent storyline, for the first half hour or so, and then it just starts to spin faster and faster until the centrifuge of random events slams you into the walls. It doesn't help that there are 500 robots in the movie and they all look kind of the same.

Oh, but that's the other thing about ROTF. It's actually quite funny, a lot of the time. Some of the jokes fall flat, like the "twin" robots with the ghetto speak, and a lot of the stuff with John Turturro. But the movie's relentless silliness is mostly pretty hilarious, in a Saturday morning cartoon kind of way, and almost nothing in the movie seems intended to be taken seriously.

So, to sum up: Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is one of the greatest achievements in the history of cinema, if not the greatest. You could easily argue that cinema, as an artform, has all been leading up to this. It will destabilize your limbic system, probably forever, and make you doubt the solidity of your surroundings. Generations of auteurs have struggled, in vain, to create a cinematic experience as overwhelming, and as liberating, as ROTF.

Women as well as men, everyone watching this film will feel the dissolution of all their certainties, all their illusory grasp on the world... but after you fall into a brazen despair that the walls of reality have become toxic ice cream of a million flavors, you will gasp with a greater realization: that once the world is reduced, forever, to a kaleidoscope of whirling shapes, you are totally free. Nothing matters, effect precedes cause, fish spawn in mid-air, and you can do whatever you want. Let yourself go in your adult diaper, Michael Bay invites you. Feel the music of total excess stir inside your deepest core. It is your Allspark, your cube. And you are a Transformer.

http://io9.com/5301898/michael-bay-finally-made-an-art-movie