a lower consciousness

ORGASMS FADE

BUT DESIRE LASTS FOREVER


"I believe in the radical possibilities of pleasure, babe."

ALBUM REVIEW:- Skyharbor, Blinding WHite Noise: Illusion & Chaos

It’s a precarious time for ‘djent’; most of it either still sucks – or has gotten to sucking – major ass. Meshuggah’s Koloss for example sounds pretty boring from the previews. But once in a while, braving the stereotypes and decay that have riddled the genre since Fredrik Thordendal coined its definitive onomatopoeia a few years ago, a genuinely creative worm will crawl out of the woodwork to say Fuck you! to disparaging hipsters such as myself. Like Vildhjarta from Sweden, who recently put out their debut LP; a monstrous nugget of an album that I hereby deem the most important in it’s category since Meshuggah’s Chaosphere. Really, go ahead; I’d like to see which of you has the gall to judge differently. Masstaden took Vildhjarta years to write and produce and the output is assfuckingly spectacular. Unless you’re tone deaf or stupid or something.

Presently, in the wake of Vildhjarta’s palm-muted 8-string carnage, homeboy Keshav Dhar is all set to blow minds with Skyharbor’s seminal (read: India’s first) full length contribution to djent. At least that’s the buzz. You’ve got to wonder if Dhar is shitting his pants. Or maybe he isn’t. He seems like the cool, confident sort to me. I ran into him one day at Candies where he was with Manasi Kale, this scenester friend of mine who wears only black t-shirts. We discussed for a few minutes our mutual love for Amogh Symphony and Cloudkicker. I offered him a cigarette which he refused. Then I saw him again, killing it on stage at Nh7 Weekender a few days before news broke that Basick Records would be releasing his debut album – which, like Vildhjarta, he’s been brooding over for way too long.

Then, just the other day, I got my hands on Blinding White Noise: Illusion & Chaos.

What do I think? Well, for one I’m only too glad to have finally heard it (completely illegally of course, and I won’t get into any more detail about this). I’ve been YouTubing Hydrodjent/ Skyharbor for (literally) years now. I’ve looked forward to this album. Immensely. Getting into my first listen of Blinding White Noise…, I was smiling so much my cheekbones hurt.

It’s sort-of-pretentious and very concept-albumish that the ten tracks on BWN:I&C have been slotted under two rubrics: the first seven under Illusion; with Daniel Tompkins on vox and the rest, Chaos with Sunneith Revankar*. But it isn’t as much a concept album as they say. There doesn’t seem to be much of a theme going on here, and the tracks in themselves are strong, each with it’s own self-contained energy, but string them together and the whole thing gets as fucking repetitive as djent bands are often wont to sound. Take my advice and put this on shuffle, with a sizeable break every two-three songs. Roll up a fat one. Drink some alcohol. It’ll be fun. It might even help you overlook the cracks in the album that show up once you’re done sitting through all 48 minutes of it.

The first thing you notice is that the songs were all probably written on solely instrumental principle, and Tompkins’ vocals seem to be that last-minute, desperate add-on that adds up to no clear purpose. His voice is monotonous, whiny and tends to muffle the rather amazing guitarwork that finds itself being pushed beneath the surface. Revankar does well though, screaming like a bunch of horny werewolves in heat, and his vocals don’t so much wrestle with the guitar lines as make love to them.

On the whole, Blinding White Noise shares its fail factor with the Periphery album from back in 2010. It’s… overdone, to put it simply. I can still listen to the Hydrodjent demos off YouTube and be impressed as fucking hell, but on this one, Skyharbor hasn’t nearly created another Masstaden or Chaosphere. Even with four years of effort, Dhar’s debut lacks the organic brutality of old school Meshuggah-esque prog, and in comparison to more modern prog-metal acts, the sound is jaded, uninspired, way too imitative. Keshav Dhar has been around for long, yes, but he’ll need to stick around for a lot longer to make the impact he is truly capable of in the long haul. Which I hope he does, because I was lucky enough to discover him when Hydrodjent was still one of the coolest djent outfits around. Best of luck, dude. Make another album soon. An instrumental one, ok?

Peace.

Blinding White Noise: Illusion & Chaos releases 23rd April, 2012.

Rating: 2.5/5

*cool title for a heavy metal talk show.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED HERE: http://mehtakyakehta.com/2012/03/01/music-review-skyharbor-blinding-white-noise-illusion-chaos/

Making rain

“I believe in love only when it rains.”

-Arkaye Kierulf

The day before Chameli’s period was due, Chameli and Mogambo had sex.

They were always having sex, those two, and even with what a lot of unable-to-get-laid psychologists will tell you, the having-a-lot-of-sex bit worked out pretty ok for the both of them. They cared deeply for each other, you could say, in addition to their endless fucking.

Also, who the hell doesn’t like to be fucking endlessly, anyway?

Also, they used handcuffs, sometimes.

Also, sometimes, they’d blast a Nine Inch Nails record in the background to orchestrate their humping because they loved listening to Nine Inch Nails together about as much as they loved to fuck, together or not. She had a massive crush on Trent Reznor. He had a massive crush on Trent Reznor, too. They might’ve even liked having a threesome with Trent Reznor, together.  “That would be mad.”  They were comfortable enough with one another that way. She thought he smelled horrible so she told him. “You smell fucking horrible.”

But they only smelled like each other. It swam across the room and climbed up into their nostrils, the sour, sticky scent of great, sticky sex.

The room was dark on the inside. Weak slivers of light stole their way in from behind the curtains. Outside, daylight undressed itself in thick orange ribbons as Chameli and Mogambo lay in bed under the covers of post-coital silence and a years-old quilt of some worn out fabric that felt soft and fuzzy touching their feet. It wasn’t easy, telling shapes in the darkness. It took some feeling around to find one another, then some more feeling around. That was the fun part.

Lying there in the half-light with his flow of happy hormones dialed all the way up and stamping a sweatprint of his nude ass into the sheets, Mogambo thought to say something.

He didn’t.

But he turned over on his side and made to take Chameli in his arms. She rejected his hug – curtly, you could say – as if accusing him of not being able to orgasm, which had been the case on that one occasion. It upset her, you could say. She took his hand. She gave it a squeeze. She returned his hand to his chest. Mogambo felt himself fall a few feet through his own body. Sexually, he was plenty satisfied and he’d done his job pretty well, you could say. He’d taken Chameli that much closer to God as he moved his instrument back and forth inside her; Mogambo made out by the manner in which she kept trying to tell him things in bed and they all came out incoherent and muddled that he was hitting the right spots. Now she was avoiding him. What was her problem? His prick was sore – but he felt nice in his head – and the PMS which had sublimated before into sexual aggression commenced to resurface from Chameli’s uterus. She did not feel very nice in her head, probably, you could say.

“I need my space,” she went, rolling away from the boy who had screwed her towards the edge of the bed, then off it, picking herself up on both legs in a singularly perfect second. “I mean, this, my physical space,” she went further. She moved her hands back and forth between herself and Mogambo. ‘Space’ was emphasized. It looked silly.  “It’s not you, sweetie,” she said. She said, “It’s not the way you smell right now. I just need a bit of distance between us, sometimes, ok?”

Outside, filthy grey clouds were gathering above the skyline waiting to let go their weight. Mogambo put on a sad face, not being able to decide whether he was actually sad or what. And it left a bad taste in Chameli’s mouth, saying what she did. She twisted her lips into a half-adorable, half-apologetic half-smile. Mogambo sat himself against the bedstead with the quilt pulled up to his armpits and lit a cigarette. Through smoke, as the woman he had screwed leaned over the bed to fetch the moist bedcovers, he watched. When she stooped her small breasts extended towards where gravity comes from and her hair fell over one shoulder, leaving the other one bare. She raised her hand to her ear and tucked the descending mass of hair behind it. Mogambo noticed these little things, always. He hoarded away the details as if it were a habit. And it was. He never told her, ever. And he didn’t put out his cigarette when she said “You shouldn’t be smoking. Not in my house.”

She gave him that look, the one which girls sometimes give boys – that ironically Oedipal warning stare – but she didn’t know if she cared too much, really. She didn’t want any ash on her bed. In an elaborate gesture she picked up the covers and ironed the wrinkles out with the flat of her palm before folding them up. Her palm gave way to long, slim fingers that Mogambo imagined with a burning cigarette placed between them. Sheets folded, then draped over one arm, Chameli went and drew apart the curtains and stood by the window.

She stayed there for a bit, still naked, one shoulder bare, the wind going cold on her skin and the smell of fresh mud gatecrashing through the window and into her senses, she said “Have you noticed?  It always rains after we fuck.”

She sounded serious. She stared outside; Mogambo wasn’t sure at what.

“Does it?”… He wasn’t taking this very seriously. He brought his gaze to her ass. He kept gazing. He might have smelled something in the air if he’d paid attention.

“Yeah, it does,” she went.

 “Well, it’s been raining a fucking lot then, haan?!”

He said this, but he’d never actually noticed – the it-always-rains-after-we-fuck-bit, whether it had ever been true. He wasn’t fully convinced she’d noticed either. She was a little crazy, that way. Sometimes she said things that didn’t make much sense.

Fuck it. He had to leave anyway.

Turning her neck back like an owl and looking her sleepy owl look at him, she gave him that same half-genuine twisted dry smile, “I guess so.” But inside her head she thought “Wow.”

It had been raining a lot, lately.

Wow.

“Uh… babe?” he began. “I’m sorry to leave you here all naked and alone, but there’s this thing I’ve got to take care of with this guy at that place…  Need to split. Important stuff. How about I stick around for a little extra next time and settle the account?”

She was still by the window.

With her chin she pointed toward the bedside drawer. She pointed to the wad of cash on top of it, and he reached for the dough with as much eagerness as wanting to hold her, earlier.

He counted the money. Each note became a blur as he transferred it from one hand to other, counting.

Mogambo smiled. “I knew there’d be about this much.”

“Well, that is the usual rate, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” he said.  He said, “See you soon.”

Getting dressed, he buttoned his shirt wrong and almost got his dick pinched in the zipper.

He smiled his professional flashbulb smile. He kissed her cheek, leaving an invisible nicotine scar where he did and then he left…

“That went well.” You could say.

…and as he left it began to rain.

Wow.

Mogambo noticed, this time. They had just fucked – Chameli and him – and now it was raining and he was standing in the middle of it and he was drenched.

He thought, Fuck. His cigarettes, “Fuck.”

Rev 22:20

Jesus is coming.

So am I.

You would too if the sexy Devil caught your eye.



She’ll suck you dry. 

-Puscifer

Album review:- Mastodon- The Hunter

Ok, so, Mastodon just made another record, with another obscure looking animal adorning the album cover. I like.

Now, it might cost me my nuts for saying this, but I pretty much hated Mastodon’s last. Even with all the huff and haw and hipster-ish ‘progressive/ experimental/ what-have-you’ genre tags and five-star ratings and blah blah blah, the exceedingly chilled out vibe of Crack the Skye was entirely lost on me. While I didn’t (and still don’t) object to the band exploring creative possibilities outside of big balled heavy metal, it wound me up to hear the testosterone driven rage of Blood Mountain and Leviathan dissolve into this weird sort of lighter, new age gunk. That said, Mastodon are still a heavy metal powerhouse with one of the most impressive and consistently innovative discographies out there.  Each of their albums has chronologically progressed from one style to another, and even though Crack the Skye was a bit too fucking hillbilly for my own taste, it sure as hell wasn’t a bad album by any stretch of analytical masturbation; whether you liked it or not, it was well written, well executed, well produced, and ultimately: tight as hell… same as all their other albums. So Mastodon haven’t nearly approximated the quality of sludge that comes from premier bands like Neurosis or Crowbar, but they have the potential to get there, and The Hunter is a seminal stride forward in making sure they damn well do.

On The Hunter, Mastodon reprise both, their spankingly slick progressive edge, as well as the visceral power of their early years. So it’s not all moshpit friendly, this album. The half assed, spaced out stoner vibe (that made Crack the Skye such a fail for me) is a lot more prominent and well defined on this one, echoing back to punk-rooted bands like Kylesa and Kyuss, which is definitely the most fun part of the album. Thankfully, Brett Hind’s pretentious intellectualism of writing thirteen minute buildups has gone out the window and the tracks meld into one another in a riot of styles. At first, you’re listening to Cult of Luna having mad sex with Eyehategod, the next moment they’re doing Brant Bjork or And So I Watch You From Afar. It’s a lot of fun, and very remarkable, especially when it dawns on you that Mastodon haven’t sacrificed one bit of their quintessential ferocity underneath all this stylistic horsing around. Unpredictable yet cohesive songwriting is what makes this record click. I’ve heard it multiple times already, and there’s still more left for me to discover.

It might be an over-thought to claim The Hunter as being Crack the Skye done right. Because it’s a lot more than just that. The Hunter, in its excellence, brings to life the beast that Mastodon have been pregnant with all along. When I think about it seriously enough, Mastodon are really the only contemporary band around that remind me of Black Sabbath. And I don’t mean that on a genre-specific basis. Rather, my point is that both these bands, they’ve always known what exactly they’re trying to do, and have followed it up with albums that are a downright pleasure to listen to at the end of the day.

All things considered, this is definitely Mastodon’s most fun album yet.

Oh, and Bret Hinds has a one helluva beard.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED HERE: 

http://mehtakyakehta.com/2011/09/26/music-review-mastodon-%E2%80%93-the-hunter-2011/ 

Once, on acid, I stared into a burning candle for a very long while in a very short time and saw this little dude wearing a penguin suit and fedora hat, looking something like a Blues Brother silhouette, dancing like some wild peacock within the very heart of the flame as if dancing in such a manner – mad and hysterical and tripping off your fucking balls – was the last singularly happy thing left to do on this doomed, pre-apocalyptic Earth. And it made sense, more or less vaguely, the notion that drugs can sort you out even in the face of Armageddon. That seems to me a reasonable way to depart: mad and hysterical and tripping off your fucking balls. A wind blew in through the window, settling on my bones like an ominous frost, wafting over the candle and then everything went fucking black, and black means more than just some fucking color when you’re on drugs, bro.  

THAT FIGHT CLUB THING I am Jack’s wasted inspiration.  Some mornings, I wake up too soon. If there were any roosters left to crow in this city, they wouldn’t be crowing at that hour when it’s too early to do anything and even brushing your teeth seems premature. I’m too lazy to make coffee, too lazy to cook any breakfast, there’s no papers to read, no sunrise to watch, no cigarettes to smoke slyly in my verandah, no morning boner to play with and the streetlights are still leaking in through the dirty windows of my home, soft and orange and depressing. I hate it. I think of Ritwik Chaudhary when I get caught up in moments like these, probably because the boy was always good with handling depression. That is to say he’d get high off his balls, and then a little bit higher, enabling himself to act upon vaguely humorous impulses just short of suicide which would fritter away every last vestige of our mutual sadness. Poof. Gone. Just like that. Let’s smoke another joint of that lovely hash you’ve got there, bruv. We were drunk, once, like we always were. We might have been studying different subjects in different schools and making our moves on different girls but mostly we’d be together at the same places, smoking, drinking the same things, listening to the same music, spewing the same weird, half-assed, pseudo-existential, pseudo-revolutionary, post-modernesque crap that we hoped would justify our social failures and our inability to get along with our mothers or give up cigarettes. Many people won’t understand why we did that. Fuck those people. Our level of irresponsibility isn’t something that the Moral Majority can be trusted with, anyway. So, coming back to the story, we were drunk, once, always, the two of us, somewhere outside Andheri station in the middle of the night returning from some concert at Sathaye College and Ritwik said “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.” Ok. I know where this is going. What the flying fuck is happening? I do not like this. I’m supposed to be Mr. Tyler Durden around here. Not my cheap, reckless, unshaven friend who looks a little too much like a junkie for his own good. No wonder he doesn’t get laid. Ok. Let’s forget I said that. “Why?” I asked him. Tyler Durden would’ve said he doesn’t want to die without at least a few scars. Ritwik said “I don’t know. I guess I just want to see if this Fight Club thing works.” Stupid bloody idea. Nothing could be surer. But what the hell, I was pretty curious to see how ‘this Fight Club thing’ was going to shape out. And I was too high to care, so I hit him, as best as I could through the hazy cloud of alcohol and bad judgment that had settled over my brain, swinging my right arm – or maybe it was my left, maybe both. I may have been smoking some weed – in Ritwik’s general direction. Whichever arm it was, he was expecting it. I was aiming for the jaw. I think I got him somewhere near the shoulder. I must have clobbered the bastard pretty hard because he immediately went “OW FUUCK!”. And then he smiled. “Don’t even think about hitting me back, you dumb cunt.” “Yeah, you fucking dickless shitbag. That was nasty. We should stop. Got a cigarette on you?” And so we did. Stop fucking around, that is. I’m not the kind of guy who likes to punch shit. The last proper John Woo-style scuffle I had with anyone was a catfight back in 7th grade in which Mahika Verma and I practically scratched each others faces off because she called me ‘gay’. Or something equally ridiculous. We were just bored twelve year old virgins. But that is a vicious tangent to stray on to. Amen. We went home instead, Ritwik and I. We ate a fuckload and went to sleep and woke up the next day and drank a lot of chai and watched Harmony Korine’s Gummo. No one hit anyone, which is kind of sad, in retrospect. We can’t even handle inspiration very well. But that’s ok. There’s worse ways to embarrass yourself. Like a bad haircut or farting in public. Even the Pope wouldn’t want to fart in public. Hallelujah. 

THAT FIGHT CLUB THING

I am Jack’s wasted inspiration. 

Some mornings, I wake up too soon. If there were any roosters left to crow in this city, they wouldn’t be crowing at that hour when it’s too early to do anything and even brushing your teeth seems premature. I’m too lazy to make coffee, too lazy to cook any breakfast, there’s no papers to read, no sunrise to watch, no cigarettes to smoke slyly in my verandah, no morning boner to play with and the streetlights are still leaking in through the dirty windows of my home, soft and orange and depressing. I hate it. I think of Ritwik Chaudhary when I get caught up in moments like these, probably because the boy was always good with handling depression. That is to say he’d get high off his balls, and then a little bit higher, enabling himself to act upon vaguely humorous impulses just short of suicide which would fritter away every last vestige of our mutual sadness. Poof. Gone. Just like that. Let’s smoke another joint of that lovely hash you’ve got there, bruv.

We were drunk, once, like we always were. We might have been studying different subjects in different schools and making our moves on different girls but mostly we’d be together at the same places, smoking, drinking the same things, listening to the same music, spewing the same weird, half-assed, pseudo-existential, pseudo-revolutionary, post-modernesque crap that we hoped would justify our social failures and our inability to get along with our mothers or give up cigarettes. Many people won’t understand why we did that. Fuck those people. Our level of irresponsibility isn’t something that the Moral Majority can be trusted with, anyway.

So, coming back to the story, we were drunk, once, always, the two of us, somewhere outside Andheri station in the middle of the night returning from some concert at Sathaye College and Ritwik said “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”

Ok. I know where this is going. What the flying fuck is happening? I do not like this. I’m supposed to be Mr. Tyler Durden around here. Not my cheap, reckless, unshaven friend who looks a little too much like a junkie for his own good. No wonder he doesn’t get laid. Ok. Let’s forget I said that.

“Why?” I asked him. Tyler Durden would’ve said he doesn’t want to die without at least a few scars. Ritwik said “I don’t know. I guess I just want to see if this Fight Club thing works.”

Stupid bloody idea. Nothing could be surer. But what the hell, I was pretty curious to see how ‘this Fight Club thing’ was going to shape out. And I was too high to care, so I hit him, as best as I could through the hazy cloud of alcohol and bad judgment that had settled over my brain, swinging my right arm – or maybe it was my left, maybe both. I may have been smoking some weed – in Ritwik’s general direction. Whichever arm it was, he was expecting it. I was aiming for the jaw. I think I got him somewhere near the shoulder. I must have clobbered the bastard pretty hard because he immediately went “OW FUUCK!”. And then he smiled.

“Don’t even think about hitting me back, you dumb cunt.”

“Yeah, you fucking dickless shitbag. That was nasty. We should stop. Got a cigarette on you?”

And so we did. Stop fucking around, that is. I’m not the kind of guy who likes to punch shit. The last proper John Woo-style scuffle I had with anyone was a catfight back in 7th grade in which Mahika Verma and I practically scratched each others faces off because she called me ‘gay’. Or something equally ridiculous. We were just bored twelve year old virgins. But that is a vicious tangent to stray on to. Amen.

We went home instead, Ritwik and I. We ate a fuckload and went to sleep and woke up the next day and drank a lot of chai and watched Harmony Korine’s Gummo. No one hit anyone, which is kind of sad, in retrospect. We can’t even handle inspiration very well. But that’s ok. There’s worse ways to embarrass yourself. Like a bad haircut or farting in public. Even the Pope wouldn’t want to fart in public. Hallelujah. 

(Source: silverspundreams, via theendisweird)

THE STREETS ARE AWASH WITH DRUGS YOU CAN HAVE FOR UNHAPPINESS AND PAIN… AND WE TOOK THEM ALL.

THE STREETS ARE AWASH WITH DRUGS YOU CAN HAVE FOR UNHAPPINESS AND PAIN… AND WE TOOK THEM ALL.

(Source: rentsocsem)