Episode 9. Prinzendorf Impressions: Süßes Erden Mysterien Theater
Past the information, extend the knowledge. Past the information, extend the knowledge.
Rick Holmes:John Coltrane said, I love supreme. I interpret back to
Justin:all living things.
Rick Holmes:Donny Hathaway said, the ghetto. Woody Shaw said, why? John F Kennedy said, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Martin Luther King said, I have a dream.
Rick Holmes:Stevie Wonder said, in her vision, interpretation,
Justin:Aretha Fry Episode nine.
Jacob:Episode nine. Episode nine. Episode nine.
Justin:So I think, you know, due to recent activities, I would love to open this episode because there's something I feel like I have to start the episode with. Are you guys good with that?
Leon:Wait. You're gonna do like a cold, like, just
Jacob:Yeah.
Justin:I mean create into the music? I think because, you know, it's a great it's a great way to start and then we can summarize the
Leon:Okay. Let's go for it. Just a side note, a lot has happened.
Justin:A lot has happened.
Leon:Past month. Mhmm.
Justin:Yeah. A lot. Yeah. A lot has happened. It's great.
Justin:So let me get there. And I I wanna yeah. I have to say that this music is exceptionally unusual. I've dived deep into this. I've dived about as deep into this as is possible and this is a very unique unique special special track.
Justin:That's the fourth part of the origin mystery theory the sorry. The origin mystery in theater twenty fifth action performance in New York City, originally released on a cassette label, recently released as a vinyl in 2016. And I believe it was done there's two different one one source says it was done in the Cinematheque in New York, which I would believe to be true and then there's another that says it was done in a specific gallery in New York and it was a two hour action, painting action. Herman Nitsch, the reason I chose this, so it's if you're familiar with Niche, this is a very, very, very delicate Niche piece, most of his music is familiarly quite intense and I just had the incredible opportunity to perform in the six day play which was the last assumptively the last time it'll ever be done it was Nietzsche's masterwork it's day four, five, six were done in Prinsen Norf at his castle and it's for people that don't know Niche it's this very intense, very beautiful but quite demanding and both the audience and of the participants So performance that's a 100 musicians, 60 actors, a lot of blood, a lot of entrails, a lot of fruit, a lot of there's a lot of stuff, there's a lot.
Justin:But I think the reason I wanted to play this piece is because what was really phenomenal about participating in that experience was that like many things and particularly at this moment, you see images of these pieces and you see and the images are really intense, it's like people on a cross covered in blood inside a pig carcass, like all of these very intense images and you get this idea of this work as this very transgressive. It gives it a very one note texture and often it's really hard to introduce people to niche because it is quite shocking and can come across as shocking for shocking sake. What is profound and and why I picked that music is that is one very partial element of what niche is and it is about a kind of entryway into this exquisite beauty and it has a very depth psychology slash Nietzschean, like, very birth of tragedy take on on the idea of transgression and and basically the and on tragedy really fundamentally that tragedy is basically the repression of drives and that the repression of drives causes all tragedy. So you think of something like Oedipus or Climonestra and it's like, you know, the repressed violence always returns and manifests in terrible things.
Justin:And so the idea of this really visceral part of niche is this ability to let go into the transgressive drives and then afterwards release into this ecstatic beauty. So you know, Dionysus' body gets torn apart and then he's born again through the winemaking. And so after all of this really heavy stuff happens, you go out into these gorgeous fields, into these beautiful fields near Prinsendorf Castle and celebrate and drink wine and and filled with joy and the music is phenomenal and everything from really delicate beautiful stuff like that to like full on polka marching bands and and it's just complete magnificent beauty and and a very full spectrum of reality. So yeah, so I just came back from that so I'm a little cooked. It's really exciting to share that with you guys and start the show off with a very special piece of niche.
Leon:That's really incredible. When you say, like, 60 actors, are the actors also playing music? Or it's like
Justin:Some of them some of them, but there's like a full symphony orchestra
Leon:there. Okay.
Justin:Yeah. The 100 musicians are on top of the 60 actors, but some of the actors, like, were also doing like, there was a Gong Orchestra that was composed of actors. Okay. There was a there was also a choir that some of the actors participated in that when the music gets quite intense, it's like, you got a lot of sound happening, and so you need as many bodies as possible.
Leon:What was your, your participation your your contribution?
Justin:So I was this was really exciting for me, and, I didn't I terrifying and exciting. So there's there's kind of niche divide two categories. This is what he calls passive actors and active actors. And I was really hoping to be one of the passive actors, which is the crucified people. So you get and you're called passive because you basically are suspended on a crucifix with like bandages and and like it holds your arms and you can't do anything and you get blindfold and then you're carried out up like by people carrying you on the cross, it's wild and then they take you and put you in the action and you are then, you know, there's different, I would not say abuses but different, what's the right word, there's different trials that the passive actors go through I guess is a good way to put So some of them have blood poured on them, some have blood poured in their mouths, some have, know, some are fully naked, I was in a cloak and my trials were to be put under the carcass of a pig while they it's hard it's really hard to talk about this because it just sounds so vile but it's quite profound and there's a lot of respect for the animals and a lot of respect for it's really, really hard to decomplexify this when you talk about But my my I was kind of received a lot of viscera on me and then was put inside the pig and and like the the cross is elevated into the carcass of the pig and they kind of rummage, pour a bunch of blood and grapes and tomatoes into the carcass of buildings and they just rummage it all over you in this kind of act of orgiastic violence.
Justin:And then I was put on the ground and Incredible. Left there for a while to while they while the the things finished. I had other tasks too, like I did a lot of support tasks the day before and there's also these these other actions. The structure of it's really extraordinary. It's really smart the way that he structured it.
Justin:So basically, it's a series of actions that like my role in the in that's there was many things happening at the time when that happened with me including someone going through the exact same thing on the other side of the center dais I guess and other people on crucifix is experiencing things too and it's very beautifully choreographed but it's quite remarkable because we only had like a few days to rehearse and so there is a lot of like kind of these discrete actions and you know what you do in the action and then you support the actions of other people when it's happening. So it's just this beautiful choreography of these kind of events and one of the other major events is called the the short term short form term for it is a rugby and basically there's this big concrete pool in the in the middle of the castle grounds. This all takes place in Nitsch's Castle in Prinsendorf which is a whole story unto itself. One of the most beautiful moments of all was going to the Nitsch Museum and there's a Jonas Mekas Pavilion where Kosmikus and and Nitch were really close friends and also with Peter Kubelka, which is a whole other story that's super cool.
Justin:But Kubelka was there, actually he has a house, he has a room in the castle that's his summer home and he was he was up with us at dawn one morning, it was so moving but the Meekas Pavilion, they just show all the Meekas films on repeat of of Niche and there's this beautiful scene, Niche is probably 36, something like that, where he gets the castle, like, and the castle is so central to his dream. Yeah. It's it's so castle to it's so critical to his dream of fulfilling the six day play and it's just him wandering around the castle grounds and it's in complete disrepair, like animals everywhere, total chaos and he just has the biggest smile on his face, like he's like he just sees the future and it's just so beautiful that they captured that and sitting there with him and with Sorry, not with him, he's passed away but with Rita, his widow in the room watching the And she's like doing color commentary like just It was just hilarious, it was so profound. Yeah. So there's this pool in the center that of concrete big concrete kind of pool that's very deep and like looks like agricultural, like like something for like washing animals or something, but it's huge.
Justin:It's like you could fit a 100 people in it And there's a white sheet on the bottom of it and then there's all these grapes and tomatoes in vats and big buckets of blood and big containers of viscera and basically the other job I had was to throw all of that stuff into the pool and then they blow a whistle and everyone rugby's in the pool and you just jump into the pool and you crush it all the the tomatoes and all of the and you're getting showered with with huge buckets of blood and like and you're just in this orgiastic frenzy with all of this material and it's like, you know, people are throwing organs at your face and like wrestling in in this stuff and then that ends and and you go into the showers, quickly shower off, change into a new fresh set of white clothes and go and get the bow stretcher and carry it into the fields where you have a big drinking party. So, it's like, yeah, it's just wild. So that basically explains the majority of my tasks. Yeah.
Leon:Thanks thank you very much, Justin, for for breaking it down that way or or, like, giving a more full context to to his to Mitch's art. Because I I was always, always, always put off by by the the kind of superficial scenario
Justin:Yeah.
Leon:And was never able to to really approach it because of that.
Justin:I mean, I think it's one of the biggest challenges of his work. And it's so interesting if you look at who he's really close to. You've got, like, Kubelka, you've got, like, you know, Miches. There there's this real delicacy to his sensitivity that is reflected in those people's work that is totally impossible to experience unless you go there with with the work as either as an audience member or as a participant. I think some of the later paintings and, you know, he did the Valkyrie at Beirut.
Justin:He did a staging of the Valkyrie at Beirut that's just exquisitely beautiful and and really non like, very delicate. Is quite it's really worth looking up online. I'll see if I can find a link to it and put it in the show notes. But I also don't wanna diminish the the the intense side of niche because I think that that's it's it's you can't have the I'm not I mean, it it's to me a work of a certain time, like this idea of depth psychology and releasing of primal drives and all of this stuff is is of a time and I think that maybe that is not like it's not it's not it's specific to a very specific moment in in thinking and and I love it, but also you can't have the It's a very powerful process to go through both as an audience or as a as a performer and I don't think you could go there like being in the fields after this stuff is just like and the music and the like and you know, also when all of this intense stuff is happening, there's just this unbelievably intense music happening and then it shifts into this just spectral light, gorgeousness and you're just like, it's a it's a pretty profound experience that I don't think could happen without that.
Justin:So I don't that like, I don't wanna pull it apart either.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:But I really and and but I I mean, just it's it's heartbreaking. It's not heartbreaking. It's just like it's frustrating to me that people only get this very narrow window on niche and it's like and I mean, that music I'll I'll probably play another niche piece later too that's just utterly beautiful and there's this real joy at the what was I think shocking to me is fundamentally, there's this deep like pagan wine filled joy at the base of niche that is the biggest piece of niche. Like, and it is absolutely like wild Austrian farmer wildness. Like, it's just so beautiful and that is an energy that, wow, the world needs so badly and was incredible to be able to participate in that.
Justin:Yeah.
Jacob:So cool. Amazing. You know, in fact, I'd say that Chris was a big fan of Nick's music.
Justin:Oh, yeah. Oh, beautiful.
Jacob:And I remember we at one point, we received, like, this whole box set of harmonium works that he did.
Leon:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember.
Jacob:And I think and I think for, two, three days, that's all would that would play in the store. And and I to this day, I remember this humorous little bit because I think I've only heard that box set once. It was at the store. And so, you know, you've got this whole harmonium thing happening. It's just like listening to it all day.
Jacob:And suddenly in the recording suddenly in the recording, you just hear, like, the loudest sneeze that you've missed. That. It's amazing. And and it just and it it it really I think, like, his his personality comes across because it's just like
Justin:So great.
Jacob:And so from this kind of, like, intensity, you just hear there's Mitch behind us or Bodhi, like, lying alone, you know. So it's really Wow. Really fantastic.
Justin:That box that box set, that that label, Organ Accordi, is such a crazy story too and such an important part of the niche story. So that's Gary Todd, who's from Santa Yeah. He a terrible tragic accident and but and never recovered from it. And he died really recently actually, but like the the whole Corti project was dismantled by that accident. And but it's very interesting because niche always like, I think niches work because of how transgressive it is, works in Europe but really North America can't go there.
Justin:And so he struggled a lot to build an audience in North America and and that those records and that label push on him really really really created a lot of momentum for him leading up to the ninety eight or post ninety eight six day play and and really allowed his I think it was like really significant part of Niche of like growing his reputation and and also undermining some of the base assumptions of what he was doing or like just that it's pure sensationalism like that that the harmony in music is exquisitely beautiful.
Jacob:It's beautiful.
Justin:And and there's a I got to see the harmony when it was in the castle. That was so wild to see Like, it's so beautiful.
Jacob:You're so lucky to have had that experience
Justin:my god. Yeah. And also, mad, mad, mad shout out to Blake Hargreaves, amazing noise musician, great organist, like, who who hooked me up with this experience and has been part of the niche community for a number of years now and Yeah. Was it was really grateful. He was like he reached out to me and he was like, Justin, you have to do this.
Justin:And I was like, okay. Great.
Jacob:It's cool because when I was listening to it, was thinking probably, like, I'm listening to this piece of music and you're listening to this piece of music, and your experience of listening to the same piece of music that I'm listening to is, like Right. I I could just feel your, like, blood pressure go up. Yeah. You know? You know?
Jacob:Like it and like it's almost like I'd be, like, sitting with, you know, Neil Armstrong, and he's telling me, yeah, I walked on the like, I walked on the moon. I was like, okay. Okay. But, you know, you know what I mean? Like You
Justin:know, it's really I was thinking when when it was playing, there's such a difference between, like, this is yeah, it's like a very, like, almost ontological thing, like, there's such a difference between how you experience something, how you experience the idea of something, how you experience the projected idea of something like from the cultural sphere that it's in and then how you experience a thing by being in it. And I think this is so fundamental to Niche, like this is what is so beautifully powerful about his work is it's an absolute rupture of all of that except for the pure experience and this was so fundamental to him and his idea of theater was which is what led him to doing such extreme things was, like, there should be no separation from the real. So if there's violence, it has to be violence. If there's, you know, like and it has to it has to have a a an absolute experience of the real and full sensorial experience of the real. So Yeah.
Justin:One of the things that's really wild about that is the smells and, like, you know, the the the the experience of tactile tactility, all of that is really to to look at that has such a different meaning than to be in it, like to be actually in the physical experience of of those extreme sensations. Yeah. And it is, yeah, very transformative and very profound. And I think also for the audience, it's really interesting, a number of the actors had been in the audience for previous things and a number of the audience had been actors previously. And so it because you have this very, very different experience
Leon:through Right.
Justin:Both of those channels and, like, there's a and and a very also a really interesting concept of what is a holistic experience of this work. You know? How do you and, you know, it it's all of those things and the rupture and the way they rupture each other. So, I mean, it's phenomenally brilliant art. Like, what a what a genius.
Justin:It's crazy.
Jacob:Yeah. It reminds me a little bit of our previous theme song from the Dussault MacAvella film Sweet movie. Yeah. Because I believe Otto Mule was in that and does, like, an action in that film. That whole film feels like her mid niche or that kind of
Leon:Yeah. Actress.
Justin:There's a scene in the commune in when Carol Lohr goes to get healed and they do all the, like, Ricky and it was it was really interesting to me. I found out something super interesting about that because there was a lot of people from the niche foundation in Naples, amazing people. I'm gonna go back there in a couple weeks just because I made super great friends and just wanna keep the momentum with my niche life. But I'm gonna go and see these beautiful beautiful people I met at the the Niche Foundation and there's also a bunch of kids from the young people who are amazing
Jacob:Mhmm.
Justin:From the Viennese Actionist Museum in Vienna and very few of them knew about Sweet Movie. Then I found out it was because of apparently, Mule really didn't like Makabev's kind of like, found it too optimistic and hippie and, like, Reiki and and had a little bit of this was the what I'd been told. So he's kind of that that participation in that film has been kind of buried because of the Mhmm. Excessive liberatory vision of it or something like that. I'm not quite sure.
Justin:But yeah. I mean, Makabev, I love so so so much too for similar reasons.
Jacob:Yeah. So cool. Yeah. This experience. Very, cool.
Leon:I think there's, like, a second part to the story. There was you guys were supposed to meet up
Justin:Yeah.
Jacob:Over there on the continent.
Justin:Yeah. Unfortunately, the the so it's extraordinarily demanding. I was gonna meet Jacob afterwards and come to Poland and I was like, sure, I'll be able to do that. No problem. I had four or five days after but first of all, you're doing like I think like seven five or seven days of rehearsal that are like super intense and then the performance days you're like it's twenty four hours like there's like you get up at dawn and there's this action at dawn, 04:00 in the morning.
Justin:You there's a string quartet and all the people are in white staring at the sun waiting for it to come up and all these bells. It's like just mind blowing. And then you have to set up the action before the audience arrives at 10AM so there's like all this work to do and like so much heavy lifting, so much crazy like physical labor and so you set everything up, maybe you have an hour or two of sleep like that you can sneak out but you're totally paranoid that you're gonna miss your cues and like it's just like you you just can't really sleep and then you perform until like ten at night and like all these actions are happening and stuff like that, no time to sleep, no time to rest, you're doing crazy physical labor and then drinking, like just crazy partying and then there's string quartets in the garden till like four in the morning, like, you know, till three in the morning, so you got like one hour before you're getting up for dawn and they're like and that goes on for for three days so
Leon:Oh, wow.
Justin:At the end of that, you're well, I just got dizzy, like, literally just like felt like because of being remembering what that was and then also, you know, I was making a joke before we started about food safety, like, it's a it's a you're dealing with a lot of toxic materials and weather and, like, and so it's, like, I I don't think anyone's like, there's been some there's yeah. I mean, there's some injuries and definitely some people have have been in compromised health positions after niche performances and so, like, I I was feeling pretty crappy afterwards. I got really crazy fever for the first few nights and was really out of energy. I don't know how much of it was I went to the that was a really funny thing. Went to the my a dear friend who'd been involved took me to a safe doctor that would understand what I could do, you know?
Justin:No, but it's crazy, like, how do you Yeah. So, yeah, like, how do you explain this and and talked it through with me. Thank you, Hannah, who's who's probably gonna come and visit here. I'll introduce you to Hannah, she's amazing Leon. Grew up in the niche world, so wild, like, as a child and performed in '98 as a 17, 18 year old.
Justin:Incredible. Yeah, one of the coolest people I've ever met in my life but she helped me out with a doctor and she was like, yeah, I got a bunch of pig blood in his ear, I felt like I had an ear infection and the doctor was like, pig blood, no problem. So that's But I wanna know before we move on, I wanna know what you guys thought of that piece of music, like what that because I'm so profoundly embedded in that world and it's like ecstatic for me, so I just wanna know what your reflections were on it.
Leon:Well, I've this was kinda like a first expo it's not really a first exposure because I've heard his music before and I've I've seen images of his the the performances of his art. And I remembered also the the harmonium works. So this wasn't it didn't feel like that far from what I remembered of the the musical aspect of it, except that it was incredibly beautiful Mhmm. And delicate. And so I was trying to see if it was representative of his music.
Leon:And so I was like, while it was playing, I had all the, yeah, the sheep blood and the carcasses images, like, floating in in the back of my eyes kind of thing. And trying to say, oh, okay. So that's the match. That's kind of like an interesting match that like, just on a very superficial level. That's what I was thinking.
Leon:But then when you when you brought up the fact that this was an exceptionally delicate piece of music, I I I was intrigued. But it is really, really beautiful.
Justin:That's such a beautiful piece.
Leon:Yeah. Yeah.
Jacob:Mean, I've I've heard a lot of niche stuff. I I think I think they released, a 51 CD set of the whole thing as well that I might have Yeah. I think I've heard that as well. And so just truthfully, was thinking about experience for the rest of your life. Every time you feel niche, your blood pressure will go up, you know.
Justin:Yeah. Or down. Or down. Or down. Whatever.
Justin:Down too.
Jacob:Yeah. I mean, you'll you'll be there. Right? Like Yeah. It's like it'll take you back.
Jacob:And I think it's an amazing thing when you can have experiences like that in life. I don't think there's many of them. I can't even think of any of them right now. But things where at some point when you just hear something, you're like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Jacob:Oh, yeah. It's an incredible thing.
Justin:You know? I would say also that walking by any, like, kind of butcher shop or
Leon:garbage, like, day Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Justin:Is a very stronger
Justin:version of that. Like, I'm just right back. That was also really wild for the first like, it took me about six showers to get the smell off
Jacob:of me.
Justin:Like, it was so maybe, like, seven or eight.
Jacob:Though you know, that smell, though I know that smell. You guys you guys know that's you guys know that smell. You know, the Joe Joe Joe and John's what is it? Jam space that was in your
Justin:Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's true. It's
Jacob:true. That that has That
Justin:totally had that smell. And then and then also the taste, like, you couldn't get everything tasted like blood for like
Jacob:Wow.
Justin:A week. Ouch. It was just wild. That was a really really really strange experience to, like, how it altered your taste buds so wildly. Like, it was just like, okay.
Justin:I wonder if anything wine, in particular, red wine, I I took like
Justin:You're taking a break?
Justin:Like a couple days ago. I'm like, I can drink red wine and not taste blood. It's crazy. Yeah.
Leon:That's really that's really fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate you going through that. I Sharing that.
Justin:I'm like, what do
Justin:you do after that?
Justin:You know? I'm like, oh my god. What's next?
Jacob:Yeah. Yeah.
Leon:I think you can retire. You're allowed to not have to do anything.
Justin:That's great. I like that. I definitely need to
Justin:do that for a while. It's crazy. Beautiful. And the other thing too is that's really important to say is like, this is as an actor and as a passive actor, I was like quite scared. And I think it's really important to own that.
Justin:Like, it like, being that vulnerable is insane. Like, just you have to trust everyone around you. There is, like, horror stories that you hear of people having, like, lungs fall on their face and them suffocating and needing to be put in an ambulance and, like, you know, so you're really in this position of tremendous vulnerability and and you're there's such a profound bond in the niche community because of having gone through this and having to trust the people Yeah.
Leon:Yeah. Yeah.
Justin:Around you. And it was hilarious. I had this conversation with one of the passive actors who had done the role I did before me in a previous action and and he was hilarious. He was like I was like, how do I prepare for this mentally? What do I do?
Justin:Like, how do I you know? And he's like, you know the answers to these questions or you wouldn't have actually volunteered to do this. And that was quite profound. And Yeah. After that experience gave me a huge hug, and he was like, now you know what that's like.
Justin:That's great. So that but yeah, going through that whole arc of of fear and and vulnerability was really Mhmm. I think maybe the most profound thing for me with it and having to really face all that and
Jacob:Yeah. Yeah.
Justin:I'm sure. Amazing. Yeah. So there we go. Who's next?
Leon:Maybe Neil Armstrong to
Justin:be Yeah.
Jacob:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Armstrong. Episode nine.
Jacob:That's all
Justin:I'm gonna
Leon:say. Episode nine. I I could fall well, I I could play something. I'm not gonna even use the words follow. Got something to share.
Leon:Well, I think we everyone's got something to share. But if that's okay with you, Jacob?
Jacob:Yeah. Yeah. It's all good.
Leon:Yeah.
Jacob:All good.
Leon:Yeah. So I'll I'll I'll play the I'll play the the song, and then we'll talk about it afterwards.
Jacob:That's very nice too.
Justin:I'm really mad that it stopped. Like, why
Jacob:did that stop? Yeah. Both pieces, I'm just kind of dozing off the image in this one in the most amazing way. Beautiful. So What is that?
Leon:Yeah. That was Patricia Mayer and Mariolina Zita. The piece is called Il Giardino de Restele from 1995 album called Nel Ventre della Terra. And is Mariolina Zita is an Italian artist who Times. Who records in Italian caves.
Leon:That's, like, her thing. She explores caves and records inside them. And mostly, she plays caves as an instrument. So she'll a lot of the percussion is actually her banging on stalactites and stalagmites. Wow.
Justin:And So I also have an Italian recording in caves queued up for today.
Jacob:So There
Leon:you go. That's the thing. That's CD Esoteric episode nine. Episode nine.
Justin:Episode nine. That is hilarious.
Leon:Yeah.
Justin:Fuck. The I was gonna say it's like a perfect it's like a perfect midpoint between Walter Maoli, who's the cat cave guy that I was gonna play, and Michael Ranta. It's got like beginning Yeah. Yeah. Super feels like Michael Ranta.
Justin:I was like Yeah.
Jacob:Yeah. It does. Yeah. That was beautiful.
Justin:Yeah. So beautiful.
Jacob:Do you know anything about anything else about this? I guess it's just
Leon:It's it's really actually, the the artist that is that has most information about is Mariolina Zita Mhmm. Because of the whole cave thing. But even then, there's very, very little information out there. She doesn't have a lot of recordings. I think she has maybe three or four albums, some fairly recent, but they're all really difficult to find.
Leon:Mhmm. And this is one of the only ones that I've actually found excerpts online. That's beautiful. Yeah.
Jacob:Yeah.
Leon:It's just it it's yeah. I was I was, like, remembering Jeff German and all the Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Orchestra kind of stuff.
Leon:And, like, wow. It was really nice and wanting to listen to stuff like that and kinda fell on this. And it it's, like, very it's very different because of how, you know, tonal it is in comparison to to the animist stuff. But it's tonal, but also it's like not it's still like rocks and stuff
Jacob:making Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Justin:I've also been like, my taste has just been going deeper and deeper into Italian avant garde for the past couple years, like and there's such a incredible, like, history of you know, I like what you say with Jeff German and stuff like that, I always think of, like, this Pacific Northwest kind of, like, noise culture as being, like, this like kind of very special unique thing in the world and like the social conditions that were part of America or whatever created that. Hell no. Like it's super interesting seeing what those same kind of currents create in a place like Italy and Mhmm. With, like, the Italian yeah. It's it's really amazing and there's so much of it.
Justin:Like, there's just so much incredible Italian avant garde music and, like from, you know, the fifties to now and and the currents run so deep and the dialogue between the eras run so deep and the dialogue to maybe art history runs a little deeper than it does in the Pacific Northwest version of that. But yeah, there's so much. It's just like it's incredible. There's such a beautiful deep deep deep current in Italy that is more exciting to me than anywhere else in Europe. Well,
Jacob:I'm gonna follow-up with something that has an Italian title. Let me see what it's called. But it's it's by a German guy. So it's only I'll play, like, just the beginning of it. It's like a it's like an opera or whatever, like a fluxes opera, I guess you could call it.
Justin:Wow.
Jacob:And the and the title is or whatever.
Leon:Yeah.
Jacob:And so I'll play just the first ten minutes of it because it's like a two hour opera, but it's pretty great sounding. So here we go. And maybe it'll go well with what we heard. I'm not sure. But Wow.
Jacob:Here we go.
Leon:There. Amazing. That was incredible.
Jacob:So that was actually a fluxes opera by Wilm Bolstow, who's, like, I I guess, like, a German artist from the seventies, eighties, I imagine, and he did stuff with fluxes. But that piece just, like, for the lack of a better word, just, like, picks me up at every like, I just feel like I'm being picked up into the heavens, really. It's just the I'm just being, like, taken up, really. There's an amazing sense of being kind of taken upwards somehow. I just can't help but just go up with it.
Jacob:It's in this kind of like, just how the the the music or the melody just just elongate and become this visceral thing. It's pretty amazing.
Justin:How does it keep because
Justin:it it kind of gathers velocity as it goes. Does it keep kind of getting more and more intense like
Jacob:that? No. It it goes to it goes to other places because it's like a big opera. So I maybe that's like the first act, I guess you could
Leon:say, like,
Jacob:the first thing. But Yeah. What it does is just I love when music does something to you very strange, and this really does it for me in that sense.
Leon:It's so amazing. I kept thinking, like, I don't know much about opera, but I know what I like. No. This is like, yeah, I can get behind this. This is alright.
Leon:Man, it's that was so that was breathtaking. That was so good.
Justin:Do you know anything about the performer?
Justin:Like, the
Leon:Yeah. Performance was phenomenal. Yeah.
Jacob:It's incredible. Yeah. Incredible sounding.
Justin:Like, that's Joan of Barbara level shit. Like, that was really, like, you've got so much control. Like, what a performer is
Jacob:Yeah. And also, what I love, it's it it it it goes to, like, a breaking point, and it goes beyond that breaking point of the voice. Yeah. But and I just love that how it seems like they're taking the voice to really the the the the utmost that they can take it, you know, and then it just cracks, and then it's becoming really visceral. So it becomes something very, very classical, and then it just, like, it keeps pushing and pushing and pushing.
Jacob:Yeah. Yeah. It's quite wonderful.
Leon:And also that that bus noise or whatever. Yeah.
Jacob:Yes. I love it. It's so good.
Justin:It's like because that was also happening in the niche. You could hear the traffic from outside of the gallery and, like, just the the really nice reflection
Justin:of those. I was like, wow. That's beautiful.
Leon:Yeah. Yeah. That's the deep yeah. It's phenomenal. I mean, like, I'm I'm definitely gonna want to to hear the whole piece because Yeah.
Leon:Oh, yeah. No compositionally compositionally, it's like, insane. It's so amazing.
Jacob:I loved also the ending of it the ending of it where it feels like she's crying and then she's laughing or something like that. And it reminds me of this incredible moment. I think you were there, Justin and Leon as well perhaps, but it was with when Test were playing at Casa Del Pablo.
Leon:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Jacob:Played this and they played this amazing first set, and then they took a break. And then after the break, everyone just kind of started laughing in the crowd because they just couldn't imagine another set because
Justin:it was
Jacob:and so people were starting to laugh, and then they were starting to laugh. But I remember to this day that their laughter became just like this demonic laughter Yeah. Which then segued into the saxophones kind of taking over. And this has something like that to me, which is really cool.
Justin:This is this is a thing too. Like, I was who was I reading? I was reading somebody talking about going to New York, maybe it's Chris Corsoano, and seeing Test in the subway all the time and Yeah. Yeah. Changing his life.
Justin:And Yeah. Like, there was, like, a there's a bands like Test that, you know, the record's good. It's a great free jazz record, but it's nothing like live.
Leon:Yeah.
Justin:And like that was just like there's a few bands like that that were reliably life changing experiences live. Was one of them. Where you're just like, how do you Yeah. Yeah. And and there's something I mean, all ties into this whole niche thing and what we're talking about too about, like, the knowing the thing, knowing the idea of the thing and experiencing the thing like Yeah.
Justin:Like being in this visceral experience of that music and those guys like and then I hear something like this that you just played and I'm like Yeah. Oh my god, I wanna I wanna see this live so badly. Like, I want like, what would the experience of this live be like? Yeah. But I should just huge part of opera too.
Justin:Right?
Jacob:Yeah. I should just mention too. It's in passing that, you know, Krakow has some pretty it's not the best place for shows, but it's got some good shows. And every year, there's, like, a festival called the unsound festival that has some good stuff. But last year, they had, like, marginal consort, which was a really amazing show.
Jacob:Man, guess who's coming this year? I couldn't believe it. I was like, who? Joanna Barbara. Wow.
Jacob:So we're thinking of how that's gonna be live. Yeah. I know. I wonder. Like, I didn't know she was still alive.
Justin:Might have to come for that.
Justin:That's exciting. That's
Leon:amazing. That's that's fantastic. We we just watched the documentary on Blue Jean Tyranny that
Justin:we made on May beautiful. Hey?
Leon:Couple years
Justin:ago. Documentary is so amazing.
Leon:With with Joan LaBarbara.
Jacob:Oh, wait. She's in it. Okay.
Leon:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's like one of the the talking heads. And there's this, like, fantastic footage of of her Oh, wow.
Jacob:Yeah. So I'm pretty excited. Seventies, eighties. So
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
Leon:Good stuff. Lucky dude.
Jacob:Yeah. That's
Justin:gonna be a great show.
Jacob:Yeah.
Justin:That's really exciting. Yeah. So I was gonna play the the also the cover of that is the visual the graphic art of the cover of that is incredible. Oh my god. I love it so much.
Justin:But I was gonna play the the the Cavern Sonora by Maoli but since you already I don't wanna like get into some kind of competition about who has the best cave music. So so I'm gonna but it does blow my mind that we
Justin:both brought cave music to this episode.
Justin:That's pretty I'm gonna switch it up to because you said this thing about music that does something to you and this is also Meioli and it is music that does something it's intentionally meant to do something to you and it'll be curious to discuss what it does to us afterwards. But and it's really something I need after Niche. I think oh, yeah. This is gonna be such an amazing segue into the story of being heal being cured by the Slavic plant world after Niche that I have to tell after this, which is a very trippy and very real thing that was mind blowing but okay, so I'll play this and it's a great introduction to that. And this is I think also this is one of the tracks I always say this almost every episode, Melozer was giving me shit about this, but this is like one of the tracks that I've played the most since I've owned it.
Justin:Like on on constant repeat, like it's just never leaves my turntable. So it's great. And I was so excited to find a digital file of this, it was really really hard to track to track down. Sounds obtained by blowing into two teraxicum dandelion stems recorded in a meadow with background sounds of insects, sounds subsequently slowed down in speed.
Jacob:That's the title? That's an
Justin:amazing the
Jacob:title. Wow.
Justin:And this is Walter Maoli and, more interestingly, Agostino Nirode Fortini, who was a specialist in the field of sound and video applied to body therapies and meditation. And so they wanted to use a single natural element and they chose yeah, this is such a beautiful statement. From the single natural element comes the vibration permeating the whole universe and in dissolvable binomial for which everything that makes up existence contains the information of itself in all its parts. And so this was they decided on the dandelion because of its profound healing properties and its abundance. And yeah.
Justin:And that music does something very Yeah.
Jacob:It's beautiful too. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Leon:It's definitely the the the the body is ready to download all that information for sure.
Justin:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Jacob:I was just gonna say it totally reminds me of just the kind of same grieving pattern of, like, timboras. It really has that kind of Yeah. Yeah. That resonance of it that I just always love so much. Just the kind of very resonant sounding.
Jacob:Yeah. And it's typical. It's really wonder.
Leon:I was I was wondering if it was I mean, I I I knew that the the insect sounds would be like tape music, but if it was, like, cellos or or, you know, double bass playing, if it was live or whatever. But the, yeah,
Jacob:this
Leon:I mean, the the description takes it to a whole other level. It's Yeah. Yeah. It it's incredible. Well, it's it's so I mean, it's it's so static and but ever changing.
Leon:And there's actually yeah. And, also, I suppose that tape, the actual medium, is contributing so much to to the music also by having you know, by revealing what it picked up when it slowed down and and also the just the the compression the artifacts from the compression and everything. I was like hearing guitars and, like, xylophones and everything. It's so amazing. It's it's really, really beautiful.
Justin:I love too that the healing like, there's a lot of, like, unrigorous healing music that I think is probably healing and good and, like, I'm not gonna be critical about any of that. But something that has this level of intensity and rigor and in that modality of being like, this is where we're making yeah. And just the vision of it. It's very it's very niche too in a way. Like, there's just this very profoundly mythical, poetic place that it's coming from that's, like, about transcendence and
Leon:Mhmm.
Justin:Imminence and yeah. It's really, really powerful.
Jacob:Yeah. That was amazing.
Justin:So so the crazy story with that is the I think the hardest thing for me in niche I was vegan mostly for two years before I went to the niche thing. And there's a lot of animal stuff and a lot of dealing with animal bodies and you're eating meat the whole time and they serve the, you know, the the animals that in the original one, they actually served the animals that were being used in the performance. And and so really wrestling a lot with this and, like, a lot of my belief systems and how do I reconcile this with this. And there was a lot of struggles with that and and kind of was quite haunted by that in the period afterwards when I was sick and having some crazy dreams and and really going through some big feelings around all of that. And I was talking to a friend and my friend was like, you just need to go to a spa, like just find a spa, like sweat out everything, like just go get in some hot and sweat all whatever's in your system out of you.
Justin:And I honestly feel like I dreamt this experience, like it was so wild. I found this spa, somehow I wanna be the only person at the spa. I walked in and there's this super intense beautiful man and he's like, you're here. And I was like, yeah.
Justin:And he was like
Justin:he's like, you you know what we're doing. And I was like, yeah. And they did these he's like, real mountain. You this is the real thing. And I was like, okay.
Justin:And they did almost the mirror inverse of the niche experience but with plants. And I was put on this bed of, you know, instead of being in the carcass, like, you're on this bed of fir branches in the sauna and they're like and everything was cold like all the blood and stuff and the viscera was super cold and they're doing all this stuff with plant material, super hot like and you're in this sauna, there's three rounds, the first one was just on the the fir branches and then the guy took me to the waiting room and just whipped up the heat like crazy, made it so hot it was super intense. And then took me to the waiting room and I was warm for the first time in days and the it served me sea buckthorns which I actually grow in my yard. It's sea buckthorns in honey and and like it was and pine nuts and it was just so beautiful. I was explaining that I was growing that and he was like, oh, of course you do, you know, like it was just such a weird trippy experience.
Justin:And then I went we went back for the second one and it was salt in these brass bowls and he's pouring it in front of my face and it's with frankincense and there was all this incense through the niche thing too. So this was this other weird mirror of the niche experience and he's pouring the salt between the bones and he's like, breathe in. Okay. Now we're cleaning your soul. And like with
Justin:every breath,
Justin:like just like my brain's flowing apart. And then the weirdest one was on the cross, the third one, on the cross, when you're getting covered by all the blood and stuff then afterwards we were left in the field where the finale happens, there's a big rugby in the pool and all this really incredible stuff's happening and I was left on the cross and it was quite cold that day and raining and like really feeling like I was gonna get hypothermia and the blood when it comes out is like four degrees because it's out of the cooler and so like you're really just freezing and they had someone come and dump, it was really beautiful, like dump hot water on my hands and feet every few minutes and it would just keep your between the extremities to keep it from getting hypothermia and so what happens in the sauna in the last round, they cover my head with this like pile of branches of like some kind of willow or something like that and they take and they take the whole time they leave me in there with all this plant material all over top of my body and they're pouring cold water on my hands and feet Wow.
Justin:To keep me there. And it was just
Justin:like, what's going on? This is so crazy.
Justin:And then and then at the end, the guy's like, Kay, now now it's now it's the you have to do this. And I was like, what? And he's like, bend over and I'm completely naked and I'm on my knees with my hands up on this wall and he beat the shit out of me with these willow branches and he's like, this will purify I've heard about this. It And I had scars on my back, like, was bleeding, like, was so intense and it like it was profound, so beautiful and it just felt like after this I was like, okay, I'm I can it was a so that music felt like a really good
Justin:good relationship to the niche thing. So thank you for
Justin:indulging my wild story. But that was like and still, like, I was just like, did I imagine all of that? Like, was that a future dream? Like, that was so crazy. Yeah.
Leon:Welcome back home, Justin.
Justin:Shout out to Tiger Spa in Vienna. If anyone
Justin:ever is in Vienna, you gotta go to Tiger Spa. The best experience ever. Incredible. Yeah. Yeah.
Justin:So that's some plant healing brought me back to Earth.
Jacob:Yeah.
Leon:Well, I'm gonna
Jacob:Are you gonna continue? I'll
Leon:I'll pick it up from here. Something that might be complementary. Yeah. Maybe complementary is is the right word. It's an artist called Dennis Wise from 1980, and it's a song called Celestial Congo Dub.
Leon:Here we go.
Justin:God, the internet really wrecked everything, didn't it?
Justin:That's amazing.
Leon:Well, that was Dennis Wise with the song Celestial Congo dub. It's like the closing out song from an incredible album called Consciousness Program from 1980. It was re released in 2022 by Stroll. Stroll.
Jacob:This is 1980? This is '19 Yeah.
Leon:1980. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. This is, like, kind of a floaty number, and there are a couple of floaty numbers on the album.
Leon:But most of it is incredibly prickly, like, pro
Justin:It had
Jacob:kind of a pro.
Justin:Had a chrome vibe a little bit with the guitar playing and stuff.
Justin:I'm like, is this like it
Justin:really had I'm like, wow.
Leon:Well, so Dennis Wise is like a really interesting musician. Put out I think most of his output was self released. So this is his second album that he put out. There was another one in 1979, which is more rock Prague called Valhalla, I think. And then, like, in the in the nineties, he started putting out, like, jungle music Woah.
Leon:Like, on his own CDs and stuff. It's, like, really nuts. But he's so his parents are Jamaican. He's still alive. He's, like, a practicing psychologist in in Florida.
Justin:Damn. I wonder
Justin:if he takes tele patients. I want this guy as my doctor. That's fantastic.
Leon:And he studied under Samuel Barber at Trinity College and ended up in New York playing playing in Gong, like the As Windows.
Jacob:At this
Leon:As Windows. Of Gong, and hanging out with material. He was playing with them also at the time that they were doing rocket with Herbie Hancock.
Jacob:Mhmm.
Leon:And also sat in with the whalers in Jamaica. Except that all of his output is, like, this really outsider, bizarre, very, very personal kind of vision of music. Never made it big. But the the story behind him getting to sit in with material and and meeting Gong is really great because it was well, he was in New York with some of his college friends, and they were all super into magma, like, listening to a lot of French Prague. And they made their own homemade Magma t shirts walking walking around town like super That's crazy.
Leon:And then someone stopped him in the street and said, like, where'd you get this t shirt? And it turns out it was the manager from Magma was in New York. And he happened to be managing Material and Gong as well. So Wow. Got to meet all of those people.
Leon:Yeah. Incredible. That's Dennis Wise.
Justin:Wow. I'm going deep on
Jacob:Dennis Wise. This is like it's
Justin:a fucking bomb. That's so amazing.
Jacob:Yeah. So blissful sounding. Was amazing.
Justin:Yeah. And like texturally, it's just like Yeah. What's going on? Like, cool.
Leon:Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm really excited about this. And he's kind of a he's obviously a cult figure. Like, people have been trying to contact him forever.
Leon:Even though he's, like, very reachable, you know. He's he's like a I read an interview, a recent ish interview on a French blog where they were like, we sent out an email and hoping to get a reply, and and he responded, like, twenty minutes later.
Jacob:I'm like,
Leon:of course, I wanna talk about my music. You know? It's like, I'm a psychologist now, but I'm glad you like my music. Damn. Yeah.
Leon:That was the discovery.
Justin:That's fucking amazing. That was really, really great. He's it had how many other music, like, from that era, like, does he have? Is it just the one other record from that time before he goes into the jungle stuff?
Leon:Yeah. There's one before this in 1979, which I think is a little less electronic and more more proggy. They're both what essentially boils down to private press. I mean, there's there's, like, a label behind them, but very short short run. They're both incredibly expensive.
Leon:Even his his jungle CDs are expensive.
Jacob:Wow. Wow. So Yeah. This is I'm
Justin:oh, Courant, man. Jungle is more than yeah. Yeah.
Jacob:This almost had like a sunroof feel to it. Like, I was I was sure it was 2,000 something and then it's like $19.80. It's amazing sounding.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. That was great.
Justin:Okay. Jacob, what you got?
Jacob:Okay. I'm gonna I think I'm I can I can jam to that one, you know? Nice. Episode nine.
Justin:Episode nine.
Jacob:Episode nine, I could jam to. I mean, it's we'll see anyway. It has a little bit of a same kind of vibe maybe to it. It's like fifteen minutes long though, and maybe it's too intense. But the story behind it is kind of amazing, and it sounds really just insane.
Jacob:This is the
Justin:niche episode, man. Nothing's too intense. Okay.
Jacob:Okay. So here we go.
Leon:One gone. All are now somewhere there and mine. All gone and some wing. There are mine. All con and some wing.
Leon:There are mine. There. Mm-mm. Con. All are now summer there and mine.
Leon:All come and some wing there are mine. All come and some wing there. Mine there.
Jacob:So that was Jerome Rothenberg, Horse Songs. And there's a crazy story about this guy. He's a poet, or he was a poet, and also and also a translator. And he translated native American native songs from native American to English, and then he sang them. And so this is like a traditional native American song, Navajo song that he sings essentially.
Jacob:And just again, just it's amazing how it catches the rhythm of that music even though it's translated and how it just becomes something entirely different, and you can almost kind of experience what it might have sounded like perhaps to, you know, people who sang it. And and it's also it's another also example of just something that just lifts you up. It's just like it keeps, like, lifting you and lifting you and lifting you and using that lift you. It's just the basic to be
Leon:Yeah. The the the breath work also, like, just the Yeah. The the the rhythm of the breathing that the the singer needs to take on in order to perform the the song. Yeah. You can imagine that it, like, kinda does, you know, oxygen it it boosts the oxygen levels.
Jacob:Yeah. Yeah.
Leon:And everything, and it gets you into this this state. It's so beautiful.
Jacob:It's so odd sounding to me. Like, it's a song, and yet it's more than a song. It seems it's like just a shamanistic feel to it. It's amazing.
Justin:There's something this is what's so powerful about music. Like, there's something like, if you think of prewritten traditions or whatever that there's something and wow. This goes back to the whole idea of, like, the the thing the thing in itself, the experience thing. Like, if you hear like music works on so many different levels and if you carry your cultural heritage through sound and through song
Jacob:Yeah.
Justin:It it has such a depth of meaning that is more powerful than written word or whatever. And especially because you learn those things and that you enact them and you're embodied in them. I secretly think this is the what will save us from you from AI is embodied knowledge. Like Yeah.
Leon:For sure. Absolutely.
Justin:Don't have a body with AI and, like and there's also, like, other traditions, like, grew up around a lot of dukkabors and in, like, the Russian and I would love to find some dukkabur music, but their whole, like, anarchist, peasant, farmer thing that would resisted representation so strongly was beautiful. Like, their only religious symbolism was a loaf of bread, like, that was it. You couldn't do anything other than that. And their whole, like, all of their ethics and and community guidelines and and and practices were all in song. And there's this songbook is the only way that you would learn the traditions of the ducobor.
Justin:Right. And it was not written down anywhere. Yeah. And it was only through this passed down song that's oh my god. It's so powerful.
Justin:Like
Leon:But, yeah, oral oral tradition is is not pre pre writing. It is
Justin:Post writing.
Jacob:No. It's it's Yeah.
Leon:Yeah. Contemporaneous to writing. It's it's like a whole other way of approaching the world. Yeah. It's it's A better way to still live that way where where you pass down knowledge Yeah.
Leon:Through embodied
Justin:Yeah. The embodied practice is so much more powerful.
Leon:The the the the written word, like, creates this reliance Yeah. And this and this kind of, you know, you start taking things for granted. You start getting lazy with knowledge. Yeah. Yeah.
Leon:You know? Yeah. Yeah. It's always there. You you can rely on it being there when you need it so you don't need to practice it at all.
Jacob:You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jacob:Was gonna say it just reminds me because recently, I've been reading books by this amazing scholar called Francis Yates. I was just gonna talk
Justin:about that.
Jacob:About memory. And and it just kinda reminds you how it's amazing how there was a time where, I guess, the printing press didn't exist. And essentially, the only way you could get to, you know, hearing a book is just through recite through someone reciting it to you. And so it's an incredible thing if you think about it. It also would take it for granted, you know, books and stuff like that and print press.
Jacob:But just this idea that you wouldn't meet someone who would tell you, like, you know Yeah. The book. Essentially, he would tell you the book that he's learned by heart
Leon:Yeah.
Jacob:Is an incredible thing as well, you know, and we take that for granted, I think.
Justin:And Jacob, I don't know if you know the connection, but Francis Yates was a huge influence on Bob Ashley. And Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. There's like the perfect lives.
Justin:There's all these references to Okay. Francis Lei Yates.
Jacob:Yeah. She's amazing.
Justin:Yeah. It's really she was like I think Lucy, she had a big impact on too, but that's Yeah. Yeah. That's super wild. Wild.
Justin:And this also, this project that this recording is part of is very much in the tradition of what we're talking about. Charlie Morrow is incredible. He founded AudioGraphics in the nineteen seventies and it basically was this way that they Oh, yeah. Yeah. Had sound artists like these guys Exactly.
Justin:To go and record in professional studios and keep this oral embodied record of all of this stuff and that like, you can get the entire I actually downloaded the entire audio graphics catalog from Bandcamp and it is like It's amazing. It's bending. It's just mind bending. So much incredible stuff. Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. Was so excited when you pulled that up. I'm like,
Justin:oh, audio graphics. Amazing. So good.
Justin:Wow. That's incredible. So I'm gonna I think we're on like a deeply like a yeah. Certain kind of voyage here today. So I'm just gonna keep it going.
Justin:It's a this is a simple one, nice and short because I always take up way too much time with my selections. So this is a really special special one too. So that's, Sweet Flying part one, from the Sweet Earth Flying album by Marion Brown. Paul Blay playing a Marion Brown composition. And the the this is so like, it the world is not perfect because if the world was perfect, there would be as many Paul Blay recordings of Marion Brown compositions as there are Paul Blay recordings of Ed Peacock compositions.
Justin:And that is the only one. And it is fucking incredible. And, like, the best for me, probably my favorite performance on a ever and, like, at such a deep understanding of that instrument and wow. Like, yeah, just so great. Roger Tilly Craig, whose new record is fucking amazing, Server Farms.
Justin:I wanna play that on the pod sometime too. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. Shout out to that record. It's like my favorite record by anyone we know in years. But he he was like, do you know any other songs like this?
Justin:And we were talking about it, I put together a list of stuff, and I really couldn't find anything. Like, there's like compositionally, it's so special. And there's some of the Annette Paul Blay stuff that kinda comes close to that, some stuff on the Scorpio record maybe. But this just has so much more like, there's just so much I mean, it's like got a lot more dandelion in it, you know, than than You know what I mean. Right?
Leon:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jacob:We know what you mean. Yeah.
Leon:Now we know you mean. Now we know what you mean.
Justin:It's got a lot more dandelion. So, yeah, it's a that's a really special record.
Leon:It's amazing. I I was actually I pulled out the record just, like, two weeks ago to listen to this. Wow. I had forgotten The dandelion goes far.
Jacob:Yeah. Dandelion goes
Leon:exactly. What an amazing album, yeah, by Marion Brown. One of the I I this morning, I I was we were talking about records and record collections, and I realized how I ended up with the records that I have because I've owned many, many, many more records than I actually own now. And I'm just my records now are basically all the records I was not able to sell that no one would take, basically.
Justin:That's what
Leon:I went
Justin:buy that one from you in a heartbeat.
Leon:No. Actually, I used to have this. I used to have Sweet Earth flying, but I don't anymore. Yeah. I I've I I had to had to pay rent.
Leon:So Yeah. Trade of that one in, unfortunately. But, yeah, thankfully, the the Internet provides. So Yeah. But, yeah, what a what a beautiful beautiful record.
Jacob:Yeah. And this was so sweet. So sweet. I mean, obviously, it's in this title. I didn't mean it to say it again, but it's really beautiful.
Jacob:Yeah.
Justin:One of the coolest things with
Justin:that record is the the it's Paul Blay and Neil Richard Abrams on keyboards. Yeah. And it's so contrasting, like, their styles are and the way Brown composes for them. You don't hear it in that track, obviously, but, like, there's such a really incredible dialogue between them as both piano players, it's, like, it's a really yeah. He's he's a genius.
Justin:Marion Brown's so under Yeah. Underrepresented. He's like, yeah, he's like, to me, he's up there with, like, Don Cherry and Alice Coltrane. Yeah. For sure.
Justin:And he's just not got that level of of attention, and it's tragic because he's, yeah, he's so incredible. There's also a really unbelievable record that he did with Harold Budd.
Leon:Oh, wow.
Justin:Yeah. That's in like and he did he did Vista and Harold Budd did the Pavilion of Dreams or whatever at the same time and they share tracks on it. And, like, you can listen to his version of
Leon:Oh, wow.
Justin:The track and and Harold Budd's version of the track. And they're just, like, mind bogglingly great. Wow. So good. Yeah.
Leon:Another thing that happened while we were listening to that, my ears pricked up at certain passages in that kind of way that, you know, sound like mechanical memory or organic memory triggers certain reactions. I'm wondering if, Justin, you may have sampled this piece before.
Justin:I didn't. I didn't. But it was You didn't? There's no. I didn't.
Justin:I didn't. I should have, but I didn't. And but I know I think I know the track you're thinking of that that it was actually an Alice Coltrane sample that
Leon:Okay.
Justin:Yes. Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But it, like, it it's got the same kind of touch.
Leon:Yeah. Yeah. But there there were definitely passage maybe maybe it wasn't you sampled it, but there's definitely a passage that I recognized in a in a mechanical kind of fashion from from somewhere else. But, yeah,
Justin:that was Got everyone on Earth, please sample this.
Jacob:Like, I just wanted, like,
Justin:I want more songs that sample this.
Leon:Alright. Well, I'm gonna take a little bit of a left turn, but it's it's not gonna be too jarring. I was recently remembering a certain artist that we used to really like at at Esoteric Sensational. Oh, yeah. The MC.
Leon:And I was wondering what he was up to because I know that he he still releases music.
Jacob:Oh, yeah. Sensational. God.
Justin:Sensational.
Jacob:Sensational. There
Leon:you go. But this is from a release from 02/2024, so pretty recent. It's a collaboration with a musician called Unbuilt, who's a Japanese electronic musician, and he runs a label called through throughout records. This is a track called Erkes taken from the release Poiesis. Well, that was sensational
Justin:Dude never disappoints, man. This is yeah.
Leon:He he can basically ride anything sensational and unbuilt with a track as Air Kiss taken from Poises released in 2024. Yeah. He's up for anything, this this guy. Man. He's awesome.
Justin:He's incredible. The I was just reading about him that while we were listening to that, that he I had no idea that he was really started out as the Jungle Brothers dancer Yeah. Kinda like Bez for the Happy Mondays. Yeah.
Leon:Yeah. Yeah.
Justin:And then he was all over that record that Warner shelved that they wouldn't put out. Yeah. And they really got excited about him because they heard him rapping over Stockhausen in the studio one day.
Justin:He was like, you know, like, yeah. That's my boy.
Jacob:That's great. I totally forgotten about Sensational. Yeah. So great.
Justin:But that It's a great documentary about him too. It's really good.
Leon:Was it the doc are you talking about the the fictional kind of
Justin:No. There's a real one too. Really? The fictional one was super cool, but there's a real documentary about him too, the rise and fall and rise of
Leon:Okay. Oh, wow.
Jacob:Yeah. There was Herman Mitch. Their collab
Justin:was their collab was incredible, actually. That one was sponsored by Adidas. Was really nice.
Leon:Sensational. When he was with the Jungle Brothers, he had another name. It was MCTorture. Yeah. Awesome.
Leon:But I I yeah. I recently listened to that that Jungle Brothers record that was re released much later. And Sensational has, like, more of a slightly more combative kind of cadence to it, which is you can tell that he's, like, younger and and feels like he has more to prove. Yeah. And he just, like, went off into his own thing, which is
Justin:Yeah. Great.
Leon:So amazing.
Jacob:Very unique sounding. Very unique. Absolutely.
Justin:Man, him and RP Boo would be a cool collaboration. That would be That would be
Jacob:That guy's coming to Crackle too, RP Boo, actually. Oh, cool. He's just gonna check it out.
Justin:Sure. Maybe him and Joan and Barbara can
Leon:get together
Justin:and make some babies.
Jacob:That's right. Am I finishing it off?
Leon:I think
Leon:so. You are you are
Justin:closing your closing statement.
Jacob:I'm totally gonna try to close this. So I'm gonna I'm gonna take the whole, you know, Italians? Yeah. Yeah. Italians.
Jacob:We spoke about Italians. Yeah. We got sensational stuff like that. You guys like impressions? Sure.
Jacob:You know? Impressions? Well, I'm gonna show you kind of kind of play you guys an impression. And in fact, impressions that I've never heard of before, namely impressions of, philosophers. And, there's this artist called Eric Schmidt, and he's released a few well, this is gonna be the excerpt, but one of them is an island by view impression, and this is a a Georgiou Gambin impression.
Jacob:And it's just an excerpt. You can only get this, I think, as, like, a 12 inch lathe cut clear vinyl.
Justin:This is like deep inside your baseball, man.
Jacob:This is In any case, it's it's it's super delightful, and I think I think the Italians will love it, and everybody's gonna really love it. It's really great. So here it is. It's it's really short. I think it's like an excerpt.
Jacob:It's like four minutes. Okay. So here we go.
Justin:I don't I don't come to America because of biomedical problem with posthumanity. I make a I make a nice pizza for you, a a pizza with with a a little philosophy, a little a little Socrates, a little little. Maybe you have a a little Alain Badiou and a little Jacques Ranciere. I'm interested in the the the the problem of posthuman philosophy, bear life bear life. Yes.
Justin:I'm have a a question for the the the people of why they go to America, and America has has a problem with the biomedical biomedical Italiano Marxist, and when reading Feuerbach, I was of had a very big problem with the Marxist, maybe the early Hegelians. And we read the Frankfurt School and the problem of Adorno and Benjamin. Benjamin Benjamin Benjamin Benjamin had a very interesting problem problem trying to explain the divine creation of the world. And I have maybe with this Sophocles and Antigone, and the is has rightesophocles. And for Heidegger, there was a problem a problem concerning technology.
Justin:And I have Aristotle wants to talk about the the the animal and the human man, man and the animal. And I have this question of the quest or the open the open. And what what is the critical philosophy? And one needs to be helplessly delivered to their own impotentiality, and the impotentiality is is is the time, the temporal question of the existence of man and the animal. Only inadequate means can do achieve the possibility and only with the the help of the Marxok, the system of the Marxo, the class the class world revolution.
Justin:The revolution. Was Antonio Negli was was my friend, and he he told me about the problem of empire. Empire. And we have the the the San Francis San Francisco de Assisi San Francisco de Assisi was a problemo in the the the Roman Roman Catholic society.
Jacob:That's all I've got. Well well played. Well It's so delightful. And, I really recommend the Alen Badu one too. It's, if you could get your heads on, it is a really good one as well.
Jacob:In any case, that was Eric Schmidt going against Giorgio Angumban, which is always a good good one for the parties.
Justin:That's the one to drop in the middle of a
Justin:really good set, Leon. I wish
Justin:you could just, like, throw
Jacob:that off. God. He's got such great swag, though. It's just it's got it's great. It's almost like hip hop.
Jacob:It's amazing. That
Leon:is oh, man. When when you were talking about impressions, like, before, like, setting up the track, I didn't understand that it was this kind of impression
Jacob:you were talking about.
Justin:You like sketches of Spain. That was an outstanding end to this episode, Chase.
Leon:It it was so good.
Jacob:Man, my good.
Leon:That's great. I I have to I
Justin:mean esoteric.
Leon:I mean, this this is I I have to shout out Rosie Braitati, which is my favorite Italian philosopher, posthuman philosopher. If ever you can listen to her lectures, She's, like, such a good show. It's amazing. It's, like, hilarious. Can you put
Justin:that in the links in the for the yeah. Yeah.
Leon:Yeah. Get one of the good ones.
Justin:Yeah.
Jacob:But You know, that's the new figure. Know, impersonating philosophers.
Justin:Oh, man. I want him to do a Bataille one. That would
Jacob:The Baju is great, though. If you can find it on YouTube, actually. So Fantastic. It's there,
Leon:the whole album.
Jacob:But, you know, 12 inch late cut, go for it. I know.
Justin:I love it. I love that that's a late cut. That's
Justin:dude worked hard to make that happen. That's fantastic.
Leon:Wow. This is yeah. That's mind blowing.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah.
Jacob:Empire. Empire.
Justin:Antonio Negri told me empire.
Justin:Oh, it's so funny.
Leon:Well, yeah. That's fantastic way to wrap it up. Think Great
Jacob:show great show today again. Great
Leon:show, guys.
Justin:Thank you. Yeah. That was I missed you guys. It's nice to reconnect.
Leon:Yeah. Absolutely. Good to catch up.
Justin:Yeah. And next one will be with a guest host again. I'm excited. It's our our regular cadence. It'll be great.
Justin:Yeah.
Leon:Yeah. So looking forward to next month. Looking forward to listening to music with you all again.
Justin:It's And everyone that makes it and to everyone that actually makes it to the end of an episode, bravo.
Jacob:Like, what the I mean,
Leon:if I can say it's this episode, like, making it to the end of this episode is really, really worth it. Yeah.
Justin:We gotta switch that to
Justin:the beginning and just wait for the bonus track at the end. It's the it's the next it's the next Yeah. It's yeah. It's great.
Leon:Great. Well, thanks. Thanks, everyone.
Justin:Yeah. You guys are the best.
Jacob:I can put that music. What's what's that
Justin:You're put our theme our end theme music on.
Leon:Oh, shit.
Jacob:I'm not
Leon:I'm not
Justin:I'm not You're not
Leon:cute at all.
Justin:You can edit it in.
Jacob:Yeah.