Jeff Cohn interview (JIVE magazine)

If Marilyn Manson was a stylist at Vogue magazine, the photographs would look like Jeff Cohn's (www.x-pose.net) portfolio. This prolific 31 year old Philadelphia-based photographer's work blends a combination of commercial, fashion, glamor, pin-up, art, nude, erotica, shock and humor into a vivid visual buffet you won't soon forget.

I sat down with Jeff and asked him why the hell anyone should pay him when anyone with a digital camera can shoot a photo...

JIVE Magazine (op ed #2)

So, I admit it. I only gave half the story in my previous article. (“Wake Up Neo: There Is No Counterculture, You Twit.”) It is true, the world is full of underground posers, sharpening their sticks for the coming revolution against an opposition that doesn't exist, artistes who haven't done a lick of real artistic work in a decade, who use their supposed underground artistic cred to get them in bed with whomever they can scam, would-be rock stars that think they are evolving music by turning it into a vapid fashion show, and old school DIY punks who haven't yet realized that their ideological stance, though noble in its way, simply limits them.

But there are also daring innovators and experimenters, willing to risk all to contribute their perspective to the ongoing narrative that is our collective heritage. So how can I say “there is no counterculture?”

I can say it, and mean it, because these people would ask you what you're smoking, if you asked what it's like, being a part of “The Counterculture.” There is no Grand Unified Scene.

These innovators I'm speaking of are the people who push their own boundaries, and the boundaries of the culture around them enough that they are simply classified as “counterculture” or “revolutionary” because the culture, and the media, doesn't really know what to make of them. (My hope is, you could very well be one yourself.)

This follow up article proposes some positive solutions and suggestions to the issues snarkily proposed there.

(JIVE magazine info.)

Lunatics At Work

Since Greylodge Podcasting has a youtube director account and can post movies over 10 minutes, I figured I'd throw the old amateurish half-crappy half-crack-smoking-genius infomercial we did back in 2000 on there. Enjoy.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdcU8f1TRu4

(For the record, many of the people in the audience and even some of the crew were invited there off the internet and had no idea what was going to happen.)

subQtaneous: early release CD

This CD is the a limited time early release version. It includes a special bonus track, and versions of a handful of songs that won't be on the final pressing.

Described as a "stick of dynamite strapped to reality," (Scenery Zine), subQtaneous is a diverse conceptual, collaborative album. It carves new soundscapes ranging from brutal, pounding industrial to sarcastic hip hop set over carnival music to delicately layered trance. It has been compared to Pigface, probably due to its format, as well as Coil, Mr Bungle, and Frank Zappa. It includes contributions from members of bands such as Collide, Veil of Thorns, Rob Banks, Elektroworx, and many others. While the tracks are tied together by a common theme – the corrosive dark side of capitalism, and its effects on our psyche – none of the musicians involved in this project try to beat you over the head with their ideology. Instead it remains, as the title would imply, an almost subliminal experience that slowly gets under your skin, and doesn't come out in the wash.

Wake Up Neo: There Is No Counterculture, you twit.

"...The Matrix. For those who live under a rock or masturbate to QVC all day long, I will paraphrase the first movie. In the scenes where Keanu Reeve isn't desperately attempting to recall his lines, it is a smart, slick take on the alienation most suburban American youth feel. Taken out of the cubicle and into the underworld with the protagonist, we witness him “keeping it real” by eating mush, donning fetish fashion, and fighting an army of identical men in business suits in slow motion.

Wake up, Neo. Zak De La Rocha wasn't “fighting the man” when he made his ending credit soundtrack royalties. It's what he did with that potential energy that counts. (Hookers? A small island for “his people” and “their culture,” where everyone sings in falsetto about oppression?) As Yogi Bhajan put it, “money is as money does.” Hard nosed books on business such as Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices say exactly the same thing, in a less epigrammatic, Yoda-like way: profit is not a motive, it is a means. Without profit, nothing happens. Game over..."

Article in Jive Magazine.

Free eBook of Join My Cult! available on Greylodge Podcasting

A free PDF of this psychadelic literary experiment.

Mysteries in the Pines

For those of you interested in a good unfolding puzzle, you may want to check in here.

subQtaneous -- a 4 year pregnancy

Described as a "stick of dynamite strapped to reality," (Scenery Zine), subQtaneous is a diverse conceptual, collaborative album. It carves new soundscapes ranging from brutal, pounding industrial to sarcastic hip hop set over carnival music to delicately layered trance. It has been compared to Pigface, probably due to its format, as well as Coil, Mr Bungle, and Frank Zappa.

While the tracks are tied together by a common theme – the corrosive dark side of capitolism, and its effects on our psyche – none of the musicians involved in this project try to beat you over the head with their ideology. Instead it remains, as the title would imply, an almost subliminal experience that slowly gets under your skin, and doesn't come out in the wash.

What is this "Chaos"?

The previous interview didn't have a very conversational format. Here's an earlier interview I did with Nate from Frequency23.org to kick off his podcasts.

Horrible Offspring (Smallworld Podcast)

Interview with James Curcio about chaos magic.

We discuss my interview with Grey Lodge's Joseph Matheny; Grant Morrison; The Invisibles as a work of art and a work of magic; when the chaos magic movement began; William S. Burrough's cut-ups; Peter Carroll; his definition of magic; how chaos magic is different from traditional magic; Golden Dawn; the theory of relativity, chaos theory and fractals; empty-handed magic; Aleister Crowley; paradigm shifting; Robert Anton Wilson; psychology and magic; C.G. Jung's archetypes in magic; sigils; Austin Osman Spare; Carroll's books Liber Null and Psychonaut; Carroll’s break with Crowley; Friedrich Nietzsche and existentialism; Key 23; Join My Cult; Bedtime Stories with the Anti-Christ; Thomas Pynchon.

Featured song is "Devil Rules The World" by The Destroyed.


Listen.

Conspiracy Theories

I discovered today MTV is airing the “Conspiracy Theories” video created by Evolving Media for Coheed & Cambria’s drummer’s rap side project, Weerd Science. (Enough adjectives there for ya?)

Full Key23 article

HERE
.

Interview with Joseph Matheny about Grey Lodge.

We discuss our previous interview; The Incunabula Papers; Grey Lodge Occult Review; Gpod; the mysterious Dr. Grey; Pirate Bay; Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs; the sTaRe Network; Bittorrent; becoming an UbuWeb affiliate; the sporadic nature of Gpod Radio; why Grey Lodge is so succesful; making his recordings of the Temporary Autonomous Zone radio show, videos of Robert Anton Wilson and projects with Psychick TV and Robert Anton Wilson and projects with Genesis P-Orrdige available on the internet; contributors Mark Pesce and James Curcio, author of Join My Cult; Curcio’s Bedtime Stories with the Anti-Christ podcast; Dave Szulborski’s Alternate Reality Gaming work; Big City Orchestra; writers Aldous Huxley and Futurism’s FT Marinetti; the Master Musicians of Joujouka; Aleister Crowley; what is magic; Generation Hex; Disinfo.com; Timothy Leary; conspiracy theories as modern superstition; the future of Grey Lodge; Gysin and Burroughs’ cut-up technique; Dada, Surrealism and Cubism; Salvador Dali; Henry Miller.

Listen.

233 Project

233 Project completed another EP. Here and Here are two of the tracks, which I did hand drums on (Sean of course tweaked the hell out of them, granulated etc.) More hand drums and some guitar Here.

Of course Sean (programming, synths) and Gaetan's (mixing, mastering) work on the project is kickass.

Check it out.

Notes From The Underground

For those that didn't catch it, the final PDF of the interview I did with P. Emerson Williams for Bright Young Things (probably to be re-syndicated a million other places) is up HERE.

GENERATION HEX: HIGH ROAD ANAMNESIS 2005

"As the Western world continues to accelerate towards information overload, a sort of crass lust for a non-offensive, non-distinct, all-inclusive "spirituality" has become more and more prevalent. Spirituality as a way to ignore the uglier aspects of life and focus on a highly bankable "eternal moment," a soothing white light to clutch like the Orgasmatron in Woody Allen's Sleeper.

In such a marketplace of belief, in which every world faith has been pureed into a homogenized feel-good power shake, it is often the options with a tad more grit to them that stick out. Voodoo, witchcraft, the abyss-transfixed "magick" of Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare and, in the case of this recording, the solipsistic sorceries of a generation raised on late postmodernism, a fragmented mediasphere and the self-conscious posturing of "chaos magic."

While it is the most fevered belief of the "New Age seeker" that all paths lead to the same destination (and that, of course, it is never the destination that counts), one wonders if these strange children of the new millennium may well have eaten so much microwaved food that even such watered-down generalities as the "path" or the "destination" remain valid concepts to them. How does one teach patience, humility, quietude or mindfulness to a generation accustomed to terrorizing its elders with the unsettling speed of its "channel-surfing?"

The book release for Generation Hex, at Alex Grey's Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, was certainly a troubling sign that our children are willing to believe anything as long as it speaks in their "jive-talk." A throng of two hundred arrived to pay tribute to these "anarchs of the new paradigm"—James Curcio, the novelist and musician; Angelina Fabbro, the scientist; Micki Pellerano, the filmmaker; Atman, the academic; Rachel Haywire, the warrior; Shaun Frenté, the diva; and Jason Louv, the editor and circus ringleader, luring the children in. Jupiter, Mercury, Luna, Saturn, Mars, Venus, Sol. Seven seals.

And though the speakers did their best to calm the crowd from their murmurs of end-times, there was something undeniably Apocalyptic to the proceedings. Could God not only be dead, but have been so picked over by the banal "spiritual" masses that only the spears of Reason, Doubt and Humanism which killed him in the first place remain to prop up a new faith with?

The occult teachers of the past carefully coded and obfuscated their teachings. I hazard a guess that it was so that neophytes such as these couldn’t get their pudgy, pink fingers on them. Yet they have indeed, and their peers are, chillingly, taking them seriously. When Ezra Pound spoke in fear of the "sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor," he might well have been speaking of this spiritually bankrupt "magickal" generation, raised by equally spiritually bankrupt, "permissive" and liberal parents.

If this is truly the grubby face of the "end of linear history" that de Chardin and McKenna predicted, then I can not so much give a positive review to this release as I can a negative review to the last several thousand years of linear history for having let it come to this."

-- Dr. Marvin K. Moloch, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of California at Bohemian Grove

----------
On October 27, 2005, these infamous "children of the new millenium," authors of the hit Disinformation anthology Generation Hex descended on Alex Grey’s Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in New York City. Speaking to a full house, the group's discussion and debate as to the nature of magick and its place in youth culture at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century is contained herein. If you couldn't be there in the flesh, this 74 minute recording of the proceedings is the next best thing.

Bedtime Stories With the ANtichrist Ep #2

"Where in the world is Agent 156?"

An hour of free underground media, interviews with musicians, artists, drug addicts, occultists, and of course the requisite insanity that ensues.

This will be launched on Greylodge shortly, but in the meantime feel free to listen, and spread it around.

233 project update

I've also been laying down guitar and percussion tracks for 233 Project's upcoming album. Possible show dates will be posted for the summer, should they happen.

CTW update

Chasing The Wish Book one now on Indyplanet.

Next up... interviews, stores.

Another Joins the Blogosphere.

My good friend Jason Stackhouse has finally entered the 21st century and is keeping a blog.

We've worked together on a number of projects you may have already enjoyed (such as Join My Cult!, Fas Ferox, and Chasing The Wish. I get the sense he has more brewing too that he's not yet let on to. He's also whooped my ass in chess more times than I'd care to think about.

I suggest you keep tabs on it.

Jesus Kundalini Commercial

Excerpted from longer Infomercial (mp4 format.)

Mind Driver 2 Update

Most people’s first question is generally, “how does it work?”

The simple answer is that the MD2 sends specifically timed, alternating light and sound signals to the brain which trigger a corresponding effect there. This effect is often referred to as “entrainment.” Technically this is the process whereby two connected oscillating systems with similar periods fall into synchronicity. The system with the greater frequency slows down, and the other accelerates. Similar synchronization can be witnessed when a tuning fork that has been struck and is oscillating at a particular frequency is brought into the vicinity of a second tuning fork. The second tuning fork, although not struck, will begin to oscillate at precisely the same frequency as the first.

This isn’t “science fiction”—think about. All your brain does all day and night is respond to patterns of light and sound. Have you ever taken a train somewhere, and found that you slipped into a deep, almost sleep-like trance? A combination of the frequency of the sound, rocking motion of the cabin, and the regular, knocking noise of the tracks below are some of the environmental effects which create this state of mind. You witness a similar effect while staring at a fire… or even a television.

These are very simple, every-day examples of some of the principles that make the MD2 work, except the MD2 provides far greater control over those variables. The possibilities are only truly limited by your imagination, and receptivity.

Listen to my conversation with Joseph Matheny about Join My Cult!, and the use of this device in its creation.

Keeping in touch

To get emails from this blog sign up here. This is just an announcement list, you won't get bombarded with endless horrible conversations.

Chasing The Wish

Preorders for book one have now begun.

Comics Get Real

Chasing The Wish: Book One.

You can now sign up to be notified of the pending release of Book One, as well as special offers and online content.

Fas Ferox: World Walkthrough

Full promotion of this is pending the next version of the site going up, but for those of you who have been itching for this...



An in-depth introduction to Fas Ferox, a multimedia graphic novel with a mythological, sci-fi, cyber theme. In a post-apocalyptic near future, explore the five realms of the universe: Divinity, Spirit, the Physical, Underworld and Dream, while meeting modern manifestations of demigods who walk among us. This cutting-edge epic is a riveting wake-up call to the archetypes in each and every one of us. Introduction by Neil Gaiman.

Creative Consultant: Neil Gaiman; Author: Jason Stackhouse; Co-Author/Creative Director: James Curcio; Creator/Producer: Anna Young; Associate Producer/Muse: Kal Masunari; various Artists including: Edson Campos.