Come:Unity part 1 - Arrival
I arrived in Austin at the bus station around 5:30 on Thursday night. It was about a 23 hour bus ride and I slept most of the way, fueled on slim jims, sour patch kids, mixed nuts and Gatorade. I was reeling, catching a breath of fresh air, and in my junk-food-induced psychosis I had an interesting conversation with a total redneck that started with Jimi Hendrix (who this man saw in concert when he was fourteen years old) and somehow moved to the topic of psychedelic mushroom tea, LSD, and the transformational benefit potential of psychedelic drugs. I returned to the inside of the bus station where I guarded over my music equipment and fumbled with my QuNeo, a complex and headache-inducing music controller, passing time until Chance came to pick me up.
Chance Roberts is a visual artist and an event worker. To pay rent he builds stages for various concerts around Austin and in all his spare time he makes art. I think I’ve mostly seen him paint. I loaded my stuff into the trunk of his car and we rode to his house. As soon as we arrived, we took my stuff inside and I dug into a coffee can in my suitcase and pulled out a sack of weed. We smoked a bowl, then another bowl, then a spliff, and then while three painters painted I tweaked a few pieces of my live set for the show the next night. I went to sleep with a lullaby of honey almond granola and Cherub - Doses and Mimosas. I got high as shit, munched out, and passed out hard on the couch.
The next morning, I woke up before everyone else and walked around the neighborhood. Spliff for breakfast. Then, 3 hours after our scheduled departure time, Chance awoke. The clock said 12:03. Apparently, Aaron Sierra, our space-cadet friend with tools and knowledge for building geodesic domes, had disappeared off the face of the earth. He was supposed to be there the night before, when we had loaded the car up with dome-parts, but he never showed. Facebook: deleted. Phone: straight to voice mail. We unloaded the dome, put some more shit in the car, and headed out in a two-piece caravan with Chance and I in one car, and Ocho and Chops (two visual artists) in Ocho’s car.
We went to the store for supplies, and then we gassed up and left for Dripping Springs, the location where Come:Unity was to be held. We set up camp, and I began to explore. I saw a friend of mine who I had not seen since the fall, and numerous people had told me that this fellow was the dude with the legit acid. Real fucking LSD that could be trusted. Not that I don’t love research chemicals, but this was an acid weekend. At the end of our conversation I walked away with 10 hits of white fluff on paper. Right before I played I took 4.
Minutes after administration I knew the stuff was good. I had my guitar tuned up and the last DJ was finishing his set, and he turned up the fader. A Jimi Hendrix sample greeted the audience, “Before we start we’d like you to forget everything that went on today or last night, or things that’s supposed to happen tomorrow, cause we’re trying to make our own little world right here…”
It was a groove out, passionate, excited, and well received. Towards the end, the next DJ up asked, “can I jam with you?” he had tablas. “Fuck yeah,” I said. We had a 154 BPM insane psychedelic IDM jam that ended with a zakir-hussein-in-deep-hyperspace exploding across galaxies finding a deep new understanding of the universe and that’s when BAM the lights came on. Here we are. LSD here we come, the trip had started. The song had ended. As I walked across the field back to my camp, i knew something incredible was happening. As I walked back towards, an back towards the stage and main area with my merchandise across a dark field, I felt the power of al time and the universe rising inside all of us, and I felt something amazing was about to take hold. Nothing could have prepared me for the insanity that would ensue over the next 8 hours.
Woah saw this and I was like DAMN STRAIGHT! We live in a culture of established paradigms that effectively, whether they were originally intended to or not, keep us docile and distracted from the real problems we need to address as a culture.
Noam Chomsky
Couldn’t have said it better myself
2013: A Sonic Odyssey (Kickstarter)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2145908231/2013-a-sonic-odyssey
I have created a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for my tour this year, and I have already had an overwhelming amount of support! I’ve reached my goal only halfway through the…
Kickstarter Video for Sonic Geometry’s US Tour 2013! http://kck.st/WCR5E7
The owner of Gravitas recordings turned me on to this while we were sharing news of our current projects with each other. I love the deep 808-sounding kicks with the snaps, trills, and bass that comes through the speakers snappy and full. Goldrush does it all with catchy high-energy vocal samples on top and a sound that remains refreshingly separate from the prolific slurry of brain-melting trap hoarding the airwaves of American music.
