Hael Walpurgis!

I want to wish my readers a mighty and glorious Walpurgisnacht! May your flight to the Sabbath be a fantastical and swift one!

More music!

Building on the last post, here are a few projects, bands or tracks that I've been greatly enjoying of late and have some connection to Stockhausen's music. Well, maybe only some of these tracks are relevant to Stockhausen, but they rock none the less! 

First up, a relatively recent discovery of mine: Æthenor

With members or Ulver, Sunn O))) and others, I knew this was going to be great from the moment I saw the vibrant blue cover of their album En Form For Blå. Though, I really didn't know what to expect at all. I was pleased from the moment the needle hit the white vinyl. Here, enjoy some live footage and hear for yourself!

Up next, a longstanding favorite: Ulver

I've been a fan of this band and their many evolutions since hearing their first album, Bergtatt. From Black Metal to Electronica and Jazz to Experimental Industrial and finally to whatever you would call them now, this band has kept its fans guessing, and pleasantly surprised. Enjoy a few tracks from their corpus!

Finally, I'll leave you with something from one of my favorite Soviet composers: Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich

Whether conjuring scenes of Cossacks riding over the Steppe or writing music for more formal occasion, Shostakovich is a powerful and gifted composer. I'll just let the music speak for him on this one!

Stockhausen on sound

One of the great names in experimental music, Karlheinz Stockhausen's influence on today's music culture is both deep and far reaching. My introduction to Stockhausen actually came in the form of some old Ulver and Arcturus tracks where samples were taken from Stockhausen's Kontakte. Years later, on my travels around Germany, I got to catch a short film about the composer and his work in Leipzig. Since then, I've come to hear more and more of Stockhausen's, along with others, influence in popular genres such as Industrial, Rock, Electronic and Experimental music.

While his works certainly aren't for everyone, his influence is undeniable. So, enjoy the words of the man himself!

Impressions II

Please, dear viewer, forgive my silence over the past week and a half! Life took me on a short detour, but thankfully I got some cool pictures out of it! Enjoy, and take comfort in knowing more verbose content is to follow!

Want to keep more up to date? Follow me on Instagram @attila_the_fun

Žižek on Ideology and "the protectors of Europe"

Slavoj Žižek, one of the only Communists that I like, discusses how Ideology affects daily life and is now more important than ever in daily experience. He then goes on to condemn the so called "defenders of Europe," the right wing, anti-immigration milieu gaining power all over Europe, with comments on related movements here in the U.S.

While I encourage you to watch the whole interview, the conversation picks up around 8:30m and 14:00m, respectively.

Next post will return to Perennialism, and my comments on that along with Traditionalism, Monotheism and the spiritual future of the West. Again, thank you for reading!

Impressions

I certainly make no claims towards being even a descent photographer, but rather wish to capture certain impressions or snip-its of my adventures. Perhaps more professional images will be forthcoming, someday.

On the problems of Nature

In truth, that which we feebly call “Nature” is really everything in the known and unknown universe. However, as the human mind is not really capable of fully understanding the complex totality of the numerous and vast systems that comprise the “natural world,” we can only call it all “nature.” But as this word is far too loaded, and far too simple given the immense baggage attached to it, can we not help but concur with Spengler’s notion that the natural is only what we conceive it to be, and the rest is left obscured by the very same term.

Here is one larger of the roots of the modern crisis. For too long we have considered nature as something outside the human sphere, something that exists outside of our cities and towns that lives only in the remotest areas that are “untouched,” or at least apparently less affected, by human influence. However, the ever increasing body of scientific evidence and social experience seems to be consistently disproving this notion. Extremely remote areas, such as polar or glacial ice caps or the deep sea, which are practically uninhabited, are taking the brunt of environmental change, as are the forests, plains and waterways of the world. At the same time, localized agriculture and environmental action in urban areas is on the rise in the developed Western world, reconnecting the most disjointed with natural cycles and rhythms.

And where does human nature fall into all of this? Clearly, we are an animal just like all the rest, but just as clearly we are something far beyond our fellow creatures. So great is our power that some in the scientific community refer to our current epoch as the Anthropocene, the age of the human. This term is easy to confuse as merely meaning that we have achieved full power and influence over the natural world as never before, and while this is certainly true it fails to grasp the full connotation of the term. Instead of our mastery over nature, we have created an economic and social system that is increasingly at odds with natural cycles and processes to ever increasingly dangerous degrees. Yes, humanity has the power to alter and transform the rest of the natural world for our benefit, but in no way are we, or were we ever, outside of or beyond the influence of that which we have named Nature. The harder we try to break free of her, the more we come to realized that her webs grow ever tighter and more restrictive as she adjusts to maintain balance. As our understanding and exploitation of natural resources, cycles, processes and other life forms, our dependence on the natural world actually increases. Resources like oil, Lithium, wood and so forth are finite and require careful management and use. Water, our greatest resource and a crucial building block of life as we understand it, is often the most abused via pollution, waste and mismanagement. In a world that is 80% water on the surface, no one anywhere should have a water problem in our time. It’s merely a distribution problem!

Then again, what would endless water do to the landscape of countries like Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan? These largely arid, dry regions could be agricultural powerhouses with proper infrastructure, funding and management. This in turn could be a social and economic boon, bringing sustainable, local wealth into these, and other, nations. But, is it worth subjecting more wild landscape to the jaws of agriculture and "progress?" These are the tough questions concerning current environment-society context, where standards of living is largely tied with access to a Western style, consumer based economy.