from VØID CONTEMPLATION TACTICS
“Inter-Dimensional Music: Zen Mind Sessions”
Psychedelic ritual meditation music for beginner minds
The Buddha studied many religions, but he was not satisfied with their practices. He could not find the answer in asceticism or in philosophies. He was not interested in some metaphysical existence, but in his own body and mind, here and now. And when he found himself, he found that everything that exists has Buddha nature. That was his enlightenment. Enlightenment is not some good feeling or some particular state of mind. The state of mind that exists when you sit in the right posture with each moment as it is, complete and full, is itself enlightenment.
Shunryu Suzuki
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
artist – work
psychedelic source – singin’ train
Jovontaes – Barbarian Pt.2
Gnod – Pilgrim’s Progress
Gailes – Requiem For An Airport Television Newsreader
Sadoul Ixchel – სამი
The Cure – A Short Term Effect (Trilogy 2003 Live)
Lebenden Toten – Near Dark
Muslimgauze – Bedouin in Mercedes B1
psychedelic source – pure rain
Annotations:
• I modified the Suzuki quote with ital language from Joko Beck. One of the most awkward and intimidating things I had to do for the chaplaincy internship was call the Trauma-Neuro Intensive Care Unit meetings to order with a “prayer,” or in my case, a Zen reading. As I was saying before, Zen Mind is a guide toward practicing Zen – starting with posture and leveling up to saving all sentient beings. They weren’t sitting, they were eager for me to stop talking so they could go over patient charts, so I subbed out “sit in the right posture” for “sit with each moment as it is, complete and full.”
• Does everybody know about the extremely prolific Hungarian back yard garden jam band psychedelic source? It is some of the most laid-back psychedelic music I have heard in a long time, except for when it is squalling White Hills-style feedback jams. Their vertical railsides album is of the former variety, with a really nice frame drum thing plus every once in awhile you hear little kids running around. I also keep reading the title as vertical rail-slides because they only thing that would make it more chill is if it was about skating rather than trains. Also most (all?) of the music on their label is NYOP.
• vertical railslides could be the name of this reissue of Jovontaes 2011 Thief of Baghdad album which is “Named after 90s street skater Jovontae Turner, Jovontaes are a group of kids from the Lexington, KY community, tearing up both the psych and skateboarding scenes. Not doing what you’d expect from a bunch of skaters, these dudes are making caveman psych rock yet still sounding way weirder than the standard psych-jam band trying to live in the past of the 60s.” It blends seamlessly into the aforementioned Hungarian garden party jam band, unsurprisingly given the ease with which Midwestern skate kids transform into hippie punks. It isn’t NYOP, but it is only $1.
• Like psychedelic source, the prolific musician Sadoul Ixchel is a source of highly psychedelic tunes, though more in a SWANA-ish goth ambient zone. Much of it available for whatever you’d like to pay. As such, they are an artist whose melancholy spiritual ambience has become a fixture on ID Music. We don’t know much more about them, other than the Traktor DJ software I use to mix the show does NOT like Georgian fonts. It can be hard to keep up with their output, but when they add low key acoustic percussion to the already North African-leaning Grouper-informed gloom, I swoon.
• Sadoul Ixchel’s delicate and downpressing jams make for an easy complement to Robert Smith’s older and wiser version of “Short Term Effect” from The Cure’s overwhelming 2003 Trilogy Live bootleg, a lighthearted performance of the soul-crushing masterpieces Pornography, Disintegration, and the consistently underrated Bloodflowers.
• Watch out for the tinnitus-informed hardcore of Portland’s elusive Lebenden Toten at the end! Their sharp-edged and extremely catchy crasher crust is harder to track down than any other artist I’ve played on the show, I’m guessing they’re one of the most off-putting bands in the ID Music canon for people in my age group, and I absolutely cannot get enough of their Nausea meets Yellow Swans inna Uptown Circle Pit sound.
