Have you guys ever heard of Hawaiian Baby Woodrose seeds? In terms of psychedelics I wouldn’t recommend them. On the gradient scale from discomfort to otherworldly bliss they skew wildly towards the former; your platter is piled high with twin helpings of purge and (if you’re lucky) only a minuscule, mostly-tasteless garnish of surreal, clanking insight. To put it simply: there’s a reason you can buy them legally at your local garden supply store.
We’ve all been there though right? A blank-slate weekend with itchy thoughts, desperate for some kind of stimulation. Your mainstays are all-but depleted with no one in sight to replenish their stores. It’s in these moments the mind gets desperate. “Oh, you read about these on the internet? You heard it could-do-something-or-other? Yeah man, whatever, I’m down.”
A bored young brain can be a strange and dangerous thing.
Anyways, after a heavy barbecue dinner, a few drinks and some futile resin hits we swallowed them down. Numerous trustworthy warnings, received in hypertext, were casually disregarded; apparently they were supposed to be soaked overnight to remove some noxious husk. Too late, it’s 11pm on a clear, perfect Saturday; we’ll take our chances. “Let’s go.”
Hours pass. Nothing. Time for bed; we’re getting sleepy, unaware that this is part of the ramp up. “I’ll take the couch dude, good night, see you in the morning.”
I’m not sure when the ‘thrumming’ started but it probably kicked-off during R.E.M. sleep. Though in-reality absolutely still, my limbs were buzzy and shaking. It was as if my tendons were lengthening, the attached muscles dangling freely from stringy bones like swaying wind chimes before a late-summer thunderstorm.
And where was the warmth going? Why was it traveling to my core in thick palpable waves? Thrum-rum-rum-um, thrum-rum-rum-um, thrum-rum-rum-um. It was pleasant but…not. I couldn’t decide. Was I dreaming?
I opened my eyes and the opposite wall was alive with blinks and flashes. Is this the trip? Yes, but not like I was thinking, the fevered visuals on display came not from my mind but a more pedestrian source: the cheap display of an all-in-one stereo perched high on the shelf behind me. There was no sound coming from the speakers but I could hear it all the same, Thrum-rum-rum-um, thrum-rum-rum-um, thrum-rum-rum-um.
It moved in concert with my jangled limbs, carrying heat down my shoulders and up my hips to meet in the center of my gut. It felt wonderful for about a minute and then I realized what was happening: my body was trying to tell me that I was going to vomit. Like now. In someone else’s house. I needed to make a break for it.
FUCK.
Lying on the cool bathroom floor felt fantastic and I stayed there for hours. It wasn’t just the idle stereo’s flickering slot-machine demo mode that could be heard but all sources of light. In here however, the gentle thrum was gone, it’s barely-audible throb replaced by a constant and abrasive owl’s screech from the bright spherical bulbs above the vanity.
It was around this time that I said aloud, “Morning…I want it to be morning now.”
The flavors in the attached remind me a bit of that night though, thankfully, sans anxious nausea. This is one of those videos you need headphones on in a dark-room to fully appreciate. The layers of tight, aggressive synths and staccato vocals from new-on-the-scene Raveyards coalesce into an aggressive cacophony while the whacked-out dark, just-a-bit unsettling visuals (as directed by Brussels-based Charles De Meyer) ramp up accordingly til it all culminates in a bizarre crescendo.
It’s so dope, you guys; an instant classic. Enjoy!
posted by respondcreate on May. 13, 2012 in Videos | tags: bizarre, charles de meyer, dark, electronic music, hd, mind bending, music video, raveyards, surreal, trippy, violence
File under: LOLWAT
Absolutely diggin’ this bizarre, hyper-violent animated short by Chinese director/animator/illustrator SeanSoong. Enjoy!
[ 地铁大逃杀 - SUB WARS ]
posted by respondcreate on Apr. 29, 2012 in Videos | tags: animation, ayo_chen, bizarre, china, hd, lolwat, seansoong, star wars, trippy, violence
I’ve seen some truly heinous shit in my day but the panic that gripped me as this music video progressed was terrifying.
I think this has more than a little to do with the birth of my first child, an incredible experience that occurred just over a week ago. When she emerged slick and squirming from my wife’s birth canal I could feel the neurons in my brain twitching with a busy psychedelic electricity, their axons plumbing to new depths while fingers of delicate dendrites spread outwards to deposit a bumper crop of synapses into my grey matter. The initial effect was euphoria, unlike any I had ever felt; nothing can prepare you for it; there is no fitting analogy to aptly describe the wholesale expansion of conciousness that takes place when a new member of your family arrives.
Much ado is made of the love that floods through you in that moment – and let me assure you, it’s there in prodigious quantities – but the fear that slowly creeps up your spine when the medical equipment is wheeled out and you are left alone with your swaddled heir is rarely mentioned. In the apt words of Jerry Holkins, “they’re only using the word fear because they don’t know what else to call it, how to name that rising, primal ice one feels when faced with the hanging jowls of the unknowable.”
Oof.
You quickly realize that the world you have inhabited for the past few decades is not fit for human life, or rather (I should say), for this human life. She is too delicate, too pure; too beautiful, too sweet. I could not bear the thought that any harm might befall her and I wasn’t quite sure it would be wise to ever leave that hospital.
A few years back I finally refined enough mental rocket fuel to propel me free of my inherited belief system’s gravity. You know, the one where you can avoid an eternity of perpetual immolation by placing your trust in a two-millennia-old fully-God-and-fully-man jewish carpenter? To be clear, the after-death insurance policy isn’t what kept me there for so long but the idea of an always-there, infinitely wise best friend who had a ‘plan’ for my life. The entirety of my psyche was stuck in a mental holding pattern, waiting in vain for the God of the Universe to tell me what it was that ‘He’ wanted me to do. Many of my former fellow congregants spoke smiling and glassy-eyed about how there was ‘freedom in Christ’ but I honestly never understood what that meant. It just felt like torturous cognitive incarceration to me.
And again, when that warm, initial giddy wave that accompanied my new-found spiritual freedom receded back, a cold realization deposited itself like jagged, rusty flotsam on the shore of my mind: no one is minding the store. There is no ultimate authority on right and wrong, no final judgement on those who seek to harm, no all-powerful hand to ensure that love ultimately prevails…
...no perfect being to protect her.
So yeah, this video! It’s messy, and raw, and real. And watching the narrative unfold in reverse (as expertly directed by Ellis Bahl) grips me with terror: who is her father? Does he know where she is? Can he get there in time? Who will save her?
I know it’s just a music video but this all could have (and, in all likelihood, probably has) happened here, in the real world. And just as I have decided to shrug off the illusory restrictions of some distant, intensely-interested-in-my-future deity, I am also determined to not be held in captive fear by all the potential ultimately-out-of-my-control ways harm could materialize around my daughter. I guess what I’m trying to explicate here is that, in spite of all this, I still have a say in the matter; I am endowed with the freedom to contribute my efforts, no matter how small, to shaping this marvelous plane of existence, too.
A sometimes scary but blindingly beautiful world awaits your discovery, Maia; there is so much I want to show you.
[ ∆ | Breezeblocks ]
posted by respondcreate on Apr. 11, 2012 in Videos | tags: alt-j, ellis bahl, hd, horror, music video, reverse time, violence, ∆
“No one gets out of here alive,
In the melee there are many ways to cry.
Who knows where the gunshots are coming from;
Those who’ve been picked off aren’t saying much.”
File under: LOLWAT
Sub Pop Records: Purveyors of fine tunes and rad music videos. Corey Adams and Alex Craig bring the bizarre with some fantastic direction that channels Mister Heavenly‘s signature ‘doom wop’ vibe. It’s deliciously whacked-out-weird. Enjoy!
[ Mister Heavenly - Bronx Sniper (OFFICIAL VIDEO) ]
posted by respondcreate on Dec. 12, 2011 in Videos | tags: alex craig, bizarre, corey adams, hd, lolwat, mister heavenly, music video, ravenhouse ltd., sub pop, violence
The attention to detail is what makes this stop-motion animated short by Olivier Trudeau so fantastic. The inclusion of subtleties like swirling, hanging dust motes or a quick cutaway to an in-the-sand foot pivot plus some tight foley work make it a treat for the eyes and ears. This one’s a keeper. Full screen and headphones are mandatory. Enjoy!
[ Ninja ]
posted by respondcreate on Oct. 07, 2011 in Videos | tags: animation, hd, ninja, olivier trudeau, stop motion, violence
“Love bird is angry and has an axe. This HATE BIRD has to defeat the toys that are rising against him.”
File under: LOLWAT
[ Axe-Wielding Bird ATTACKS! via Peter Berkman > ceronprime ]
posted by respondcreate on Sep. 23, 2011 in Videos | tags: birds, bizarre, hd, kuli24000, lolwat, nature, stop motion, violence
