Cosmic Chambo Studio: September 2021
Habitual rituals, death cleaning, and other pleasant mellownesses
Greetings from the low-rolling plains of East Central Indiana,
I started my career as a writer doing music journalism at URB Magazine in Los Angeles during the late ‘90s. From there I moved on to reporting from the fringes of American bohemia for Arthur Magazine. I left writing behind almost completely after I moved to Texas where I turned to visual art and meditation, while working as a medic, and later as a nonprofit communications/grants person. This path informs several of the projects that came to fruition over the course of late Summer 2021.
I’m more interested in writing about Zen and yoga now, and thus grateful to the people at Aquarium Drunkard for letting me proselytize about my borderline heretical approach to these mindfulness practices under the cover of music criticism. In January 2020 I wrote about anarchist black metal and “the healing power of righteous heavy music.” And now the follow-up: “Ritual de lo Habitual :: Timber Rattle And The Value of Not Knowing." It’s 1500 words on devotional ambient music, ritualistic metal, and my first visit to the Indianapolis Zen Center.
In the years since my days at URB and Arthur I’ve moved from Los Angeles to Marfa to Indianapolis to Muncie. Along the way I’ve carted multiple cumbersome bins of promotional CDs with the idea that I’d eventually digitize and sell them. Despite my attempt to rebrand CDs as “portable lossless audio archives,” this collection is now perhaps most easily appraised at a rate of a dollar or two per pound. August’s Inter-Dimensional Music “storage wars” diptych is a documentation of my attempt to reckon with this massive archive of glitchy techno, psych-folk also-rans, wacky underground hip-hop, and stoned downtempo abstractions. It’s a two hour mixtape, a greatest hits of the music that I once wrote about in exchange for a decent salary and benefits package, an arrangement that is almost entirely unheard of in 2021.
I’ve included language from the meditation teacher that I sat with briefly in Los Angeles. Kusala Bhikshu’s “Letting Go” dharma talk synchs up with “leave no trace” wilderness ethics, and provides a Zen alternative to the classic Christian “footprints” poetry.
Nobody is going to want most of your stuff when you die, and all cleaning is death cleaning. Prismatic polycarbonate may shine more spectacularly than gold, but valuation of aesthetic appeal is one of the more unstable features of the thoroughly cruel logic of unfettered capitalism.
Drop me a line if you know anyone who’d like to inherit this decaying collection. Or just enjoy two hours of highlights via Inter-Dimensional Musics 20210813 and 2021820.
In addition, I’ve updated the site with…
• My LA Weekly profile of Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux, RTX, and Black Bananas from the same era.
• An appreciation of the “pleasant mellowness” that comes from the accidental re-wilding of some of Muncie’s disused human structures.
As for the immediate future, September’s Inter-Dimensional Music takes the koan “Original Face” as inspiration. If you’d like to read along, you can find all the necessary materials in the first installment of the series: ID Music 20210827.
We’ll also be digging deeper into the devotional/ritual/heavy/mellow vibes with Timber Rattle-inspired mixes for ID Music, and with a guest appearance on Aquarium Drunkard’s monthly dublab show.
Also, exciting news soon coming regarding several bird-based video art collaborations with musicians who will be familiar to regular listeners of our airwaves.
Finally, a note about this new platform and the paid subscription option that comes with it: In keeping with the DIY ethics that we learned at tiny Midwestern hardcore shows in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, we value maximizing access to all of our work. “All ages” and “no one will be turned away for lack of funds” are the default options whenever possible.
With that said, I put significant time, effort, and money into producing the weekly broadcast, meditation videos, and slow-moving botanical mandalas. I buy most of the music you hear on the show, and am hopelessly reliant on Adobe Creative Suite.
If you’re feeling flush, please consider a subscription as a donation to our projects. Your contribution will mostly likely be redistributed via Bandcamp or maybe one day we’ll upgrade the janky YouTube channel to a nice Vimeo account. Paid subs include a link to the new archive of ID Music downloads and instrumental versions, but these bonus mixes will also eventually be made available to other readers. Including you, should you decide to discontinue your subscription!
We’re mostly just happy to know that there are people out there receiving these transmissions.
Thank you for reading, watching, and listening,
DC