Friday, 14 August 2015

Slow Gum by Fraser A. Gorman - Album Review by Moss Rock



I was checking out Courtney Barnett's indie record label Milk Records and stumbled across
this album 'Slow Gum' by local guitar slinger Fraser A. Gorman. I decided to give it a listen
and at first I was a bit put off by Fraser's somewhat quirky vocal delivery that kind of jumbled along.
But the more I listened to the music the more I found myself enjoy were it got to the point that I'd traversed from a position of mildly dis-liking 10 minutes ago to think it was f#@ken brilliant. Well yes hopefully i'm not one of those whack jobs who can only hate or love something with no middle ground haha. But who cares cause man the production on this record is beautiful, luxurious, soft, full sounding, warm, earthy with a strong flare of swag. It almost even sounds like it's been recorded in a church hall straight to 2 inch tape used by audiophiles.

To sum up my favourite songs on the album are: "My Old Man" and "Book of Love" which both have different vibes the later song is more jazzy and trippy while the former is a down country jam out with an elegant and tasteful string arrangement. If you like some of the greats aka Bob Dylan, The Band's stuff hell even Lou Reed try this record on your computer, stereo, headphones go on give it a  gander you might really like it. It's cheaper than flying out to Australya and fare more pleasant then sunbathing in your Auckland backyard in winter.


Thursday, 13 August 2015

Did Kurt Cobain Cheat his Way to Enlightenment?



"The event which takes place when we fully assume the results of brain sciences is the event of Enlightenment, the attainment of Nirvana, which liberates us from the constraints of our self as as an autonomous substantial agent. But does this solution work?" Slavoj Zizek from his book Event

Is their a dark brooding irony that Kurt Cobain's band was called Nirvana. By Zizeks' reading Buddhist enlightenment once attained renders an individual free from the concept of the self. So when Kurt Cobain died in a way he made the choice to rid himself of individual consciousness and enter into the state of Nirvana free from his pain in the world. Or instead should we read Cobain's death as an occurrence generated by historically specific life narrative that chained him to the wheel of suffering, the very thing Buddhism emphasizes one must break free from before becoming enlightened.

The secondary reading begs the question whether one can you go from a suffering individual to free from suffering by eliminating the self in one fateful step. Did Kurt Cobain cheat his way to enlightenment? or instead succumb to the earthly misery with roots in his traumatic childhood, what was by most accounts a very unhappy time for him taking on the role as a sullen and ostracized outcast abandoned even by his blood relatives.

A useful source of commentary on death and enlightenment is Ickheartol a new age self-help guru who talks about the split running down the consciousness of every human being who has two selves enclosed inside one body. On one side, much like old cartoons is the healthy happy angel sitting on our shoulder side that we usually are. However, in tough circumstance horrible circumstances the 'pain body' or devil side of our mental selves comes to the for, typified by the emotional scars amassed over a lifetime from mean and hurtful comments.

Despite the prima-facie beneficial arrangement of the angelic and demonic selves inside us, problems rapidly arise when we lose control of the 'pain body',that has the ability to derail our lives sabotaging every good thing that happens in our lives inherited by the actions of the happy side of our psyche mental self. An out of control pain body occurs when someone is triggered who has has undergone to much trauma in a single lifetime usually occurring in childhood were 'issues repressed come back into our lives with double the original ferocity'(zizek).  

The guru Ickehardtol was himself almost a fatal victim of the pain body as he opened up to his audience in a lecture about the perils of the battle inside his unconscious in the shape of a war against himself motivated by self-hatred and self-disgust. He outlined how he nearly lost complete control over his body almost resulting in suicide. Thankfully things didn't turn pear shaped as he was able to distinguish the pain body from his true self the happy side that wrenched back control and saved his life. Tols own battle with the pain body made him highly motivated to educate others on the dangers of mentally distinct and split selves, when you hear a negative voice rolling around in your head that's the pain body the one listening is your other side the good side. Sadly for some people yes even the famous who have bad mental health the inner-mind dialogue comes to be completely dominated by the pain body, the idea of diminished responsibility seems to be appropriate as a person loses control
over their own actions.Like an insane person the pain body in a sense is the manifestation of an inability to function in a normal way due to a troubling situation or circumstance in the present, past or future. 

To draw a parallel back to Kurt Cobain after watching the latest documentary "Montage of Heck" executive produced by his daughter Francis Bean it seems strikingly obvious how the trauma and pain Cobain suffered as an unwanted child with no real family to depended on fractured his sense of self. The unimaginable pain of being rejected by loved ones caused him to constantly act out and become angry and very depressed as an adolescent which only further isolated him and re-inforced his families decision to reject him, which created the primordial pain and root cause of his bad behaviour. Cobain stated that all he ever truly wanted was a strong cohesive family unit. And for this very reason I believe Kurt Cobain and many other individuals in similar positions to him die unnecessarily at the hands of themselves due to an out of control pain body that consciously blocks any good thoughts from entering their mind when they preform their self-harming final act. The fight of the split psyche between the devil and angel at war inside Kurt and others causes far to many people to die when they have so much to live for, but in their last moments controlled by the pain body they have no way to realize the good, such a scenario really sounds like the opposite of enlightenment. 

Saturday, 8 August 2015

The Moss Rock Show - Episode 5 Best new music from NZ and Around the World

The Moss Rock Show - Episode 5 + Co-Host Volita Pearl
The player should be directly below these words;
https://archive.org/details/Podcast5VM_201508

The Eclectic Playlist 
white reaper - pills
jaill - got an F
king tuff - black moon spell
thee ohh seehs - sticky hulks
white denim - street joys
fats domino - blueberry hill
the bid and the bee - will you dance 
mac demarco - brother
black keys - weight of love 
bully - trying 

Podcasting today for
The Moss Rock Show :) #themossrockshow#rock #rocknroll #rockmusic #radio#newzealand #america #newmusic#podcast

Monday, 3 August 2015

Podcasts are coming along well

show podcast playlists are coming along swell a lot of good tunes around busy sifting through the best music releases worldwide :)

Saturday, 1 August 2015

"So What are we Worried About" - Jane Kelsey vs Mike Hosking The Painful TPPA interview



The real story behind the TPPA 6 main points:

1) NZ will make no money ssigning the TPPA agreement. The US government released a statement saying if all our trade barriers were removed i.e capital investment, foreign business regulations,  labour and wage laws and health and safety practices in the workplace the New Zealand economy stands to increase trade by 0.01% GDP in 2025, hip hip yeah nah

2) Pharmaceuticals and Medicine prices will sky rocket on Life saving drugs "Biologics"
costing NZ $25 million a year for each drug per year.

A Quick maths equation: 5 live saving cancer drugs
                                         at the price of $25 million dollars a year
                                         Over 10 years = $1,250,000,000 NZD  sound nice Pharmac I bet it does

3) Handcuffs will be placed on the Government hindering our abilities to make the laws of New Zealand

4) We don't even know what is in the agreement, and thats not normal

5) Foreign investment will be hard to regulate in our own country

6) The NZ Government will open itself up to being sued overseas by TPPA signees
    in shadow Kangaroo Courts