Goa Gil Memorial Meltdown

For those who asked… this is pretty much how my weekend went.

Can’t really improve on perfection… =)

Equity TONIGHT! with SeventhSwami and Resynthesize

http://www.false-profit.com/2009/05/13/equity/

One week from today, the sun could be shining. One week from today, our city could be an island, separated from the peninsula along an undiscovered faultline. One week from today, we could all wake up from the same dream and wonder if it really happened. One week from today, you could be investing in things that matter to you.

By which we mean to say: Equity is just around the corner with hot pizza, deep basslines and $2 Red Stripes. Let the fresh new music from Seventh Swami and Resynthesize provide a soundtrack for some real conversations. Let yourself be happy for more than an hour, but start with one.

Seventh Swami (sundried tomatoes and red onions)

Resynthesize (pesto and feta)

Attend this Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=95824565942

Thursday, April 30th: Muti Music Takeover w/Dov, Nanda, SeventhSwami

Muti Music is a label that has been consistently pumping out good music in the Bay Area for years. We’re excited to welcome label head Dov with Seventh Swami and Nanda, both of whom have dope recent releases on Muti, on to the bus.

Dov is one of San Francisco’s continual boundary pushers in electronic music having produced music, party nights and distributing music from the vibrant Bay Area music scene since 1996. Founding his own imprint, Muti Music in 2002 and since then making a distinctive mark on the west coast sound. The sounds to be expected from Dov are always elevated and emotional, whether downtempo or peak time uptempo in super-clubs.

SeventhSwami delivers a wide range of musical styles… from downtempo, trip-hop and dub to midtempo, breakbeat and psy. Melodic and beat-oriented… Swami’s music is spiritually uplifiting, original and always thought-provoking.

Nanda typically dips into multiple influences and emerges with something broken in beats and flirting with Dubstep, Grime, Garage, Electro Bass and Downtempo music in genre classifications. The result is something that pushes a few edges technologically and somehow retains a sense of worldliness. In Nanda’s music it’s common to catch samples of Didgeridoo, Ood and ancient chants amongst other strings and organic instrumentation all in tracks that have some of the most crunchy Electro Breaks grooves and the result is an intense ecstatic dance experience waiting to happen.

This will be a night not to be missed!

We meet at The Bus Stop Gallery for check-in at 8pm and our bus leaves promptly at 8:30pm. We return you at Midnight. All our events are 21+ and BYOB. Tickets are $21 and can be purchased through the transportedsf website.

Photo courtesy of Wetribe

Here For Now… AVAILABLE NOW!

“Muti further solidifies their reputation as a prime west coast outlet for downtempo electronics with this tight release. ‘tornado dreams’ and ‘forever you forever me’ are highlights, with their digitized focus and IDM aesthetic. thanks for sending…” – SHEN / Noah Pred (Native State/GSC)
	With so many modern conveniences it is tempting for us to do as much as we can at any given moment, simply because we CAN. The price to be paid, however, is our own peace of mind. In our effort to stay efficient, we find ourselves in the middle of a time-famine where our modern conveniences and devices have made us more stressed out and overwhelmed than ever. SeventhSwami’s debut album, Here For Now, was created with the intent to help defuse this epidemic of anxiety, overwork, and over-scheduling that is upon us by helping guide people back to the tranquility of the present moment.
You can purchase Here For Now through Amazon, iTunes, and most other online digital retailers… or use the beatport widget below For more about the present moment, please visit the LINKS page on this website.

STILLGREEN – Saturday April 18th, 2009 – Bay Area

Stilldream and Love All Stars present

[[[STILLGREEN]]]
The Stilldream 9 Year Bay Area Warm Up Event!

Saturday April 18th, 2009
Bay Area, CA

Area1:

Forest Green (Cute Things with Fangs / forestgreen.org)
Mancub (Spacecowboys)
Serch (Freshout / theserch.com) – Chicago, IL
Michael Liu & Sausee (Illumination / Galaxy Unkown)
Carlos Alfonzo & Knifey Paul (Vibrance Recordings / Nocturnalism)
Nick Nyquil & G.A.M.M.A. (Stilldream / Movement Now)
Adam Ant & Miz Fiz (Love All Stars / Nocturnalism)
B33son (B33)

Area2:
SeventhSwami (stilldream / Muti / Ambient Mafia)
Ripple (FullMelt)
Phokus (Ritual Sounds / Movement Now)
The Doctor (Norcalnights / Primitive Science)
Atom O.N.E. (National Entity)
Rye Bread (Nocturnalism)

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2 Rooms Fully Permitted
18+ to enter
21+ to drink

$10 b4 11
$15 after

8pm-2am  (afterparty tba)

More info:
415.373.0181
916.676.7411

stilldream.org
myspace.com/stilldream

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What is Stilldream?
Stilldream is something different for everyone. Ask anyone who’s been and they’ll have a hard time coming up with the words to describe what it means to them. For some its the vibe, for some its the music, for some its the people. All we can tell you is, “Its not a party, its an experience. You have to go to understand.” All are accepted with no preconceptions about who you are, because in the end we’re all part of the same family!

Stillgreen?
Staying green has never been more important then it is today!. We have the power, why not use it? As Stilldream works on becoming greener every year, how bout you? Are you green? There’s always room for improvement, nobody is perfect but the idea is to do a little bit better everyday. Recycle, Reduce, Reuse! These are 3 things that can help everyone make this a better world for us all to live in and enjoy! Set goals for yourself, see what kind of difference you can make.

What is the Warm up about?
Since many Stilldreamers live in different areas of California, the west coast and the US. The Warm up Events are a way that we can see each other, catch up with old friends, make some new ones and start the planning, preperations and get those creative juices flowing, we can hit the ground running for the main gathering.

So this is it!
Come join us as we reunite the Stilldream Tribe and get warmed up for this years 9 Year Anniversary. All proceeds go directly into the main gathering coming June 19-21st.

Stilldream 9 Year Anniversary
Early Bird Memberships Available
@ www.groovetickets.com

Keep Dreaming, Living and Loving!

Two 2nd Saturday shows TONIGHT!

Resynthesize and I will be performing tonight in Midtown Sacramento at the 2nd Saturday art walk, at two different venues! alongside Psylence and Dirt.

FIRST: I will be dropping fresh beat at the Stilldream art show at:
Bonehead Tattoo
( 1017 24th St)6pm

SECOND: Doing it again at Kristen Hoard‘s art show at:
The Sacramento Art Complex
(April 11th 2nd Saturday 6-10pm 2110 K. Street) @ 8pm.

Kristen will be showing some new fire art pieces and there will be over 20 artists showing work as well! Please come out for a great night to kickoff spring! Also come see the wonderful SN&R newstands that many of the artists of the SAC have decorated. Several of the artists at the Sacramento Art Complex have been decorated SN&R Newstands for a couple of weeks and now they are all done! Soon they will be placed around midtown!

DBeat

That’s it… commence drooling and crying.

http://www.openlabs.com/DBeat.html

Whoa dude… everything a laptop DJ needs besides drink tickets… all in a 20lb aluminum package?

Price notwithstanding, there are many forseeable pros and cons to a device this specialized. I would love to get my hands on one for a weekend to put it throught the wringer.

When Man and Machine Merge

An excerpt from the Ray Kurzweil article in Rolling Stone magazine:

entire article: http://www.seventhswami.com/misc/KURZWEIL_IN_ROLLING_STONE.pdf

For his contributions to artificial intelligence, Kurzweil has been enshrined in the Inventors Hall of Fame and has received White House honors from three presidents – including the highest prize in his field, the National Medal of Technology. But nothing he has done in the past has shaken the scientific community as profoundly as his latest prediction. In our lifetime, Kurzweil believes, machines will not only surpass humans in intelligence – they will irrevocably alter what it means to be human.

Kurzweil had already been forecasting technology for years. It’s an essential part of any inventor’s trade, because he has to know what technology will be on the market by the time his product is released. To calculate what’s ahead, Kurzweil extrapolates from historical data. By charting microprocessor clock speeds since 1975, for example, he found they were doubling every three years. “It’s like skeet-shooting,” he says. “Things are moving very quickly.”

Kurzweil proved himself an astonishingly good shot – so good, in fact, that he began to make sweeping predictions about politics and society. During the 1980s, he correctly predicted the fall of the Soviet Union due to decentralized technologies, the rise of the Internet and the ubiquity of wireless networks. He announced that a computer would be a world chess champion by 1998 – a reality that occurred in May 1992 when Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov. “There’s something inexorable about these progressions,” Kurzweil says. “We really can predict – not exactly what’s going to happen, but the power of these technologies.” Then one day, as he was plotting the time between innovations from the wheel to the World Wide Web, Kurzweil made a discovery: Technological change is accelerating at a far more rapid pace than we understand. At the current rate, he wrote, “We wont experience 1oo years of progress in the 21st century – it will be more like 20,000 years of progress.” The rapidly decreasing cost of technology, he predicted, coupled with the exponentially increasing power of computers, will lead inevitably to a single moment: The Singularity.

The takeoff starts with computers embedding themselves – from GPS systems to iPhones – into the fabric of our lives. Then, 10 years from now, computing power will finally catch up with our brains. For $1,ooo, you’ll be able to store as much memory on a chip as you can in your head. By 2O3O, artificial intelligence will make computerized voices on telephone help lines as realistic sounding as any human’s (think HAL from 2O01). Virtual realities – projected directly onto your retinas – will become indistinguishable from your own. Kurzweil compares this leap to when humans learned how to fly. “Once we figured out the secret to flight – the subtle scientific principles – we created the world of aviation,” he says. “Once we can build and create intelligence that doesn’t have the limitations of our brain, there’s nothing it can’t do.”

But the even trippier stuff happens in the 2030s, when nanobots – microscopic machines built from molecular components – start to infiltrate your everyday life. “Nanobots in our physical bodies will destroy pathogens, remove debris, repair DNA and reverse aging,” Kurzweii predicts. “We will be able to redesign all the systems in our bodies and brains to be far more capable and durable.” By scanning the contents of your brain, nanobots will be able to transfer everything you know, everything you have ever experienced, into a robot or a virtual reality
program. If something happens to your physical body, no problem. Your mind will live on – forever.

But as computer intelligence surpasses that of humans, machines will also make smarter and smarter versions of themselves – without any help from us. After 2045, Kurzweil predicts, nanobots will replicate and spread throughout the tiniest recesses of matter, transforming the host – say, a tree or a stone – into a computational device. He calls this intelligence-infested matter “computronium, which is matter and energy organized at optimum level for computation. Using nanotechnology, we’re going to turn a rock into a computer.” As the nanobots spread computer intelligence beyond our planet, the universe itself will awaken as if a giant switch is finally being turned on. “The universe is not conscious – yet,” Kurzweil has written. “But it will be.”

The Reptile Mind

As humans evolved (from reptiles, to lower mammals, to modern man) so did our brains, both in size and complexity. An interesting aspect of this evolution is that, instead of simply expanding, our brains added on new components to augment the old ones. If you look at a cross-section of human brain, you can see evidence of it’s evolutionary history. The original reptilian brain resides in the center. The lower mammalian brain formed around it. And the frontal lobe of the human brain, lastly, surrounding it. The neurologist Paul McLean called this “the triune brain”… I call it “my turducken.”

“MacLean says that the three brains operate like three interconnected biological computers, each with its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space and its own memory. He refers to these three brains as the Neo-Cortex or neo-mammalian brain of the frontal lobes of the cerebrum; the Limbic or paleo-mammalian system of the mid-brain and thalamus; and the Reptilian brain – the brain-stem and cerebellum.  Each of the three brains is connected by nerves to the other two, but each seems to operate to some extent independently, as its own brain system with distinct capacities. Each successive layer of the Triune Brain contains a progressively more complex infrastructure of nerve cells, and the neurons which connect them are terminated within the three levels, almost as if the higher functions were tacked on as an afterthought.”

The reptile brain handles our basic survival instincts while our lower mammal brain handles our emotions. Lastly, the frontal lobe is in charge of abstract thinking, empathy, and all the other things that make us (and other higher mammals) so unique in this world. What fascinates me is how these ancient artifacts lodged in our minds are still slaves to the old rituals. You would think that it’d be somewhat like the human appendix… obsolete with no signs of functionality. But we can see the lower brains at work around us every day.

Think of things in terms of the reptile mind next time you are out at a bar on a busy night. You can see ancient courtship rituals at work… males establishing their alpha-ness… People ganging up on the weak… nodding their heads in approval of the strong… and it becomes more pronounced as the alcohol takes it toll. The medulla oblongata activates… fights break out… muscles are flexed… colors are brandished.

When you understand that we are slaves to these atavistic tendencies, it explains so much. Like why so many of us to behave in petty ways under the pressure of social scenarios. We hold ourselves up to this lofty standard of human behavior and yet, at times, we seem to automatically react to situations and revert to behavior unfitting of a species so supposedly advanced and cultured.

I have felt guilty in the past when I’ve reverted to old reptilian behavior. There have been instances where I wonder why I have a hard time warming up to certain people… times where I’ve been irresistibly drawn to “show off” in front of others… times where I’ve been unnaturally butt-hurt over things that shouldn’t matter… and I have had also been upset with friends who acted in strange ways when girls are around and I’ve judged them for it… thinking of it as a character flaw or an issue of maturity. When I think of it from this new perspective though, this “auto-pilot” behavior becomes forgivable, natural and humorous.

These ancient subroutines govern our happiness and, when they kick in, we are at their mercy. I vow that we all stop beating ourselves (and others) up over these little slips in civilized behavior. Let’s embrace our reptilian components and learn to  appreciate these little rituals and outbursts when they happen. This is not to say we should just run amok with little regard for other people’s feelings… remember, the reptile part of brain occupies less than 5% of the total mass of our gourds. Rather, we should recognize it for what it is so that we can understand and adjust our behavior for the better whenever possible.

Update:  Seth Godin on Quieting the Lizard Brain

Tomorrow Night at Silk!

Looks like we got the crew together again to shatter your braindrums! I’ve been putting together a thumpin new set for this all week too. I’m on from 9:30 to 10:30 with Tha Fruitbat, Phokus, Resynthesize, Psylence, and Dirt! You don’t want to miss this rare performance by bay area whompstars and hometown heroes combined!

1011 Del Paso Blvd Sacramento, CA 95815
$5 before 10:30, $10 after…
Live art and visuals by Goren the Robot, Wes Rodriguez and Mr. Fuel