I love my brain. I respect my brain, having a brain is sort of necessary to have all the other great things that I have in life. It's the thing that enables me to have other things. So if the other things it enables me to have are attacking the very brain itself, then how can they work?

But then also, having a brain is not it. I mean, divinity and intelligence are still different things, like a keyboard is different from the fingers that type on it. And the computer itself is separate from the keyboard.

Acid presents the fallacy that having a brain is all that is important. That all of our ideas come from inside our own head, so lets push the limits of the system, and lets make it break so we can see how it was all put together. But if the wizard conjures a demon who eats him, then who will unconjure the demon?

We must remember to always leave ourselves enough power to survive. Because each of these drugs steals a bit of that power. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. What does kill you, kills you.

It's always very important to know where that line is. And each of us has that line. For some of us it's a wall that we smash into, like a passenger in a speeding car, and we limp away bruised and broken, looking for a doctor.

For me last night it was a cliff that I jumped off of, catching myself at the last moment like Indiana Jones near the end of the Last Crusade. We know the hero can't die because he hasn't found the holy grail. Once he finds it, he has to die. he must either stay and guard the sacred chalice and have eternal life, or he must leave it behind and never see it again, and the rest of his life will pass in the blink of an eye.

Acid is the holy grail. it's the same holy grail as shone over the Castle Anthrax. Naughty, naughty zoot. You definitely deserve a spanking.

What is the holy grail, really? It's a castle full of young beautiful women waiting for you to do devious and wonderful things to them. But that's just the grail beacon. The real grail is kept locked up in a castle guarded by an insulting frenchman. Yeah you can try to get it, but you'll just get a lot of shit dumped on you.

So get an army up, storm the castle. All that does is end the film.

Arthur never recovers the grail. And neither will we. These great stories we retell now, with so much more depth. To the point where the symbols become so obvious that we just see them there. So then we mistake the symbols for the real things and we have to start all over again.

Each time, there's a new layer, an extra nudge and wink to the audience. Another little complexity added to the ritual. But it's not the endpoint of the ritual. It's the ritual itself. And we keep getting better and better at enjoying it.

I certainly am. I'm getting closer and closer everyday to enjoying it as much as I see i can. And I can see a lot.

-Trevor

That's why we take LSD.

-Trevor

God is not separate from time, he is all time. He presents us the past and a future, and we live only in the present. Our job is just to enjoy what has already been provided and do our best to leave the stage as we entered it.

There's no need to smash your guitars. But if you want to, go ahead, I'll take the broken pieces and make a song with them. But after tonight, I'm taking very good care of my guitar.

This culture worships LSD, and it's no wonder. The drug dumbs you down so much that you can't help but fall in love with things. Such a massive assault on your central nervous system, you see non-attachment in attachment. Attatchment to non-attachment is still attachment.

What culture do we live in when brain toxins are marketed for enjoyment? I suppose this one.

Wee!

-Trevor

God gives you a second chance, and he lets you cheat by remembering what you did last time.

-Trevor

LSD is your first warning from God.

Death is the second.

-Trevor

Dear shepherd,

It's my own sentence, and I don't know how to end it. What a ridiculous thought. The words themselves answer the question. The question contains it's own answer.

Thos of us stupid enough to ask are left staring down the revolver of a gun, cocked, loaded at our foreheads with great alimghty god at the trigger ready to blast every last one of us to smithereens! Jesus god don't let go of other people. They're all that keep you in this.

The hope that someone somewhere out there is reading this.

That's what I don't like about LSD. It makes me completely forget how incredibly awesome the world is.

It sort of focuses your attention on the real, bare survival elements of life. Knocks you down several pegs on your Mazlow Hierarchy of Needs.

The secret is not getting stuck there, on learning to take for granted things you never knew you took for granted.

Only the bravest souls should swim this deep. And I'm not one of them. I feel a bit like a reverse-coelecanth. Like I might implode at any minute. I'm just happy to say that I kissed the devil, and he's good with his tongue.

But it's a pretty loveless kiss, I'll tell you that.

Someone play me a beatles record...

-Trevor

My main job as an artist is just to keep my interior monologue exterior as much as possible isn't it? Isn't my job as the artist actually to play crazy? And am I not in fact doing this right now? Does this not validate my previous point?

-Trevor

Worrying is about as useful as not-worrying.

-Trevor

wounded,
against his breast

A debt never repaid,
A mind that flew so close to the sun
It's feathers were a little burned around the edges.

And god scolded the naughty little angel for thinking he could know more than he should.

And set him gently down in his own bed for him to sleep.

Thank god.

-Trevor

Clichés are just great truths we’ve grown bored of hearing.

-Trevor

|LR| do it! DO it! says:
we'll be chatting with each other through magazine interviews, but in code
First album: complete. ON SALE NOW! says:
yes
First album: complete. ON SALE NOW! says:
a secret code
First album: complete. ON SALE NOW! says:
purple means jellyfish
|LR| do it! DO it! says:
whoa slow down im confused
First album: complete. ON SALE NOW! says:
dandelion means acupulco
|LR| do it! DO it! says:
lol
First album: complete. ON SALE NOW! says:
asparagus means don't look at the iguana
First album: complete. ON SALE NOW! says:
means means hehehe BOW!
|LR| do it! DO it! says:
dodecahedron means 11-sided polygon
|LR| do it! DO it! says:
heh
First album: complete. ON SALE NOW! says:
means means hehehe BOW!

The secret is to let god do the thinking, and then just steal the credit.

-Trevor

If you think about it, everything is being recorded. the idea of a recoding is even recorded by history. The event of a capture happens as an event in this much larger process.

Recording is time travel, but it only works for sounds, we can't send a whole body. And it only goes to the future.

And we don't know how far into the future it wil go, or if anyone will listen.

Anyone seen 12 monkeys? You should probably watch it again after you read this.

It's really fucking good. You thought it was about time travel and this guy who went to the past, but really it's about artists. About how the really crazy people are the ones who think that the future doesn't exist yet.

-Trevor

It's interesting how the lies of the music industry are embedded in the very language it uses to describe itself.

It is an industry built on lies.

A recording artist is actually a "recorded artist."

I am a true recording artist, but I am not a Sony Music Recording Artist.

The recording artists on their roster are in fact "recorded artists."

If you think the autotune is the lie, you're not looking close enough. The autotune they let you see. What don't they let you see, that's the question. What is concealed if they allow you to see such blatant lies?

Unless everything is truly open.

In that case we're fine.

-Trevor

I don't need no velvet underground to make me andy warhol. I make my own music. I am andy warhol and the velvet underground in one.

He was context without meaning, the velvet were meaning without context.

I'm both in one. Fuck andy warhol. I got him beat.

-Trevor

Sometimes I think the noise I make tapping on my guitar stand is more musical than the noise I make tappping on the guitar itself.

The voice of moving a microphone makes more sound than the recorder can handle. It shows us the limits of the medium. The sound of an empty room recorded shows us the filter of of the room, like weighing the bag before you put the weed in it. So you're not measuring the bag.

Like lets hear the sound of the room the music is recorded in. Lets hear a little bit of the system that it's processed though. Lets hear that and see what it sounds like.

Lets hear the sound of a microphone being moved.

-Trevor

It doesn't matter if you're a genius if your genius is all stored on 5 1/4" floppies

-Trevor

Everywhere you don't look, there's another part of God you don't see.

-Trevor

Sometimes, I find it helpful to step outside of this universe.
Slip into the place between the places.
Sometimes I let desert time pass me by,
And sleep in sweet non-time's oasis.
A minute
My life
A moment
My whole life.
It's all the time you want for it to be.
Just open your eyes half-way
listen to what the world has to say
Things will be different if you look at them that way.

-Trevor

a book collection
why do people watch antiques roadshow
life

Taking mushrooms is like swimming in the sea of consciousness.

Take E at the same time is like wearing a life jacket.

You can't swim as deep, but you don't have to worry about drowning.

-Trevor

If the Internet is the brain of our culture, then wireless is surely its soul.

-Trevor

Bandwidth is a renewable resource.

-Trevor

In the beginning, it's pretending you don't care to be around someone you care about.

In the end, it's pretending to care about someone you don't care to be around.

-Trevor

You can hear some of my disco-punk music at http://members.rogers.com/trevorcoleman/

To the members of the Jury:
I realise as you listen to this demo CD, you are probably asking “Is this guy serious?,” and I assure you I am. Serious like a heart attack.

I appreciate that the music is quite simple, and I tell you it is intentionally so. In the current musical climate many people feel as though music is a strange and arcane art, best left to specialists and artists, whatever those strange and wonderful beasts may be.

The truth of the matter is that music is all around us, and that we don’t even need to do anything to make it happen. John Cage tried to show us that with his work 4’33”, and the futurists tried to show us that by incorporating the sounds of typewriters and other machines into their work.

In my music, I try to follow the same path incorporating supposedly non-musical sounds, and non-musical people and making music with them. The drums in payless for everything are actually the sampled sound of gunshots and electrical crackling. Half of the shouting is done by my roommate, a self-professed non-musician.

Buzzers and alarm beeps also feature prominently. I’m fascinated by the sounds that used to catch our attention. I try to incorporate as many of them into my music as I can.

My creative strategy is to tear away any sound that is not music, and to leave the seams showing. Whatever is left must be the song. I also attempt to include as many non-musical sounds in the work as possible. Most of my exploration happens in the grey area between music and noise.

I also try to allow randomness into my creative process. Randomness, in my mind, is a pattern much larger than we can see. Divine or not, there is some greater order in this universe than we humans have access to. By allowing some of that randomness into my work, I am, in a way, allowing God to do some of the writing for me.

Or as someone once said it’s not the notes, it’s the space between the notes. It’s clichéd perhaps, but clichés are just great truths we’ve grown bored of hearing.

The lyrics feature advertising slogans and other short simple statements that we hear a million times a day without noticing. This is to draw attention to the messages that the media and advertisers repeat to us over and over, day in and day out. By taking these messages out of context we reveal them for what they are, and uncover the subtext that is so ubiquitous that we barely notice it anymore. You are not worth anything unless you are consuming something.

So much of the music on the radio today is really just a commercial for itself. Songs are just tools to drive album sales, when really the focus shouldn’t be on the songs or the albums, but really on the ideas that the music is advancing. These songs are just saying the same thing as everything else, except they’re saying it loud and clear, making the dialogue itself the subject of discussion, rather than trying to hide it under pretentious, self-important navel gazing on Behind The Music.

The planned process for the production of this record is far from traditional. Because of the nature of this type of music, most of the production will be done in my home studio, during what would traditionally be considered pre-production. Tracks will be sequenced using a rented Roland SP-808 sampler, which will be more than adequate for my needs.

The work in the studio will be about using the equipment I don’t usually have access to, not to get “better” sounds, but to get more sounds. The spontaneous nature of the composition and recording process, and the availability of easy-to-use digital sequencers and samplers both vastly reduce the amount of time required to complete this project

Another important part of this style of music is leaving some of the loose ends showing. Have a few seconds of people talking before the track begins. Let the breaths, giggles, and coughs come into the music. Let the audience hear that it’s not a machine, it’s a person making the music. Let them hear how much fun you had making it. That spirit is contrasted with the mechanical repetition of the sequenced drum sounds. It’s not the sounds that make music, it’s the people. That theme cannot be re-stated often enough.

I call this type of music Disco Punk. It doesn’t sound like disco or punk, but that’s the whole point. It embodies the spirit of the two movements. The whole point is that the music isn’t about what it sounds like, nor whether it sounds “good” or “bad”. It’s about the idea that makes you want to make the music in the first place. Disco is all about “Fun-fun-fun! Party-party-party!”, and punk is all about “Get the theory-bound capitalist pigs off the stage, and lets get some real people making real f**king music!” Disco Punk tries to unite those two movements, because there is common ground there: both are about being unpretentious.

Contradictions in life are the most interesting parts. Anyone who comes to Disco Punk has to confront their own ignorance of the genre right off the bat, so any preconceived notions of what they thought it was going to be like are proved wrong right away.

Well there you have it, you like it or you don’t, you buy it or you don’t. This scene is happening it Toronto, it’s our grunge. It has the same roots, but this time it’s got the Internet, so it won’t get strangled by the traditional media. There’s something new and different about to happen here. Something completely outside of our current conception of art and commerce. This album will sell, not a lot perhaps, but enough to make back what I spend. I have complete faith in that. People are looking for something different, and this type of music is it. Just show up at Wavelength in Toronto on any given Sunday night and you’ll see the market for this.

-Trevor Coleman