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Shpongle track A New Way To Say Hooray was more tricky. It wasn't difficult to guess that it was Terence McKenna speaking in the beginning, but the speech itself is cut from many different parts of the speech you can find from here and here.

Now that I'm on it, Simon Posford was sampling also the movie Forbidden Planet when he was composing Shpongleyes. It's always like a flashback when I hear out of the blue the original sources of the samples used for Shpongle or Simon's other projects.

Since I don't know if anyone has been tracking down these, I'll at least leave a write these up in case someone is wondering about the origins.

Oh my godzilla. Again I encountered suddenly a sample from LSD. This time Simon Posford had been sampling a kid talking with Allbert Hoffmann. See the video Kid on LSD and listen to either the original track or the fantastic remix, LSD (World Sheet Of Closed String Mix), composed by Ott. Both of them are my all-time favorites.

I was listening to new album Last Days Of Gravity. Second track, All I Want, was a surprise only Simon Posford could arrange me, as he did in the past.

I almost fell off the bench at work when I heard the vocals, which were in Finnish (around 4:45 and later as well). I'd be baffled, if the voice has been chosen for the lyrics, since they would translate like 'the last time I left home my old man was stomping his feet.' and later follows 'the last time I left home my old man was sitting on the stone foundation of the house'.

Que?

At least the album is convincing me even after just listening to it once.

My last journal entry was almost a year ago, talking about spiders on drugs. I found this video clip in YouTube the other day: Spiders on drugs

There is an interesting question everyone has always been wondering about: what kind of a cobweb would spider weave if it was on LSD?

Look no further, someone has already answered to one of the most intriquing questions of humankind:

• Nets made by spiders fed on drug-dosed flies
• the story behind
• Web of Spider on Chloral Hydrate

I was watching an episode of The Simpsons just a moment ago. The story started by Homer Simpson going to the annual chili cook-off, though Marge is trying to prevent him. Things get very interesting as the chief Wiggum brings in his chili from Central America.

Central America is known of its various psychoactive substances that Mayas, Aztecs and various Native American tribes were using - like Morning Glory, Salvia Divinorum, Ayahuasca and so forth. I am aware of the botanology of Central America and my interest was doubled on the moment when I saw the chili.

I remember hearing ages ago that Matt Groening of the creators of The Simpsons was arrested due to possession of LSD, yet after a few minutes of Google I wasn't able to verify that. Regardless, there has been connections of him and psychedelics - at least through many references in his TV series.

When Homer eventually started tripping on the Guatemalan insanity peppers, he was seeing loads of very trippy images and hearing morphing sounds. One of the howls was also spotted by Simon Posford as he had been welding Homer's auditive experience of listening to Ned Flanders babbling into piece Connoisseur of Hallucination, right in the end where it blends into The Nebbish Route.

Name of the episode was El Viaje Misterioso De Nuestro Homer (a.k.a. The Mysterious Voyage Of Our Homer), in case you are interested.

This album - Nothing Lasts... But Nothing Is Lost - is again an album from Shpongle to change my life alot.

My first listening experience was a big disappointment. I had been gnawing my knucklebones while waiting for the album to appear and I just couldn't resist downloading a version of it on the net when I saw it for the first time, a month before the release.

I started listening to the album on a bus, thinking that finally I have time to just concentrate on the music. But no, there was some young girl (approximately 4 years) that needed to express her feelings in the bus and she was yelling, screaming and crying, because her mother was trying to make her sit on her place.

The three opening tracks were released under the name Beija Flor on Dorset Perception being just one piece. I was disappointed, since all the material of the album wasn't new.

Then, while listening to the girl expressing herself I was half-listening to some of the next pieces and I simply was amazed. This shit could not be Shpongle, it was terrible. It was nothing like I had been waiting for and I had been waiting for it a lot!

After the first time listening I thought that I have to give it a second chance. It wasn't anything I had been expecting, so I had been disappointed. Cheesy speech samples from Terrence McKenna (Life must be a preparation for a transition into another dimension) and other issues of simply bad taste.

Slowly I started to realize that it wasn't anything I had been expecting, it was a lot better. Pieces like ...But Nothing Is Lost and When Shall I Be Free? simply blew my mind in some point.

The first part of the album title Nothing lasts... refers in my opinion heavily to death. I had to realize that I wasn't supposed to expect happy and cheerful pieces like Around the World in a Tea Daze, I had to be more serious. After starting to see this album first in the light of nothing really lasting and eventually proceeding to the second part but nothing is lost I saw a lot of life in the album as a whole.

I had been taking this album in the first place too lightly, as a tool for tripping. This album goes way beyond and goes to serious thinking without any unnecessary substances. Psychedelic effects are still heavily present, especially in skillfully composed vocoder parts, but I have a feeling that Simon Posford - who earlier was known as Hallucinogen - has been growing up.

When this album was released, I had to order it immediately, no matter the cost. This is definetly one of the best albums I have, and if you disagree, you are ignorant and wrong. ;)

I also think that with this album I have also been growing up. Nothing lasts, but nothing is lost.

When shall I be free?
When I shall cease to be?
No more 'I' but 'we'
In perfect harmony


Update: I found some references to Sri Ramakrishna when I was trying to search for the origin of this small poem.