On Psychedelic Fractals

Monday, October 25th, 2010 // Paperhouse

I would talk about Bauhaus and Bela Lugosi being dead, but Halloween’s not my style. Sorry folks, I’m an All Saints Day kind of guy. Speaking of saints, let’s talk about Benoit Mandelbrot. He passed away this week. That’s right; that guy who was responsible for the entire field of mathematics that you’re currently studying was still alive a week ago. Let’s just take a minute and think about how radically he morphed how we as humans experience reality.

Ah, good reader, you’re back! So, you’ve come to the realization that you’re nothing more than an emergent behavior phenomenon and that the way in which you interact with other humans and the world around you is paralleled by the way that cellular structures interact with each other, have you? Well, that’s great. I guess that it’s only natural then that we talk about psychedelic music. Psychedelic musical history is a funny one in that at the time of its origins — the late ‘60s and early ‘70s — the music that was being produced under this name was some pansy-ass folk. You had the Grateful Dead, the Mamas and the Papas, Moby Grape, the Yardbirds, and the 13th Floor Elevators. Simply put, psychedelic music started out slow. Boy, have things changed! Thanks to the pace of audio recording technology, things have gotten loud, abrasive, euphoric and stupidly complex, all of which are good things.

If you’re interested in exploring the truly avant-garde psychedelia that was manifesting itself throughout the world in the ‘70s, explore the Finders Keepers catalogue. Dedicated to introducing fans of psychedelic, jazz, folk, funk, avant-garde, and whacked-out movie muzak to a lost world of undiscovered vinyl artifacts from the annals of alternative pop history, you’ll find the artists that paved the road for contemporary psychedelia. They can be found at .

You don’t have to be tripping hard to experience psychedelia. Check out the following and you’ll see what I mean: Flying Lotus, Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Kristin Miltner, Boards of Canada.

-Juan Fernandez