♫♪  Lee Gamble - “Quadripoints”

Not all swirling animated rock monsters are malevolent. I mean, you see one movie like Galaxy Quest and all of a sudden it’s “Rock monsters only like to smash stuff” this and “Don’t wake up the rock monster or it’ll smash stuff, like your face” that. What’s lost in the oversimplification is that rock monsters probably have feelings too – you’ve just never met one that you could talk to, maybe at a bar or a coffee shop or even on the street, or you’ve simply never met one at all. I think we could all take a page from Lee Gamble’s book and try to understand the rock monster as a self-aware entity with hopes, dreams, aspirations, or even just the desire to let loose once in a while and groove out to some airy IDM. We can all relate to that – we’ve all imagined ourselves as billowing clouds of agitated molecules at times, rhythmically pulsing to whatever Hyperdub track was throbbing from our stereo speakers.

“Quadripoints” (from the brand spankin’ new Mnestic Pressure) takes that idea and literally visualizes it, bringing to the screen the rock monster inside us all, allowing us to dance across landscapes in its metaphorical shoes. From here, with this personification in mind, our hearts can melt just a little bit, our indifference of rock monsters thawing just enough that we can accept them for who they are. No longer should rock monsters be feared as enemies or perceived as obstacles. We can now look forward to the day when rock monsters no longer play the villains but instead smash through the granite ceiling to secure high-profile space captain jobs, responsible for likeminded crews, intent on discovery and observation. My one wish for them, for their success, is that they don’t encounter churning masses of human bodies that freak them out like the swirling rocks once did us – and if they do run into a “people monster,” I like to think that the rock monsters have learned the same lesson today that we Earthlings have and give their newfound comrades a fair shake.

Chocolate Grinder

CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

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