“International Symposium
on the occasion of the
100th Birthday of Albert Hofmann

13 to 15 January 2006
Convention Center Basel, Switzerland

On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Dr. Albert Hofmann on 11 January 2006, the Gaia Media Foundation stages an International Symposium on the most widely known and most controversial discovery of this outstanding scientist.

LSD – three letters that changed the world. Since 19 April 1943, the day Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann discovered this psychoactive substance, millions of people all over the world have experienced a higher reality with profound and psychological insights and spiritual renewal; created innovative social transformation, music, art, and fashion; were healed from addiction and depression; experienced enlightened insights into the human consciousness.

Some 60 years later more than 80 experts from all over the world will present an in-depth review of all aspects of this unique phenomenon, informing and discussing history, experiences, implications, assess the risks and benefits of this most potent of all psychoactive substances. LSD – a challenge in the past, now, and in the future.

Friday, 13 January 2006
From the Plants of God to LSD

07.30 Opening of the Registration Desk

08.15 ñ 08.45 Tune-in
Akasha Project
From the Sound of the Earthly Year to the Vibration of the LSD-25 Molecule
The Akasha Project presents a meditative electronic sound trip. Starting from the primeval sound of the earthly year, a C sharp with 136.10 hertz, we glide into the LSD-25 molecule’s octave analoguous field of frequency.

09.00 ñ 11.00 Panorama
From the Plants of the Gods to LSD (1)
Simultaneous translation Ger/Eng and Eng/Ger
Moderation: Lucius Werthm¸ller

Dieter A. Hagenbach and Lucius Werthm¸ller: Welcome and Opening of the Symposium

Lucius Werthm¸ller interviews Albert Hofmann: The Discovery of LSD-25

Felix Hasler, Ph.D.: What is Lysergic Acid Diethylamide?

Rolf Verres, M.D.: Appraisal of Albert Hofmannís Lifework

Rudolf Bauer, M.D.: Welcome speech of the Society for Medicinal Plant Research

Reynold Nicole: LSD, Albert Hofmann and the Quality of Time

Thomas Klett, Ph.D.: Albert Hofmann – Ernst J¸nger: Notes on a Long Friendship

Jochen Gartz, Ph.D.: Teonanacatl: The Discovery of Psilocybin by Albert Hofmann

Carl P. Ruck, Ph.D.: Eleusis: Retracing the Sacred Road

11.00 ñ 11.30 Break

11.30 ñ 13.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Seminar
Ralph Metzner
Albert Hofmann, LSD and the Quest for the Alchemical Philosopherís Stone
(German, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng)

Originally, alchemy was a holistic system of methods for the physical, psychological and mental transformation, which is related to Indian yoga, among other things. Under pressure of the church esoteric methods of self-transformation were hidden in an obscure secret language. In modern age disapproved-of as superstition by natural science, alchemyís symbolism was being revived in Carl Jungís analytical psychology. The discovery of highly effective substances by Albert Hofmann and others, suitable for triggering physical, psychological and mental transformations, carries on smoothly where this western tradition of wisdom broke off.

Joint Seminar
Meaning and Implications of LSD for Science, Society, and Culture
With G¸nter Amendt, Rick Doblin, Felix Hasler, Martin A. Lee, Claudia M¸ller-Ebeling, Jeremy Narby, Juraj Styk
(German, English, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng, Eng/Ger)

About sixty years after its discovery, the significance of LSD in all spheres of life and knowledge becomes more and more evident. A high-calibre international team of experts discusses the manifold, and often unrecognized influences of LSD on their respective fields.

Seminar
Carl P. Ruck, Peter Webster
The Mythology and Chemistry of the Eleusinian Mysteries
(English, without translation)

A case pending before the United States Supreme Court presented by an appeal by the New Mexico chapter of the Uniao do Vegetal (UDV) Christian church cites the Eleusinian Mystery as precedent for a psychoactive Eucharist within a well-ordered religious ceremony. For approximately two millennia, beginning about 1500 BCE and ending with the conversion of the Greco-Roman world to Christianity, people gathered at the village of Eleusis outside ancient Athens to experience something that would change them and their expectations about the meaning of life and death forever.

Seminar
Wolf-Dieter Storl
Albert Hofmann and the Inspiration through Plant Devas
(German, without translation)

Mid-Twentieth Century: ´Wastelandª, Nuclear Fear and Desert of Materialism, and how the wise Alberich found the Nano-Flower which granted the Devas the access again and liberated the Flower Power Children from their exile.

Seminar
Society for Medicinal Plant Research (GA)
With Rudolf Brenneisen, Matthias Hamburger, Wolfgang Kubelka
Drug Discovery from Nature

Wolfgang Kubelka
“Pharmakon”: From Poison to Medicine – the Chemical Improvement of Nature?

The Greek term “Pharmakon” was used for poison, at the same time for antidote and medicine. During centuries, poisonous and healing plants have been detected by trial and error; it was not before 1800, however, that natural science became successful in isolating and identifying active substances from plants. With the development of chemistry the number of known structures increased enormously, and in many cases their mode of action became explainable. Albert Hofmann in his work, sometimes led by serendipity, gives us excellent examples for classical natural products chemistry. To which extent is it possible to find and improve natural compounds for their use in medicine?

Rudolf Brenneisen
Cannabis – From Phytocannabinoids to Endocannabinoids

The Cannabis plant has been an essential element of traditional medicine for thousands of years. Today, its medicinal use is becoming again popular mainly within self-medication. However, the discrepancy between empirical and evidence-based data is obvious and therefore implies intensive pharmacological and clinical research. On the other hand, the recently discovered Cannabis receptors and their endogenous ligands are potential targets for new therapeutic tools.

Matthias Hamburger
Contemporary Natural Product Drug Discovery

Natural products have been the historically most prolific source for drugs and inspiration for designing synthetic drug substances. Recently, their role in drug discovery has been challenged by the advent of combinatorial synthesis and high-throughput screening. Contemporary opportunities for natural products will be discussed in the larger context of methodological advances and new paradigms in the life sciences. Selected examples will highlight the continued importance of natural products in target discovery and as source for new drug templates with unique properties.

13.00 ñ 14.00 Break

14.00 ñ 16.00 Panorama

From the Plants of the Gods to LSD (2)
Simultaneous translation Ger/Eng and Eng/Ger

Moderation: Martin Frischknecht

Christian R‰tsch Ph.D.: Plants of the Gods: From the Jungle to the Laboratories of Pharmacologists

Ulrich Holbein: Writers and Drugs: From Charles Baudelaire to Aldous Huxley

Jonathan Ott: The Relatives of LSD: Ololiuqui und Ayahuasca

Ralph Metzner Ph.D.: The Beginning of LSD-Research: Canada, Harvard and Good Friday

David E. Nichols Ph.D.: The Heffter Research Institute USA and the Heffter Research Center Zurich: Centers for Hallucinogenic Research

Franz X. Vollenweider M.D.: The Effects of LSD: The State of Research Today

Felix Hasler Ph.D.: Special Case Switzerland: LSD-Research and Therapy

Rick Doblin Ph.D.: The Worldwide Use of LSD in Therapy and Medicine

16.00 ñ 16.30 Break

16.30 ñ 18.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Seminar
Christian R‰tsch
From the Plants of the Gods to LSD
(German, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng)

Chemically, and as to its mental effects, LSD belongs to the group of ancient Mexican sacred drugs, and probably also to the Eleusinian drink of initiation. Albert Hofmannís phytochemical research enabled a special ethnopharmacological study of Mexican magic plants and mushrooms. In his seminar, the famous German ethnopharmacologist and author of the Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants goes into the complex significance of Albert Hofmannís research for ethno(pharmaco)logy.

Seminar
Alexander T. and Ann Shulgin
´Ask the Shulginsª
(English, consecutive summary in German)

Sasha and Ann will answer everything you wanted to know about psychoactive substances. Alexander “Sasha” T. Shulgin, is a pharmacologist and chemist known for his creation of new psychoactive chemicals. In 1967, he was introduced to the possibilities of MDMA by an undergrad at San Francisco State University at a time when very few people had tried MDMA. Though Shulgin did not invent the chemical, he did create a new synthesis process in 1976. Since that time, Shulgin has synthesized and bioassayed (self-tested) hundreds of psychoactive chemicals, recording his work in four books and in more than two hundred papers. He is a figure in the psychedelic community, speaking at conferences, granting frequent interviews, and instilling a sense of rational scientific thought into the world of self-experimentation and psychoactive ingestion Sasha’s partner, Ann Shulgin also conducted psychedelic therapy sessions with MDMA before it was scheduled in 1985.

Seminar
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)
With Rick Doblin, Charles S. Grob, John H. Halpern, Valerie Mojeiko, Andrew Sewell,
In the Midst of Darkness – Light:
US Government approved Psychedelic Therapy Research
(English, without translation)

Presentation by the principle investigators of all three FDA-approved psychedelic psychotherapy research projects in the US: Psilocybin in cancer patients with anxiety, MDMA in cancer patients with anxiety, and MDMA in subjects with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Further, MAPS presents information about the case report study of LSD/Psilocybin in cluster headache and plans for the study of Ibogaine in treating substance abusers, as well as information on building a non-profit psychedelic and medical marijuana pharmaceutical company.

2 Seminars
16.30 ñ 17.10
Wolf-Dieter Storl
“The Spirit of Basel”
(German, without translation)

Basel has a long humanist tradition, be it the spirit of Desiderius Erasmus, the activities of Paracelsus, or the discoveries of Albert Hofmann. Wolf-Dieter Storl takes a look at mysterious facts and backgrounds: Baselís sacred geography since megalithic times; the Rhine as a sacred river, which embodies the triple-shaped pre-Indo-European goddess as a snake or a dragon; Basel as a centre of the cult of Celtic sun god Belenos; city of basilisks and sphinxes, city of alchemy and, today, city of chemistry.

17.10 ñ 17.20 Break

17.20 ñ 18.00

John Beresford
Psychedelic Agents and the Structure of Consciousness: Stages in a Session Using LSD and DMT
(English, without translation)

Experimental work with psychedelic agents permits a theoretical conception of consciousness unlike any posed by academic philosophy, analytic or existential. The sequence of stages revealed in a session adapts to the view that consciousness, at any rate human consciousness, possesses an inherent structure. What are the metaphysical consequences of this fact? In particular, how does the sequence of stages relate to activity in the brain? There is tension between the reality of the “LSD experience” ñ for example, karmic reaching-back to a significant past life event ñ and the reality of brain cells and their synapses. Speculation here may goad philosophy to explore the new paradigm we hear about.

18.00 ñ 18.30 Break

18.30 ñ 20.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Film
Jon Hanna
Psychopticon Animatris: A Visual Tour of Hallucinatory Imagery in Animation
(English, without translation)

This collection of diverse clips showcases hallucinatory content and inspiration in pop-culture animation from the 1920s until today. Whether induced by alcohol, psychedelics or other drugs, dreams, music or meditation, the depiction of crossing liminal boundaries is frequently beautiful, often humorous, and always entertaining.

Panel
LSD and the Counterculture of the Sixties in Europe
With Brummbaer, Sergius Golowin, Urban Gwerder, Werner Pieper, Ronald Steckel, Simon Vinkenoog, Moderation: G¸nter Amendt
(German, without translation)

Contemporary witnesses share memories of the Sixties. They inform us about the specific movements of their country of origin and analyze the impact of LSD on the varied streams of the political and social counterculture.

2 Seminars
18.30 ñ 19.10
The Beckley Foundation / Amanda Feilding
LSD, Precious Key of Neuroscience
(English, without translation)

The Beckley Foundation Scientific Program conducts cutting edge research with LSD in human subjects, explores neurophysiological similarities between LSD and the mystical experience through observing modulations in the blood supply, brainwaves and a broad spectrum of cognitive changes. The Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Program advises governments and international agencies such as the UN. It produces reports and organises seminars at the House of Lords, which evaluate global drug policy and its impact on scientific and medical research.

19.10 ñ 19.20 Break

19.20 ñ 20.00
Stephen Abrams
Moving Sideways in Time: Miracles that Leave no Traces
(English, without translation)

This talk looks at synchronicity and the problem of coincidence in psychedelic experience. It brings together the views of Carl Jung and Alfred North Whitehead and considers the possibility that human fate can be understood in terms of a sideways motion in time between parallel worlds. The discussion may help to resolve the contradiction between the ubiquity of meaningful coincidence and the paucity of experimental evidence for so-called “psychic” phenomena. The speaker describes top-secret US government funded research at Oxford University.

2 Seminars
18.30 ñ 19.10
Jochen Gartz
From the Demystification of Teonanacatl to the Global Research on Psychoactive Mushroom Species
(German, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng)

Early in 1958, Albert Hofmann and collaborators succeeded in isolating psilocybin and psilocin from Mexican magic mushrooms for the first time. A new type of cultivation methods and a subsequent synthesis made it possible to analyze the structure of these agents and to produce them rationally. Since then many mushroom species, developing these alkaloids, have been found all over the world and have been chemically analyzed. Apart from these results of the research also the structure of a so far unknown derivative of psilocybin is being presented for the first time, which ñ as far as is known ñ only occurs in a single psychoactive kind of the inocybe species (a psilocybin mushroom).

19.10 ñ 19.20 Break

19.20 ñ 20.00
Ulrich Holbein
The Indescribable Doesnít Mind who Describes it!
Three Thousand Years of LSD between Literary Artistry and Drivel
(German, without translation)

Ancient, medieval, romantic and other minds and reporters never took LSD, maybe only beer or nothing at all; but in their reports based on personal experiences they describe unmistakable typical LSD visions. Then, when LSD became available, the ability to describe of those concerned seems to diminish. German writer Ulrich Holbein documents his astounding thesis with many mostly unknown citational finds from all times and territories.

2 Seminars

18.30 ñ 19.10
Michael Horowitz
“Kissing the Sky”: Writers on LSD
(English, without translation)

Psychedelic drugs and literature both tap into the realm of Creative Intelligence. Writers have used different literary genres and stylistic approaches to describe the LSD experience to readers and listeners. This lecture presents a survey of texts from Hofmann and Huxley to Leary and Lennon.

19.10 ñ 19.20 Break

19.20 ñ 20.00
Jonathan Ott
Albert Hofmann’s Contributions to Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research
(English, with consecutive translation Eng/Ger)

A survey of the major contributions of Albert Hofmann to the research of complex chemical and pharmacological properties of several natural substances and their derivatives, with special reference to the derivatives of ergot.

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Saturday, 14 January 2006
The Ecstatic Adventure

07.30 Opening of the Registration Desk

08.15 ñ 08.45 Tune-in
Star Sounds Orchestra
Mercury ñ Meditation

Resonance frequency is the “patron saint” of each successful communication so to speak; traditionally known as “Mercury”, “Hermes” and “Toth”. On this basis the Star Sounds Orchestra will get you into the right mood for the dayís events with a musical “Tune-in”, and turn your nervous system into a state of expectancy and bless you with a pleasant day.

09.00 ñ 11.00 Panorama
The Ecstatic Adventure (1)
Simultaneous Translation Ger/Eng and Eng/Ger

Moderation: Martin Frischknecht

Carlo Zumstein M.D.: Transcendence and Back ñ In Favor of a Culture of Netherworld Journey

Juraj Styk M.D.: Psycholytic and Psychedelic Therapies

Mathias Brˆckers: The Right to get High

Martin A. Lee: LSD and CIA and KGB

Ralph Metzner Ph.D.: The Meaning of Set and Setting

Micky Remann: Baptism, Wellness and Back: Water as an initiate Psychedelic of Nature

Alex Grey: Psychedelic Art in the 20th and 21st Century

11.00 ñ 11.30 Break

11.30 ñ 13.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Seminar
Alex Grey
Impact and Influence of LSD on Art and Culture
(English, consecutive translation Eng/Ger)

Artist Alex Grey will trace the emergence of psychedelic imagery in 20th and 21st century graphics and fine art, including film and music. Grey will focus primarily on the art of painting and the current relevance of consciousness expansion on the ecstatic aesthetic in contemporary art. A Psychedelic or Entheo-Art that was born in the crucible of the Sixties has matured to the deeper and more spiritually compelling expressions of today.

Panel
Psychedelic Therapy: Chances and Risks
With: Rick Doblin, Charles S. Grob, Michael Schlichting, Manuel Schoch, Juraj Styk; Moderation: Martin Frischknecht
(German, simultaneous translation Eng/Ger)

It probably was Italian psychoanalyst Baroni who, in his “Confessions High on Mescaline” in 1931, first published on the use of psychedelics in psychotherapy. But it wasnít before clinical experiments with LSD (discovered in 1943) that the therapeutic potential of altered states of consciousness was brought to light. During the sixties, psycholysis was being practiced in 18 European treatment centers on a regular basis. Through continuous further development and optimization, today we can refer to a fully developed, therapeutically valid and secure method. A high-calibre team of experts informs about the present-day level of knowledge as well as about chances and risks, using hallucinogenic substances in psychotherapy.

Seminar
Alexander T. and Ann Shulgin
Pihkal and Tihkal: A Chemical Love Story
(English, consecutive translation Eng/Ger)

“We met, married and formed a research team about twenty five years ago. This called upon a background of psychedelic drug invention and exploration of the previous twenty years, but it added a new dimension to this area of exploration. Besides the definition of a new material in synthetic and analytical terms, there is now a social and psychological aspect that can be explored. The increasing reluctance of the scientific research community to accept these new discoveries led to the writing and publication of the books Pihkal and Tihkal.”

Seminar
Martin A. Lee
LSD and CIA ñ Demonizing of LSD & the Suppression of Research
(English, simultaneous translation Eng/Ger)

The CIA and the US military were both actively involved in anti-LSD propaganda (chromosome damage scare, etc.). The CIA and the army funded scientists favoring the psychosis-producing view of LSD as opposed to researchers exploring therapeutic applications. Martin A. Lee analyses how the CIA ties with the US Food & Drug Administration and how the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Public Health Service influenced U.S. policy decisions regarding LSD research and prohibition in the Sixties.

2 Seminars
Felix Hasler, Franz X. Vollenweider
Requirements for the Work with Hallucinogens (60í)
(German, without translation)

With practical examples the clinical, scientific, therapeutic as well as legal and ethical general conditions allowing the work with hallucinogens in Switzerland will be explained and discussed.

Rael Cahn
Psychedelic States and Meditation (30í)
(English, without translation)

Rael Cahn presents results of EEG studies with Tibetan monks in order to measure brain activities during meditation compared with studies with students under the influence of psilocybin. Among other things, with these studies research was made on how visual and auditory stimuli occuring during these altered states of consciousness were being assimilated. Similarities between these two kinds of experience suggest to take a closer look at connections and differences between meditative and psychedelic states. The increased switching-rate during binocular rivalry stimulation, as has been observed during both meditation and under the influence of psilocybin, is being treated exemplarily.

13.00 ñ 14.00 Break

14.00 ñ 16.00 Panorama
The Ecstatic Adventure (2)
Simultaneous translation Ger/Eng and Eng/Ger

Moderation: Lucius Werthm¸ller

Michael Horowitz: LSD: The Antidote to Everything

Sue Hall: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ñ The Sixties

Martin A. Lee: Summer of Love and Woodstock ñ LSD and Counterculture

Simon Vinkenoog: From Amsterdam to Zurich ñ The Sixties in Europe

G¸nter Amendt Ph.D.: The Empire Strikes Back: The Demonization of LSD

Barry Miles: LSD and its Impact on Art, Design and Music

Hans Cousto: The Psychedelic Revival of the Nineties: The Global Techno, Rave and Trance Rituals

16.00 ñ 16.30 Break

16.30 ñ 18.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Seminar
Hans Cousto
The Psychedelic Revival of the Nineties: The Global Techno, Rave and Trance Rituals
(German, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng)

Well-known drug expert and musicologist Hans Cousto demonstrates how different preferences in the use of psychoactive substances within the techno and party culture evolved, and the way these have influenced the cultural development as a whole. He especially explains the differences between entheogenically acting psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin, emphatically acting entactogenes like MDMA and stimuli like amphetamine and cocaine as well as different kinds and dangers of mixed consumption.

Panel
Natural and Pharmacological Paths to Expanded States of Consciousness
With Ralph Metzner, Bea Rubli, Manuel Schoch, Franz X. Vollenweider, Carlo Zumstein, Moderation: Lucius Werthm¸ller
(German, without translation)

Many spiritual traditions disapprove of the use of drugs in order to produce altered or expanded states of consciousness as inadmissible short cuts of a natural spiritual development. They refer to pharmacologically induced states as “artificial paradises” and claim that these states differ basically from states, which appear spontaneously or are being induced through persistent spiritual practicing. A group of consciousness researchers experienced in travelling inner worlds discusses the legitimacy of using psychoactive substances as well as common grounds and differences of these states and their long-term implications as to personality development.

2 Seminars
16.30 ñ 17.10
John Dunbar, John “Hoppy” Hopkins, Barry Miles
LSD and its Visual Impact
(English, without translation)

Three contemporary witnesses uncover the historic roots of 1960ís psychedelic art explosion, giving us impressions on the climate of experimentation across all art forms, cross-fertilization of ideas, life styles and drugs. They will take some significant examples from this very wide field: Influences on the Beatles, with anecdotes and sketches by Lennon under LSD; recordings of Mark Boyleís early lightshows for UFO, the legendary nightclub; poster art of the London psychedelic school 1966-68 compared with its U.S. counterpart and present-day trance/dance wall hangings.

17.10 ñ 17.20 Break

17.20 ñ 18.00
Robert Forte
Lets Save Democracy: Timothy Leary and the Popularization of LSD
(English, without translation)

More than any other single individual, Timothy Leary is to thank, or blame, for the popularization of LSD. Here we honor the merits and madness of Timothyís exuberant ministry within the social, political, and environmental context of the 1960s.

Earth Erowid and Fire Erowid
Current Views of Acid: What do LSD Users Say?
(English, simultaneous translation Eng/Ger)

In the 40 years since it first became widely available, LSD has solidified its position as the quintessential hallucinogen, front and center of an enduring psychedelic movement. But what role does LSD play today? How available is it? How many people ingest it? Why do they try it and what do they think of it? We will take a look at the way people think about and use this classic psychedelic.

2 Seminars

16.30 ñ 17.10
Torsten Passie
Thinking, Remembering, Guessing: LSD in Cognition Research, from 1950 to this Day
(German, without translation)

With changes of model conceptions to cognitive functions ñ from simple psychological and biological models to more complex neuropsychological and brainphysiological models ñ LSD has temporarily played an important role. Thus one wanted to find out through which neurotransmitters cognitive functions are being passed on. A number of experiments were carried out with which the implications of LSD on cognitive functions like thinking, remembering, associating, the guessing of time and so forth were analyzed. This widely scattered and little known research will be systematically presented and looked at within its historical and actual framework.

17.10 ñ 17.20 Break

17.20 ñ 18.00
Torsten Passie
Lasting Change of Personality as After-effect of Controlled Taking LSD: What Do We Know?
(German, without translation)

Already early on, the systematic use of LSD in research and therapy speaks against the assumption that LSD would trigger a “model psychosis.” After taking LSD many test persons showed positive, sometimes personality-changing after-effects. The results of these experiments were the beginning of psychedelic (as distinct from psycholytic) therapy with single and very intense sessions with large doses. Systematic research was also done on this kind of (after) effects in a number of especially designed experiments. Both the experiments and the personality changing effects after psychedelic treatments will be presented and closely analyzed in this lecture.

18.00 ñ 18.30 Break

18.30 ñ 20.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

2 Seminars
18.30 ñ 19.10
Ralph Metzner
Expanding Consciousness – Seven Phases of Socio-Cultural Transformation
(English, simultaneous translation Eng/Ger)

The Discovery of the consciousness-expanding substance LSD at the height of WWII synchronistically coincided with the invention of nuclear weaponry. As the world geopolitical order attempted to come to terms with the existence of these horrendous weapons of mass destruction, the next few decades saw the birth and growth of a multifaceted movement of consciousness expansion in all areas of society and culture. We can identify a series of profound social-cultural transformations proceeding in seven stages, like the octave pattern described by Gurdjieff. These transformative movements represent a creative response of the collective human psyche to the evolutionary survival challenge posed by nuclear weaponry, world-wide environmental devastation and runaway population growth.

19.10 ñ 19.20 Break

19.20 ñ 20.00
Rolf Verres
LSD, Meditation and Music
(German, without translation)

Psychedelic music of the 1970s does not conform to present-day Zeitgeist any more. Albert Hofmannís preferences are with certain kinds of classical music. Why? This seminar will present examples of music which Albert Hofmann loves.

Panel
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds: LSD and the Counterculture of the Sixties
With John Dunbar, John “Hoppy” Hopkins, Michael Horowitz, Martin A. Lee, Barry Miles , Moderation: Stephen Abrams
(English, simultaneous translation Eng/Ger)

Without a doubt the legendary sixties were the peak of the “ecstatic adventure”. LSD’s rapid dissemination and the upcoming counterculture of hippies and students were fervently discussed topics of this period of new departures and general renewal. Several decades later, witnesses of the times remember the wild years in England and the USA. The turned-on Beatles and their trippy songs, Flower Power, Be-ins and Sit-ins in San Francisco, Woodstock in the acid fever and much more will be exchanged and remembered in this English-American panel.

Seminar
Heffter Research Center / University Hospital of Psychiatry Zurich
With Mark Geyer, Charles S. Grob, David E. Nichols, Franz X. Vollenweider
From Molecule to Mind: Recent Advances of Psychedelic Research
(English, without translation)

Widely known researchers of the HRC will present following topics:

David E. Nichols: Neurochemistry and Molecular Action of LSD

Mark Geyer: Behavioral Pharmacology of Hallucinogens: A System Approach

Franz X. Vollenweider: Psilocybin and itís Brain: A Neuroscience Perspective

Charles S. Grob: Hallucinogens in Clinical Practise: Basic Principles and Results

2 Seminars
18.30 ñ 19.10
Mathias Brˆckers
From “Open Mind” to “Open Source”: how the Counterculture of the Sixties led to the Personal Computer and to Unlimited Information
(German, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng)

Albert Hofmannís discovery has not only significantly marked 20th century culture it also influenced technology. Personal computer, Internet and “Open Source” software would not have been developed the way the were without LSD-induced inspirations. “Acid heads” laid the foundation for what we nowadays call computer revolution and information age.

19.10 ñ 19.20 Break

19.20 ñ 20.00
Mark McCloud
Bring the Fire! A Pictorial History of LSD Blotter Art
(English, without translation)

A colorful presentation of forty years of art history on LSD impregnated blotting paper. Over one hundred images of “The Greatest Hits” of the past four decades from the worldís biggest collection will be shown.

2 Seminars

18.30 ñ 19.10
Wolfgang Sterneck
LSD and Sexuality
(German, without translation)

Filled with the psychedelic movementís euphoria, Timothy Leary described LSD as “the most potent aphrodisiac ever found by man”. Meanwhile this view has given way to a more realistic approach, which describes both potentials and dangers in an appropriate way. LSD can, also in the erotic context, open up new and so far unknown spaces, but it also can totally close them. The ìcosmic orgasmî is as much part of the spectrum of perception as is a total distance between partners who are captivated in their own worlds.

19.10 ñ 19.20 Break

19.20 ñ 20.00
Fred Weidmann
Albert Hofmannís, Fred Weidmannís and Gaiaís “Romantic Principle”
(German, without translation)

Since the inside equals the outside, small things may equal big things. Pictures turn into means of knowledge, if small-scale creation gives an idea of the allover creation. The “Romantic principle” reads: while creating beauty in miniature, you help to improve the whole. Through interaction of doing and looking the painter becomes Gaiaís lover. This lecture is based on a correspondence with Albert Hofmann.

20.00 ñ 20.15 Break

20.15 ñ approx. 22.15

Concert
Introduction by Hans Cousto
Akasha Project
Barnim Schulze

The substance’s frequencies, measured in the infrared spectrum, are being transposed to octave analogous sounds. By logically using data thus obtained to all musical parameters like sound modulations, tempi and frequencies, a sometimes strangely meditative sound originates: quantum music which Barnim Schulze calls “Klangwirkstoff”, active sound substance. While you tune in to these molecular fields of sound and rhythm, you may state for yourself in which way the experiencing of substance analogous effects via perceiving octave ananologous sounds is possible.

Star Sounds Orchestra
Steve Schroyder, Jens Zygar

The Star Sounds Orchestra will musically interpret harmonical occurences at the moment of the discovery of LSD. This psychedelic symphony in five movements describes significant astronomical positions of our solar system’s planets at the time of this moment of birth of a new door of awareness, so important for psychedelic history. Musical citations from the history of psychedelics in connection with the sounds of planets are the starting point for a spherical trip of the cosmic kind.

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Sunday, 15 January 2006
New Dimensions of Consciousness

07.30 Opening of the Registration Desk

08.15 ñ 08.45 Tune-in
Banco de Gaia
Toby Marks

With his sensitive electronic style mix of Techno, House, Ambient-Trance, and musical influences from Arabian, Indian and Far East areas, English composer and musician Toby Marks helps us tune into the last day of the Symposium, opening our mind and our senses to a variety of new dimensions of consciousness.

09.00 ñ 11.00 Panorama

New Dimensions of Consciousness (1)
Simultaneous translation Ger/Eng and Eng/Ger

Moderation: Lucius Werthm¸ller

Ralph Metzner Ph.D.: The Meaning of Psychedelic Experience

Rick Doblin: The Revival of Psychedelic Medicine

G¸nter Amendt Ph.D.: No Drugs ñ No Future: Sketches of an Adequate Drug Policy

Christian R‰tsch Ph.D.: The New Rituals: LSD as a Sacred Substance

Ronald Steckel: Freedom and Hedonism: The Way of the West

Claudia M¸ller-Ebeling Ph.D.: LSD and Creativity

Rolf Verres M.D.: LSD, Meditation and Music

11.00 ñ 11.30 Break

11.30 ñ 13.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Seminar
Stanley Krippner
LSD and Psychic Phenomena: Attempting to Grasp the Unpredictable and the Intangible
(English, simultaneous translation Eng/Ger)

LSD-type drugs have often been used to facilitate so-called “psychic phenomena”, in other words, those experiences that seem to defy mainstream science’s concepts of time, space, and energy. An Italian investigation met with meager results, and few formal studies have been attempted since. Such hypothetical phenomena as telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis appear to be intangible, and peopleís laboratory reactions to LSD often are unpredictable. However, there are several anecdotal reports that could serve as the basis for continued exploration, especially those coming from shamans’ usage of such substances as ayahuasca and their contemporary use as religious sacraments.

Panel
Towards an Adequate Drug Policy
With G¸nter Amendt, Mathias Brˆckers, Roger Liggenstorfer, Luc Saner, Moderation: Thomas Kessler
(German, simultaneous translation, Ger/Eng)

The American “War on Drugs” is but the visible peak of an international drug policy which measures everything with a different yardstick and is strongly defined by economic interests and irrational motives. A drug policy in keeping with the times should be oriented towards the risks of drugs, not towards their being legal or illegal.
Switzerland ñ and above all the city of Basel ñ has taken on a role as trailblazer as far as a pragmatically oriented drug policy is concerned; even though the National Council wasted the chance, last year, to discuss new, already completed forward-looking bills. A group of drug experts, politicians, journalists and activists outlines ways out of a hopeless situation towards an adequate drug policy in keeping with the times.

11.30 – 12.10
Seminar
Sue Hall
LSD – A Tool for Life
(English, without translation)

LSD may be more versatile than generally believed. This seminar will explore the use of different dosages.

12.10 ñ 12.20 Break

12.20 ñ 13.00
Jeremy Narby
The Future of Biology
(English, without translation)

The idea of a kind of intelligence active throughout nature is gaining support within the scientific community, affirming a view long held by indigenous people and shamans. Shamanic use of such plants as ayahuasca and tobacco deals centrally with contact with other beings including plants and animals. Ayahuasca and LSD enhance peopleís concern with the natural world. Hallucinogens are tools for exploring little-known facets of the human mind, for thinking ourselves as animals, and as predators, and for rethinking our place in nature and our relationship with other species. Biology has a date with shamanism and with altered states of consciousness.

2 Seminars

11.30 – 12.10
Micky Remann
Water as a Medium and the Muse of Consciousness
(German, without translation)

It’s in the nature of nature that it opens its artistic realities preferably to the consciousness, which dives under the surface. An entry into this world is offered by a stay in water where nobody can avoid experiencing an altered functioning of senses first-hand. The way eye, ear, consciousness and feeling are being touched in water, depends on which sensory stimuli are being transported there. What happens when water becomes the medium for multisensory, multimedia stagings, is to be demonstrated with pictures, sounds and tales.

12.10 ñ 12.20 Break

12.20 ñ 13.00
Peter Webster
Psychoactive Plants and Human Evolution
(English, without translation)

Psychoactive plants have been omnipresent during all the stages of hominid evolution – but is there any evidence that they may have had an important influence or been the evolutionary catalyst for the emergence of modern humans? Mythological tales of a “forbidden fruit” acting to awaken humankind from their ìnaturalî or protohuman state are not uncommon, but some recent findings of science now seem to give new meaning to such stories.

13.00 ñ 14.00 Break

14.00 ñ 16.00 Panorama
New Dimensions of Consciousness (2)
Simultaneous translation Ger/Eng and Eng/Ger

Moderation: Lucius Werthm¸ller

Stanley Krippner Ph.D.: The Future of Religion: Dogma or Transcendental Experience?

Jeremy Narby Ph.D.: The Future of Human Consciousness

Ulrich Holbein: Future Society: “Brave New World” or “Island”

Ralph Metzner Ph.D.: Psychedelics and a new Paradigm: Personal Responsibility and Self-Reliance

Alexander T. Shulgin Ph.D.: New Psychedelics and their Specific Effects

Mathias Brˆckers: Handling Hallucinogens: Visions and Initiatives

Carlo Zumstein M.D.: Neo-Schamanism for a Neo-Consciousness

Albert Hofmann Ph.D., h.c.: The Meaning of LSD from the Discoverers Point of View

16.00 ñ 16.30 Break

16.30 ñ 18.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Seminar
Claudia M¸ller-Ebeling
LSD and Creativity
(German, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng)

The well-known art historian and ethnologist gives a comprehensive summary of creativity research in the sixties and seventies. Furthermore, she allows an insight into the work of artists who implemented, in their work, personal LSD experiences, or who have met Albert Hofmann personally.

Panel
Consciousness and Future Society
With Mathias Brˆckers, Stanley Krippner, Ralph Metzner, Jeremy Narby, Micky Remann, Moderation: Martin Frischknecht
(English, consecutive summarization in German)

“The evolution of mankind is in the alteration of consciousness,” states Albert Hofmann. Having a close look at different developments on our planet, we soon realize how urgently a new consciousness is needed, in order to do justice to the requirements of a future existence worth living. Representatives and experts from different spheres of life and fields of knowledge discuss the major challenges, which we only can meet with an altered or expanded consciousness.

2 Seminars
16.30 ñ 17.10
Manuel Schoch
Meditation and Mind-expanding Drugs: complementary or irritating?
(German, without translation)

The focal points of this lecture are: the power of silence in a state of mind-expansion; the understanding of the emotional chain and its effects in meditation; drugs as mystic experience of timelessness; consciousness-expanding drugs as therapeutic means without the “detour” via the past.

17.10 ñ 17.20 Break

17.20 ñ 18.00
Seminar
Ronald Steckel
The Way of the West, or the Rise of the Occident
(German, without translation)

This lecture deals with aspects of the present-day consciousness-mutation: with the new (cosmic) view of man as a new paradigm; with the significance of the “individual” with the “all”; with “initiations” and “paths”; with the “Occident” as a spiritual Fort Knox.

Workshop
Carlo Zumstein
Everybody his own Shaman
(German, without translation)

Everybody needs his own myth of life. In ancient cultures shamans were not solely healers. Above all they were visionaries: creators and organizers of their communityís self-image and view of the world. For centuries we have left this to the church, to the government and to schools. In this workshop Carlo Zumstein demonstrates how a present-day shamanism opens oneís own doors towards dreams and visionary powers – for a fulfilled self-creation within new communities.

2 Seminars
16.30 ñ 17.10
Bruce Eisner
LSD, Its Past and Potential
(English, without translation)

Bruce Eisner explores LSD’s past, including its ancient lineage, uses in research, significance to the counterculture of the Sixties and the consequences of its suppression. Within this context, he will bring his own experiences and the development of the Island Project, named after the work of Aldous Huxley. Bruce Eisner covers the host of potential future roles for LSD including psychotherapy, spiritual/religious awareness, creativity and problem solving, in the experimental production of new cultural memes and the evolution of a neo-Eleusinian mystery.

17.10 ñ 17.20 Break

17.20 ñ 18.00
Myron Stolaroff
The Future of Consciousness
(English, without translation)

The average person today is far below the level of ultimate consciousness. With Albert Hofmann’s creation of LSD, and with competent support and guidance, vast new areas of discovery and understanding can be explored. Maintaining these findings require intention and discipline, as new learned values may slip away. Attention will be given on how to best retain these fresh discoveries, and keep them active in our life. Also covered will be examining sources of difficulties and how they can be avoided.

18.00 ñ 18.30 Break

18.30 ñ 19.30
Closing Ceremony

For three days we have obtained a variety of suggestions and information on all aspects of LSD or discussed, in the words of its discoverer: Insights and Outlooks in connection with this highly potent substance. In this closing ceremony with musical framework famous speakers will draw balance, pay tribute to Albert Hofmann and take a hopeful look at the future of the human consciousness.

LINK COURTESY RICHARD PLEUGER!

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report – New York Times

December 24, 2005
Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 – The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system’s main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

The government’s collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.’s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic “switches,” according to officials familiar with the matter.

“There was a lot of discussion about the switches” in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. “You’re talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that’s on a switch that’s carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that.”

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.’s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.

Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.’s use of broad searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the program’s operational details, as well as its legality.

Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.

This so-called “pattern analysis” on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom.

The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Capps program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties.

But the Bush administration regards the N.S.A.’s ability to trace and analyze large volumes of data as critical to its expanded mission to detect terrorist plots before they can be carried out, officials familiar with the program say. Administration officials maintain that the system set up by Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not give them the speed and flexibility to respond fully to terrorist threats at home.

A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists.

“All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared with them, and since 9/11, there’s been much more active involvement in that area,” said the former manager, a telecommunications expert who did not want his name or that of his former company used because of concern about revealing trade secrets.

Such information often proves just as valuable to the government as eavesdropping on the calls themselves, the former manager said.

“If they get content, that’s useful to them too, but the real plum is going to be the transaction data and the traffic analysis,” he said. “Massive amounts of traffic analysis information – who is calling whom, who is in Osama Bin Laden’s circle of family and friends – is used to identify lines of communication that are then given closer scrutiny.”

Several officials said that after President Bush’s order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States’ communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined.

The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches.

One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.

The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully addressed by 1970’s-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for domestic surveillance.

Historically, the American intelligence community has had close relationships with many communications and computer firms and related technical industries. But the N.S.A.’s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency’s operational capability, according to current and former government officials.

Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be significant. “If the government is gaining access to the switches like this, what you’re really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data,” he said.

$88.00: A one year subscription to the Numero Group.

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Police Infilitrate Protests, Videotapes Show – New York Times

December 22, 2005

By JIM DWYER

Undercover New York City police officers have conducted covert surveillance in the last 16 months of people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident, a series of videotapes show.

In glimpses and in glaring detail, the videotape images reveal the robust presence of disguised officers or others working with them at seven public gatherings since August 2004.

The officers hoist protest signs. They hold flowers with mourners. They ride in bicycle events. At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, “I am a shameless agitator.” She also carried a camera and videotaped the roughly 15 people present.

Beyond collecting information, some of the undercover officers or their associates are seen on the tape having influence on events. At a demonstration last year during the Republican National Convention, the sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders.

Until Sept. 11, the secret monitoring of events where people expressed their opinions was among the most tightly limited of police powers.

Provided with images from the tape, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, did not dispute that they showed officers at work but said that disguised officers had always attended such gatherings – not to investigate political activities but to keep order and protect free speech. Activists, however, say that police officers masquerading as protesters and bicycle riders distort their messages and provoke trouble.

The pictures of the undercover officers were culled from an unofficial archive of civilian and police videotapes by Eileen Clancy, a forensic video analyst who is critical of the tactics. She gave the tapes to The New York Times. Based on what the individuals said, the equipment they carried and their almost immediate release after they had been arrested amid protesters or bicycle riders, The Times concluded that at least 10 officers were incognito at the events.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, officials at all levels of government considered major changes in various police powers. President Bush acknowledged last Saturday that he has secretly permitted the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a warrant on international telephone calls and e-mail messages in terror investigations.

In New York, the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg persuaded a federal judge in 2003 to enlarge the Police Department’s authority to conduct investigations of political, social and religious groups. “We live in a more dangerous, constantly changing world,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said.

Before then, very few political organizations or activities were secretly investigated by the Police Department, the result of a 1971 class-action lawsuit that charged the city with abuses in surveillance during the 1960’s. Now the standard for opening inquiries into political activity has been relaxed, full authority to begin surveillance has been restored to the police and federal courts no longer require a special panel to oversee the tactics.

Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, said the department did not increase its surveillance of political groups when the restrictions were eased. The powers obtained after Sept. 11 have been used exclusively “to investigate and thwart terrorists,” Mr. Browne said. He would not answer specific questions about the disguised officers or describe any limits the department placed on surveillance at public events.

Jethro M. Eisenstein, one of the lawyers who brought the lawsuit 34 years ago, said: “This is a level-headed Police Department, led by a level-headed police commissioner. What in the world are they doing?”

For nearly four decades, civil liberty advocates and police officials have fought over the kinds of procedures needed to avoid excessive intrusion on people expressing their views, to provide accountability in secret police operations and to assure public safety for a city that has been the leading American target of terrorists.

To date, officials say no one has complained of personal damage from the information collected over recent months, but participants in the protests, rallies and other gatherings say the police have been a disruptive presence.

Ryan Kuonen, 32, who took part in a “ride of silence” in memory of a dead cyclist, said that two undercover officers – one with a camera – subverted the event. “They were just in your face,” she said. “It made what was a really solemn event into something that seemed wrong. It made you feel like you were a criminal. It was grotesque.”

Ms. Clancy, a founder of I-Witness Video, a project that collected hundreds of videotapes during the Republican National Convention that were used in the successful defense of people arrested that week, has assembled videotape of other public events made by legal observers, activists, bystanders and police officers.

She presented examples in October at a conference of defense lawyers. “What has to go on is an informed discussion of policing tactics at public demonstrations, and these images offer a window into the issues and allow the public to make up their own mind,” Ms. Clancy said. “How is it possible for police to be accountable when they infiltrate events and dress in the garb of protesters?”

The videotapes that most clearly disclosed the presence of the disguised officers began in August 2004. What happened before that is unclear.

Among the events that have drawn surveillance is a monthly bicycle ride called Critical Mass. The Critical Mass rides, which have no acknowledged leadership, take place in many cities around the world on the last Friday of the month, with bicycle riders rolling through the streets to promote bicycle transportation. Relations between the riders and the police soured last year after thousands of cyclists flooded the streets on the Friday before the Republican National Convention. Officials say the rides cause havoc because the participants refuse to obtain a permit. The riders say they can use public streets without permission from the government.

In a tape made at the April 29 Critical Mass ride, a man in a football jersey is seen riding along West 19th Street with a group of bicycle riders to a police blockade at 10th Avenue. As the police begin to handcuff the bicyclists, the man in the jersey drops to one knee. He tells a uniformed officer, “I’m on the job.” The officer in uniform calls to a colleague, “Louie – he’s under.” A second officer arrives and leads the man in the jersey – hands clasped behind his back – one block away, where the man gets back on his bicycle and rides off.

That videotape was made by a police officer and was recently turned over by prosecutors to Gideon Oliver, a lawyer representing bicycle riders arrested that night.

Another arrest that appeared to be a sham changed the dynamics of a demonstration. On Aug. 30, 2004, during the Republican National Convention, a man with vivid blond hair was filmed as he stood on 23rd Street, holding a sign at a march of homeless and poor people. A police lieutenant suddenly moved to arrest him. Onlookers protested, shouting, “Let him go.” In response, police officers in helmets and with batons pushed against the crowd, and at least two other people were arrested.

The videotape shows the blond-haired man speaking calmly with the lieutenant. When the lieutenant unzipped the man’s backpack, a two-way radio could be seen. Then the man was briskly escorted away, unlike others who were put on the ground, plastic restraints around their wrists. And while the blond-haired man kept his hands clasped behind his back, the tape shows that he was not handcuffed or restrained.

The same man was videotaped a day earlier, observing the actress Rosario Dawson as she and others were arrested on 35th Street and Eighth Avenue as they filmed “This Revolution,” a movie that used actual street demonstrations as a backdrop. At one point, the blond-haired man seemed to try to rile bystanders.

After Ms. Dawson and another actress were placed into a police van, the blond-haired man can be seen peering in the window. According to Charles Maol, who was working on the film, the blond-haired man is the source of a voice that is heard calling: “Hey, that’s my brother in there. What do you got my brother in there for?”

After Mr. Browne was sent photographs of the people involved in the convention incidents and the bicycle arrests, he said, “I am not commenting on descriptions of purported or imagined officers.”

The federal courts have long held that undercover officers can monitor political activities for a “legitimate law enforcement purpose.” While the police routinely conduct undercover operations in plainly criminal circumstances – the illegal sale of weapons, for example – surveillance at political events is laden with ambiguity. To retain cover in those settings, officers might take part in public dialogue, debate and demonstration, at the risk of influencing others to alter opinions or behavior.

The authority of the police to conduct surveillance of First Amendment activities has been shaped over the years not only by the law but also by the politics of the moment and the perception of public safety needs.

In the 1971 class-action lawsuit, the city acknowledged that the Police Department had used infiltrators, undercover agents and fake news reporters to spy on yippies, civil rights advocates, antiwar activists, labor organizers and black power groups.

A former police chief said the department’s intelligence files contained a million names of groups and individuals – more in just the New York files than were collected for the entire country in a now-discontinued program of domestic spying by the United States Army around the same time. In its legal filings, the city said any excesses were aberrational acts.

The case, known as Handschu for the lead plaintiff, was settled in 1985 when the city agreed to extraordinary new limits in the investigation of political organizations, among them the creation of an oversight panel that included a civilian appointed by the mayor. The police were required to have “specific information” that a crime was in the works before investigating such groups.

The Handschu settlement also limited the number of police officers who could take part in such investigations and restricted sharing information with other agencies.

Over the years, police officials made no secret of their belief that the city had surrendered too much power. Some community affairs officers were told they could not collect newspaper articles about political gatherings in their precincts, said John F. Timoney, a former first deputy commissioner who is now the chief of police in Miami.

The lawyers who brought the Handschu lawsuit say that such concerns were exaggerated to make limits on police behavior seem unreasonable. The city’s concessions in the Handschu settlement, while similar to those enacted during that era in other states and by the federal government, surpassed the ordinary limits on police actions.

“It was to remedy what was a very egregious violation of people’s First Amendment rights to free speech and assemble,” said Jeremy Travis, the deputy police commissioner for legal affairs from 1990 to 1994.

At both the local and federal level, many of these reforms effectively discouraged many worthy investigations, Chief Timoney said. “The police departments screw up and we go to extremes to fix it,” Chief Timoney said. “In going to extremes, we leave ourselves vulnerable.”

Mr. Travis, who was on the Handschu oversight panel, said that intelligence officers understood they could collect information, provided they had good reason.

“A number of courts decided there should be some mechanism set up to make sure the police didn’t overstep the boundary,” said Mr. Travis, who is now the president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It was complicated finding that boundary.” The authority to determine the boundary would be handed back to the Police Department after the Sept. 11 attacks.

On Sept. 12, 2002, the deputy police commissioner for intelligence, David Cohen, wrote in an affidavit that the police should not be required to have a “specific indication” of a crime before investigating. “In the case of terrorism, to wait for an indication of crime before investigating is to wait far too long,” he wrote.

Mr. Cohen also took strong exception to limits on police surveillance of public events.

In granting the city’s request, Charles S. Haight, a federal judge in Manhattan, ruled that the dangers of terrorism were “perils sufficient to outweigh any First Amendment cost.”

New guidelines say undercover agents may be used to investigate “information indicating the possibility of unlawful activity”- but also say that commanders should consider whether the tactics are “warranted in light of the seriousness of the crime.”

Ms. Clancy said those guidelines offered no clear limits on intrusiveness at political or social events. Could police officers take part in pot-luck suppers of antiwar groups, buy drinks for activists? Could they offer political opinions for broadcast or publication while on duty but disguised as civilians?

Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, declined to answer those questions. Nor would he say how often – if ever – covert surveillance at public events has been approved by the deputy commissioner for intelligence, as the new guidelines require.

[From Jay Babcock: The book pictured above, published by the New York Public Library in 1998 in conjunction with an exhibition there, is the direct inspiration for the new line of Bastet “Mimeo” publications (see Arthur news for details). Here’s the NYUPL’s description of the “A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980” exhibition…]

From their apartments, garages, and basements, poets like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Spicer, Ted Berrigan, and Anne Waldman created their own publications as an alternative to the academic literary mainstream of the mid-twentieth century. More than 400 such publications are included in A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980, an exhibition on view from January 24 to July 25, 1998 in the Berg Exhibition Room of The New York Public Library’s Center for the Humanities at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

These publications overflow with the enthusiastic experiments and explorations of such writers as Paul Auster, Clark Coolidge, LeRoi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka), Kenneth Koch, Eileen Myles, and Aram Saroyan. Also included are designs and original art by artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Joe Brainard, and Alex Katz, who created covers and illustrations for many of the publications. A compelling photograph that helps introduce the exhibition is by Allen Ginsberg, taken from his back window. At the bottom, in black ink, he inscribed “Out my kitchen window, Ed Sanders’ Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts was Emimeo’d in a secret location in the lower East Side’ circa 1964 . . . . ”

The writers who created their own publications required cheap, accessible means of duplicating them. In many cases they turned to the then prevalent mimeograph machine. “Mimeograph allowed for immediate publication and distribution and was a primary tool of communion among many poets and other writers of the ’60s and ’70s in what became known as the mimeograph revolution,” said Rodney Phillips, curator of the Library’s Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature. Mr. Phillips and Steven Clay, Publisher of Granary Books, are the curators of the exhibition.

A Secret Location showcases several early items which were precursors to the wave of artist-created publications that started appearing in the 1960s. On view are two 1951 issues of Origin: A Quarterly for the Creative, a journal published by poet Cid Corman. Origin featured the work of many important poets, including early poems by Charles Olson, who (with Robert Creeley) a few years later created the seminal Black Mountain Review, published from Black Mountain College where he was Rector.

One of the most fascinating early items on view is Allen Ginsberg’s publication of his poem Siesta in Xbalba, which he created in 1956 aboard a ship in the Alaskan Sea. Ginsberg managed to find a mimeograph machine on board and published approximately thirty copies of the work.

It was Donald Allen’s watershed 1960 anthology The New American Poetry that stimulated the flood of poetry that led to the mimeo movement. Allen defined a “New York School” of poets, which included such writers as John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O’Hara. The work of these writers is included in many of the publications in A Secret Location, and their own elegant magazines are also on view. These include Art and Literature, edited from Paris by Ashbery, and Locus Solus, issues of which were edited by Ashbery, Koch, and James Schuyler.

In the early 1960s, a second generation of younger “New York School” writers emerged. Centered in New York City’s East Village, many were affiliated with The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, which even today is considered the premier venue for new and experimental poetry. The loose band of second-generation writers included Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard, Larry Fagin, Dick Gallup, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, and Lewis Warsh.

The exhibition features many of their publications, including copies of Berrigan’s “C”: A Journal of Poetry, Fagin’s Adventures in Poetry, and Angel Hair, edited by Waldman and Warsh. Also included is the first issue of the Poetry Project Newsletter, edited by Ron Padgett in 1972, and issues of The World, the Project’s journal. Both are still being published and are important beacons of contemporary poetry.

In addition to providing a cross-sectional look at the poetry and art of the 1960s, A Secret Location allows a glimpse at the vivid social life of the era through a series of photographs and artifacts from the personal collections of some of the second-generation “New York School” poets. A series of thirty or so small, color snapshots capture a charming exuberance which seems to have characterized the group. There also are photographs of a long-running poker game in which many of the writers played and of the session in which a score of poets posed nude for a painting by George Schneeman. The huge, unfinished artwork is on display and dominates the walls of the exhibition room.

Journals were often devoted to works in a particular style or form. For example, 0 to 9, edited by Bernadette Mayer and Vito Hannibal Acconci, focused on “concrete” poetry; Carol Berg?©’s Center published “performance” poetry; and Trobar, published in only five issues from 1960 to 1964, was dedicated to “deep image poetry.” A Secret Location also showcases publications reflecting a third generation “New York School” poetry as represented by the work of Eileen Myles, Gregory Masters, Michael Scholnick, Gary Lenhart, and others.

Although much of the material in A Secret Location was created in New York, the mimeo revolution thrived in many locations throughout the country, but especially in the San Francisco Bay area. Among the most important precursors to the genre was City Lights, which in the mid-1950s began publishing from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s bookstore in the city’s North Beach neighborhood. City Lights became known for publishing works of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and many other important poets of the Beat generation. Jack Spicer’s J, published in 1959 and 1960, also came out of the North Beach area. It featured intricate mimeographed covers with designs formed from thick patches of letters typed in repetition.

The materials in A Secret Location are drawn largely from the Library’s Berg Collection. Other materials have been loaned by poets and collectors. The exhibition will also form the basis for a book to be published by the Library and Granary Press.

Not in our name

The War Game had no budget, no hero and was banned by the BBC. Yet it remains a landmark anti-war film. Alex Cox traces the career of its fearless director

Alex Cox
Saturday July 9, 2005
The Observer

I saw Peter Watkins’ documentary film Culloden when it was first broadcast on December 15 1964. It was on the new, third channel, BBC2. I watched it with my parents; they didn’t let on to being impressed by it, but it disturbed me. After a diet of second world war newsreels recycled into documentaries, and old war features like Reach for the Sky (Douglas Bader loses both legs yet still pilots a Spitfire!), it was the first thing I’d ever seen on television that could be called anti-war. Thanks to the documentary style, the parallels between what the Americans were doing in Vietnam and what the English had done to the Scots were very clear. The Scotswoman telling the camera how the English troops had killed her child stuck in my head and haunted me. I resolved to be a pacifist. It was my 10th birthday.

Culloden was such a brilliant film, such a great and tragic work of art, that it should have got its 28-year-old director immediately fired from the BBC. Somehow, this did not occur. Maybe the BBC didn’t know what directors were – Watkins was credited only as writer and producer. More likely he was fortunate, and the head of documentaries, Huw Weldon, stuck up for him. We’re lucky Weldon did, because in the space of 18 months Watkins shot a pair of films that changed the nature of what a documentary could be, and that profoundly affected filmed drama. The other film was The War Game

What makes these two films particularly great is the director’s perfect use of minimal resources. Culloden and The War Game were only possible, are only conceivable, in black and white – where blood and earth and mud are all the same colour, and the viewer isn’t always sure what they’ve just seen. But Watkins’ inventive resourcefulness went way beyond film stock. These were the days before CGI and dinosaur-documentary budgets; there was no possibility of a wide shot or a panorama in either film. So Watkins did the reverse of what one expected: he concentrated on the faces of the people in his story – the clansman, the English soldier, the civil defence official, the relocatee.

Doing this, and filling in the background with a few more extras in costumes, got around the budget issue. But it also did something democratic, even revolutionary: it made the clansmen and the English prison conscripts protagonists. In a traditional war film, heroic individuals (William Holden, Alec Guinness, Peter O’Toole) received the lion’s share of close-ups; in Culloden, a landless man had as large a closeup as Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Watkins wanted to draw parallels between Culloden and Vietnam, of course, and to warn of the consequences of nuclear war. But, going far beyond that, he also wanted to oppose the western-heroic-drama structure, with its sole, strong protagonist, and its obvious moral line. In neither film did he try to score points against an obvious antagonist, or to rely on the tedious weight of a conventional villain. As the narrator points out in Culloden, there are thousands of Scottish soldiers in the English ranks, and Prince Charlie is an idiot. As order breaks down in The War Game, the police end up hoarding the last rations of food: how could they keep order, otherwise?

The nearest thing to a villain in either film is the actor playing an Anglican bishop in The War Game, who says (quoting the bishop’s words): “I still believe in the war of the just.” Watkins cuts straight from this close-up to blurred images of a vehicle, ablaze. “In this car, a family is burning alive,” the narrator says. The juxtaposition isn’t about nuclear war, any more. It could be a cut straight out of Culloden – or from an anti-war documentary about Iraq.

But there won’t be any bold anti-war documentary coming from the BBC; for the same reason, The War Game was banned, and remained unscreenable, for many years. In the past decade, a debate has arisen as to whether this great, passionate, genial film was banned as an act of self-censorship, or on direct orders from Whitehall. Patrick Murphy, Watkins’ biographer, writes that the BBC organised “secret screenings … for senior government representatives” in September 1965, prior to the official ban. He also reports that formerly classified documents relating to the genesis of the ban have been destroyed, so we may never know whether the BBC was leaned on, or whether they leaned on themselves. But these debates don’t really matter. The miracle was that Culloden, with its graphic anti-war message (“This is grapeshot. This is what it does”) had slipped through the net, and with it, Watkins’ original and radical style.

Inevitably, The War Game is technically more proficient and more interesting than Culloden. In less than a year, the young film-maker had got better at his craft, and wanted to try new things. In addition to the extraordinary editing, and the brilliantly choreographed action (both films’ action coordinator was Derek Ware), Watkins tried a new technique: the long, hand-held take, in which he followed a motorcycle dispatch rider from his pillion, into a building and up a flight of stairs; or a doctor, in his car, then out of it, without a cut. In a medium endangered by repetitive editing and storytelling, Watkins was pushing down barriers more effectively than any other film-maker.

But, if the jig with the BBC was up, where was he to go from there? Conventionally, a film-maker is supposed to make a work-for-hire feature at this point, then go off to Hollywood. This is more or less what Watkins did. But, equally predictably, it didn’t turn out as planned.

Privilege was a rock’n’roll messiah story, originally written by Johnny Speight, which Watkins adapted into his preferred quasi-documentary style. Punishment Park was a more personal project, which Watkins developed for himself and shot in the US in 1970. Like Culloden and The War Game it posited societal breakdown followed by reprisals and police actions, with the war-torn US in the grip of mass arrests and show trials. Again, Watkins filmed his stressed-out characters addressing the camera directly.

In this way, as in the hand-held style of his action sequences, the director Watkins most resembles is Stanley Kubrick, whose war-related films Fear and Desire and Full Metal Jacket also lack a single protagonist, and feature characters speaking directly to the camera. Kubrick and Watkins were alike in other ways, perhaps: both famously resisted the trappings of Hollywood and film festivals; both have a reputation for reclusivity and intelligence. But Kubrick’s intelligence led him to daily conversations with studio heads and to a 10-picture deal with Warner Bros. Watkins, more radical, more humanistic, far less politic, now lives in Lithuania, and publishes manifestos via the internet.

Watkins has made 14 films in all, ranging from a 17-minute amateur short to an anti-nuclear documentary, Resan (The Journey), which runs for 14 and a half hours. Of these, only two are “mainstream” features, in the sense of English-language dramas intended to be shown in the cinema; his recent work has been diverse in the extreme, and has received little distribution.

Right now, the British film industry is in a right mess. I’m sure Watkins has been having a great time, making films about Munch and Strindberg with enthusiastic amateurs, and tweaking his website. But, damn it, there’s a war on! We need Watkins here. The peace movement needs him, because it’s one of the largest national movements in the world, and one of the most ignored. And the nation needs him. Even reactionaries can agree with this, because Britain needs great, fearless film-makers who can see both sides of the question, no matter whom it incenses, and who can make radical, revolutionary films for little money. There are still great film technicians here, dying to work on great films – and I suspect that never since making The War Game has Watkins had the same combination of autonomy and economy that he achieved during that one momentous year.

Maybe the BBC in 1964 was a bureaucratic nightmare, but it also hired bright young men, set them up as full-time, salaried directors, and gave them some of the best technical staff in the world to work with: cameramen like Dick Bush and Peter Bartlett, editors like Michael Bradsell, stunt coordinators like Derek Ware. Their successors sit behind computers now, not just in Soho, but in Bradford, Liverpool, Nottingham, dutifully assembling promos and corporates and stupid reality TV. They hate the formulaic trash that they are paid to deliver. And they would love to work on films like the ones Watkins, Ware, Bradsell and company made. Peter, come home.

? Punishment Park was re-released yeserday.

COURTESY JOHN COULTHART!

SFWEEKLY, Jan 26, 2005

ARMAGEDDON IT

Oakland noise nuts Axolotl school us in aliens, hash, and the end of the world as we know it

By Justin F. Farrar

“Let me see if I understand this. According to the ancient calendar of the Mayans, some massive event, irrevocably altering humanity, is scheduled to occur on October 28, 2011.”

“Yes. That’s basically it.”

“Well, then, what the fuck do you think is really going to happen, Karl — global nuclear holocaust?”

“Possibly, but a hopeful thing that could happen is a total transformation in human consciousness. Then again, some say it will be permanent global blackout. There are actually infinite possibilities.”

So here I am grilling — quite relentlessly, mind you — this experimental musician-dude named Karl Bauer about what exactly is going to occur when this date, Oct. 28, 2011, hits us all, discussion of which is all Bauer’s fault. We are — I mean, I am — supposed to be conducting a professional journalistic interview, because Bauer, along with William Sabiston, is Axolotl (pronounced “ax-oh-lot-el”), Oakland-based creators of deeply meditative psych-noise. But we are both having a little trouble focusing on this because just minutes after Bauer entered my Ocean Beach digs for said interview two objects furtively appeared on the carpet that were not there before: a tiny but effective nugget of hash and a copy of the book The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness. I simply take all this in stride, because rapping with Bauer about such unabashedly New Age hippie-trippy subjects as violent cosmic realignment makes absolute sense considering how mind-fucking stoned and “out there” Bauer and Sabiston’s music feels.

Axolotl, you see, is one of literally hundreds, possibly thousands, of super-obscure bands and collectives from all over mother Gaia. These groups have sprung forth just within the past five years, and they’ve spurned traditional song structures in favor of a brand-new electronic-based brand of mind-expanding tones and sounds inspired by ’60s minimalism, feedback-packed experimental noise from early-’90s Japan, traditional Indian ragas, the faux world-music jams of the Sun City Girls, post-techno ambient electronics, fiery free jazz, field recordings of African and Asian tribal musicians, and ridiculously rare acid freakout psych-rock from the late ’60s and early ’70s that very few ears have ever heard save those belonging to fanatical record collectors.

“I feel like music has gotten real interesting since about 2001,” Bauer explains just after presenting evidence for the existence of world-dominating extraterrestrials called “Archons.” “Many bands these days, Axolotl included, seem to be inspired by world music — music that is, to a large degree, spiritual music, sometimes even ritual music. It seems as though the thought of the Eastern Hemisphere is now permeating the Western Hemisphere.” As you can plainly read, Bauer and I are now floating far, far above San Francisco, rapping about ultra-rare psych records, aliens, and Taoism. But for the uninitiated, here is a mental image explaining what Axolotl’s droning psychedelic noise sounds like, or, more importantly, does.

First off, please relocate to the quietest place that you know of. Now listen to the beat of your heart, to the soft, persistent ring in your ears, to the hushed hum of your nervous system, to the air drifting through your nostrils, to the garbled contractions in your abdomen, to the saliva collecting in the back of your throat, and even to the silence encompassing your body. If you meditate hard enough (but not too hard), the clatter of individual metabolic processes slowly morphs into a single, organically nurtured movement of sound. This is precisely what Axolotl (and the new psychedelia) strives to create using jury-rigged electronics and just about any other object capable of producing noise. It’s all about orchestrated sound flowing as a living, breathing organism.

“We want to feel the sound in our guts. We want to make huge gorgeous drones,” Bauer enthusiastically says. “We do not want to hurt people, but we do want them to feel this expanse of sound. I want to create an incredible physical experience. We really like the idea of the visceral fused to really blessed-out sounds. We really like the way frequencies affect hearing, depth perception, and sense of space. We love powerful tones. We just love that feeling.”

Of course, the evocation of all this patchouli-soaked yogi mysticism is not to imply that Bauer and Sabiston, while at home in their Oakland warehouse, wrap themselves up like a couple of Auntie Anne’s hot pretzels and record the sound of their stomach acids dissolving pork chops and apple sauce (although someone does need to request that as an encore at the next Axolotl gig). On the contrary, the duo actually started as live-action improvisational performers when Bauer, a classically trained violinist, and Sabiston, a drummer, came together in 2002 not long after Bauer relocated to the Bay Area from New York.

“I used to take mushrooms with some of my musician friends in New York,” Bauer recalls, “and we just wanted to have a bunch of shit in the room to find out what happened. We would just bang on lots of pots and pans with contact mikes. We just wanted to document weird human outbursts. That was a huge influence on all of us. Then I moved out here and I wanted to continue what I was doing back east.”

Before too long, Bauer augmented his violin with an assortment of toy instruments, trumpets, and human voices and started feeding them through a complex network of pedals, wires, and blinking lights, which transformed these formerly acoustic instruments into cyclical waves of feedback and thick, undulating sheets of static and distortion. Sabiston followed suit, ditching his drum kit and acquiring a small collection of hand-held percussion elements and this large black box outfitted with all types of esoteric knobs, buttons, and levers, which generates growling low-end frequencies and cascades of crackling static.

Axolotl’s preliminary results from this new fusion of the acoustic and the digital can be heard on the 2003 compilation Space Is No Place: NYC Noise From the Underground and the duo’s 2004 self-titled debut, both released on the New York-based imprint Psych-o-Path Records. As I mentioned earlier, Axolotl is indeed from Oakland, but its particular style of droning psychedelic noise definitely has much in common aesthetically and spiritually with New York’s current tribe of hippie-stinking noise-shamans such as Double Leopards, Black Dice, Mouthus, Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, Excepter, and the No Neck Blues Band. These acts convey a loose collective mind-set that Bauer feels quite intimate with.

Overall, Axolotl’s first full-length CD is a pretty expansive and far-out affair even though its palette of tones and frequencies is relatively narrow and the production quality just a little too uniformly digital. But the group is evolving at an accelerated clip. A mystical incandescence that Bauer and Sabiston’s debut only hints at can now be thoroughly and profoundly experienced on their brand-new CD-R, Archons?/Archons!, released on the Jyrk imprint, a small but industrious underground label operated by Oakland-based noise guerrillas D Yellow Swans.

“The song titles on the new CD-R [such as ‘Emme Ya,’ ‘Enuma Elish,’ and ‘Baal’] are influenced by a lot of cosmic thought and conspiracy stuff,” Bauer elaborates in a choked voice as if he’s preventing something from escaping his lungs.

Archons?/Archons! consists of fragments of eight separate drones recorded over the past year that Axolotl has sequenced and edited into one 48-minute master-drone. This is the group’s most successfully psychedelic and trance-inducing release to date. (Time to pass that hash pipe again, Bauer.) It’s meticulously constructed and spontaneously performed. It’s dense but not muddy. It’s propulsive but not explicitly beat-driven. And sinking deeper into its expanse of textures and patterns, we discover faint digital tones that drunkenly chirp like naughty sparrows sipping cough syrup. Clusters of effervescent static tumble from the speaker cones like steel teeth patiently chewing on a mouthful of thin copper wire. Electronic babble nervously converses with hand rattles and bells. Deep, ghostly voices moan from within the ruined temples of Atlantis only to gradually melt and re-form into the well-measured whir of Bauer’s echo-stained violin. And vaporous feedback trails every sound.

At times these incredibly varied sonic textures feel like microscopic particles wandering the inner corridors of the mind heretofore locked shut, and other times they swell to monolithic proportions, dwarfing the listener and shaking the walls and furniture as if the N Judah were scuttling past your crib. But, regardless of volume and dissonance, what remains of ultimate importance is how deeply and succinctly Axolotl’s collective sound lives, breathes, talks, walks, cries, crawls, flexes, sighs, and coughs.

It’s that very last quality that seems particularly appropriate, because by this point our interview has devolved into violent fits of coughing and gasping amidst a thick, stagnant fog of hash exhaust, but, I must admit, the mind does feel slightly more expanded than ever before.