Music Recommendation: And So I Watch You From Afar: Heirs

An adrenaline rush that wakes you up in a cold sweat at two in the morning.

You wake up on your starship staring at the asteroid fields and pockets of ice crystals floating about you in oblivion.

Your ideas about what constitutes tonal beauty are challenged when you're trying to keep your mouth above the tidal wave of bass and gain which is stifling the ability to breathe and think lucidly.

Voices? Are those real words? Your brain tries to comprehend the vocalizations until you realize that ignoring your preconceptions of language is the only road to comprehension.

Your watering eyes blink and you wipe the salt off your forehead trying to see into the mist. The burning comes from the sadness or maybe the trauma of joy crashing against your stone tower of musical presuppositions.

Is this the future? Or is this the decade on repeat? Holding hands with strangers you know better than the hands you’re hold theirs with.

That’s a bit of the tumult that Heirs offers its listeners. It’s comfortable but it isn’t familiar. It’s your average raucous post/math rock album but it also has dignity. The band is clearly comfortable with displaying their emotions and they are also at home using their mouths to speak musical notes rather than words if that’s what it takes to get the point across. You’ll want to sing along, but there aren’t words. It’s your favorite song that prompts you to mouth the non-sense words, but you’re underwater, fighting to hold your breath.

At once, ASIWYFA channels post-hardcore’s destructive bass tones, Tera-Melos’ atonality (7/4 vocal-earthquake These Secret Kings I Know), Animals As Leaders’ progressive proclivities (People Not Sleeping, second half), and Adebesi Shank’s floor pounding stomp-riff-ic madness (F*cking Lifer). Somehow they trimmed the fat off of their experience with All Hail Bright Futures, which by all means is a great album but had a lot of weird hiccups. Those songs weren’t forgettable but there were some uncomfortable filler songs. And the effort was made a bit worse by the lack of meaning in real words. Heirs is the antithesis: fullness of meaning within the lack of words.

Heirs is less dauntingly weird, and takes some undue challenge out of listening to it by blending the incoherence of math-rock with the atmospheric beauty of post-rock and the space-exploration of progressive rock. It’s the guilty pleasure of accessibility without all the alienation of a sell-out.

Highly recommended.

The vanity within long flights

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after. (Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 ESV)

And thus begins the overwhelming feeling of vanity come 36,000 feet above the earth. I'm listening to music with earbuds to forget the crying baby and young child in the seats behind me. I'm trying to ignore the slight turbulence when it came at the beginning of the flight. I'm sitting in cramped space. The week was too short but the days were too long. Dorena (another no-name post rock band from Europe) is serenading my ears and my nerves.

Megan is doing the crossword puzzle and forgetting that nothing else exists in the space of the three hour flight. My neck is stiff. I wish I had the patience to crossword puzzles. Another small window into her world.

And I want to sleep and take advantage of the two hours I've gained back with the vain time zone adjustments.

Vanity vanity vanity. And only in Christ can I really enjoy it.

Nick. 

Lent and Facebook: the aftermath.

Things I don't miss about Facebook.

Being told about the latest food industry travesty.
Being told what I shouldn't eat.
Being told what I should eat.
Feeling like blogging about Facebook. Or some current event issue on Facebook. Promoting my blog on Facebook knowing it probably won't get read anyways.
Logical fallacies and one-sided blaring of opinions in fruitless online arguments.
The need to check it every fifteen minutes.
Non-stories about how one feels about other people.
Stupid opinions.
Strongly worded stupid opinions.
My need to share my opinions.
My need to share my strongly worded stupid opinions.
Bands asking to follow other bands.
Bands asking to follow record labels.
The rumbling feeling that my distant relatives are watching my every status update.
Getting a message from my grandparents about posting something on Facebook.
Deleting posts and comments from Facebook.
The blatant blaring of bad theology.
The time it takes away from intellectual capacity to hear my wife's voice.
Stories about the latest awesome thing Pope Francis did and how much we should love him for it.
Stories about the latest terrible thing Barack Obama did and how much we should hate him for it.
Finding excuses to dislike people more than I ought to love them.
Establishing my opinion about people based on what they do and share on Facebook.
The awkward and superficial connections that I try to legitimize with people I should really let go of.
The awkward and superficial connections that I refuse to progress with people in real life because of time spent otherwise on Facebook.
The social abandonment felt when leaving Facebook. For no good reason.
My idea that Facebook is the only way to keep connected with the people who really matter.
My need to feel clever and validated by the amount of likes I receive on status updates and comments.
Militant slacktivist feminism.
Militant slacktivist conservativism.
Militant slacktivist liberalism.
Militant and crappy theology.
The shadow of myself in the social sphere.
Feeling known by people who certainly do not know me.
Friend requests from people who certainly do not know me anymore.
Superficial friendships and the illusion of being known.

Things I miss about Facebook

The reformed pub.
Pictures of my wife when we are not in the same place.
Album releases
Tour announcements.
Seeing what's up with my relatives and people that I really ought to know.

Nick

Music Recommendation: Pacific Gold

Here's another band I rarely have time to listen to lately but wish I could forever. Here's their first EP, "The River". Everything else is good but this one might be my favorite folked-up hymnal EP.

Alas and did my Saviour bleed, and did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head for sinners such as I?
Was it for sins that I have done He suffered on the tree?
Amazing pity, Grace unknown, and Love beyond degree!

Well might the sun in darkness hide and shut His glory in
When Christ the great Redeemer died for man, the creature's, sin.
Thus might I hide my blushing face while His dear cross appears,
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness, and melt my eyes to tears!

Music Recommendation: Lent

Here's a good album that I listen to all the time, but since Lent began have not listened to 'til just now. Ironical. I have lent brain and have neglected social media for the last month. And it turns out that I love people a lot more than being clever when I no longer am given the ammunition to attempt clever responses and snark. I may ditch Facebook forever. But I do miss hanging out in the Reformed Pub, the only place on Facebook that I have found that has time and time again encouraged me even through the debates. And the reformed folk are indeed a debatey bunch.

Anyways, enjoy this music I enjoy. Or else.

More on Reading Chesterton

I'm not a Roman Catholic (nor do I ever imagine becoming one). Regardless, I think this quote holds much savor and hope for Protestants if only we replace the words "the Mass" with "The Church", and I do mean that in the universal congregation of all believers in Christ Jesus everywhere, perhaps to the chagrin of Our Darling Papist Chesterton.

After all, it is perhaps no matter of surprise that Bishop Barnes of Birmingham should see a link between the Magician and the Mass. There is a sort of logical link between them; the logical link that connects Yes and No. In other words, they are exact contraries; like light and darkness, which are often classed together because they are often mentioned at once. They cross each other with the complete collision and contradiction that belongs to "The Two Magics." The Magician is the Man when he seeks to become a God, and, being a usurper, can hardly fail to be a tyrant. Not being the maker, but only the distorter, he twists all things out of their intended shape, and imprisons natural things in unnatural forms. But the Mass is exactly the opposite of a Man seeking to be a God. It is a God seeking to be a Man; it is God giving His creative life to mankind as such, and restoring the original pattern of their manhood; making not gods, nor beasts, nor angels, but, by the original blast and miracle that makes all things new, turning men into men.

SDG

Nick

The better wine of the new covenant

This past Sunday my pastor Erik preached on wine. We're currently going through an expositional study of John's gospel. The text was John 2:1-11

The Wedding at Cana On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. (John 2:1-11 ESV)

So delicious, and 2 for $30 at BevMo right now. Full flavor and the beautiful bottle.

While Erik spoke a small amount about the wine being actual wine (to the dismay of our prohibitionist brethren, his main focus was the purpose of the miracle: why Jesus chose to make wine as the first miracle. I won't recount the entire sermon but one of Erik's main points made me thirsty for red drink. Indeed after church Megan and I made our way to BevMo and picked up a delicious Pinot Noir and partook of it during a match of SkipBo and dinner.


Jesus' wine was a sign of the inauguration of the new covenant.

Jesus made wine out of the water from the jars "there for the Jewish rites of purification". This is but the shadow of the reality: Jesus took the old covenant of "rites of purification" and made it into wine, but not just any wine. Jesus made "good wine" which was "kept until now". The good wine (the old covenant) was a shadow of the better wine (the new covenant). There should be no mistaking it: the good wine was served already, and Jesus made better wine and served it afterward. This is the shadow of the substance of Christ made into the full substance of Christ.

Jesus' wine is the best wine because Jesus is the best vineyard and the best winemaker.

Jesus' creation of wine may be unprecedented even here in wine-happy California. We are told that Jesus made good wine. The master of the feast recognizes Jesus' craftmanship when he is served the wine, remarking that the good wine was "kept... until now". Jesus loves good wine. Why? Because --stay with me here -- Jesus is the essence of good wine. Jesus makes the best wine.

Wine, like food and all other drink and all other pleasures, is the shadow of true pleasure and fulfillment in Christ. So when I drink wine, it is best consumed when I pray thus: "This wine is but a shadow of the fulfillment I already have in Christ". We commemorate this and continually do so in the ordinance of communion. Our grape juice (or wine for all you lovely RPW folks) and bread is, like baptism, a symbol of continuing communion with Christ. Metaphorically we renew the covenant with Christ as we partake.

In our homes, it is good to remember this as we drink good wine. The wine is good because God is good, because Jesus is good.

Jesus cares about wine and makes good wine because He is the unlimited source of good wine.

Jesus made roughly 150 gallons of wine. That's about 608 750ml bottles of the best wine this earth has ever seen. While the limitation of the jars necessitated a physical absolute on the volume of wine, the truth was this: Jesus filled the jars with wine to last the entirety of the wedding at Cana. Jesus was essentially the source of that wine, and he provided an effectively unlimited amount of wine for the wedding.

Jesus made good wine that people may drink and their hearts be gladdened, and that they may be satisfied in his provision. Good wine is good because God is good and Jesus is the essence and source of good wine.

While we may rejoice at the fountains of earthly wine unending, this wine will never satisfy, nor is it truly unending. The true satisfaction in wine is found in Christ Jesus, and he is the unlimited fountain of life and pleasure everlasting. The new covenant is better than the old, and thus new wine is better than old wine. Good wine matters because Jesus is good and Jesus matters.

SDG

Nick