Me, LCD Soundsystem and the Chamber of Consciousness
I saw something at a gig once that would change my life forever.
It was the headline act of electric picnic 2016 and I was in the crowd about ¾ way towards the top. It had been an amazing weekend at the tail end of a very troubled period of my life. I had returned from London the summer before with a B.A. in design and a mental breakdown. All things considered, I was alive and things were getting better and better.
I was volunteering with some environmental activist friends at the festival. My job was meeting and greeting people with a petition for personal solar energy production.
I had overheard LCD Soundsystem doing their soundcheck in the rain earlier on that day whilst setting up our little stall. I had never heard much more than a few songs of theirs’ before but it sounded like something unmissable. After a long and larey day in the eco village, I wound down in the main arena. After a few controversial and frustrating moments with my mates, I found myself alone (thankfully so) and realising LCD were playing in ten minutes, so I stumbled my way to the main stage.
It had been a turbulent and beautiful weekend at ep and I was on some very potent entheogens a friend of mine had given me. I had only recently tried trips for the first time and as it turns out, I’m quite the fan :)
So there I am, at Lcd, floating along an astral plane. When a culmination of strange and miraculous events produced a very specific vision in my mind. It only appeared for a moment, although a moment was more than enough. I percieved of this thing, this great big neon DNA strand sprouting up from above the crowd.
It appeared at the apex of LCD’s set, which had been fraught with trouble and spectacular drama.
James Murphy had just thrown a wobbly on stage. Something was obviously up with the lead singer of this mega-band who had only 5 years earlier hung up their equipment and called it a day.
After 3 studios albums, a series of farewell concerts, a documentary about said concerts and then a live album of the documentary, LCD had quit the music scene. That title of that live album had been The long goodbye and now, 5 years later, they were back.
It was a weird situation for such a well-respected band to be in and you could tell from Murphy's demeanour he knew it. Apparently, if it weren’t for Bowie's persuasion it would of never even happened. But there they were, in all their glamour and glory trying to figure what was going on with their lives just like the rest of us.
But unlike the rest of us, they were having to figure all this out on stage in front of 40,00 people. It was intense and peculiar.
Murphy knew he was a sham and he was owning it. He was honing in on his honest opinions to produce some sort of magic. Like an old master craftsman having a musical shit-fit. Murphy managed to subtly and angrily tell-off a sound guy and call him an amateur to the tune of one of his songs, it was so well done you could barely tell what he was doing.
The song in question ended and the vibe duly died. The band fumbled around with their instruments for a while. Murphy roamed up and down the set, plucking and fucking with whatever energy was left. And I started whooping, whooping loud, powerfully and ever so sporadically.
The blood, sweat and electric juices pulsating through my swollen fingers tips, sweaty mouth and wide eyes responded to being entheogenically revitalized with a few loud & proud “whoops”.
I won’t go into exactly what happened from there but ask me in person if you care. Some stories are meant to evaporate in your ear.
But basically, LCD pulled it back in spectacular fashion. They flopped and got back up better than ever. They used their downswing to get even higher and that’s where I saw it. At the pinnacle of the show, at the apex of the performance, I percieved of a great-big-thing sprouting up over the crowd.
It looked like a big double helix structure made up of thousands of light-blue fiberoptic strands. A superstructure being built from everyone’s energy shooting up into the night sky. Like a monstrous, neon tree being woven into the air by LCD and the crowds’ weekend of debauchery.
James Murphy there in the centre, conducting this collective effervescence of festival energy into a pulse that briefly shot up into the universe. Blowing my mind apart…I had never experienced joy like it. Lcd had managed to strangle the vibe to death and rise it from the ashes.
Just before the crowd began to roar back at them in adulation, Murphy let out a sigh;
“I love you guys..”
And without missing a beat, the sound guy comes over the system….
“Sure as long as I’ve had my fun.. that’s all that matters”.
To blink was too miss it. As the roar of the adoring crowd muffled the sound of one of the most well-timed Father Ted gags I’ve ever heard.
Looking up into the evaporating night in the aftermath of that event, shweating pure joy and ecstasy, I understood something that has changed me forever.
See I didn't really see that blue thing come up from the crowd in a visual sense. It was rather that I perceived of that neon tree. In my mind's eye, I percieved of this collective thing that I, LCD Soundsystem and the crowd were creating.
A little bit of context. I’m an artist working in realms of the climate crisis so perceiving of these things is what I’m after. I train my brain to see the world and its’ connections so I can express their existence and (hopefully) preserve them. It just so happens that that night was my first introduction to seeing a world of brand new inter-connections.
It was as if all our merry-making over the weekend had combined with the mastery of James Murphy and LCD to create a collective resonance. A back and forth between the band and the crowd which produced, at least for a little while, a bit of unity. An organizing principle that at that moment I understood to be made from rhythm.
I felt my perspective shift as I perceived that all of life is a series of these rhythms. From my heartbeat to the workweek, from particles of light moving through waves to the way the music plays.
Everything and anything moving forward through space and time creates a rhythm. A pattern that persists.
There, at LCD we created a superseding rhythm and we did it without using cumbersome politics. We produced a communal superstructure. Between LCD and the crowd, we constructed a thing that you might refer to as an orchestra. Except it doesn’t just play music of the audio kind. This thing has the power to play with the deepest parts of our mind.
Or so I say, as my experience has taught me. Because I don’t fully understand what’s going on or what these moments mean. All I know is with the aid of entheogens and festivals since I have been able to play in more than one of these orchestras and it’s mind-bendingly beautiful stuff. To experience life inside these chambers of consciousness.
