Zachariah Julian expands genre using ancient traumas through modern mayhem
Oblique scores movement through a motionless existence of suppressed agency and the realization of its absence; a divine collaboration with New Mexico's finest shadow workers.
Reference points.
We are all trying to get there.
Here we go: I now live in the north valley of the middle rio grande conservation district; it isn’t really albuquerque and it isn’t really los ranchos. It’s kind of nowhere but neatly centered in the suspiciously fertile fields of irrigated agriculture and its domesticated origin of human evolution.
Out of my many readers, maybe a few will understand where I live now using reference points provided in the previous descriptive paragraph. One reader will even be able to identify my exact triangulation using those details alone (without a pre visit). Most water chasers will figure it out.
The remaining readers will have no clue where I live and will skim over the sentence because it means absolutely fuck all. They wanna get to the part where there’s a dead body in the closet, under a single junk tire, with the word “keys” written in white chalk on the sidewall with a half-eaten #8 from Jimmy Johns on the floor. And I am one of those readers who will pick up the sandwich.
The human brain has a mechanism that automatically skims, there is nothing to be done about this whatsoever. Giggidy. The freakishly weird part, is the very same mechanism, let's call it a solenoid1, will activate said skimming in life and music, and in today’s lingo, we call it passive living. Or passive listening.
Same. Same. Not different.
The trauma of everyday life will keep the solenoid activated as the skimming expands until one day, we’re all In Da Couch with very little desire to live, let alone getting outside to breathe in fresh air and grabbing a handful of mycelium dirt mapping. We never find out that other humans have created something magical to lessen our suffering, or to celebrate the precious victory with us in solidarity.
If the material, or the artist, doesn’t shock the recipient, the mechanical or visual stimulation gets absorbed by the body and enters a bin in the brain called “this will not kill me, it’s nothing to focus on” and in today’s human language, we call it skimming. The function of our brain to let us know there is no threat, we can proceed with status quo. All is clear. Boring, but at least safe. We live to hear our favorite dead artist one more day.
So how does a writer, who once checked off every damn thing in the world as meh, get to the heart of the traumatic matter without it killing him, as per the amygdala handbook?
Music.
For me, music became a built-in psychedelic, which deactivates the pesky little amygdala, allowing the body to be still but the mind returns, perhaps for the first time ever, to the trauma event (or many events). One massive clarification I must make here: it really should be new music (written by someone else). Find something resonant, not dissonant. (More on that later.) Once the amygdala is flipped off, music then becomes a conduit into realms undiscovered, yet ever so brilliantly radiant, traveling to and from the impact of trauma. Curious with intent to accept…and safe to do so.
New music + amygdala off = portals into our never ending blind spots and our journey to deconstruct blockages to our own bliss. And then, and then, annnnnd thennnn the murdering commences. Cold-blooded and merciless drowning of the constructed versions we built to survive the damn thing.
If one doesn’t understand piano, they skim it; if one doesn’t understand Beethoven, they skim it. But if one understands pain, well then, there’s a connection to another star in the universe and the body moves closer to nirvana and more cogs to the vulnerability wheel spinning engaged movement throughout the universe.
Old music will keep the body stuck in a sort of holding pattern (motionless) throughout life, even worse on drugs. Exponentially worse on drugs. Soothing is not healing and soothing becomes the addiction. One day the occupant wakes up and feels as though the whole world has passed them by, but they never see the incremental steps to self destruction.
It’s like watching your kids grow up only to miss the whole damn thing.
Breathe. Take a moment to relax your imagination.
The cosmic fabric of indigenous is their application of silent anger gained from centuries of new beginnings. Masters of observation, a seemingly knowing of the intricate and connected harmonies, Jicarilla Apache possess primal balances of existence, from creation to now.
See? Skimmed it. Sounds a bit like: ickoree-ya (almost) apache.
The first Peoples who entered the new world and the new age witnessed it all go down and became the living reference encyclopedia we were tricked into ignoring. Over a period of nearly two centuries of brutal colonization and a violet halt to their southern migration, a silencing of the oppressed spirit yielded complacency and stagnation and the vessel followed. Regardless of band, tribe, or origin, silent anger becomes a genome in the masculine composition and the mind/body/spirit is left to sort out the chaff on his own, or be damned to eternal intoxication to numb the elusive rage, killing being frowned upon and all.
Zachariah Julian put his delicately orchestrated anger into community ascension within the adobe walls of Rio Grande Studios and the mesmerizing application of progressive sound and story in a world class symphony of high desert encampment of instrumental surrealism and arroyos of vocal grit to illuminate the endless sky of balanced, yet tragic existence within the realm of love yet forever hollowed by watching it burn into the ether at the hands of crushing global evolution and murderously oppressive systems beyond our current comprehension.
We were all once warriors.
Jicarilla Apache didn’t skim through life, they migrated and adjusted to it. Didn’t have a choice. They lived the damn thing in living color and found a way to bury it in the genomes of the bloodline, ensuring everyone could tap into the story at will. Oral, visual, and behavioral storytelling masters from a continuous lifetime of existence in the new age.
Witnessing repeated annihilation, and narrowly avoiding their own is not an observable truth to be skimmed.
Julian painted a disturbingly imminent love story of apathetic existence within human consciousness, firing synapses of surgical anger to conduit atmospheres of magic and movement within human suffering using a delicately structured testimony to the continued and ignored shredding of the alkaline fabric binding our interwoven journeys; both then and now.
Every key stroke is a generation of existential anger produced in a captivating heart-string tone of a modern day love story under the aura of brutal systems and mental mind fucks; every lyric echoed by a timely reckoning of injustice, the pinnacle evolution we desperately needed in the blues, metal, and rock. Born in the very land of its murderous history.
With an unparalleled supporting cast, Zachariah Julian is advancing several genres well into the new era of apathetic existence. The sound may be blues and glorious anger but the message is real time; unearthing as we gather around the rocket blast melting the skin of human compassion. Oblique scores a nation in formidable annihilation while preserving the endearing and commanding movements of touch and truth within a fractured spirit.
Oblique is a discernible and timely ode to anger, a symphony of head-first dives into staggering consequence orchestrated by the relentless fire to elicit movement ever so begrudgingly toward enlightenment. Timeless in every audible trace of shared celebration with each compassionate musician behind those adobe walls of dire artistic expulsion.
***Oblique - (title track) ushers many newcomers in with an unparalleled and immediate signature in daunting and rhythmic key strokes, pain heavy on the lows, followed by the agility of featherweight vocals and a whimsical, dreamlike conversation with self. A brilliant lift off with layers of structure to shock the audience with alternating currents and mesmerizing saga before setting the returnee gently on the edge of oblivion to dance to their own reckoning. Those unfortunate souls still alive to tell the damn thing.
***Tattoo - been a while since I screamed cried, rage cried, and love cried through a song. Too damn long. The artist uses a very modern vernacular to capture both the state of the world and the state of mind within the eye of a battleground of instilled and constant chaos. Production casts a stark scene of the artist swinging from a noose just above the airport passenger conveyor, fighting for air while never missing a key stroke as the passive bodies rush below unfazed to their next delayed departure to someplace easily forgotten with somebody who never stays. Solenoids stuck on skim.
***Paper Ghost is a multi-faceted dream state conversation with big brother, and old self, maybe even a few assassins, and some other hypocritical characters buried alive in the psyches of public servitude. The journey is filled with intense cadence as they taunt the mysterious force as once profound, now lacking; laughable. The efficiency of the piece stabs and slices through the pitch black alleys, the dark web spun by unbridled anger and masking, and the very real battles with systems through continued advancement. A brilliant upper cut to those whining through abundance while the artist stands square in the ring of divine agency with the grit to infill nothingness.
Show me your anger and I’ll show you mine.
***Aview is a zoomed out finale of a centuries old struggle to preserve the essence of origin, pressurized and bizarre revelations; an infinity of calloused resistance. The poet takes a considerable amount of time to capture the vitality of slowing down and the listener receives a commanding sensation of global and total annihilation if the message is not soon actualized. The damning evidence of Julian’s brilliant anger lies within the closing apathy of a millennia of carnage; having survived enough to far outlive the glory given by the mind-numbing emptiness of it all.
I don’t need your glory, cause I don’t feel a thing.
***In Braid is psychosis absent fear. Unravel the damn thing long enough and the ending becomes the beginning. Unrestricted rocket blasts through oblivion absent the imposed moral friction of inhibition. We come back down only to realize everyone is now outside the glass bowl. Nothing will never be the same again, yet, the curiosity marches us to another hunt; another era of nurturing isolation. Life, death, sobriety, or substance, they are all harmonic tenets of existence; interwoven threads of subdued consciousness, begging to be explored through the timbre and soothing, yet haunting and horrifying conviction that is Zachariah Julian’s vocal exploration of thin air grit; his signature application to life. Epic and maddening, I crave it for ultra deep dives into my own inhibitions, now thoroughly enjoying the damn thing absent imposed shame.
***Symphony hammers a coffin nail head with each growling low tone, giving the thin air blues a gorgeous piano resuscitation into both the genre and the rhythmic stimulus required to bypass amygdala for reflection, taunting arrangements of deliberately ignored red flags, composed in opposing and valiant vocal harmony of accountability. Perfection through minimalism; conviction through error; daring through anger, Symphony is now my favorite blues song of all time.
Each pass is experienced in a new body.
Stringer
Zachariah Julian music and merch
Oblique credited cast and crew: Zachariah Julian, Kenny Riley, Harvey Robb Pierce, Richard Reed, Brian Burton, and Tex Monarco
Solenoid - a mechanical switch activated by an electrical input (signal). In the mind, I refer to many of the brain’s functions as solenoids. Some are automatically fired by electrical impulses and many others are fired by a series of signals or several identification-present signals to activate movement within the human body. A de-energized solenoid prevents the body from fleeing every waking moment to inputs already tossed into the ignore bin. An activated (energized) solenoid keeps the body in survival mode built into the human body. Solenoids are NOT designed to remain energized, nor is the human body in hyper survival mode.