Check out this special edition of the Synthesis Digital focusing on the music, the art, the culture, and more importantly the BURRITOS of San Francisco!

Synthesis Digital Magazine San Francisco Issue. Download Free PDF.

Loserkids.com and Synthesis.net present the first Macbeth Footwear Digital Magazine. With interviews with Angels and Airwaves, The Color Fred, Sparta, Eisley and complete with audio and video – download it now !

There’s a new sheriff in town. And by sheriff, I mean editorial circus master/mob boss.
And by town I mean Issue #9 of Synthesis Digital. James Barone has left the building.
Actually he’s sitting right next to me, but he’s doing something way more important…running the show over at www.synthesis.net,
our newly redesigned homepage from which you very well might have downloaded this here document. So in his place, you get me: Daniel Taylor.
You might remember me from such epic blog posts as “Pitchfork Media Can Suck My Cock” or as the bassist in hugely famous rock ‘n’ roll band Surrogate (album out now on Tooth and Nail Records).
But since none of that shit actually pays my phone bill, here I am, wrangling content and pwning bands.
Loyal readers may also notice it’s been a minute since the last edition of Synthesis Digital. And for that I take full responsibility.
Reading the interview with Circa Survive’s Anthony Green compelled me to take a DMT-fueled vision quest, searching for the answer to life’s ultimate question. This, of course, took a little time. But I’m back, and I’ve brought the answer with me.
I’d tell you what it is, but that wouldn’t be any fun now would it? Instead, I’ve encrypted it within the text of this issue of Synthesis Digital.
So make sure to read every interview—from Mike Kieran’s chat with Every Time I Die frontman Keith Buckley to Harland Spinks’ (yes that’s his real name) talk with former Hot Water Music frontman Chuck Ragan—very, very carefully.
There are also clues hidden in the images—check Mike Z’s photo of cover artist and hip-hop sav Musab—as well as the ads peppered throughout.
So click every link. Toil over every word. Read and reread every sentence, every title. It’s all there. IT’S ALL RIGHT THERE. You just have to figure it out, man. If you need some help, feel free to e-mail me at daniel@synthesis.net. I’m trying to add another title to my job description: guru or at least assistant guru. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. And I think I’m ready. I’ve been waiting my whole life for this opportunity. I won’t let you down. I swear.

In this issue’s cover story, Circa Survive frontman Anthony Green mentions that Breaking Open the Head – A Psychedelic Journey
into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism, a book by Daniel Pinchbeck, played a part in inspiring his band’s latest record, On Letting Go. The book is a personal memoir chronicling Pinchbeck’s experiences with psychedelic drugs. According to the inside flap, the book is “a vivid account of psychic and intellectual experiences that opened doors in the wall of Western rationalism and completed Daniel Pinchbeck’s personal transformation from a jaded Manhattan journalist to shamanic initiate and grateful citizen of the cosmos.” Unfortunately, I haven’t read it. But I did catch an interview with Pinchbeck a little while back on The Colbert Report. At the time, he was plugging his latest book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. In it, according to Publishers Weekly, Pinchbeck “has set out to create an ‘extravagant thought experiment’ centering around the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring about the end of the world as we know it, ‘the conclusion of a vast evolutionary cycle, and the potential gateway to a higher level of manifestation.’” I haven’t read that one either. Pinchbeck sort of looked like that old dude who still lives in the dorms, but he had plenty of interesting things to say about shamanistic religions, Mayan prophecy and how we may be headed toward a dramatic spiritual shift in our society. I never really experimented with drugs; I mean, I took them, but it’s not the same thing. Mostly, I just smoked pot. When I was younger I thought it would open my mind, but while I think it helped me get over myself a bit, it never really led me to some major epiphany. It enhanced my enjoyment of cookies and milk and helped me realize the subtle comedic genius of Taxi, but that’s about it. I took LSD once and it was a good time, but it didn’t transform my worldview. The only thought I remember with any clarity is sitting on the stoop of my friend’s house and seeing what I believed was the grass of his front lawn slowly crawling over the concrete of the walkway leading to his front door and thinking that this was how the world would end—that nature would somehow reclaim everything. I know. Deep. Maybe I was doing the wrong drugs. Maybe if I was hanging out with Hopi tribespeople instead of watching television, things would be different. But I always thought Reverend Jim Ignatowski was pretty spiritual. Elsewhere in this issue you’ll be able to delve deeper into expanding worldviews with Texas choir-poppers The Polyphonic Spree. Also, Tyson Vogel and Adam Stephens of Two Gallants talk about playing live in kitchens, BART stations and major summer festivals.

Enjoy.
–James Barone.

Free PDF Synthesis Magazine i08

TORI AMOS FANS : CLICK HERE for our audio interview with Tori

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