Friday, December 28, 2018

Dimetia 13 - 108 Sacred Stages

To close out 2018 here's something special and a bit obscure. the neo-psyche band Dimentia 13.

Dimentia 13 released their first album in 1985 and released five albums while they were active. Hailing from Ohio they were similar but separate from the Paisley Underground bands of the time with influences closer to Syd Barrett, Robyn Hitchcock and the 13th Floor Elevators. Trippy lyrics and lots of fuzz guitar.

Fronted by Brad Warner who wrote the songs and on the early albums played most of, or all of the instruments. In the early 80s Brad was the bass player for the hardcore punk band 0DFX. When that band had run its course Brad went back to school, formed Dimentia 13 and discovered Zen. In the 90s he moved to Japan to teach English and went on to work for the company that gave us Godzilla and Ultraman. At that time he also became an ordained Buddhist monk in the Soto school of Zen. These days he leads Zen meditation classes, gives talks and writes books on Buddhism and Zen and plays bass in the revived 0DFX.

This is a collection of demos, outtakes and live tracks from his band Dimentia 13.

01 108 Sacred Stages
02 Hey, Maharaja!
03 Fog Camouflage
04 Truth
05 Weight
06 Innocent Anemia
07 Somebody Stop Me
08 In The Past
09 Snow Is Falling
10 Twice The Speed Of Time [Demo]
11 Can't Stand Still
12 All Is One
13 Mr Blood Clot
14 We Are
15 Mesmerized
16 Get Me Outta Sing Sing
17 Lucifer Sam
18 Do What You Will
19 God Part III

Reality Notes

I discovered Brad Warner through his books on Buddhism. If you have an interest in that kind of thing, I highly recommend them. His writing style is very accessible and personable and helped clarify many misconceptions I had about Buddhism in general and Zen in particular.

After reading his first book, Hardcore Zen, I found his website. There he would post articles and pictures of dinosaur books. He also posted some songs from his music career. The first ten songs in this comp came from there. The rest of the songs can be found on YouTube and are mostly live tracks and a couple of outtakes.

Tracks 14-17 come from a 1988 T.V. appearance on a Chicago public access show called Friday Club. Each performance was separated by other content so I edited the songs together to seem like a continuous performance.

Snow Is Falling was originally released on the various artist Christmas album put out by the record label he was signed to Midnight Records.

Can't Stand Still is an outtake from the album Flat Earth Society produced by Glenn Rehse of Plasticland.

Mr Blood Clot was released on a Flexidisc given away with an issue of the British psych mag Freakbeat.

God Part III is a more recent live solo acoustic performance of a song from the album Flat Earth Society.

I found the cover pic online and added the text.

Hardcore Zen blog
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