Blog — Page 83 of 277

Thus Let Us Drink Beer – Rock Brewing Co

Before Rocks Brewing Co’s brewery was incepted in 2014, Rocks was known for channelling its alchemy as a gypsy brewer at different established Sydney breweries to create approachable ales to capture the hoppy equivalent to the characteristics of Sydney and its personalities.

In 2021, Rocks Brewing has established itself firmly as a veritable heavyweight in the Sydney craft beer scene, including the establishment of a brewpub, where the liquid range is on offer and can be sampled individually or tasting paddles and backed by sustenance in form of food pairings.

While It’s been in my periphery, it been a long time coming to zero in on how they channel their alchemy. Word around the campfire had that Rocks Brewing recently onboarded a new head brewer, who allegedly loves his IPAs, so needless to say that I was intrigued.

My first exposure to Rock Brewing Co was through their Hangman Pale Ale, which manifests their idiosyncratic take and Australian twist on the classic American pale ale style. With a melange of Cascade and Liberty hops, the Hangman is a carefully calibrated exercise in balancing the essence of malty caramel goodness against citrussy, stone fruity highlights. Not bad, not bad at all.

Given this fulminant start, expectations were high for what their West Coast IPA would have in store.

Upon opening the can of Rock; Holey Dollar, what tickled the nostrils was a welcome dankness, which after the first sip seamlessly transitions to the palate with a beautifully resinous onslaught of piney nuances, counterbalanced by just the right level of bitterness (57 IBU) and just a hint of spiciness. As the companion to a Laphroaig Quarter Cask Boilermaker, this is one flavourful IPA with a solid malt taste.

Given that I missed out on Rocks Brewing’s 10 Year Red IIPA as well as their Convict IPA, I shall make sure to check in regularly to not miss out on any of their upcoming specials.

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image from company website

Affirm Press Australia

Australia is home to quite an array of independent publishers, whose emissions deserve to find a wider international audience. Affirm Press is one of them with their foci firmly set on not only capturing and publishing Australian stories in their broad range of fiction but also provide food for thought with their non-fiction books, which nurture big ideas.

Once you have read a few of Affirm Press’ books, the common denominators can be easily pinpointed, i.e. loving attention to detail, editorial commitment and careful curation, which is reflected in most of their non-fictional titles focussing on influencing by delight.

Some reasons examples I found quite enlightening, especially during the travails of recent times, are the books penned by Patrick Lindsay, an ex- journalist and television presenter who eventually reinvented himself as a non-fiction author.

Be Inspired Every Day: 170 Ways to Transform Your Life is an example par excellence for no self-help hocus-pocus, but a guide that sheds light on the reconnection with sources of inspiration that are surrounding us, be it nature, the arts, music and good ole plain human interaction. A book that helps finetune one’s antennae to elevate the ordinary, find calm in the chaos to lift spirits and enrich the mundaneness of the day-to-day.

Be Resilient and Thrive sees Lindsay focus on the journey from being under pressures and stresses to the other side and how to navigate by note merely pushing on, but developing strategies to build and nurture resilience based on simple and common sensical ingredients like the soundness of body, mind and spirit and an action plan.

Anastasia Charisiou’s Simple Self Care zeroes in on the reset and restoring of oneself in a world that is obsessed with productivity, 24/7 availability and success by illustrating the transformative and liberating effects self-compassion can have.

Neuroscientists and podcast host Alexis Fernandez’ Be Bold has the mind and brain at the centre of its elaborations to help unlock the best version of yourself by not only identifying the best course of action but by pro-actively learning and unlearning.

Yoga: The Secret of Life

powerHouse Books

Given punk’s anti-dogmatic and religious credo, the advent of “Krishna core” was in the was viewed with suspicion, as it seems to be at odds with the nihilistic mindset that it was fuelled by.

Eventually, through bands like the Bad Brains and their Rastafarian beliefs and New York Hardcore bands like the Antidote, Cro Mags and Cause for Alarm , who started to explore Krishna Consciousness, a foundation was laid upon which bands like Shelter and 108 founded their endeavours to not merely connect with the Hare Krishna movement but make it their sole objective and raison d’etre.

Prominent figureheads like Ray Cappo and Porcell started to fully immerse in the lifestyle, learn more about it at the source on the subcontinent, and began to share their learnings and wisdom. In the case of Porcell, it meant that over time he has firmly established his yoga practice and become an internationally acclaimed yoga teacher.

It was through him that I initially learned about yoga and its nature, i.e. its facets of balance, breathwork, focus, flexibility, muscular power and determination, which eventually made me join classes wherever I roamed. I specifically liked the challenging aspects and the growth that came with the various stages that I have had to master.

In conversations with the uninitiated, I still often find a sceptical approach, which is fair enough and does certainly not spurn me on to change their mind. However, I usually recommend to check yoga out for themselves to learn more about the spiritual and physical aspects behind it.

Yoga: The Secret of Life is a coffee table book that in a visual and photodocumentary manner, accompanied by essays and personal accounts, of how yoga practice has impacted and transformed the lives of practitioners.

For the photos, Francesco Mastalia has applied special techniques and equipment  to create ambrotype photographs, which not only add depth and dimension but aid in creating an otherworldly experience and deliberately add a mysterious aesthetic. In other words, the aesthetic of the book add a layer that should attract even those not planning to learn more about the subject matter itself.

Apart from illustrating the respective poses and each’s practitioner’s individual journey, Yoga: The Secret of Life encourages one to dig deeper in a bid to understand who we really are and questions our purpose.

Centre Pompidou – Anselm Kiefer

Located in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, The Centre Pompidou, is quite a sight to behold and sets a contrast to the backdrop of traditional Parisian architecture with its high-tech “inside-out” colour-coded exterior skeleton design courtesy of the architect triumvirate Philip Johnson, Jean Prouvé and Oscar Niemeyer.

Comprising not merely the largest museum for modern art in the old world but also an extensive public library, along with the centre for music and acoustic research, claiming that it is one of the pre-eminent European multicultural strongholds – it is designed not to merely a building but a town within a town intended to hold close to ten thousand visitor a day.

Needless to say, that the Centre Pompidou proved to be the ideal forum for one of the most expensive , thematically arranged retrospective on German painter, sculptor and pusher of boundaries Anselm Kiefer in 2016.

While Anselm Kiefer art can be found in literally any well-established metropolitan museum on this earthround, Centre Pompidou exhibited over 150 artworks and did not merely focus on graphic and painting but sculptures and large scale installations, multi-layered mazes, documenting Kiefer’s oeuvre from the late 1960s to current times. While Kiefer is one of the most prolific artists and know for working with unorthodox source materials, the DNA of his art can be simmered down to recurring and intentionally overlapping g themes, language  and symbols heavily influenced by his post-war background, Germany’s history, religion, alchemy, spirituality, philosophy and literature. Kiefer’s idiosyncratic compositions allow for the expression of complex and intricate connections, making the whole of each iconographic artwork much more than the mere sum of its individual ingredients.

It would have not been Centre Pompidou if the exhibition did not entail new and specifically created art: Kiefer created forty display cases, which in essence served as portable mini-museums to pay homage to a bygone industrial era, which natural , primal objects like straw, sand, clay and ash intermingled.

To ensure that one does not get lost in the artist’s realm of symbolism, Centre Pompidou’s catalogue provides a thematic overview, which apart from displaying all exhibits from the retrospective offers accompanying essays of art luminaries as well as a diary-like part, which sheds light on Anselm Kiefer’s evolution.

A visit to Paris would not be complete without having checked out Centre Pompidou and once travel restrictions lift, it will be one of my first stops in Europe.

The Formative Years – Black Sabbath and Righteous Riffage

If one was to compile a list with the greatest riffs ever written, no doubt Black Sabbath would occupy quite a few spots at the more formidable end of the spectrum. Sometimes a band and their emissions are so great and prolific, that even epigones channelling their essence can appear attractive instantaneously by mere association or citing them as an influence.

Enter stoner rock and doom.

It was through cover versions of “Paranoid” by German punk bands in the late 1980s that I was first introduced to Toni Iommi idiosyncratic way of songwriting and it took not long to delve into Black Sabbath’s back catalogue and fall in love head over heels, without any vestige of my passion subsiding any time soon.

Over time, I was exposed to bands like Grief , Sleep and Eyehategod – bands that took the DNA Black Sabbath and created an ever more dirgy, powerful concoction that is immensely conducive to blazing up one’s mind, i.e. what is commonly classified as “doom” and constitutes one of the most powerful genres of underground music with its slowly building, crushing tsunamis of delightful heaviness.

I have always found it funny, how doom and dirge bands were perceived to be aggressive in nature by some of my comrades, when I found the listening experience to be immensely relaxing and satisfying, like a warm bath while under the influence of codeine.

It was through the Swiss label Off the Disk records, who released the first Infest 12” with the H.R. Giger cover, ABC Diabolo’s first 7” and other delicacies as Morbid Angel’s demo from the early 1990s on, that I was first exposed to Sleep and their tribute to Black Sabbath.

Their album Dopesmoker followed – not merely a telling title but a close to seventy minutes long exercise in meditation on heavy, drawn out riffing based on the essence of Black Sabbath but infusing it with their own style. Expertly executed and unrivalled to this day. Needless to say, any band or project a member of Sleep touched thereafter, did not let down either and it was fantastic to see Matt Pike incarnate in the third dimension with his current band High on Fire a few years ago.

Over time, some bands perfectioned their approach to a level that became borderline pornographic in term of auditory pleasure, with an example par excellence being Electric Wizard – a band that borderlines tectonic shifting doom glam.

If music carried calories, listening to Electric Wizard’s album “Funerapolis” would be the musical equivalent to having a cheese-laden lasagne with cookie dough ice-cream as desert.

An experience that does not waver to excite, hypnotize, and calm me down in equal measure.