You will be aware of the work of James McKeown and his Hawksmoor project. A catalogue of 13 significant and substantial records made in less than a decade.

James can be said to be operating in the realm of ambient music.

There are song structures and often beautiful melodies deployed - and more often than you might expect. He can be psycho-geographical, and woozily hauntological at times. There are shades of Eno, Tangerine Dream, Cluster and Michael Rother - but nothing is ever copied. It's detailed, textured deep and often emotionally affecting. He's made records inspired by Victorian religious architecture, geopolitical instability, JG Ballard, dreams and alternate states of consciousness; prescription drugs, new town neurosis and a secretly prehistoric Milton Keynes.

Musically, it always somehow reflects the subject matter. He's primarily about analog synthesis, old drum boxes, razor and tape, tangled wires and real instruments. Perhaps a post-digital Druid who emerged from the strange recesses of the natively insurrectionist Bristol scene. There are records backed up and ready to go. A modern British electronic genius of sorts.

Which brings us here to BID13 and another record about drugs. Am I Conscious Now? is perhaps a companion piece to 2021's oddly melancholy On Prescription.

The subject matter at hand is specifically the psychedelic variant 5-MeO-DMT. James dutifully did his research - experimenting with the drug - with a view to exploring the impact it might make on his music. Hold up, I hear you cry, musicians have been using psychedelics at least since the Maggot Brained Funkadelic freed our minds in the hope our asses would follow. Can't forget Spacemen Three's brilliantly definitive 'Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To'. James McKeown has made a record which deserves to enter this stoned immaculate pantheon. But 5-MeO-DMT is very different.

"It overrides the body and forces surrender. As a person, it completely changed my life, outlook, perspective".

It was first documented in the 1930s, is very different to your 'standard' LSD variants. No colour wheel intensity, no flying about seeing little green men with massive heads calling you into infinity. It doesn't flood the mind but rather, it empties it. Scarily for some, 5-MeO-DMT is said to strip away all sensation as it acts on the brain in specific relation to Serotonin. It lasts sometimes only minutes, though the individual's internal perception of time is obviously exploded. As, 'the Mount Everest of Psychedelics', it's no groovy cartoon loon pant Purple Haze then, man. All of which persuaded our intrepid hero to give it a go. It specifically inspired the music you can hear by clicking on the links above.

"Psychedelics are for me tools for healing, spiritual connection and creativity. It's not about hedonism, flashing lights, patterns, the cliches. It's very unique.
Language doesn't really work to explain it. It's everything and nothing. Some experience a state of pure bliss. I experienced a terrifying feeling of dying, and then a sense of unity, like I was connected to everything. I hesitate to use the term, but I'd describe it as being a sense of being reborn".

If like Lennon and our man here you truly surrender to The Void, you'll know you are everything and nothing too. So tell me, which album by Gary Barlow is going to gift you all this?

Hawksmoor is building an important body of work notable for its deep integrity.

This is an extraordinary record. Its intensity is an instant hit and, once you are sucked into its orbit, it's routinely mesmerising.
Beyond that it is not, kids, an ad for the drug. As Frank Zappa advised re. the Yellow Snow, make your own informed decisions.

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