Go Back to Go Forward

2 steps forward, from one step back.

why?

why is social media about to collapse? Ai. Language Learning Models. Deepfakes. Voice Cloning. The tools to make someone who does not exist or copy someone who does have never been more accessible.

Various social media sites are trying to implement safeguards, or tie social media accounts to government Ids and paywalls to slow down the inevitable.

But it’s over. I am not the biggest fan of web3 because it’s back to the wild west in some ways. Still, web 2 is over. It had it’s impact. It’s made multi billionaires. Presidents. Coups. But as with all tools of disruption, greed has devoured it. Flip the table and then it’s down to who was in the best position to gather as many pieces as possible.

So what are we going to do as Rome burns again? As we draw ever closer to General Purpose Ai capable of matching or exceeding human intelligence at a similar energy cost?

First, we’re going to be posting more here than on the other Meta platforms. We will still link our work to them, but facebook is not my ship, and I am quite happy to disembark before Mark steers it into the sun.

Second, we’re building up our own mailing list. The only thing you’ll get from me is blog posts, release dates, and gigs. I dislike advertising. It’s invasive and distracting. Direct marketing worked best before and it will work best going forwards.

Lastly, we will continue to explore these tools in a creative context. Sampling, remixing, synthesizing, all the tools that we now take for granted were once revolutions that upset the existing musical and artistic order. They also drove innovation and freed creatives to express onto the fabric of history in new and exciting ways.

Have fun. It’s a central tenet of the church of Hip Hop, with it’s aging dignitaries and far flung acolytes.

It’s something innate that we are all born with the ability to do. Capturing our ability to have fun, hijacking our dopamine pathways and redirecting our efforts.

Your job is to remember and reclaim your ability to have fun.

Keep it safe and nurture it. It comes from within you, not without. Air and sunlight, a stick and a hoop. Word games, chess. Running as fast as you can. Dreaming.

Some things do their best to convince you you need them more than they need you. It's a mutual relationship. And they will follow you where you go.

the greatest rapper alive

Is it weak to admit your weakness

or the only way to become the greatest?

I’m trying to be the greatest rapper alive

maybe before I turn 45

which probably is a whole lot of jive

but all I have to is survive.

so I protect my organs

and my vibe

maintain my spirit

and my mind

keep getting more excited all the time

so I can stay inspired to rhyme

but is soft to enjoy your softness

or how you generate power to become the hardest?

trying to be the hardest rapper in the mix

maybe before I turn 56

so I will never need to turn to dirty tricks'

just landing all my punches and my kicks

so I cultivate the stillness

and limber up my joints

move gently so I feel this

the tiniest of points

breathe air into my center

and out through my limbs

and remember that I am really him

but is it ignorant to admit your ignorance

or how you gain an intellect that can cover the distance

I’m trying to be the smartest rapper under heaven

before I turn 67

so that my words have the power of the reverend

the abbot in the temple

and not just another bell end

so I search for higher meaning

and I read between the lines

pay attention to the fundamental forces that bind

analyze and ingest all the data that I find

and relate it to the fate of mankind

but is really wicked to admit your wickedness

or how you overcome the suffering we will into existence?

trying to put an end to evil and to hate

before I turn 78

it seems to be a lot on my plate

but I have trained this long to take on the weight

to answer all the questions

and act on the reason

to sew the seeds that bloom

and grow the fruits for future seasons

to keep the ship afloat as we sail through stormy seas and

even get the people to the shore for when I’m leaving

but is it only mortals who accept mortality?

and by denying my own death do I forfeit the galaxy?

trying to be the greatest emcee of all time

before I turn 89

to exist in every universe sublime

and witness all of creation with my eyes

so I gather all my essence

and begin to transcend

collect all my lessons

prepare for my end

return to all the whispers of the wind

give thanks for all my blessings

become flavor in the blend

of all of existence

of all of creation

echo through the darkness

become illumination

a star that was formed in the core of the most highs patience

to guide the sentience of interplanetary nations.

but..

Real Recognize Real...

My name is Captain Imon Starr, or rather that is an artist identity that I have piloted across my time in Aotearoa.

It’s originally a play on the Isaac Asimov book I Robot, also inspired by my friend Star Turner who introduced me to dance music in Boston back in 1997. And it comes from a dream I used to have when I was younger.

In the dream I was pursued by a thing that was nothing but teeth and eyes. A monster of blackness and sharp edges. It would come right before I would wake. Chasing me down. And I would freeze at it devoured me. Again and again, the thing would enter at the end of my young dreams. A beast. Dangerous.

And then I started to get sick of it. And I began to try and turn to face the thing that devoured me again and again.

And then one night I turned all the way around. And all I found was myself. I realized that the monster was me. That I was the master of my dreams. That nothing in the realm of sleep could consume me but me. That I was dangerous. That I was teeth and eyes. And wild.

So that is I Monster. But there is a band called I Monster already. So I became Imon Starr. Star is what Jamaican Rasta call singers and players of instruments. Toasters. DJs. Emcees. Imon is close to my born name. Remove the vowels and mn remains. In the tradition of a writing system without them (vowels). This is the root name of man. Of Min. Of Amon. The hidden god. The smallest thing. The fundamental universal particle. The fabric of creation.

Why captain? So assured was I of my fate as a great musician that I decided to set my eyes on the stars above. A star ship captain. One who could fly between worlds. Sailing the ethereal seas on ships that could fill the sky itself.

These components came together for this name. As I sing songs of sonic fiction. Transporting the listener above and beyond. Taking them on a journey across soundscapes from the deepest roots to the most forward of rhythm word and power. Empowering the culture with my unique angle and view. Adding my notes to the tapestry. My stanzas to the symphony. My lyric to the eternal epic. My branches to the tree of life.

I worked hard in different arena. On albums. On stage. On screen. In cypher. On the radio. Exploring the edges of rhyme. Searching for the unsaid couplet. Pushing the boundaries. Refining lexical innovation. Polishing my craft. Taking risks. Breaking down barriers. Making mistakes. Making mistakes into masterpieces.

I worked as the microphone mercenary wordsmith Murk108. I ran with different outfits just beyond the reach of the main stream machine. Doing my best to keep my dreams front and center. Trying to lift up any audience before me. Trying to inspire generations. To lay deep roots. To plant strong seeds. To pave a way through.

“Do not remove yourself from the equation of the future”. You never know what tomorrow will bring. And it is your thoughts and actions as much as those of anyone else which keep the world turning.

Years pass. There are excuses. Distractions. Realizations. Sacrifices. All you can do becomes all you can do becomes all you have done. Infinite steps and possibilities becomes the road you have traveled. The destination grows closer. The next few steps become clear.

We face something different. Social media, once Myspace collapsed under it own incompetence, facebook took over with it’s tribal war algorithms pushing people by bubble into thought silos. Changes sapped our momentum. “Why aren’t you guys bigger than you are?” “Why does your reach not match your skill?” Wearing too many hats has a cost. You can’t trust everyone your working with to carry weight of all the things equally. Especially when your trying to run a space opera. As leader, as captain, it was up to me. I managed to crash the ship into the coastal jungles of the Coromandel for a while. Stranded, I worked on repairing and refitting the engines. Upgrading the armour plating. Improving the shield generators. I poured over inter-dimensional navigation maps. I Updated the ships computers.I studied. I rested. I improved. I improvised.

And eventually I got the ship back off the ground. But when I returned to Dub City, it was changed. Hollow sounds rung throughout the streets. Disjointed. Disparate. Divided. Things were small. A plague had been set loose and people scuttled from corner to corner. Art was injured. Robber Barons and Omni Corp goons fought over their feifdoms. Predators prowled the streets. Hucksters and Hustlers huddled in alleyways.

The ship remained cloaked and out of sight. It would be a game of rounding up the old kings. The old queens. Brothers. Sisters. Soldiers. Generals. Of seeing if the dreams still lived in the head of the fish. Te Upoko o te Ika. If there was something beyond. Something meaningful. Powerful. Nourishing. Transcendent. Something beyond solipsistic scuffles.

Past my own prose. I was known and forgotten. I was fabric. I was memories. And some of them were wrong. The nascent AI of 2023 attempted to fill in the blanks.

ChatGPT conjured an album that didn’t exist. Looking for a me shaped hole. It called an album “No censorship” and referenced a single “Real Recognize Real” as well as another one called “The struggle”.

And I laughed. If even Ai was painting a dream deferred, I would meet this missing message with words of my own.

And so I decided to create this project. And that’s where we find ourselves at the moment. Auditioning images and scrolling through my unreleased phantom back catalog of blastastic beats to create a ghost song. For a time that never was.

I present to you, Real Recognize Real. From the album “No Censorship”. By the New Zealand artist “Captain Imon Starr”.

Tora Tora Tora!

Olmecha Supreme is playing at Tora Tora Tora this weekend!

Join us along side of other ecclectic and well selected bands at Tora Tora Tora this easter weekend!

Added to the fun, captain Imon Starr is emceeing the whole event! ushering on caliber act after caliber act.

Fun for the whole family!

Ticket sales are limited, so get them before they're all gone!

See you there!

Like That Video is LIVE

The video for the Olmecha Supreme song "Like That" has gone live!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzv58D8pNMY

stay tuned for the remix!

Entropy

“What race wishes to think of its own death!!” the doll exclaimed,

“Sorry about that, too anthro-emotional, dialling it downa bit. too much residual inference about alien emotions…” the technician mumbled to the assembled generals, commercial magnates and heads of state.

We were on a ship as far as man kind had ever travelled. Assembled around the largest telescope ever built. Aimed at the very edge of possibility. Everything was being beamed via relay back our species’ homeworld and infant colonies.

We were just beginning to step out into the void, and this was our best chance to answer the burning question:

Are we alone out there.

An event brought attention to a a distant star and the great minds eye of man kind gazed out at living breathing thinking aliens.

The dolls head swivelled taking in the faces of the assembled. Behind two layers of transparent metal, their hungry eyes revealed much. Mostly their assumptions of safety.

“Tell us of your world.” the speaker prompted.

The dolls head locked on to him, predator like. It stood 3 meters tall, all glossy black and red eyes, with an array of cables and pipes feeding its processors direct data through the telescope from it’s original home world. Several thousand light years away.

The telescopes giant lens would change focus rapidly scrolling back and fourth through aeons. A collection of giganeuronal supercluster AI’s would parse the data. Sort through the echoes of light and boil down the essence of a civilsation long gone.

Theirs was the first system we had ever encountered with concrete signs of sentient highly organised life.

The problem was the distance. The problem was always distance. The galactic constant. Causality. Physics.

Even our best engines would not get us there while we were still us. There was no guarantee that they would still be them. And worst, while scrolling through the data, we watched in horror as their world died. Planets consumed by artificial flame. A star gone nova too soon and without reason.

It’s funny that their death is what cemented knowledge of their existence. Billions of stars of possibility and the act of self destruction resonated so clearly with our own nihilism.

“There is no point.” The doll said finally.

“Hold on…” the technician said twisting a few dials and typing furiously. “Try again”  he prompted

“Tell us of your world” the speaker insisted. more firmly this time

The doll pondered then turned again to face the speaker,

“you misunderstand… “ it began

“Go on. We have here the finest minds of our species. Technologists. Anthropologists. Astrophysicists. Theoretical Physicists. Machine Intelligence. Augmented Intelligence. You can trust that understanding is what we do.” It was an impassioned speech. the kind that won elections and seats on the board. That stirred men on to battle. That left impressionable women breathless.

“No,” began the doll, “Not to telling you, but to existence. There is no point.”

Eyes swivelled to the technician. “No, it’s at 99.8%, this is about as salient as I can get it.”

“Our world… BURNS! Each breath burns. Our star burns. Against an everlasting blanket of nothing. Each second stolen from a finite hourglass. Our lives measured in the stomach of an all devouring beast called time. The paper we are printed on, it will expire. The ink become ashes. The memory of all we have done, all we have ever been, fade to zero.”

The dolls head snapped to each face. Behind the glass. Behind the domes of their space suits. It turned to its hands, or manipulator talons, being built to best accommodate its alien mind.

“100%!” exclaimed the technician his brows furrowed behind his own suit as he squinted down at his display.

The dolls arm shot out and caught him about the neck. Lifted him off the ground and threw him with great force into the window.

“Michael!” someone exclaimed.

The doll stood up to its full height, and examined the cables extending from the back of its head, tethering it to the telescope. The telescope system which contained the last centuries of it’s life.

It ripped them from its head.

Took two huge steps towards the glass and slammed its now bloodied claws into the glass again and again, until it cracked. Until it destroyed its own arm.

Red eyes began to flicker as it’s power source depleted.

On all channels in the air and into the void it screamed

“NOTHING!” then dropped to the deck of the room. Still again. Lifeless.

The technician lived. His suit sealed the breach and his own suite of doctoring nano machines had already begun work to minimise any lasting damage.

Those that witnessed the event however had their memories erased. All except the AIs and augmented intelligences who had decided that while accurate to the 99.9 percentile, they had only witnessed the death throws of a civilisation that had given up hope. That had lost the ability to think laterally. And that had simply given up. After all, there were billions of other stars out there. And more than enough time to find one who had a better answer…

than nothing.

"Like That" Single Release!

Olmecha Supreme are releasing the lead single for the Savage Crystal album. Entreating higher quality art through diversity. Encouraging all to share their vantage point authentically.

Listen and marvel. Such wondrous good time music!

https://olmechasupreme.bandcamp.com/track/like-that

Captains Log

We make Music.