Hexvessel and Mariee Sioux

I listen to a LOT of music. I always have and always will. As a kid I liked to go to record stores and dig through LPs for hours. When I was young and first discovering punk, it was always great to find new bands. Sometimes you took a chance on a record and it became an instant favorite. One of my favorite shops had a couple of turntables with headphones set up and they allowed you to listen to the used records before you bought them. As you can imagine, I would stay in that store all day.

These days it is so much easier to find new music. As a kid in the 70s and 80s, you either heard about a new band word-of-mouth, found it in a catalog (Toxic Shock was my favorite - so much good stuff) or got the chance to give it a listen at a used record store. Since I was never really into things that get much radio play, these were pretty much my only options. Fast-forward to today and you have the internet.

Over the years, music access on the internet has improved substantially. Even rare and obscure titles are available at the press of a button. You can even find bands from all over the world using Bandcamp, Soundcloud, YouTube, Spotify, etc. This is exactly how I found one of my favorite bands of all time: Hexvessel.

I cannot remember exactly how I came across them but I believe it was in a Related Artists page for another band in Spotify. Hexvessel hails from Finland but their lead singer, Mat McNerney aka Kvohst, is from England. You may know him from the Dødheimsgard album, Supervillian Outcast.

Hearing Hexvessel for the first time was like a religious experience. For anyone that knows me, you know my affinity and reverence for nature. Listening to Hexvessel is like sitting in on an ancient Druid ritual. It's calming. It's magick.

I'm really hoping to see them live some day. For now, I have to rely on my (now) old friend the internet for live videos. For the curious, there are plenty of non-live videos out there as well. Here is the first song of theirs I ever heard titled Sacred Marriage:

While clicking through Related Artists pages in Spotify another time, I came across an artist that has been populating my headphones ever since: Mariee Sioux. From what I've read, Mariee hails from California, USA. Her music is not only beautiful but her lyrical content is incredible. There are poetic stories woven into melodies that soothe and calm the listener. If you pay attention to some of the lyrics, it's like listening to old tales and myths. No matter how much I listen, I find new things to like in her songs.
The first album of Mariee Sioux's that I heard was Faces in the Rocks. At the time, I was having a serious panic attack. Laying in the dark while listening to this album brought me back to Earth and calmed me down. It was bliss. Since that time, her music always calms me and makes me feel better if I'm having a bad day. For this, I thank her.
Here is her song Wizard Flurry Home:

I've read somewhere (maybe on their own webpage) that Hexvessel calls themselves Forest Folk. I would agree with this because I feel like this description fits any music that embraces and reveres nature and the Earth as much as they do. I would also say that this "Forest Folk" term that they've coined includes aspects of the psychedelic. With that in mind, Mariee Sioux fits nicely into this category as well.
I can only hope that both of these artists tour in Michigan someday.
If you have any comments or similar artists you would like to share, feel free.

Moss Gardening

I've been into hunting and cultivating mushrooms for a while now but lately I've been getting more and more interested in moss. Hunting and cultivating mushrooms falls under mycology while mosses, lichens (also awesome) and liverworts fall under bryology. By the way, I also write a blog on Michigan mushrooms. Click here to check it out.

So...what is moss? The short answer is that moss is a plant that, rather than true roots, has what are called rhizoids. It also reproduces using spores like a fungus. The spores of a moss are contained in small pods called spore capsules. For more on what a moss is, check out the explanation from Mountain Moss.

One way to transfer and plant moss is to take pieces, plant them like sod and then fill in the space between with a moss slurry. A moss slurry is made by taking pieces of the moss, putting them in a blender, and adding a substrate such as beer, yogurt or buttermilk. I don't believe in wasting beer and buttermilk is cheap so that's what I went with. I would not suggest using a blender that you plan to use for anything else but that's up to you. I found a shitty old blender for 3 dollars at a thrift store and so far it's working great. To create the slurry, put some of the moss in the blender, add the buttermilk...and blend it! The first picture here is just some of the moss in the blender. The second picture is after I added the buttermilk and blended. It's like dirty buttermilk and smells like it. Tasty.

One thing you'll want to do is pull all the grass and other plants from the area you want to grow moss in. This will limit competition and allow the moss to take over easier. I decided to start in a fairly shady spot in my front yard. Hopefully it propagates. If it does well, I can then take pieces and spread it further. My goal is to not have grass in a few years (or sooner). Moss is only one of the things I plan to use for this purpose.

To get moss, you have options. You can buy it at some nurseries and also online at a place like Mountain Moss. You can also do what I did and find some you like out in the wild. I've found a lot of different types that I like in graveyards, the woods, etc. I found one out while I was mushroom hunting that had these awesome orange spore capsules. I took some of it (while leaving enough for it to survive of course), brought it home and used it. I also found some that I liked in my backyard. It's really not all that hard to find if you just open your eyes and look for it.

There is no need to pay for something that Mother Nature provides for free!

In the third picture here, you can see the results of my work. I pulled out the grass and loosened the dirt. I then planted the moss sod and filled in some of the space with the moss slurry. It looks pretty crappy at the moment but hopefully the moss will start to grow. I will post an update at some point in the future.