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Typical cost* 1 CD + International Shipping = $18.43

Typical cost* 2 CDs + International Shipping = $33.78

Friday, December 25, 2009


This picture was taken this evening: no, this is not a WITCHES BREW...German speakers among you will probably recognize the characteristic profile of a burning Koelner Zuckerhut, well-laced with high proof rum!

This was hands down the best Feurzangenbowle I ever sampled, due certainly to its overnight incubation. We prepared the wine yesterday at our friends' house, then did not "do the burn" because Mama Lycan fell sound asleep whilst putting young Solaris "dodo" (hiya, night night...you know). So, the wine, orange and lemon concoction was heated with cinnamon, allspice and cardamon, then cooled and left sitting overnight. The flavor today was simply divine!

Better yet, after heating issues since moving into the new house, we splurged and started a fire with the stove in our new house. Talk about efficient - we are roasting in here, and only added 1 log since starting the fire 8 hours ago...the coals are red hot and the stove is still blasting heat.

So, just a quick note to wish you (yes, YOU!) all the best for the holiday season and every day. We are really excited about this upcoming year: Nelson will continue to focus on his music and Lycantrop. I will continue to help with the "marketing" side of Lycantrop, and will also focus on my passion: sustainable business. As some of you know, my background is in technology sales and business development: my goal now is to assist companies in re-tooling their strategies for maximum sustainability. In Jan/Feb, I'll be taking a course in Triple Bottom Line Accounting (People/Planet/Profit). Anyone interested in this stuff, get in touch and let's share information!

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Hi Friends, little update..

First, we are NOT stopping Lycantrop Records! Not sure where these rumors started. Maybe because I blogged that we move to a new location? Yes, we are moving and the studio may be down for 1 month, but our release schedule will not be affected.

We will have 2 to 3 releases next year. Nelson is almost done compiling HYBRIDES EVOLUTION, which will be 100% collaboration (2 or more projects) tracks. A challenge to compile a good story with such diverse input, but the finished result will deliver a highly concentrated smorgasbord of sound.
Expected Release date: March or April

After that: Lycantrop DJs Iguana and Corious are compiling something nice and hot to go along with the summer sunshine.

For autumn, we have TIGHT SHIP, all tracks custom-produced around one common theme. Since "loose lips sink tight ships", I won't say more about this one so early on, but stay tuned.

ps - We are thrilled to be syncing up with DIST ELECTRONIC for our digital distribution: Distorted Shire is the first release they will manage, release date is 8 December

pps - just a few Lycantrop Records "v 1.0" tshirts left! A perfect holiday gift - see our special package deals: http://www.lycantrop-rec.com/shop.html (click on the TSHIRT symbol)

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Permatrance Culture (Will we Figure it Out?)

Okay, this is a bit of a rant - yes, I'm grumpy! It has occurred to me...the global psytrance scene must have the highest concentration of sustainability phreaks of any group on the planet. Why, then, are so few of our artists sustainable in their music-creation lifestyles? There are very few artists making a living from their music - most either have other jobs or other sources of incomes. The night psychedelic scene, in particular, is the least commercial and the most poverty stricken!

The global economy is 10 times the size of the global money supply. So, everything runs on credit, except The Underground. In our world, cash is king. So, if you are going to make a party, have someone who understands finances make the budget. Charge the cover price you need to charge so that everyone gets taken care of. Don't compete with other events. Remember that the music-makers are our technoshamans, they modulate the trance energy, they must be supported, for without them, the beating pulse of trance is nought.

It's not right and it is not fair and it is not sustainable when people get something without reciprocating. Long term, it does not add up: pain and hardship hit the very shamans we are honor-bound to protect. We see this problem on a global scale (I sometimes think I hear Gaia weeping), but we don't fix it in our own scene. And if we can't get sustainable in a cash economy, how on earth (pardon the pun) will we unwind all that global credit and balance things out on a global scale?

We are the canaries in the coal mine, friends. Credit is dried up. Now it gets ugly. Or beautiful. (Anyone else read Jared Diamond's "Collapse"?)



Friday, November 13, 2009

Lycantrop Celebrates Birthday with YOU ( + Godzilla friend!)

Wow, many thanks to all for your birthday greetings - yes, Lycantrop turns 1 year old today, this being the one year anniversary of our flagship release: Lycans' Meeting! A special thanks to people who have bought CDs from us - your support really and truly is keeping this label alive, Lycan friends like T in Japan and J in South Korea (J, hope the tshirt fits PERFECT), Belinda, Jose, Vincent...EVERYONE: massive gratitude: obrigado, thank you, danke schoen, dank je wel, grazie, arigato, merci, gracias!

As a special thank you to online-connected friends, we will sell Lycans' Meeting for 7 Euros for the rest of the month of November. Even better, you can purchase Lycans' Meeting + Distorted Shire (including access codes for 2 free downloads) - 2CDs - for just 12 € (Currency Converter here on our main blog page). Shipping costs additional (much less expensive if we remove from the plastic jewel cases, but you can choose: packaged or not).

To order, contact us on Facebook, Ning, MySpace or directly by email at LycantropRecordsAdmin@gmail.com

Now is probably a good moment to remind you that the first 10 Lycantrop CDs will form a VISUAL BOXED SSETt, with a special image visible when you place the 10 CDs sequentially.

Look at the picture: can you already guess what the image will be?

  • A few tshirts and tanktops are still available – ask for your size and save BIG on shipping costs when you place a CD+shirt order!

Must run, time to put Solaris to bed. Then back to packing and organizing for our upcoming move to new Lycantrop digs. Overijse experiment drawing to a close, time for the next phase!

Monday, October 12, 2009

Auuwooooohhhhm!

Auuwooooohhhhm! Do you like my new word? It is a combination of wolf's howl and AUM.

Over here at Lycantrop headquarters, we are just starting to get back to a normal pattern, after a summer of travel, followed by our son being too sick to go to daycare for over a month. That set us back a bit, especially with our website, which still needs a lot of work - but only Mrs Lycan can do it, and only when she has some time. Musically, we are pushing ahead: Hybrides Evolution is very very close to being compiled. Expect a March release date. The concept is 100% collaboration (2 or more projects) tracks. A challenge to build a good story, but Nelson is feeling good about the flow so far! So, stay tuned.

Local parties are back now that summer is over: I had a great time and made a little money doing a shop for the last Lost Theory party: highlights were Neil Gibson deco (and hanging a biwith Neil: a most considerate, interesting and fun dooooooood - tks again for the Js!), hanging a bit with Gus Till and the DJ set from top Belgian DJ Entre Nous (formerly Makkura). Standout tracks in his set: Encephalopaticys (don't know what track it was) and Megalopsy's new track "Derrames" from Lost Theory's Forest Frequencies release. How could I forget: also had mucho funno with Mike and Pieter - Repsycled all the way. In fact, the strangest thing about this party in a boy scout building somewhere in Belgium, was the fact that we had 4 native English speakers just chillin and all of us are so used to our odd lives, that it didn't seem strange. Then, we were like, "How did we all get here?" ;-)))))))))))

Just 2 days until Solaris turns 2 and we will celebrate with our extended trance family (our own families are farther afield) this Saturday. Serendipitously enough, our friends Ryko and Pedro make a free "Elektro Shankar" party in Brussels that night and Nelson is going to DJ (get your asses down there, Mario aka DJ Device is playing, too - and Ryko and Mozkatt and and and!!!)...and Luis has agreed (THANK YOU!) to stay home with Little One so that I can enjoy. That will be a real celebration: I love being a mom, but it has been a while since I saw Nelson play, so this will be a day to enjoy both of my guys. :-)))

Okay, gotta run, just wanted to say HELLO, thanks for staying tuned. We are alive and kicking (and bass-ing, too) !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Boooooooom and Auuwooooohhhhm!!! K Lycan

ps- for realtime miniupdates, follow us on Twitter: LycantropRecord ;-))

Friday, September 4, 2009

What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger!

Let's hope the old adage proves true in the case of super son/sun Solaris, today diagnosed with bronchitis after over 2 months with a cough. I did take him to the doctor between returning from Portugal and leaving for the US, but the doctor said she "did not hear anything" in his chest...long story short, it got worse and worse, and then he got a high fever, vomiting stomach flu on top of it...not good.

I am sure he will be fine: he is incredibly strong and still has a lot of energy for being so sick. He is taking 3 medicines through an inhaler machine...which he hates and which requires assistance (endless gratitude to Luis, aka Pikalel, aka Krono Psy). His father cannot help because he is in Guatemala, resting up for Crossroads of Fantapsy tomorrow - should be a great party, and Nelson is in the mood to PLAAAAAY after a killer set at Aurora Festival in Greece last month.

On the Lycantrop side of the world, top priority is finishing the artist profiles complete (finally) and doing some other necessary website stuff. As soon as Nelson finishes compiling for the Hybrides Evolution compilation (a tricky CD this one, as every track will be a VERSUS...or as we like to say "WITH"...so you have to build a story that flows with many different producer sounds in it), we will announce it - right now, the tracklist is perhaps 70% finalized. Realistically, we probably won't get it out before the end of the year, as we had been hoping to do. March looks more likely and you know what they say about March...IN LIKE A LION. We'll keep ya posted.

DISTORTED SHIRE - the DarkShiRe+Mind Distortion System "split versus plus friends"comp just released in August) continues to sell well - currently sold out in Saiko Sounds and Bravo, but Beatspace has promised me they will restock soon. It's been #12 or 13 on the Psyshop charts for the past week. As you might know, this CD was HANDMADE WITH LOVE right in Lycantrop HQ - and I cannot tell you how many people have told me they never would have guessed it - the quality is very, very good. A reminder that every time you buy the full release (digital from our webshop or physical CD from our shop or any retailer), you get a code for 2 free downloads- X by Dark Elf (DarkShiRe rmx) and Space Race by MDS...

As usual, a big thanks to YOU for your support - if you are reading this, your good energy is coming our way (and vice versa)!!

Finally, a few words to acknowledge the untimely passing of Rodney, internationally known for being the main man behind Shanti Jatra festival in Nepal. I did not know Rodney personally, but all my contact him was professional and pleasant, and it was a shock to hear that he is no longer part of our material realm. Condolences to his friends and family.

Peace to all,
K. Lycan


ps - Hopefully, this post will NOT show up 3 times on Facebook - I think I fixed the problem. I cannot believe that some dude thought I was triple posting intentionally.

pps - little videomix of Solaris hitting his current favorite tunes: "Eensy Weensy Spider", "Oh Susannah" and the Sesame Street classic "C is for Cookie" right at the the end of our US trip...it looks more dangerous than it was, we were going very very very slow in a big traffic jam and I just held the camera behind me (I wasn't looking). Yes, he likes to pretend that a pretend Jupiler remote control is his telephone....good little Belgian. ;-)))

Monday, August 31, 2009

We would thank you from the bottom of our hearts, but for you, our hearts have no bottom!

Big thanks to Belinda in Denmark, Will in the UK, Marek in Poland, Christoph in Austria, Bjorn in Norway, Yu in Japan....Jelle in Belgium, Sylvain in France....just a few of the many who have shown their support for DISTORTED SHIRE by purchasing the CD!!!

This week, DISTORTED SHIRE is #3 in Saiko Charts and #12 on Psyshop.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Thanks for putting us in the Psyshop charts AGAIN!!


You've done it again. We were so happy and apprecaitive when Lycans' Meeting hit the top 20 charts for Psyshop, but I can honestly say, we did not expect it to happen again with our second release. It is summertime, everyone is traveling, and we have not had much time to promote this release.

But, wow, guess what! DISTORTED SHIRE just arrived at Psyshop and is already number 17 in their charts!

Thanks SOOOO much for your support. As many of you know, these CDs were handmade with love and dedication to the community.

Every little bit helps us to stay 1000% focused on our mission of TRANSFORMATION-through-TRANCE FORMATION!!

Monday, August 3, 2009

Distorted Shire - Out Now

Distorted Shire inner album artwork 3x!"Distorted Shire inner album artwork 3x


Hi Ho! Hope everyone is having a great summer. We just got back from Portugal last night, and baby Lycantrop and Mama Lycantrop leave Friday for almost 1 month in the US, visiting family. Meanwhile, we are busy working on the Lycantrop website and our second release, Distorted Shire: a tightly woven, highly cohesive story OUT NOW - in both digital (MP3 and FLAC/WAV) and CD formats!!! Here is the tracklist:

DarkShiRe: Yakuza 148
DarkShiRe & Detonator: Snake in the Grass 149
Dark Elf & Mind Distortion System: Groovy Minds 150
Septagram: Trancendance 150
Kulu & Mind Distortion System: Moving from Inside 150
DarkShiRe & Mind Distortion System: Night Takes the Queen 149
Mind Distortion System: Lycantrop 152
Mind Distortion System: Dollar Collapse 154
Mind Distortion System & Darkshire: Integrated 154
Kokobloko & Cymazz: Micromodules 156-168

Feedback has been excellent - so far, we have had direct contact with every single person who has the music, which is really cool and also probably explains why it is not being shared over the internet.

GET IT NOW/HOW??
We are going on the record to say we have NOTHING against sharing music as part of what it means to enjoy!! Full 128 kbps tracks are up on LAST FM for your listening pleasure. Our Webshop (more on this later) sells both 320 kbps mp3 and FLAC4WAV.

So, yes, the CD is out now, but still not available in the regular shops - there was a delay because Beatspace first did not want to carry the CDs.* Beatspace has now confirmed receipt of the shipment, so DISTORTED SHIRE should be in stock at Beatspace and other shops any day now.

Here in Belgium, we encourage you to purchase from Mike of Recycled Records - this way, your purchasing power goes straight back into our local community. Sustainability is where it is at. Mike will have DISTORTED SHIRE CDs at the Lost Theory party on 5 September.

If you just can't wait - our "Nimbit" webshop is integrated with our Lycantrop web-profiles - and features exclusive SPECIAL DEALS. Find the Nimbit Shop on any of these pages:
- MySpace profile (top of page)
- Facebook profile (go to boxes tab)
- Facebook page (go to boxes tab) BTW: still a chance to get the Distorted Shire bonus tracks from this page if you read carefully ;-)))))))
- Psyport page (top of page)
- Lycantrop website (a work in progress, artist "portals" will all be "activated" soon)
:-)))))))))))

SPECIAL DEALS:
From the webshop interface, CLICK on the TSHIRT icon to the right of the music (albums) icon.
Special deals: Discounts if you purchase:
1) - 2 CDS and a tshirt/tank top
2) - 1 CD and a tshirt/tank top
3) - Lycans' Meeting+ Distorted Shire together (this deal will come online tonight or tomorrow)
----------------
THANKS!
Some people have already noticed that when you place Lycans' Meeting next to Distorted Shire, the beginning of a design begins to emerge. The full design will be visible when the first 10 Lycantrop CDS are placed together in sequence. A special thank you to the listeners who show their support through buying the music.
----------------
BONUS TRACKS!!!!
A more immediate way of saying thanks: if you buy the full DISTORTED SHIRE album (MP3, FLAC/WAV) or CD & receive 2 bonus tracks as free downloads. The tracks are "X" 152 by Dark Elf (DarkShiRe rmx) and "Space Race" (also 152, this one has received great response here in Belgium) by Mind Distortion System. If you buy the CDs through our shop, the downloads appear automatically. If you buy the CD through Beatspace, Psyshop, etc, the download codes can be found inside the CD package.

Big boom!!!
The Lycan Crew

ps - DJ contest will be reannounced with updated parameters once tech issues are sorted. sorry for not having it together sooner
----------------------------
* If you buy a CD, you might notice they were "Made in Belgium" - underground (literally) style. We chose to work this way because was the only way to be SURE not to lose money on the release. Most people who have seen the CDs have said that if we did not tell them we'd done them ourselves, they would not have guessed it. But anybody who pays attention to that sort of thing CAN see it (on the CD). That said, the quality is pretty damn good. And just think, handmade with LOVE.
:-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ALBUM DESCRIPTION
The inspiration for Lycantrop's second compilation, Distorted Shire, comes from Greek myth and legend. For thousands of years, the ancient Greeks celebrated the Eleusinian Mysteries, an annual ritual that culminated with group consumption of the barley-based, entheogenic kykeon drink and a night of wild dancing. Greece was also home to the father of all Lycans: King Lykaon, transformed into a wolf by Zeus himself. Transformation lies at the heart of these ancient traditions and tales and trance formation is Lycan lifeblood.

Distorted Shire is a "split plus friends", with Nelson (Mind Distortion System) and Mario (DarkShiRe) at its core, and featuring an all-Greek cast of producers, with the exception of Mind Distortion System. MDS and DarkShiRe collaborated on two tracks; the rest of the album is split between the two artists and features each of them solo, as well as with friends, including artist Dimitri Dark Elf on tracks with each. The result of this tight-knit collaboration is a highly cohesive and smooth-flowing album with dynamic basslines and energetic, shifting rhythms: acoustic kykeon for the wolf within!

Lycanophiles everywhere, prepare for lift-off!

Efxaristo Ellada!

~~~~~~~~~~
Compiled by Nelson MDS and Mario DarkShiRe

Mastered by Nelson MDS and Dimitri Dark Elf

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Deep Politics Monitor: James Turk on how the elites always destroy the paper money they value - and why gold always wins

Deep Politics Monitor: James Turk on how the elites always destroy the paper money they value - and why gold always wins

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Distorted Shire release + bonus tracks

Just a quick note to let you know that the Distorted Shire bonus tracks are now in our webshop (you can find the webshop on this blog, and also on our Myspace page, Facebook pages (fan page and main page) as well as on the Lycantrop website: wherever you go, there we are! (As Alan Watts says, "Now, don't be frightened...")
;-)

Distorted Shire bonus tracks:
We are proud to offer you "X" by Dark Elf (DarksHiRe remix) and "Space Race" by Mind Distortion System - both tracks are 152 bpm and you receive download access to each track in both MP3 and FLAC(WAV).

The tracks can be purchased (yes, yes, show your support!!!) but they will be FREE to anyone who purchases the Distorted Shire physical CD (release date 3 July), which we are hand-crafting with LOVE right here in the Lycantrop HQ production facility. I'll get some pics online soon, and explain more....but I can promise you that the quality is retail-level. It has been a big project but we hope that innovation and dedication to the scene are gonna keep us pumping music your way for a long time to come!

If you do visit our website, you might notice that the Artist Profiles are all F#CkED up - long story short, we are getting some great help on our site from Boo Design in Australia, but I'm doing the profiles and pseudo-learning Dreamweaver on the fly. I think I finally know what I am doing, so all profiles should be online by the end of this month...I'll be doing a few each day...currently, Mubali, MDS, Dark Elf and DarksHiRe are online, so you can check them out for fun.

Psycrowdelica

We're making a shop at Psycrowdelica (Irish Coffee...mmmh) - hope see you there!

Monday, April 6, 2009

Spring has sprung!

Over here in the land of Moules and Frites, the birds are cuddled up in pairs, and the tulips in our garden have flowered. Things are growing, maturing. And while our blog may have apppeared lifeless of late, Lycantrop Records is alive and well, about to enter Chapter 2 with the upcoming release of Distorted Shire a "split (MDS and Darkshire) + friends (an all Greek cast!). Mastering by MDS and Dimitri and artwork by Ju...

There is a comment thread going on Forum Isra Trance, if you want to visit, here's the direct link.
:-)

On the website front, we'll have artist profiles online within a week or two - most of the artists have already been mentioned on this site, but there are a couple of surprises, too. We are so happy to have these artists with us - it is our mission to support them and help them to touch people wi...we are just channeling all that energy and hoping that our contribution to the vibration is gonna help humanity to get to the next stage - a world where our children can grow without fear and hate, where we are sustainable in our habitat and respectful of every living thing. A place of balance. An evolved world. A spiritual world. Cross your fingers for Spaceship Earth!

On our "Nimbit" webshop, you can also shop directly for Lycantrop digital and physical merchandise - that means MP3 and FLAC (WAV) tracks, as well as CDs and )- coming soon - Tshirts. The shop is also THE PLACE to join our mailing list - we are getting organized and will be using our shop to do things like make exclusive tracks available to the people on our list - so JOIN THE PACK - OWWOOOOOH!

Oh yeah, I should mention that our webshop is also integrated into the Lycantrop Records profiles on MySpace and Facebook , as well as Psyport and here on this blog...so you can join our mailing list from any site and also purchase Lycantrop stuff if you are the purchasing kind of person. ;-)

Rawar was just here and it was a true pleasure to meet him, and I was blown away by his music...if you don't know his stuff or you haven't heard his latest music, I highly recommend a listen! Was a great night at Psychedelic DOA - da Portuguese were really in the house with Krono Psy of ICC and Lycantrop (okay, now it is not a surprise anymore!), Mind Distortion System (kiss!) and Rawar all playing live. I'll get pics online soon and videos...someday. Soon. I hope. ;-)

The DJ Mixcast contest is still happening but technical issues have delayed the "active phase" of listening and voting, so I will reannounce it soon and allow entries until much later than originally planned. Sorry about that and thanks for your patience.

That's all for now. Peace....

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Must read article on the true crisis we face!

Wow, this is an article REALLY worth reading! Someone has tied it all together, simply, elegantly and profoundly. Understanding this article fully can be a life changing experience.

Step by step, a clear and logical explanation of our situation. In my previous life, I helped develop software and business based around total automation of once human processes. Every time our software was installed, 1 to 1000 people lost their jobs. Growth, indeed. Parasites grow big and fat on their hosts, but they die together.

Right now, we are born and socialized into a world that tells us to maintain the status quo. We do not think about this fundamental imbalance, because we are told (through media, education, etc) that all the institutions and authorities, the laws, the values and the science are working. Even now, in the midst of crisis, the goal is to restart "growth". Consumers need access to credit so they can go out and spend, spend, spend.

Everything we have that we don't need (and we all have!) accelerates the destruction of our planetary ecosystem and takes resources away from future generations of life on this planet. We are encouraged to do this by corrupted institutions. In every type of government, in every way imaginable, money creeps in and buys: influence.

Everyone wants to stay asleep because the personal implications of waking up are so momentous. As long as you are ignorant, you are innocent. You live your Matrix life, plugged in. But once you are aware, you cannot press the UNDO button and go back to ignorance.

Reader beware, for as you well know, life outside the Matrix is a tough and gritty existence!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Money and the Crisis of Civilization

Charles Eisenstein

Suppose you give me a million dollars with the instructions, "Invest this profitably, and I'll pay you well." I'm a sharp dresser -- why not? So I go out onto the street and hand out stacks of bills to random passers-by. Ten thousand dollars each. In return, each scribbles out an IOU for $20,000, payable in five years. I come back to you and say, "Look at these IOUs! I have generated a 20% annual return on your investment." You are very pleased, and pay me an enormous commission.

Now I've got a big stack of IOUs, so I use these "assets" as collateral to borrow even more money, which I lend out to even more people, or sell them to others like myself who do the same. I also buy insurance to cover me in case the borrowers default -- and I pay for it with those self-same IOUs! Round and round it goes, each new loan becoming somebody's asset on which to borrow yet more money. We all rake in huge commissions and bonuses, as the total face value of all the assets we've created from that initial million dollars is now fifty times that.

Then one day, the first batch of IOUs comes due. But guess what? The person who scribbled his name on the IOU can't pay me back right now. In fact, lots of the borrowers can't. I try to hush this embarrassing fact up as long as possible, but pretty soon you get suspicious. You want your million dollars back -- in cash. I try to sell the IOUs and their derivatives that I hold, but everyone else is suspicious too, and no one buys them. The insurance company tries to cover my losses, but it can only do so by selling the IOUs I gave it!

So finally, the government steps in and buys the IOUs, bails out the insurance company and everyone else holding the IOUs and the derivatives stacked on them. Their total value is way more than a million dollars now. I and my fellow entrepreneurs retire with our lucre. Everyone else pays for it.

This is the first level of what has happened in the financial industry over the past decade. It is a huge transfer of wealth to the financial elite, to be funded by US taxpayers, foreign corporations and governments, and ultimately the foreign workers who subsidize US debt indirectly via the lower purchasing power of their wages. However, to see the current crisis as merely the result of a big con is to miss its true significance.

I think we all sense that we are nearing the end of an era. On the most superficial level, it is the era of unregulated casino-style financial manipulation that is ending. But the current efforts of the political elites to fix the crisis at this level will only reveal its deeper dimensions. In fact, the crisis goes "all the way to the bottom." It arises from the very nature of money and property in the world today, and it will persist and continue to intensify until money itself is transformed. A process centuries in the making is in its final stages of unfoldment.

Money as we know it today has crisis and collapse built into its basic design. That is because money seeks interest, bears interest, and indeed is born of interest. To see how this works, let's go back to some finance basics. Money is created when somebody takes out a loan from a bank (or more recently, a disguised loan from some other kind of institution). A debt is a promise to pay money in the future in order to buy something today; in other words, borrowing money is a form of delayed trading. I receive something now (bought with the money I borrowed) and agree to give something in the future (a good or service which I will sell for the money to pay back the debt). A bank or any other lender will ordinarily only agree to lend you money if there is a reasonable expectation you will pay it back; in other words, if there is a reasonable expectation you will produce goods or services of equivalent value. This "reasonable expectation" can be guaranteed in the form of collateral, or it can be encoded in one's credit rating.

Any time you use money, you are essentially guaranteeing "I have performed a service or provided a good of equivalent value to the one I am buying." If the money is borrowed money, you are saying that you will provide an equivalent good/service in the future.

Now enter interest. What motivates a bank to lend anyone money in the first place? It is interest. Interest drives the creation of money today. Any time money is created through debt, a need to create even more money in the future is also created. The amount of money must grow over time, which means that the volume of goods and services must grow over time as well.

If the volume of money grows faster than the volume of goods and services, the result is inflation. If it grows more slowly -- for example through a slowdown in lending -- the result is bankruptcies, recession, or deflation. The government can increase or decrease the supply of money in several ways. First, it can create money by borrowing it from the central bank, or in America, from the Federal Reserve. This money ends up as bank deposits, which in turn give banks more margin reserves on which to extend loans. You see, a bank's capacity to create money is limited by margin reserve requirements. Typically, a bank must hold cash (or central bank deposits) equal to about 10% of its total customer deposits. The other 90%, it can loan out, thus creating new money. This money ends up back in a bank as deposits, allowing another 81% of it (90% of 90%) to be lent out again. In this way, each dollar of initial deposits ends up as $9 of new money. Government spending of money borrowed from the central bank acts a seed for new money creation. (Of course, this depends on banks' willingness to lend! In a credit freeze such as happened this week, banks hoard excess reserves and the repeated injections of government money have little effect.)

Another way to increase the money supply is to lower margin reserve requirements. In practice this is rarely done, at least directly. However, in the last decade, various kinds of non-bank lending have skirted the margin reserve requirement, through the alphabet soup of financial instruments you've been hearing about in the news. The result is that each dollar of original equity has been leveraged not to nine times it original value, as in traditional banking, but to 70 times or even more. This has allowed returns on investment far beyond the 5% or so available from traditional banking, along with "compensation" packages beyond the dreams of avarice.

Each new dollar that is created comes with a new dollar of debt -- more than a dollar of debt, because of interest. The debt is eventually redeemed either with goods and services, or with more borrowed money, which in turn can be redeemed with yet more borrowed money... but eventually it will be used to buy goods and services. The interest has to come from somewhere. Borrowing more money to make the interest payments on an existing loan merely postpones the day of reckoning by deferring the need to create new goods and services.

The whole system of interest-bearing money works fine as long as the volume of goods and services exchanged for money keeps growing. The crisis we are seeing today is in part because new money has been created much faster than goods and services have, and much faster than has been historically sustainable. There are only two ways out of such a situation: inflation and bankruptcies. Each involve the destruction of money. The current convulsions of the financial and political elites basically come down to a futile attempt to prevent both. Their first concern is to prevent the evaporation of money through massive bankruptcies, because it is, after all, their money.

There is a much deeper crisis at work as well, a crisis in the creation of goods and services that underlies money to begin with, and it is this crisis that gave birth to the real estate bubble everyone blames for the current situation. To understand it, let's get clear on what constitutes a "good" or a "service." In economics, these terms refer to something that is exchanged for money. If I babysit your children for free, economists don't count it as a service. It cannot be used to pay a financial debt: I cannot go to the supermarket and say, "I watched my neighbor's kids this morning, so please give me food." But if I open a day care center and charge you money, I have created a "service." GDP rises and, according to economists, society has become wealthier.

The same is true if I cut down a forest and sell the timber. While it is still standing and inaccessible, it is not a good. It only becomes "good" when I build a logging road, hire labor, cut it down, and transport it to a buyer. I convert a forest to timber, a commodity, and GDP goes up. Similarly, if I create a new song and share it for free, GDP does not go up and society is not considered wealthier, but if I copyright it and sell it, it becomes a good. Or I can find a traditional society that uses herbs and shamanic techniques for healing, destroy their culture and make them dependent on pharmaceutical medicine which they must purchase, evict them from their land so they cannot be subsistence farmers and must buy food, clear the land and hire them on a banana plantation -- and I have made the world richer. I have brought various functions, relationships, and natural resources into the realm of money. In The Ascent of Humanity I describe this process in depth: the conversion of social capital, natural capital, cultural capital, and spiritual capital into money.

Essentially, for the economy to continue growing and for the (interest-based) money system to remain viable, more and more of nature and human relationship must be monetized. For example, thirty years ago most meals were prepared at home; today some two-thirds are prepared outside, in restaurants or supermarket delis. A once unpaid function, cooking, has become a "service". And we are the richer for it. Right?

Another major engine of economic growth over the last three decades, child care, has also made us richer. We are now relieved of the burden of caring for our own children. We pay experts instead, who can do it much more efficiently.

In ancient times entertainment was also a free, participatory function. Everyone played an instrument, sang, participated in drama. Even 75 years ago in America, every small town had its own marching band and baseball team. Now we pay for those services. The economy has grown. Hooray.

The crisis we are facing today arises from the fact that there is almost no more social, cultural, natural, and spiritual capital left to convert into money. Centuries, millennia of near-continuous money creation has left us so destitute that we have nothing left to sell. Our forests are damaged beyond repair, our soil depleted and washed into the sea, our fisheries fished out, the rejuvenating capacity of the earth to recycle our waste saturated. Our cultural treasury of songs and stories, images and icons, has been looted and copyrighted. Any clever phrase you can think of is already a trademarked slogan. Our very human relationships and abilities have been taken away from us and sold back, so that we are now dependent on strangers, and therefore on money, for things few humans ever paid for until recently: food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, child care, cooking. Life itself has become a consumer item. Today we sell away the last vestiges of our divine bequeathment: our health, the biosphere and genome, even our own minds. This is the process that is culminating in our age. It is almost complete, especially in America and the "developed" world. In the developing world there still remain people who live substantially in gift cultures, where natural and social wealth is not yet the subject of property. Globalization is the process of stripping away these assets, to feed the money machine's insatiable, existential need to grow. Yet this stripmining of other lands is running up against its limits too, both because there is almost nothing left to take, and because of growing pockets of effective resistance.

The result is that the supply of money -- and the corresponding volume of debt -- has for several decades outstripped the production of goods and services that it promises. It is deeply related to the classic problem of oversupply in capitalist economics. The Marxian crisis of capital can be deferred into the future as long as new, high-profit industries and markets can be developed to compensate for the vicious circle of falling profits, falling wages, depressed consumption, and overproduction in mature industries. The continuation of capitalism as we know it depends on an infinite supply of these new industries, which essentially must convert infinite new realms of social, natural, cultural, and spiritual capital into money. The problem is, these resources are finite, and the closer they come to exhaustion, the more painful their extraction becomes. Therefore, contemporaneous with the financial crisis we have an ecological crisis and a health crisis. They are intimately interlinked. We cannot convert much more of the earth into money, or much more of our health into money, before the basis of life itself is threatened.

Faced with the exhaustion of the non-monetized commonwealth that it consumes, financial capital has tried to delay the inevitable by cannibalizing itself. The dot-com bubble of the late 90s showed that the productive economy could not longer keep up with the growth of money. Lots of excess money was running around frantically, searching for a place where the promise of deferred goods and services could be redeemed. So, to postpone the inevitable crash, the Fed slashed interest rates and loosened monetary policy to allow old debts to be repaid with new debts (rather than real goods and services). The new financial goods and services that arose were phony, artifacts of deceptive accounting on a vast, systemic scale.

Obviously, the practice of borrowing new money to pay the principal and interest of old debts cannot last very long, but that is what the economy as a whole has done for ten years now. Unfortunately, simply stopping this practice isn't going to solve the underlying problem. A collapse is coming, unavoidably. The government's bailout plan will at best postpone it for a year or two (who knows, maybe until 2012!), long enough for the big players to move their money to a safe haven. They will discover, though, that there is no safe haven. As the US dollar loses its safe-haven status (which will happen all the more certainly when the government takes over Wall Street's bad debts), you can expect capital to chase various commodities in an inflationary surge before a deflationary depression takes hold. If a credit freeze overpowers the government's inflationary measures, depression will come all the sooner.

The present crisis is actually the final stage of what began in the 1930s. Successive solutions to the fundamental problem of keeping pace with money that expands with the rate of interest have been applied, and exhausted. The first effective solution was war, a state which has been permanent since 1940. Nuclear weapons and a shift in human consciousness have limited the solution of endless military escalation. Other solutions -- globalization, technology-enabled development of new goods and services to replace human functions never before commoditized, and technology-enabled plunder of natural resources once off limits, and finally financial auto-cannibalism -- have similarly run their course. Unless there are realms of wealth I have not considered, and new depths of poverty, misery, and alienation to which we might plunge, the inevitable cannot be delayed much longer.

In the face of the impending crisis, people often ask what they can do to protect themselves. "Buy gold? Stockpile canned goods? Build a fortified compound in a remote area? What should I do?" I would like to suggest a different kind of question: "What is the most beautiful thing I can do?" You see, the gathering crisis presents a tremendous opportunity. Deflation, the destruction of money, is only a categorical evil if the creation of money is a categorical good. However, you can see from the examples I have given that the creation of money has in many ways impoverished us all. Conversely, the destruction of money has the potential to enrich us. It offers the opportunity to reclaim parts of the lost commonwealth from the realm of money and property.

We actually see this happening every time there is an economic recession. People can no longer pay for various goods and services, and so have to rely on friends and neighbors instead. Where there is no money to facilitate transactions, gift economies reemerge and new kinds of money are created. Ordinarily, though, people and institutions fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening. The habitual first response to economic crisis is to make and keep more money -- to accelerate the conversion of anything you can into money. On a systemic level, the debt surge is generating enormous pressure to extend the commodification of the commonwealth. We can see this happening with the calls to drill for oil in Alaska, commence deep-sea drilling, and so on. The time is here, though, for the reverse process to begin in earnest -- to remove things from the realm of goods and services, and return them to the realm of gifts, reciprocity, self-sufficiency, and community sharing. Note well: this is going to happen anyway in the wake of a currency collapse, as people lose their jobs or become too poor to buy things. People will help each other and real communities will reemerge.

In the meantime, anything we do to protect some natural or social resource from conversion into money will both hasten the collapse and mitigate its severity. Any forest you save from development, any road you stop, any cooperative playgroup you establish; anyone you teach to heal themselves, or to build their own house, cook their own food, make their own clothes; any wealth you create or add to the public domain; anything you render off-limits to the world-devouring machine, will help shorten the Machine's lifespan. Think of it this way: if you already do not depend on money for some portion of life's necessities and pleasures, then the collapse of money will pose much less of a harsh transition for you. The same applies to the social level. Any network or community or social institution that is not a vehicle for the conversion of life into money will sustain and enrich life after money.

In previous essays I have described alternative money systems, based on mutual credit and demurrage, that do not drive the conversion of all that is good, true, and beautiful into money. These enact a fundamentally different human identity, a fundamentally different sense of self, from what dominates today. No more will it be true that more for me is less for you. On a personal level, the deepest possible revolution we can enact is a revolution in our sense of self, in our identity. The discrete and separate self of Descartes and Adam Smith has run its course and is becoming obsolete. We are realizing our own inseparateness, from each other and from the totality of all life. Interest denies this union, for it seeks growth of the separate self and the expense of something external, something other. Probably everyone reading this essay agrees with the principles of interconnectedness, whether from a Buddhistic or an ecological perspective. The time has come to live it. It is time to enter the spirit of the gift, which embodies the felt understanding of non-separation. It is becoming abundantly obvious that less for you (in all its dimensions) is also less for me. The ideology of perpetual gain has brought us to a state of poverty so destitute that we are gasping for air. That ideology, and the civilization built upon it, is what is collapsing today.

Individually and collectively, anything we do to resist or postpone the collapse will only make it worse. So stop resisting the revolution in human beingness. If you want to survive the multiple crises unfolding today, do not seek to survive them. That is the mindset of separation; that is resistance, a clinging to a dying past. Instead, allow your perspective to shift toward reunion, and think in terms of what you can give. What can you contribute to a more beautiful world? That is your only responsibility and your only security. The gifts you need to survive and enjoy will come to you easily, because what you do to the world, you do to yourself.


Photo by mudricky, courtesy of Creative Commons license.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Dollar Collapse (Mind Distortion System) Video by VJ Psysource

Hello, Everyone!

For your enjoyment, Lycantrop Records presents a little video.
:-))))

With MUCH gratitude to Psysource,
~ Keira



Track: Dollar Collapse
Artist: Mind Distortion System
Compilation: Distorted **Coming Soon***
Label: Lycantrop Records

VJ: Psysource
Label: Lycantrop Records

:-)))))))))))))))

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Endless Euforia DJ Mix for Contest on Triplag!

Here's the link!

We hope the video will be ready soon and will update this post when it's online.

:-)

About Endless Euforia:ENDLESS EUFORIA (www.myspace.com/endlesseuforia) is a project formed ends of 2007 by Adolfo Usier aka d.N.i (www.myspace.com/dnipsydark),
Owner and Manager of Ultravision Records Spain , Adolfo met psychedelic trance in 1997 and began make music in April 2006...
He had a experience in 2006 when he know Aaron Peacock aka OCELOT in basel swiss, adolfo usier know with Ocelot how to use Nuendo, izotope ozone, albino 3 and much more..."THANK YOU MAN".
D.N.I / ENDLESS EUFORIA/MIND TALKERS projects has released with dark psychedelic music in labels like Moonsun Records, Thee Magik Family Records, Kagdila Records, Import Exploit Records, ICC Records, UNwashed Records, Twisted Minds Records, Psydom Records, Blind Noise records, Ultravision Records and will release this year of 2009 with, Namaha records, Quantum Frog Productions, Biomechanix Records, Xtream Dimension Label, Active Meditation Records, Buddha Mantra records and too much more to coming... Ends of 2007 he create "ENDLESS EUFORIA" for make unique and new dark style, The idea to form this new project "Endless Euforia" is for make more psychedelic music, and it comes to follow the line of Dark Twisted / Mental and Industrial. The music produced by Endless Euforia have a deep kicks, fat basslines, crazy effects, psyhchedelic twisted Sounds with Gltich and Crazy Breaks a frenetic style, accelerated and very incorporate frenzied beats and psychedelic basslines; agressive, clean and serious. Yours effects are some acid elements, he's crazy all in the dancefloors....


Equipment Used:
Laptops:
AMD Turion 64 bits Dualcore 2.4 _ RAM> 4.096mb
Genuine Core2Duo
AMD Atlon Dual Core 1.2 2048 RAM
Soundcards:
M-Audio Fast Track Ultra and Fast Track PRO
Samson Studio Monitors:
Rubicon 80, Resolv 65a and Media one 5a
Mackie 6chnl/line Digital Mixer
Nord Lead Synthesizer
M-Audio Axion 25 Keyboard Usb Controller
Digital Drums Yamaha DD5
DBX 266 XL Compressor/Limiter/Gate/Expander
Tubetech Multiband Compressor 2MC 2B
Effect Proccesor

Nuendo3,Cubase sx3,Sound Forge,WaveLab,Abelton Live Pro.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

DJ Mixcast Contest Extended, Rules Changed

Deadline for applications EXTENDED!

Old deadline: March 15
New deadline: April 30

Date Contest (voting) ends also CHANGED!

Old : May 15
New: June 30

================================================

Another important change:

Old rules required a total of at least 5 tracks from Lycans' Meeting artists
New rules for artists: at least 2 tracks from Lycans' Meeting v.a. and a total of at least 4 tracks from Lycantrop Label Artists


==================================================

Everything else stays the same! Send us your mixes soon!!
:-))

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Lycantrop Release Schedule through 09/09

Distorted Shire is finalized...the other 2 are still missing info but we will update over time, so be sure to check back....
:-)


CD2 // Distorted Shire (v.a.) // scheduled release date: March 09

- Darkshire: Yakuza 148
- Darkshire & Detonator: Snake in the Grass 149
- Septagram: Trancendance 150
- Dark Elf & Mind Distortion System: Groovy Minds 150
- Kulu & Mind Distortion System: Moving from Inside 150
- Mind Distortion System & Darkshire : Night Takes the Queen 149
- Mind Distortion System: Psychologue 150
- Darkshire & Mind Distortion System: Integrated 154
- Mind Distortion System: Dollar Collapse 154
- Kokobloko & Cymazz: Micromodules: 156-168


CD3 : Hybrides Evolution - release date JUNE/JULY 2009

(tracklist incomplete)


Rawar and Psyhamaa
MDS and Mubali
MDS and Zik and Jelly
MDS and ADI
Muktisvara and Iguana
Darkshire and Detonator
Somadelic and Axis Mundi
White Wizard and Mind Game (under production)
+ more not announced

CD4 : Pirate Planet - release date September 2009
All fresh tracks with a Pirate theme, either in Track Name, Samples, or Both.
(tracklist incomplete)

Rawar
Mubali
Silent Horror
Dark Elf
Orestis
MDS
Dementia
Kashyyyk

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Update

I hope everybody enojoyed the holiday season. The full moon is beautiful tonight! I appreciate it more than usual, since, after a few months of trying to figure out where to go next, we realized, the next step is not yet clear, so Mr. and Mrs. Lycantrop decided to stay in our house in Belgium for one more year.

We really do like it here - Solaris has lots of room to run around, we are surrounded by nature (just this week, Solaris saw 2 deer and a fox!)...and the Lycantrop studio setup is perfect.

So, a big relief that we don't have to worry about where to live for a while. Now, it's back to work!

We are still working out some issues with our main website, but hope to have all fixed soon. (This blog needs some layout help, too!) We are trying to upload all of our artist and release content to a great music-network-site called ReverbNation: you can see widgets from RN at the top of this blog (with artist info, track info, videos, bookings, and more). Check out ReverbNation: it is really cool!
:-)

We are super happy to welcome Pablo, aka Kashyyyk, to the Lycantrop family! Kashyyyk is one of the most innovative producers to emerge in recent times: fasten your seatbelts before taking a trip with this dude, 'cos his music picks up where the Concorde left off - supersonic and way above the clouds!

Other news? The Distorted Shire v.a. is looking good for a March release...good ol' Ju is hard at work on another cover, so quality guaranteed! Here is the tracklisting:

CD2 // Distorted Shire (v.a.) // scheduled release date: March 09

- Darkshire: Yakuza 148
- Darkshire & Detonator: Snake in the Grass 149
- Septagram: Trancendance 150
- Dark Elf & Mind Distortion System: Groovy Minds 150
- Kulu & Mind Distortion System: Moving from Inside 150
- Mind Distortion System & Darkshire : Night Takes the Queen 149
- Mind Distortion System: Psychologue 150
- Darkshire & Mind Distortion System: Integrated 154
- Mind Distortion System: Dollar Collapse 154
- Kokobloko & Cymazz: Micromodules: 156-168

Psysource from Iran is a VJ and friend of Nelson...in fact, he just joined Lycantrop as a label VJ! I JUST saw the video he made for Dollar Collapse and it is excellent...I can't wait to get it online. I wonder if the dollar really will collapse just when we release this track? The scheduled March release date for Distored Shire is looking about right!!

Much more going on, but I will leave it for another day and go sit by the cozy fire for a little while.

Namaste from Belgium. Over and out.

~ Lycan HQ

* go to this forum thread for more theorizing on the demise of the world's FIAT reserve currency:
"I think everyone realizes Bush and Co. have no political clout left to explain Bretton Woods III to the American people.... This announcement will be done under their new brand name product, "Obama (TM)".

Once this announcement is made, and the US Dollar loses its reserve currency status (and the insiders are given a chance to get out before the announcement is made), then the US Dollar will be thrown to the wolves, and should collapse shortly thereafter. March is probably a good bet.

I am interested to see what the new reserve currency will be, and if gold or a basket of commodities will be a component, but really you will need to exit the Dollar before the announcement in January. I think it could come anytime after the inauguration. If you wait until March, I think the Dollar will be completely debased, and it'll be too late.

Gold is probably as safe as any place to be right now, if you aren't on the privileged inside.