as of 9/11/06, the audio portion of I AM SPOONBENDER BUY HIDDEN PERSUADERS is absolutely free.

Q: why is BUY HIDDEN PERSUADERS free?
A: because an album about lies should be true to itself.

Q: in ice cube 3, what do you see?
A: "buy now"

YOU HAVE BEEN SUGGESTED
"we'd been using subliminal information in our live show for years", says IAS's DUSTIN DONALDSON.
"it was time to get it more into the recordings."

BUY HIDDEN PERSUADERS is "a ritual in sound. a spell for change in the war against 'either/or'." an examination of spychiatrists. secret ad-exec societies. MK-ULTRA toothpaste commands. plastic surgery rationalization. self esteem implants. hypnotic product placement. unquestioning brand loyalty. it examines the effects of advertising agencies on the psyche, media manipulation, and the slow-motion image shift of the human aging process and the subsequent rationalizations and lies to the mirror that people go through to maintain their self image. it is active, soapbox-free politics. "the subject matter of the project came out of examining the effects on ourselves of being 'persuaded' our whole lives. we looked at ourselves and tried to see how we personally had been effected by that. we then wondered how society as a whole had been effected. we started talking about ideas like: could the insecurity messages that are being transmitted to us all day long actually be real? meaning, once they're inside, can they manifest, virus-like? * after identifying said tactics and scanning ourselves to look for the results, we employed them in the album itself. 'BHP' contains concealed information and explores 'subthreshold effects'. it is a subliminal advertisement for itself. it is also a narrative, and the song titles themselves are actually coded messages."
meaning?
"we're not going to decode it for you, but i'll tell you this: all the letters in the titles are symbols used for other letters. the numbers 3, 9 and 12 come into play.."
but why?
"this gives each song at least 2 meanings: a 'surface' one and an 'encoded' one. this increases the likelihood of uncovering new things with subsequent encounters."
if you haven't experienced IAS' alpha-wave-state-inducing-strobe-light-experiments-meets-popartpunk- telepathy-research-institute-soundtracks, you might feel a little bit lost. those of you that know... wait- ... s    u     b l    imi       na ls .    .   .. m     e s   sag   e . ...   .    WHAT?

PENETRATE TO DEEPER LEVELS
"we found out how to make a subliminal while doing research for BHP and its' related media. the key elements of subliminal perception are speed and intensity of image. if the intensity of the image is decreased as the length of 'viewing' time is increased, the message presented can be kept below the threshold of conscious perception. you 'flash' short messages at 1/20th of a second at 5 second intervals, for example. the technique uses low contrast and brightness against each other. works basically the same in audio. there are lots of things that are hidden in this record. it needs to be heard many times before it will start to reveal its' true self, and hearing it at the right times in the right ways will give different readings. we worked out many ways to embed meaning into the landscape. many systems were used. any system was allowed as valid as a means to knowledge as long as a certain amount of skepticism was maintained and a subjective and poetic thirst for truth prevailed. these practices were really opening up our general sensitivity and awareness- city noise bugged me more, and subsequently, my collection of frog recordings was growing. at home i was researching the connections between the third reich and the occult due to my interest in the political climate under bush2 and his secret society/occult connections. a fascinating and sobering book on media called 'inventing reality' came on the heels of a few books on how militaries use 'remote viewing'. i started watching tv for the first time in 10 years, and it had changed so much it just blew me away- especially the drug company-ads-as-surrealfreudianist-hemorrages of desire and insecurity. watching commercials attempt to psychically feed on me while i had them on 'mute' was a big lesson. i started focusing on the esteem-eroding messages and editing styles, and most of all, the complete sublimation of reality. everything in commercials is exactly the OPPOSITE of the reality it presents. compositionally, CUP and i began focusing on embedding sub-limina textures in new vocal oriented material. lyrics focused squarely on examining the effects of being 'sold-to' our whole lives, meat, jeans and flickering screens, as well as a musing about a 'mixed IQ' couple. many of these word and sound ideas were revealed during perception and consciousness shift experiments, such as playing for hours to strobe light tempos in our darkened studio, sleep deprivation experiments, etc. we came up with a few interesting techniques as a result, such as one we call 'time stretch pitch concealment'. simply put: if you listen to HP at different tempos you'll hear phrases that have been encoded. for example: there are messages over the course of a whole verse at a lower pitch and in a different time context., etc. we also used these techniques live on the BHP tours in 2003-4."
did it work?
"hmmm. well, we all agreed that the shows got more ...intense. we started getting more comments on the audiences' personal experiences during the show- some said they felt like they were dreaming. agitated. floating. crying. adrenalin rushes. sleepwalking. few danced- nobody dances at IAS shows, because we're not a dance band, that's a misconception due to some lazy reviewers- but there was always movement in some way. much more fun for all of us, it seemed."
but aren't you against this stuff?
"as far as the strobelights/alpha wave state stuff on stage.... we feel ok doing it because we're going through it too. it's not like we're doing it from a distance, unaffected, like tele-vision commercials, 'spy-chiatrists' or the military. and the more you know about what you're dealing with, the more equipped you are to effect your will. and we want change."

SLOWLY REPLACED IN MIRRORS
Q: how do we change things?
A: "well, first of all you have to have a belief that change is possible. sometimes this requires focusing your will intensely. determinedly. by believing, you start to take steps towards doing. magic is about causing change without appearing as if you've done anything. if you raise your will to the level of your achieved goal, you MEET that goal, which neutralizes it... ultimately, IAS' records and shows are designed to trigger altered states- whether this happens or not is to a large extent up to the recever, but see, we're interested in both whether the 'subliminals' worked in the context of the overall shows' effect, or because we (IAS) believed that the subliminals worked and the crowd picked back up on that... we think it likely that any of these theories are correct because what we encoded was a suggestion to the receiver to be opened up. to what, we don't know or want to control. I AM SPOONBENDER is open to interpretation. we think all perceptions are valid and alive. real.

"there are actually coded advertisements on BUY HIDDEN PERSUADERS", says CUP.
Q: whose products are they for?
"our own. one of our products is mystery. but, CUP adds, it is only positive things we wove into the album- rejection of drug company profit-motive 'better-life' aids. acknowledgement of the aging process as a natural and actually interesting thing; self examination... keeping a playful, childlike view on things, despite at the same time, being able to identify (and therefore reject) control systems... one of the key elements of this work for us was simply trying to understand. it seems to me that the best way to approach it from the audiences' perspective is in the same spirit. there is a lot of 'theory' in this project, but ultimately, BHP should be fun to listen to."
ok. but you're human- you need to make a living. what, then, is I AM SPOONBENDER selling?
"mirrors".

if you are still capable of listening to an album more than a couple of times before you know what you've actually heard, then I AM SPOONBENDER BUY HIDDEN PERSUADERS is for you. 3 years of work is simply impossible to digest in one listen- in fact, it's probable that your feelings upon the inital listen will turn out to be the opposite of what you come to find BHP actually IS. that's the way it's been for me, at least. much like advertising itself, it's true intentions are "hiding in plain sight".

"True artists are experts in the training of perception." - Marshall McLuhan __________________________________________________________________________________

addendum:

BUY HIDDEN PERSUADERS is just now being released, but was actually finished in 2004. that's another story. but it's a pretty good one.

BHP will also soon be available for purchase in digital download format from the usual vendors (like itunes, etc). some limited edition hard copy/packaged versions will appear sporadically on select labels of IAS' choosing. you will be informed if you are on the email list. also, the decision to release BUY HIDDEN PERSUADERS in this fashion will not be continued for future releases.
after this IAS will permanently reside in helicopters and underwater glass houses.