Recently my old pal Mike G aka Troy Westfield of the Troy Westfield Experience conducted a long-ass interview with yours truly about Agents of Venus' album Boduvt. Mike is calling Boduvt his favorite album of 2010! High praise indeed from a discriminating musicologist.
In this meandering colossus of an interview, Mike and I go in depth into the song writing process: I explain lyrics pretty specifically for a few songs and give some little known facts about the behind the scenes making of the album. I also give insight into the mythological meanings behind some of the themes of the album and my at times rather eccentric philosophy behind song writing in general. Its a cool interview for fans of the record. I think you just might dig it.
And thanks again for making 2010 the year of the round boat aka Boduvt. We are truly grateful for the love and support for our album! Happy New Year! 2011 will kick ass! I promise....
AoV's smash hit "Her Favorite Song" was recently featured on the last episode of Frank Todaro's Invisible World interview show (its episode 36 if you want to listen to the show on Frank's site.) The hour long web show features Frank and yours truly (Zuben aka Phil) talking at length about pyramid shaped ufos, the ghost of TV's first superman, George Reeves, underwater orbs, and meaning behind the Agents of Venus name and our album title, Boduvt. Dig in and dig it:
I have to say, this interview just barely scratched the surface of a larger subject I'm looking forward to exploring, either with Frank or here in blog form (probably both). That subject, the seemingly contradicting understanding of the planet Venus being represented historically (in western traditions) as either Venus or Aphrodite (or maybe Isis or Mary Magdelene, perhaps?), the goddess of love and beauty, as well as Lucifer, the first cast out angel from heaven, the Lightbringer, that much maligned representative of all things hidden and nefarious in this world.
I inadvertently seem to blame the Freemasons for representing the latter in our discussion, without being able to really explain why I say it and what I really mean by it. I'm not going to go into it yet here, but I will eventually explain myself in a future post (hopefully in the near future). I do want to admit that I have nothing against those wacky kabalists the Freemasons in general. During the interview, I was trying to spout out a large idea in a small amount of time, and I didn't really formulate my idea all that clearly.
If you'd like to learn more about Venus in relation to Freemasonic symbolism, you might want to check out this earlier post, which features two great video presentations about the subject.
Suffice it to say, when choosing the band name, I was trying to find a way to bring to polarities, two opposing ideas together under one roof, so to speak, in hopes of creating a higher level of perspective on just what the morning star (Venus) means to our little planet and our world traditions. It seems to me that its time to unify polar opposites, not only because we surely could use a fresh perspective on the seemingly endless struggle of good and evil in this world, but because the struggle itself is indicative of a 3rd dimensional perspective, as the push/pull of the polar opposites seems to be (to me) the creative force in action in our world, and I believe, since we appear to be moving into times that call for us to broaden our awareness of higher levels of reality, then the act of unifying these polarities is the action that propels one into these higher levels. I promise somewhere down the line I will do my darndest to explain this further (or "furthur," as the Merry Pranksters might have put it.)
Later on in the conversation with Frank, we talk about several pyramid shaped ufos that have been spotted in the past year or so. One that appeared above Moscow right after the Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Price and the Norway Spiral appeared, and one much more recently that showed up to dramatic effect over Taiwan. They are both worth having a gander at, so for those of you keeping score at home, here's video of both pyramid 'boduvts." Consider it extra material to enhance your experience as you listen to the interview.
Here's the Moscow Pyramid:
and the Taiwan Pyramid (this one is especially cool):
Keep looking up -- there are Boduvts out there waiting to have a conversation with you.....
Your pal Zuben aka Phil Ristaino, Agent of Venus here. Glad to see you back. This is a quick post. Over the past month, month 1/2, I've been interviewed twice on the magnificent The Invisible World with Frank Todaro. Frank is an actor who lives in NYC with a great voice for radio, as well as a fellow sci fi promulgator and comic book buff. Up until mid last year, we performed together in the NYC long form episodic improv group Start Trekkin NY. Frank became a great friend, and we would have long conversations about paranormal phenomena and fictional fascination. Fortunately, Frank is channeling his love for BSG, Dr Who and the X Men into a weekly online radio show. It gets better and better every week, so get on over there and download his shows! You can hear new ones at his show's site every Tuesday night.
In the mean time, Frank was kind enough to feature two Agents of Venus tunes on the show: Hero with 1000 Eyes in the first interview, and Cobalt Silver on the second. Hopefully this trend will continue and we will play the entire album over the course of 12 interviews, if Frank says its cool. Thanks, Agent Todaro!
Also featured in the interviews: my take on synchronicity, stories of phenomena I've experienced that I can't truly explain, visions, 2012, precognitive dreams, and lots more. Dig it and dig in!
Boduvites!
Recently my old pal Mike G aka Troy Westfield of the Troy Westfield Experience conducted a long-ass interview with yours truly about Agents of Venus' album Boduvt. Mike is calling Boduvt his favorite album of 2010! High praise indeed from a discriminating musicologist. 
