Eric, who used to work with me, intro­duced me to Brant Bjork, and ston­er rock in gen­er­al, about two years ago. It’s a genre that explores delight­ful rep­e­ti­tion, where vari­a­tions are sub­tle, but pow­er­ful­ly psy­che­del­ic.

[I]t is cer­tain­ly accept­ed that the effects of mar­i­jua­na and the often low or psy­che­del­ic riffs of ston­er rock com­ple­ment each oth­er.

—Wikipedia, Stoner rock

I liken the idea to Plastikman’s debut album, Sheet One. Though of a dif­fer­ent genre — trance — it fea­tures a per­fo­rat­ed album cov­er, an homage to acid tab art, for which the LSD enhances the details of every sin­gle min­i­mal­is­tic beat (so I’m told).

While I’ve enjoyed Queens of the Stone Age, who are con­sid­ered to be influ­enced by the ston­er rock move­ment (indeed, Josh Homme and Brant Bjork formed pio­neer­ing band Kyuss while in high school), the sound is a lit­tle more com­mer­cial, less dron­ing.

After I heard a few songs by Brant Bjork, I was hooked. I nev­er asso­ci­at­ed it with a mem­o­ry, which is what I do with almost all my songs, but it was good enough that I did­n’t have to.

At Thanksgiving, dur­ing one of my trips through the mall with Andrew and Alex, I resumed my search for Brant Bjork’s solo album by the name of Jalamanta. It was a big­ger city, a big­ger place…maybe I’d have a bet­ter luck. Unfortunately, every music store gave me the same answer; it was an album they did­n’t keep reg­u­lar­ly in stock.

Alex asked me what I was look­ing for, the name of the album and artist, and I did­n’t think any­thing of it.

Yesterday, I found a pack­age in the mail. Fragile — CD, it said. Inside was the Brant Bjork CD I’ve been look­ing for, which they found at an inde­pen­dent music store. Along with the CD was a card made from my Pollen Junkie pho­to (which was tak­en in their gar­den), with a mes­sage writ­ten on the back.

And as great as it is to final­ly hear the songs I’ve been miss­ing, as nice as it is to have an orig­i­nal release, it’s noth­ing com­pared to the thought­ful­ness, the effort they made to find me exact­ly what I was look­ing for.