From the very beginning our goal was to be as open minded as possible. From classical music over jazz to post rock and black metal, but also ambient, psychedelic electronics and techno, we dig into everything. Of course, that first article about Incubate already contained heaps of different styles since that festival was one of the broadest we have ever encountered. Since then, we have been on an amazing journey through the vast world of music exploration. We have been doing this for three years and the will to carry on is very strong.

But everything goes with ups and downs and perhaps our third year was a decent example of that. Our growth has not been as exponential as our second year in business, although we more than doubled our visitor count since the first year. I can only imagine one reason for that: lesser articles. I think we wrote less reviews than in 2016. Other projects and personal issues have been keeping all of us occupied more than Merchants Of Air has. Some of our writers needed a long break and at the same time very few new aspirant writers contacted us.

We had a few. Two women ask for guest writer spots but they wanted to add links to certain shopping websites. I told them that we are a music webzine and that they will have to prove themselves with reviews first, just like I did, just like Wagner did. I never heard from them again. In fact, only one serious applicant contacted us. I hope his first reviews will enter my inbox soon. Until then, I'll keep his identity a secret.

Yet, even through a decline in number, our articles seem to attract more people to the website. The series about Belgium has been quite successful. With these columns I digged into the musical history of our own little country, much to the delight of thousands of readers. It will undoubtedly be continued soon, and so will the new series about the correlation between music and science. It has been fun to write these and I've come to the realization that writing stuff like this is what I like doing the most. 

The past few years, each time on 25 September, we released a compilation album. This year, for reasons stated above, our annual compilation will be postponed to December. With that, it will also correlate with our end-year overviews, best-of lists and columns about the musical highlights of 2017.

So yes, there are still plenty of spots open. Bands and projects who want to join our compilation can still contact us. We're also planning another project to be finalized by then. So December might be a huge month for Merchants Of Air. 

This past year has been fun, that's for sure. Once again I have encountered hundreds of amazing albums, seen plenty of awesome gigs and shook hands with artists from allover the world. The rest of the world is letting me down, letting pretty much all of us down. Terrorism, world leaders with the IQ of a cracked brick, the ever growing hatred towards everything that deviates from an unrealistic norm, natural disasters... Yep, the world is in a bad state but here we are, doing our thing, keeping the brotherhood of underground music alive.

I know, that world would have been very much alive without Merchants Of Air too but I'm quite proud of what we have accomplished over the past three years. I have said it before and I will say it again, I have never felt so appreciated and respected while doing some kind of work for somebody. Not one of my previous employers has sent me so much "thank you" and "great work" compliments than all of you have been doing. To be brutally honest, this level of appreciation is one of the few things that keep me going.

Perhaps over these past three years, Merchants Of Air has finally grown up. Our website witnessed only slight changes in lay-out. Our promo pictures for the t-shirts we design have been left behind and currently we're only promoting 'Cecilia's World'. With that, I clearly noticed a decline in income too, to the point where year four will once again be paid out of my own pocket. It's too bad, but I'm not going to change things now. I hate begging for money but if you want to support us, we will appreciate it.

How to support Merchants Of Air? There are plenty of possibilities. There is our shop with awesome shirts, metal decks, stickers and so on. There are the occasional Amazon links on our reviews which provide us with a little percentage, even if you buy something completely different. We have a few free/pay-what-you-want compilations and of course, there is my book. I think out of all these possibilities, purchasing 'Cecilia's World' will be the most appreciated by me. Like I said, I'm a writer...

We will see what the future has in store for us. Today, I'm going out for diner and I'll be celebrating this little birthday with a glass of champagne. Why? Well, when I moved into this apartment and this neighbourhood, I told my wife that I was going to tell people that I am a writer, rather than a helpdesk employee. In these past three years, I became exactly that. Just look at the content on this website. Just read my book. Just wait for the dark follow-up to 'Cecilia's World' which carries the working title 'Misanthrope'. 

Whatever the future holds, I have reached my goal. In a few days, I'll be at the printers and shortly after that, copies of this book will be shipped to Australia, Germany, India, Belgium, USA and many more. But before that happens, I will probably have published another heap of reviews, brieviews and columns. This is what I love doing, and I want to thank all of you for making it possible and for appreciating the words/worlds pouring out of my brain.

​Thank you for three years of Merchants Of Air.



Serge

At this very moment, large parts of the world are in crisis. Forest fires, hurricanes, disease spreading mosquitoes, water shortage, food shortage,... We're in deep shit, which is ironic because according to some people; most of these disasters are caused by gay sex. Yes, sodomy is the number one cause of the problems we're in. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people die each day because some men can't keep their penises out of other men's buttholes. 

Shame, isn't it? All those thousands of years of scientific research, all useless now. I mean, if all those scientists, all those people who have worked their entire lives to solve man's problems, had just tried to find a way to stop gay men for fondling each other, we would still be in the happy ages. We would all still die of the plague and other diseases and we would have no idea whatsoever why the sun disappears at night, but we'd be free from natural disasters, right?

I have never trusted opinionists and I don't think I'll ever will. That's probably why I avoid marketing people, priests, journalists, managers and - most importantly - politicians. Who I trust? Scientists, people like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Dick Swaab and Richard Dawkins. People that prove things, people that build our future based on knowledge which in itself is based on repeatable experiments with repeatable results. People who have discovered cures for polio, people who invented solar panels, people who put Kepler into outer space.

That is also why I never ever have someone's opinion about music influence mine. If you tell me that Pink Floyd sucks and someone else tells me that Pink Floyd is the greatest band in the world and both opinions would influence mine, I'd go crazy. Therefore, obviously, I'll make up my own mind. I base my opinion on Pink Floyd, and all other bands, on a few observations. 

1. Does it annoy me?
A lot of songs annoy me (a lot of people too but let's not go there for now). That's the first criterium. It's also repeatable. If you play 'Paradise By The Dashboard Light', I will be as annoyed as every single time I hear that tune. (On a side note, I don't hate Meatloaf. I don't disrespect him for making music I don't like. That would be childish.)

2. Does it have something extra?
A well written song always has something more than others. Taake's 'Myr' is their only song I know the name of, just because of the banjo solo. It's unexpected and well executed. Gorki was awesome because of the Dutch lyrics. Many others of my favorite bands are innovators and pioneers, doing something different.

There are other criteria too but I'm not going to turn this article into a science essay about music appreciation. The point is, the way you appreciate music is completely and utterly based on how your brain works. Your brain filters whatever it needs from both your DNA and your environment to make you like or dislike a song. Think about that for a second while you listen to this Taake song. The banjo solo appears in the second half, but also listen to the drums.

So, by now you might be wondering what the point of this whole article is. Well, I'm a science fan as much as I'm a music fan and quite frankly, I see both  trapped in a whirlpool of dumbing down. Hurricanes are claimed to be caused by gay sex and songs with lyrics like 'You a stupid hoe / You a / You a stupid hoe' become massive hits. So perhaps this article is an effort to save both from being obliterated. I'm a music journalist (one of the few I trust - sometimes) and I see links between the two. Science and music fit perfectly well together. So let's put a bit of science into the music we listen to. It's going to be fun, I promise you.

In recent weeks I have been reading a book by Dutch neuroscientist Dick Swaab. In 'Our Creative Brain', Swaab explains how art and the brain impact each other. It's tremendously interesting literature which I can recommend to anyone. One passage reminded me of drummers and their use of blast beats. Swaab never really talks about black metal, or any alternative music for that matter, so I'll do that.

Have you ever noticed that - unless professionally mastered - blast beats never sound as loud as other times the stick hits the snare? It might seem logical to you but let's go over the entire process. To drum and keep a steady rhythm, a drummer needs to lift his arm and lower it again many times, each time with the exact same amount of time in between. The upward movement, the one you don't hear, is just as important as the hit, if not more. It's in that movement that the precise moment of the hit is being decided. To be able to do that, our brain has to react and decide in nanoseconds and it does too. According to Swaab, our brain thrives on these tempos. Our sense of rhythm is quite unique in the animal kingdom. It requires ultimate precision, thus nanoseconds. To be able to create blast beats, your arm, controlled by the brain, has to hit faster which works best by not lifting the arm up so high. That's where physics come in. Lower distance is less loud. It's simple but it needs a lot of brain effort to do it properly. That is also why musicians practice.

Categorizing music is something for music journalists. They came up with most of the names, like "grunge", "metal", "progressive". However, for genres to exist, you need science. 

Once upon a time a caveman was experimenting with the sound of a tubular piece of wood. When he blew through it, it made a whistling sound. He punched some holes in it and noticed that it sounded different when he covered or uncovered some of the holes. That moment might have well sparked ages of folk music. 

In 1897, Thaddeus Cahill invented the Telharmonium which eventually led to to synthesizers ànd their early adopters. Kraftwerk were hooked on electronic instrumentation from the very beginning. While the technical possibilities expanded, so did the sound and so did Kraftwerk's influence on the world of music. 

While electronics became a household thing, science kept having its influence on music. Around the time America landed on the moon, space rock came into existence, inspired not only by all kinds of psychedelic drugs but also about the popularity of NASA and their missions. 

At one point in their lives, these young metalheads had a future occupation to choose, a study to decide on. Guess what, a lot of them went into archeology and Scandinavian history. In the past ten to fifteen years, we have discovered so much more of the vikings, of ancient Europe as a whole. Those metalheads inspired a whole generation to go literally dig for their roots, before it all disappears under a massive slab of concrete. 

If you look at today's hip hop and rap scene, you will indeed encounter shiploads of cringeworthy lyrics, mostly about genitals. Apparently, today it's incredibly creative to talk about your private parts. Any knowledge about anatomy, physics or how what metal detectors actually do seems obsolete. Did Sheldon Cooper ever do a rant on hip hop lyrics? If not, he should do that. Or Neil deGrasse Tyson. He should make a comedy show about that. 

Right, rap is dumb. But wait, what about Eminem? 

"Rap God" contains 1,560 words, which gets Eminem a spot in the Guinness Book Of Records. The song was eventually replaced by MC Harry Shotta's song "Animal" (which includes 1771 words). I had a solid listen to both songs. Personally, I favor "Rap God". It's simply more creative. While "Animal" feels like an effort to outdo Eminem, "Rap God" is a massive story, something Marshall Matters can do like nobody else. "Stan" is another epic example. It even got the rapper into the official English vocabulary. A stan is an obnoxious fan. Eminem's IQ is estimated to be around 140, not bad.

You'd think that he is an exception but we found another rapper who goes very creative. Baba Brinkman raps about...science. Driven on hip beats, he introduces the listener to religion, rationalism, medicine, biology and evolution. It's fun to listen to and you can learn a thing or two. So we end this article with a few raps. It has become a strange article and I have a strong feeling that there will be more about the correlation between science and music in the near future. 

Article by Wagner Hertzog 

The Zapotecs are an indigenous people of Mexico, who, like the Maya, and unlike the Aztecs and Incas, were able to survive the Spanish conquest, and therefore managed to exist until the present day. With a population that, according to speculation, can reach a million inhabitants, they are concentrated mainly in the southern state of Oaxaca, but also inhabit other Mexican states, like Jalisco and Guerrero, in addition to a small diaspora that have settled down in some cities, in the American part of the state of California. Having been one of the most important civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, the Zapotecs established a modest empire in the Valley of Oaxaca, whose first capital was the city of Monte Albán, which later would be completely taken over and controlled by the Mixtecs. Reaching its apogee during the classical period, many archaeologists, scholars and researchers believe that Monte Albán was initially built by Zapotecs who congregated to build fortifications to protect themselves from external threats. At the beginning of the classical period (200 - 1000 CE), the Zapotec empire consolidated itself as a political and military power, guaranteeing its dominion over tribes, civilizations and surrounding territories, without anyone being able to compete, to challenge them or to suppress their hegemony. So the Zapotecs somehow managed to remain undefeated for centuries.
 
As far as it can be ascribed, the Zapotecs, like various civilizations in Mesoamerica, haven’t recorded their history, at least, not all of it, leaving to archeology the task of conducting research and making firsthand discoveries. The renowned Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso y Andrade, devoted to the study of ancient peoples of Mexico, was one of the first in his area to devote himself to the study of the Zapotec civilization (although he has also devoted himself to the research of many other pre-Columbian cultures and civilizations), and was one of the first to carry out research and excavations in situ in Monte Albán, concentrating his readings and interpretations on slabs of a great palace, now known as "Palace J", whose inscriptions on the slabs apparently depict what appear to have been local provinces controlled by the Zapotecs, as well as rulers who would have surrendered peacefully to their dominion, and also those who were killed, and had to be conquered by force.

The Zapotecs are also considered to be among the first peoples of Mesoamerica to develop a system of writing, of a logographic character, which, to this day, remains largely unknown, and many believe that it was a predecessor of systems later developed by the Maya, Aztecs and Mixtecs. It is also believed that they have cohabited with different levels of interaction with other races and cultures, and, according to traditional historiography, their relations with Aztecs and Mixtecs are very well documented. One of the main characteristics of the Zapotec society seems to have been gender equality: women would have as many rights as men, although the Zapotecs today seem more inclined to conservatism, and a strong tendency to segregate activities and genders, being responsible of a considerable setback on this issue. Nevertheless, situations and customs vary greatly depending on the community. While some women and female adolescents enjoy some freedom, others live in much more conservative atmospheres and environments.

At the time of the conquest of the Spanish invaders, the Zapotec civilization was centuries distant from its glorious days, unable to offer adequate resistance to the invading culture, although, on the other hand, they never experienced a severe or irreversible decline, like the one experienced by the Maya, for example, in a certain period of their history. To this day, the factors that have contributed to the survival of Zapotec peoples and culture are not very clear, but like the Mayans, it is probable that the Zapotecs have dispersed to other territories, thus ensuring their continuity, although several indicators highlight the fact that a certain nucleus of them has never left Oaxaca. Another factor that may have contributed to their permanence was the possible identification by the Spaniards of the Aztec empire as their greatest enemy, possibly not evaluating as a major threat tribes and civilizations considered minor, or incapable of triggering an uprising; Europeans may have felt no need to declare war or to eradicate the Zapotecs. A possible treaty or a speculative ability to accept and coexist with the Spaniards may have also been a determining factor in this process, although such formulations on these fields are only mere hypotheses and conjectures. The fact is that the Zapotecs have remained, which have a considerable value in cultural, social and political terms.

The Zapotecs today are divided into four main groups: the istmeños, the serranos, the southerners, and the Zapotecs of the Central Valley, agglomerated in the Oaxaca Valley region, and suburbs, the classic territory of the Zapotec civilization during its apogee. Although many of them speak some of the Zapotec languages, or one of its numerous dialects – while there are a few monoglots – much of them were assimilated by globalization, or "Mexicanized," being virtually distant from its cultural roots.


Wagner

Article written by Wagner Hertzog

The Toltec culture was a civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, which founded an empire normally inserted in the classic and post-classic period of Mesoamerican chronology, and whose capital was the city of Tollan-Xicocotitlan (Tula), of which little is known in the present day, by virtue of a great lack of information.
 

​
What is known concerning Toltec culture and civilization was a collection of texts transmitted by the Aztecs, who considered the Toltec their predecessors, portraying and disseminating them widely as the apogee of civilization. Nonetheless, the scientific community today finds itself highly divided as to whether or not to consider the Toltec civilization as a real and factual civilization of the past. Several scientists and archaeologists who have studied the Aztec inscriptions claim that the vast majority of the descriptions provided are purely mythological, arguing with cynicism and mistrust to what extent, in fact, Aztec narratives would be real portraits of an earlier civilization. Up to the present day, absolutely no consensus has emerged among the experts, regarding the Toltec civilization, and the debate continues.

The study concerning Toltec historicity is not new, and has already generated frequent, disputed and heated debates. In the 21st century, the preponderance of seeing Toltec civilization as a myth constructed by the Aztecs seem to have gained new impetus, and prevails in some academic circles; the division established between scholars and researchers in the subject has only increased, to the point that today it is absolutely impossible to affirm with truthfulness who were (or weren’t) the Toltec. Another point of interest among Toltec culture enthusiasts is the great similarities between Tula and Chichén Itzá, a huge Mayan complex from the late classic period.
 
Nevertheless, despite the lack of consensus, and its existence being doubted for a long time, the statues, ruins, monuments and pyramids that exist today in Tula are considered products of the Toltec civilization. In this way, it is not surprising that Tula remains one of the most popular tourist destinations in Mexico, and the columns of Atlantean soldiers – four huge statues of 4.6m high Toltec warriors, carved in stone –, continues to fascinate tourists and travelers alike, and to intrigue archaeologists interested in Mesoamerican culture. While a definitive answer on Toltec culture does not exist, and apparently never will, at least there will be no shortage of research material, books and lectures, as well as controversial and interesting debates, on the Toltec in particular, and on civilizations of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica in general. Some of them are extremely mysterious, and are still surrounded by many uncertainties, such as the Toltec themselves, and others more known and widespread, such as the Mayans. But of course, all of them, equally fascinating, educational and interesting. At least, for those who like and appreciate.


Wagner