Café Thelémè

Voodoo is a pop culture phenomenon. It originated in Haiti during the French Colonial Period (~1697-1791~), and is widely practiced today, world-wide. We first encountered it at Café Thelémè in Montreal. A friend was playing a weekend gig in the small bar, and didn't wish to lug his Rhodes and Korg keyboards back for the second performance across town, so I helped him store it in their basement after his performance. What an experience.

Voodoo Electra Power Cable,

The restaurant upstairs was strange enough - carved symbols, pentagrams, etc. in the chairs and such, and odd, West Indian art adorned the walls, and yet downstairs was another thing entirely.




Viewing today's Café Thelémè, it seems to have changed. Perhaps black candles, an altar to Mahomet, and a stone sacrificial trough - for humans? no longer adorn the interesting place.



A quick good Google.com reveals that the location played host to the Canadian O.T.O. aka "The Caliphate." Obviously no relation to the one being established in the Middle East as of recent media attention, however one of our favourite academics, Alister Crowley was O.T.O. related.

Now how is this article related to music, and hi-fi?

Every day we look at the hi-fi online periodicals. The Absolute Sound is one of our favorites, and today, an article by Neil Gadner, "Three Power Cord Updates," crossed our desk.

As we have three espresso machines in house, in the price range of these cables, the natural experiment would be to purchase these cables, and see how they affect (and improve) the taste of our focus-group coffee.

The most expensive of these three cables Gadner reviews is the Audience ($2420/6ft), however for less than the price of a Black-Diamond encrusted silver David Yurman signet ring ($1100/6ft), or just $100.00 CDN more than what we paid for our Philips / Saeco Intelia locally at Cookworks.com, we could experiment and report back to you.

This is $200.00 CDN less than the cost of an AKG K3003 in-ear headphone, reportedly one of the best, which we hope to acquire from Headphone Bar, for comparison.

Voodoo Cable is gaunt enough to label their art Voodoo, and Gadner is good enough to give us his opinion for free.

Just how will the replacement of a stock power basic cable to an automatic espresso machine affect the flavour of the brew?

We'll just have to let you know.

Until then, you are welcome to try our suggestion of using a BoozBlock, Voodo-style, to suspend your Nagra components. It will set you back less than even a Black Diamond.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Haiti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonial_empire
http://www.univie.ac.at/Anglistik/webprojects/LiveMiss/Voodoo/chap1.htm
http://www.parareligion.ch/moose/canada1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley