There will be talks on 'sexual politics, rave, revolt, and repression' starting at 5pm including:
CHRISTOPH FRINGELI
Introduction to the thirteenth print edition of datacide – the magazine for noise & politics
JASON SKEET (UK)
In search of the constructivist moment: from Russian Futurism to South London Speedcore (via 1975)
"It's not freedom that I want but a way out!" So proclaimed the ape in Kafka's short story 'A Report to the Academy'. This talk takes this ape's proclamation as a reference point for the construction of a map that could be used to locate potential points of escape. The first part of this talk identifies what exactly it is that we may be seeking to escape from. We will then embark on an exploration of a series of problems, some of which may involve us asking: what is the meaning of Mayakovsky's "our''? what is a sonic community? and how exactly did the world change in 1975? Jason Skeet is currently completing a book about contemporary poetry. In the last years of the previous century he was involved in the Association of Autonomous Astronauts (AAA) and this talk may, or may not, build on a certain number of exit strategies previously put forward by the AAA'.
DAVID CECIL (UGANDA)
Confessions of an Accidental Activist – Sexual politics and homophobia in Uganda
David Cecil’s contribution to this issue of Datacide looks at the politics of sexuality in Uganda from a very subjective angle. The author found himself in the media spotlight in 2012/13 after he produced a comedy drama in Kampala (Uganda) which was mistakenly portrayed as a piece of ‘gay activism’. The US evangelist movement, international rights activists and the mainstream media have all contributed in different ways to misleading perceptions of sexuality in Uganda. Meanwhile, more substantial and complex factors of post-colonial socio-economic transformation have been (deliberately?) overlooked, along with the actual experience of daily life for LGBTI people in Uganda. The author will give a brief presentation
focusing on the politics of identity in Uganda, and looks forward to a discussion on international sexual politics.
MARK HARRISON (SPIRAL TRIBE)
A Darker Electricity - a co-founder talks about the history of Spiral Tribe
Mark will be talking about his personal experience with the Spiral Tribe sound system and how that experience revealed the establishment's invention of plausible narratives to define territories and control them – whether those territories be physical, social, intellectual, artistic or electronic.
The party includes a top line up of noise/experimental/breakcore/drum & bass sounds:
There's also going to be more low key London launch event the following weekend - provisionally on Sunday 20th October, 7 pm to 10 pm, at Vinyl (record shop/cafe/gallery space), 4 Tanners Hill, Deptford, London SE8. Watch this space for more details...
Looking forward to next Friday's Praxis records party in London, all aboard the MS Stubnitz boat (facebook events details here) .
Praxis released its first records in November 1992, and twenty years later is still going strong. Started by Christoph Fringeli in South London, and associated in the mid-1990s with the famous Brixton Dead by Dawn parties, it is now based in Berlin. It has stayed true to its mission of putting out sounds from the noisier, faster, more experimental, but still very much partyable end of electronic music. There's a great line up next week, with various people associated with Praxis and related projects at various times:
The boat is located at King George V Dock, Gallions Reach (DLR-Station), Royal Docks, London - it is a stationary boat, so you can get on and off when you like!
Doors open 11pm on Friday 2nd November, music starts midnight and goes until 6.
Tickets on the night: GBP 10.00. Guest list: GBP 5.00 (email to praxis(at)c8.com for guest list with subject header “stubnitz guest list”)
The venue itself will be worth the effort. The MS Stubnitz is a former East German deep-sea fishing vessel, converted in 1992 to a floating cultural space. It came over to London earlier this year for the ill-fated Bloc festival. In fact, as chaos and overcrowding ensued on shore, leading to the cancellation of the festival, the party on the Stubnitz went fine by all accounts, with DJ Controlled Weirdness and others holding it together.
The twelfth issue of Datacide, 'the magazine for noise and politics', is out today, with 68 pages of stuff you won't find in any other journal. I have a couple of pieces in it, and the full contents are as follows:
- Datacide: Introduction
- Darkam: The Art of Visual Noise
- Nemeton: Political News
- Christoph Fringeli: Neo-Nazi Terror and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Germany
- Cherry Angioma: Communisation Theory and the Question of Fascism
- Christoph Fringeli: From Adorno to Mao – The Decomposition of the ’68 Protest Movement into Maoism (extended book review)
- Split Horizon: Control and Freedom in Geographic Information Systems
- Riccardo Balli: “Bolognoise ain’t a Sauce for Spaghetti but Bologna’s Soundscape”
- Polaris International: Documents and Interventions
- TechNET insert:
- Noise and Politics – Technet Mix
- No More WordS
- Listener as Operator
- The Intensifier
- No Stars Here
- Techno: Psycho-Social Tumult
- Dead By Dawn – Explorations inside the Night
- Psycho-Social Tumult (Remix)
- Dan Hekate: Kiss me, cut me, hurt me, love me
- Howard Slater: Useless Ease
- John Eden: The Dog’s Bollocks – Vagina Dentata Organ and the Valls Brothers (interview)
- Neil Transpontine: Spannered – Bert Random Interview
- LFO Demon: When Hell is full the Dead will Dance on your iPhone (Review of Simon Reynolds' “Retromania”)
- Christoph Fringeli: “Fight for Freedom” – The Legend of the “other” Germany (extended book review)
- Nemeton: “West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California” (book review)
- Datacide: Press reviews
- terra audio: 2023: A Spor remembers ‘Reclaim the Streets’
- John Eden: Christopher Partridge: Dub in Babylon (book review)
- terra audio: Jeff Mills: Violet Extremist
- terra audio: Keeping the Door of the Cosmos open – on Sun Ra’s Arkestra directed by Marshall Allen
- Record Reviews
- The Lives and Times of Bloor Schleppy (12)
- Comic by Sansculotte
There's a launch conference and party in Berlin tomorrow night October 20th at Subversiv - more details here.
If you're in London you will be able to pick up a copy next weekend (27th October) from the Datacide stall at the London Anarchist Bookfair. There is also a plan for some Datacide talks and a party in London on November 2nd - watch this space for more details.
A global economic crisis is leading to global austerity - yet paradoxically in places at the sharp end populist nationalism is resurgent amidst the demonstrations and riots. A recent survey of the situation in Greece notes that 'Nationalism (mostly in a populist form) is dominant, favoured both by the various extreme right wing cliques as well as by left parties and leftists. Even for a lot of proletarians or petty-bourgeois hit by the crisis who are not affiliated with political parties, national identity appears as a last imaginary refuge when everything else is rapidly crumbling. Behind the slogans against the “foreign, sell out government” or for the “Salvation of the country”, “National sovereignty” and a “New Constitution” lies a deep feeling of fear and alienation to which the “national community” appears as a magical unifying solution. Class interests are often expressed in nationalist and racist terms producing a confused and explosive political cocktail'.
Look too at Egypt where the army seized power by posing as the guardian of the nation in the revolutionary upheaval there; or at Libya where 'foreign national' migrant workers have suffered abuse and worse as potential 'mercenaries' during the revolt. Adrift on the ocean of debt and recession the ship of the nation state seems to be a place of safety even as it sinks... the dream of returning back to an imaginary time when our lives weren't at the mercy of abstract, impersonal forces.
There are a number of ways to respond to this. One is to go with the flow and try to put a postive spin on it, to imagine a kind of politically correct patriotism - see for instance Billy Bragg's advocacy of a 'Progressive Patriot' position [insert standard Orwell quote about patriotism being good, but nationalism being bad, whatever the difference is]. But loving the place you happen to know is no basis for any kind of politics - that doesn't make it any better than all the places you don't happen to know.
Another approach is an abstract internationalism which simply affirms a global solidarity without getting hands dirty criticising the prevalent nationalism of where you live. In Berlin earlier this year, on the other hand, I was struck by the continuing virulence of the anti-national position: a total refusal to have any truck with celebrating Germany or German culture. Here's some images from that current:
'Keing tag fur die Nation' ('No day for the nation').
'Staat, Nation, Kapital. Scheisse' (State, Nation, Capital. Shit') - demonstration against day to celebrate German reunification.
Fight the Empire, Destroy Germany
Deutschland Abschalten (Shut down Germany)
'Everybody loves Germany. We don't'
'Love techno, hate Germany'
There are some problems with parts of the 'anti-national' tendency, especially when German exceptionalism is over-emphasised. The point isn't to be just 'anti-German' as if other people's nationalism is OK - and indeed in Germany many people in that current moved on from describing themselves as 'antideutsch' to 'antinational'.
What would an 'anti-British' imagery look like? What is it we would be against - the nation state? The political formation? The notion of supremacy of British culture and history? Would it be worthwhile? Just thinking aloud here, but if you want to have a go at some stickers let's see what you come up with!
At this time of year it is customary to raise a glass to one of Germany's finest music critics: Albrecht (Ali) Höhler (1898-1933).
His exemplary practical critique was directed againt Horst Wessel, a musician, song writer and founder of a Nazi stormtrooper Schalmeienkapelle (shawm band - the shawn being a kind of oboe). Wessel was a leading Nazi party organiser in Berlin. Among other things he organised an attack on the local headquarters of the Communist Party in Friedrichshain, Berlin, during which four workers sustained serious injuries.
In January 1930 Wessel was shot in the head by Ali Höhler, seemingly at the instigation of members of the communist Roter Frontkämpferbund (Red Front Fighters League). Wessel died from his injuries a few weeks later and was buried on 23 February 1930 in a public funeral stage managed by Goebbels. Unfortunately one of his songs survived and became known as the "Horst Wessel Lied" and the official anthem of the Nazi Party.
When the Nazis came to power they killed Höhler and elevated Wessel to the rank of a holy martyr (one magazine wrote: 'How high Horst Wessel towers over that Jesus of Nazareth').
So here's to Ali Höhler - he had some fine tattoos too:
I went to Berlin recently for the launch of the new issue (number 11) of Datacide - 'the magazine for noise and politics'.
There were a couple of events. First up was a series of talks at Cagliostro, a bar in Friedrichshain which also houses the Praxis record shop (plenty of breakcore, noise and hard drum and bass vinyl with some radical literature too - funny seeing Aufheben, the German-titled English communist magazine on sale in Germany). Praxis is the label started by Christoph Fringeli who also initiated Datacide. Note the extremely rare Association of Autonomous Astronauts slipmat in the shop:
I gave a talk based on my article in the magazine, Dance Before the Police Come, looking at the different ways the state tries to regulate clubs, raves and parties. I also reflected on the role of sound systems in the recent student demonstrations in the UK.
Nemeton spoke about the Tea Party movement and the radical right in the US, also based around her article in Datacide#11 . She dismissed claims that it simply represents a grass roots popular movement, highlighting the role of Fox media and established right wing politicians in launching and promoting it.
Riccardo Balli missed his flight from Italy but gave a reading of his short fiction piece ' 333 bpm' the next day.
Then on the Friday night there was a launch party at Subversiv, a housing project with a bar and brick basement. Berlin nightlife gets going late, the music started about one and the dancefloor peaked around four. Hard breaks and beats were supplied by DJs from Berlin, Bologna, Los Angeles and Essex including Christoph Fringeli, Balli (Sonic Belligeranza), Kovert, Baseck (Dark Matter), Nemeton (Dark Matter), LT, Cannibal Brother. I missed the last couple as I had to leave to get to the airport. But it was a good party and the notion of praxis as the unity of theory and action was certainly embedded in the event with at least four of the DJs also writing articles for the new Datacide.
[In the basemenet of Subversiv - the red poster sets out the venue's rules: 'Diese Party isteinFreiraum in demSexismus, Transphobe, Homophobe, Mackertum, Antisemitismus and RassismusKEINENPLATZhaben' ( approximately 'this party is a free space in which sexism, transphobia, homophobia, macho behaviour, anti-semitism and racism have no place')]
Subversiv is one of the few squatted projects left in Berlin from the period after the fall of the wall when vacant properties were occupied en masse. Many of these were subsequently licensed in deals with the local government, but as the buildings have been sold off to developers and private landlords most have been evicted.
The day before I arrived another high profile squat was evicted in Friedrichshain, with 25 residents cleared from the Liebig 14 tenement block. The eviction was a big deal, the day was announced in advance and thousands of cops swamped the streets to make sure it went ahead.
On Wednesday night (2nd February) a march of a couple of thousand people in the area was stopped by the police short of its destination, and there were clashes followed by cat and mouse chasing through the streets with groups heading off causing mischief. I saw smashed bank windows and lots of graffiti, and apparently windows were broken at the O2 centre (big corporate entertainment centre similar to its London counterpart).
The full contents of Datacide #11 are as follows:
Datacide events - page 3 Political news compiled by Nemeton - page 4-5
Features:
“Hedonism and Revolution: The Barricade and the Dancefloor” by Christoph Fringeli, page 6 “Dope smuggling, LSD manufacture, organized crime & the law in 1960s London” by Stewart Home, page 8 “Shaking the Foundations: Reggae soundsystem meets ‘Big Ben British values’ downtown” by John Eden, page 12 “Tortugan tower blocks? Pirate signals from the margins” by Alexis Wolton, page 16 “Dancing before the police come” by Neil Transpontine, page 21 “From Subculture to Hegemony: Transversal Strategies of the New Right in Neofolk and Industrial” by Christoph Fringeli, page 24 “From Conspiracy Theories to Attempted Assassinations: The American Radical Right and the Rise of the Tea Party Movement” by Nemeton, page 28 “How to start with the subject. Notes on Burroughs and the ‘combination of all forms of struggle’” by R. C., page 37
Fiction “Sonic Fictions” by Riccardo Balli, page 40 “Digital Disease” by Dan Hekate, page 45 “Infra-Noir. 23 Untitled Poems” by Howard Slater, page 46 “Office Work” by Matthew Fuller, page 48
Record Reviews, page 52
“Beat Blasted Planet. An interview with Steve Goodman on ‘Sonic Warfare’” by Matthew Fuller and Steve Goodman, page 58 “Free Parties” by Terra Audio, page 60 “This is the end… the official ending” by GorkiPlubakter, page 61
The Lives and Times of BloorSchleppy (11), page 62 Charts, page 63
Available now for EUR 4.00 incl. postage – order now by sending this amount via paypal to praxis(at)c8.com, or send EUR 10 for 3 issues (note that currently only issues 5, 7 and 10 are still available, but you can also pre-order future issues.) Also from the Praxis Webshop.
The zine is now available in London, currently exclusively at the 56a Info Shop, 56 Crampton Street, SE17.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin works on two levels -above ground the 'Field of Stelae' conveys a sense of scale, like a vast expanse of anonymous tombs.
In the exhibition below ground the focus is on named individuals. A small sample of life stories from the Shoah puts it on a human scale - real people shown going about their lives before they were cut short - musicians whose music was silenced, murdered dancers, lovers, mothers, sisters.
Alice Dreifuss (born 1910) in a Fasching (carnival costume) in Altdorf in 1927; she was murdered in January 1943 in Auschwitz-Birkenau
'Belgrade, 1924: members of the Demajo, Arueti and Elkalay families at a picnic. A friend of the Demajo family hid the photos in a box dug in the ground in Belgrade. Rafael Pijada saved the rest of the photos under Bulgarian occupation in Macedonia'. Chaim Demajo, the accordionist on the left, was shot in October 1941 near Belgrade.
Going to be in Berlin next week to do a talk as part of the launch of the new edition of Datacide magazine (number 11), in which I have an article. The next night there's a launch party. Details follow:
Thursday, 3rd February 2011 - TALKS & DISCUSSION Cagliostro, Lenbachstr. 10, (Ostkreuz), from 17h
“333 bpm” - a sonic-fiction by Riccardo Balli Iconographic references by: Caina Every style in electronic music inspires a certain social behaviour, well more, it actually structures the listener’s brainframe. Do you want to know how? And, above all, do you want to smash this social brainframe down by hyper-mixing genres? Some tips on how to do this can maybe come from this fiction, a sonic one, of course!
Dance before the police come - talk by Neil Transpontine What’s going on when police raid parties? Neil Transpontine explores the different ways laws on sex, drugs, noise, property and subversion are used to constrain dancing in the UK and across the world.
Friday 4th February 2011, Datacide Release Party at Subversiv, Brunnenstrasse 7, U8 with DJs including Nemeton (Darkmatter Sound System), DJ Balli, Kovert (Critical Noise), Christoph Fringeli (Praxis), LT (Cagliostro), Baseck (Darkmatter).
"I read your story about the mandoline, it was interesting, I too have a strong interest in the jewish resistance history and I am specially fascinated by the "little" stories. When I was young we were singing the jiddish songs of Hirsh Glik and others... since I know about your electronical music background I wanted to share my new track with you: I called it jiddish partizan marsh, it's based on the melody of Sog nit kejnmal als du gejst den letztn".
There's more detail on the song from which this track's melody comes in this article on Music of the Holocaust: 'News of the Warsaw ghetto uprising of April 1943 inspired the Vilna poet and underground fighter Hirsh Glik (ca. 1921–ca. 1944) to write Never Say That You Have Reached the Final Road (the Yiddish title is often shortened to Zog nit keynmol). With a melody taken from a march tune composed for the Soviet cinema, the song spread quickly beyond the ghetto walls and was soon adopted as the official anthem of the Jewish partisans. Glik was later deported to an Estonian labor camp and is presumed to have lost his life during an escape attempt. His song remains a favorite at Holocaust commemoration ceremonies worldwide'. This site also includes a recording of the track - which is also known as the Song of the Partisans - by Betty Segal.
A couple of (related?) new blogs with similar interests to this site:
Apples from the Underground - ' blog inspired by the underground subcultures of resistance , rave music creativity , temporary autonomous zones and radical theory'. Some interesting stuff about French free parties, including last weekend's Free Parade in Paris - trying to find out more about this (will translate some material from the French Free Parade site, does anyone have any information in English that I can use?)
An excellent event in Berlin last month (October 31st) to mark the launch of the 10th issue of Datacide magazine (see programme). The venue was K9 in Kinzigstrasse, in the Friedrichshain part of the city - an area with some surviving traces of the mass wave of squatting that followed the fall of the Berlin wall. The venue itself was formerly squatted but now has some kind of regularised existence, with housing, a couple of bars and a dancefloor space downstairs. Handily it is just around the corner from the record shop run by the Praxis/Datacide crew in Mainzer Strasse - 'Tricky Tunes: Bassline Provider' the sign says - catering for all your breakbeat/dancehall needs if you are in the area:
In the daytime at K9 there was a conference with contributions loosely themed - as is Datacide 10 - around the historification of rave and electronic music cultures.
Christoph Fringelli talked about ‘Hedonism and Revolution’ with particular reference to the movements of the late 1960s/early 1970s. His starting point was a critique of the dismal figure of the professional revolutionary proposed by Nechayev in the 19th century – the notion of a single-minded man with a mission and no emotions that influenced the practice of both some Bakuninist anarchists and Bolsheviks. The movements of the late 1960s by contrast initially combined political radicalism with a practice of pleasure – there was ‘cultural rupture hand in hand with political rupture’. In West Berlin in the late 1960s for instance there were at least 100 radical bars. Soon though there was a re-emergence of traditional political formations, with both the German SDS (Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund) and American SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) giving birth to orthodox Marxist-Leninist parties that became increasingly dismissive of the counter-culture.
Hans Christian Psaar (Unkultur) gave a talk entitled 'Kindertotenlieder for Rave Culture', taking issue with the way utopian visions of the party as temporary autonomous zone can disavow the labour that constitutes the basis for the party, ignoring questions such as who built the sound system, who is serving the drinks, who's working in the factory where the vehicles were made? Or, as I pondered later when I was helping Hans sweep up fag ends from the dancefloor at the end of the party, who cleans up afterwards?
Lauren Graber's 'Countervailing Forces: Electronic Music Countercultures and Subcultures', drew on the work of Sarah Chambers (Club Culture) and Arun Saldanha (Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race) - both of whom criticise taking sub-cultural self-definitions as 'alternative' and 'underground' at face value. One of the questions posed by her discussion was whether the kind of music played in a scene affected its liberatory content - is a squat bar playing breakcore intrinsically more radical than the same place, with the same crowd, playing punk? Lauren defended noise and broken beats as a ‘radical practice’ to ‘get out of standardisation’, not surprizing given her affiliation with Darkmatter Soundsystem (Los Angeles). I agree with this as one strategy, but it's not the only one - experimental scenes can still generate their own rules, styles and fashions, while I'm sure we've all been in situations where the cheesiest pop track has soundracked the most exciting moment. Ultimately it's the social relations that develop between people around music and dancing that matter, rather than what tunes are playing - although I would still argue that some kinds of music have more potential than others.
Alexis Wolton talked about the history of UK pirate radio from the BBC’s first use of the term ‘pirate’ to describe Radio Luxemburg in 1933. He distinguished between an early wave of 1960s offshore pirates like Radio Caroline and Radio Invicta broadcasting from the North Sea, overtly political free radio (rare in the UK, best exemplified in Italy by Bologna’s Radio Alice in the 1970s) and the wave of dance music stations from the early 1990s using tower blocks to broadcast the tunes the official stations neglected and to create ‘a psychic space outside of the monopolies’. Along the way he mentioned various pioneers such as the 1970s/early 80s South London soul station Radio Jackie, and celebrated the continuing vibrancy of unofficial broadcasting - on the weekend before 71 pirate stations were broadcasting in London.
'Shaking the Foundations: Reggae soundsystems meet Big Ben British Values downtown' by John Eden (Uncarved/Woofah) was a freewheeling history of the impact of reggae sound system culture on the UK, tracing a line from the the first London sound system, started by Duke Vin when he moved from Jamaica in 1955 (with arguably the first sound system night being put on by him in the same year in Brixton town hall), through the tribulations of the 1970s (Notting Hill carnival riots, Misty/People Unite and the Southall anti-fascist clashes of 1979), to today's different scenes. Along the way he opposed the attempts of policy makers to create artificial integration by imposing 'national values' from above with the organic process of people coming together through music, dance, sex and drugs.
Stewart Home's Hallucination Generation talk explored some of the forgotten byways of the 1960s counter-culture, partly prompted by his investigations into the life of his mother, Julia Callan-Thompson, who was involved in the 1960s/70s hippy drug scene in Notting Hill. He referenced Terry Taylor, the author of a 1960 novel that seems to have been the first work of fiction in England to mention LSD - and in which incidentally, the hash-dealing/using mod narrator slags off the speed-using trad fans (see mod vs. trad). More generally, his talk caused me to reflect on how in 'counter cultures' defined at least partially by drugs, claims to freedom and autonomy are undercut by the fact that you are only ever a couple of steps away from a gangster with a gun and all kinds of nefarious business/criminal/security services activities.
My own talk expanded on my article in the new Datacide "A Loop Da Loop Era: towards an (anti)history of ‘rave’", with the starting point a critique of this year's '20th anniversary of house music' nostalgia in the UK. Aside from the obvious point that house music and even its UK reception goes back further than 20 years, I wanted to think about some of the deeper roots of what became known as ‘acid house’ and later as ‘rave’ and to consider some of the disparate trajectories that converge on the dancefloors of London, Manchester and Berlin from the late 1980s - such as the phenomonon of groups of disaffected young Europeans organising themselves arounds slices of Black American vinyl that goes back to the jazz age. I used Jeremy Deller's ‘The History of the World’ - which famously explores the affinities between Acid House on the one hand, and the Brass Bands associated with mining villages in the north of England on the other - as an exemplar of how interesting connections could be traced between apparently disparate social and cultural scenes.
Blackmass Plastics and Controlled Weirdness stumble into the morning light after the party. The 'keine homezone fur faschisten' banner outside K9 translates as 'no safe haven for fascists' - the place has had some hassle recently from nazi 'autonomous nationalists'.
Later the action moved downstairs to the dancefloor for a 'day of the dead' party, with a good crowd (200+) and dancing, drinking and chatting until well into the next day. There was no plan to recapitulate the historical dimension of the talks, but it kind of worked out that way. After The Wirebug (Dan Hekate) had warmed things up with some laptop noise action, DJ Controlled Weirdness really turned up the heat at around 4 am with a set that started out with House Nation, headed through piano break hardcore before moving into darker territory that finished with Soundproof's Bring the Lights Down. That set it up nicely for Blackmass Plastics, prolific producer of bass heavy breakbeats in all flavours with his own Thorn Industries and Dirty Needles labels, as well as Rag and Bone records and Combat Recordings.
DJ Kovert was next, an object lesson in how to play hard and very very fast but still keep people dancing - the track that really got people excited was Current Value's Faith with its 'heaven isn't heaven anymore' sample. Anybody can bang on some speedcore/broken beats/experimental noise that leaves people leaning against the walls and stroking their chins - the trick is to do so while teasing the dancing body's expectations of regularity, so that it teeters in suspension on the edge of giving up before being pulled back into motion. The effect is like being on the Waltzers at the fairground - where you seem to be heading at high speed in one direction but are suddenly spun round the other way at the same time.
Throughout the party, visuals were supplied by X-Tractor with projections including distorted images of Walter Benjamin, Marx, Bakunin, Gramsci and Louise Michel.
All in all the event couldn't really have gone any better. John Eden has written up his own report at Uncarved, and is also selling copies of the essential Datacide 10 for a mere £2.50 at his uncarved shop.
Christoph Fringeli: Introduction - A brief introduction to Datacide, where it’s coming from and a brief introduction to the new issue and the conference.
Christoph Fringeli: Hedonism and Revolution
Will true pleasure only exist after the revolution, or will it be indispensable to even lead to the revolution?Proclaiming the revolutionary as a “doomed man” without “personal interests”, the anarchist Sergey Nechayev set the pace for an ascetic image of the revolutionary that would be picked up by the direct heirs of Bakuninism: the Leninists. An “ideal” of a person without desires and only one passion - the revolution - was supposed to bring about a society of human fullfillment, something that had to go wrong, and end in the misery of the Maoist and Trotzkyist sects. But there has always been a hedonist counter-tendency to this, from Fourier to Sexpol to the Commune movement and the counter cultures of the 60’s to the 90’s. CF will examine some of the tensions and discussions that took place in the 70’s and ask if they have any relevance now.
Neil Transpontine (History is Made at Night): A Loop Da Loop Era: towards an (anti)history of ‘rave’
In 2008 the UK media have been full of stories about the ‘20th annversary of acid house’. Neil Transpontine critiques this conventional history, and celebrates instead the multiple trajectories that converge and pass through the various sonic, social and chemical phenomena grouped under that unstable term ‘rave’. It is a story that takes in not just 303s and 808s but gay riots, carnival uprisings and underground jazz clubs in 1940s Europe.
Stewart Home: Hallucination Generation
Looking at some of the more occulted aspects of the counterculture in 1960s London. How some of the key figures in the development of the scene rarely make it into the histories. Terry Taylor the first person to mention LSD in a British novel, and the inspirationfor both Absolute Beginners and Mister Love and Justice by a better known writer Colin MacInnes. Detta Whybrow and the first major LSD distribution network in London after the drug was made illegal. Alex Trocchi, drug dealing and black powers. Plus the Notting Hill’s problematic writers of the 1950s who later occupied positions on the outer fringes of the counterculture.
John Eden: Shaking The Foundations: Reggae soundsystems meet ‘Big Ben British values’ downtown
John Eden will examine the contribution reggae soundsystems have contributed to British culture and identity, and what they can teach the global mp3 generation. John has contributed writing to a vast number of independent publications over the years and currently co-edits Woofah magazine – “a completely DIY rag covering reggae, dubstep and grime”. He has run his own uncarved.org website since 1997. He began unleashing his musical taste on the world in the mid 80s by wrestling all-comers off the stereo at house parties and standing guard whilst his carefully compiled cassettes played. More recently he has contributed sets to the respected Blogariddims podcast series and played records at a bewildering array of obscure London venues.
Hans-Christian Psaar: Kindertotenlieder for Rave culture.
It's a common myth in music subcultures to think of themselves as independent. But what happens? Commodities get produced and sold on the market to consumers. No matter if those consumers wear dreadlocks or suits. Rebellion and subversion are labels to sell capitalist goods in the cultural industry. Be creative! Have fun! Those are the new imperatives of post-fordist capitalism and its cultural economies. The talk will show on the examples of The Prodigy and Kid606 how rave music is branded and sold.
Lauren Graber: Countervailing Forces: Electronic Music Countercultures and Subcultures
This paper will open with a discussion of how counterculture and subculture have been defined, and then ask what is at stake when we seek to assess divergent avenues within electronic music in these terms. Central to the operational imperative of subculture is the solidification of style and genre - visible and audible signs connoting sameness and belonging. The tactics of visibility and disappearance enacted as subcultural and countercultural everyday practices will be drawn out through a commentary on the book “Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race” and other oppositional tendencies in experimental electronics.
Alexis Wolton: Tortugan towerblocks: Pirate signals in the 90s
After a clampdown on pirate activity at the end of the 80s, the housing estates of London saw a renewed explosion of pirate stations in the early 90s. During the 90s commentators enthusiastically linked the pirate stations with Hakim Bey’s ideas on pirate utopias, information networks and self-organisation. A decade later the pirates still exist, their relationship to the world radically changed by the internet, but the positivist optimism of 90s technoculture has waned, many of its hopes recuperated by Capital.A discussion of the history and legacy of pirate radio, the theories of self-organisation that accompanied it and current ideas on participatory media.
Anita Berber (1899-1928) was a dancer in pre-Nazi Germany, famous/notorious for a life of bisexuality, drugs and semi-naked performance.
With her sometime husband and dancing parter Sebastian Droste she published in 1923 a book of poetry, photographs, and drawings called Die Tänze des Lasters, des Grauens und der Ekstase (Dances of Vice, Horror, and Ecstasy), based on their performance of the same name.
In Berlin, "Berber was known to dance in the Eldorado, a homosexual and transvestite bar, where Rudi Anhang, dancer and jazz banjoist, accompanied her. Berber's speciality was a depraved dance number entitled 'Cocaine', performed to the music of Camille Saint-Saens. She also did a piece called 'Morphium'" (Kater).
Another dance, first performed in 1919, was Heliogabal where she played a sun-worshipping priest ‘Exquisite, entirely attired in gold, her metallic body lured the sun’ (Elegante Welt, 1919, cited in Toepfer).
In 1925 she was the subject of an expressionist portrait, entitled The Dancer Anita Berber, by the painter Otto Dix.
Death in Vegas dedicated a song to Anita on their 2004 album Satan's Circus.
Berber's reputation still manages to wind up present-day Nazi sympathisers. While researching this I came across one such scum-site praising Hitler's cleansing of 'decadent' Weimar Berlin, and stating that Berber 'Typified the Jewish mindset. Her stage acts revolved around masturbation, cocaine, and lesbian love' (yes the fascists are still out there, though apparently there's now one less to worry about in Austria)
The relationship between music, dance and community is a recurring theme on this site, but the word 'community' has come to be appropriated in ways that I am not comfortable with. In some uses it seems to imply an enforced membership of a social body and an obligation to abide by its mores. Worse it often implies an exclusion of those deemed outside of the community - like those migrants locked up in detention centres because they lack the papers to belong to the national community even though in every other repsect they have shared the social life of their neighbours.
I am more concerned with a looser, more open notion of community, the kind of free association constituted by the passage of a few persons (or maybe a lot) through an intense period of time.
In this respect I was interested in an exchange between the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy and critic Chantal Pontbriand. The fomer argues that the word community "has come to connote very much the 'exclusive community'... That is why I prefer to speak of being-in-common or being-with". This is "No longer a community whose meaning would derive from some grand narrative, but a community of sense, which makes sense, a community of ties and touch, elaborated pragmatically rather than dogmatically" (Pontbriand).
For Nancy, this sensual connection with others can be magnified by art, which "intensifies a sensibility or a sensoriality, bringing it to an extremity where, precisely it touches the others". This can involve "Hearing, seeing, touching oneself, letting oneself be heard, seen, touched, smelled, sensed: art as the intensification of 'sensing'".
If this is so, the music space (the club/gig/party) certainly intensifies our auditory sense through volume and quality of sound. But it also intensifies the community of being experienced through the senses, constituted by the different ways our bodies relate to each other "distant-near, reachable-unreachable, desirable-fearful, erotic, powerful, weak, fleeting, confrontational etc".
This is precisely the dynamic of the fleeting community of the senses that is the dancefloor - not an undifferentiated mass, but defined by bodies moving in relation to each other - not just moving to the music, but moving to be nearer the object of desire, to get away from the moody guy, to invite in or exclude others from personal space...
I read this exchange in Common Wealth, edited by Jessica Morgan (Tate: london 2003), but it is now available online.Photo of clubbers in Berlin 2006, by Loewenhertz.
Advance warning – I will be doing a talk in Berlin on Friday October 31st, part of an event to mark the tenth issue of Datacide zine. Not sure of details yet, but the plan is to have talks in the afternoon followed by a party, with other participants probably including John Eden (Uncarved), Stewart Home, Dan Hekate, Controlled Weirdness and Christoph Fringeli (Datacide, Praxis records and once upon a time Dead by Dawn). If you’re within reach, put it in your diary. Details to follow.
Another classic article from the zine vaults, again incredibly not already online. 'Decoder: the sound of muzak' by Tom Vague was first printed in Zig-Zag in Feburary 1985 and then reprinted in his own Vague zine (May 1985). This article had a big impact on me, not so much in terms of the film it describes, but in introducing to me the notion of music as a form of control.
As far as the Concise Oxford Dictionary is concerned it doesn't exist. As far as the majority of people are concerned it doesn't exist. As far as the Muzak Corporation is concerned that's just fine. Muzak Corp is the only company in the world that doesn't advertise it's product to the public. In fact they don't even want it widely known that Muzak is a product. They're quite happy for it to be known as harmless background music.
That's not to say that the people who create and use Muzak don't think highly of it; 'Muzak is more than music. It's an environment,' is the catchphrase used in the Muzak manual. And that's not boastful hard-sell either, that's factual information. 'Muzak is scientifically-engineered sound,' continues the manual, 'The sound of Muzak is subtle and musical. But it is not music which is meant to entertain. Because music is art. But Muzak is science. So it does not require a conscious listening effort. Yet it has an enormous effect on those who hear it ... Muzak is programmed to motivate office and industrial workers, relax restaurant patrons and medical patients, make shopping more pleasant and less hurried ... The entire process is known as Muzak Stimulus Progression ... It provides an overall feeling of forward movement, can mitigate stress and produce beneficial psychological changes.'
However, not everyone is in a state of stimulated, blissful ignorance of Muzak's supposedly beneficial psychological effects. Beneficial to whom and who decides what is beneficial, you may well ask. Hamburg journalist/director, Klaus Maeck did so, at great length. Eventually turning his obsession with Muzak and the harm it does into the new German underground movie, 'Decoder’.
Klaus used to run Hamburg's 'Rip-Off' Records and as a journalist covered the likes of Einsturzende Neubauten, Abwarts, Xmal Deutschland, Malaria and Psychic TV. He had previously documented the likes of the aforementioned on Super-8 and gained some recognition as a Punk film maker, because in his words, "Nobody else was doing it in Hamburg." After the collapse of 'Rip-Off' and disillusionment with journalism, Klaus began to concentrate on his idea of making a film about Muzak. Over a couple of years he researched the phenomena and compiled the 'Decoder Handbook'; to support the film with information about Muzak and related subjects; like Cut-ups, Infra-sound, Dream machines, cassette-piracy and frogs. (Still don't see how that last one fits in.)
His research entailed visiting Muzak control offices - In every main city in Germany - Hamburg, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Munich - there is one office for this purpose - And he got to interview one of the directors, but found himself responding in a peculiar way; "I sat there talking with him and I really felt something. When I arrived there I wanted to ask him some quite provocative questions. After one hour I was really calm and talking with him very gently. He explained to me, really he told me and I really believed him, that Muzak is good in hospitals. Instead of having valium, you hear some Muzak and you're really calm before an operation.
"I think that's the good thing about Muzak." Klaus concedes, "To be used in that way instead of chemicals, pills and so on. But that's the only good thing about it. You can manipulate the brain with it. Mainly it’s negative, but it could have some good effects. I still can't believe, this director told me they use the same Muzak in hospitals, supermarkets, fastfood chains, offices, factories. I cannot believe that, because in supermarkets its purpose is to make you comfortable to buy more. In offices it's to make the working atmosphere more relaxed to increase efficiency. But he told me it's the same. And there is only one tape reel running in this office, going by telephone cable to all the different places. You don't get anything on tape or record. It's just through cable.
"It's built up on the human bio-rhythm, on the normal daily rhythm people have; like you start work at 8, so around 11 they make the Muzak more exciting because you're thinking about lunchbreak. Then in the afternoon it’s calm because you've just had a break. Then at 3 they make the Muzak more exciting again. The tape runs and runs all day, endless. You can't decide for yourself which Muzak you want to hear. They decide in the office. Even if you turn it off you're still in that rhythm. I think it's pretty dangerous. You never know when Muzak is on the radio - many major groups arrange their music using Muzak techniques. You never can be sure."
And so using the basic theme of Muzak; the damage it can cause, how to deal with it and ultimately decode it, scriptwriting began for 'Decoder’. At this stage Klaus brought in Muscha, a young film maker from Düsseldorf, who had the experience necessary to direct the proposed one and a half hour film. And together with Volker Schaefer and Trini Trimpop, they set about building a plot around three central characters: The main protagonist, a young noise-freak, played by Mufti of Neubauten/Abwarts fame, sets out to decode the hidden information of Muzak. But Mufti's quest doesn't interest his girlfriend, who works in a sleazy sex show on Hamburg's Reeperbahn. She's played by another familiar figure from the German underground, Christiane F, who in the film is obsessed with frogs. In real life of course it’s something else.
As Mufti and Christiane's relationship breaks down, a sub plot develops around Jager, the Muzak Corporation hitman, who's being blackmailed back to work to bring an end to Mufti’s decoding. During Jager's frequent social jaunts down the Reeperbahn, he begins to show more interest in Christiane than Mufti does. But he doesn't discover the connection until the end, when he decides, too late, to finish the job in his own interest.
The Jager role is played by the only pro-actor in 'Decoder', Bill Rice, the star of another nocturnal delight 'Subway Riders', and a well known face on the New York theatre scene. In fact his desperately appealing, sad face was why he got the part. "He's not famous but he had such a good face we just had to have him," enthuses Klaus.
Finally the Austrian-American director of photography, Johanna Heer was recruited to the team, and shooting began in sterile computer centres, even more sterile hamburger joints and, as a contrast, glaringly Iit peep-shows and underground sound-labs. At times I found it a bit hard to follow the sub-titles and I was watching it in the morning, the wrong time of day to watch it according to Klaus, but I thought the story did well to unravel itself from the various ongoing sub-plots and themes. And the use of colour and tone carries the film through; each central character is Iit in different fluorescent shades between neon and argon, which often explode into 'architectures of fire’.
However the soundtrack (available on 'Some Bizarre') is probably its most endearing feature. Regular Zig-Zag readers may already be familiar with 'Decoder' because of Dave Ball's work on it, which he said something about in the March issue. Various Psychic Tellys, Collapsing New Buildings and Some Bizarros did their bit to add to the general ambience. And I even found myself liking Marc Almond's 'Sleazy City' in the peep-show sequences. Their soundtrack is cut with FM news broadcasts and the scientifically programmed art-product of industrial psychologists, musicologists and marketing engineers. There's a war on, as Klaus outlines;
"I think Muzak or music in general can be used to manipulate the brain, in any way· for relaxing, or getting you excited. And they work with it. They do it. And I think you, we, whoever can do it also in a different way, like Mufti does in the film; he does the opposite. He develops Anti-Muzak for his own purposes, to provoke in the end street riots; first to make people puke instead of feeling relaxed in the burger place. I'm still convinced, even if it sounds funny, that you really can do it. If you have 3 or 4 people with tape recorders on the streets you can provoke something like that. You get manipulated all the time by the media. So why shouldn't we use the same techniques for our purpose, to try to break that down. I think that's okay, necessary even."
There's a war on. An information war: 'Decoder' credits its two major influences in this field with cameo roles of their own design: Genesis P.Orridge appears as an anti-pope sort of figure, leading an underground resistance movement - I think all the people in 'Decoder' parody themselves to a certain extent, but Gen's parody is the funniest. In one scene Mufti stumbles into his bunker, where he becomes a not entirely willing participant in a nihilistic noise ritual. Gen's main line to Mufti before he's sent packing is; "Information is like a bank, and we have to rob this bank."
Rob a Bank. Storm the Reality Studio and Retake the Universe: Ironically the development of functional music and subliminal techniques owes a great deal to Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. Advertisers and god knows who else have been using their Cut-up technique to manipulate people ever since Burroughs first applied it to his literary works. He used it to seemingly rearrange a text at random to create new words and watch the future flood out. But it can of course be used for more down to earth motives, such as profit and greed.
Burroughs also wrote a book called 'The Revised Boy Scout Manual', which gave instructions on how to use his techniques on the streets. It was planned for this to be incorporated into 'Decoder', with tape-terrorists/pirates using cut-up tapes to provoke a riot in the final scene. But when the 'Decoder' crew arrived in Berlin to shoot footage of the anti-Reagan riots, they were astounded to find the cassette-pirates already there. Ghetto blasters had been set up in open windows and helicopter and gunfire noises were being played in the streets. Hundreds of tape recorders were confiscated as a result.
As an acknowledgement of the debt the film owes him, Burroughs himself crops up in Mufti's dream sequences; first leading Christiane across a field in Jarmanesque ambience. The second time handing Mufti a broken tape recorder on Mufti's TV - this was shot when Burroughs was staying in Tottenham Court Road for 'The Final Academy' in 1982 – Ain’t nothing here now but the recordings. So hit it! Pause it! Record it and play! C-30! C-60! C-90! GO!
Here's a section from the film Decoder (1984), featuring Genesis P.Orridge. His speech seems quite prophetic now of the internet age, just on the horizon at the time of the film: "Information is like a bank. Some of us are rich, some of us are poor with information. All of us can be rich. Our job, your job is to rob the bank"
