Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: berlin, breaching the vortex, columbia, cortex, dead time, dispatchwork, dubai, eminent domain, flipper, gentrification, ghost of petrodollar bubble past, hardcore, jan vormann, occupation, open the gate, punk, the future
The picture above is from the Berlin that I won’t be revisiting in June – I think it’s from the alleyway/courtyard leading to Central Kino? Couldn’t agree/hope for more perhaps – capitalism is pretty much ‘civilised cannibalism’ anyways. Ditto with ecocide – I have issues with the “Earth-my-mother” vibe – but it seems that hyperconsumption and death-by fossil fuels looks a bit cannibalistic? And sorcery – I don’t remember where from but Paul Bohannon has opined that “men attain power by consuming the substance of others”. (For a desktop sticky note tells me so – I sense my life would implode slightly if the program ever crumbles). I’ve been thinking a lot about magic/sorcery and links to power and art lately following a recent final (and via Zerzan’s ‘Case Against Art’ – hopefully not the beginning of an awkward green-team foray) – more on this later perhaps. Also from Berlin though, this time to patch up the gaps of the past (not that the vortex hasn’t been breached already) is this lego brick project I’m really digging:
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: berlin, berlin wall, east side gallery, gentrification, germany, graffiti, kreuzberg, music, prenzlauer berg, street art
Ahh! Berlin is like a morsecode of mental checkmarks so far, staccatoing really satisfactorially (as opposed to satisfiyingly maybe? more heavyset perhaps) like the bmm tsh music that seems especially popular. I’ve only ever been into ambienty idm and breaky glitchy digital hc type electronics before, so it’s been a nice introduction to more technosided and dancey stuff. My friend arrived and has been searching for the alternafilm strains; perhaps I should quest for the subaltern? 
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bass, berlin, dancing, drugs and rock n roll, friday i'm in love, fugazi, fugazi fridays, headspace, joy division, magnolia, promises, sex, signs, text, the cure, toast, word on the street, words, writing
Another week, another Fugazi Friday. This one is about words, words and expressions, as the song Promises from their 1989 Margin Walker EP (and the compilation 13 Songs) goes. This was the first Fugazi album I ever heard, and the sweet intro of Waiting Room coincided wonderfully with learning to play bass, coincidently also age 13. It’s not actually that hard but I remember being crazyproud when I finally nailed it. I didn’t actually realise it was a compilation album until probably a few years later – as with, perhaps embarrassingly, the Cure’s Galore. The song Promises can anyway be found audibly here, and also, adorably, here with this video from sometime in 1988 in DC. Having just begun to recover from the doom that was Intro to Linguistics, I’m not so much a fan of words and their phonological microcomponents right now. I still like words on walls though, and words on the street and on signs, so here’s ten for today, with what is probably a shockngly accurate characterisation of my headspace right now. The signage of Fraday I’m in love’ might be the best thing I have seen all week?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: alec empire, atari teenage riot, atari tuesday riot, berlin, berlin 1999 riots, creepy, DHR, digital hardcore, hotse, ian mackaye, macabre, pigs, rings, rocking horse, sous les pavés, surrealist
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Atari Teenage Riot got me into harder electronic music in general, and specifically the hyperpolitical and the deliciously breaky and glitchy. Here began the wanting to live in Berlin one day (it’ll happen one day, perhaps in a huge wave like the original Potluck House?). And along with it, Alec Empire and digital hardcore, the DHR label and my second start-you-own-label personal hero (the first being of course, Ian MacKaye). I don’t know how many times Ive linked this video of the 1999 Mayday riots in Berlin, but here’s the same song, with a sick video to boot. Today’s images are a little darker and more macabre, then. From this interview, with regards to their quote that “Riot sounds produce riots”:
‘destroy 2000 years of culture’ is an ATR song from the 90s, but so applicable today no?
