I have interviewed my favorite current band. It was a great experience.
Link here:
http://www.fvckthemedia.com/issue57/hard-coming-down
Sunday, June 7, 2015
#385
If punk is
dead now then when did it live? When did it has its hey days when everything
that it was destined to fulfill was a living reality? When Malcom Mclaren was
selling ugly cloths in Chelsea or when the Ramones wrote rock and roll songs
about sniffing glue and horror movies? When Crass was walking around naked in a
squatted garden using anarchy as an excuse not to do the dishes? When Tampax
and Hitler SS played under a bridge on cartoon instruments and decided that
they rather just hang at home? When Spions (the Hungarian Electric Eels) wrote
songs in English because the communist regime was too stupid to understand
foreign languages? Or when Los Saicos started playing mutant surf rock in Peru
before anyone? When did it reach the wall from where everything started to
sound not only boring but as much a redundant reproduction of the sound in
question that it felt useless to play and probably listen to ever again?
Already with Outsiders? Nasal Boys? Johnny Moped or what? Was it Less Than
Jake? Nah, they are too cool. Sup, all my friends who are metal heads? Hardcore
died when good bands started playing dad rock and everyone forgot to notice and
keep in mind the Crucifucks, Deep Wound, Spike In Vain, United Mutation, Die
Kreuzen, Outpatients, Really Red rather they realized baggy pants are more
comfy and you can listen and play metal even with short hair. Everything else
still lives, that Guns and Roses cover band just played for a packed house and
the up rise of the western civilization part II is right at the corner.
Have you realized that people who tend to bury culture are always live in a plastic bag located hundred feet deep under the ground? If you can’t find something you really looking for then that could mean you are still not looking hard enough or at the right exact place. It also could mean that you have invented something that is waiting for you to actually create it or you expect things that never existed and you live with false definitions in your head. I hated it when everyone called everything punk. Fucking freakish, trashy drum and bass was called punk because it was loud and fast and noisy and was easier to listen to it under the influence of drugs and booze. But no, punk is a word used for punk things. It doesn’t define just anything that is vaguely awesome or the truest shit. It defines many things but not everything that is great. So stop calling jazz, British invasion, kraut rock, garage, surf, rock and roll, psych, metal bands punk and start calling yourself either illiterate or a punk who listens to other music. Don’t be an Eskimo standing in a desert wondering, how weird the snow is here.
Have you realized that people who tend to bury culture are always live in a plastic bag located hundred feet deep under the ground? If you can’t find something you really looking for then that could mean you are still not looking hard enough or at the right exact place. It also could mean that you have invented something that is waiting for you to actually create it or you expect things that never existed and you live with false definitions in your head. I hated it when everyone called everything punk. Fucking freakish, trashy drum and bass was called punk because it was loud and fast and noisy and was easier to listen to it under the influence of drugs and booze. But no, punk is a word used for punk things. It doesn’t define just anything that is vaguely awesome or the truest shit. It defines many things but not everything that is great. So stop calling jazz, British invasion, kraut rock, garage, surf, rock and roll, psych, metal bands punk and start calling yourself either illiterate or a punk who listens to other music. Don’t be an Eskimo standing in a desert wondering, how weird the snow is here.
I would
puke those in the face who say fun begins outside your comfort zone because I
really hate everything all the time when I’m not in my bed, eating pizza,
listening to The Fall and receiving a back rub. Being lazy and boring is no
comfort. To learn and while doing that also have fun takes time and work for
sure but if you are not doing it inside your comfort zone why the fuck do you
do it anyway? Ha?!
I deleted
everything from my mp3 player because I felt awful wasting my time with
listening to the three same albums when I have two hundred other records on my
player’s memory beside them. Most of them I have now on actual record that
stands on my shelf and I decided to divide my music listening into three
different environments. At home, at work and while travelling. At home I spin
my records. I tend to pile them up at the beginning of the weekend and listen
my way through them. Also because I have my laptop and wifi at home that’s
where I search for new music. At work I like to listen to long albums that not
just take more time to hear but the whole record blends into a structure of
songs not only one tune after another. While travelling I used to reach for my
feel good acts but life is not a movie since we take films more serious than
actual reality, thus I abandoned the concept of me listening to soundtrack-esque
hits which is mostly MF Doom, for an eastern European white guy in dad cloths.
I want to discover bands even while I sneak around the streets of Budapest so
my rule was not putting anything on my mp3 player that is too easy to listen
to. And now I have 200 albums that have the same chance to be digitally spanned
by me. And I love it because this is my comfort zone that now has been expanded
to the streets too where I listen to new music or already known ones with a
different set of mind. This is music I have to work for a little bit, that
needs my attention, music I don’t already know even when I don’t listen to it.
Just today I went out to buy Club Mate and cherry juice while listening to
Barcelona’s Extremo Nihilismo En Barcelona, Confuse’ Stupid Life
and H.H.H.’s Intellectual Punks and Contrazione ‘s Cineocchio! Storia E
Memoria. It was also such a joyful trip when I was taking a bus a bit tipsy and
blasted Räjäyttäjät’s Rock 'n' Roll Painajainen or some other time when I was
nerding out on Warum Joe’s Toccare La Verita. Is that fuckwave?
So if a comfort zone is where you can be lazy and boring then I want to exist outside of that but if it means where you have fun on your own rules than fuck society and the outside world and I want to eat my mind pizza in MY NEW HOUSE, MY NEW HOUSE.
So if a comfort zone is where you can be lazy and boring then I want to exist outside of that but if it means where you have fun on your own rules than fuck society and the outside world and I want to eat my mind pizza in MY NEW HOUSE, MY NEW HOUSE.
Probably
what always calms down the tension to a boring state of calling the scene where
you consume culture a comfort zone is the rise of mediocrity among its doers,
which I have nothing against. That’s great when almost everything is at least
average and not either super amazing or really bad. In punk only two things are
bad. When people try to play shitty music in a shitty way or when they play
shitty music in a really good way. But going out to a show seeing a band
perform a solid set that you forgot while travelling home and listening to
Flipper is not a bad night at all.
Nowadays
sometimes it also feels like everybody is doing everything so the focus is
switched from those who produce to those who are judging the creative out-puts.
Truth being said I had more sex over my fanzines than I did for my bands. While
I write as a lazy and stupid school paper press gang goof but dance on stage as
Prince on acid.
But it’s
terrible right? This world is obscene when people whose work I adore write me
e-mails that they liked what and how I have written about them. It should be
the other way around.
I reached a point during the write up for the YETT where I realized since everything is so instant nowadays bands are forming to play a genre that is on the spotlight rather than just stepping out from the shadow into the spotlight that is focused on their style of sound. These bands lack the main motivation what is the real reason of why I really love to listen to music: Hearing people play whatever they think is cool. But these protocol bands are playing what is in other people’s favor which even if executed in a real decent way is super dumb because these bands couldn’t exists without anyone’s attention and this is why I skip them because I don’t have to hear it to know what they play. It’s not only dark, gothic post-punk/death rock that I always kick around in my column along with oi influenced hardcore but generic KDB hardcore punk and well bed room noise hardcore too drowning me with their uncountable amount of demos, eps, break ups and last shows. I accept it, these are sub-genres with their own rules that might differ from mine. The music is only bad when the listener is bad.
I like it better when there is more to discover than what I hear for the first time or when there is nothing else but that indescribable quality, luck, charm of music writing that creates awkward feelings that make you hostile so you give in to fall into Stockholm Syndrome and embrace the sounds. Interesting music not only could mean chaos as no idea noise but also exact separable parts organized in a way that is shocking. I want ideas. Not intelligence but people with a will that reeks from unstoppable innocence. The more fucked up their ideas are the more interesting to music will be for me. Let it be Buck Biloxi and the Fucks, Deformity or the new Rákosi recordings. I need to hear that force which made the music happen. I love how under certain circumstances guitars can end up as an inconceivable buzz that leaves space for imagination not only for what the player’s intention was with using such mutual code to transmit information but I feel welcomed to guess after all what the fuck is happening.
I reached a point during the write up for the YETT where I realized since everything is so instant nowadays bands are forming to play a genre that is on the spotlight rather than just stepping out from the shadow into the spotlight that is focused on their style of sound. These bands lack the main motivation what is the real reason of why I really love to listen to music: Hearing people play whatever they think is cool. But these protocol bands are playing what is in other people’s favor which even if executed in a real decent way is super dumb because these bands couldn’t exists without anyone’s attention and this is why I skip them because I don’t have to hear it to know what they play. It’s not only dark, gothic post-punk/death rock that I always kick around in my column along with oi influenced hardcore but generic KDB hardcore punk and well bed room noise hardcore too drowning me with their uncountable amount of demos, eps, break ups and last shows. I accept it, these are sub-genres with their own rules that might differ from mine. The music is only bad when the listener is bad.
I like it better when there is more to discover than what I hear for the first time or when there is nothing else but that indescribable quality, luck, charm of music writing that creates awkward feelings that make you hostile so you give in to fall into Stockholm Syndrome and embrace the sounds. Interesting music not only could mean chaos as no idea noise but also exact separable parts organized in a way that is shocking. I want ideas. Not intelligence but people with a will that reeks from unstoppable innocence. The more fucked up their ideas are the more interesting to music will be for me. Let it be Buck Biloxi and the Fucks, Deformity or the new Rákosi recordings. I need to hear that force which made the music happen. I love how under certain circumstances guitars can end up as an inconceivable buzz that leaves space for imagination not only for what the player’s intention was with using such mutual code to transmit information but I feel welcomed to guess after all what the fuck is happening.
It doesn’t
mean I only listen to the most unique bands who live outside the box. If I were
in a band whose sound I couldn’t describe in any way maybe I would succeed as a
musician who I don’t want to be and fail as a listener and by this my music
would be just shit. Because after all I want to make music I want to hear and
selfishly it would be great if other people would think the same and produce
more music I want to hear.
#384
I want to write as the Gonz skates. Or better I want to live how he skates, I want the world to be familiar to his style of thrasin’ because it’s far from what reality is and if I could write like that then when it gets printed out on paper this utopist vision will be a bit closer to reality. I was thinking about the rhythm of life and walking with a groove and ended up at the similarities of skateboarding and punk.
Both
hobbies are very concerned about self-documentation. Tribes hidden from
civilization thought a camera could steal your soul. Modern man thinks only
those things exist that are documented. This set of mentality leads into the
challenge to film something that really worth to be filmed and all of a sudden
the whole skate industry hyped itself into a constant stunt act in which
skaters only go out to jump down from neck breaking heights and the actual
thrashin’ lost it’s representation and in the rare moments when it appears on
screen it feels so heartwarming. To use an allegory here professional
skate world seems as if in music progrock won. But kids filming kids
skateboarding is very familiar to everyday punk struggles, if a part of a
skater equals a song and the whole movie as an album. And just as the best punk
albums, good skateboarding movies too, do make you want to go out and
participate in the same fun. This eagerness of self-documentation, that
probably made the bed for selfies and the whole web 2.0 society, brought every
skate rat crew a camera, just as how all the punk crews have a band with a
demo. I started to think about what is a stunt in punk. Writing the tightest,
coolest songs in Switzerland? Trashing spoons at neck breaking speed in
Finland? Dorks, assholes, maniax hitting back the terrorize the society that
has melted in the fear of a nuclear war in the shittier parts of the US? Art
school drop outs trying to paint shit pictures with their guitars? Mexico holding
satanic rituals that is crushing? French people being French but it actually
sounds pretty amazing?
In punk the
documentation is focused on the falling not on a controlled and successful
landing. The risky minutes when anything can happen. Could everything happen?
Everywhere, all the time. I watched a Suicide interview where they said they
wanted to make something new and as a listener I could state that they still
sound fresh. They created modernism. But are the limits of sonic creativity really
border-less? Is it even punks duty to out-do and reinvent themselves? It’s
supposed to save the society, bring anarchy and kill cops but it’s not destined
to figure out new song structures and produce another sonic dimension. It has
to be itself and people who love punk music aka punx have to be themselves as
well. I try to accept that when I want something new I don’t always have to
look among punk bands. My own social problem is that I always want something
new because for me the unknown is what’s interesting so whenever I name drop a
band here, I feel as the most boring person ever, because I know that band and
for me their greatness is obvious while I wanna be surprised. I want the
uncontrolled falling in my head to grab me with it’s weight so we can offer
ourselves to gravity and so it be. So I started listening.
I was
re-amazed by the awesome noise of Shellac, had a brain crush on Steve Albini
and hammered my worn out-work-wise mind with Jesus Lizard’s Goat. When factory
workers take ecstasy and I hear it behind all my desks. Fell in love with the
finnish Nolla Nolla Nolla and their ep from ’81 what a great reproduction of
chilling gloom, no new romanticism but guitars. Mauna Kea’s transcendental
noise is amazing, they are probably close to Rakta. Deformity continuing being
themselves and why the fuck is short music short, kill shuffle mode and put
that in repeat, discovered Piece War, who are such dreamy, cool folk, I wanna
watch people draw to their music, Doc Dart’s Patricia is just as exhaustively interesting
as his profile piece written by that Born Again dude, and if I were there than
I listened to Crucifucks stayed close to the sound and spent hours at work to
put Spike In Vain and the Landlords on repeat, death to false historians for
forcing interesting bands into the shadow of all that boring shit. Why is it
too logical that the majority loves crap? Chrome’s alien disco is mathematical
language for free thinkers, too many ideas, Shitlickers swinging their boots so
we can like them while Rattus makes me amazed by their too much guitar in my
room, Roy Montgomery write songs from different rainy nights soundtrack for the
stopped cameras, PERVERS ET TRUANDS bringing heaviness like a river bringing
you thrown out trash making a whole city ugly when running through it, Les
Vandales writing hymnal hate songs, Barcelona who are the most destructive
beautiful band.
These bands
are painting a much better picture of the world than what it is actually. That
is basically stupid people staring on themselves. If you browse through the
holiday photo album of your parents and your friends the main difference will
probably be that your parents made pictures of scenes and views when they were
happy. If they had enough ego they stood in the left corner of a huge cathedral
being happy, smiling. They captured moments. On the other hand your post-modern
friends’ digital photo album will be nothing but close ups of their faces with
something amazing landmark hidden in the background that is not covered by a
pair of pursing lips. They capture their face. You think it’s fucked. But punx
helped to arrive here. Some of your friends are probably already this
fucked. Most of the shitty bands are just selfies of boring people standing in
front of formalities.
Have you
read it? New Yorker being tldr over Age of Quarell and United Blood! That was a
terrific article. It could have proved that none of us is qualified enough to
write as good as it would fit into the New Yorker and at the same time
understands hardcore. But it’s not true because punk has so many great minds
who can use the language in a really entertaining way when they have to express
how good Saccharine Trust is and why do they love Tampere SS. But that article
demonstrated the true style of those funny/dumb bands. Hardcore when it is bad
takes only one thing serious. The codes of being hardcore. While punx who play
hardcore take themselves serious, their circumstances, the world around them
and it’s not a terrifyingly awkward ego trip of proving yourself to very stupid
people. I agree that hardcore is music played by punx who are more punk than
regular punx. But again it’s mostly just fast, angry, heavy, noisy music with
some ideas that you can dumpster dive even in a fucking library. When HARLEY
FLANAGAN WANTS TO KILL THE BAND MEMBERS OF FVK he is not out punking the punx
he is showing how fucking sad, shallow and empty his life is when he is still
frustrated over some band beef that happened decades ago. Also only American
hardcore is American. Do your fucking homework and open a map then imagine
guitars are sold even outside the USA and people can play as fast on them as
they want to.
Just take
Hungary and my weekend that was ruled by Rákosi, Önkiírtás, Gross Out,
Berosszulás. Best hardcore bands of 2015.
#383
Reading
books on reading books, knife cut noodles, proto-techno, repetitive manic rock
and roll, shows, german post-modern, the Czech crust scene, losing my edge.
I’m losing
my edge to the kids, to myself, to laziness, to being dumb or rather just feeling
dumb and above all being paralyzed by the terrifying mixture of the previously
mentioned components. I’m tired and the work hasn’t even begun. I'm not afraid of work, I’m not afraid
of failure. I have failed. It’s unpleasant but useful. A good reminder of bad
memories – Don’t be sorry, be different. I don’t even want success but to be
able to be successful, to be good at what I really like to do. That’s enough. What am I good at? That’s probably listening
and this was an intro.
Reading books on reading books is like writing columns about not writing columns, which is a very frequent topic in punk writing. If punk writing is reduced to MRR’s columnist reality. In a better world this column should be about being busy on being punk. Wait, there is no should in punk (and this is already the better world, with poorly selected words, still printed out, left right next to your toilet bowl). Generally in punk there is punk music and its fans who are the punx. Listeners. I’m a punk thus I recommend myself to write about music but I won’t because the music I listen to nowadays are non-review-able here. Proto-techno which basically is manic, repetitive rock and roll (and some that will be discussed later). System error, a person who is a fan of punk music becomes a punk and then doesn’t exclusively listens to punk rock. Theoretical question how could a punk listen to non-punk music? Is there a pause in this being? Now I thank my younger mind for getting the word (e.g.: punk) tattooed on my tight. I’m safe.
Ideas.
The core feature of punk music is similar to porn’s: you can’t define it but you know when you see it. Wittgenstein said what could be shown can’t be said and I guess laying judgement on videotaped sex depends on your vision just as much as noise is a sonic experience best lived through your hearing. Words fall on both. But playing with your zipper could satisfy each interest. Eco tried his best and said in porn time is spent as generously as it is in real life. Which means everything is boringly real until we don’t fuck. Punk music is probably when due to hearing played out sounds, finally you are not bored but feeling as if you were having some very pleasant, consensual sex. Culturally I prefer orgies. In reality: Anna, my heart is all only yours.
Sex and punk. The subject of satisfaction depends on the input of participants very similar to how this magazine’s content is formed; namely it could be anything what people make it to be.
News from the outside world: It’s a gentle act that there is shitty punk being produced because some people love crap and still they can call themselves punks which self-proclamation makes them happy. For me it’s a rational realization. I’m a punk for the same reasons as I’m a Hungarian: it just happened this way and I can’t do anything against it. For the majority my favorite bands are closer to human feces just as for the majority of Hungarians I’m a godless traitor. So be it. Punk has no rules, but damn my punk has so many. It’s not political it’s personal but to be a person among people is always political. Who, why, where, what? It’s more of a hunt for quality. Yes, there is a huge amount of punk bands who I love for their ideas and strict attitude. Mostly because they are able to transform these features into sounds and it ends up crushingly great. But it’s my taste. I have a sweet tooth for this. For what? For the terrifying groove of Missing Foundation. The artistic sadism that never falls from consciousness, so it knows what it does. It does everything. A distorted mist wrapping around everything and keeping it together in a claustrophobic space. Everything happens at the same time and it’s fun to wander around and focus always on something else. Their sound is so fundamental it’s hard to pin it to other bands. It’s heavy, slow, noisy, chanting. But not chaotic since it sounds pre-planned. Like a fucked up opera written for some fucked up reason. Sound terror, that others call industrial music? Whatever it is, it’s frightening, disgusting and really good. Without text book knowledge I see their fingerprints on many bands and without the text book knowledge it’s an interesting space where everybody is influencing each other. The whole musical and cultural scene with bands locking themselves into a sound laboratory to experience. Sonically not ideologically. Musicians play music thus they should care about rhythm and sounds. Or care about how to not care about the previous two. If they are good everything will come along. Sound experiences.I spent a great amount of time listening my way through some Pop Group records. Their echoing, distant dance records, post-punk, proto-disco, wait a minute it’s not New York, un-danceable hysteria music that is constantly arguing with itself. Parallel, inverted sounds within a band. I love to dance but I’m too comfortable to go out dancing and this sound makes me feel good because I know there is no place where people dance to this so I belong home.
Then there is the guitar sound of Henry Flynt. Deep repetition. It’s all traditional.
Does it mean I’m down with listening to punk music and you can buy my Die Kreuzen lp on Discogs? No. But I do listen to Die Kreuzen now with a different ear and I realize, pay attention and understand other aspects of their music. And by this everything gets better. New sounds are not punker than simple primitive notes of strict hardcore bands. It’s called post, proto, new wave whatever. Not better.
One final music experience from work that is too good to exclude from here. I was listening to the Peel Session of Crass and it is amazing. It doesn’t really sound just as an idea but it is actual and powerful music. Tape collages all over the session, the structure of the whole set is so hectic, the instant changes raise the idea of the missing parts were censored by the authorities. What do we want, what do we want? Disco! Also Tyvek, also the compilation La voix des gnomes. Also Pale Grey Suits from Good Throb. What a mellow atmosphere, lazy punk weekends, waking up to coffee sips, wondering through your records and fanzines. Music makes me happy.
It’s funny but by funny I ironically mean sad that ageless people are proud and willfully requesting respect for still being punk or representing the other end of this crying game and mistaking a collection of teenage-radicalism ideology with music, dividing idea from sound as if there was the capital idea and not only their own belief that match sounds and then they abandon punk for picking lint out of their belly button. That says one thing that they just give up on listening quality music. Give up to care about quality which pretty much translates to having fun. This is why nostalgia tastes so awfully bitter, because mostly it’s a re-consumption of something that is bad but once we thought it’s good. Reliving fun we are lazy to have now. But my punk is about glorifying mistakes and not stupidity, because a mistake is not what a stupid person does but something a smart person recognizes and my punk is about staying young not about dropping crocodile tears while reminiscing such hey days.
Mann said “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people”. Sometimes I think a listener is someone for whom listening is more difficult than it is for other people. Most of the times I think that I’m someone for whom it is more difficult then it is for other people. What is? That.
But I’m a listener and I’m a good listener so I know that you have to work for listening and suffer through shitty bands, times when everything seems boring, when you can’t find what you really wish to hear, when you feel there is not enough time to hear everything that is great and recently have fallen into your lap. You have to be hungry but in this case to be hungry could be fun. Because it’s not about starving it’s about the desire for consuming eternal culture. I’m fat and okay with it but I’m terribly unlettered and that is not such a sexy feeling when you face it. I blame myself for the delusion of once I was full. Books not midnight food.
Don’t fall for fake listeners. The ones who slackishly state there are only two types of music, good and bad. That means they have to decide what is good and what is bad, they have to make universal decisions and it leads to objectify their lives by objectifying everything else around them. It’s the fear of everything. Overproduced bro-core means nothing to me but probably that genre has its top performers since it has it’s own habits, rituals, ideas which could be eminently performed or reconstructed and reinvented. I let it be but I won’t be around it. While in another universe Firmeza 10 is a perfect hardcore band. This other universe is the space between my two ears, You can obey objectivity by sacrificing your subjectivity but at the same time you can’t hope for pizza when you go into a Korean place.
Reading books on reading books is like writing columns about not writing columns, which is a very frequent topic in punk writing. If punk writing is reduced to MRR’s columnist reality. In a better world this column should be about being busy on being punk. Wait, there is no should in punk (and this is already the better world, with poorly selected words, still printed out, left right next to your toilet bowl). Generally in punk there is punk music and its fans who are the punx. Listeners. I’m a punk thus I recommend myself to write about music but I won’t because the music I listen to nowadays are non-review-able here. Proto-techno which basically is manic, repetitive rock and roll (and some that will be discussed later). System error, a person who is a fan of punk music becomes a punk and then doesn’t exclusively listens to punk rock. Theoretical question how could a punk listen to non-punk music? Is there a pause in this being? Now I thank my younger mind for getting the word (e.g.: punk) tattooed on my tight. I’m safe.
Ideas.
The core feature of punk music is similar to porn’s: you can’t define it but you know when you see it. Wittgenstein said what could be shown can’t be said and I guess laying judgement on videotaped sex depends on your vision just as much as noise is a sonic experience best lived through your hearing. Words fall on both. But playing with your zipper could satisfy each interest. Eco tried his best and said in porn time is spent as generously as it is in real life. Which means everything is boringly real until we don’t fuck. Punk music is probably when due to hearing played out sounds, finally you are not bored but feeling as if you were having some very pleasant, consensual sex. Culturally I prefer orgies. In reality: Anna, my heart is all only yours.
Sex and punk. The subject of satisfaction depends on the input of participants very similar to how this magazine’s content is formed; namely it could be anything what people make it to be.
News from the outside world: It’s a gentle act that there is shitty punk being produced because some people love crap and still they can call themselves punks which self-proclamation makes them happy. For me it’s a rational realization. I’m a punk for the same reasons as I’m a Hungarian: it just happened this way and I can’t do anything against it. For the majority my favorite bands are closer to human feces just as for the majority of Hungarians I’m a godless traitor. So be it. Punk has no rules, but damn my punk has so many. It’s not political it’s personal but to be a person among people is always political. Who, why, where, what? It’s more of a hunt for quality. Yes, there is a huge amount of punk bands who I love for their ideas and strict attitude. Mostly because they are able to transform these features into sounds and it ends up crushingly great. But it’s my taste. I have a sweet tooth for this. For what? For the terrifying groove of Missing Foundation. The artistic sadism that never falls from consciousness, so it knows what it does. It does everything. A distorted mist wrapping around everything and keeping it together in a claustrophobic space. Everything happens at the same time and it’s fun to wander around and focus always on something else. Their sound is so fundamental it’s hard to pin it to other bands. It’s heavy, slow, noisy, chanting. But not chaotic since it sounds pre-planned. Like a fucked up opera written for some fucked up reason. Sound terror, that others call industrial music? Whatever it is, it’s frightening, disgusting and really good. Without text book knowledge I see their fingerprints on many bands and without the text book knowledge it’s an interesting space where everybody is influencing each other. The whole musical and cultural scene with bands locking themselves into a sound laboratory to experience. Sonically not ideologically. Musicians play music thus they should care about rhythm and sounds. Or care about how to not care about the previous two. If they are good everything will come along. Sound experiences.I spent a great amount of time listening my way through some Pop Group records. Their echoing, distant dance records, post-punk, proto-disco, wait a minute it’s not New York, un-danceable hysteria music that is constantly arguing with itself. Parallel, inverted sounds within a band. I love to dance but I’m too comfortable to go out dancing and this sound makes me feel good because I know there is no place where people dance to this so I belong home.
Then there is the guitar sound of Henry Flynt. Deep repetition. It’s all traditional.
Does it mean I’m down with listening to punk music and you can buy my Die Kreuzen lp on Discogs? No. But I do listen to Die Kreuzen now with a different ear and I realize, pay attention and understand other aspects of their music. And by this everything gets better. New sounds are not punker than simple primitive notes of strict hardcore bands. It’s called post, proto, new wave whatever. Not better.
One final music experience from work that is too good to exclude from here. I was listening to the Peel Session of Crass and it is amazing. It doesn’t really sound just as an idea but it is actual and powerful music. Tape collages all over the session, the structure of the whole set is so hectic, the instant changes raise the idea of the missing parts were censored by the authorities. What do we want, what do we want? Disco! Also Tyvek, also the compilation La voix des gnomes. Also Pale Grey Suits from Good Throb. What a mellow atmosphere, lazy punk weekends, waking up to coffee sips, wondering through your records and fanzines. Music makes me happy.
It’s funny but by funny I ironically mean sad that ageless people are proud and willfully requesting respect for still being punk or representing the other end of this crying game and mistaking a collection of teenage-radicalism ideology with music, dividing idea from sound as if there was the capital idea and not only their own belief that match sounds and then they abandon punk for picking lint out of their belly button. That says one thing that they just give up on listening quality music. Give up to care about quality which pretty much translates to having fun. This is why nostalgia tastes so awfully bitter, because mostly it’s a re-consumption of something that is bad but once we thought it’s good. Reliving fun we are lazy to have now. But my punk is about glorifying mistakes and not stupidity, because a mistake is not what a stupid person does but something a smart person recognizes and my punk is about staying young not about dropping crocodile tears while reminiscing such hey days.
Mann said “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people”. Sometimes I think a listener is someone for whom listening is more difficult than it is for other people. Most of the times I think that I’m someone for whom it is more difficult then it is for other people. What is? That.
But I’m a listener and I’m a good listener so I know that you have to work for listening and suffer through shitty bands, times when everything seems boring, when you can’t find what you really wish to hear, when you feel there is not enough time to hear everything that is great and recently have fallen into your lap. You have to be hungry but in this case to be hungry could be fun. Because it’s not about starving it’s about the desire for consuming eternal culture. I’m fat and okay with it but I’m terribly unlettered and that is not such a sexy feeling when you face it. I blame myself for the delusion of once I was full. Books not midnight food.
Don’t fall for fake listeners. The ones who slackishly state there are only two types of music, good and bad. That means they have to decide what is good and what is bad, they have to make universal decisions and it leads to objectify their lives by objectifying everything else around them. It’s the fear of everything. Overproduced bro-core means nothing to me but probably that genre has its top performers since it has it’s own habits, rituals, ideas which could be eminently performed or reconstructed and reinvented. I let it be but I won’t be around it. While in another universe Firmeza 10 is a perfect hardcore band. This other universe is the space between my two ears, You can obey objectivity by sacrificing your subjectivity but at the same time you can’t hope for pizza when you go into a Korean place.
Is it a
title to be a listener? It’s a great hobby and nothing else. Not a prestige,
not anything but time being spent with standing next to music. Still I’m losing
my edge and crying like a baby when others borrow my beloved micro-subculture’s
essence to prove their relevance. They wear it, not live it. But to live
listening is a bizarre act and probably not something that should be
impeachable on anyone. Although I live among people and it feels like shit when
someone reduce my obsession into a replication of a look or act. It’s childish
but I’m desperate because I’m losing my edge.
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